1. re: #316 CuriousLurker

I would more heartily agree if all the things we have done since 1914 had been consistently noble, but that just sounds like realpolitik.

Yep, that’s what it is.

Is it true that “the weak suffer what they must”? The Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, Bosnia, Darfur, etc. were all simply things that the weak suffered because they must, or because the strong are too important, too busy to intervene and prevent the deaths of tens or hundreds of thousands or even millions?

grumble ;-) I’d hoped to sneak off without addressing this big issue right now. I’ll do so fragmentarily.

I do not believe that humanity is condemned to a future of scorched-earth realpolitik. For one thing, a certain degree of domestic liberty and international cooperation is necessary (IMO) to maintain a postindustrial civilization. The Chinese ruling class is not permitting a degree of social mobility and internal dissent because they’re nice guys. (And thank goodness: otherwise we could be facing a North Korea with a billion people.)

However, realpolitik will not yield to modernity because of arguments that we’re all better off when we cooperate. If modernity is the path to an ever better future (which I hope), modernity, when challenged as it will be, must be ready and willing to prevail over realpolitik’s thuggery.

Afaic considerations of realpolitik will never go away because, well, they’re real. I believe that modernity will be challenged by thug-grade realpolitik for the foreseeable future; I hope that modernity will prevail; but I believe that modernity will have to bring its A-game to do so.

That’s what I mean by saying that the point is what we do.

2. Before logging off at least for a time, let me draw attention to my page concerning the Chinese government’s bigoted attack on Ambassador Gary Locke.