Perhaps we should implement China's 2,000-year-old process for choosing public servants: from the top 2% of the country's brightest examinees, select the most honest and competent. Send them to the poorest villages until they raise average incomes 50% then promote them to repeat the process at the District level. Repeat this process for 25 years and, presto! you have your new chief civil servant. It weeds out the sociopaths really fast.
Xi Jinping's father started his cursus honorum at 17, Xi began at 19.
Yes, indeed, fully agree. Doesn't mean corruption and inefficiency doesn't exist in China, but it seems not systemic, related more to particular individuals who then can be rooted out of the system relatively easily. Plus the public policy in China of actually highlighting the fight against corruption. Not quite the same in Europe; we are so self-satisfied that we consider corruption as something others do, not we in our beautiful "garden" (to quote Borrell).
I will mention these aspects in a future part of this series.
Below is a quotation straight from Wikipedia that is exactly relevant to the central issue that you are skirting, Zionist Extermination of Palestine and its relationship to Colonial Occupation governments of Western Europe. Europe is a schizophrenic caught between the masterful and liberating Westphalia Treaties that liberated nations from religious domination, and the Anglo-Saxonist imperative of expansion. Likudist Zionism has ironically adopted this unfortunate model of Totalitarianism. Arendt's caveat that small nations like 1940 Italy of Mussolini cannot reach critical mass necessary to be totalitarian is overcome by its AIPAC purchase of USA Congress. Arendt is vindicated and I feel very strange in sensing, like you seem to do, that MAGA Trump has inadvertently become the catalyst for Africa, BRICS, Slavs, Global South to finally end neocolonialism and its minority European elitist unpopular, as you point out, leaders. The gorilla we cannot ignore is the rise of the East, essential part of BRICS.
EU and especially Germany Olaf Scholz and Poland are tilting at windmills of dead Stalin and dead Soviet Union in unfortunate inertia of dysfunctional Anglo-Saxonism. (Readers look up this term.)
" Arendt discusses the transformation of classes into masses, the role of propaganda in dealing with the non-totalitarian world, and the use of terror, essential to this form of government. Totalitarian movements are fundamentally different from autocratic regimes, says Arendt, insofar as autocratic regimes seek only to gain absolute political power and to outlaw opposition, while totalitarian regimes seek to dominate every aspect of everyone's life as a prelude to world domination. She states:
... Intellectual, spiritual, and artistic initiative is as dangerous to totalitarianism as the gangster initiative of the mob, and both are more dangerous than mere political opposition. The consistent persecution of every higher form of intellectual activity by the new mass leaders springs from more than their natural resentment against everything they cannot understand. Total domination does not allow for free initiative in any field of life, for any activity that is not entirely predictable. Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.[18]
Hannah Arendt considers the Soviet and Nazi regimes alongside European colonies in Africa and Asia, as their later and gruesome transformation due to the effect of imperial boomerang. She analyzes Russian pan-Slavism as a stage in the development of racism and totalitarianism. Her analysis was continued by Alexander Etkind in the book "Internal colonization: Russia's imperial experience".[19]
Arendt discusses the use of front organizations, fake governmental agencies, and esoteric doctrines as a means of concealing the radical nature of totalitarian aims from the non-totalitarian world. Near the end of the book, Arendt writes that loneliness is a precondition for totalitarian domination, with people who are socially isolated being more likely to be attracted to totalitarian ideology and movements.[20]"
Hello, yes I agree with the first part of your post, exactly! For the second part, less, probably because I am not a great fan of Hannah Arendt; or rather: this confirms to me again that I am not such a great fan of hers. She seems even more off today, specially in this discussion of totalitarianism; it's so 1940s. And as far as I know she did not criticise Zionism, instead focused of the banality of evil as per the trial of Eichmann. But I don't think it is that original, actually. It was also quite the fashion of the 60 (with Milgram's experiments, etc)
What is worse is that she does not criticie the liberal democracies ; remember many did at that time from both the right and the left ; like Hayek, Mises, but also Chomsky and the Frankfurt School.
Instead, I think G. Orwell is more perceptive and even more so A. Huxley. One of his last interviews he made is really worth seeing, shortly before he died, on the same day as JFK:
I can't imagine most of the voters in the EU are socially isolated. They continue to support the WEF's alpha-test for global fascism, the EU. The good news is the EU's current structure will destroy itself. The bad news is it will try to snatch as much sovereignty as it can from the people and nations before it collapses.
Agree, they do support the WEF ideology and programme, but sometimes without even knowing it too clearly. There is no collective political consciousness. It is just so easy to manipulate the public opinion when one has the MSM on ones' side. Though it might slowly be changing as other media are rising, like substack , X , etc. Interesting times we live in...
Zilu asked, “If the Duke of Wei were to employ you to serve in the government of his state, what would be your first priority?”
The Master answered, “It would, of course, be the rectification of names.”
Zilu said, “Could you, Master, really be so far off the mark? Why worry about rectifying names?”
The Master replied, “How boorish you are, Zilu! When it comes to matters that he does not understand, the gentleman should remain silent.
“If names are not rectified, speech will not accord with reality; when speech does not accord with reality, things will not be successfully accomplished. When things are not successfully accomplished, ritual practice and music will fail to flourish; when ritual and music fail to flourish, punishments and penalties will miss the mark. And when punishments and penalties miss the mark, the common people will be at a loss as to what to do with themselves. This is why the gentleman only applies names that can be properly spoken and assures that what he says can be properly put into action. The gentleman simply guards against arbitrariness in his speech. That is all there is to it.”
I consider Japan and South Korea to be in the western collective. Yoon was around 11% before he was booted and Ishiba is at 27%.
It should be improbable that of the 36 nations in the EU, NATO, 5 Eyes, including South Korea and Japan, there are only five or six heads-of-state that are competent.
I am holding my nose and counting Trump as one of the competent ones.
These are USA satellites and both suzerainties as is Taiwan. Their people are rational as the European electorate and elections just as media dominated. The ruling class, yes EU unelected leadership very much monarchy, own the media. Substack so far is out of their box.
Taiwan is more complicated of course than Japan and South Korea which are quite firmly in the US camp. Taiwan is a potential powderkeg if politics there evolves in the wrong direction and the Beijing is not able to direct it in the direction they want. As our friend below writes, I think China will solve it by 2049, but without weapons, chinese style : absorption... :)
We keep screwing around in Taiwan politics and China will settle the issue before 2049. China plays the long game, no invasion that will destroy tens of billions of infrastructure. A blockade.
Yes. China is long range culturally, so careful not to unnecessarily provoke an impetuous Trump. They are protecting their own economy in the short term. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, They have kept away from the genocide issue as anti-China and Russiphobic Israel discredits itself and the West. Africa is also encouraged, even as Trump attacks Africa for fake 'White genocide'. Before we get carried away by MAGA disparagement, we are reminded that Biden described Mandela as a terrorist and supported Botha.
I identify with Alon Mizrahi, with personal outrage at brutality and inhumanity of the racist West and its white supremacy & absurdity. Yes, blockade is the stick for USA Taiwan marionettes but chips come first.
Perhaps we should implement China's 2,000-year-old process for choosing public servants: from the top 2% of the country's brightest examinees, select the most honest and competent. Send them to the poorest villages until they raise average incomes 50% then promote them to repeat the process at the District level. Repeat this process for 25 years and, presto! you have your new chief civil servant. It weeds out the sociopaths really fast.
Xi Jinping's father started his cursus honorum at 17, Xi began at 19.
Yes, indeed, fully agree. Doesn't mean corruption and inefficiency doesn't exist in China, but it seems not systemic, related more to particular individuals who then can be rooted out of the system relatively easily. Plus the public policy in China of actually highlighting the fight against corruption. Not quite the same in Europe; we are so self-satisfied that we consider corruption as something others do, not we in our beautiful "garden" (to quote Borrell).
I will mention these aspects in a future part of this series.
Thanks!
Those exams are literally a foundation behind China's isolationism and stagnation in the face of the Industrial Age.
For that matter, the "leaders" of Europe today are from the finest European schools and are "right thinking".
Love your comment! :)
Below is a quotation straight from Wikipedia that is exactly relevant to the central issue that you are skirting, Zionist Extermination of Palestine and its relationship to Colonial Occupation governments of Western Europe. Europe is a schizophrenic caught between the masterful and liberating Westphalia Treaties that liberated nations from religious domination, and the Anglo-Saxonist imperative of expansion. Likudist Zionism has ironically adopted this unfortunate model of Totalitarianism. Arendt's caveat that small nations like 1940 Italy of Mussolini cannot reach critical mass necessary to be totalitarian is overcome by its AIPAC purchase of USA Congress. Arendt is vindicated and I feel very strange in sensing, like you seem to do, that MAGA Trump has inadvertently become the catalyst for Africa, BRICS, Slavs, Global South to finally end neocolonialism and its minority European elitist unpopular, as you point out, leaders. The gorilla we cannot ignore is the rise of the East, essential part of BRICS.
EU and especially Germany Olaf Scholz and Poland are tilting at windmills of dead Stalin and dead Soviet Union in unfortunate inertia of dysfunctional Anglo-Saxonism. (Readers look up this term.)
" Arendt discusses the transformation of classes into masses, the role of propaganda in dealing with the non-totalitarian world, and the use of terror, essential to this form of government. Totalitarian movements are fundamentally different from autocratic regimes, says Arendt, insofar as autocratic regimes seek only to gain absolute political power and to outlaw opposition, while totalitarian regimes seek to dominate every aspect of everyone's life as a prelude to world domination. She states:
... Intellectual, spiritual, and artistic initiative is as dangerous to totalitarianism as the gangster initiative of the mob, and both are more dangerous than mere political opposition. The consistent persecution of every higher form of intellectual activity by the new mass leaders springs from more than their natural resentment against everything they cannot understand. Total domination does not allow for free initiative in any field of life, for any activity that is not entirely predictable. Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.[18]
Hannah Arendt considers the Soviet and Nazi regimes alongside European colonies in Africa and Asia, as their later and gruesome transformation due to the effect of imperial boomerang. She analyzes Russian pan-Slavism as a stage in the development of racism and totalitarianism. Her analysis was continued by Alexander Etkind in the book "Internal colonization: Russia's imperial experience".[19]
Arendt discusses the use of front organizations, fake governmental agencies, and esoteric doctrines as a means of concealing the radical nature of totalitarian aims from the non-totalitarian world. Near the end of the book, Arendt writes that loneliness is a precondition for totalitarian domination, with people who are socially isolated being more likely to be attracted to totalitarian ideology and movements.[20]"
Hello, yes I agree with the first part of your post, exactly! For the second part, less, probably because I am not a great fan of Hannah Arendt; or rather: this confirms to me again that I am not such a great fan of hers. She seems even more off today, specially in this discussion of totalitarianism; it's so 1940s. And as far as I know she did not criticise Zionism, instead focused of the banality of evil as per the trial of Eichmann. But I don't think it is that original, actually. It was also quite the fashion of the 60 (with Milgram's experiments, etc)
What is worse is that she does not criticie the liberal democracies ; remember many did at that time from both the right and the left ; like Hayek, Mises, but also Chomsky and the Frankfurt School.
Instead, I think G. Orwell is more perceptive and even more so A. Huxley. One of his last interviews he made is really worth seeing, shortly before he died, on the same day as JFK:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alasBxZsb40
I can't imagine most of the voters in the EU are socially isolated. They continue to support the WEF's alpha-test for global fascism, the EU. The good news is the EU's current structure will destroy itself. The bad news is it will try to snatch as much sovereignty as it can from the people and nations before it collapses.
Agree, they do support the WEF ideology and programme, but sometimes without even knowing it too clearly. There is no collective political consciousness. It is just so easy to manipulate the public opinion when one has the MSM on ones' side. Though it might slowly be changing as other media are rising, like substack , X , etc. Interesting times we live in...
It is doubtful whether this is the case. If anything, the ideas of liberty are probably regressing in Europe (though not in the US).
I live in a state some of us jokingly refer to as "The Peoples' Republic." Its voters are majority dirigiste. Other states might be less so.
Interesting. Could that be Washington state?
No, I'm a Bay Stater.
Oh, that People's Republic :)
An oldie, but goodie, from Confucius's Analects:
13.3
Zilu asked, “If the Duke of Wei were to employ you to serve in the government of his state, what would be your first priority?”
The Master answered, “It would, of course, be the rectification of names.”
Zilu said, “Could you, Master, really be so far off the mark? Why worry about rectifying names?”
The Master replied, “How boorish you are, Zilu! When it comes to matters that he does not understand, the gentleman should remain silent.
“If names are not rectified, speech will not accord with reality; when speech does not accord with reality, things will not be successfully accomplished. When things are not successfully accomplished, ritual practice and music will fail to flourish; when ritual and music fail to flourish, punishments and penalties will miss the mark. And when punishments and penalties miss the mark, the common people will be at a loss as to what to do with themselves. This is why the gentleman only applies names that can be properly spoken and assures that what he says can be properly put into action. The gentleman simply guards against arbitrariness in his speech. That is all there is to it.”
Yes, very interesting, it reminds me that when China centralised early in comparison to Europe it also aligned speech ; mandarin across China.
I blame everything on the WEF. The transhumanists are misanthropes.
Yes, that's one way to see it! :))
I consider Japan and South Korea to be in the western collective. Yoon was around 11% before he was booted and Ishiba is at 27%.
It should be improbable that of the 36 nations in the EU, NATO, 5 Eyes, including South Korea and Japan, there are only five or six heads-of-state that are competent.
I am holding my nose and counting Trump as one of the competent ones.
Yes, 11% must be some kind of record. I guess related to martial law.
Competence is one thing, but Solzhenitsyn spoke also of courage of leaders, and Trump has that even if he lacks a bit in competence.
Some day I am going to read Solzhenitsyn. Less time reading the excellent writing on Substack.
These are USA satellites and both suzerainties as is Taiwan. Their people are rational as the European electorate and elections just as media dominated. The ruling class, yes EU unelected leadership very much monarchy, own the media. Substack so far is out of their box.
Taiwan is more complicated of course than Japan and South Korea which are quite firmly in the US camp. Taiwan is a potential powderkeg if politics there evolves in the wrong direction and the Beijing is not able to direct it in the direction they want. As our friend below writes, I think China will solve it by 2049, but without weapons, chinese style : absorption... :)
We keep screwing around in Taiwan politics and China will settle the issue before 2049. China plays the long game, no invasion that will destroy tens of billions of infrastructure. A blockade.
Yes, indeed , agree; see my comment above.
Yes. China is long range culturally, so careful not to unnecessarily provoke an impetuous Trump. They are protecting their own economy in the short term. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, They have kept away from the genocide issue as anti-China and Russiphobic Israel discredits itself and the West. Africa is also encouraged, even as Trump attacks Africa for fake 'White genocide'. Before we get carried away by MAGA disparagement, we are reminded that Biden described Mandela as a terrorist and supported Botha.
I identify with Alon Mizrahi, with personal outrage at brutality and inhumanity of the racist West and its white supremacy & absurdity. Yes, blockade is the stick for USA Taiwan marionettes but chips come first.
Yes, fully agree, and good point to bring in South Africa.