Comments by "" (@SusCalvin) on "Ryan Chapman" channel.

@duralumin594 The populist thoroughly deny they are the elite, no matter how much power they accumulate and centralize. They are so in tune with the people that eventually the people need not be questioned. The populist is an embodiment of the people itself.
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 @LouisGedo The separatists ended up being annexed into Russia.
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My big comparison with Pakistan is the role of the army, with the invasive role it has in the civ economy. A bit similar to the role of the army in Egypt. The IRGC seems to have a fluid role in civ life as well.
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@realryanchapman I think even the most heavily editorialized media, with some sort of diversity and professionality, is far more preferable than when a party creates an unfiltered channel directly to people.
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The absolute monarchy of Saudi Arabia currently has no threat to itself other than palace coups.
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@kerokikun2784 At least from what I can see. It has few outside threats since the fall of Saddam, with Iranian proxy groups on the fringe. There is no functional Saudi opposition, it is thoroughly suppressed. There was some incidents where bits of the family had a mandatory hotel stay at bin-Salmans orders. So that might be out of the way. I guess some disturbance from far out might happen. Like a global oil demand collapse or something.
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@omegablackzero I think it's this sort of apathy Putin banks on. A fully depoliticized population that knows Putin lies, steals and cheats and even feels clever knowing he does. But can no longer imagine that anything better exists. If you would like to have an abortion in certain parts of the country its definitely a change. Then it probably feels even more cynical to hear some hustler try to explain this is the new normal.
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@KonglomeratYT Trump would start ranting about the election fraud any time he was here in the EU to talk about anything. And now it's some sort of truth in elements that anything but a Trump victory must be fraud. I'm starting to think large bits of the party supporters do not talk with people of the same party. Its a dang festival, not active democracy.
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Nationalism in the Soviet Union probably means the re-emergence of a dominant Russia, with the others as satellites. Nationalism in Russia today wants to trace their national historical line through the Soviet period and right out the other end through the tsars. Trotsky looks a lot more internationalist. Worldwide revolution and all.
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There is a bunch of social-liberals near me. They are highly individualistic, but they think the state is necessary to give everyone an even starting point and guarantee the individual. And they still think more fields should have a state hand than full laizze faire liberals.
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 @artorhen The Ukrainian parliament wanted to approach the EU. President Yanukovytch refused after pressure from Putin. This led to a series of riots.
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I think it gets harder when the people who want a worse sort of nationalism gets free reign. There are way too many dictators who have said they so embody the nation that to replace them would be an affront to national culture. Same how I can't defend capitalism by saying monopoly practices are good and you should expect stagnant wages.
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@eee9034 I think Europe has a long history of Europeans beating eachother up. And at some point I got to accept that those people are dead and gone since generations. We have literally over a thousand years of stupid backstory. Jim Crow and 1980's reservation poverty is clearly within living memory.
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@chickenfishhybrid44 There is little reverance of some mythic founders in my nation. Mostly because the crown was a pack of gangsters and the church beat you if you were the wrong sort of Christian. There was greater faith in a path to the future because our past was such muck.
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 @Ariverfish Autocrats run their countries like clown shows.
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@evanrutledge-sz4yo The history of state churches here is about giving one sect of Christians a privilege over others in exchange for helping the crown. My Lutheran state church would have flogged every mormon and baptist they found. That's suddenly an option to settle theological debate when you got crown backing.
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 @Ariverfish I think of Ferdinand and Isabella as the twats who were in on purging the Jews.
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@Hwje1111 The UAE and Saudi are raw material dictatorships. Their states does not even need the subjects for taxes. The state is a weird free-floating entity above people who largely does what it wants. The only two sources of instability I can envision are sudden crashes on the oil market large enough to disrupt their budgets and palace coups within the royal family. Sometimes a whole bunch are in house arrest for undisclosed reasons. They are dang clown shows.
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 @stuartcarter4139 Making your useless but loyal cousin Pope is tradition.
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 @Ariverfish You can smuggle salt, poach, beat up the bailiff and other peasant shenanigans.
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@Hwje1111 During the early centuries in Haiti, without understanding tropical disease, it was a gnarly station. They keep feeding slaves and troops and administrators into the fever. At least as a soldier, or better as an officer, you could get rotated out. France has a whole thing about spreading enlightenment. They make a show of setting up schools and academies. Where brit colonies seem to let any missionary who cares do it if they feel like.
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When nationalism was relatively new in Europe, it was important to create a national story. You see national museums pop up, they teach national history, you send people out on a special nation holiday. The longer back you could draw a line in history the better. Unlike what hardcore nationalists think, this was not a smooth, organic process. People of the same early modern period states were not guaranteed to speak the same language. Sometimes you had more in common with the other peasant community across the border than the crown.
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@konstancemakjaveli I think to many early modern period peasants in Europe, that was how the crown appeared. The crown says you owe allegiance to it over your local world. Especially over those slightly different peasants just across the river. And it's gonna be deeper than just paying taxmen with different hats that can shift with a single war.
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@konstancemakjaveli Russia and the Soviet Union were brutal Imperial powers. Nationalism was part of the independence of Finland and later the breakup of the Soviet Block. Russia today is a huge place with more than a few groups who wish Russia would dissolve out in the member republics.
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 @konstancemakjaveli I think a lot of the early modern period nations are fun in how loose and funky the hold of the crown still is. Like they are in this transition period.
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I think class makes it easy. There is one class who literally owns and another class who works for them. It gets weirder when someone tries to make an underpaid librarian into the elite and billionaires into the people.
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How is this wonderful insight supposed to help us who live next to Putin and his imperial ambitions?
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I am a fairly conservative social democrat, and to me it's the libertarians and the new crop of weird wannabe conservatives who are the funky new kids.
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I think the populist will always deny they are an elite themselves, no matter how much concentration of power they accumulate.
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I think the IRGC would be a fully functional secular military dictatorship if the Guardian Council magically disappeared one day. They would have the same legitimacy issues as other military governments.
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I partly think the US federal military has become the largest economic stimulus system. Any overpriced thing bought keeps the Lockheed plant in some corner running, and some congressman would need to explain sudden layoffs at it.
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This sounds like a holdover from old Britain. Parliamentarians are not expected to be regular chumps or middle class oafs. They are supposed to be landed gentry or at least leisured folks with a guaranteed income. A lot of army and government positions were sold by commission, where you put up your own money as guarantee. It's a feature that a working class chump can't afford officer kit. I don't know what to compare with. Like a golf club where everyone can theoretically join but they need both time, a bunch of kit and a big annual fee.
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@jimk8520 Britain is a much more rigid class society than the USA, with ideas that an upper class crop of people from the right families or the right school debate club should naturally fill government. They don't need large gobs of campaign money but leisure time and being chums helps. Just having time to participate helps. They are a multi-party parliamentarian system but every MP is elected in many little local winner takes all elections. So if the largest local 30% minority is a tory or labour they take that seat. Northern Ireland and Scotland where local parties are concentrated are the exceptions.
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@jimk8520 Upper class crop in Britain means Boris Johnson and similar chums who have studied rhetoric, the classics and little else and expect things to just sort themselves out.
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We have one of those. The Chamber of Commerce runs it. It has very few normal people in it.
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@ronblack7870 "Buy local" is one such thing. The public can both want the municipality to get the cheapest option and to buy locally. You can weigh these against eachother if you are a reasonable group. Maybe argue that local dairy is worth a slight cost markup. At my place, the civil service is told to look at cost after other standards are met. I think from a union side, you have to treat the state as any other employer. Sometimes as your only employer, if there is no free market competing fire station or water plant.
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Right now, I think Iran is held together as much or more by nationalism than the official faith of the regime. Iran itself is not breaking apart with regional separatism, from what I can see. If everyone on the Guardian Council and every cleric magically disappeared one day, the IRGC would remain as a fully functional military dictatorship. This sort of secularism and democracy movement is absent in Saudi Arabia. My hopes for these absolute monarchies is much more faint. Despite this, I have to stand watching reps of the Kingdom show up on arms shows in Europe like they are normal.
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Some statistics seems to indicate that a lot more of you aren't hardcore party folks.
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@Onyx0920 I think at least a large minority of Americans aren't party loyalists. The video touched a bit on people who aren't voting for a candidate but against the other candidate. One of the most important numbers to me in a democracy is voter turnout. To me it's partly an indicator of how many have opted out. I'm not sure how to interpret US turnout.
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I have never actually read your pledge, what does it mean?
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@M1splace2day Years later, this war fervor died out at a much larger scale than a few classrooms. But that's a fun part of nations. Who gets to decide what fits in. And what happens when oddballs don't.
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Right now, I think Iran is held together slightly more by nationalism than the official faith of the state.
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@begumhasina1052 The Iranian regime isn't a military dictatorship at heart for nothing. There was a second conflict after the revolution.
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@meep1809 The family of the Shah is still around, in exile. I think one of them is part of the broad opposition in exile.
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North Korea is pretty funky. They started adapting juche alongside central planning with the second generation of Kims. There was very little class struggle last time I watched DPRK propaganda.
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In private industry we do the same. We might need a special screw one place in the country has. And we can't keep all non-standard parts in inventory. Or we need to pay someone to machine that bit. If the mine nearby is loosing millions by the hour and need the dang part right now, they will pay through their nose to get it shipped by courier.
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It depends if you are up for demanding that your congressman shuts down the local Lockheed plant.
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@zkuru19 Some of the faiths who practice adult baptism has similar beliefs. You can't take a full baptism without understanding what you are doing. Final baptism might be the conclusion of a whole summer camp experience. Just parroting the words is meaningless and probably papism.
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