And I'm pretty sure Russia or China have the second biggest military in the world? So I'm not sure your stats are right, either?

I don't know how true that is in practice, but given the numbers on aid given to Ukraine, and the difference before Trump was elected, it seems true-ish.[1]

[1] https://www.kielinstitut.de/publications/news/ukraine-suppor...

Organizations are always reflections of the individuals of which they exist, in aggregate. I think that has always been true, and always will be true. It's sort of true by definition?

I mean, unless you're talking about revolutions, I suppose, but that's usually the end result of the ruling class distilling their support structure too much?

Not really. And you can choose to not subscribe to a "left-right paradigm", but it remains a functional reality in the US. Not believing in something doesn't always make it less real!

> Modern America itself is the problem. Modern Americans lack the mental capacity to reason about this.

This is a wildly arrogant take. I don't necessarily disagree that there are (a lot of!) real problems with "Modern America", but writing an entire country off, as an outsider, is incredibly self-centered.

> You can put as many friendly people as you can find in the police force, and the same with the NSA and CIA, but it would be just as futile as doing the same with the Stasi, the KGB or the GRU.

This is completely incorrect. If the government behind any of the examples you cited were actually full of "friendly people", those organizations would never have reached the points the did, or done the things they did.

You have a weirdly immutable view of the world, as if completely changing the moral and ethical makeup of entire governments would somehow have no effect on the actions that government takes?

You speak as if "the man" is by definition "on the wrong side" (i.e. lacking conscience), but there is no "man", just a body of civil servants trying to do what they think is right, for varying definitions of right. After all, isn't that what folks were out protesting during the DOGE days, when whole departments were eliminated?

Your argument assumes its conclusion, and thus is circular.

I agree with the issue of folks trying their best and burning out--but this is why it's important that the people replacing them be just as hungry to do the right thing, if not more so.

However, it's been a tactic in politics recently to call entire departments corrupt, and insinuate that anyone who wants to work for them are likewise so.

But I don't understand the logic of doing this. If, for example, you think "all cops are bastards"... Wouldn't you want more people who think like you to become cops, instead of fewer? Wouldn't you rather run into your best friend in a cop's uniform, than someone you don't know? Why, then, would you vilify the entire organization, and make it clear you could never stand shoulder to shoulder with anyone who would dare want to be a police officer?

Wouldn't that make it less likely that someone who thinks the same as you would consider joining?

And yet the need for police persists; thus by vilifying them, your end up increasing the concentration of people who don't think like you. This seems, like my statement above, a strictly worse situation, and seems to be exactly what has played out in many jurisdictions!

You can apply the same line of thinking to all parts of the government, with similar results. In fact, I'll go further: I think this dynamic better explains the rotting of our institutions than yours does.

We should be encouraging people who think like us to work in the government, not discouraging them with pointless fatalism.

That... Isn't really how that works in the real world, though.

What happens when people with conscience leave legitimate institutions is that they lose legitimacy. Now you have a legitimate institution with power and no conscience, and a myriad of non-legitimate institutions with little power and some conscience.

This is a strictly worse situation to be in.

I see this frequently as an engineer: my pet peeve is the "can't we just..." from someone who has no idea how the system works. Occasionally they're correct that we could make a trivial change to make something work... But most times, that "just" is hand-waving away days/weeks of effort. On the other hand, when "can't we just ..." is uttered by someone else on the same team, they're usually correct that the change is indeed trivial.

In this case, "outside" vs "inside" is actually a good proxy for how informed or accurate the opinion actually is.

Another good example is the stereotypical "expert in a field who thinks their expertise trivially transfers to unrelated fields".

To put it more simply: the distinction exists because outsiders are very frequently blind to the internal complexity of something (a system, an idea, etc), but are still willing to confidently assert their ideas anyway, leading to a frequent association of "outsider" with "poorly-formed opinions".

I think outside perspectives can be useful, but sometimes they are just ignorant. Really depends on a) the perspective, and b) the intent

But isn't this exactly what various social media companies are doing now? Choosing "to verify identities" because they have "deemed it worthwhile to do so?"

And don't tell me "the difference is scale", unless you're prepared to explain exactly what difference that makes.

But this isn't (intellectually) honest, either?

Maybe you can justify asking that they post under their real name, but asking for the kind of information that's required to steal their identity isn't the same as asking them who they are.

See, this is where I disagree. You can argue that many of these things are "actually happening", but doing so often requires stretching the definitions of these things, or conflating speech with action.

Take your example: I see all sorts of instances where folks on the right have accused others of treason, but there's a significant lack of actual charges. You're conflating rhetoric with action. Rhetoric is dangerous, yes, but the rhetoric we see from the right is just the next escalation in a constant game of escalating rhetoric from both sides.

I mean, calling Republicans "fascists" and "nazis" isn't exactly nonviolent rhetoric, either, especially the latter. There are actual fascists and Nazis among Republicans, for sure, but they don't represent anything close to a majority. There are fascists among Democrats, too!

The rest of your comment is just another great example of inflammatory rhetoric that isn't really representative of a reality that exists outside your own head, unfortunately.

I think this framework really just describes "tribalism", and not specifically "fascism".

And the President of this country has frequently rewritten laws based on their own personal whims, for a very long time now. Trump's actions in this vein might be the most blatant in this regard, but Executive power has been allowed to grow relatively unchecked for a number of decades already, largely because Congress has been unwilling or unable to do anything about it.

Which is why I think opposing this particular abuse of Executive power (if it really is such a thing) is a really weird hill to die on.

I think it's the affirmative action, the choice, that makes the difference

It's either terrible reading comprehension, an inability to understand nuance, or just plain trolling. None of these lead to productive conversations.

This is literally the definition of selfish? You see what you must give up for the sake of someone else (children), see the lack of support you will receive, and decide that you don't want to make that exchange.

That's literally a selfish decision, because you are deciding you want to keep that energy and those resources for yourself.

It's not inherently bad to make that decision, but it absolutely is selfish.

It's worth pointing out that "criminals" are generally "people at the margins"... If for no other reason than to point out that pithy comments like this are often so vague as to be worthless, or even counter-productive!

It's also a good thing that antisocial behavior is often isolated to "the margins", so your statement can even be considered a good thing, by the same metric!

TL;DR: Twitterisms like this are stupid.