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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

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Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

Conversational account. For work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian. IKEA builder.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 8
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      Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Ribbonfarm

      A big takeaway for me from this book was that no matter how bad things got, the commoners found ways to excuse even mad kings. All blame was directed at nobility later below the king. The purpose of a monarch is to be blameless source of hope to idiot commoners in misery.https://twitter.com/ribbonfarm/status/1280245808529465344 …

      Venkatesh Rao added,

      Ribbonfarm @ribbonfarm
      New post. Notes: A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2020/07/06/notes-a-distant-mirror-by-barbara-tuchman/ …
      6 replies 18 retweets 73 likes
      Show this thread
    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 8
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      The purpose of marking one person “divine” and putting them above the law and impossible to blame is to preserve hope in elites. A sort of pilot light to reignite a “better” elite.

      1 reply 3 retweets 23 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 8
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      I have zero issues holding trump directly responsible for tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths but to those to whom he is an object of monarchical yearnings, he is going to remain blameless. Everybody else will be sacrificed for that if necessary.

      2 replies 3 retweets 15 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 8
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      Monarchism might seem like a fun larp in LOTR, but actually living under monarchism (de facto or de jure) rots your brain. The contortions of keeping even an ordinary but fallible okay monarch blameless are too much. Pretending actual bad or mad kings are divine makes you mad.

      3 replies 6 retweets 24 likes
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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 8
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      This book also suggested how girarduan scapegoat theory is actually a theory of rare exceptions. Scapegoats are nearly always lesser nobility and bourgeois. There’s an exhausting number of nobles tortured to extract “confessions” to various sins and then executed in this book.

      1 reply 1 retweet 9 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 8
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      The American presidency has been a cult of personality for a while, with projection of monarchic yearning held in check only by the incumbent’s sense of their own limits and humanity. But it was inevitable that a mad potus incapable of that would eventually occupy the office.

      9:26 PM - 8 Jul 2020
      • 3 Retweets
      • 14 Likes
      • Åse Kvist Innes-Ker chicanery johnny cash's thigh high boots Charles Neill 🤨 Shane Warren 🐲BadFanGirl🐲 Sai Prasanna Julien Nguyen Kirbmarc
      2 replies 3 retweets 14 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 8
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          There ought to be an archetype you could call an anti-monarch. Like Sam Vimes in Terry Pratchett. The books create an anti-monarchist aura around him by constantly referring to his descent from the regicide who end monarchy in Ankh-Morpork.

          1 reply 2 retweets 15 likes
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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 8
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          Trump’s base should be called his subjects. They behave like subjects.

          4 replies 2 retweets 14 likes
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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 8
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          Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Eric

          Eeyup https://twitter.com/plagueofcustom/status/1281085177691865093?s=21 …https://twitter.com/PlagueofCustom/status/1281085177691865093 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Eric @PlagueofCustom
          Replying to @vgr
          There’s an old idea in Russia (apocryphal or not): “Good Tsar, Bad Boyar” — the monarch is benevolent, the nobility/bureaucracy sinister and selfish.
          1 reply 0 retweets 6 likes
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        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 8
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          Nehru-Gandhi family was the only monarchical dynasty in India for a while. When they were out of power the opposition never rose to monarchic optics (even though one, V. P. Singh, was actual royalty). That changed with Modi, the first non-NG monarch. Fortunately he has no kids.

          1 reply 1 retweet 13 likes
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        6. End of conversation
        1. Mark Cheng‏ @markch3ng Jul 8
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          Replying to @vgr

          Every Rome eventually meets its Nero

          0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
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