Venkatesh Rao

I see; it's their support for Trump that tells you they don't have an understanding of shared humanity? As well as them saying so directly? b/c Disliking Kissinger's profit-making by the deindustrialization of America (for added green PR) is not a rejection of shared humanity.

Both. And I don’t see the deindustrialization of America as a problem. Outsourcing to China was the best thing for both countries at the time. Post-Covid the US is going to reindustrialize, but in a high-automation software-eaten robots-and-AI way that won’t help Red much.

Profits are good. China developing rapidly in 20 years while supplying far cheaper goods to the US than it could to itself was good. Attaching Kissinger’s name to a broad historical trend is a kind of meaningless smear. Chimerica was an inevitable thing for its time.

At some level that’s shared humanity. You recognize the value of good things happening for others. If it means you sometimes have to scramble to reposition, so be it. But if “profit” and “green” are suspect terms for you, you’ll ofc see blue as irredeemably corrupted.

I am sorry, but profits gained from reviving slavery and free-range industrial pollution are neither "good", "green" nor "shared humanity". And yes I am very suspicious of those who would call net higher emissions "green" and profits from slave labor "good".

Your conundrum that you are apparently trying to “use twitter to deradicalize well-intentioned people” to quote your twitter profile. That suggests a certain radical confidence in your own unradical reasonableness. I think such a posture is both impossible and doomed today.

That's a common sentiment among the radicalized; they believe themselves in a moment of crises in which the tenants of civil society need to be abandoned (&can be abandoned w/o personal consequence). They then inevitably attempt to coerce others into their absolutist morality.

Nope. Not at all what I meant. Based on our conversation, seems to me you’re much more of a radical than I am. Your posture feels largely like projection. I wouldn’t be so sure you’re not the one in need of deradicalization. Luckily for you I don’t see it as my job.