The Bolton book.

[Syt]

Fox has an alternate take.

[The Brain]

Trump certainly errs a whole fucking lot.

[Razgovory]

Yeah, well the text book said that the communist leaders might lose the Mandate of Heaven in the eyes of the populace and start an uprising.  This book was printed in the early 1990's but honestly it seems sort of absurd.  Like Commonwealth countries overthrowing their elected governments to make way for the divine right of kings.

Does it? I mean I thought the term implied some kind of social agreement where the leaders had to provide good results for the people and in exchange they got to be the rulers. If they fuck up and bad shit starts happening then the people were required to replace them with people who could get good results.

Is that really that absurd of a concept? Granted there is some superstition in there that all bad things are the leaders fault but we kind of do the same thing in the United States where Presidents can get taken out, or are given credit, by factors often beyond their control.

The Divine Right of Kings is almost the opposite, where if bad things happen it is God's Will and it was probably your fault for God punishing you with a bad King. Better go pray and do better and maybe the next King will be good.

I don't think the mandate of heaven was a social agreement and I don't think that people of China believe they can stop a drought by killing president Xi.

[Valmy]

I don't think the mandate of heaven was a social agreement and I don't think that people of China believe they can stop a drought by killing president Xi.

Well I couldn't disagree more. I think it absolutely was a social agreement. And I do think the CCP knows they have to produce good results or the people might turn on them.

[HisMajestyBOB]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/18/heres-what-truly-shocking-revelation-would-sound-like-john-bolton/

[Oexmelin]

Alexandra Petri is wonderful.

[The Minsky Moment]

OK it's funny but

we shouldn't be making light of the pattern of importuning foreign leaders to help out his election campaign.  That is isn't surprising doesn't make it into puppy level destructiveness.  It's more like your puppy keeps using your absence to try to convey your house to another potential owner.  The first gets the puppy an aw shucks response; the second, you get a new puppy, fast.

[crazy canuck]

Mono, what is life like where you literally don't ever have to think of a moral quandary or higher ideal beyond "my boss is always right"?

Mono: Utopia

[Monoriu]

Yeah, well the text book said that the communist leaders might lose the Mandate of Heaven in the eyes of the populace and start an uprising.  This book was printed in the early 1990's but honestly it seems sort of absurd.  Like Commonwealth countries overthrowing their elected governments to make way for the divine right of kings.

Does it? I mean I thought the term implied some kind of social agreement where the leaders had to provide good results for the people and in exchange they got to be the rulers. If they fuck up and bad shit starts happening then the people were required to replace them with people who could get good results.

Is that really that absurd of a concept? Granted there is some superstition in there that all bad things are the leaders fault but we kind of do the same thing in the United States where Presidents can get taken out, or are given credit, by factors often beyond their control.

The Divine Right of Kings is almost the opposite, where if bad things happen it is God's Will and it was probably your fault for God punishing you with a bad King. Better go pray and do better and maybe the next King will be good.

Mandate of Heaven is just a polite, convoluted and glorified way of the scholar officials to tell the emperor that, if you don't behave, you'll be deposed.  If they tell that directly to the emperor, they'll be beheaded, tortured, burned alive, cut a thousand times etc.  So they had to invent a nice way to say it

[Eddie Teach]

Mono, what is life like where you literally don't ever have to think of a moral quandary or higher ideal beyond "my boss is always right"?

Mono: Utopia

Isn't that religion in a nutshell?

[grumbler]

I don't think the mandate of heaven was a social agreement and I don't think that people of China believe they can stop a drought by killing president Xi.

Well I couldn't disagree more. I think it absolutely was a social agreement. And I do think the CCP knows they have to produce good results or the people might turn on them.

I believe (and my Chinese students agree with me) that the concept of the Mandate of Heaven, while formally forsworn, still exerts a cultural influence on the Chinese people.  The Mandate idea basically said that Heaven rewards virtue with prosperity.  If the emperor is virtuous, then the country is prosperous, therefor, if the country is prosperous, then the ruler is virtuous.  If the country is not prosperous, the ruler is not virtuous.  Thus, Chinese rulers have pursued prosperity more than any other form of legitimacy, and the people have desired their government to promote prosperity more than, say, democracy or the rule of law.

[Razgovory]

Bolton may have to turn over the profits from his book.  That would substantially increase my desire to buy it.

[jimmy olsen]

Why are we wasting our time on the troll?

It's only a troll if he doesn't really believe it. We've know him for 17 years now. He believes it.