Philosophy Is "woke" actually fascism of a stripe?

[KilroywasNOTHere]

The point isn't that anything is flawless. It's that dramatic "revolutions" of any kind will, almost invariably, lead to something worse than what they were revolting against.

For comparison: it's not like Louis XVI and his ministers were doing a very good job running France, but Robespierre and his ilk were a whole lot worse. In the same way, the Catholic Church had serious issues by the (so-called) Renaissance era, but the way the Protestant Reformation turned out was a bloody disaster.

(The moral difference is that Luther, at least, started out genuinely wanting to reform the Church; whereas the intellectual standard-bearers of the French Revolution were genocidal psychopaths who intended to cause a massive bloodbath. See Diderot's maxim that mankind could only be freed "when the last king is strangled with the entails of the last priest".)

This is a conversation for another thread, but I'll simply say this anything that is built with lies and is capable of shifting and evolving like the position of sand is destined to die. The church lost all credibility in my eyes when it became a political entity.

 

[Lord Sovereign]

To your specific ethical standards that largely start from the premise that what they overthrew was right.

I don't think he's saying that. It's just that, by comparison, was Tsar Nicholai II anywhere near the monster that was Joseph Stalin?

Revolutions end in a hideous blood bath and tyranny. (And before you bring it up, for fuck's sake no, the American "Revolution" was a War for Independence which is a very different thing to a revolution. They weren't even that revolutionary to be honest as they just implemented the British system, minus a king, and with more checks and balances)

Better the Devil you know than the Devil you don't.

 

[Morphic Tide]

You are taking results of technological progress and ascribing them to the mythological "political progress", when in fact changes in political landscape are usually a result of the technological progress, not its cause.

They feed very directly back into eachother, with the political progress getting nepotistic graft out of the way of or in line with actually using the technology. The before-and-after of the French revolution had systematic improvements the monarchies it ran over would never have tolerated, such as the multinational adoption of the SI measurement system.

Factories were not a result of any revolutions.

Not a violent overthrow of the political system, no, but they were the result of very much deliberate efforts to upend basically everything about economics, to considerably greater impact on people's day-to-day life.

But Louis XVI was not inevitable

There was rarely a legal basis that the king could not revoke the delegation of day-to-day rule over areas from the lower nobility. It was often purely tradition, purely soft power, frequently challenged without official punishment. Very few monarchies had official limits on the king, because for most of them the king was the sole sovereign.

Fact is that modern-day democracies are far more centralized and bureocratized than late 19th century / early 20th century monarchies.

Government employment =/= centralization of power, and employed by the Crown =/= employed by the government. The modern figure counts every part of the governmental system, while the Crown-employment figure ignores many kinds of local offices and nominally-private infrastructure "merely" funded by the Crown.

In medieval Europe, you had division of power between the King, the nobility, the cities and the Church. Even in the modern monarchies, courts of law were not exactly controlled by the state, and in Austria-Hungary and Germany both, local governments could and would resist the central government.

The key difference you willfully ignore is that the only one of these that was actually a legislated system was the "Free Cities". All the rest ran on soft power backed by the implicit threat of starting a war over it, something officially protected in the US by the 2nd Amendment.

I'd say you were saved by the state governments that were capable of resisting the Federal government.

Qualitative strata operating in exactly the role the quantitative strata of "nobility" you wrongly imagine were a useful check on the king's legal authority. When the states tell the feds to fuck off for going too far, the feds are actually obligated to do so by the written-down rules they operate under. No such thing in the old monarchies, it was all about the nobles having their own men with spears to shoo the king's away, which generally led to war soon thereafter any time it got bad enough to be used.

It essentially comes down to insistence on the Soap>Ballot>Jury>Ammo box path of dispute resolution. The system you idolize only had the first and last any time you wanted to push against the king. Either you could talk him into something, or you had to drag him to the table in chains, because in the soft-power setup in question he had the final say on law and there were no courts with authority over him. Save maybe the Church, but many members of the Clergy hated it whenever they did more than send an angry letter.

 

[KilroywasNOTHere]

you could talk him into something, or you had to drag him to the table in chains.

Are we sure that's a bad thing? Sometimes I wonder if more leaders could stand to learn a lesson in their own mortality. How many crimes against their own citizenry can they get away with and get just an angry letter at most.

 

[Batrix2070]

Are we sure that's a bad thing? Sometimes I wonder if more leaders could stand to learn a lesson in their own mortality. How many crimes against their own citizenry can they get away with and get just an angry letter at most.

Yes, it will certainly not simply end in yet more bloodshed. You know, people have, for good reason, consciously limited the ability to behead people in power.
Because it stems from a simple question, if we can kill someone highest up and it's good because of that, how much do we need to kill those lower down to make it better?
If you put a knife to the throat of your ruler, he will do everything he can to survive, and when he dies, those who killed him do not have to stop, on the contrary, our experience has shown that if you murder the highest-ranking person, then murdering tens of thousands of people below him is a piece of cake, and this cycle of violence continues until something or someone is found to stop the killing machine again and finally restore order.
After all, the murder of Alexander II did not improve the situation in the Russian Empire at all, it only made it much worse!
It effectively stopped any reform in Russia and gave justification for more absolutism and unreformation of the Empire for decades to come.

 

[Morphic Tide]

Are we sure that's a bad thing? Sometimes I wonder if more leaders could stand to learn a lesson in their own mortality. How many crimes against their own citizenry can they get away with and get just an angry letter at most.

This is an Overton Window problem, and a lot of it stems from pinning most of the voterbase idiot-proofing on the suffrage whitelist instead of using a blacklist defining the character faults not to be trusted with the vote. Took quite some time to get Congressmen voting themselves higher salaries to slow down...

It's just that, by comparison, was Tsar Nicholai II anywhere near the monster that was Joseph Stalin?

There were a good few years that the early Russian Soviet Republic was still doing better before the ideologues purity-spiraled into totalitarian extremism. The "Russian Terror" is a bit odd as revolutions go because the victor was a means-driven movement, rather than an ends-driven one, ending up with a whole bunch of Weird Shit particular to itself.

And before you bring it up, for fuck's sake no, the American "Revolution" was a War for Independence which is a very different thing to a revolution.

The Founding Fathers gleefully threw out any hint of hereditary aristocracy and made a very firm point of being a functionally distinct system. Of course, the Articles of Confederation proved to be complete ass, so they went for tweaking the British Parliamentary system a bit for their second attempt.

After all, the murder of Alexander II did not improve the situation in the Russian Empire at all, it only made it much worse!

Again, there were a few good years of getting the low-hanging fruit settled, before the means-driven Communists purity spiraled into maldevelopment worthy of legends to suffer routine food shortages with industrialized agriculture. Still wonder where Syndicalists winning could go.

 

[Aldarion]

They feed very directly back into eachother, with the political progress getting nepotistic graft out of the way of or in line with actually using the technology. The before-and-after of the French revolution had systematic improvements the monarchies it ran over would never have tolerated, such as the multinational adoption of the SI measurement system.

I hardly see value in that particular improvement. Also, it is not political progress that gets nepotistic graft out of the way. Rather, it is the very simple fact that people die.

Not a violent overthrow of the political system, no, but they were the result of very much deliberate efforts to upend basically everything about economics, to considerably greater impact on people's day-to-day life.

No, they were not. Factories existed as early as the Roman Empire, specifically for weapons production, called fabricae.

There was rarely a legal basis that the king could not revoke the delegation of day-to-day rule over areas from the lower nobility. It was often purely tradition, purely soft power, frequently challenged without official punishment. Very few monarchies had official limits on the king, because for most of them the king was the sole sovereign.

Very few monarchies had official limits on the king because unofficial limits worked perfectly well.

Government employment =/= centralization of power, and employed by the Crown =/= employed by the government. The modern figure counts every part of the governmental system, while the Crown-employment figure ignores many kinds of local offices and nominally-private infrastructure "merely" funded by the Crown.

Those local offices were largely independent of the Crown, hence why they were not counted. And yes, government employment is indicative of centralization of power, as less centralized society is more capable of self-management.

The key difference you willfully ignore is that the only one of these that was actually a legislated system was the "Free Cities". All the rest ran on soft power backed by the implicit threat of starting a war over it, something officially protected in the US by the 2nd Amendment.

I do not ignore that difference, I just don't think it matters. Legislation is nothing but a worthless piece of paper unless backed by soft and hard power, as has been shown repeatedly (among other things, by the European Union).

Qualitative strata operating in exactly the role the quantitative strata of "nobility" you wrongly imagine were a useful check on the king's legal authority. When the states tell the feds to fuck off for going too far, the feds are actually obligated to do so by the written-down rules they operate under. No such thing in the old monarchies, it was all about the nobles having their own men with spears to shoo the king's away, which generally led to war soon thereafter any time it got bad enough to be used.

It essentially comes down to insistence on the Soap>Ballot>Jury>Ammo box path of dispute resolution. The system you idolize only had the first and last any time you wanted to push against the king. Either you could talk him into something, or you had to drag him to the table in chains, because in the soft-power setup in question he had the final say on law and there were no courts with authority over him. Save maybe the Church, but many members of the Clergy hated it whenever they did more than send an angry letter.

They are obligated by the fact that states have their own finances, their own administration and their own armies. All kinds of stuff which make the legislation actually effective but which you are conveniently ignoring.

Government is all about power. Laws and legislation literally do not matter unless somebody has power to enforce them. Of course, if somebody has power to enforce it he will have power to write the laws he wants, hence the illusion that laws as such are important.

 

[Lord Sovereign]

There were a good few years that the early Russian Soviet Republic was still doing better before the ideologues purity-spiraled into totalitarian extremism. The "Russian Terror" is a bit odd as revolutions go because the victor was a means-driven movement, rather than an ends-driven one, ending up with a whole bunch of Weird Shit particular to itself.

Errr...no. Lenin had already gone straight to the mass murder stuff by then, he was just pragmatic enough to implement the NEP and not make the life of the average Russian complete Hell just yet.

Also, the manner of the Romanov family's death was unforgivable and entirely on Lenin's orders. Prince Alexi, a little boy, bled to death, surrounded by the corpses of his family. Fuck the Bolsheviks.

The Founding Fathers gleefully threw out any hint of hereditary aristocracy and made a very firm point of being a functionally distinct system. Of course, the Articles of Confederation proved to be complete ass, so they went for tweaking the British Parliamentary system a bit for their second attempt.

Ah yes, they got rid of the House of Lords and Commons, and replaced them with very similar bodies that were filled with wealthy land owners...hmm...it's almost like they just changed some names around...

In all honesty, Americans living in denial about their patrician class, which they've had for centuries, is quite amusing to my mind. Aristocracy is inevitable.

 

[KilroywasNOTHere]

Yes, it will certainly not simply end in yet more bloodshed. You know, people have, for good reason, consciously limited the ability to behead people in power.
Because it stems from a simple question, if we can kill someone highest up and it's good because of that, how much do we need to kill those lower down to make it better?
If you put a knife to the throat of your ruler, he will do everything he can to survive, and when he dies, those who killed him do not have to stop, on the contrary, our experience has shown that if you murder the highest-ranking person, then murdering tens of thousands of people below him is a piece of cake, and this cycle of violence continues until something or someone is found to stop the killing machine again and finally restore order.
After all, the murder of Alexander II did not improve the situation in the Russian Empire at all, it only made it much worse!
It effectively stopped any reform in Russia and gave justification for more absolutism and unreformation of the Empire for decades to come.

And what keeps the king from doing the same thing? Good faith certainly doesn't do it. The heavens don't smite him. The nobility can prove to be complacent with a bribe. Why is it that when a cult leader can force hundreds thousands or even millions to die they are absolved from all earthly sin but when it's you or I that want to be left alone and fight back we are the barbarians?

What makes the eggs and sperm of his parents more valuable than ours?

 

[Morphic Tide]

Also, it is not political progress that gets nepotistic graft out of the way. Rather, it is the very simple fact that people die.

Doesn't really work when the nepotism is hereditary aristocratic seats, because the asshole Lord has a son to smoothly become a new asshole Lord.

No, they were not. Factories existed as early as the Roman Empire, specifically for weapons production, called fabricae.

You mean one of the major driving forces behind Roman logistics that let them create the idea of Europe as an overall cultural entity in the first place? That ceased to exist for over a thousand years before being replaced by a rather different style of large-scale manufacturing infrastructure, starting with the completely different field of textiles?

Very few monarchies had official limits on the king because unofficial limits worked perfectly well.

Except that the failure modes far more frequently entail active warfare, because unseating a king occurs by dragging them to the table to discuss terms of abdication in chains at best.

And yes, government employment is indicative of centralization of power, as less centralized society is more capable of self-management.

No, a less complex society is more capable of self-management. While I don't go nearly as far with it as Aaron Fox, a great deal of the expansion of government has been the massive increase in variety of industries and thus variety of legislation-worthy problems, like keeping rivers from lighting on fire from discarded gasoline.

Legislation is nothing but a worthless piece of paper unless backed by soft and hard power, as has been shown repeatedly (among other things, by the European Union).

Having it on a piece of paper makes it far easier to have the ballot and jury box for peaceful resolution of disputes. This also makes it possible to restore the intended operations after interruptions, a key requirement for any reactionary movement to meet its goals and a major advantage in cleaning up corruption.

All kinds of stuff which make the legislation actually effective but which you are conveniently ignoring.

The piece of paper being a frequent reminder with members tasked solely with guaranteeing that said reminders are noticed by the system is, again, a major advantage in cleaning up corruption. Because we've written it down, we can fix problems with a rollback instead of needing to come up with replacements.

Overall, it's that rule of law is a wonderful thing for governmental error-correction. By having clearly defined procedures, violations become easier to identify and rectify, with less frequent and smaller-scale use of force, thus reducing the amount on hand for bad actors to try anything self-destructive with.

Errr...no. Lenin had already gone straight to the mass murder stuff by then, he was just pragmatic enough to implement the NEP and not make the life of the average Russian complete Hell just yet.

It was still a lower death and imprisonment rate than the Tsar with less issues with necessities. The obsession with the means of answering the problems made it worse than it had to be, and guaranteed the decline to despots, but the opening days were still successful, earning public approval that long outlasted said success.

Funnily enough, the USSR almost became a significantly more competent technocracy, but the hardware wasn't quite good enough to digitize their quota system before the project was shut down over party politics. And probably would have been shut down midway through deployment for the same anyways, but it's a lot harder to fuck up quota designation when you have spreadsheets keeping track of the resources.

Ah yes, they got rid of the House of Lords and Commons, and replaced them with very similar bodies that were filled with wealthy land owners...hmm...it's almost like they just changed some names around...

The point is that this was their second attempt, after being shown their attempt at a from-scratch minimal-influence system was terrible by the problems that cropped up early on. The US Constitution is not the original document laying out the powers of our federal government, that was the mentioned Articles of Confederation.

 

[Aldarion]

Doesn't really work when the nepotism is hereditary aristocratic seats, because the asshole Lord has a son to smoothly become a new asshole Lord.

That happens in democracy as well. Literally everybody who makes actual decisions is a part of one dynasty or another. Everything else is a clown show to keep the crowds entertained.

Also, when rulers are a) hereditary and b) visible, they have an actual incentive to not be assholes, because they or their children will be the ones suffering the consequences. Elected leaders don't have to give a shit and generally don't give a shit to what will happen after they leave the reins of the government. Democratic politicians will just as happily genocide their own people as any other, if it will allow them to remain in power.

You mean one of the major driving forces behind Roman logistics that let them create the idea of Europe as an overall cultural entity in the first place? That ceased to exist for over a thousand years before being replaced by a rather different style of large-scale manufacturing infrastructure, starting with the completely different field of textiles?

Yes. And as I said, neither Roman nor modern factories were a result of revolutions.

Also, Roman Empire was not a good thing.

Except that the failure modes far more frequently entail active warfare, because unseating a king occurs by dragging them to the table to discuss terms of abdication in chains at best.

At least unsettling a king is actually possible. In a democracy, changing the ruling political party basically never changes the actual governmental policy.

No, a less complex society is more capable of self-management. While I don't go nearly as far with it as Aaron Fox, a great deal of the expansion of government has been the massive increase in variety of industries and thus variety of legislation-worthy problems, like keeping rivers from lighting on fire from discarded gasoline.

Actually, decentralization is the best answer to increasing complexity, because centralization means there are far more failure modes and thus having a central government manage everything is far more likely to screw everything up.

Having it on a piece of paper makes it far easier to have the ballot and jury box for peaceful resolution of disputes. This also makes it possible to restore the intended operations after interruptions, a key requirement for any reactionary movement to meet its goals and a major advantage in cleaning up corruption.

Problem is that ballot and jury box almost never resolve anything, because they offer no real choice. Major political parties in all "democratic" countries have homogenized to the point we may as well be living in a single-party system.

So while theory is nice, in reality it solves nothing.

The piece of paper being a frequent reminder with members tasked solely with guaranteeing that said reminders are noticed by the system is, again, a major advantage in cleaning up corruption. Because we've written it down, we can fix problems with a rollback instead of needing to come up with replacements.

Overall, it's that rule of law is a wonderful thing for governmental error-correction. By having clearly defined procedures, violations become easier to identify and rectify, with less frequent and smaller-scale use of force, thus reducing the amount on hand for bad actors to try anything self-destructive with.

Doesn't seem to work in practice, though. Austria-Hungary was far more efficient and far less corrupt than either the Socialist Yugoslavia, modern Croatia, or... literally any of its successor states.

 

[KilroywasNOTHere]

Personally, If It were me I'd put a mock guillotine or sword above the king (or lord's) throne with the following phrase scripted in Latin "Stipendium peccati mors.: ("For the wages of Sin is death") let it serve as a warning to the king.

 

[Aldarion]

Personally, If It were me I'd put a mock guillotine or sword above the king (or lord's) throne with the following phrase scripted in Latin "Stipendium peccati mors.: ("For the wages of Sin is death") let it serve as a warning to the king.

I think all politicians need this...

 

[Simonbob]

Also, Roman Empire was not a good thing.

At the time, the Roman Empire was, for most of it's existance, simply better that all it's surrounding groups.

They were the best, in both tech and generally, morals.

 

[KilroywasNOTHere]

I think all politicians need this...

yeah I think part of the reason why I'm so cautious about a monarch (Especially an absolute monarch) is that when I think of an absolute Monarch my mind goes to the Monarchs of the early bronze age kings/modern socialist dictators. not held accountable by oath and law but left to their own devices under the loose justification of a mandate from heaven/mandate from the people. With the only loose hope being that "Surly for the sake of their future heirs they wouldn't screw the country up" (I've heard this argument used a lot.) or they wouldn't dare put themselves above the God that crowned them (Even if God literally does Ordain them, Isreal's age of kings says hi.)

We've seen what happens when that occurs. I'm not saying the crown needs to be made of thorns and the throne of nails but would be kings need to learn that leadership is not like high school. You don't get to just ride on the prestige or spend your nation's money like it's your rich daddy's. Whether the punishment for oppression and abuse of power/breaking of their oaths is death or revoking of the crown from that dynasty, it would need to be just and swift lest a dynasty starts to view themselves as gods and believe they are invincible.

 

[Aldarion]

yeah I think part of the reason why I'm so cautious about a monarch (Especially an absolute monarch) is that when I think of an absolute Monarch my mind goes to the Monarchs of the early bronze age kings/modern socialist dictators. not held accountable by oath and law but left to their own devices under the loose justification of a mandate from heaven/mandate from the people. With the only loose hope being that "Surly for the sake of their future heirs they wouldn't screw the country up" (I've heard this argument used a lot.) or they wouldn't dare put themselves above the God that crowned them (Even if God literally does Ordain them, Isreal's age of kings says hi.)

We've seen what happens when that occurs. I'm not saying the crown needs to be made of thorns and the throne of nails but would be kings need to learn that leadership is not like high school. You don't get to just ride on the prestige or spend your nation's money like it's your rich daddy's. Whether the punishment for oppression and abuse of power/breaking of their oaths is death or revoking of the crown from that dynasty, it would need to be just and swift lest a dynasty starts to view themselves as gods and believe they are invincible.

There are actually several advantages to monarchy, and disadvantages to democracy, especially representative democracy:
1) Psychology of the whole thing. To a monarch, state is his responsibility, even his possession, and something that he is aiming to leave to his children. What this means is that you may get an incompetent or a mad monarch... but rarely one that will deliberately destroy the country. By contrast, in a democracy, politicians are elected every four years. They are not there for life, and they are not aiming to leave anything for their children... in other words, they are completely free to make as much of a mess as they like without worrying about the consequences. So we end up with this:

2) Psychology of the people in power. As noted, monarchs are not elected, so who you get is somewhat random. Elected politicians however... need to be elected. And that means that they need to be very good liars, which usually means some mix of sociopathy and perhaps even psychopathy.
3) Nature of the government. Democracy is basically set up to be divisive: different political fractions see each other as the greatest evil and will do anything to win power. Result of this is that the democracy is fundamentally genocidal. Entire reason why leftists support mass immigration is to win votes.
4) Mandate of Heaven, in both its Chinese and Byzantine forms, was a very serious thing. Monarch was supposed to protect and take care of his people... and if he didn't, he lost his head. Democracy was supposed to emulate this with elections, but all it succeeded in was to make everything seem like a joke or a fun little circus.
5) Kings actually do learn leadership. That is in fact the entire raison d'etre for the hereditary monarchy: king rules, and teaches his heir how to rule. Now, this does not always work out... but it still results, on average, in more competent performance than with democratically elected officials.

Issue with socialist dictators is not even in the fact that they are absolutist dictators (well, it certainly is an issue), but more so in that socialism in and by itself requires dissolution of old social contract in order to work. And that leads to big state, genocide and all the fun shit typical of socialist states. Sure, absolute monarchies can also be nasty - but they at least don't have an incentive to murder a good portion of their own populace for shit and giggles progress.

 

[KilroywasNOTHere]

There are actually several advantages to monarchy, and disadvantages to democracy, especially representative democracy:
1) Psychology of the whole thing. To a monarch, state is his responsibility, even his possession, and something that he is aiming to leave to his children. What this means is that you may get an incompetent or a mad monarch... but rarely one that will deliberately destroy the country. By contrast, in a democracy, politicians are elected every four years. They are not there for life, and they are not aiming to leave anything for their children... in other words, they are completely free to make as much of a mess as they like without worrying about the consequences. So we end up with this:

2) Psychology of the people in power. As noted, monarchs are not elected, so who you get is somewhat random. Elected politicians however... need to be elected. And that means that they need to be very good liars, which usually means some mix of sociopathy and perhaps even psychopathy.
3) Nature of the government. Democracy is basically set up to be divisive: different political fractions see each other as the greatest evil and will do anything to win power. Result of this is that the democracy is fundamentally genocidal. Entire reason why leftists support mass immigration is to win votes.
4) Mandate of Heaven, in both its Chinese and Byzantine forms, was a very serious thing. Monarch was supposed to protect and take care of his people... and if he didn't, he lost his head. Democracy was supposed to emulate this with elections, but all it succeeded in was to make everything seem like a joke or a fun little circus.
5) Kings actually do learn leadership. That is in fact the entire raison d'etre for the hereditary monarchy: king rules, and teaches his heir how to rule. Now, this does not always work out... but it still results, on average, in more competent performance than with democratically elected officials.

Issue with socialist dictators is not even in the fact that they are absolutist dictators (well, it certainly is an issue), but more so in that socialism in and by itself requires dissolution of old social contract in order to work. And that leads to big state, genocide and all the fun shit typical of socialist states. Sure, absolute monarchies can also be nasty - but they at least don't have an incentive to murder a good portion of their own populace for shit and giggles progress.

I guess at the end of the day my viewpoint is this. Change is hard even in the best of circumstances. There was a reason why death before capture or surrender was a common thing among soldiers and civs all across the globe. It was better to die than to lose your since of identity however that identity was formed. There is also the fact that I wouldn't trust anyone today to be able to perform the old duties well. Even if the System itself goes away people will still carry the baggage and ignorance with them *see Liberal californians as they move to red states* that's also why revolutions can be so dangerous.

Even if we accepted that on paper a monarchy is better, There is no way I'd trust someone that lived on the same planet that Hollywood and Disney Princess came from to be a monarch. (so basically no one alive today at least not American) for those who really think America should have a king Best we can hope for is that society completely collapses and we have to start over from scratch and then maybe 200-300 years from now our descendants will be molded by the environment in such a way that they'd accept a monarch and that's in an ideal world. Even then if you're talking strictly ideal situations I think you'd be better off simply having tribes shepherded by a council of Elders that was the government God endorsed for his first Kingdom and it's still how he expects his Kingdom to be ruled today.

but again this is all just my viewpoint looking through history. Perhaps I'm too cynical of a soul. There is a lot of stuff that seems near infallible in ideal circumstances on paper, once the human factor gets involved. society starts suddenly rolling a bunch of Crit 1s (That's an old DnD term from before 5e for those that don't know.)

 

[Aldarion]

I guess at the end of the day my viewpoint is this. Change is hard even in the best of circumstances. There was a reason why death before capture or surrender was a common thing among soldiers and civs all across the globe. It was better to die than to lose your since of identity however that identity was formed. There is also the fact that I wouldn't trust anyone today to be able to perform the old duties well. Even if the System itself goes away people will still carry the baggage and ignorance with them *see Liberal californians as they move to red states* that's also why revolutions can be so dangerous.

Even if we accepted that on paper a monarchy is better, There is no way I'd trust someone that lived on the same planet that Hollywood and Disney Princess came from to be a monarch. (so basically no one alive today at least not American) for those who really think America should have a king Best we can hope for is that society completely collapses and we have to start over from scratch and then maybe 200-300 years from now our descendants will be molded by the environment in such a way that they'd accept a monarch and that's in an ideal world. Even then if you're talking strictly ideal situations I think you'd be better off simply having tribes shepherded by a council of Elders that was the government God endorsed for his first Kingdom and it's still how he expects his Kingdom to be ruled today.

but again this is all just my viewpoint looking through history. Perhaps I'm too cynical of a soul. There is a lot of stuff that seems near infallible in ideal circumstances on paper, that turns to utter crap once the human factor gets involved." and then society starts suddenly rolling a bunch of Crit 1s (That's an old DnD term from before 5e for those that don't know.)

This is actually something I can agree with. But the thing is, as much as the people shape the system, system also shapes the people. Good part of the reason why people are so screwed up today is because they have spent their lives being taught that they are incompetent, hopeless, and that they should let the Nanny State take care of them.

I am not sure that US should be a monarchy because it never was. But at the same time, Europe's abandonment of the monarchy post World War One and World War 2 was a mistake.

 

[KilroywasNOTHere]

This is actually something I can agree with. But the thing is, as much as the people shape the system, system also shapes the people. Good part of the reason why people are so screwed up today is because they have spent their lives being taught that they are incompetent, hopeless, and that they should let the Nanny State take care of them.

I am not sure that US should be a monarchy because it never was. But at the same time, Europe's abandonment of the monarchy post World War One and World War 2 was a mistake.

that's fair, but I'm going to cop out on and say that's something they (and they alone) need to decide on. Anytime we've tried to eh..."Help" Europe all it's done is hurt both of us in the long run. Right now as an American I'm strict "America First." (potentially "America only")

 

[Aldarion]

that's fair, but I'm going to cop out on and say that's something they need to decide on. Anytime we've tried to eh..."Help" Europe all it's done is hurt both of us in the long run. Right now as an American I'm strictly "America First." (potentially "America only"

Agreed.