I think he was Vietnamese, yeah. Or certainly Vietnamese-adjacent.
One amusing aspect of the open-borders Britain is that you now have all these ethnic foreigners who were born there and have the class accent of where they grew up.
I only even say that because in the gypsy episode JP makes mention of "Vietnamese weed pickers" getting lost. Probably makes me racist, but it still occasionally seems incongruous to me when I hear non-white people with English accents, despite half the world learning the Queen's at some point.
well, "English" is a loose term. As an American, trying to understand the Indian "English" idiom can be maddening. Though trying to understand a deep Scottish brogue is almost as difficult.
I have no idea what true “proper” english is, but I find that phrase to be totally aggravating, even though it might be considered “proper” in some places.
Black guys with British accents, speaking The King's English, always present a sharp "what could have been" contrast to the police body cam videos I can't seem to get enough of.
On the subject of the idiot box, how do the resident ACF Sinophiles see the 'Shogun' reboot? (caveat, have not read the novel and memories of the first miniseries are vague).
The scenes and costumes are beautiful, the Japanese leads excellent, although the 'Angin' is written purposely as buffoonish, to be frequently girlbossed by the oddly mannish and square jawed Mariko, who sits a horse and fights with a spear. All very current year and tiresome. Chamberlin was much more dignified.
Said buffoonery and pushback actually aligns to the first half of the literary source, though made more obvious for the TV audience. Remains to be seen if this shifts with the same timing as the novel. I'm enjoying it so far.
Think any tax-funded Canadian reporter is willing to ask this question at a Trudeau press conference?
"When you hear the Rolling Stones play Starfucker, does it make you think of your mother? Who did she say was better in bed, your father, or Pierre Trudeau?"
That's pretty funny, actually. My wife hates the imperial family and thinks they're a waste of money. And now they're a bunch of Koreans on top of that!
I read the book. Twice. I lived in Japan for a long time and know what everything looks like (or is supposed to look like) and I've seen plenty of jidai-geki and a couple of the year long Taiga Dramas so I don't really have a desire to watch the new Shogun, but everything I've heard about it is good. My coworker LOVES it. I like Sanada Hiroyuki a lot, too. Maybe I'll watch it when the whole thing is available at once and I have some spare time in the next year or two.
For a look at how accurate the Shogun series is, check out a YouTube channel called Metatron. His main interest seems to be armor and weapons but in general it's what used to be called academic level history. https://www.youtube.com/@metatronyt
I found the Chamberlin series unwatchable. I am loving the current one. One change I don't love is there isn't as much emphasis on how much Toranaga loathes the concept of Crimson Sky and wasted lives. The juxtaposition of a person so willing to use people up, as in to their death, with the loathing of death for not purpose is a key concept in the novel.
Waiting for the ability to watch all episodes of Shogun at my leisure like someone who lives in 2024 is the reason I'm finishing "3 body" now with "gentlemen" on deck. Agree wholeheartedly with Jack's agrivation at Benioff and Weiss' pandering to the shalow and insufferable modern "girlboss" culture.
Hand in hand with girlbossing in modren (sic) TV will be very oddly placed, needless, and explicit sex scenes and a brothel will somehow be worked into the plot.
That is definitely an unwelcome minus when it happens. I thought he was commenting on the irony of women still being objectified in media that revolves around one or more "boss bitches."
Yes this: echoes of the popularity of the bondage novels, and the endless boundary pushing for the sake of. See also: Game of Clowns.
In Shogun alone: a scene where the village lord's nephew has sex with a prostitute in front of him. Why? No reason.
Another where one character is tapping perhaps the same prostitute while choking himself out. After he's finished, she suggests getting some other 'toys', which I figured meant they were jumping the shark to actually pegging on screen. Luckily, they went in a different direction.
The 1980 Mariko is graceful, feminine, and often smiles. The new one is dour and never smiles. Her fight scenes so abruptly break the otherwise such hard fought for immersion as to be almost tragic. One of the other women characters pulls a pistol on a Samurai. Another manipulates the Regents to her own ends as revenge for being 'Handmaidened'.
I enjoyed the movie and the series. The movie took a few watches to appreciate the nuances. The series had a little too much serial feel to it at times, as in "who's the eccentric criminal type we meet in this episode." Or it became a bit repetitive. By the end, I guess all of those gangsters of the week were pulled together in a satisfying way, so I can't really complain.
I'd say this is the best show I've seen in awhile, and better than other shows I've watched recently, including "Mr. and Mrs. Smith", "The Sandman", "Death and Other Details", "True Detective Season 4", and so on.
I am allergic to aristocracy. I vastly prefer the French or Bolshevik way of handling them vice the fawning American press. That being said anyone who thinks Bill Gates or Prince Andrew is in their respective positions because they are stupider or less ruthless than the average street level gangster probably believes that Epstein hung himself.
An aristocracy trained from birth to lead and bound by noblesse oblige is theoretically a pretty good deal, but it’s usually generations of coasting mediocrity descending from someone who lent the king money or knifed the old duke and backed the right usurper in the 15th century. That said, our meritocracy is starting to turn into that, just with more legalistic rent seeking and fewer actual swords.
I never thought about it but I guess they do / did use gold leaf for naming.
They are like old / vintage collector cars to the 10th power. He has several fully restored boats that have never been in the water. He’ll be 70 this week, and I’m sure he’ll rectify that right around … never.
-He lives on a busy road (it’s a highway, really) on which cars - and 18 wheelers - travel at 75 MPH. The driveway is long, and it exits at a steep and oblique angle just after a blind brow. He is unwilling to enter or exit with a boat trailer without calling a local cop to give him cover. Once, about 20 years ago, a truck from the nearby wood yard nearly turned his ultra-rare Gar Wood into popsicle sticks.
-He sold his lake house for top dollar during COVID…
-…which means he’d have to use the boat ramp at the local marina.
-Given how infrequently the boats are used, they are guaranteed to experience a failure to proceed, so he’d need someone to go with him to tow him back to the ramp, which presents some difficulties in getting an old boat back on the trailer.
-Once back home, the boat has to receive hours of TLC with a chamois before it returns to storage.
As a result, it’s much easier to keep them in storage.
Guess I've been busy living an authentic, fullfilled life. Never heard of 3 Body Problem. As I hated the stupid Benneton ads back in the 80s, I'll continue to never bother hearing of it.
Always been a big fan of Guy Ritchie's work. (Might have to do my yearly re-watch of "The Star" soon.) I thought the Gentlemen was a fine film, though not one of his best, though I could not put my finger on why. I think Jack pointed out the reason - the wrong cast.
Since I'm too cheap to spend the $12/month (while being fully aware that I spend thousands on toys and fun recreational pursuits), will have to fanangle someone's Netflix account and watch this show.
I agree with you on the too cheap part. At one point I was paying monthly subscriptions to at least a dozen different streaming channels. My wife only watches Investigation
Sorry, hit the wrong button. My wife only watches Investigation Discovery and I never get the time to watch any movies, so I simple stopped paying. I'd rather stare at the wall as I sip whiskey than watch 99% of what's on.
Even when I had subscriptions I invariably ended up watching the same old stuff I'd seen 10x before versus the new crap.
I spent this evening watching The Rockford Files for free on Pluto TV. I'm confident that this show Jack's talking about would not have been half as entertaining.
I've been spending my evenings of the last several weeks either prepping my car for racing season and riding my bicycle, so I was unaware of either 3BP or The Gentlemen. I have, however been keeping up with season 2 of Tokyo Vice, which also uses high-end watch as a plot device, in this case a Vacheron Constantin claimed to be worth a quarter million. From what I've read, the real-life Jake Adelstein seems like a fraud, but the show has a good sense of grit, and the hero car is a Fairlady Z.
Had an ancient Baruth been the one to land on the shores of Japan, half of the population would have weird squeaky voices by now. I can imagine it: "My... er.. intimate custom... is three of you at once, on a rotating basis."
The Sopranos riffed on that fact way back in the '00s only to indulge in some unnecessary gayness with Fat Vito's arc. I'll give them credit for being self-aware on that one since it's a beloved IP.
You can’t renew a series without it. The Hollywood gay mafia will end your show if you don’t. The only I show I can think of that was renewed without a gay love story was Ray Donovan. But they all got molested by a priest. So while not a love story I guess they got their gay plot twist.
It’s hysterical to me when they can’t introduce a new character and are like just make that one gay. Remember Animal Kingdom? They had been robbing banks and parting for episodes. But a few seasons later, they all surfing and one of the brothers comes home gay. Haha.
It’s like they sell the first set of scripts but can’t reload without going gay. So the stand alone mini series can stay straight. But… I bet we’ll get a gay Reacher soon.
What I don’t know is if they tell the writers to include it or if they add it to a rewrite when the next season isn’t picked up right away. Or are they just expected to go by the Abbey on Sundays and kiss the ring… haha. I never kissed the ring, but I spent a lot of Sundays with dude’s thongs and dongs in my face as I helped my girlfriend sell tv shows.
Uh oh. Tangent time: It was actually a lot of fun and I kind of miss day drinking in West Hollywood. But I also couldn’t sit there and not pitch in! So I pushed car shows I signed bad obsession/ project binky and put together sizzle reel and pitch for them to come to the US and build weird stuff. By the time the networks were done with their comments it looked like every other horrible build show. Same with the other cool concepts I pitched.
I did get kind of close on One Man, One Car, Every race. Where one car gets modded each week for the next style of racing. Autocross to drag racing to circle track and so on. Ending at the mint400 with a desert race. The car would be a butchered mess from all the different shops that worked on it from week to week but I thought it would be fun.
Maybe I shouldn’t have broken up with her. Maybe I could have made car shows? I doubt it, but it was a super fun chapter. And I got to shoot a ton of video myself which was awesome. But she was never in town and it got old. I felt like that dude that lived in Oj’s house. Kato or whatever. Her apartment was insane and I’d take her 997 up to Angeles crest every night. I was looking for Takumi. And I found him one night! Turbo Miata on Hoosiers with rally lights! Goes up after 1am… anyway, I was over it and spent like $5k just on gas (2 tanks a night for weeks) and Carrera just hired me to model for them. Like I was leaving for an 18hour photo shoot during fashion week where I would be asked to “do the nude!” Wearing sunglasses of course. I had no idea that meant just a nipple. I was like sure, you’re paying over a thousand an hour, you want nude?? Ohhh a majority of the shoot was a cocktail party. Like 100+ people watching as I tried to undo my pants. The scream from the woman who had just been yelling do the nude was amazing. It was so awesome. So ridiculous.
They finally got wise and canceled the whole thing. But only after they paid me even more for additional photos. Life is so weird. I think they went with a Somalian refugee who became a model instead. Like so different from me and my story. And it’s probably a good thing. I’m already pretty obnoxious, could you imagine if they actually put me on billboards? Makes me laugh so hard every time I think about it. Like was that even real?
Sooooo…… you can sell a show without a gay line, but no way you get to renew it without one. Not a chance.
Thank you! That’s a huge compliment! And while my life has always been a bit lucky or ridiculous, I worked really hard at it when I finally had a break from finance.
I said yes to almost anything. And when the day was over, I pushed it farther. It’s strange looking back at it in some ways. I look at some pictures and am like WTF. Where? What? How?
The turbo Miata kid I only saw once. It’s was near the end of a $5-6k gas bill and the tires and brakes were done. Plus both rear shocks were leaking. They should be trophy truck sized in the rear of a 911. But I loved my nights up there. It was a convertible 4s which was so dangerous up there. But i loved hearing the rear tires. They made the coolest noises with no roof, no helmet.
Anyway… I used to do laps up there. Yeah I know… bad… but at night, you could see the headlights coming for miles. And then I’d take a break and back the car behind a rock formation in of my favorite sections and recline the seat and look at the stars and chill. Then one night I heard something running through gears with those crazy turbo chipmunk noises. And absolutely no tire noise but they were moving!
I pulled out behind him, HARD on the gas! And he parked it like I was cop! Like what dude? I almost passed him he braked so hard! And when he realized it was a 911, I had one of the best 5 minutes up there of all time. Yeah I know. Take it to the track. And that is 100% right.
But there’s no one up there at 2am and you can easily see headlights on that side of the mountain. And I wanted it just once. One and done. Two many initial D episodes. And the old stories from mulholland are wild. They built grandstands!!! I just assumed it still went on and that would be the next logical road. I was pretty wrong. But that Miata was fast.
Worse was that he could out brake me by a lot. I couldn’t just follow his inputs or he would punish me. I used to do it larger street cars when I was in my e30 on Hoosiers. But I wasn’t ready. The Miata was so light. I found out later it was gutted. Totally empty. I actually left the road a little bit at one point. 2 wheels hard off. But that car’s 4wd system ruled. You stay in it and keep the car pointed straight.
I never did get by him. I got a few runs on him bc the pdk shifted so fast through so many gears. It’s so not fair. But I would start to pull ahead and he would turn off his rally lights. To be nice. But…the road went so dark every time. Haha. I knew the road, but it’s weird when you have to focus with your night vision all F’d. I backed off every single time. No f’ing way.
So I took the light bar off my Baja car and bought those huge suction cups for rigging cameras to cars! But every piece of body flexes on a 911 except the glass and the light bar was heavy!
And then it all ended. I never saw the Miata on the mountain again, but I know I’ll run into him again some day. He moved to the base so he could build a weapon and get up the mountain without anyone noticing… drivers like that don’t stop driving.
Jack, thanks for letting me drop a rant or story in here. Im sorry if I detract, but it’s a fun, safe place for me to share old adventures. I should probably start my own substack and definitely need to write the book now that I have the rights back. But thanks. and sorry! Haha.
I think the only reason I haven't yet bundled my car into a hedge or chucked it off a cliff despite watching everything Initial D related is that there aren't any curvy roads around. I'm well aware of the danger and illegality of it all, but a touge battle/pass racing is one of the things I gotta try at least once.
And keep me posted when you write that book, I'll definitely be purchasing a copy from you.
"I did get kind of close on One Man, One Car, Every race. Where one car gets modded each week for the next style of racing. Autocross to drag racing to circle track and so on. Ending at the mint400 with a desert race. The car would be a butchered mess from all the different shops that worked on it from week to week but I thought it would be fun."
This would be a better show than 99.9% of the YouTube car dreck.
So far as a landed gentry or some sort of aristocracy goes, sure it looks good now, but some of our greatest entrepreneurs would not have happened had we been tied to some worthless royal family. John D Rockefeller was the son of a con man and lived in Cleveland. Henry Ford was some random farmboy, and Dale Carnegie's parents were farmers. Thomas Edison's mom was some schoolteacher in Michigan. I'd rather have those guys doing the leading without someone like King George III or Louis XVI. Fortunes and influence can be pissed away by the inept, but titles are forever... unless we French Revolution our way through them. And like I always say whenever I see some stupid news item about the British royal family, we fought a war to not have to care about them. I'm not about to start.
The practical appeal of an aristocracy is that the rulers are specifically trained to rule from childhood on. If the education is properly accomplished, then power passes into the hands of people who feel a least a passing obligation to the people over whom they have that power.
What we have today, instead: a group of people who ruthlessly stack the deck in favor of their children while letting said children think they DESERVE everything they have because of their individual merit, which leads to absolutely ruthless behavior on everyone's part.
Another important part of the aristocracy that our current "meritocracy" omits: they actually FOUGHT in the wars they started, rather than farming it out mercenary-style to kids from West Virginia and South Carolina.
Wars that they started over family disputes with their cousins. A lot of the world's current problems can be traced to World War One. The Kaiser, the King, and the Czar were all blood relatives.
Indeed. Much of the world's very current problems can be traced to the Sykes Picot Agreement that came out of the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the wake of WWI. A fact I like bringing up almost as much as I like to bring up my S550 EB Mustang convertible.
While I think what you present is the "ideal" (I can't use italics) scenario for aristocracy, I would argue that what you do get is an out of touch populace that ends up running things and hoards all the wealth. In our "meritocracy" the opposite should occur. I think the problem we have today is not the meritocracy of itself sending the leaders of the young ones to die, but we have separated our warriors from our leaders (our best presidents have been generals/served except for Lincoln, who one could argue is overrated.) A meritocracy is always superior since we can get rid of those who are bad easily, wheras getting rid of the aristocracy has usually resulted in civil war.
I'd also add, that a female president would exacerbate this claim of sending people to die since all men know they have some skin in the game, whereas women do not. The end of a country is a female leader.
I remember reading that the British aristocracy and the rest of the Eton/Oxford/Cambridge elite had the highest percentage casualty rates in WW1 of any (I think class) group. Not just because of being the junior officers standing in front of everyone else while walking very slowly towards machine guns, but also because of very high rates of volunteering and them thinking it their obligation to go. The idea was - in 1914 anyway - the UK elite did actually see themselves as something like an Indian military caste and felt obliged to go.
Read it years ago and still remember it as having a kind of awful tragedy about it all. Entire classes from the top universities just disappeared. The way it was presented was these junior officers actually knew once fighting began how bad it was going to be - they were probably more aware of the impact of modern weapons than anyone, including the generals, definitely more than the men they were leading - but still climbed out of trenches and went because that was seen as their whole purpose - to step up and go into the army when it was needed.
It wasn't the fear of being thought a coward that motivated them, it was the sense that in a very real way, their privileged place in society had to be paid for every few generations in blood, and unfortunately for them it was now the time to do so.
The book was by a guy called David Cannadine, I think Victorious Century - he is sympathetic the aristocracy.
Obviously none of that probably applies to the current ones, but still.
Some days its really starting to seem like perhaps having a landed gentry and making very sure they get brought up right might actually make for a better society. Can't quite put my finger on it, but perhaps having Lord Crawly thinking "his people" need looking after might make him slightly less of an asshole, or that having aristocrats around maybe inoculates your society from the worst stupidity of the second-generation heirs. It's probably just carefully managing the elite status competition type games into something useful for the whole society, but its starting to feel like maybe an aristocracy gives you a head start on that.
The aristocracy is a concept that is tied to the days when land was, quite literally, the only source of wealth. And the aristocrat was tied to his land. What would the first born sons of Elon Musk/Steve Jobs/Bill Gates etc be tied to? Nothing of permanence, I suspect.
It can be argued that you fought a war for a local protection racket (which, in fairness, is the root of all government) and for the right to pay your own defence bill. The net result was a 50% drop in GDP over 15 years as the colonies had to defend themselves against your French friends and the Spanish. But we all need a foundation myth...and we have a few of our own.
The counterpoint is that aristocracy might conceivably feel (or exhibit) noblesse oblige to the citizenry it rules, whereas an oligarchy *probably* never will. Present day examples seem to prove this out: the King of Thailand might offer the occasional debt jubilee, but american oligarchs want you to "own nothing and be happy," and the russian oligarchs are sending the sons of their Nation to the front to be drone fodder for america's oligarch-aligned foreign policy class.
Perhaps someone can think of one, but I can't think of an example where oligarchy does not result in a similar situation to what we are seeing in countries currently so configured. Maybe "The US, Pre-1860" is the answer to this (I am not sure)
I think that noblesse oblige only goes so far, and that it depends on an awful lot of things to actually see practiced. Whereas in a country where people have some determination over their own lives and can make their own choices as to how to use their money, where to live, etc, things are better. All those things the noblesse oblige depends upon to be put into practice the right way already exist under limited representative government and free market capitalism. The oligarchy sucks ass, I agree completely with that sentiment, and honestly it wouldn't be a bad thing if they were all French Revolution'ed away. But we need to go back to limited government and free markets. People need to remember how to live again, without begging for someone to save them.
As a side note, I don't get why so many lefties think they have to use the state to get what they want. The USA was always the most charitable nation on the face of the planet (and while I don't know if I'm right, I recall seeing a stat where you still would not equal our charity if you combined the charity of the next ten most charitable nations). Americans are happy to give time and money to good causes. Why does the state always need to be involved? Does anyone think that the current groups of lefties would not try to corrupt what "noblesse oblige" means for their own ends? And then we'd end up right back where we started. And even in my case, there are certain leftie things I'm not opposed to: conserving land for hiking and camping and whatnot as an example, or providing alms to the poor. Even at my poorest I still gave some change to the Salvation Army because there were people worse off than us who desperately needed it. With fewer dollars lost to taxes we would all have more to give to our preferred causes. With fewer hours this required to work since there would be fewer taxes, we would each have more time to dedicate to our preferred causes. And even though things are, ahem, less than ideal here, I continue to maintain, where else is better? Where else has ever been better?
I'm posting this using my phone and it's a pain in the ass to proofread properly so I may not have expressed myself to the best of my abilities, and there are likely mistakes. My apologies for that!
I'd like to think I'm "option 3" for why I haven't heard of most subjects discussed on ACF, especially when it comes to shows, movies, and books. It's more likely that I'd just rather watch independently created content with my youtube premium subscription. That and spotify are the only 2 services I pay for because I use them almost constantly and their ads became unbearable. That being said, I might give Netflix a couple bucks to watch this because it seems interesting.
For all the complaints about the 'caste' system, you express favor towards EXACTLY that in its original appearance and manifestation (not what it devolved into, which is repugnant) in your last real paragraph.
This is absolutely worth a separate discussion, but I'm influenced by Curtis Yarvin, who basically says:
0. A good monarchy/aristocracy is better than a good democracy/meritocracy.
1. A BAD monarchy/aristocracy is usually WORSE than a good democracy/meritocracy.
2. However, our current democracy no longer offers the possibility of becoming "good" without violent and/or decisive action, because it has devolved into a rent-seeking cash-extraction machine, so
3. Let's take a shot at having a good monarchy, which requires LESS effort than overthrowing the current system and replacing it with a similar but better system.
4. And when the monarchy ceases to be useful, you pitch it away and have another popular rule.
I'm not contesting any of this, just the cognitive dissonance with the same results when employed by a different society at a different time, constantly brought up over and over in discussions here, and spoken about derisively.
Note that I already conceded that what it devolved into over time is nothing like what it was originally centuries ago, and it supported genuine social mobility, arguably more than what is possible today.
Hence my prior comments about people bullshitting about things they know nothing about.
Let's be real: much of it has to do with American perception of Indians, which is primarily driven by the H1-B crowd and rarely includes Sikhs, Gurkhas, or any of your rougher types. We find the notion of having a dot on one's head inherently hilarious, we aren't sure why a caste system exists when the British so easily dominated the whole country with about a tenth of the troops it would take to make Rommel spill his drink, and no doubt some of our subconscious subcontinental programming from pop culture -- think "George Harrison and Kama Sutra" -- feeds into it as well.
Ask any American man if they'd rather fight the toughest Indian in their ZIP code or a Russian man over the age of 15 chosen at random, and they will all say the latter, unless they've actually BEEN to India.
That being said, let's not co-locate my personal feelings about an aristocracy with the general American opinion of the caste system, because the two have little to do with each other. Furthermore, Americans far more readily accept the idea of a caste system where the top five percent is set by custom, as is OUR PERCEPTION of the European system, than a caste system that permanently renders someone an "untouchable". The former is an annoyance; the latter feels actively cruel.
I was recently assisting an Indian customer over Zoom. I noticed that she worked at a large West Coast healthcare system, and that she was receiving numerous direct messages, entirely from people with Indian names, implying that the entire back office of said system was staffed by Indians.
As we were testing, I prompted her to think of an American city, and she said "San Fransisco." I said, "OK, well think of a large American city without a space in the name." "Pleasanton?" was her response.
In other words, COMPLETELY ignorant of anything about her host country beyond her immediate environment.
I'll buy the first three points, but who's going to select this "good monarchy?" Because half the country already thinks Trump should be king, while the other half is ready for single party rule.
Everybody thinks "democracy" is broken because they don't like that the people they don't agree with also get a say. Probably because most people are too stupid realize we aren't a democracy at all.
It almost doesn't matter how it's done. Have the entire country play Civ III, then select the highest scorer. Pick a well-liked major in the Air Force. The man involved need only be of higher quality than our two current candidates -- not that hard of a bar to clear -- and be beholden to no one for his position, unlike the current candidates.
This is such a wild idea, it’s almost impossible to imagine how it would come to pass. So hard to believe that anyone with any power would give up one iota of it without threat of death and desolation.
*The people on the right pushing for monarchy/aristocracy largely are trying to reinstate feudalism for the benefit of their funders.
*A good king is rarely followed by another good king. The "five good emperors" were notable because they were an exception.
*There is nothing in the system to select for a good ruler other than the training you mention. It is demonstrably insufficient.
*A characteristic of monarchy/aristocracy is resistance to change for fear of upsetting the apple cart. While this is often of social benefit, it is an economic disaster, preventing economic growth. Examples: Imperial China, Rome.
*Capitalist democracy can "devolve into a rent-seeking cash-extraction machine", i.e., an inheritance-based aristocracy. It is our failure mode, not an improvement.
Even by the extremely modest standards of whatever the peak of whatever aristocracy our host seems to idolize is talking about (Victorian England? 1870s Prussia? Imaginationland?) things were pretty lousy for a lot of people in those countries and horrific for their colonies.
The typical "that's not true communism" of the 20th century communist regimes bear an uncanny resemblance to the hereditary aristocracy our host pines for.
Denmark has the monarchy, as do other northern European countries. I'm not suggesting we return Henry VIII to the throne -- merely that we replace our moronic dog-and-pony executive show with something better.
I’m no historian, but I can’t think of a properly bad, major monarchy in the 500 years, except for Russia and maybe Japan? All of the other stuff could easily have been done by any democracy. Additionally, you could also describe the various regimes as monarchies… but that point is mostly argumentative.
"*The people on the right pushing for monarchy/aristocracy largely are trying to reinstate feudalism for the benefit of their funders."
Nobody wants the Sacklers or Kochs as King and Queen. Yarvin suggests that almost any decent human being could do it to start. Hell, that's what the UK did twice, for the Hanoverian and Windsor successions. In neither case were the Kings experienced.
"*A good king is rarely followed by another good king. The "five good emperors" were notable because they were an exception."
Surely we can do a better job than the Romans, however. And I would take ninety years of peace after what we've had lately.
I've seen posited in science fiction that a good selection mechanism might be to have the king choose his successor, but relatives are disallowed. I don't believe that would work either. Wait, I know, let Multivac pick.
I'm not clear on your proposal/preference: do you want an empowered monarchy or a figurehead?
You want an empowered and virtually unaccountable King. Someone who can reshape society for the good or all, or most, without worrying about raising funds for re-election.
Just in case the "Multivac" reference was too obscure for some, it was to an Asimov story, "Franchise." I did not realize, but it is an un-Googleable reference due to the number of companies shamelessly using the name.
“Nobody wants the Sacklers or Kochs as King and Queen“
Oh I’m sure someone does. At the very least, those are the sort of scumbags that will be constantly trying to sway or undermine this all powerful king. Just like any other politician.
That you think otherwise seems embarrassingly optimistic and naive.
And yes, scumbags would be trying to sway the king all the time. Just like they sway senators and presidents. But in this case they'd be short one of their most powerful tools, namely: the ability to help pay for re-election.
I will admit that I try to preserve a sense of optimism and naivete whenever possible. If you'd ever seen a government official drop kittens into a bucket of bleach one at a time, from the wrong side of a steel fence, you'd want to preserve some of yours as well, even if you knew it was a losing battle.
I've read a bit of his stuff about monarchies and he makes some convincing points, but the thing that made this a great frickin' country to live and work in was the fact that power was decentralized and people could decide what to do on their own with their own means. Smart, motivated people could seize opportunities without having to wait for the favor of some idiotic, slow-moving, dimwitted ruling class. Normal people could join them, work for them, or ignore them.
Sure, like Yarvin says, CEOs are able to run their companies like fiefs (to a certain extent) and successful CEOs can get a lot done exercising monarch-like power. But that's still on a smaller scale than a whole country, and it's still within a single entity among (ideally, at least) a shit-ton of competitors. Mr Successful CEO is not centrally planning an entire economy, and we've seen what happens when companies get so big they dominate their entire industry (they don't get happy endings, some upstart will always be gunning for them). The more decentralized power is, especially political power, the stronger the country will be.
So far as points 0 and 1, I would still choose the USA any time after 1900 (to at least get as much fecal matter out of my food as possible) over any other society in the history of the earth. Is there a better place with a monarch ruling versus America as it rose or as it reached the height of its civilization? And even now, what's better than here?
If we're talking FDR, he's one of the problems. The Great Depression ended despite his best efforts, not because of them, and he really should have listened to Gen Patton and wiped communism off the face of the earth.
It never stopped throwing me for a loop when Jimmy the (Vietnamese?) weed cultivator busted out a very low class British accent
I think he was Vietnamese, yeah. Or certainly Vietnamese-adjacent.
One amusing aspect of the open-borders Britain is that you now have all these ethnic foreigners who were born there and have the class accent of where they grew up.
I only even say that because in the gypsy episode JP makes mention of "Vietnamese weed pickers" getting lost. Probably makes me racist, but it still occasionally seems incongruous to me when I hear non-white people with English accents, despite half the world learning the Queen's at some point.
It implies he's one of a few, right?
There are more Indians, in India, who speak English than there are Americans who speak English.
well, "English" is a loose term. As an American, trying to understand the Indian "English" idiom can be maddening. Though trying to understand a deep Scottish brogue is almost as difficult.
Are you implying "do the needful" is not proper English?!
It absolutely is!!!
I have no idea what true “proper” english is, but I find that phrase to be totally aggravating, even though it might be considered “proper” in some places.
I wish I could give > 1 “like” for this! How about 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍?
Black guys with British accents, speaking The King's English, always present a sharp "what could have been" contrast to the police body cam videos I can't seem to get enough of.
theres plenty of that kind of footage in Britain to entertain you
that kind of juxtaposition rankles me in ways few things can
no i dont care if im racist
I don't think it makes you racist.. unless you guys are always throwing that around as a joke.
had a guy from jamaica in the dorm at tulsa u. in '54. looked exactly like a milk chocolate clark gable and had an r.a.f. officer's accent. charming.
Good review, I really liked the story and the clothing and all the luxe stuff. Big Guy Richie fan!
Agreed, but I think I liked the brunette (a lot) more than Jack.
Didn’t quite beat Thandie Newton in RocknRolla though (for me).
I really dug her vibe, but she's not classically pretty.
I think they glossed her up too much, but otherwise she is pretty. Here is where lipstick can be a bad thing
I also liked the mom
Joely Richardson was gorgeous in her twenties and thirties.
She will always suffer from being in the same show as Tessa Thompson.
she is easier to look at than jack yes
Jack just prefers blonds.
Will watch.
On the subject of the idiot box, how do the resident ACF Sinophiles see the 'Shogun' reboot? (caveat, have not read the novel and memories of the first miniseries are vague).
The scenes and costumes are beautiful, the Japanese leads excellent, although the 'Angin' is written purposely as buffoonish, to be frequently girlbossed by the oddly mannish and square jawed Mariko, who sits a horse and fights with a spear. All very current year and tiresome. Chamberlin was much more dignified.
Said buffoonery and pushback actually aligns to the first half of the literary source, though made more obvious for the TV audience. Remains to be seen if this shifts with the same timing as the novel. I'm enjoying it so far.
Loved the original.
Won't watch the new one on principle, as I'm permanently put off of reboots.
Oh, and "Sino" means Chinese. Just FYI.
Japan is just an inferior version of China!
Ask any Chinese person, they'll tell you, in detail.
That's not the way I heard it from Hashimoto-san.
My wife is going to kick your crippled butt.
Sounds like I should go into hiding!
Nah. *My* wife has your back!
Please, attractive Asian women, stop fighting over...
*blushes*
...little ol' me.
I don't appreciate this implication that other countries are racist, everyone knows the USA holds a monopoly on racism in the world.
im trying very hard to bring that accolade here
And slavery! Slavery only ever existed in America!
Just don't tell the Japanese that their imperial family's roots are in Korea.
first its the royal family being german
now its the japanese royal family being korean
next youre going to tell me the prime minister of canada is actually half cuban
well to be more accurate, one half Spanish - African mix.
the important point is that he not canadian but some kind of bastard child
My absolute favorite, without a shadow of a doubt true, "conspiracy theory"
Think any tax-funded Canadian reporter is willing to ask this question at a Trudeau press conference?
"When you hear the Rolling Stones play Starfucker, does it make you think of your mother? Who did she say was better in bed, your father, or Pierre Trudeau?"
seeing as the media is basically state owned and a mouthpiece for the liberal government the is little chance of anything like that happening
sadly
That's pretty funny, actually. My wife hates the imperial family and thinks they're a waste of money. And now they're a bunch of Koreans on top of that!
I read the book. Twice. I lived in Japan for a long time and know what everything looks like (or is supposed to look like) and I've seen plenty of jidai-geki and a couple of the year long Taiga Dramas so I don't really have a desire to watch the new Shogun, but everything I've heard about it is good. My coworker LOVES it. I like Sanada Hiroyuki a lot, too. Maybe I'll watch it when the whole thing is available at once and I have some spare time in the next year or two.
In the same camp.
Original book series was good though. Need to find audiobook for that series.
Actually on a site called humble bundle right now.
https://www.humblebundle.com/books/shogun-asian-saga-james-clavell-books
Probably cheaper, I mean. That may not have been obvious...
Thanks!
For a look at how accurate the Shogun series is, check out a YouTube channel called Metatron. His main interest seems to be armor and weapons but in general it's what used to be called academic level history. https://www.youtube.com/@metatronyt
I don't get to watch as many of his videos these days as I'd like, but I really enjoy his channel.
I found the Chamberlin series unwatchable. I am loving the current one. One change I don't love is there isn't as much emphasis on how much Toranaga loathes the concept of Crimson Sky and wasted lives. The juxtaposition of a person so willing to use people up, as in to their death, with the loathing of death for not purpose is a key concept in the novel.
Production quality has improved in 44 years.
Waiting for the ability to watch all episodes of Shogun at my leisure like someone who lives in 2024 is the reason I'm finishing "3 body" now with "gentlemen" on deck. Agree wholeheartedly with Jack's agrivation at Benioff and Weiss' pandering to the shalow and insufferable modern "girlboss" culture.
Hand in hand with girlbossing in modren (sic) TV will be very oddly placed, needless, and explicit sex scenes and a brothel will somehow be worked into the plot.
I thought we were bringing up negatives
LMAO
The negative is that now instead of gratuitous boobs in those scenes, its gratuitous penis.
That is definitely an unwelcome minus when it happens. I thought he was commenting on the irony of women still being objectified in media that revolves around one or more "boss bitches."
Yes this: echoes of the popularity of the bondage novels, and the endless boundary pushing for the sake of. See also: Game of Clowns.
In Shogun alone: a scene where the village lord's nephew has sex with a prostitute in front of him. Why? No reason.
Another where one character is tapping perhaps the same prostitute while choking himself out. After he's finished, she suggests getting some other 'toys', which I figured meant they were jumping the shark to actually pegging on screen. Luckily, they went in a different direction.
The 1980 Mariko is graceful, feminine, and often smiles. The new one is dour and never smiles. Her fight scenes so abruptly break the otherwise such hard fought for immersion as to be almost tragic. One of the other women characters pulls a pistol on a Samurai. Another manipulates the Regents to her own ends as revenge for being 'Handmaidened'.
This is why we can't have nice things.
I enjoyed the movie and the series. The movie took a few watches to appreciate the nuances. The series had a little too much serial feel to it at times, as in "who's the eccentric criminal type we meet in this episode." Or it became a bit repetitive. By the end, I guess all of those gangsters of the week were pulled together in a satisfying way, so I can't really complain.
I'd say this is the best show I've seen in awhile, and better than other shows I've watched recently, including "Mr. and Mrs. Smith", "The Sandman", "Death and Other Details", "True Detective Season 4", and so on.
I am allergic to aristocracy. I vastly prefer the French or Bolshevik way of handling them vice the fawning American press. That being said anyone who thinks Bill Gates or Prince Andrew is in their respective positions because they are stupider or less ruthless than the average street level gangster probably believes that Epstein hung himself.
An aristocracy trained from birth to lead and bound by noblesse oblige is theoretically a pretty good deal, but it’s usually generations of coasting mediocrity descending from someone who lent the king money or knifed the old duke and backed the right usurper in the 15th century. That said, our meritocracy is starting to turn into that, just with more legalistic rent seeking and fewer actual swords.
Don't forget all the inbreeding.
Noblesse Oblige would be a great name for a (wooden) boat.
(For the avoidance of doubt, that’s tongue-in-cheek!)
You could gold leaf it on the back of one of your dads!
By way of olive leaf, the Tahoe wooden boat scene is truly gorgeous to behold.
I never thought about it but I guess they do / did use gold leaf for naming.
They are like old / vintage collector cars to the 10th power. He has several fully restored boats that have never been in the water. He’ll be 70 this week, and I’m sure he’ll rectify that right around … never.
Awe man. That’s like a surfboard that’s never been waxed, it’s almost sinful. I’d have to give them a rip at least once.
Well, there are several problems:
-He lives on a busy road (it’s a highway, really) on which cars - and 18 wheelers - travel at 75 MPH. The driveway is long, and it exits at a steep and oblique angle just after a blind brow. He is unwilling to enter or exit with a boat trailer without calling a local cop to give him cover. Once, about 20 years ago, a truck from the nearby wood yard nearly turned his ultra-rare Gar Wood into popsicle sticks.
-He sold his lake house for top dollar during COVID…
-…which means he’d have to use the boat ramp at the local marina.
-Given how infrequently the boats are used, they are guaranteed to experience a failure to proceed, so he’d need someone to go with him to tow him back to the ramp, which presents some difficulties in getting an old boat back on the trailer.
-Once back home, the boat has to receive hours of TLC with a chamois before it returns to storage.
As a result, it’s much easier to keep them in storage.
Guess I've been busy living an authentic, fullfilled life. Never heard of 3 Body Problem. As I hated the stupid Benneton ads back in the 80s, I'll continue to never bother hearing of it.
Always been a big fan of Guy Ritchie's work. (Might have to do my yearly re-watch of "The Star" soon.) I thought the Gentlemen was a fine film, though not one of his best, though I could not put my finger on why. I think Jack pointed out the reason - the wrong cast.
Since I'm too cheap to spend the $12/month (while being fully aware that I spend thousands on toys and fun recreational pursuits), will have to fanangle someone's Netflix account and watch this show.
I am with you. I only had a “3 body problem” when I was dating in college and had three rather differing women on the rotation.
Like you I will need to find a way to watch this, but may try reading the book first.
I do like how Guy Ritchie films so this may be worth the watch.
But I did like the Benneton race livery, but agree the ads were trash.
Let's not confuse the Schumacher world championship F1 car with all the stupidity of their marketing :)
Yes! Diametrically opposed. One brilliantly designed and driven. The other also ran.
I agree with you on the too cheap part. At one point I was paying monthly subscriptions to at least a dozen different streaming channels. My wife only watches Investigation
Sorry, hit the wrong button. My wife only watches Investigation Discovery and I never get the time to watch any movies, so I simple stopped paying. I'd rather stare at the wall as I sip whiskey than watch 99% of what's on.
"I'd rather stare at the wall as I sip whiskey than watch 99% of what's on."
Wise choice.
I find that I watch less and less of the content du jour targeted toward me.
Leaves more time for listening to podcasts or audiobooks while also doing something else!
You're better off watching Friends than you are listening to these inane podcasts.
"Bro, I hate when traffic is slow."
"Me too bro. Let's stop to acknowledge our sponsors."
I do not exclusively listen to the shows that arouse your ire!
Depends on the whisky. (Dropping the "e" is deliberate.)
Dropping the "e"? Heathen.
Even when I had subscriptions I invariably ended up watching the same old stuff I'd seen 10x before versus the new crap.
I spent this evening watching The Rockford Files for free on Pluto TV. I'm confident that this show Jack's talking about would not have been half as entertaining.
Perhaps I should introduce my children to Stuart 'Angel' Margolin.
Being outside, staring at a fire with a nice rye whiskey.
Magic.
I've been spending my evenings of the last several weeks either prepping my car for racing season and riding my bicycle, so I was unaware of either 3BP or The Gentlemen. I have, however been keeping up with season 2 of Tokyo Vice, which also uses high-end watch as a plot device, in this case a Vacheron Constantin claimed to be worth a quarter million. From what I've read, the real-life Jake Adelstein seems like a fraud, but the show has a good sense of grit, and the hero car is a Fairlady Z.
Wait, season two is out? I didn't realize that. I'll have to watch it.
Sounds like an interesting show, is it on Netflix? Between this and The Gentlemen I may just have to pay for a month or 2
HBO
Oh damn, I think my lady has that!
HBO is worth it to just watch their back catalogue
Excellent season. No need for the gay shit but oh well
Oh boy. There ALWAYS has to be some eventually.
It's very funny that you mention that. After accidentally starting on part 2 of the old Shogun, I stumbled on this: https://archive.org/details/shogun.-part.-2.1980.-restored.-bluray.-1080p.-dts-hd.x-264-grym
Go to 8:36
Ninja edit: Apparently Chamberlain was in the closet.
Had an ancient Baruth been the one to land on the shores of Japan, half of the population would have weird squeaky voices by now. I can imagine it: "My... er.. intimate custom... is three of you at once, on a rotating basis."
The Sopranos riffed on that fact way back in the '00s only to indulge in some unnecessary gayness with Fat Vito's arc. I'll give them credit for being self-aware on that one since it's a beloved IP.
You can’t renew a series without it. The Hollywood gay mafia will end your show if you don’t. The only I show I can think of that was renewed without a gay love story was Ray Donovan. But they all got molested by a priest. So while not a love story I guess they got their gay plot twist.
It’s hysterical to me when they can’t introduce a new character and are like just make that one gay. Remember Animal Kingdom? They had been robbing banks and parting for episodes. But a few seasons later, they all surfing and one of the brothers comes home gay. Haha.
It’s like they sell the first set of scripts but can’t reload without going gay. So the stand alone mini series can stay straight. But… I bet we’ll get a gay Reacher soon.
What I don’t know is if they tell the writers to include it or if they add it to a rewrite when the next season isn’t picked up right away. Or are they just expected to go by the Abbey on Sundays and kiss the ring… haha. I never kissed the ring, but I spent a lot of Sundays with dude’s thongs and dongs in my face as I helped my girlfriend sell tv shows.
Uh oh. Tangent time: It was actually a lot of fun and I kind of miss day drinking in West Hollywood. But I also couldn’t sit there and not pitch in! So I pushed car shows I signed bad obsession/ project binky and put together sizzle reel and pitch for them to come to the US and build weird stuff. By the time the networks were done with their comments it looked like every other horrible build show. Same with the other cool concepts I pitched.
I did get kind of close on One Man, One Car, Every race. Where one car gets modded each week for the next style of racing. Autocross to drag racing to circle track and so on. Ending at the mint400 with a desert race. The car would be a butchered mess from all the different shops that worked on it from week to week but I thought it would be fun.
Maybe I shouldn’t have broken up with her. Maybe I could have made car shows? I doubt it, but it was a super fun chapter. And I got to shoot a ton of video myself which was awesome. But she was never in town and it got old. I felt like that dude that lived in Oj’s house. Kato or whatever. Her apartment was insane and I’d take her 997 up to Angeles crest every night. I was looking for Takumi. And I found him one night! Turbo Miata on Hoosiers with rally lights! Goes up after 1am… anyway, I was over it and spent like $5k just on gas (2 tanks a night for weeks) and Carrera just hired me to model for them. Like I was leaving for an 18hour photo shoot during fashion week where I would be asked to “do the nude!” Wearing sunglasses of course. I had no idea that meant just a nipple. I was like sure, you’re paying over a thousand an hour, you want nude?? Ohhh a majority of the shoot was a cocktail party. Like 100+ people watching as I tried to undo my pants. The scream from the woman who had just been yelling do the nude was amazing. It was so awesome. So ridiculous.
They finally got wise and canceled the whole thing. But only after they paid me even more for additional photos. Life is so weird. I think they went with a Somalian refugee who became a model instead. Like so different from me and my story. And it’s probably a good thing. I’m already pretty obnoxious, could you imagine if they actually put me on billboards? Makes me laugh so hard every time I think about it. Like was that even real?
Sooooo…… you can sell a show without a gay line, but no way you get to renew it without one. Not a chance.
I seem to remember that some of their "guidelines" were leaked at one point:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLAAD
Imagine if the NRA vetoed scripts that were negative about privately-owned firearms.
your life and stories are so vibrant that if you made shit up halfway through i literally could not tell
and a turbo miata on hoosiers would be an utter weapon on any backroad
Thank you! That’s a huge compliment! And while my life has always been a bit lucky or ridiculous, I worked really hard at it when I finally had a break from finance.
I said yes to almost anything. And when the day was over, I pushed it farther. It’s strange looking back at it in some ways. I look at some pictures and am like WTF. Where? What? How?
The turbo Miata kid I only saw once. It’s was near the end of a $5-6k gas bill and the tires and brakes were done. Plus both rear shocks were leaking. They should be trophy truck sized in the rear of a 911. But I loved my nights up there. It was a convertible 4s which was so dangerous up there. But i loved hearing the rear tires. They made the coolest noises with no roof, no helmet.
Anyway… I used to do laps up there. Yeah I know… bad… but at night, you could see the headlights coming for miles. And then I’d take a break and back the car behind a rock formation in of my favorite sections and recline the seat and look at the stars and chill. Then one night I heard something running through gears with those crazy turbo chipmunk noises. And absolutely no tire noise but they were moving!
I pulled out behind him, HARD on the gas! And he parked it like I was cop! Like what dude? I almost passed him he braked so hard! And when he realized it was a 911, I had one of the best 5 minutes up there of all time. Yeah I know. Take it to the track. And that is 100% right.
But there’s no one up there at 2am and you can easily see headlights on that side of the mountain. And I wanted it just once. One and done. Two many initial D episodes. And the old stories from mulholland are wild. They built grandstands!!! I just assumed it still went on and that would be the next logical road. I was pretty wrong. But that Miata was fast.
Worse was that he could out brake me by a lot. I couldn’t just follow his inputs or he would punish me. I used to do it larger street cars when I was in my e30 on Hoosiers. But I wasn’t ready. The Miata was so light. I found out later it was gutted. Totally empty. I actually left the road a little bit at one point. 2 wheels hard off. But that car’s 4wd system ruled. You stay in it and keep the car pointed straight.
I never did get by him. I got a few runs on him bc the pdk shifted so fast through so many gears. It’s so not fair. But I would start to pull ahead and he would turn off his rally lights. To be nice. But…the road went so dark every time. Haha. I knew the road, but it’s weird when you have to focus with your night vision all F’d. I backed off every single time. No f’ing way.
So I took the light bar off my Baja car and bought those huge suction cups for rigging cameras to cars! But every piece of body flexes on a 911 except the glass and the light bar was heavy!
And then it all ended. I never saw the Miata on the mountain again, but I know I’ll run into him again some day. He moved to the base so he could build a weapon and get up the mountain without anyone noticing… drivers like that don’t stop driving.
Jack, thanks for letting me drop a rant or story in here. Im sorry if I detract, but it’s a fun, safe place for me to share old adventures. I should probably start my own substack and definitely need to write the book now that I have the rights back. But thanks. and sorry! Haha.
I think the only reason I haven't yet bundled my car into a hedge or chucked it off a cliff despite watching everything Initial D related is that there aren't any curvy roads around. I'm well aware of the danger and illegality of it all, but a touge battle/pass racing is one of the things I gotta try at least once.
And keep me posted when you write that book, I'll definitely be purchasing a copy from you.
Bill these stories are priceless.
Please get them in writing before health, motorsport-related-concussions or any other form of entropy steals them from your memory.
I am sure there are 10+ people in this forum alone who would pre-order an account of your adventures.
"I did get kind of close on One Man, One Car, Every race. Where one car gets modded each week for the next style of racing. Autocross to drag racing to circle track and so on. Ending at the mint400 with a desert race. The car would be a butchered mess from all the different shops that worked on it from week to week but I thought it would be fun."
This would be a better show than 99.9% of the YouTube car dreck.
Succinctness is great, but True Hollywood Stories are always catnip.
Care to expand the above into a guest post?
So far as a landed gentry or some sort of aristocracy goes, sure it looks good now, but some of our greatest entrepreneurs would not have happened had we been tied to some worthless royal family. John D Rockefeller was the son of a con man and lived in Cleveland. Henry Ford was some random farmboy, and Dale Carnegie's parents were farmers. Thomas Edison's mom was some schoolteacher in Michigan. I'd rather have those guys doing the leading without someone like King George III or Louis XVI. Fortunes and influence can be pissed away by the inept, but titles are forever... unless we French Revolution our way through them. And like I always say whenever I see some stupid news item about the British royal family, we fought a war to not have to care about them. I'm not about to start.
Aristocracy is complete bs. We like it because it’s a foreign concept and essentially fantasy/zooish behavior
Allow me to offer a counterpoint.
The practical appeal of an aristocracy is that the rulers are specifically trained to rule from childhood on. If the education is properly accomplished, then power passes into the hands of people who feel a least a passing obligation to the people over whom they have that power.
What we have today, instead: a group of people who ruthlessly stack the deck in favor of their children while letting said children think they DESERVE everything they have because of their individual merit, which leads to absolutely ruthless behavior on everyone's part.
Another important part of the aristocracy that our current "meritocracy" omits: they actually FOUGHT in the wars they started, rather than farming it out mercenary-style to kids from West Virginia and South Carolina.
Your last point would partly explain Western Europe's trajectory after WW1.
As I said, WWI was started by aristocrats so much of that trajectory can be attributed to their actions.
Agreed, although I was rather alluding to that so many of that class were killed in the war.
my father called ww1 the greatest genocide ever.
Wars that they started over family disputes with their cousins. A lot of the world's current problems can be traced to World War One. The Kaiser, the King, and the Czar were all blood relatives.
Also war of 1873
Indeed. Much of the world's very current problems can be traced to the Sykes Picot Agreement that came out of the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the wake of WWI. A fact I like bringing up almost as much as I like to bring up my S550 EB Mustang convertible.
Both topics, it must be said, on which the average man in the street should be better-educated.
The snark!
While I think what you present is the "ideal" (I can't use italics) scenario for aristocracy, I would argue that what you do get is an out of touch populace that ends up running things and hoards all the wealth. In our "meritocracy" the opposite should occur. I think the problem we have today is not the meritocracy of itself sending the leaders of the young ones to die, but we have separated our warriors from our leaders (our best presidents have been generals/served except for Lincoln, who one could argue is overrated.) A meritocracy is always superior since we can get rid of those who are bad easily, wheras getting rid of the aristocracy has usually resulted in civil war.
I'd also add, that a female president would exacerbate this claim of sending people to die since all men know they have some skin in the game, whereas women do not. The end of a country is a female leader.
well that cant be true
germany seems to be doing quite well with that ancient swamp creature running the place
Angela Merkel? She stepped down in’21
margaret thatcher?
a lot of people in Britain despise her. But Britain was toast long before she came to power, the socialists killed that one.
To be fair, Lincoln DID seem to have superhuman strength.
And now you know why that was the case.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln:_Vampire_Hunter
The ideal of the aristocracy IS nice. Calls to mind the intro to that Matisyahu song.
CS Lewis would say we like the idea because we have the memory of the One Just King forever on our souls.
al gore's mother didn't let him play the violin--because "presidents don't play the violin."
I remember reading that the British aristocracy and the rest of the Eton/Oxford/Cambridge elite had the highest percentage casualty rates in WW1 of any (I think class) group. Not just because of being the junior officers standing in front of everyone else while walking very slowly towards machine guns, but also because of very high rates of volunteering and them thinking it their obligation to go. The idea was - in 1914 anyway - the UK elite did actually see themselves as something like an Indian military caste and felt obliged to go.
Read it years ago and still remember it as having a kind of awful tragedy about it all. Entire classes from the top universities just disappeared. The way it was presented was these junior officers actually knew once fighting began how bad it was going to be - they were probably more aware of the impact of modern weapons than anyone, including the generals, definitely more than the men they were leading - but still climbed out of trenches and went because that was seen as their whole purpose - to step up and go into the army when it was needed.
It wasn't the fear of being thought a coward that motivated them, it was the sense that in a very real way, their privileged place in society had to be paid for every few generations in blood, and unfortunately for them it was now the time to do so.
The book was by a guy called David Cannadine, I think Victorious Century - he is sympathetic the aristocracy.
Obviously none of that probably applies to the current ones, but still.
Some days its really starting to seem like perhaps having a landed gentry and making very sure they get brought up right might actually make for a better society. Can't quite put my finger on it, but perhaps having Lord Crawly thinking "his people" need looking after might make him slightly less of an asshole, or that having aristocrats around maybe inoculates your society from the worst stupidity of the second-generation heirs. It's probably just carefully managing the elite status competition type games into something useful for the whole society, but its starting to feel like maybe an aristocracy gives you a head start on that.
The aristocracy is a concept that is tied to the days when land was, quite literally, the only source of wealth. And the aristocrat was tied to his land. What would the first born sons of Elon Musk/Steve Jobs/Bill Gates etc be tied to? Nothing of permanence, I suspect.
Well said. Thanks.
It can be argued that you fought a war for a local protection racket (which, in fairness, is the root of all government) and for the right to pay your own defence bill. The net result was a 50% drop in GDP over 15 years as the colonies had to defend themselves against your French friends and the Spanish. But we all need a foundation myth...and we have a few of our own.
Your argument is strong. Of two minds though.
The counterpoint is that aristocracy might conceivably feel (or exhibit) noblesse oblige to the citizenry it rules, whereas an oligarchy *probably* never will. Present day examples seem to prove this out: the King of Thailand might offer the occasional debt jubilee, but american oligarchs want you to "own nothing and be happy," and the russian oligarchs are sending the sons of their Nation to the front to be drone fodder for america's oligarch-aligned foreign policy class.
Perhaps someone can think of one, but I can't think of an example where oligarchy does not result in a similar situation to what we are seeing in countries currently so configured. Maybe "The US, Pre-1860" is the answer to this (I am not sure)
I think that noblesse oblige only goes so far, and that it depends on an awful lot of things to actually see practiced. Whereas in a country where people have some determination over their own lives and can make their own choices as to how to use their money, where to live, etc, things are better. All those things the noblesse oblige depends upon to be put into practice the right way already exist under limited representative government and free market capitalism. The oligarchy sucks ass, I agree completely with that sentiment, and honestly it wouldn't be a bad thing if they were all French Revolution'ed away. But we need to go back to limited government and free markets. People need to remember how to live again, without begging for someone to save them.
As a side note, I don't get why so many lefties think they have to use the state to get what they want. The USA was always the most charitable nation on the face of the planet (and while I don't know if I'm right, I recall seeing a stat where you still would not equal our charity if you combined the charity of the next ten most charitable nations). Americans are happy to give time and money to good causes. Why does the state always need to be involved? Does anyone think that the current groups of lefties would not try to corrupt what "noblesse oblige" means for their own ends? And then we'd end up right back where we started. And even in my case, there are certain leftie things I'm not opposed to: conserving land for hiking and camping and whatnot as an example, or providing alms to the poor. Even at my poorest I still gave some change to the Salvation Army because there were people worse off than us who desperately needed it. With fewer dollars lost to taxes we would all have more to give to our preferred causes. With fewer hours this required to work since there would be fewer taxes, we would each have more time to dedicate to our preferred causes. And even though things are, ahem, less than ideal here, I continue to maintain, where else is better? Where else has ever been better?
I'm posting this using my phone and it's a pain in the ass to proofread properly so I may not have expressed myself to the best of my abilities, and there are likely mistakes. My apologies for that!
All good points.
I'd like to think I'm "option 3" for why I haven't heard of most subjects discussed on ACF, especially when it comes to shows, movies, and books. It's more likely that I'd just rather watch independently created content with my youtube premium subscription. That and spotify are the only 2 services I pay for because I use them almost constantly and their ads became unbearable. That being said, I might give Netflix a couple bucks to watch this because it seems interesting.
For all the complaints about the 'caste' system, you express favor towards EXACTLY that in its original appearance and manifestation (not what it devolved into, which is repugnant) in your last real paragraph.
This is absolutely worth a separate discussion, but I'm influenced by Curtis Yarvin, who basically says:
0. A good monarchy/aristocracy is better than a good democracy/meritocracy.
1. A BAD monarchy/aristocracy is usually WORSE than a good democracy/meritocracy.
2. However, our current democracy no longer offers the possibility of becoming "good" without violent and/or decisive action, because it has devolved into a rent-seeking cash-extraction machine, so
3. Let's take a shot at having a good monarchy, which requires LESS effort than overthrowing the current system and replacing it with a similar but better system.
4. And when the monarchy ceases to be useful, you pitch it away and have another popular rule.
I'm not contesting any of this, just the cognitive dissonance with the same results when employed by a different society at a different time, constantly brought up over and over in discussions here, and spoken about derisively.
Note that I already conceded that what it devolved into over time is nothing like what it was originally centuries ago, and it supported genuine social mobility, arguably more than what is possible today.
Hence my prior comments about people bullshitting about things they know nothing about.
Let's be real: much of it has to do with American perception of Indians, which is primarily driven by the H1-B crowd and rarely includes Sikhs, Gurkhas, or any of your rougher types. We find the notion of having a dot on one's head inherently hilarious, we aren't sure why a caste system exists when the British so easily dominated the whole country with about a tenth of the troops it would take to make Rommel spill his drink, and no doubt some of our subconscious subcontinental programming from pop culture -- think "George Harrison and Kama Sutra" -- feeds into it as well.
Ask any American man if they'd rather fight the toughest Indian in their ZIP code or a Russian man over the age of 15 chosen at random, and they will all say the latter, unless they've actually BEEN to India.
That being said, let's not co-locate my personal feelings about an aristocracy with the general American opinion of the caste system, because the two have little to do with each other. Furthermore, Americans far more readily accept the idea of a caste system where the top five percent is set by custom, as is OUR PERCEPTION of the European system, than a caste system that permanently renders someone an "untouchable". The former is an annoyance; the latter feels actively cruel.
The 'untouchable' part of it is what it morphed into over 'centuries'.
I guess I'm more annoyed at the relative illiteracy and sheer ignorance of the average American.
I was recently assisting an Indian customer over Zoom. I noticed that she worked at a large West Coast healthcare system, and that she was receiving numerous direct messages, entirely from people with Indian names, implying that the entire back office of said system was staffed by Indians.
As we were testing, I prompted her to think of an American city, and she said "San Fransisco." I said, "OK, well think of a large American city without a space in the name." "Pleasanton?" was her response.
In other words, COMPLETELY ignorant of anything about her host country beyond her immediate environment.
colour me surprised
Sure, cause pop quizzes are representative of entire populations.
Maybe she is really into Safeway?
To be fair, I'm the same way about Malaysia when I'm there.
I don’t quite understand, so if she said miami or Philadelphia she would have passed your test ?
I'll buy the first three points, but who's going to select this "good monarchy?" Because half the country already thinks Trump should be king, while the other half is ready for single party rule.
Everybody thinks "democracy" is broken because they don't like that the people they don't agree with also get a say. Probably because most people are too stupid realize we aren't a democracy at all.
It almost doesn't matter how it's done. Have the entire country play Civ III, then select the highest scorer. Pick a well-liked major in the Air Force. The man involved need only be of higher quality than our two current candidates -- not that hard of a bar to clear -- and be beholden to no one for his position, unlike the current candidates.
This is such a wild idea, it’s almost impossible to imagine how it would come to pass. So hard to believe that anyone with any power would give up one iota of it without threat of death and desolation.
I see what you did there. Is there a particular pilot that might join and reach Major by 35 that you have in mind?
Oh, you don't want HIM. Worst son since Commodus!
...And be able to resist co-option or murder by the military intelligence that got away with killing multiple(!) Kennedys.
Anyone with pulse knows that's a hard feat verging on the impossible.
A few thoughts (in an unordered list).
*The people on the right pushing for monarchy/aristocracy largely are trying to reinstate feudalism for the benefit of their funders.
*A good king is rarely followed by another good king. The "five good emperors" were notable because they were an exception.
*There is nothing in the system to select for a good ruler other than the training you mention. It is demonstrably insufficient.
*A characteristic of monarchy/aristocracy is resistance to change for fear of upsetting the apple cart. While this is often of social benefit, it is an economic disaster, preventing economic growth. Examples: Imperial China, Rome.
*Capitalist democracy can "devolve into a rent-seeking cash-extraction machine", i.e., an inheritance-based aristocracy. It is our failure mode, not an improvement.
*I admit I like the associated clothes, though.
Even by the extremely modest standards of whatever the peak of whatever aristocracy our host seems to idolize is talking about (Victorian England? 1870s Prussia? Imaginationland?) things were pretty lousy for a lot of people in those countries and horrific for their colonies.
The typical "that's not true communism" of the 20th century communist regimes bear an uncanny resemblance to the hereditary aristocracy our host pines for.
Denmark has the monarchy, as do other northern European countries. I'm not suggesting we return Henry VIII to the throne -- merely that we replace our moronic dog-and-pony executive show with something better.
But was that because of the monarchies? Or just a fact of the human existence prior to our post-industrial age?
I'd suggest it was largely the former.
I’m no historian, but I can’t think of a properly bad, major monarchy in the 500 years, except for Russia and maybe Japan? All of the other stuff could easily have been done by any democracy. Additionally, you could also describe the various regimes as monarchies… but that point is mostly argumentative.
"*The people on the right pushing for monarchy/aristocracy largely are trying to reinstate feudalism for the benefit of their funders."
Nobody wants the Sacklers or Kochs as King and Queen. Yarvin suggests that almost any decent human being could do it to start. Hell, that's what the UK did twice, for the Hanoverian and Windsor successions. In neither case were the Kings experienced.
"*A good king is rarely followed by another good king. The "five good emperors" were notable because they were an exception."
Surely we can do a better job than the Romans, however. And I would take ninety years of peace after what we've had lately.
I any decent human being could do it to start, I offer myself as king.
if we had true constitutional government this discussion wouldn't be happening.
I've seen posited in science fiction that a good selection mechanism might be to have the king choose his successor, but relatives are disallowed. I don't believe that would work either. Wait, I know, let Multivac pick.
I'm not clear on your proposal/preference: do you want an empowered monarchy or a figurehead?
You want an empowered and virtually unaccountable King. Someone who can reshape society for the good or all, or most, without worrying about raising funds for re-election.
So you are suggesting we return Henry VIII to the throne?
Just in case the "Multivac" reference was too obscure for some, it was to an Asimov story, "Franchise." I did not realize, but it is an un-Googleable reference due to the number of companies shamelessly using the name.
“Nobody wants the Sacklers or Kochs as King and Queen“
Oh I’m sure someone does. At the very least, those are the sort of scumbags that will be constantly trying to sway or undermine this all powerful king. Just like any other politician.
That you think otherwise seems embarrassingly optimistic and naive.
I just mean "nobody with any sense".
And yes, scumbags would be trying to sway the king all the time. Just like they sway senators and presidents. But in this case they'd be short one of their most powerful tools, namely: the ability to help pay for re-election.
I will admit that I try to preserve a sense of optimism and naivete whenever possible. If you'd ever seen a government official drop kittens into a bucket of bleach one at a time, from the wrong side of a steel fence, you'd want to preserve some of yours as well, even if you knew it was a losing battle.
I've read a bit of his stuff about monarchies and he makes some convincing points, but the thing that made this a great frickin' country to live and work in was the fact that power was decentralized and people could decide what to do on their own with their own means. Smart, motivated people could seize opportunities without having to wait for the favor of some idiotic, slow-moving, dimwitted ruling class. Normal people could join them, work for them, or ignore them.
Sure, like Yarvin says, CEOs are able to run their companies like fiefs (to a certain extent) and successful CEOs can get a lot done exercising monarch-like power. But that's still on a smaller scale than a whole country, and it's still within a single entity among (ideally, at least) a shit-ton of competitors. Mr Successful CEO is not centrally planning an entire economy, and we've seen what happens when companies get so big they dominate their entire industry (they don't get happy endings, some upstart will always be gunning for them). The more decentralized power is, especially political power, the stronger the country will be.
So far as points 0 and 1, I would still choose the USA any time after 1900 (to at least get as much fecal matter out of my food as possible) over any other society in the history of the earth. Is there a better place with a monarch ruling versus America as it rose or as it reached the height of its civilization? And even now, what's better than here?
It's been pointed out that the President had considerably more power than he has now during this country's finest hours.
If we're talking FDR, he's one of the problems. The Great Depression ended despite his best efforts, not because of them, and he really should have listened to Gen Patton and wiped communism off the face of the earth.
Movie or book idea: alternate timeline with a President Patton instead of Ike.
Oh hell no, I was thinking more like the 19th Century.
Yet despite the dim-witted ruling class, the industrial revolution (or revelation as Setright called it) started in Britain.
That's true. But Britain is also where the Magna Carta was signed and where Parliament was growing in influence.