Nothing new under the sun, but 'our leaders' become more brazen by the day while, with each passing day, more and more of the pretence of popular sovereignty vanishes before our eyes
I am reminded of a french, perhaps obscure, political ideawhich arose as a counter to the then-current voluntary communes and anarchists: synarchism.
Or as it should be called, french fascism (or corporatism).
In short, it advocates for the guise and forms of capitalism, free trade, and democracy to be maintained as to give legitimacy to a system the purpose of which is full cooperation and synergy between all wielders of power, in all its shapes: church/faith, unions, capital, banks, old aristocracy, industry, education, politics, and so on - the insititutions of the modern state withiut any plae or boundary inbetween.
A total state, if you will. Not so much totalitarianism with the iron gauntlet in full view, but rather with the velvet firmly in place, replete with frills and lace as to bedazzle the populous.
The only opposing force I can think of is nationalism based on race and tribe, and well, that's a hard no-sell for most all westerners due to 70 years hard conditioning.
Caveat, surely unnecessary: does not mean racial hate or eugenicism or the rest of the tripe - just to put one's own kind first and foremost. The american lunacy of insisting everyon who shares the same nationality are also the same people, and (illogically logical) that race is paramount in all issues is the death of Europe, both in the ideal and the physical sense.
So, nationalism defined as a creed of "Familj, fränder, folk, fosterland". Family, friends, people, country. Not nationstate but country. The nationstate is an administrative concept, the country is a cultural, racial, and traditional such.
And that latter concept is not under the control of neither capital nor state, not fully and not yet.
I couldn't agree more about the 'creed' you outline: much like 'the nation' of yore, which in US parlance would be something akin to 'patriotism', another one of these ideas that has a long history of abuse since, well the 1940s, incidentally.
Since we're having such a nice conversation about these issues, why not ask you about the following proposition: 'modern' nationalism being a bourgeois concept, alright, it would logically mean that the older kind of 'nationalism', deriving from the Latin natio, i.e., kindship-or-blood relationships, would be 'modified' by those 19th-century bourgeoise who 'invented' the modern notion thereof.
In other words, of course, family, friends, people, and country were older than the 'modern' nation. I think we've reached the end point of the 'modern' bourgois version of 'nationalism' around the mid-20th century, and what we can observe now are its death throes while 'something else' is struggling to be born.
Apr 27, 2022·edited Apr 27, 2022Liked by epimetheus
It's delightfully annoying when I can't quibble, add or go off a tangent* because yes, it is as you say: the older version of nationalism, with its roots in the Cro Magnon staying as an extended family, a clan, a tribe and finally a people, died with the onset of industrialism and the rise of the urban bourgeoisie (and feel free to draw the obvious parallel to Rome the Eternal, when the rural landowning knight class were outmaneuvered by power-players and businessmen closer to the Emperor).
It's just that deaths of societal systems are gradual, often longer than human lifetimes, so for most of us it isn't noticeable outside of school textbooks and besides: how much does it affect a store clerk working 40+ hours/week at Fakta or Lidl, in her daily life, really? That's the eternal problem of all oppositional forces: why should the people care, if they are fed, safe and can live in relative peace?
Creature comforts makes us comfortable creatures - a phrase which caused a colleague to remark I sounded almost 'Spencerian'...
What scares me, demographical changes aside, is that we have reached the same point as the USSR in the mid-eighties: the system can no longer be turned around or metamorphose, it must crash.
Globalism or cosmopolitanism as it used to be called, simply does not work. Neither does the version of economics we have used since the seventies (early nineties in Sweden's case), but all those who can effect (or should that be affect?) change sees little profit in taking the risk. They can after all as Chesterton put it "go away to New Guinea in a yacht".
Personally, I see little recourse right now than simply "walking away from Omelas" and staying out, which unfortunately doesn't help with the main issue.
'What scares me, demographical changes aside, is that we have reached the same point as the USSR in the mid-eighties: the system can no longer be turned around or metamorphose, it must crash.'
I subscribe to the part that relates our situation to the former USSR, but keep in mind that, as Marx himself wrote (in the 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoléon, which came out in the early 1850s): 'history repeats itself first as tragedy, second as farce'.
We're certainly deep into the farcical lands of wishful thinking. I am convinced that people like Marx, Weber, Spencer, Spengler et al. would all consider the collective West insane and, perhaps, even beyond redemption.
Re your globalism quip: agreed, but just because it doesn't work for you or me, it does work for the 0.1%, the super-rich. Take a look at the wealth these people have stolen over the past 1-2 generations.
As a concludion, I think that every halfway sane person may only try 'walking away', which, as you correctly point out, neither helps with the main issue nor is it very practical: we're all so tied up--entangled, perhaps--in 'Western Civilisation' that it becomes really more than just 'a hard thing to do'. And then we haven't even talked about whether or not these totalitarian enforcers would let you 'walk away'.
As Rikard accurately opines, there's not a lot to quibble with in this exchange. Not much to add except some thoughts about the "walk away" question dangling precariously at the end.
Based on experience with large-scale process design in a professional context a long time ago in a galaxy far (far) away, one of my favorite exercises is to deconstruct large, scary possibilities in the present with the foil of hard physical logistics. Wrap it in a little historically-informed spatial analysis and voila... different views of the narrative begin to emerge organically. I like to think of it as reverse-engineering the myth-building process.
Practice the techniques for awhile -- decades in my case -- and hindsight also joins the fray, with far more incisive (and decisive) results. In this case, it's disassembling the long-awaited physical crackdowns in the "free West" that finally arrived in 2020, dragging a thirty-year-long tail of legal breadcrumbs showing us "dissidents" how we arrived here.
To the point : for years now I've explained (to the handful of people who are actually interested) that the logistics of power projection are far more precarious than we are led to believe in consensus portrayals. If nothing else, the last two years have finally provided those outside the consensus mindf**kery with some actual operational hindsight in several respects. In particular, it's exploded our view of the people who populate "polite" society.
In terms of literal door-to-door operations, for whatever nefarious purpose such things are (eventually) trotted out under the guise of "public safety" or similar, I see two primary axes defining this next escalation.
One : despite the outsize advantages in technology wielded by the various (disposable) "authorities" tasked with carrying out orders, they will ALWAYS be vastly outnumbered. As such, they can only crackdown in a highly selective manner. The strategic and tactical implications of this are fairly clear.
Two : as such, any ground-level ops must focus their efforts hierarchically, leaning first and hardest on the largest areas of concentrated risk, starting with the urban hubs. The "rural flight" strategy will largely disappear.
There's a vast sea of particulars beneath the surface here, which one can waste years dithering over, but the hard truth remains; the folks on the fringes -- physically and philosophically -- will mostly be able to see them coming.
It also means their actions will be MUCH closer to the homes of the many sitting on the proverbial fence, and as such, harder to hide -- or portray as something other than what is actually unfolding. These "radicalization" moments are highly individual, and it's often hard to say in advance what their root will be, but when they arrive the epiphany and call to action (run, hide, fight, play dead) are unmistakable.
Historically speaking, there are four consistently radicalizing forces in our various societies : food, shelter, health and family. Mess with any of the above in a door-to-door fashion and you quickly begin losing hearts and minds.
Speaking about nationalism and/or patriotism, which I have been interested in since attending university, I don’t take a negative view of these things and I don’t think most people in the U.S. do either.
There is a book published recently and I am stealing a quote from an article published by the author, “Skeptics may ask why anyone should love the culture of a particular modern nation state when all nations increasingly resemble one another, contain a lot of variety within their own borders, and suffer from serious injustices. But when someone says that they love Brazil or Indonesia or the U.S., they don’t mean that their attributes are unique, that there is nothing wrong with them, or that other countries are terrible. They are simply expressing a special affection for what is theirs.”
This is the sort of nationalism that should be encouraged, in my opinion. “An affection for what is theirs” (without a hatred of the ‘other’.) The book is: The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure.
Frankly, I think only the ‘chattering classes’, whose voices are over-amplified in society, really despise patriotism. The rest of us have the ‘special affection’ mentioned above.
Apr 27, 2022·edited Apr 27, 2022Liked by epimetheus
Yes all interesting in this context. But, I just can't help myself to type these are nations and more nations, large corporations and institutions, all wanting to be on the edge, where the money flows, Not where the people are. Learning to live without money is not possible sure, but learning to not want what the rich want is to be free of the stresses. Learning to dislike what the fascists want is to lose their attention. Work for the system, but build resilience in that which the system can not hold. Still I'm interested if nothing else in learning to avoid being squashed.
I subscribe to most of the above, but I'd add a caveat.
You wrote: 'Learning to dislike what the fascists want is to lose their attention.'
I doubt that; these Phascists are totalitarian, and if the past 15+ months (w/respect to the 'get vaccinated campaign') are any guide, 'they' won't let you live in peace even if you try to get 'them' to lose 'their' interest in you.
I propose this: 'they' will not give up, because 'their' world-view requires absolute compliance.
One more quick thought. I read somewhere the German Nazis were killing gardeners, you might know if this was true, and maybe why they didn't want any gardeners around. I also read that some people there and then were eating their lawn grass. So the lesson is, grow something to eat that nobody considers as food, most times the best nutrition comes from food that isn't perfectly in tune with sweet, which is not really easy to get use to. One has to build up the biological resources in the digestive tract overtime. Again, grow a diversity of more wild food and call it for the wildlife. Sign up for the fascist World Wildlife Fund and you'll have cover.
I don't know anything about the Nazis killing gardeners. To me, it sounds quite implausible, given that they strove for autarky and national self-reliance.
Ok. I know an old barber who is Polish and he remembers the Nazis taking families off their little homesteads and relocating them in Germany to work on big farms. They had no choice, if people didn't work they killed people according to this guy. He lives in town here.
I am willing to die. They can't get me then. Lots of people like me, in this country we can own guns, all the courts agree with this owing guns principle. I believe as individuals, like seventy million of us, will not die without trying to kill them first. think 10 million hunting rifles independently aimed at 3000 people. So we have a slightly different perspective. But, now, there is legalize protecting them, if they take the established legalize away, and they would in changing The Bill of Rights, then they are inviting all hell to break loose.
This is too big for them, they can't control everything for long. The fascist élite would have to kill 90%, maybe more, for these plans to have a chance. Imagine how people would resist. Might work in some countries having habituated to totalitarianism, like in China people are now voluntarily jumping out of highrises. But then they risk not having enough people around to have them do the work. Study the EROEI idea, machines are not a viable replacement. Its an elite pipedream.
Anyway, looks like we might find out, we'll see what happens.
At the very least grow some food to eat, they will use food as a means to control you.
Never-ever, only a few years ago, would I've thought to support that above statement.
You know, there's hunting rights that go with the farm we bought, which means that I'll get me gun permit, too, you know, 'just in case'.
Re the EROI notion: yep, that's one of the major fallacies of the 4th industrialisation idea, and I'd add that these people are also stupid because they measure things in terms of short-term (quarterly) profit, instead of long-term sustainability.
Grow some food, learn how to protect yourself, and become a yeoman republican.
Ever since a fat girl in Berlin punched me in the arm as I was walking along the pavement, I have not been back. Nor will I ever return to this most unpleasant country. My idea of what hell must be like.
Oh my, that doesn't sound right (but could've happened anywhere). Still, personal issues and reservations aside, Germans have been unfree for many decades, and perhaps they haven't been free ever?
Personally, I don't mind, or dislike, 'the Germans' (or anyone else for that matter), but I value freedom and independence. No self-respecting people should be treated like the German people have been treated, and continue to be treated, since 1945 (and, arguably, before that point in time).
Mind you, it's not better anywhere else in EUrope. Freedom and Liberty, it is said, are only a generation away from extinction, and there isn't much that could be said about the states of UN-freedom and IL-liberty in Europe for decades now.
There's the problem. You were in Berlin. Another problem is the rather bizarre assumption that an entire nation is reflected in the sad ravings of a portly female stranger in one it's largest cities. Just like all the French are Parisians -- and all Americans New Yorkers.
Comparing Germany to the literal Christian manifestation of infernal torment -- as channeled by Dante & Bosch in the popular mind -- takes your effort above to a whole new level. I'm also beginning to ask myself what YOU might have done to possibly earn the aggression.
Between the huge mental gap required to make such leaps of illogic possible AND the very fragile nature of your person -- put off an entire PEOPLE by just a single (unarmed) encounter -- it's hard to believe you're NOT a bot, Mary.
Care to prove otherwise...?
If human, you clearly took valuable time out of your day to squat over the author's most clear and accurate analysis and squeeze this one out. If not, most likely... [ crickets ].
You somehow came away with "offended" from the above...? Over here, I'm still trying to understand how you came to loathe millions based on the interaction you describe. Nothing more, nothing less. Care to explain it all to those of us less socially capable than yourself...?
I am reminded of a french, perhaps obscure, political ideawhich arose as a counter to the then-current voluntary communes and anarchists: synarchism.
Or as it should be called, french fascism (or corporatism).
In short, it advocates for the guise and forms of capitalism, free trade, and democracy to be maintained as to give legitimacy to a system the purpose of which is full cooperation and synergy between all wielders of power, in all its shapes: church/faith, unions, capital, banks, old aristocracy, industry, education, politics, and so on - the insititutions of the modern state withiut any plae or boundary inbetween.
A total state, if you will. Not so much totalitarianism with the iron gauntlet in full view, but rather with the velvet firmly in place, replete with frills and lace as to bedazzle the populous.
The only opposing force I can think of is nationalism based on race and tribe, and well, that's a hard no-sell for most all westerners due to 70 years hard conditioning.
Caveat, surely unnecessary: does not mean racial hate or eugenicism or the rest of the tripe - just to put one's own kind first and foremost. The american lunacy of insisting everyon who shares the same nationality are also the same people, and (illogically logical) that race is paramount in all issues is the death of Europe, both in the ideal and the physical sense.
So, nationalism defined as a creed of "Familj, fränder, folk, fosterland". Family, friends, people, country. Not nationstate but country. The nationstate is an administrative concept, the country is a cultural, racial, and traditional such.
And that latter concept is not under the control of neither capital nor state, not fully and not yet.
I couldn't agree more about the 'creed' you outline: much like 'the nation' of yore, which in US parlance would be something akin to 'patriotism', another one of these ideas that has a long history of abuse since, well the 1940s, incidentally.
Since we're having such a nice conversation about these issues, why not ask you about the following proposition: 'modern' nationalism being a bourgeois concept, alright, it would logically mean that the older kind of 'nationalism', deriving from the Latin natio, i.e., kindship-or-blood relationships, would be 'modified' by those 19th-century bourgeoise who 'invented' the modern notion thereof.
In other words, of course, family, friends, people, and country were older than the 'modern' nation. I think we've reached the end point of the 'modern' bourgois version of 'nationalism' around the mid-20th century, and what we can observe now are its death throes while 'something else' is struggling to be born.
It's delightfully annoying when I can't quibble, add or go off a tangent* because yes, it is as you say: the older version of nationalism, with its roots in the Cro Magnon staying as an extended family, a clan, a tribe and finally a people, died with the onset of industrialism and the rise of the urban bourgeoisie (and feel free to draw the obvious parallel to Rome the Eternal, when the rural landowning knight class were outmaneuvered by power-players and businessmen closer to the Emperor).
It's just that deaths of societal systems are gradual, often longer than human lifetimes, so for most of us it isn't noticeable outside of school textbooks and besides: how much does it affect a store clerk working 40+ hours/week at Fakta or Lidl, in her daily life, really? That's the eternal problem of all oppositional forces: why should the people care, if they are fed, safe and can live in relative peace?
Creature comforts makes us comfortable creatures - a phrase which caused a colleague to remark I sounded almost 'Spencerian'...
What scares me, demographical changes aside, is that we have reached the same point as the USSR in the mid-eighties: the system can no longer be turned around or metamorphose, it must crash.
Globalism or cosmopolitanism as it used to be called, simply does not work. Neither does the version of economics we have used since the seventies (early nineties in Sweden's case), but all those who can effect (or should that be affect?) change sees little profit in taking the risk. They can after all as Chesterton put it "go away to New Guinea in a yacht".
Personally, I see little recourse right now than simply "walking away from Omelas" and staying out, which unfortunately doesn't help with the main issue.
*That's a compliment by the way.
My friend,
you write the following:
'What scares me, demographical changes aside, is that we have reached the same point as the USSR in the mid-eighties: the system can no longer be turned around or metamorphose, it must crash.'
I subscribe to the part that relates our situation to the former USSR, but keep in mind that, as Marx himself wrote (in the 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoléon, which came out in the early 1850s): 'history repeats itself first as tragedy, second as farce'.
We're certainly deep into the farcical lands of wishful thinking. I am convinced that people like Marx, Weber, Spencer, Spengler et al. would all consider the collective West insane and, perhaps, even beyond redemption.
Re your globalism quip: agreed, but just because it doesn't work for you or me, it does work for the 0.1%, the super-rich. Take a look at the wealth these people have stolen over the past 1-2 generations.
As a concludion, I think that every halfway sane person may only try 'walking away', which, as you correctly point out, neither helps with the main issue nor is it very practical: we're all so tied up--entangled, perhaps--in 'Western Civilisation' that it becomes really more than just 'a hard thing to do'. And then we haven't even talked about whether or not these totalitarian enforcers would let you 'walk away'.
As Rikard accurately opines, there's not a lot to quibble with in this exchange. Not much to add except some thoughts about the "walk away" question dangling precariously at the end.
Based on experience with large-scale process design in a professional context a long time ago in a galaxy far (far) away, one of my favorite exercises is to deconstruct large, scary possibilities in the present with the foil of hard physical logistics. Wrap it in a little historically-informed spatial analysis and voila... different views of the narrative begin to emerge organically. I like to think of it as reverse-engineering the myth-building process.
Practice the techniques for awhile -- decades in my case -- and hindsight also joins the fray, with far more incisive (and decisive) results. In this case, it's disassembling the long-awaited physical crackdowns in the "free West" that finally arrived in 2020, dragging a thirty-year-long tail of legal breadcrumbs showing us "dissidents" how we arrived here.
To the point : for years now I've explained (to the handful of people who are actually interested) that the logistics of power projection are far more precarious than we are led to believe in consensus portrayals. If nothing else, the last two years have finally provided those outside the consensus mindf**kery with some actual operational hindsight in several respects. In particular, it's exploded our view of the people who populate "polite" society.
In terms of literal door-to-door operations, for whatever nefarious purpose such things are (eventually) trotted out under the guise of "public safety" or similar, I see two primary axes defining this next escalation.
One : despite the outsize advantages in technology wielded by the various (disposable) "authorities" tasked with carrying out orders, they will ALWAYS be vastly outnumbered. As such, they can only crackdown in a highly selective manner. The strategic and tactical implications of this are fairly clear.
Two : as such, any ground-level ops must focus their efforts hierarchically, leaning first and hardest on the largest areas of concentrated risk, starting with the urban hubs. The "rural flight" strategy will largely disappear.
There's a vast sea of particulars beneath the surface here, which one can waste years dithering over, but the hard truth remains; the folks on the fringes -- physically and philosophically -- will mostly be able to see them coming.
It also means their actions will be MUCH closer to the homes of the many sitting on the proverbial fence, and as such, harder to hide -- or portray as something other than what is actually unfolding. These "radicalization" moments are highly individual, and it's often hard to say in advance what their root will be, but when they arrive the epiphany and call to action (run, hide, fight, play dead) are unmistakable.
Historically speaking, there are four consistently radicalizing forces in our various societies : food, shelter, health and family. Mess with any of the above in a door-to-door fashion and you quickly begin losing hearts and minds.
Speaking about nationalism and/or patriotism, which I have been interested in since attending university, I don’t take a negative view of these things and I don’t think most people in the U.S. do either.
There is a book published recently and I am stealing a quote from an article published by the author, “Skeptics may ask why anyone should love the culture of a particular modern nation state when all nations increasingly resemble one another, contain a lot of variety within their own borders, and suffer from serious injustices. But when someone says that they love Brazil or Indonesia or the U.S., they don’t mean that their attributes are unique, that there is nothing wrong with them, or that other countries are terrible. They are simply expressing a special affection for what is theirs.”
This is the sort of nationalism that should be encouraged, in my opinion. “An affection for what is theirs” (without a hatred of the ‘other’.) The book is: The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure.
Frankly, I think only the ‘chattering classes’, whose voices are over-amplified in society, really despise patriotism. The rest of us have the ‘special affection’ mentioned above.
Yes all interesting in this context. But, I just can't help myself to type these are nations and more nations, large corporations and institutions, all wanting to be on the edge, where the money flows, Not where the people are. Learning to live without money is not possible sure, but learning to not want what the rich want is to be free of the stresses. Learning to dislike what the fascists want is to lose their attention. Work for the system, but build resilience in that which the system can not hold. Still I'm interested if nothing else in learning to avoid being squashed.
I subscribe to most of the above, but I'd add a caveat.
You wrote: 'Learning to dislike what the fascists want is to lose their attention.'
I doubt that; these Phascists are totalitarian, and if the past 15+ months (w/respect to the 'get vaccinated campaign') are any guide, 'they' won't let you live in peace even if you try to get 'them' to lose 'their' interest in you.
I propose this: 'they' will not give up, because 'their' world-view requires absolute compliance.
One more quick thought. I read somewhere the German Nazis were killing gardeners, you might know if this was true, and maybe why they didn't want any gardeners around. I also read that some people there and then were eating their lawn grass. So the lesson is, grow something to eat that nobody considers as food, most times the best nutrition comes from food that isn't perfectly in tune with sweet, which is not really easy to get use to. One has to build up the biological resources in the digestive tract overtime. Again, grow a diversity of more wild food and call it for the wildlife. Sign up for the fascist World Wildlife Fund and you'll have cover.
I don't know anything about the Nazis killing gardeners. To me, it sounds quite implausible, given that they strove for autarky and national self-reliance.
Ok. I know an old barber who is Polish and he remembers the Nazis taking families off their little homesteads and relocating them in Germany to work on big farms. They had no choice, if people didn't work they killed people according to this guy. He lives in town here.
I am willing to die. They can't get me then. Lots of people like me, in this country we can own guns, all the courts agree with this owing guns principle. I believe as individuals, like seventy million of us, will not die without trying to kill them first. think 10 million hunting rifles independently aimed at 3000 people. So we have a slightly different perspective. But, now, there is legalize protecting them, if they take the established legalize away, and they would in changing The Bill of Rights, then they are inviting all hell to break loose.
This is too big for them, they can't control everything for long. The fascist élite would have to kill 90%, maybe more, for these plans to have a chance. Imagine how people would resist. Might work in some countries having habituated to totalitarianism, like in China people are now voluntarily jumping out of highrises. But then they risk not having enough people around to have them do the work. Study the EROEI idea, machines are not a viable replacement. Its an elite pipedream.
Anyway, looks like we might find out, we'll see what happens.
At the very least grow some food to eat, they will use food as a means to control you.
Never-ever, only a few years ago, would I've thought to support that above statement.
You know, there's hunting rights that go with the farm we bought, which means that I'll get me gun permit, too, you know, 'just in case'.
Re the EROI notion: yep, that's one of the major fallacies of the 4th industrialisation idea, and I'd add that these people are also stupid because they measure things in terms of short-term (quarterly) profit, instead of long-term sustainability.
Grow some food, learn how to protect yourself, and become a yeoman republican.
Ever since a fat girl in Berlin punched me in the arm as I was walking along the pavement, I have not been back. Nor will I ever return to this most unpleasant country. My idea of what hell must be like.
Oh my, that doesn't sound right (but could've happened anywhere). Still, personal issues and reservations aside, Germans have been unfree for many decades, and perhaps they haven't been free ever?
Personally, I don't mind, or dislike, 'the Germans' (or anyone else for that matter), but I value freedom and independence. No self-respecting people should be treated like the German people have been treated, and continue to be treated, since 1945 (and, arguably, before that point in time).
Mind you, it's not better anywhere else in EUrope. Freedom and Liberty, it is said, are only a generation away from extinction, and there isn't much that could be said about the states of UN-freedom and IL-liberty in Europe for decades now.
There's the problem. You were in Berlin. Another problem is the rather bizarre assumption that an entire nation is reflected in the sad ravings of a portly female stranger in one it's largest cities. Just like all the French are Parisians -- and all Americans New Yorkers.
Comparing Germany to the literal Christian manifestation of infernal torment -- as channeled by Dante & Bosch in the popular mind -- takes your effort above to a whole new level. I'm also beginning to ask myself what YOU might have done to possibly earn the aggression.
Between the huge mental gap required to make such leaps of illogic possible AND the very fragile nature of your person -- put off an entire PEOPLE by just a single (unarmed) encounter -- it's hard to believe you're NOT a bot, Mary.
Care to prove otherwise...?
If human, you clearly took valuable time out of your day to squat over the author's most clear and accurate analysis and squeeze this one out. If not, most likely... [ crickets ].
Sorry you were offended.
You somehow came away with "offended" from the above...? Over here, I'm still trying to understand how you came to loathe millions based on the interaction you describe. Nothing more, nothing less. Care to explain it all to those of us less socially capable than yourself...?