Stidmatt

Stop sending arms to Israel.

Send arms to Ukraine with no restrictions beyond the Geneva conventions so they win the war this summer.

The truth is that Joe Biden is one of only two American presidents who lost a war; the other is Gerald Ford, who lost Vietnam. Biden’s approval rating plummeted after we abandoned Afghanistan to the terrorists, and his approval rating has not recovered since. So we now are faced with a presidential election with two deeply unpopular candidates.

I believe Biden can gain a lot more votes if he ends the war in Ukraine by giving them everything they need to push Russians out of their land and destroy Russian military bases in Russia, and makes a peace agreement in Israel and Palestine, combined with US recognition of an independent Palestinian state.

As usual, his foreign policy and defense teams have been massively miscalculating the situation in Ukraine. We live in a world where you can type in a prompt to ChatGPT and receive an answer within seconds. We live in a world where you can tap a button on the phone and have food delivered to your house within 30 minutes from across town.

This instant gratification does not extend to politics. We want everything unpleasant to be over now, and everything pleasant to be done fast, but this cannot be how we base our foreign policy. Sometimes, things will take some time. When we left a power vacuum in Afghanistan, the terrorists and their state sponsors were more than happy to fill the power vacuum. When we give Ukraine absurd requirements so we don’t cross Putin’s “red lines,” we prolong the conflict, and innocent young Ukrainians pay the ultimate price. This is their punishment for desiring to be free.

We need to be methodical and think through situations using game theory, and it is abundantly obvious the Biden Administration is not doing this. We need to look at the options we have:

• Afghanistan
  • Either we support a nominally government democratic government, training their security forces to the point of self-sufficiency and ensure they can educate their children, OR
  • The terrorists take over the country and girls will no longer go to school.
• Russia/Ukraine
  • Either we support Ukraine militarily until Russia leaves all of Ukraine’s internationally recognized territory and Ukraine destroys the Russian military, OR
  • Ukraine will be fully annexed into Russia, and China will invade Taiwan.
• Israel/Palestine
  • Either we recognize a sovereign Palestinian state and require the Israeli government to protect Palestinian civilians and send aid into Gaza, OR
  • There will be genocide.

There are no other stable third options in these three crises.

Biden can still win the presidency by forcing Israel to agree to a stable lasting peace and not sending them more military aid if they continue to violate international.

Otherwise people will not vote for him, and I pray we will keep the Senate so Trump’s second term will be as ineffective as the first.

Oh, and Democrats really need to kick Rafael Cruz (If he believes trans people should go with their name assigned with birth, so should he) out of office down in Texas if we have any chance of taking the Senate this year. The only potential reason we might lose is Collin Allred is a New Democrat.

This is an interesting conversation I had with a friend over text. Published here with permission because we think it will be of interest to people who live in or travel to Southwest Oregon.

“Ashland, Oregon to Montague, California not being operated due to pricing actions. There is a general concern among some shippers that the line is at risk if business doesn’t resume.”

Friend: It’s not a good line. It was built cheaply for land grants, and it will be expensive to operate.

Me: Douglas County is expensive to build in, no matter what. Whether we connect the country with highways or rail just comes down to priorities. If we wanted to improve the railroad to Ashland, Oregon, we would.
The Klamath line’s advantage is that the land is much flatter on that side of the Pacific Crest. The disadvantage is that only 40,000 people live in all of Klamath County, so it is only about California.
The additional time it takes to get from Roseburg, Grants Pass, and Medford to Klamath County makes it not useful for most people in Southern Oregon. It would take too long for a private company to invest, and when UP can undercut the Class III railroad if it improves its infrastructure, there will never be an incentive for a Class II or III railroad to improve its tracks in most circumstances. So, they fall into disrepair, get bought out, and then are reliably abandoned.

In most countries, the usual option is to nationalize the railroads and use the profits to improve the tracks nationwide.

Friend: (The other option, the one we consistently do is the most expensive, and that is for) ODOT to constantly spend Connect Oregon money on reopening the line between Ashland and Montague.

Friend: It would never make sense to use that line for travel between Redding and Eugene without billions of dollars of investment.

Me: But I think the most beneficial thing would be to improve the line between Medford and Eugene to make it useful. The railroad through Medford is mostly only useful for people in Southern Oregon going to California, otherwise go through Klamabama (local lingo for Klamath Falls).

Me: Now… if the entire line from Montague to Eugene was brought up to take less time than the route going through Klamabama, then the route will become the more valuable of the two for multiple reasons: more people, shorter route, more industry, just a better route overall.

Friend: In the short run we can extend Cascades to Ashland, but I am comfortable forcing a transfer (to air or bus) for the foreseeable future in order to get south from there, and the Klamabama route can be kept around as a bypass for freight.

Me: If the Klamabama route is improved as well it will always be faster. We absolutely have enough demand to run both Cascades to Ashland and Coast Starlight through Klamabama.

Friend: Potentially get CORP more powerful locomotives, so they can compete better with road and have more motivation to keep their line better maintained as well.

Me: As long as they pay the investment back, sure. The inherent efficiency of rail vs road should be enough to be honest. They probably feel like its not worth the investment since they probably already are cheaper per km than freight via I-5, so no pressure to improve. Which for freight is fine… but people exist. So the state has to step in and get it improved to the point where the time is on par or faster than I-5, which already is a very slow section of freeway because of topography.

I wish openrailwaymap had speed information for CORP. I wonder how expensive it would be just to expand to Roseburg, which is north of the most hairy sections of track. It’s clearly the Roseburg-Glendale section in particular which causes the problem. Which is the most expensive to fix, the rest of the track isn’t that terrible at least looking at it on the map, which is also of course the most mountainous part of the route. f Cascades went as far as Roseburg, then having a bus at least temporarily to Grants Pass, Medford, and Ashland would be far more appealing.

Friend: It’s old, and I thought I saw Roseburg to Eugene capable of 40 mph, but I don’t remember any big rebuilding project more recently than this.

Me: yeah, that maximum authorized speed of 25 MPH is a killer. I’m sure it could be made capable of 60 MPH from Eugene to Roseburg and Ashland to Grants Pass, and that should be able to be done in a way that the benefits outweigh the costs. I’m not too concerned about the connection to Weed. If we could get that up to a higher speed, that’s great, but that will be the most expensive section of all.

So in order:

1. Start with Ashland – Grants Pass, which is mostly level, even the mountain pass from Medford to Grants Pass is wide and not too bad.
2. Then Eugene – Roseburg, as the second priority which is a little more hilly than Grants Pass – Medford, but not by much.

Getting those two sections done properly will be very beneficial for Southern Oregon.
Weed is a nice to have once the rest of the line is improved.
It’s easiest to think of it as river basins, which mostly lines up with counties except how both Josephine and Jackson are both mostly in the Rogue River Valley.
Contours.axismaps
This is the best contour map I have ever found online. What makes getting between the Umpqua and Rogue basins so difficult is the rivers go mostly east-west but we want the train to go north-south.
Honestly, Ashland – Weed is likely easier to improve compared to Canyonville – Grants Pass
While Ashland – Weed is taller, Canyonville – Weed has a much longer distance of mountainous terrain.

Friend: I mean even at the time of construction the line was advertised more as being scenic than being fast. The deviation through Cow Creek canyon was frequently used in advertising.

Me: I’m sure its a very pretty ride, and its ok if that section stays scenic, there’s no way to make it rapid, but the rest of the section has a lot of utility. Sure, maybe not NEC levels, but still useful enough to be worth investing in.

Friend: Yeah, I mean bypassing cow Creek canyon along I-5 wouldn’t be the hardest thing but there’s plenty of other speed up to do first.

Me: Odell Lake elevation: 1475 meters. Rail tunnel south of Ashland elevation: 1239 meters.

Friend: Probably why there’s a massive loop in the track near Odell Lake

Me: Exactly, but its interesting how the track we currently use reaches a higher elevation than the track which goes through Medford.

Friend: The stretch through the Cascades was built first, before it was bought out by Southern Pacific I believe, amd I believe a portion of that started as a logging railroad.

Me: So that would have been before there was more population in Douglas, Josephine, and Jackson counties than Klamath falls, or at least the differential was much larger. Pretty much all the railroads in the region were originally for logging and mining I believe.

Friend: Not really, the Siskiyou subdivision wasn’t. Hauling logs, hell yes but land grant railroads were usually built more passenger centric since the governmental incentive tried to prevent the land being used purely for industry.

Me: So mostly then about moving white people into the area.

Friend: “Civilizing” the native people.

Me: That also explains why Medford is bigger than Klamtucky (another euphemism for Klamath Falls).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_and_California_Railroad

So the government promised the railroads all these lands, and then claimed them in eminent domain. In response to fraud by the railroad. Imagine… massive megacorporation in lands the government has barely any control over commits fraud. Who could have expected that?!

Friend: Basically they sold the land to corporate interests rather than farming interests.

Me: Contrary to what the law said, which is fraud.

Friend: Yep.

Me: We should have bought out the railroad and let the O&C become a logging company. That would have been hill areas. Nyanyanya, hurhurhur.

Another interesting factoid… both the CORP and Klamtucky railroads were both owned by SPR. I’m guessing SP divested from the Medford route in favor of the Klamtucky route, which is definitely better than what happened to the railroad in Alger, Washington.

Friend: I mean they bypassed the Medford route by building the Klamabama route. There’s a reason why it’s faster to take US 97 and OR 58 than take I-5 between Weed and Eugene.

Me: I see. They built Klamabama in 1905. Medford was selected as right-of-way for OCR in 1883. Ashland received the railroad in 1887. I assume that when the Klamabama route was built, they expected it to prosper and grow, but it never did.

Friend: Nope, I think they believed it was more important to get between Redding and Eugene than to get to Ashland or Medford. I don’t think Union Pacific regrets the bypass one bit.

Me: Otherwise, they would have kept the original track.

Friend: I can’t remember if they sold it or leased it.

Me: They sold it to CORP in 1995, and it was still Southern Pacific at that point, which was divided and bought out in 1996.

Friend: I mean, I knew that SP sold to UP after first doing some weird shit with the Denver and Rio Grande Western.

Me: They had such a strong network in California, amazing how they had financial problems.

Friend: I know, right? Monopolies shouldn’t go bankrupt like that 😛

Me: Including both the Coast Starlight track, and the track running from Sacramento to LA. Yup, that’s my entire point on how the entire model is broken to the core.

Friend: Almost as if the transportation utility rather than the transportation technology creates the value.

Me: Exactly, we should just walk everywhere since mode doesn’t matter. 😛

Friend: Walking has a lot of transportation utility, many people can do it and it doesn’t cost much to furnish to the consumers of it.

Me: Absolutely. But since utility is the root of all demand…demand is a fancy way of saying utility, which is a fancy way of saying valuable.

Then we started to talk about other issues…

But…

The Medford route never reaches an elevation as high as Klamath Falls; the main issue is that the route is very windy. The highest point between Eugene and Ashland is Ashland.

References:

https://www.oregon.gov/odot/RPTD/RPTD%20Document%20Library/Oregon-Rail-Study-2010.pdf

https://wx4.org/to/foam/maps/2-Perry/020/2006-05-14CORP10-Perry.pdf

Stages to bring AMTRAK to Ashland, Oregon

Step 1:

Oregon purchases the tracks owned by the Central Oregon and Pacific Railroad.

Step 2:

Oregon upgrades the line for 60 MPH. This increases freight capacity and makes passenger rail viable.

Step 3:

Start running service.

Potential riders:

Josephine, Jackson, and Douglas counties have 400,000 people total, versus about 5 million on the Cascades route. In 2023, Cascades had 600k riders, which is around 15% of the total population. The 2010 projection for riders is 5200, or roughly 1% of the population, which sounds extremely low to me. It’s more likely to have 40,000-60,000 riders a year I believe, unless if the network effect of having three world cities in the Northwest is that strong.

But even at 40k riders, that section of Cascades would be a rounding error for the service, and if it was a separate route would be the third least used AMTRAK route in the country.

While an AMTRAK route to southern Oregon would be nice, there are not enough potential riders to justify the expense given the track’s state from a federal level, and so many other routes have no service.

That being said, if Oregon chose to buy out the track down to Ashland and start doing incremental upgrades at least between Eugene and Myrtle Creek and between Grants Pass and Ashland this can help increase trains using the track, reducing dependence on trucking. This helps reduce carbon emissions. Once the track is fast enough on the majority of the route, it can be used for passenger service.

Unfortunately, despite it being possible to extend service to Ashland, extending AMTRAK to Southern Oregon will unlikely happen in the next 30 years.

References:

https://wx4.org/to/foam/maps/2-Perry/020/2006-05-14CORP10-Perry.pdf

https://www.oregon.gov/odot/RPTD/RPTD%20Document%20Library/Oregon-Rail-Study-2010.pdf

https://media.amtrak.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Amtrak-Fiscal-Year-2023-Ridership.pdf

There is a popular idea in popular economics discussions that the left wing is on the demand side and for the working class, and the right wing is on the supply side and for the bourgeoisie.

This could not be farther from the truth.

Housing costs

In the case of zoning, zoning is a supply-side policy that keeps the supply of housing low. As the population increases, the demand for housing increases. Without the supply of new housing being created for natural population growth, people either have to emigrate to keep demand the same, which is difficult, or prices will increase in the most desirable places to live. Increase demand, stagnant supply, increase price.

Restrictive single-family home R1 zoning is a supply-side reform that benefits landlords.

Carbon Tax

On the flip side, if you talk about something like a carbon tax to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels that cause climate change, the policy receives hate from both the left and the right. Pigouvian taxes reduce demand for a good which creates massive negative externalities… which means the right wing hates it because it is a tax, and the left wing hates it because it isn’t strictly spending more money to solve a problem. You get ridiculous policies like the California governor giving citizens gas cards of $200 to “offset the cost of gas,” which only increases gasoline demand, keeping prices high.

So, is a carbon tax a right-wing policy? Definitely not. It is a tax. Is it a left-wing policy? From the right wing, they see it as left-wing from a simplistic tax=bad viewpoint. From the left wing, they see it as being not demand side enough because it’s not spending money, which makes it conservative. They claim that it only increases costs on families, even if the money is spent on a universal basic income as they do in Canada (they call it a rebate) or in Alaska, but the far left still hates it. The only people who support the carbon tax end up being environmental economists who spend their entire lives, but what do they know?

The options for climate change are varied. We can do deadlines (“I love deadlines, I love the whooshing sound they make as they pass by” ~ Douglas Adams), which can encourage people not to do enough now because we will take care of it later.

Spending more money on renewable energy increases renewable energy consumption, but this will never lead to a 1-1 relationship between increased electricity production and reduction in carbon emissions because the substitution effect is never 100%. Some of it will be induced demand. On top of this, most of this money will probably be raised via a regressive sales, property, or payroll tax. It is highly unlikely this will come from progressive taxes, so it is inefficient and increases the tax burden on low-income people. Renewable energy subsidies are better than nothing but far less than we should aim for.

Carbon sequestration is great when combined with a carbon tax, but it can be used by companies to offset the emissions they are already spewing simply. Carbon sequestration should reduce carbon already in the air; otherwise, it is usually greenwashing. Encourage carbon sequestration in the form of policies like biochar, though, because biochar is awesome!

Only the carbon tax has the benefit of being a policy to reduce emissions immediately; it is direct, the substitution effect does not apply, and it cannot be used as simple greenwashing.

So, is a carbon tax a supply-side or demand-side solution?

It’s both!

Health care

Healthcare costs are going up for two reasons:

1. An older population means more healthcare demand. Increase demand, price goes up.
2. Drug patents give companies monopolies on drugs.

So we can’t do much with the first issue. Killing seniors on their 85th birthday just seems wrong to me. I don’t know. Maybe I’m a snowflake.

Increasing health care supply through better wages increases prices, but that’s not the main reason prices are increasing.

The government can also have generous subsidies to increase the number of nurses and doctors graduating from college, which is a “left-wing” supply-side solution. This helps health care professionals’ wages from ballooning, saving the government money.

The main reason healthcare costs are increasing is that many life-saving drugs are under patent, and the monopoly granted by the patent increases the costs when no monopsony purchases the drug or the insurance company refuses to use its power to pay a lower rate. Shortening health care patents is another “left-wing” supply-side solution.

So, either abandon patents or let Medicare negotiate drug prices. Simply ballooning government health care expenditure forever for smaller and smaller benefits is not a good solution, because you will eventually run into the issue of not enough doctors.

From a pure demand-side solution, we can just spend as much money as we want on private insurance and private drug companies and have that written off as tax breaks for employer-sponsored health insurance, which is a “right-wing” demand-side solution. It is right-wing because it is corporate welfare.

Health care requires a combination of demand (universal health insurance) and supply (free college for doctors and nurses) to keep costs under control.

Railroads and other infrastructure

If infrastructure is owned by a private monopoly, you can either:

1. Regulate it to the point where the private monopoly has no agency, e.g., the Japan model.
2. Just own the infrastructure, e.g., what most of the world does.
3. Let the private monopoly operate with few restrictions, e.g., the American model.

The first two work well. You get great service at affordable prices through this supply-side solution which benefits consumers.

The third one means you harness the full impact of the private monopoly graph, which gives you less of a good thing and at higher prices.

Hooray!

The demand-side solution is to subsidize the railroads until we pay the price demanded by the monopoly and the government pays the cost. This is expensive and does not work.

Fun!

If the market can be broken into a competitive market, do that, but that is not true with most infrastructure. A track from Los Angeles to Phoenix is not a substitute for one from Chicago to Minneapolis. In this situation, dividing monopolies up is not a real solution.

The supply-side solution, in this case, is to nationalize the railroads.

So supply-side = left wing?

Sometimes, yes.

Education

Education has many clear positive benefits. It increases people’s incomes, increases longevity, and educated people are more likely to vote. It’s the cheapest way to increase the quality of life for the entire population. These are clear positive externalities, which is why subsidizing education (within reason) to have more people go to college is good for society. This is a positive externality. Positive externalities are where demand-side policies make sense!

We can also increase the supply of education by building more universities so that more people can get a college education. This is another “left-wing” supply-side solution to a problem.

Conclusion

When we look at housing costs or climate change, we need to eliminate our mindset of demand side = good and supply side = bad, because that mindset usually only harms progressive movements. We need to look at problems holistically, analyze policies in full, and think about the long-term consequences of each policy.

Most economic problems are caused by either an imbalance of supply and demand, externality issues, or a principal-agent problem.

Tax cuts to big companies are a supply-side policy, and the one most people think of, but as we see in the preceding sections, many supply-side policies can benefit consumers.

The demand side, as well as corporate tax breaks for health insurance premiums, can benefit corporations while leaving consumers in the dark.

Not to be the annoying economist, but… it depends!

Once we identify whether a problem is a demand-side issue or a supply-side issue, we can then identify the solutions that are going to actually be effective with minimal side effects. Simple cheat sheet:

1. Negative externality: tax the good or service to reduce consumption.
2. Positive externality: consider subsidizing the good or service to reap those sweet, sweet, positive externalities.
3. Monopoly: either end it through a break-up or nationalization or have the government use negotiating power to keep costs under control.

This is a better lens to analyze policy and is far less likely to cause undesired results.

Current situation

Joe Manchin and Karen Sinema are de facto Republicans and must be treated as such. Likewise, Bernie Sanders and Angus King are de facto Democrats and must be treated as such.

De facto 51 Republicans and 49 Democrats in the Senate today.

Democrats win 2024

If Democrats win in 2024, we won’t lose any seats. We’ll flip Arizona, giving us 50 seats in the US Senate. Texas, Florida, and Indiana are tossups since the Republicans received less than 51% of the vote in those three states in 2018.

From this reality, two possibilities emerge: either the Democrats again perform well in 2026 or the Republicans perform well in 2026.

Democrats have 50 seats, Republicans 47, and there are 3 tossups.

Democrats then win again in 2026

Democrats pick up in North Carolina and Maine to give Democrats 52 seats in total.

Texas is again a tossup due to shifting demographics and poor performance for the Republicans in 2018.

Democrats have 52 seats, and Republicans have 44. There are four tossups in total, two in Texas and one each in Indiana and Florida.

Republicans then win in 2026

If Republicans have a good year in 2026 following a strong Democratic year in 2024, I believe this will make Georgia and Maine tossups. Georgia because it is in the Deep South and if there is poor voter turnout among African Americans, the Democrat will lose. I think no matter what happens, Maine is going to be a relatively easy pickup for the Democrats, given how Maine is part of New England and has liberal values which do not match those of the Republican Party.

Democrats have 49 seats, Republicans 46, and there are 5 tossups.

Republicans win in 2024

If Republicans win this year, however, it will be a very different story for the next four years.

The best Republicans can hope for is flipping Montana, but Democrats will flip Arizona. Nothing else changes.

This gives the Democrats 49 and Republicans 51 seats. There will be no overall change.

This is a substantial finding because if Democrats have a good year this year, it will be almost impossible for Republicans to regain control of the Senate in 2026! The Senate’s map favorability really does skew toward the Democrats this year.

Republicans win again in 2026

If the Republicans win again after winning in 2026, they will flip Georgia, but nothing else will change from the 2024 map. The biggest victory for Republicans is holding Maine, which is a stretch.

48 Democrats and 52 Republicans is the best the GOP can hope for in the next two Senate elections.

Democrats win in 2026 after Republican 2024

If the Democrats have a good year after the Republicans in 2024, I believe Democrats will then flip seats in Maine and North Carolina. Texas will be a toss-up.

51 Democrats, 48 Republicans, and 1 tossup.

Overview

The only way the Republicans can reliably win control of the Senate is if they have a good year this year, and again in 2026. But this requires them to substantially overperform in Maine, and break the current trends in Texas and Florida from the last decade which have seen them move from Republican strongholds to having much closer elections over the last 6 years.

That is highly unlikely given how unpopular Donald Trump is.

If Democrats win this year, the Republicans won’t be in a good position again to win until at least 2028.

The potential swing states of the 2020s are:

• Montana
• Indiana
• Ohio
• Texas
• Florida
• North Carolina
• Wisconsin
• Georgia
• Maine
• Iowa

Every other state is unlikely to flip a Senate seat.

If Republicans fail to flip the Senate seat in Montana, they will likely not be able to win control of the Senate this November.

If Republicans fail to flip Montana this year and then fail to flip Ossof’s seat in Georgia in 2026, they have no path to a majority in the Senate.

If Iowa comes into play, Republicans are screwed. If Iowa is in play in 2026, subtract one from the Republican column and add one to the tossup column.

If Democrats campaign well, we will win. We need to win Sinema’s seat in Arizona and lose nothing.

I have a spreadsheet of 100 wars and conflicts from history, stretching from 475 BC to the present. Wars before then tend to have poor data. All major wars are on the spreadsheet, which can be viewed on Google Drive.

A few interesting things about this sheet are how I approach the data. I include the length of the conflict, total casualties, and the world population when the conflict ended. The data is from Wikipedia, from the most recent scholarship for each conflict.

I then calculate a few statistics from this data:

• Casualties per year
• Percent of global population killed
• Annual Casulaties as a percent of the global population

We now can find some interesting insights from this on the five worst conflicts in history by each of these metrics:

Casualties

• World War II (about 73,000,000)
• Great Leap Forward
• An Lushan Rebellion
• Mongol Conquests
• Native American genocide (about 30,o00,000)

Casualties per year

• World War II (about 12,200,0o0)
• Great Leap Forward
• Holodomor
• World War I
• Rwandan Genocide of 1994 (about 4,696,000)

Percent of global population killed

• An Lushan Rebellion (16%)
• Mongol Conquests
• Warring States Era
• Qing Dynasty Conquest of Ming Dynasty
• World War II (3%)

Annual casualties as a percent of the global population

• An Lushan Rebellion (2%)
• World War II
• Great Leap Forward
• World War I
• Holodomor

Even if we go with the lowest acceptable scholarly estimate for Holodomor fatalities, it still makes the top 5 on 2 of these rankings.

An interesting takeaway from this data is that the Holocaust doesn’t make the top 5, 11 million people killed or 900,000 people per year, placing it as the 12th worst calamity in history by total numbers and 17th worst in history by deaths per year. A horrible event without question, there’s no denying that.

World War II appears in all lists by this cut-off. It truly was the worst war in world history. Only the An Lushan Rebellion beats it when controlling for the global population.

If the Holodomor lasted for one more year, its death could have surpassed the Holocaust. Both genocides were horrible and need to be recognized in full to understand their causes and to understand that anyone can be the victim of genocide under certain circumstances. We need to study the political economic and social forces which led to these genocides so future genocides can be prevented. Erasing victims of genocide only increases the probability of genocide in the future by painting it as being across indelible racial lines that cannot be changed, and nothing could possibly be further from the truth. For example, the fact that many slave owners in the Southern US were Irish, does not erase the horrors of the Irish Potato Famine, which I consider a genocide because it was the consequence of deliberate British policy to prevent the import of food until the crisis got so bad that parliament repealed the corn laws.

Genocides do not appear out of thin air.

To understand the nature of genocide and properly bulletproof our institutions and our societies to be immune from this type of madness, it is essential not to underplay or undercount while also recognizing when events are repeating.

Understanding the Holodomor requires you to understand it was deliberate, quick, and effective. From that, you can then study how it progressed and how politics in the Soviet Union led to such a disaster. The basics of it is the Soviet Union used central planning to force people out of their professions and onto the farms while also stealing the food from the people and letting Ukrainians starve. This central planning resulted in one of the two fastest genocides in history, comparable only to the Great Leap Forward based on modern counts of how quickly people died and how pointless it was.

Behind the Holodomor, Holocaust, Rwandan Genocide of 1994, and Great Leap Forward there is not just a simple hatred directed toward a single group of people found from the leaders of such horrible events, but a general antihumanism which more than anything denies the central tenant of humanism of egalitarianism. This is rooted in Kant’s categorical imperative, which is fundamental to all following liberatory philosophy:

Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.

Thus the third practical principle follows [from the first two] as the ultimate condition of their harmony with practical reason: the idea of the will of every rational being as a universally legislating will.

Act according to maxims of a universally legislating member of a merely possible kingdom of ends.

~ Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Immanuel Kant

This forms the basis of liberalism from which the rest of the school of thought is built.

Genocide breaks all four maxims of the Categorical Imperative. It is impossible to advocate for the eradication of innocent people while also arguing for universality. The first step to eradicating the rights of the individual is to group them into groups by either wealth, race, gender, or whatever distinguishing factor. Fascism examines history through the battle of nations and communism through class struggle. In this way, they obscure individual liberty in favor of a larger group based not on equal rights and universality but on conflict theory.

It is rare to find a regime that targets only one demographic.

If history is based solely on conflicts between groups, then increasing the rights of one group to that of the other will intensify the conflict and harm the rights of the opposing party. For this reason, as we observe in philosophy and history, this observation:

Universality cannot coexist with conflict theory.

Human rights abuses generally follow if the base unit of history is not the individual but a category above the individual. It is rare for organizations to be fully based on one philosophy or another because, at the individual level, conflicting interests create tensions in the politics we observe in our law. Using the founding of the United States, you had humanist idealists from New England building a constitution with literal slaveholders in the South. Right here, we have a conflict, but due to outside pressure from the global powers of the day, idealists and slavers worked together, as we read in the Federalist Papers. From this, we observe:

Much of politics is the struggle between humanists and conflict theorists.

As time goes on and we as people debate and fight for beliefs, there are times where old hatreds last for generations.

Slava Ukraine.

Free Palestine.

Free Israel.

Free Russia.

There have been three resolutions in the UN over the last year regarding the invasion of Gaza and six regarding Ukraine over the last two years.

The following countries have voted in favor of Likud at least once in the last three resolutions:

• Argentina
• Austria (x2)
• Croatia
• Czechia (x3)
• Fiji
• Guatemala (x2)
• Hungary (x2)
• Israel (x3)
• Liberia (x2)
• Marshall Islands
• Micronesia (x2)
• Nauru (x3)
• Palau
• Papua New Guinea (x3)
• Paraguay (x2)
• Tonga
• United States (x3)

The vast majority of countries, including the vast majority of NATO members, consistently vote in favor of the peace treaties or abstain. Israel has very few supporters in their realm.

When it comes to Ukraine, we see a similar story. The following countries have voted in favor of Russia’s side at least once:

• Algeria
• Bahamas
• Belarus (7)
• Bolivia
• Burundi
• Central African Republic (2)
• China (2)
• Congo
• Cuba (2)
• Eritrea (6)
• Ethiopia (2)
• Gabon
• Iran (2)
• Kazakhstan
• Kyrgyzstan
• Laos
• Mali (4)
• Nicaragua (5)
• North Korea (7)
• Russia (7)
• Syria (7)
• Tajikistan
• Uzbekistan
• Vietnam
• Zimbabwe (2)

Most of these countries only voted against removing Russia from the Human Rights Council, but it still counts.

Belarus, North Korea, Russia, and Syria are the only countries that have voted in Putin’s favor every single time.

Most countries and most democracies have not voted in favor of Russia or Likud even once in the last two years.

In the latest resolution, only seven countries sided with Russia.

It is clear the majority of the countries have the position I hold:

1. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is barbaric and wrong. Russia must withdraw and respect Ukrainian sovereignty.

2. The Israeli operation in Gaza violates international law. It cannot eradicate Hamas through military means. Israel needs to withdraw, and Palestine needs to be an independent state.

This is the global consensus.

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_Nations_resolutions_concerning_Israel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleventh_emergency_special_session_of_the_United_Nations_General_Assembly

It is long past time to fire Jake Sullivan.

He should have lost his job after the fall of Kabul. He assured the American government and people that the Afghan government would be able to withstand the Saudi pressure, and he was completely wrong. I have been fired for far less. He should have lost his job for his massive misunderstanding of the situation and inability to find reliable information.

He utterly failed to collect and direct American surveillance and security to predict the October 6th attack. We now know that the Israeli security system knew an attack was coming, I am sure the United States knew as well. Jake Sullivan kills Jews to create profits for the Military industrial complex along with Likud. He should be fired.

He continuously, incorrectly, declares that if we pressure Russia more that there will be nuclear war. He believes all of their threats, regardless of evidence or reason. At least a broken clock is right twice a day. He doesn’t even have that going for him.

Jake Sullivan has made a world where tyrants can invade with impunity.

Where terrorists are training in Afghanistan today.

Where IDF kills children with no repercussions.

Where we believe in incredible threats, but evidence of mounting terrorist attacks is routinely ignored.

He claims Ukraine needs to wait another year to take back their country. https://www.businessinsider.com/jake-sullivan-ukraine-can-mount-counteroffensive-on-russia-in-2025-2024-5?op=1

https://www.businessinsider.com/jake-sullivan-ukraine-can-mount-counteroffensive-on-russia-in-2025-2024-5?op=1

Fire Jake Sullivan. He makes the world a more dangerous place.

Also fire Antony Blinken. He consistently makes the wrong decisions on Ukraine by withholding aid. He is a Zionist. His maneuvering around Afghanistan had made the world a more dangerous place.

For our highest offices regarding foreign relations, we need people who are actually experts, who have expertise in the regions of the world where there are significant problems.

There was a random attack against a consulate in Libya, and Hillary Clinton had to sit through months of testimony for something that was not her fault.

Antony Blinken and Jake Sullivan have supported Netanyahu, been hesitant to support Ukraine, and threw Afghanistan to the terrorists, so where are the months of testimony for far more serious crimes?

The entire upper leadership of American foreign policy is leading us straight into World War III. Jake Sullivan and Antony Blinken should have been fired two years ago.

They are clearly incompetent and need to be fired.