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We've seen some strange behaviour by some people in the past weeks. Some people who were famous for something (often advocacy) began to side not just with Palestinians/Arabs, but even with Hamas.
It reminded me of an old blog post of mine:
/2016/04/thinking-on-military-affairs-and-going.html
I think you need to be a certain kind of person to dare leave the conventional consensus and be an outspoken champion for a change of the status quo. This readiness to turn against the mainstream doesn't necessarily correlate with great judgment, of course.
All those gold bugs are plain idiots when it comes to economics and monetary policy in particular, for example. They get every single it 180° wrong and don't care that all the evidence is against them. Still, they are people who dare to turn against the mainstream opinion on money.
So people may have become famous for some advocacy against the mainstream position, and maybe they were right on that one - but that doesn't mean their opinion is a smart one on another topic that they chose to become outspoken about.
Just as famous businessmen are usually delusional when they think they can give good economic policy advice.
Yes, I'm self-aware that I wade into many different topics and am greatly at risk of being wrong in one or another. See this about that.
S O
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I would go further with this. Many, if not most, of those people choose to take such "special" opinions precisely BECAUSE they go against the mainstream; they've got it in their heads that capitalism/socialism/the West/their political opposites/the mainstream media etc. must be wrong in all things (for to admit an ideological enemy might have a point discredits their own platform), so they take the opposite position out of principle (some might say out of spite). No matter how idiotic such a position is.
ReplyDeleteSuch a mindset requires a hefty dose of idealism, so people famous for their idealistic opinions are obvious shoo ins for such displays of brainrot.
Western leftwing hates USA and jews. Nothing new.
ReplyDeleteWell, typically it's the right wing that's antisemitic (see Orban/Hungary), but left wingers tend to side with the underdog, and Israel isn't the underdog in the region.
DeleteSympathy/aversion regarding the U.S. is not the topic here.
Orban is typical leftwing, Ceausescu-style. Hates elections and another "liberal garbage".
DeleteAh, I see. You're influenced by American bullshit propaganda and American bullshit discussion 'culture'.
DeleteHere in the civilised world we don't pretend that our words (and smears) warp an unpleasant reality into something that fits our views.
Hint:
"Fidesz – Hungarian Civic Alliance (Hungarian pronunciation: [ˈfidɛs]; Hungarian: Fidesz – Magyar Polgári Szövetség) is a right-wing populist and national-conservative political party in Hungary, led by Viktor Orbán."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fidesz
>Wikipedia
DeleteMeh. If leftwing doesn't like something - they call this "rightwing". Ancap - rightwing and Hitler - rightwing. Sometimes Mao and Pol Pot - rightwing.
That's made-up nonsense and -sadly- a projection.
DeleteAmerican rightwingers label things they don't like "left" (or "woke"), such as the extreme right wing nazis.
The delusion that bullshitting changes reality to a more convenient fantasyworld is rendering American rightwingers intellectually impotent.
disclosure: I deleted a delusional 'reality doesn't matter, I project everything on people I don't like' bollocks comment because this blog isn't bizarroworld.
Delete>reality doesn't matter
DeleteI see.
Concerning people going nuts, there's a new epidemic coming out of China, a strain of mycoplasma pneumoniae that causes more severe infections, especially among children, and is resistant to Zithromax and similar antibiotics. Do you think we'll handle it better than COVID and what will the lunatic fringe do?
DeleteThere are still reserve antibiotics.
DeleteYou haven't posted for quite some time. Would you write about mounted crossbowmen? They were a thing in Europe, North Africa, and China. Especially the Mamlucks and the Manchu had both mounted archers and mounted crossbowmen.
ReplyDeleteAll I know about non-fictional mounted crossbowmen is that supposedly some were part of the French "lance" (follower group of knights) sometime in the middle ages.
DeleteI read they were meant as a counter to mounted archers, but this seems implausible to me. More plausible is that they were equivalents to the mounted British longbowmen of Black Prince's raid fame, who acted as a kind of dragoon; fighting battle-ready enemies on foot only, but march with a horse for doubled daily marches and being rested when the fight begins.
We have depictions of them shooting from the saddle and being light or as heavily armoured as knights. That's unlike mounted longbowmen.
DeleteWe have depictions of them shooting from the saddle and being light armed up to being as heavily armoured as men-at-arms. I talked with a reenactor, who did riding and shooting a crossbow on the move with a goatsfoot lever. They are often shown as part of a unit of lancers in Europe and could be most of the unit. They also often bodyguard units of a few hundred.
ReplyDeletehttps://je-lay-emprins.blogspot.com/2013/02/mounted-crossbowmen-some-observations.html?m=1
ReplyDeleteThis is a useful article
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/Northern_song_Cavalry.jpg For the Chinese, this image is helpful it shows lancers, archers and crossbowmen all as part of mixed cavalry force with the same degree of armor. It would be interesting to get your analysis on the issue, because it's an overlooked part of armies all over the old world.
ReplyDeleteLook closely at those crossbows. They have that characteristic hook at the business end. That's where you put your foot in during the charging. These crossbows were not meant to be charged on horseback. Those crossbowmen look like dismounting combatants.
DeleteIt's possible to load crossbows with stirrups on horseback. You need one foot without spurs.
Deletehttps://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/120hrnd/the_song_dynasty_crossbow/
Deletehttps://je-lay-emprins.blogspot.com/2013/02/mounted-crossbowmen-some-observations.html?m=1
DeleteIf you look here at European crossbowmen shooting crossbows from the saddle, they also have stirrups. It's possible that they dismounted to load, but there's no depiction of mounted or unmounted loading by a mounted crossbowman. That part is a mystery, but the sources can be interpreted, that they were able to load while mounted with cranequins and levers, which is also verified by tests as an option. The crossbows can have a second loading option when dismounted, because mounted archers dismounted to shoot as well.