Anecdata, but quite a few people I met in alternative music and politics sphere a good decade ago, I meet again in unrelated non-music/political bubbles focused on heavy community involvement.

Further confirming the joke, many of those either apreach own or look to buy a bunch of power tools.

Today’s grown-up counter culture seems to be building sheds and growing wide variety of tomatoes.

JPII was also elected in a very different world. And he played a big moral role in taking down iron curtain and getting Eastern Europe back Europe.

Meanwhile Francis was quite the opposite. Especially as seen in the light of Russian aggression against Ukraine. For much of Eastern Europe that was like 180 turn. At least here both church goers and not seem to despise Francis while JPII has a warm place in the hearts both factions. Maybe it was different far away where Russia ain’t a hot topic.

Can you elaborate on what you mean here? You seem to be alluding to a stance that Francis had towards Russia that I am not familiar with.

He said Ukraine should surrender. To Russia which wants to exterminate Ukraine as a nation, culture and language.

Feel free to google for more details. There were multiple occurrences when he doubled-down on his words after backlash.

> He said Ukraine should surrender.

Which would be bad, had he done so, but he didn't actually say that; the white flag comment was specifically and explicitly about being willing to directly negotiate with Russia, not about surrender.

> There were multiple occurrences when he doubled-down on his words after backlash.

He certainly called on multiple occasions for all parties to negotiate, but he was also consistent, both before Russia invaded, after the invasion and before the "white flag" comment, immediately after the "white flag" comment, and since that the invasion by Russia is (or "would be" before it occurred) unjustifiable, immoral, an act of aggression, and that Russia has the primary obligation to stop it.

What negotiations when Russians were asking for surrender and no other options were on the table?

Went to Jesus in a keffiyeh, that in itself is atrocious!!! Then simped for jihadis. Plenty of similar stuff.

It's hard to blame all the catholics that are sighing in relief hoping for a better successor.

Seems to line up well with self-hate tendencies in many parts of West.

Just war theory was first written on in the West by Saint Augustine.

I didn’t hear from him any call-to-arms to defend Christianity from those who keep making fun of it left and right. Be it other religious faiths or quasi-religious political movements. His actions seemed the opposite tbh.

Literally.

As Christians are being massacred in Africa at the hands of muslims, as Christianity is besieged, all he did was simp for one group in specific and scold everyone else.

Even scolded Greece for not wanting to share the same fate as some Western European countries.

Changing road design is not necessarily a cultural change from driving.

My country had very bad traffic deaths record. few decades later, traffic is much more intense and there're many more cars, but traffic deaths are waaaaaay down. Thanks to better infrastructure, better cars and better culture especially when it comes to drink and drive...

It was caused by the previous generation.

When famine hits or you get attacked by another country, it’s not about weak being protected from the strong. It’s about one society getting into trouble.

And perhaps this is the core of our disagreement - you see a country being attacked by another and you blame those hard times on the victim while I blame it on the attacker.

I say it's a problem of unrestrained strength, of strength misapplied, not a problem of some people being weaker than others.

And an enormous number of famines are caused by conflict, or historically by dumb central government by overly strong tyrants.

Then those men you're calling „weak“ are actually strong...

"Good times" is a property of the political system as a whole and has little to do with "strength of men" unless you bend backwards to redefine strength.

Good times is not a property of political system. It’s overall life property. Including politics and whatnot.

Producing a quality political regime needs strong men too.

Strong together. Strong, when they choose to support each other. Weak otherwise.

Ability to band together is a strength.

I agree, the ability to lend your strength to benefit others is a moral strength and it's key to human flourishing and achievement. Where I might disagree though is if you think that this is the kind of strength that most users of the phrase in question are thinking of.

TBH all the time I saw this phrase was about strong people in the broadest possible way. And always as a positive.

It’s very strange to see people defining strong in very narrow bigot way and then trying to spin the whole phrase into a negative. This thread is probably the first time I saw people take such turn.

It’s also very strange that people try to portray being weak as a positive. Sure, strong may have very different definitions from different people. Even borderline opposite. But turning the whole word into a negative… that reminds me of 1984. Weaknesses is strength, strength is weakness.

Whereas I always take this phrase to be refering to a military kind of strength. For example, this whole article tells us that Oda Ujiharu got the nickname "weakest" because of his military incompetence. Your own examples of strength in this thread tend to be mainly martial too.

This kind of strength - the ability to force your will upon others (which is what military strength is, and also the kind of strength that 'Strong Men' dictators have), motivates the (usually incorrect) comparisons to historical empires. There are other kinds of strength - moral strength, resilience, determination, vision, etc they're just not what I think is being talked about with this phrase.

I don't know where you get 'weakness' is being described as a positive in this thread. Weakness can also mean many things, but in this context, it means being susceptible to others forcing their will onto you. It's not a good thing, but differences in strength are natural and impossible to avoid. What is a good thing is when the great mass of comparatively 'weak' people realise that together they are stronger than the tyrant.

Rather than 1984, for an appropriate comparison I'd go to the Bible: - "God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong."

A lot of „martial“ skills are needed in daily life. Discipline, planning, ability to operate both on your own and in a team both as a leader and a member. Even physical strength does help, even in modern world. A good CEO and good military commander skillset is very very similar. Just like good specialist and good soldier.

Whenever I meet this phrase, it's talking about specifically those „other kinds of strength“.

I'd even argue that there's no „strength“ in dumbly forcing your will upon others. It's a strength to lead people, to inspire them and get them to follow you. Charisma and leadership is a hell of a strength. But to physically force people... All you need is a number of, possibly weak, people and you'll likely succeed in bending even physically much stronger people.

And weak people banding together can build a tyrant regime. Soviet union is probably good example. Both at initial stage when workers kick started it. And in later stages when usually the weak life scum went to work for the security apparatus of said regime. And reading about other regimes, it seems to be a recurring theme that security apparatus is built out of weak miserable people who look for an revenge opportunity.

Security needs taxes which lower profits and salaries (= jobs people want). On top of that, security needs a lot of not-so-profitable capabilities.

High profits and jobs people want also don't exactly go hand-in-hand.

Depends on how evaluate what is valuable. E.g. here in europe a lot of people think subsidising local agriculture is not valuable and we should just import cheaper food. On the other hand, a lot of people agree that food security is kinda valuable by itself. And want similar security in more fields. In that sense yes, doing „low tech“ is valuable in the long run.

I've been thinking lately that we don't properly account for things like security. I've also been thinking lately that a lot of people have terrible ethics and are more than happy to engage in nepotism and or fraud. Don't know what to do about it personally, I just try to keep my needs small and be happy with what I've got while trying to prepare my own children to have some level of a good life.

More like common man does not think long term (and I'd say rightfully so). While democratic regime embraces populist hedonistic solutions.

Who cares about defense capabilities 10 or 50 years down the line? Lots of people in West had a good run outsourcing everything. But once there's nothing else to outsource and IP to sell... It's not gonna be pretty.

Next generations in West will have to work very hard to recover from this mess.

Hate to agree.

As long as you have whole supply chain locally, you don't need to store too much.

The problem with agriculture is you can't really „ramp up“ it on a whim. That's why you need to keep it going and you can't just kick start your food production when outside suppliers start to blackmail you.

> In that sense yes, doing „low tech“ is valuable in the long run.

Sure. But how much tax money do you want to throw at entire industries to hide the basic fact that wages are lower elsewhere? Where do you want to take the labor away from? And where do you draw the essential/wasted subsidies boundary line?

Because in my view, Trump tariffs just ignore those very basic questions and don't even attempt to answer them.

It's perfectly reasonable IMO to throw 20 billion a year to agriculture, because that is a very essential sector. But doing the same for the textile industry? Ore/Oil refining? Steelworks? Chemical plants?

I don't wanna subsidies 20 non-essential industries just so that some former fast-food worker can assemble overpriced shoes inside the US (and labor demand from all those industries would drive up wages/costs in the fast-food sector, too, thanks to the Baumol effect).

I'm not against nurturing some important local industries, but Trump tariffs are a complete failure at achieving that IMO.

Don't want to make hypothetical shoes? Fine. One day soldiers may end up marching barefooted and loosing a battle though.

IMO the global economy eventually self-levels. Either you go up the chain so far that you eventually go off the rails by being unable to make basic stuff. And eventually being eaten by more hungry people with the basic skills. Or you keep yourself down by forcing yourself to not loose basic skills. Former gives you a short moment of glory with a high price for future generations. Later forces people to be more ascetic if that's the right word.

You misunderstand me. The US is making shoes-- just not as many as it imports from Vietnam or China. In fact enough shoes get made locally to export about 1$ billion worth of them (while ~$20 billion are spent on imports).

But I don't see the point in throwing billions of dollars from taxes at this industry just to make all those shoes here-- that is stupid (because the jobs that would create are not gonna be very desirable, they are gonna drive up costs all over by competing for labor, and that kind of protectionism is gonna invite retaliation).

The situation is very similar for a lot of industries.

I also think it is extremely unhealthy to baby an industry long-term by isolating it from competition like this.

I'd be totally on board if there was like 20% unemployment in the US, and this was a short term plan to give those people work/income.

But that's not it. This is in my view really bad policy driven by emotional arguments, and actual numbers, expected outcomes and historical precedent (for "I know better than market economies what ought to be produced") all heavily weight against this.

I'm very confident right now that the whole "20%ish tariffs for everyone to balance trade deficit with everyone" approach is gonna be walked back or lead to abysmal outcomes, and people should have realized that from the start.

> Or arts funding in the USSR and other soviet bloc countries.

This is pretty good example why UBI is dangerous. Those funded artists were very happy to suck it up and go along with the regime. The censorship was in place, but self-censorship was even stronger.

Meanwhile a lot of art existed outside of the system with people working some shitty jobs and doing arts in free time.

Totally explains why the gulag archipelago was never written.

Well, that book was not officially published in USSR till the fall of the iron curtain. So in official sense your snarky comment is sort of correct :)

Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich was published. The premise was that people were self censoring even outside of what was being officially approved, so not really.

That book was published during Kruschiov era. Which was definitely not representative of the rest of Soviet era. Let alone that the book was peanuts compared to Gulag archipelago.

Eventually Solzhenytsin was kicked out from USSR and had to take exile in west. Do you really want to use him as an example of Soviet artistic freedom?

I didn't. I even said that the premise was that people were self censoring outside of the censors. Clearly not though.

So, one dude did not censor himself, during a cultural warm up era, ended up being kicked out to exile. Which was a fortunate outcome due to his previous fame. Hmmm, is that an example how people were free to do whatever in USSR? :) Is that more like an example how dangerous it was to not self-censor even to well known people with support (for some time) from the ruling elite?

Hearing parents and grandparents stories... And having talked to older artsy people who did grow up before the fall of USSR... Self-censorship was the default modus operandi. Sure, few didn't do it. Most of those paid the price either in gulags in earlier years or mental asylums later.

> is that an example how people were free to do whatever in USSR?

Who are you even arguing with at this point?

You? That people did self censor indeed. And one example of one author not self-censoring and being made an example does not deny that.

ok, then look at the depression era US federal arts project