Goodreads Doesn't Have It, Data Migration: The Eurasian Century
Exactly. What these totalitarian illiberal countries, Xi Jinping's China and Putin's Russia, have in common is that they use force instead of attraction. They are not attractive countries, they are very repressive and have mastered the art of repression as opposed to attraction. They call repression and suppression management which is where you have a problem and just say "stop talking about it". That's not management at all. The funny part is Putin wants to be competitive from a speed perspective when the book clearly makes the great point that the extreme corruption of oligarchy destroys the accountability mechanisms that lead to real speed. So then Putin is blown away and angered that his oligarchy corrupted itself out of any basic speed.
Can you imagine one of these lumbering, obese oligarchs suddenly becoming the infamous speed demon? You can't have both; illiberal totalitarianism supported by a corrupting oligarchy that basically just ignores problems and calls its management, and real speed and efficiency that can't be bought out of calling a clear spade and spade and then cleaning up the illogical, nepotistic blockages that slowed down everyone unfortunate to be affected by them.
The book also agrees with established research on Putin that he rules by institutionalized humiliation, injustice collecting, that fits the profile of covert homosexual. It's only funny when you know he's constantly mocking the US and West on homosexuality charges, when this book and established American research agree that he fits the profile of a homosexual who is fixated on "ritualized humiliation" and "injustice collecting".
They also agree that Xi Jinping is slowly moving off of debt bondage and debt governance due to its congruence with human trafficking, but is now literally trying to buy the internet and then falling in a rage when the repression mechanisms silence the very voices it was essentially trying to buy. It's too pathetic.
That these communist countries call themselves democracy while the world calls them "autocracies" or by their actual self-assigned name in the case of the CCP, "communist party" is just...what kind of lunatic world do we live in. Democracy is literally the opposite of repressing voices you donât like. Theyâre more like a disabled Red than anything. Disabled Red is hardly Blue, itâs disabled Red.
This book says though China and Russia linking up will be a formidable force, it will also be a force for increasing corruption and with the increased corruption a mass de-intelligencing of the human species by the union.
Russia has been retarding its own country since the beginning. This was from a dissertation on Tolstoy, where an censor in deep envy of Tolstoy also somehow manages to retard his own country at the same time he bereaves the world of several notable pieces of his writing, to the point it doesn't get published but gets circulated with the pure corruption in-crowd and Tolstoy himself doesn't make a thing. Also showing a government arteries clogged with oligarchy destroys greats that are often the only reason people give a crap about the country at all to begin with. People were in the streets for that guy for Tolstoy due to how disgusting that act was, "Pobedonostev also severely restricted the flow of information, communication, and education". (aka, he retarded his own country, the literal meaning, to make it slower. Putin uses the exact same strategies, they are almost identical to Pobedonostev's in their utilization of the Orthodox church to cripple Russia's intelligence from the inside from gross incompetence thinking they were making it stronger. Then he throws a fit and tantrum when he can't have competitive speed with non-corrupt countries that don't give wrong answers or corrupt answers according to identity. If you've been so inudated in corruption you don't even know what your own eyes are telling you, you're certainly going to be useless in any speed environment.).
The union will literally retard any natural speed across the world due to repression and suppression where accountability, accurate recognition, and corruption-free ability to create real justice in congruence with well-written law once existed and once begot the lingering traces of intelligence that are now being put out by just these two. You can't have "slow down so the corrupt oligarchy can take any power you made or opened up" communist style and have your Blitzkrieg too. The part about Putin being mad he can't have his Blitzkrieg with a "slow down for the lingering Russian communist corruption" was just comedic and pathetic, but it's really like that. Deeply in denial that you canât have the lumbering oligarch who just sits there and stops any anti-autocracy energy through sheer do-nothing rot, and also the responsive, super sharp correct apprehension that doesnât struggle with basic recognition of a truly speedy expression. You canât have both, and itâs hilarious that Putin is having a tantrum unable to accept you canât have both.
Russia is primarily a natural resources economy. It is not very developed. Nord Stream 2 was so exciting for them because it wasn't technological, it was more natural resources, and that was mostly all they can handle these days. China is a technological parasite, stealing from other countries or the internet. This book overestimates the power these two will have. If it does anything, it will be to send developed countries backwards and retard any last non-corrupt bastions of intelligence across the world. A "gradual decoupling" is possible but this book really fails to look at how their economies are really based and that they are not independent at all (most residually communist countries aren't, that's why they're so desperate to not lose their satellites like Taiwan and Ukraine) and therefore it's not like two US equivalents moving against the US.
They are not that independent. This book overestimates the power of their linkage failing to see the weak basis of both of their economies and it underestimates how desperate they are not to not lose anything they parasite, like Ukraine, because they are that dependent still, to the point in some cases these communist areas that somehow think they're democratic have a mass disability problem.
So four instead of five stars for not looking keenly at the economic type to the degree they could. They say that these totalitarian states are based on technological hegemony, and that China is especially letting all that go to its head like developing countries do--look at a teenager when they're learning basic crap, but doing it very well, they fancy themselves the King of England for it, China is acting just like that --but they really underestimate the de-intelligencing effect of repressive, suppressive corrupt and oligarchical countries on the world.
They are desperate to keep themselves together in a way other countries aren't. They are way more fragile and in a state of collective disability more than this book can admit. Though their linkage is formidable, especially for a small country like Ukraine, it will not be a devastating, superior conquerer like America described and somewhat expected out of Nazi Germany. It will be more like their acquiring a satellite and begging it to want to stay with them and begging to make money off of them. So, all in all pathetic. They really overestimate how fragile and disabled these repressive/supressive regimes are and that forceful instead of attractive energy is usually compensating for profound failures in governance that don't hold their own. So although it's important to not underestimate the threat of these two linking up, it will be more like acquiring a very feeble and disabled husband who begs for you to do basic things and it will be more ongoing everyday pathetic than anything to actually fear, like a Nazi invasion. Since Elon Musk has begun doing that, literally begging users and sites to make money on them, that is how China treats its satellites and that is the government to look forward to. It will be worse, not better, and it will be pathetic compared to the norms America was used to.
I like the line that they won on their "heft". I literally saw two obese oligarchs lifting their fat and plunking it down as they "waged war" across the world.
So there was a lot of projection and overestimation happening there. All in all though they are formidable, they will send any conquered lands backwards and overall have a de-intelligencing effect that will ultimately render them so weak and hapless over time that they will be conquered back in no time. Don't forget the Chinese who have so little sex they want "war that is hot" because that's all the action they see. Literal Chinese incels in disturbing numbers, they were even targeting Ukrainian women âironicallyâ. They have a "shortage of viable females" problem literally because of their femicide problem, these people are not bright. That's hardly an invasion by a brutal and horrific, but arguably quite competent, force like Nazi Germany. It will send us backwards and it will be struggling with things we as American had put together long ago. That's what happens when a developing country licks its lips and tries to conquer a more developed country. In Nazi Germany's case, he just had geographic ambitions. Many of the places he conquered, like Poland, had nothing to offer them except a geographic advantage. It's the opposite for China and Russia. We have a lot to offer them, them not so much.
It's really funny to hear them call Putin the Tsar. The idea of a gopnik Tsar who thinks the west is gay for being basically educated is the most pathetic thing I've seen in a second. The old tsars used to import great thinkers from top universities to come teach them and make them more intelligent. This guy does some sort of "ritualized humiliation" to any equivalent and then puts forward troll memes with him riding a bear. The publications that call this illiberal totalitarian with conflated logic a tsar is pathetic. A gopnik tsar is one of the most pathetic misunderstandings I've seen in my life. That said, tsarists were not much better. They may have imported intelligentsia, but they were notorious for not actually getting what they imported. At least they tried. That's more liberal than this Gopnik Putin calling the west gay at any chance he gets while he literally fits the profile of a homosexual ruling Russia through ritualized humiliation.
If you don't know what a Gopnik is, this definition was helpful. Putin 100% unironically funds troll farms as political weapons (that alone is basically a Slavic squat for a diplomatic signature), believes any real industrial efficiency and care for quality as efficiency is "gay", and then throws a tantrum when his own infrastructure is so corrupt it is completely noncompetitive. "The Polish term for a similar subculture is dresiarz. Dresiarz is a term used to describe young men who are usually portrayed as unemployed, undereducated, aggressive, and anti-social".