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Patrick O'Neil's avatar

...and if it isn't obvious from my previous post, it's my hope that this substack remains a reasoned place for disagreement, commentary and exchange, rather than a "safe room" where we can unspool all our frustrations with "those people our there" and get validation for our beliefs. I don't want to argue, but I would love to converse. I don't need more twitter.

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Rachel's avatar

I'll share my experience on the ground, from downtown Ottawa, Canada.

Here's the truth as far as I can discern, having lived among the protestors and walked through the protest site(s) several times per day: they were entirely peaceful, even friendly. Noisy on occasion, yes, with revving engines, horns and train whistles providing the soundtrack for a country in distress after two years of stringent Covid-related restrictions and increasing, deliberate marginalization of the unvaccinated. Each weekend, thousands of ordinary Canadians poured into the core of the city, waving flags and spreading a message of love and unity, accompanied by free hugs and plenty of street dancing. They were working class - a very different population from the one ordinarily gathered in Ottawa - and very determined to see an end to pandemic restrictions. Some were truckers, many were not; some were vaccinated, many were not. Reports from a couple of local merchants I spoke to noted unpleasant conflicts over masking indoors, while one store owner welcomed their cheerful, respectful presence outside her door despite the negative impact on her business. My neighbour reported that he had been honked at for wearing a mask outdoors. As has been widely reported, the protestors were peacefully disbanded this past weekend, though police checkpoints around the downtown core remain in place.

Here's the other truth: right from the time they started, even hinting that the protests were not entirely bad or evil, or reporting objective facts that were not in line with the official narrative, was enough to have one labelled as a white supremacist and shunned. Convoy donors and convoy supporters have lost their jobs, and are worrying now about having their bank accounts frozen. Mainstream media reported uncritically throughout the event that protestors were driven by hate and hateful ideologies - largely on the evidence of a couple of swastikas seen on Day 1 of the protests intended to compare vaccine mandates to Nazism - and that the protests represented an organized, foreign-funded, alt-right effort to undermine Canadian democracy. Were it not for the presence and interest of international media outlets, Canadians would have heard no other perspective. The sweeping powers of the Emergencies Act will remain in place for at least 30 days, and will allow the government to close ranks even further with the help of its allies in the media, academia, and legal circles.

It has been difficult in practice to engage in any form of public dissent or even debate here for a long while, at least if you work in professional or elite circles (and Ottawa is a town run by and for the professional class). It is now essentially impossible. David Sachs' piece on a social credit system is bang-on in that regard.

Where next for us? Who knows. But Trudeau would likely be re-elected again today, despite the government's unpopularity. Someone, somewhere (in the NYT I think?) said that the population still prefers a disliked elite to a chaotic and disreputable alternative, and I think that is true.

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N.S. Lyons's avatar

Thanks for sharing. Here's a question I wonder about: do the people in the Trudeau government actually literally believe they are facing a foreign-funded Nazi conspiracy to destroy democracy? Same with the average Liberal or NDP voter, or the average CBC journalist. What I mean is, are they cynically spinning a narrative to conceal what they know to be the truth, or are they already so caught up in their own narrative that they look at the protestors and literally perceive dangerous, violent extremists?

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Rachel's avatar

The latter - most believe it to be true, or believe what they are told, and the ones who don't believe it keep their heads down to avoid the firestorm. (Keep in mind that Canada's best and brightest minds are not currently in charge, though in fairness there were a couple of lower-level dissenters within Trudeau's own caucus.) But this is what also brings me to despair; there is no reasoning with people like that, who will ignore the evidence of their own eyes - or deliberately hide from it - in order to hew to the accepted narrative. And the narrative was firmly in place before the protests had hardly begun!

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N.S. Lyons's avatar

Yeah that is by far the more frightening option.

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MarkS's avatar

"spreading a message of love and unity"

Spreading something else too: a deadly disease that they refuse to innoculate themselves against, thus serving as potential reservoirs for development of future variants.

And if they get sick, they will undoubtedly expect to be fully treated by Canada's national health system, putting the doctors and nurses who must care for them at risk themselves, and forcing all other Canadians to financially support their choice to undermine public health.

So why exactly am I supposed to have sympathy for them? I just don't get it.

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Rachel's avatar

That's certainly the view of the majority here, and the government too, since it's done its polling on the issue. For the 10% or so who refuse to be vaccinated against the dreaded Covid, the view is that they ought to be pushed out of society altogether, and that includes the workforce. The PM has gone as far as to label them racist and misogynist. I just don't happen to agree with that, and I'm triple-vaccinated myself. Canada will never achieve 100% vaccine compliance, and it's neither desirable nor necessary to try and force it, in my opinion. I don't understand the reasons for vaccine hesitancy, but the hesitant have their reasons, and they feel strongly about it, and they are my fellow citizens. As for clogging up the health-care system, Canada's hospitals have been staggering along for years, barely able to cope and way over-capacity during every flu season. The healthcare system is already packed full with those who refuse to follow a healthy diet, or exercise vigorously 4-5 times per week, or stop smoking, or get an annual flu shot - so I find it hard to get too judgemental over a Covid vaccine.

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MarkS's avatar

These are all good points.

I certainly don't agree that the anti-vaxxers are racist or misogynist (just because they are anti-vax), and labeling them as such is both factually incorrect and morally wrong.

Exactly what to do about people who choose to be menaces to public health, I don't know, that's above my pay grade.

But that they're "spreading a message of love and unity"? Fuck no! That's flatly ridiculous.

I'm a lefty who thinks that society owes a great deal more to Physicals than they currently get. I'm a Virtual who comes from a Physical family (first in my family to go to college).

But I have no patience for nonsense. My poor Physical mom cried tears of joy when I got my first polio vaccine, because now she didn't have to worry so much. She was a Physical with a brain who could use it.

The anti-vax truckers? Not so much.

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MarkS's avatar

Janet Bufton, 2/17: "Canada's Freedom Convoy Is Undermining the Cause of Freedom" https://theunpopulist.substack.com/p/canadas-freedom-convoy-is-undermining

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Madjack's avatar

Very interesting articles. Just finished Tlabbi’s piece in the truckers in Canada. Nature abhors a vacuum a new, authoritarian ideology is sweeping in with no mercy

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JustAnotherLurker's avatar

I am a Canadian who lives in Ottawa. I work in high tech as a software developer. I belong to the “virtual” class per your previous post. I have pretty much always been a conservative and/or “classic liberal” depending on your definition. As the years go by, I feel more and more like an alien within my own class; being of a conservative bent always put me outside the mainstream (which are comfortably Liberal). Woke ideology and and creeping authoritarianism scares me.

I live in the suburbs and did not visit the downtown during the protests. I generally support people’s right to protest, though I draw the line at violence and destruction. I feel a lot of generalized anxiety about the protests because I am finding it very hard to get any sense of what is true and what is false about how events unfolded.

The Canadian media has a narrative (or a set of narratives) that they present. The narratives range from “the truckers are racist bigot crazy undesirables who should be shunned and criminalized” to “the protesters are useful idiots of the American Right”. I feel outright manipulated by the media. Truly, once you see how everything in the press is narrative building, you cannot unsee it.

On the other hand, conservative leaning social media presents the protestors as heroic working class people, bravely fighting oppression by the elites. I admit that I tend to be more sympathetic to this narrative, but to a certain degree, I feel that it is also a manipulative effort. According to this media, the protestors are all incredibly civil, teddy bear-like polite Canadians who just want to share a Timmies and hold hands.

Which version is true? I lean towards the conservative narrative, but I also recognize that it fits into my pre-conceived notions quite neatly. So I must question it. I feel like reality can no longer be known and manipulative propaganda is all. Anyhow, I suppose this is a bit ramble-y.

It is incredibly rare that I post anything on social media, but I would really like to hear NS Lyon’s and other readers thoughts on question #1 posed at the top of this thread:

Where next for Canada? How resilient is Trudeau’s government?

I feel that this is a very interesting question. The few opinion polls I’ve seen tend to indicate that something like 60%-70% of Canadians disapprove of the Trucker protest. I would guess that this is probably in the realm of correct. But disapproving of the protest does not necessarily translate into approval for the government’s actions (or lack thereof) during the protests. Many people I know are very disapproving of the disruption, but also very disapproving of all the politicians and their response. And what people disapprove of is the incompetence at all levels of government. A few have said it, but “Peace, Order and Good Government” does actually reflect Canadian sentiment. Order and Good Government were not around, and Peace was threatened, and most Canadians HATE that.

I really think Trudeau’s days as leader of the Liberal party are numbered, and I believe there is a significant chance that the Liberal government will fall, either at the next election in three years, or possibly sooner depending on how the political winds blow.

I give maybe a 25% chance that Trudeau is kicked out as leader of the Liberal party if his personal popularity or the Liberal party popularity tanks in opinion polls. Historically, the Liberal party has not been hospitable to failed leaders. However, given that Trudeau has lots of star power and there’s not much talent waiting in the wings, he might be able to hang on.

I give high odds to the Liberals losing the next election. I think enough people will have decided they are incompetent to turn the tide against them. Trudeau went into the last election he was supposed to handily win and immediately tanked in popularity. He barely won the last election. People are tired of him. I don’t see that feeling being improved by his performance during the protests. I also think that the NDP may lose an important piece of their working class base after this debacle. I would not be surprised if a bunch of working class NDP voters defect to the Conservatives and a bunch of Liberals defect to the NDP. I predict a major realignment of the electorate.

I could imagine a scenario where the Liberal government falls on a vote of non-confidence before the next scheduled election. If the NDP gets in trouble with their base for propping up the Liberals, the knives may come out For Jagmeet Singh, and whoever replaces him may want to prove he’s not a Liberal stooge by voting to take down the government.

Three years is a long time, things could change massively, but if I had to place money on the issue, I would bet on Trudeau’s days being numbered.

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N.S. Lyons's avatar

There's an interesting book titled "Nothing is True and Everything is Possible", about how basically Putin was able to create the space needed to centralize his power in Russia because, due to a deliberately post-modern media, ordinary citizens came to stop trusting anything whatsoever that they saw or read and lost any sense of what was real and what was not: https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-True-Everything-Possible-Surreal/dp/1610396006

If I had to bet, I'd say Trudeau will be fine until the next election, when he will probably lose. He successfully extended his emergency powers, so the only major test for him has now been passed. "How Being 'Nice' Leads to Tyranny" might make a good future essay.

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Patrick O'Neil's avatar

I'd love to see some clarity in terms. Totalitarianism should be defined clearly, using Arendt or the work of Linz and Stepan--it's a regime type, not an epithet. I hate the sloppiness of "neoliberal"--what are we gaining by using this term? If I use it, instead of liberal, what is being implied? I can suss out the general argument but it strikes me as a shibboleth more than a concept. I know this is my dead horse but without precision we replace analysis with emotion.

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N.S. Lyons's avatar

Fair enough. Really quickly for now, I'd define totalitarianism as the intrusion of the political into every sphere of life (hence becoming total), including the social and private. So for example, as much as it makes me angry, Trudeau's crackdown in Canada is merely authoritarian, not totalitarian. His proposed hate crime bills, which would have everyone constantly monitoring themselves lest they commit a thoughtcrime out loud, however, I would certainly describe as totalitarian.

Edit: Oh and on Neoliberalism that is a harder question. It is a notoriously hard to define beast, though I'd say the key difference from classical liberalism probably centers around the rise of the technocratic state. I have on my bookshelf Quinn Slobodian's book "Globalists" about Neoliberalism, among others, that I'd like to read at some point.

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MarkS's avatar

I agree with Nandor Fehervar (super cool username by the way, everyone should google it) that "neoliberal" is a meaningless term. No one who wishes to speak precisely and clearly should use it.

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Patrick O'Neil's avatar

I'm sensing two trends, glimpsed dimly from my lack of attention to the various substacks and factions out there. There seems to be a path of individuals who have been "thrown out" of liberalism as it has marched in the direction of DEI, who have gotten increasingly screedy and I dare to say unmoored from a broader conversation. Greenwald, Taibbi, DeBoer all seem to fit this mold. Are they angry that the leftism once deployed against Reagan is a lost world? I don't know. There is a second group, the Kingsnorths and Deneens, who want some kind of eco-aristo localism that turns its back on the Enlightenment in favor of orthodoxy, composting and religious communities. I'm not crazy about either of them--JD Vance embraces Catholicism but has nothing to say for the Catholics who will come under Russian tanks in Ukraine, too busy is he ranting about the Catholics to our south who bring in (some of the) Chinese fentanyl. As is always the case, none of these places resonate with me, and I find unease at the strident certainty coming from both my workplace (academia) and those would lance it. Ah well. Ukraine will sort some political positions, I think, much as the Spanish Civil War. What is more attractive--the cultural nationalism of Russia, or the messy liberalism of Ukraine? I know where I'd prefer to live.

So here's one piece I think everyone should read:

Laura Field, "Revisiting “Why Liberalism Failed:” A Five-Part Series," is a masterful attack on Deneen that everyone should read. https://www.niskanencenter.org/revisiting-why-liberalism-failed-a-five-part-series/

runner ups:

Gertrude Himmelfarb, The Roads to Modernity: The British, French and American Enlightenments

And two forgotten journalists:

Vincent Sheean, Personal History (1935)--inspired the Hitchcock film Foreign Correspondent

Geyde, Fallen Bastions, The Central European Tragedy (1939). The collapse of Austria in overwhelming detail.

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N.S. Lyons's avatar

Thanks, I'll read Field's piece in detail. I have my own problem's with Deneen, including his belief that the American Founding was flawed from the beginning, and his not very well described solutions. However, from what I've read of this piece so far, I can already say that I think it is limited by taking for granted that liberalism has not failed, and that Deneen is engaged in "dystopian" hand waving for partisan reasons. Personally, despite being much more positive about liberalism than Deneen, I find myself agreeing with him that we have reached a state of almost jaw-dropping failure and ruin - the only question is what caused that. If it was or was not in fact something flawed about liberalism, that is of course something important to figure out.

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Frank Lee's avatar

There are a couple of very important big topics that I crave more information on.

The first is ideological identity related to actual ideological values... where are we on the ACTUAL political spectrum. For example, "liberal progressive" seems to have migrated to illiberalism and authoritarianism. However, it is also supported by so called "Antifascists" that seem to embrace anarchy... beliefs that would align more with a pure libertarian mindset noted as extreme right. The project to write on these things should include some on the street interviews and farming for clues and queues in what is written and said by those claiming a certain ideological tribe alliance. This is important because it seems that our binary "Democrat-vs-Republican" labeling isn't working. It hides political motivations and agenda that serve the hider and not the voter.

The second big gap in reporting I see is that on the source of money and power behind the totalitarian power grab of the West. It seems to me that the globalist cabal was shocked by Brexit and then Trump and has since colluded to go all in. The political left seems to be the primary side beholden to this investment. There is breathtaking policy and enforcement cruelness from the left-controlled governments from North America to Australia. These are things that would have been unthinkable just a couple of years ago... the voters would crush politicians that behaved this way. For these politicians to ignore recent political sensibilities and take these political risks to destroy their own constituents, they have to see a big reward opportunity. They have to have confidence that their political or monetary fortunes are better served by their cruelness. What is the source of this? It is really the Klaus Schwabb Great Reset project? Who are the main players funding this? Can individual politicians be connected? Or have these politicians polled their constituents and found that they have recently grown enough support to behave so cruelly against some of their constituents. Basically there is not enough reporting on why this is happening and how it is happening.

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N.S. Lyons's avatar

Well, I'm not sure I could fit an attempted answer to that question into one piece haha. It is kind of one to be addressed step by step over time. One thing I'd say now is that I don't think everything is the result of some WEF conspiracy. There are much broader political and societal trends at work than that - though the influence of the WEF and its ideas is in itself a very interesting reflection of those, in my view.

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Frank Lee's avatar

Ha. Yes... too big. That step approach works for me.

It is the pace of the shift along with some other cues that have me believing there is a project. The pandemic certainly forced change, but it seems that big money was waiting in the weeds and is pulling levers and switches at a profound scope and pace. The rise of authoritarianism in the West has been breathtaking and it is increasing even as the pandemic ends.

By the way, The Reality War is a fantastic piece and covers much of this. I subscribed after reading it.

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d       r's avatar

I thought the Substack post (link below) by Helena was incredibly well written and gave me much better insight into what is driving the trans contagion amongst pubescent American girls: https://lacroicsz.substack.com/p/by-any-other-name?utm_source=url

Her indictment of the "adults" affirming her journey is exceptional. This is a fraught topic and the ability of a young person to have such perspective and insight should be celebrated.

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Chris Gast's avatar

Something I haven't seen many think deeply about China's massive course reversal on population control in the last few years, to the point of now restricting abortions—and so far the absolute failure of the changes to arrest their decline. In the last few years I've started to see some surprising publications address aging demographics, but population control seems to become one the core commandments of modern society. I am still amazed Chinese leaders were able to at least acknowledge reality. Will our leaders follow suit, or double-down?

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Truthbird's avatar

First, I want to declare how glad I am that Alex Berenson linked to your blog a couple of days ago. I immediately paid for a subscription to The Upheaval after having read your piece titled Reality Honks Back.

You asked "what's the single best piece of writing you've read recently?" I suspect you're thinking of online essays, but I hope you'll accept a book recommendation.

The book I have in mind is The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health, by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

This is the most important book I've read, not only recently, but perhaps in my entire life. I think it's the most important book of our era. It's difficult to read because it tells the brutal truth about the nightmare we're living through. It's long, dense, and profoundly disturbing. I felt dazed and concussed by the time I finished reading it. But reality is reality, and if people choose to deny it, humanity's doom is assured. I urge everyone to read it.

Kennedy is often dismissed as a conspiracy theorist, a fabulist, or worse. The fact of the matter is that not only are there thousands of endnotes which document every statement he makes, but he has repeatedly publicly challenged anyone to debate him. No one will take him up on his challenge, because no one can truthfully deny anything in the book.

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faithful READER's avatar

Great writing. Just suppose however it is less about the physicals vs the virtuals and more about the cost/benefit of cities. Maybe the 500 year experiment is over and cities are no longer the solution. Maybe it is time for the "bougnat" to go home. And we will take with us our laptops and our educations in physics, computer science, medicine, etc and dream once more of trucks and chainsaws. What do you think ???

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N.S. Lyons's avatar

Well, I have been pondering the long-term influence of remote work... Theoretically it could fundamentally reshape political geography by redistributing "virtual" talent back into the hinterlands. Optimistically, this could even reduce political divides. But I guess we'll see how widely it actually manages to take off, or if it is constrained by managerial or cultural choice, etc.

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Richard Smith's avatar

If you're not familiar with the work of Dr. Wolfgang Smith, I highly recommend him. His first book, Cosmos & Transcendence, has just been reissued in a new edition. The subtitle to the book is Breaking Through the Barrier of Scientistic Belief. In the original preface to that book (40 years ago) he says, "What I object to fundamentally in the scientistic worldview is that it conceives the objective universe to be unperceived and unperceivable." That is really the crux of the matter that is permitting the "social construction" philosophy that is the runaway train of our times.

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N.S. Lyons's avatar

Sounds interesting, thanks!

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Dáithí's avatar

1. Take this with a bag of salt. I do not have a close understanding of Canadian politics. That said, I have trouble seeing Trudeau making it as party leader through another election. The counter-protests (the physical ones) were tiny, and the online response was a morass that didn't exactly make him look good.

2. Will China under Xi move soon to seize Taiwan? Or Siberia for that matter? And/or will China use it's advantages in economics to exert more pressure than it is already?

Links:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-25/chinese-state-banks-restrict-financing-for-russian-commodities

https://thediplomat.com/2022/02/taiwan-watches-ukraine-with-an-eye-toward-security-at-home/

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/standing-ovation-putin-china-get-siberia-due-putins-ukraine-beckwith

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2100228/chinese-russian-far-east-geopolitical-time-bomb

https://tfiglobalnews.com/2022/02/19/we-will-lose-the-south-china-sea-because-of-joe-biden-australia-makes-no-bones-about-it/

https://aaronrenn.substack.com/p/gender-trouble-in-east-asia

3. That would be:

"The Haunted Mansion of Modern Freedom - Ukraine and the Failed Pax Capitalis"

https://rhyd.substack.com/p/the-haunted-mansion-of-modern-freedom

Links not specifically asked for:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/learning-from-the-final-pagan-generation/

https://edwest.substack.com/p/how-we-were-vaccinated-against-conservatism

https://akarlin.substack.com/p/grey-skies-ahead-for-life-extension

https://peterofbasilea.substack.com/p/bottom-trawling-the-mind

https://backtothefront.substack.com/p/selling-the-war-to-the-russians

https://antonhowes.substack.com/p/age-of-invention-the-great-contract

https://martyrmade.substack.com/p/human-forever-pt-1

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james's avatar

An important strategic topic is the impact of Chinese genomic research (see Prof. Steve Hsu, https://infoproc.blogspot.com/ for past discussions of the Beijing Genomics Institute) on the CCP's own elite family lineages. While they industriously harvest the world's DNA, their own DNA info will either be held as "top secret" lest it be leveraged to advantage during internal dynastic competitions.

The partial heritability of individual attributes (intelligence, personality, health/disease susceptibility, athleticism, etc.), and the statistical tracking of tendencies across family trees, certainly provides an important and inexpensive means for long-term authoritarian control of the populace ... spot troublemakers or assets while they are still children, and identify trouble-making families or ethnicities for continued monitoring and domestication. And do so at marginal cost using computational architectures already in place. The enthusiasm of Western academics for giving entire DNA databases of mathematically gifted children to the CCP is head-shaking, but it is the CCP's own internal use of genotyping that may ultimately have the biggest impact in future decades.

Shades of the Bene Gesserit breeding program, on a less fanciful scale.

Great Substack. Thanks for your efforts.

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N.S. Lyons's avatar

Well, if the Chinese turn to test-tube super-babies that might solve their demographic problems. So it could happen. Would make a great dystopian sci-fi novel. But there might not be much time left to write it!

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james's avatar

Aporia Substack with more on this from June 2023: https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/personalised-war

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james's avatar

Near-term, I think, it's more making sure internal political competitors aren't salting away brilliant relatives in otherwise innocuous positions in the bureaucracy. Having a DNA heads-up would be mighty handy. Plus identifying CCP families with hidden genetic disease predispositions that might affect their ability to take or maintain power. Think of what Lin Biao's lack of (perceived) health meant to the Mao dynasty and the history of China. It's all about "know your enemy." Perhaps better than they know themselves. First past the post has a huge advantage. I can't imagine someone very, very clever didn't work this out a decade or two back. Pace Dr. Hsu, who can't imagine that. Thx.

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