Jack Peterson > Recent Status Updates

The more I read about this book, the more it appears to me that the war on terror is just a self-inflicted wound from the mismanagement of the Afghan-Soviet war in the 80s

We really should be more concerned about building these massive data centers that don’t provide any material improvements to Peoples lives in the real world. The small economic boost from constructing it does not outweigh the long-term destruction. It will cause whether that’s environmentally, economically or mentally via AI psychosis.

The book is interesting, giving perspectives about how authoritarian governments work in unison to create a normalization of their oppression. But once every couple of pages, the blatant CIA/American propaganda spills out, and it’s like, “ OK. This just comes off as super hypocritical.” I find the author’s analysis to be too ingrained with American exceptionalism and not enough with a non-Western perspective.

Seeing what all the hype was about. The author makes compelling argument about the change in politics from the early 1990s to our current state.

It’s interesting to look at the author’s analysis of January 6 after her previous chapters describing how countries fall into civil war. Taking a retrospective look, you could see that the signs were always there and that the COVID-19 pandemic was surely an acceleration point and that the Trump administration was helping spread the lies to keep power.

I always forget how much social media had to effect on revolutionary messaging throughout the 2010s before we learned about the atrocities of Lake Cambridge analytics and Mark Zuckerberg’s actions in Myanmar. The authors argument that social media now act as an accelerate I believe to be through as related to the post Covid world where many people got radicalized on social media about the vaccine.

The authors argue that when groups feel like they’re losing political power, becoming organized helps contribute to civil wars. It made me think about how individuals in the MAGA political movement felt like they were losing their political status due to the influx of more liberal voters, thus creating the foundation for the more extreme members that are arguing for civil war and the destruction of democracy.

Very interesting to see how the author uses the Yugoslavia Civil War as a way to point towards factionalism to be one of the leading sources of civil wars. Reflecting on the current American geopolitical situation and comparing it to Yugoslavia, there can be some parallels drawn between political factualism and extreme ism in those groups. found chapter 2 to be very interesting.

I forgot the before 2020 election a Michigan Militia tried to arrest the governor for treason because of the covid lockdowns. That got me hooked into the book, it will be interesting to understand argument’s on how civil wars start and relate that back to the Trump regime

The check always comes due, can only fake it so long

Feels like a prelude to Trump’s americs