Periodic Brain Dump
My covid seems to be fading away, but my voice is still not podcast-worthy. So here are a few things to get you thinking/laughing/wondering:
You’ve gotta love this guy. Is there a job more prone to taking oneself too seriously than “geopolitical analyst?” He seems to be avoiding that pitfall.
So the assignment is to write a sketch that’s funny precisely because it’s incredibly unfunny:
What a fucking life this guy lived!
“KRIS KRISTOFFERSON IS CUT FROM A thicker, more intricate cloth than most celebrities today: Imagine if Brad Pitt had also written a Number One single for someone like Amy Winehouse, was considered among the finest songwriters of his generation, had been a Rhodes scholar, a U.S. Army Airborne Ranger, a boxer, a professional helicopter pilot — and was as politically outspoken as Sean Penn. That’s what a motherfuckin’ badass Kris Kristofferson was in 1979.”
I hope Chris eventually sees Zeihan for the grifter he is.
His recent video on Hezbollah and Lebanon have aged liked milk. He's seems like a covert state department shill.
https://www.reddit.com/r/LessCredibleDefence/comments/1426zs2/peter_zeihan_is_not_a_serious_intellectual/
Peter Zeihan is not a serious intellectual
Hope this post doesn't break any rules...
I don't think everything Peter Zeihan says is wrong, but I dismiss him as any sort of a serious geopolitical intellectual for the following reasons:
His main theory that he bases his career off of is that global trade and order will immediately break down once the United States stops protecting the world's oceans, as if other countries are too stupid/inept to work together to preserve their own prosperity and security...
… which is a silly scenario to even consider in the first place, because the greatest beneficiary of global trade won't suddenly stop protecting it when the cost-benefit analysis of doing so is strongly in America's favor and all-powerful American corporations would overwhelmingly oppose its breakdown.
He is deluded on the realistic extent of how far American domestic manufacturing can/should go. No matter how much in subsidies get thrown at related reshoring initiatives, (North) America will never again be able to completely meet its own demand for any of the following products in an economically viable way in the foreseeable future: merchant ships, steel, semiconductors, consumer electronics, clothing and textiles, rare earth metals, EV battery materials, most cheap plastic consumer goods, etc. American dependence on foreign goods has only GROWN since launching its trade disputes with the rest of the world several years back. Again, it is far easier for America and better for the American consumer to have the USN continue patrolling a few sea lanes than further exacerbate inflation and waste taxpayer money reshoring everything.
He moronically claims that the two main determinants of a country's future are geography and demographics, leading him to promote economic/social/political basket cases as the next regional hegemons, while claiming perfectly functional countries to be on verge of dramatic change if not outright collapse.
Speaking of collapse, here's some countries that he's been predicting the imminent collapse of for a long time: China, Russia, Canada. Much like the even more infamous idiot Gordon Chang, Zeihan is a strong proponent of the "China will collapse in 30 seconds" theory, having written articles on China's soon-to-come economic collapse at least as far back as 2010 and predicting it every year since. Do you guys think America's China policy will change for the better or worse if their politicians and military personnel are fed this nonsense?
He gets really basic facts and figures wrong all the time on his videos and presentations. These mistakes are usually not completely detrimental to his arguments, but they certainly make him look unprofessional.
There is a CCP/PRC apologist YouTuber named Nathan Rich who a while back made a few videos completely exposing a few presentations Zeihan gave on China. You can watch them for yourselves to see what kind of fraud Zeihan is (before I get accused of anything, I myself am not pro-CCP/China at all, but I'm mentioning this to show how Zeihan can be debunked by just about anyone who knows anything).
What do you guys think about Zeihan? I think some of his work (like his maps) are useful, and he is capable of making sense of a situation after its occurrence in an entertaining way, but I don't think he should be trusted at all to predict major trends.
https://youtu.be/BlQKdoWCfAg?feature=shared
Who is the quote about Kristoffersen from? Shit, if the only thing he ever did was write Sunday Morning Coming Down, he would still put most of the moderns to shame.