Apropos of...

The video of that media conference is going to be one of the most played historical pieces of our time. Trump and Vance have burnt themselves into the history books, and history is written by others. All the failures and themes are in that video. Now we just have to play them out.

Tradfi coder by day, hacker by night. Doesn’t know night from day. Freelance scribe. Dad cook. Dog butler.  Happy Grandpa. Draws badly.

Aviator, diver, Etherean, nexialist, PhD in aviation ∩ climate science | Host of /diving /ethfinance /eth-staker /geopolitics /science /singapore /thomas

That is a good point. Without manners we are nothing more than trousered apes.

One second-order consequence that worries me about this public, real-time breakdown of perennial rules and conventions is the trickling down to all of society.

When the leaders themselves stop leading by example, and act pettily, petulantly, and malignantly on full display, they normalize that behavior for everyone else. Their followers in particular will do the same out of pride and mimicry.

It will take a while for said behavior to seep into the rest of society, but I’m worried we’re headed for a much more selfish, transactional, utilitarian non-community of atomic interests, driven by a hostile zero-sum mindset.

Just at a time that planetary-scale problems (climate change, biodiversity collapse, resource scarcity, pandemics, jingoism and military expansionism, AI-driven jobs obsolescence, tech panopticons, trade wars, etc) require *more* global coordination than ever in human history.

Moloch in action. I feel very disheartened right now.