[Cause]

Now that I am older and have actually lived through some history I am re-examining a notion that I have long held. I have believed that while certain names in history may stand out, these characters of history are not the cause for momentous events but merely the wheel spinning as a result of a greater momentum in history. I am specifically thinking of Trump right now but history is full of many examples...

Was Alexander the Great so great? He wasnt a fool but he didnt single handedly defeat the persian empire and hellenize the world because he was wiser and stronger than mortal humans. His army was better trained, better armed and better led than the persian empires. It was a result of at least two generations of Macedonia and we could probably argue it goes back even much further.

MLK famously fought for and won civil rights but if he had been shot or never even been born, the civil rights movement would still have happened and still have been won. Maybe a year later, maybe even a year sooner. He is a famous figure but he was merely a conductor of a greater movement. He also of course had several contemporaries such as Malcom X and many more who all played their part. The millions of Americans who followed him, supported him and propelled him do not get Wikipedia pages but the movement was clearly more than one man.

Nelson Mandela was South Africas first black president after apartheid fell but he was just the ANCs lead candidate but not the only won.

If Winston Churchill had been assassinated during WW2 the war would have gone on and I find it hard to believe that Winston Churchill single handedly won the war for the allies. He was important in the way that any leader of the UK would have been important in his place. Similiarly if Hitler was killed, another Nazi would have taken over. However if Hitler was killed during WW1, the treaty that ended that war would still have planted the seeds for german discontent. Was the seed of WW2 already planted and Hitler just the most successful gardner or is he pivotal. Without him specifically would WW2 been a lesser event, without his obsession with Jews would the holocaust have been absent from events? Alternativly the rise of fashism seems to require an other to vilify so perhaps it was inevitable.

With Trump it seems different. The discontent with politics was there. There was room for an outsider to rise. There was room for the standard politics of the day to be upended by populism. The road to where we are has been paved for decades by repulbicans like Mitch McConnel and the federalist society judges. The overturning of Roe vs Wade was a milestone in their design. We are now in the present. Perhaps Trumo could be any populist celebrity. Elon Musk could perhaps be any rich republican donor of which there are many (surviving Koch Brother for an example). The strings pulled would be different, the agendas might be different but I could see a path that took us down only a slightly different reality. However Tarrifs seem to be a momentul change, huge in scope and altering the fabric of the world. It seems uniquelt Trump. He is its singular champion. He is bringing the Republican part along with him and not the other way round.

After the fall of the USSR it seems Russia was fertile soil for a dictatorship and oligarchy to rise. Perhaps it only looks that way with the target already struck and so anything else seems far fetched. Still if not Putin some other dictator seems likely. However Putins attack on Ukraine seems to be his desire. The purported aims of security, protecting russian language speakers etc all seem to ring hollow. It doesnt even seem Putin needed the war to distract the Russian people. He wanted to cement HIS legacy.

I am coming round to the idea that the influence individuals can have on the world is so much more than perhaps I first admitted. I feel like the greater momentum is still the most imprtant factor but maybe some people are able to direct it while others surf it.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

It seems a bit like chaos theory... many general overall directions may be determined beyond small perturbations of contingency, and many more primed, but a small contingent change in a condition (Trump rather than Kanye or whoever) could cause one of those primed possibilities to cascade on.... (And not only the contingent choice of leader as "initial condition" but---especially in Trump's case---ongoing chaos inside Trump's decaying brain, and the chaotic circles that influence its travesty...)

OTOH it's been argued that some sort of tax increase was practically all but necessary to finance the debt, and the only way Republicans would agree to tax increase would be by framing it as not a tax increase---or not a tax increase on the US. Thus tariffs. Which in reality have the advantage, for Republican politicians and their major donors, of being regressive taxes that shift more of the tax burden onto poor people.

Which chaotic fractal spirals the wheel goes down...

[the broken]

Elements of both. It's important not to be too deterministic, because then you just give up. A lot of people react to the rise of Trump like some kind of inevitable natural disaster and throw up their hands, but the victory was never inevitable. His opponents lost to someone who barely knows what they're doing at any given moment. How could the established opponents be so terrible at their jobs that they lost to him, where moderately competent opposition would not have?



Lots of other countries could have become oligarchies post USSR. But many of them didn't. No one stands alone, but that's not the same as no one can make a difference. No one 'singlehandedly won the war', because warsa re not won by single hands, but that doesn't mean the person in charge makes no difference at all.

[Tsundoku]

"If only" a few more of those in the USA could have been bothered to get out and vote Trump would have been a footnote in history.
They certainly have no excuse the second time round. While noone might have known how bad Trump 2.0 could be, the first time was enough of a clue. And Project 2025 was a great big blaring billboard.

In China, they could have simply gone on further establishing their power and being everyone's friend if Xi didn't want to push things early so he could cement his legacy as the great reunifier etc.
Conversely, he saw this was going to be the peak of Chinese power and is throwing the dice because with their population and economic woes, there may not be a better time for them. Especially after the disruption of Trump 1.0 and now the utter chaos of 2.0. Plus Putin and Ukraine.

This post has been edited by Tsundoku: Yesterday, 10:47 PM