Quote of the day

What’s amazing is this urge to take the slogans of the various parties, clans, mafias, banditti, liberation fronts, etc, and treat them as at least the first draft of “what they’re fighting for.”

People fight because they expect to win, or think they have at least a reasonable chance of winning. “Winning” can mean a lot of things, but presumably it involves an increased level of either money, power or both. Of course the leaders are elites – this is more or less a tautology.

World peace 101: if you want to stop people from fighting, make it clear to them that they won’t win.

I suppose the approach of actually listening to what people say is better than the “social justice” theory. But you have to realize that when you’re starting from a point of complete detachment from reality, a small improvement doesn’t do you much good.

…

‘Mencius’, from a comment here. Kasparov makes a related point in the youtube video I linked to earlier today: Don’t look into Putin’s eyes to figure out what he wants – look at his record.