Rambling Reply to Ugo

 

Art Informel / Manuel Rivera/ Metamorfosis

I started out this morning drinking my coffee and reading Ugo’s piece.  I think that he is making things sound fancier than absolutely necessary, but I can’t say that I disagree with him anyway.   I think that what is being seen in the US is comparable with what is being seen in the EU.  I haven’t had time to drill down on other countries.

I also wonder how the size of societies will effect the process?  Rome was big, but looking at it perspective (see here the link below) it wasn't all that big. (BTW:  This Mapfight program is a hoot to play with.)

https://mapfight.xyz/map/roman.empire/#usc

The other two examples of Germany and Italy were small countries. (yes, they are small.  The old truism about Europeans thinking a hundred miles is a long way and Americans thinking a hundred years is a long time comes to mind here).  The dictators gained power over a small country and then tried to create an empire.  Augustus succeeded.  Hitler and Mussolini failed.  I feel that Augutus’ success had more to do with the novelty of the concept than the long term reproducibility of the experiment.  And really, the Roman Empire à la Augustus really didn’t have that long a run.  His successors had nothing like his skill set.

I agree with you that the memesphere has an oversized role in this.  I also think that serious ongoing efforts are being made to bring the memesphere under control by governments.  I wonder how the efforts of big tech to control the memesphere concerning the science behind covid are an effort to minimize the effect of non-sanctioned memes on the internet.

By the fact that the US is a physically large country, it will be physically difficult to exercise the needed level of control in a fine-toothed approach.  I find it interesting that large urban concentrations have much more homogeneity in thought than the lesser developed areas. 

 I suspect that this is a feature, not a bug.  The high-population blue coasts appear to be much further along the road to a pyramidal memesphere than the low population red states in “bumpkinland”.  I think that the efforts that have been made in the blue periphery have been pretty successful thus far for “Pyramid” guys.

I think that the efforts will redouble to bring the blue states under more complete control.  With their population base, they will then make the effort to bring the red states under control.  

But then there is the upcoming midterms…..that will be the battleground.