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T. Greer Profile picture
T. Greer
@Scholars_Stage
• Director @CSTranslate • Essayist https://t.co/QAwli8kcMU • Long takes on 🇨🇳 politics, 🇺🇸 conservatism, ancient history • Old tweets on auto-delete!
Pradeep Gowda Profile picture Luca M. Sergio Profile picture Daniel O'Donnell Profile picture A. S. Profile picture Kabir Brar Profile picture 17 subscribed
Apr 14 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
William Ian Miller, writing about honor cultures and the practice of vengeance, notes in most premodern cultures the easiest way to steel oneself for vengeance was to “remember who you are.”


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Image Thus the advice that @KTmBoyle gives, though she might not realize it, is thousands of years old. It is the way of the ancestors.

I wrote more about that here: scholars-stage.org/vengeance-as-j…
Apr 7 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
Everyone is quote tweeting this with some version of "well obviously this guy like hentai." But it isn't that at all. Its the normal reaction of anyone who grew up Mormon and whose parents banned Ed, Ed, and Eddie. Whether Grain's parents *actually* banned EEE I don't know, but there is a deep-set revulsion to unwholesome shared by our entire culture.

The entire wojack/4chan asthetic apalls for the same reasons.
Apr 6 • 14 tweets • 5 min read
Theda Skopcal's DIMINISHED DEMOCRACY: FROM MEMBERSHIP TO MANAGEMENT IN AMERICAN CIVIC LIFE deals with this directly.

That book can eb bought here:

A few excerpts: amzn.to/3vP6WZF

Image The general theme: Image
Apr 2 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
I am skeptical that this will ever happen, under Balaji's rubric or otherwise.

But it is interesting to see reactions to this. This tweeter is clearly repelled enough by the notion that she believes merely reporting what Balaji said will be incriminating--without acknowledging that for many people this entire pitch is inspirational. Even more interesting is the object of her displeasure: replacement of "democratic" institutions with start-ups. Democratic institutions like... Harvard, "Wall Street," the Supreme Court, and the Federal Reserve.

Again, I have 0 confidence that they will be able to create a parallel institution to "Wall Street" and the Fed. But who thinks of these existing institutions as bastions of democracy?
Mar 19 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
This man’s experience applies beyond the white nationalist case: a whole host of reactionary contrarians will, if their project ever succeeds, discover that their edgy attitude and lifestyle is really only adapted for life in corrupt, hyper capitalist, liberal metropoles. This guy’s experience with dating, in particular, is a microcosm of an entire social set and its illusions.
Mar 17 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
The reasons why I do not believe the line “we would have done Iraq even without 9/11 because the neocons had it in for Iraq for a decade before 9/11 happened.” Maybe I should make a list of Bush admin officials. It would have three categories.

“Officials who believed that foreign affairs did not really matter.”

“Officials who believed that foreign affairs really mattered, but that Iraq was not the thing that mattered most.”

“Officials who believed that foreign affairs really mattered, and that Iraq mattered most.”

People like Wolfowitz were in category 3. But much more important people, like Rumsfeld or Rice, were in category 2. The most important figures in the early bush White House—Hughes, Rove, and the resident himself—were all in category 1.

9/11 eliminated category 1. And it shifted many people from category 2 to 3 as well.
Mar 15 • 15 tweets • 2 min read
Read this on the train today on @Iron_Man_Actual‘s recommendation. Image One of
@IskanderRehman
‘s more interesting features as an analyst is the case studies he most often draws on—in this case, the Punic Wars, Span and France’s Italian wars, the 100 Years War, and the 30 Years War.
Mar 5 • 36 tweets • 13 min read
What factor is most important to the rise or fall of a great power? According to one influential line of thought in Chinese security circles, the answer is clear: technology.

A 🧵on @CSTranslate's most recent translation: This translation is an excerpt from a 2021 book titled "National Security and the Rise and Fall of Great Powers." Image
Feb 20 • 33 tweets • 6 min read
One day I will write the essay about how almost all ideas of "western civilization," "great books," and "conservative tradition" from 1950 forward are down stream of secularized Jewish scholars who, for several centuries in Europe and several key decades in America, created these concepts to find a spiritual and cultural home. Explicitly rejecting their Jewish heritage, but in turn rejected from both the national (read: Germanic) traditions of Western Europe as well as from "Christendom," they turned instead to the idea of the "west" grounded in the worship of ancient Greece.

In the case that Lyman highlights, we have this idea that western democracy/egalitarianism/proto-liberalism are the children of "Athens and Jerusalem" instead of the Things, Hustingers, and Lawspeakers of the germanic tradition.

There are many other omissions that flow from the "western civ" narrative and its worship of the ancient Greek. 1 key thing to understand: the canon of texts we associate with terms like "great books" &"western canon" only coalesced between 1890&1930. Its general contours (ratio of Greek works to everything else; philosophy to poetry, etc) would not have been obvious to someone in 1860.
Feb 9 • 38 tweets • 11 min read
This is a rather fascinating excerpt from Wang Huning's book. In it he makes the argument that in the United States (and perhaps, by extension, any modern society), "Sometimes it is not man that masters technology, but technology that masters man."

A 🧵 Wang Huning is an important guy. He is the 4th man in the Politburo. He has served as the chief ideologue for three General Secretaries in a row. Many people have written about this.
Jan 15 • 16 tweets • 4 min read
“The situation on the Korean Peninsula is more dangerous than it has been at any time since early June 1950. That may sound overly dramatic, but we believe that, like his grandfather in 1950, Kim Jong Un has made a strategic decision to go to war.“ It is notable that the two analysts in question were something like doves, consistently arguing for many years that a diplomatic accommodation with the North was possible, and an earnestly sought goal of the Kim regime.
Jan 13 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
I do think Midwestern influence on American civilization is poorly understood.

In many ways though the region was less isolationist than simply… Germanophilic.
Image There is this idea that old school progressivism was puritan yankee agitation under a new form.

Another way to look at it, especially when you see which states pioneered it’s structures and priorities, is German political theory remade for American conditions.
Nov 24, 2023 • 22 tweets • 7 min read
I found this a disconcerting read.

These observations by Wang Huning were made in 1991, following a 1989 tour of the United States.

Here the most powerful intellectual celebrates America.... but in 2023 everything he celebrates abou the USA now seems more true of *China.* In many ways this translation pairs very well with @DouthatNYT's book, THE DECADENT SOCIETY

The thesis of Douthat's book is that the last thirty years have been a period of stasis and stagnation for the American life. Image
Nov 2, 2023 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
Is this true? Do we have data? Why is it true, if so? It certainly feels true for backpackers I met in Southeast Asia. Probably also study abroad students I met in Taiwan. There were always more girls than guys in my language classes there.
Oct 31, 2023 • 14 tweets • 5 min read
Can “senseless” violence make strategic sense? Are the sort of civilian massacres we saw on October 7th acts of irrational barbarity?

In @MosaicMagazine I attempt to answer this question. A 🧵

mosaicmagazine.com/response/israe… In the hours and days that followed these attacks, people across the internet asked: "How could they think this helps their cause?"

Oct 28, 2023 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
The entire debate over “are our state colleges falling apart now because business types hate the humanities/old degrees are longer marketable vs because the universities went too woke, eroding public trust” is wrong headed.

Both answers are right—and connected in a fairly obvious way. State universities have been undermined by rising costs of tuition, flattening value of college degree, administrative bloat, and so forth. It has always been a bubble—a bubble that almost popped c. 2013z
Oct 6, 2023 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
I wish the lesson people were taking from the Dykstra controversy was not “you shouldn’t write interesting books.”

I do wish we had a different definition of “interesting.” By far my greatest problem with historical writing on pre-PRC China in the west is the lack of prestige attached to *narrative history.*
Oct 1, 2023 • 26 tweets • 6 min read
Let’s play a game. I took a cross country road trip last week. Let’s look at some of the small towns that seem to aesthetically match the vision of the op.

This is Staunton, VA (pop 25,000).

Voted 53% D in last election.

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Image This is Durango, Colorado (20,000).

Only 38% of the county voted R last round—a number that would be smaller if it was just the city. Image
Aug 23, 2023 • 24 tweets • 6 min read
This is silly—fundamentally misunderstands how war works.

I normally take the historians side against the social scientists on all such questions, but this one of those rare times where the poli sci people have something important to contribute. A few decades ago there was this IR guy named James Fearon. Wrote this very famous essay called “Rationalist Explanations for War.” I do not look so kindly on the entire research program it spawned but the original article is a gem of brilliance.

web.stanford.edu/group/fearon-r…
Aug 22, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
A lot of people’s gut reaction to China’s economic problems is to count them out for the count.

I suppose one could have had very similar thoughts about America in 1932. Everybody is misunderstanding my point here.
Jul 19, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
My problem with this @avik piece (where he writes contra @michaelbd ) is that almost all of the things he cites to distinguish his manifesto from the natcon one... are not actually in his freecon manifesto nationalreview.com/2023/07/freedo… Why was this missing from the platform? "Freecons believe that a conservative movement must be built on winning elections, so on and so forth" Image