Charlie Stross
I'd just like to remind Americans that France is currently on its Fifth Republic since 1789 (with three Empires—with monarchs—interleaved until 1870).
The USA appears to be in the dying days of its Second Republic (time out in 1860-65) but something better will emerge eventually, if we avoid planetary ecosystem collapse in the meantime.
This, too, shall pass.
Rich Felker
@cstross At human civilization scale, it might very well pass, or might not.
For many individual people, and even *peoples*, this very likely will not "pass".
Charlie Stross
@guenterhack I'm in the UK; I've been living under neoliberal regimes I voted against since 1979. 20+ years is lowballing it.
minidisco volante
@cstross But all the time lost to so many people. Guys like Orban, Erdogan or Putin stay for 20+ years.
Charlie Stross
@aka_quant_noir That's probably non-viable: nuclear weapons require maintenance every couple of years or they cease to be serviceable, and the supply chains are very exotic and centralized. Same goes for the delivery systems: an H-bomb is no use if you can't put it where you want it.
Our best precedent is the denuclearization of all but one of the Soviet successor states (Russia ended up with all the nukes).
Extinction Studies
Balkanization, with 3-4 nuclear armed regional superstates. Which isn't better, but maybe the most likely. Have you read Christopher Brown's novels? Could be something like that too.
Kid Mania
@wonka @cstross
It really is a big "if"--
"...if we avoid planetary ecosystem collapse in the meantime..."
😂
Under Trump -- of course -- all worries about climate, climate action or climate change are effectively dead. He's made it clear time and time again.
"...This, too, shall pass...."
As concerns climate, no, no it won't.
Charlie Stross
@clintruin @wonka Trump presides over a decaying superpower with about 5% of the planetary population and a declining share of GDP. He can ignore climate change but climate change won't ignore him. The rest of the world will hopefully learn from his mistakes.
Wilfried Klaebe
@cstross That's quite a big "if" this time.
Charlie Stross
@dany_57987 I don't expect to live long enough to see what comes after this round of fascism. (I'm 60 and not in great health.) So my hopes are for everyone else.
Dany
@cstross Love the optimism! Thank you, of course you are right. The other "smolk" clouding the outset is my own estimated lifespan. Hope to remain to see that future.
Charlie Stross
@clintruin @wonka Yes it WILL pass, in the same way that the end Cretaceous extinction event passed within only a few million years. Sucked to be a non-flying dinosaur, though.
Robert Link
@cstross Good perspective. Appreciated!
jwz
@cstross As a victim of an American education I know basically nothing about French history, so I learned that this *this year* after watching the recent (terrible, interminable) Napoleon movie. In the American version the whole French Revolution is just a footnote in the chapter where Jefferson invents Liberty. So on realizing that after all that fuss with the beheadings and whatnot it only lasted ten years, I had to pause the movie and go "wait, what?" on Wikipedia for a while.
jwz
@luis_in_brief Alas I cannot tolerate podcasts in any way. Having someone talking in my ear while I'm trying to do anything, including *nothing*, is kryptonite.
Podcast, (n): This audio book could have been a blog post.
Luis Villa
@jwz I don’t know if you’re a podcast person at all, but I do know you’re a nerd, so I wholeheartedly recommend the Revolutions podcast; doesn’t cover all five French Republics but does get into several of them. Maybe a good listen while you’re on a SOMA nature walk. https://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/revolutions_podcast/
your auntifa liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦
@jwz @luis_in_brief OMG YOU ARE MY PEOPLE! it feels good to know am not the only one.
Charlie Stross
@jwz Back atcha, a book rec: "Citizens" by Simon Schama, a very approachable single volume history of the French Revolution (including its causes).
gerikson
@jwz @cstross the Revolutions podcast had a long arc about the French Revolution, recommended if you have the time.
Mantel's A Place of Greater Safety is a great novel set there
David Andress' The Terror is good too
Susan Kaye Quinn 🌱(she/her)
@cstross I mean... that's kinda a big IF. I'm the furthest thing from a climate doomer but it's undeniable that Trump will burn a ton of carbon in the next four years, assuming it's not 12. We're gonna blow through limits without even slowing down (and all that green energy? I expect him to find a way to funnel money to FF companies for green energy while *also* finding ways to pump even more oil out of the ground. Or cancel tax credits entirely)
Charlie Stross
@susankayequinn I repeat: the USA is only one country. China has pivoted to renewables unbelievably hard. The EU is doing so slightly more slowly but faster than the USA has been. The UK shuttered its last coal-burning power station a few months ago. India is rolling out PV panels too. And so on.
By sticking to the fossil fuel economy Trump is consigning the USA to the history books—much as if the USA had eschewed gasoline and internal combustion in favour of steam locomotives in the 1950s.
Susan Kaye Quinn 🌱(she/her)
@cstross I suppose crashing the economy will reduce our carbon output (and our demand for goods from the rest of the world). I get that America isn't the only country on the planet, but we do burn a hell of a lot of carbon and that's about to skyrocket.
Charlie Stross
@Salty @aka_quant_noir AIUI Soviet nukes didn't have PAL codes, they just had a detachment of KGB guards ready to shoot anyone who tried to launch them without orders. However, by now the tritium in their pits would have decayed. Ukraine could *probably* manufacture more tritium (using their existing reactor fleet) but it's non-trivial.
Simply Simon
@cstross @aka_quant_noir And look where that got Ukraine... There may have been a case for them to have kept them and cracked the codes over a year or two to gain full control. OTOH it may not have made any difference and Russia might have still invaded anyway, or even invaded earlier specifically *because* Ukraine was keeping the nukes.
Kid Mania
@cstross @wonka
That word "hopefully" sure is doing a lot of heavy lifting these days, eh?
CrazyDogLadysezBreatheWithMe
@cstross @clintruin @wonka Our share of the population is not reflective of our share of carbon emissions, unfortunately.
Bob Thomson
@NatureMC @cstross to me it’s like many western democracies now; it has a system that does not reflect the multi party situation now, and also the participation of actors who give no fucks about accepted conventions of how things are done and thus demonstrate the need for more guardrails.
Bob Thomson
@cstross I think many of us in France think it’s time for the 6th Republic to spin up.
Petra van Cronenburg
@bobthomson70 This. I just wanted to say that Macron's "fabrication" of the new government against the results of the last elections is not the finest example for an intact democracy.
@cstross
stingraz
@slothrop @cstross I like to remember that the first two republics ended before their second parliamentary session, by being turned into dictatorships (or as they were called then, imperial monarchies) by their elected rulers. The first one to make it to a second electoral cycle was number three, and if we use that as a definition, France only successfully turned itself into a republic in 1874, after almost a century of intermittent civil and international wars.
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