Dumb and Stupid Quotes Thread: Idiotic Source and Context are Key.

[Flying Pig]

"[T]he highly aggressive Bismarck was far from a reluctant war-maker. In power from 1862 to 1890 he engineered three short wars – they’re where the word “blitzkrieg” comes from – against Denmark (1863), Austria (1866) and France (1870) to turn Prussia into the Second Reich (1871-1918) – the first had been medieval – and fatally undermined Germany’s fragile liberal institutions at a critical stage of their evolution.

What Germans got instead was a militarised monarchical autocracy sustained by rampant nationalism and supported by intellectuals of all kinds – sociologist Max Weber later repented his enthusiasm – who should have known better. Parliament was marginalised, the parties manipulated against each other, and Bismarck threatened to resign whenever he was seriously challenged. It was outrageous and it ended in the ruins of Berlin of 1945."

- Michael White, "How has Bismarck escaped most of the blame for the first world war?", The Guardian

I'm glad Dachs isn't here, or he'd probably have an aneurysm seeing this in a national newspaper. As it is, I'll just be killing Owen, Ajidica and maybe Flying Pig.

The worst thing is that it's mostly true... I think it's a good candidate for the phrase 'not even wrong'.

 

[Kyriakos]

There is a nice Napoleon III (aka Napoleon le petit) put-down quote against Italy. But three years later he was put down himself, and afaik Garibaldi's (small) regiment was likely the only one in the Franco-Prussian war that routinely defeated the Prussians/Germans.

 

[Arakhor]

I think it's a good candidate for the phrase 'not even wrong'.

Well, unless you mean it's nonsensical pseudobabble, Wolfgang Pauli's famous phrase is (quite unintuitively) not correct.

 

[Flying Pig]

Bismarck was hardly shy of fighting or engineering wars (though to claim that he managed to engineer three is to give him too much credit). The Germans did get a militarised monarchical autocracy which did have the backing of various intellectuals and did use nationalism to hold itself up. By the time of the war the Kaiser had marginalised Parliament, and Bismarck was notorious for throwing tantrums and tearfully threatening to resign when he didn't get his way. However, all of that is almost totally irrelevant to the reasons why the First World War began. So there's not much in that which is quantifiably wrong, it's just that it's totally unsuited to the argument in which it's being used. Does that not qualify as a 'terminal logical fallacy'?

 

[Arakhor]

You may well be right. I'm never sure about that phrase anyway.

 

[Traitorfish]

I'd still quibble the characterisation of Germany as a militarist autocracy, with an enfeebled parliament, and representing the seeds of Nazism. Despite the high cultural status of the military in imperial Germany, it wasn't what we'd recognise as a militarist culture, and arguably less so than republican France; the government was dominated by the executive, but was in no meaningful sense "autocratic", certainly not when compared to Tsarist Russia; parliament may not have been the dominant institution it was in the UK (or, at least, as the British like to imagine), but the reichstag was hardly irrelevant, especially given its substantial fiscal powers, or Bismarck and his successors wouldn't have had to keep butting heads with it; and to characterise the regime as proto-Nazi is to totally ignore the strength of both civil society and the legal system in imperial Germany. It's a rehash of Fischerite historiography which is now regarded as largely obsolete- part of what's so galling is not simply that the argument is wrong, but that it's so wilfully ignorant of the last thirty years of scholarship- which in White's hands appears to have been hollowed of its legitimate if misguided scholarly basis and replaced with vintage 1910s Germanophobia. That part of the argument, relevant or not, is simply caricature.

 

[Tahuti]

I'd still quibble the characterisation of Germany as a militarist autocracy, with an enfeebled parliament, and representing the seeds of Nazism. Despite the high cultural status of the military in imperial Germany, it wasn't what we'd recognise as a militarist culture, and arguably less so than republican France; the government was dominated by the executive, but was in no meaningful sense "autocratic", certainly not when compared to Tsarist Russia; parliament may not have been the dominant institution it was in the UK (or, at least, as the British like to imagine), but the reichstag was hardly irrelevant, especially given its substantial fiscal powers, or Bismarck and his successors wouldn't have had to keep butting heads with it; and to characterise the regime as proto-Nazi is to totally ignore the strength of both civil society and the legal system in imperial Germany. It's a rehash of Fischerite historiography which is now regarded as largely obsolete- part of what's so galling is not simply that the argument is wrong, but that it's so wilfully ignorant of the last thirty years of scholarship- which in White's hands appears to have been hollowed of its legitimate if misguided scholarly basis and replaced with vintage 1910s Germanophobia. That part of the argument, relevant or not, is simply caricature.

So 19th century Germany is more like modern-day USA?

 

[Traitorfish]

Than a Pickelhaube'd DPRK? Hard to think of many modern societies that aren't.

 

[Bridog7]

You want trouble. Oh I want trouble all right, then you'll get trouble, yeah yeah I want trouble, yeah trouble it is..., yeah for you! - my fight against George h w bush.

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[Cutlass]

"The most important [project] in the history of humanity."
—

Chinese billionaire/impresario Wang Jing, on the Nicaragua Canal

 

[Tee Kay]

We in Thailand have a saying that hyperbole is the Chinese national art.

 

[Antilogic]

Is this a new Nicaragua Canal or the original site of the Panama Canal?

 

[classical_hero]

The Chinese want to build a separate canal from the Panama one, but it is vastly more difficult to build.

 

[bhsup]

Well that's just unacceptable that the Monroe Doctrine only applies to European countries

 

[Cutlass]

Is this a new Nicaragua Canal or the original site of the Panama Canal?

There's a plan to build a new canal, and in the process devastate Nicaragua's ecology. And somehow they see that as a major money making venture.

 

[Tee Kay]

Well from the point of view of people profiting from the canal, then yeah. Screw the country.

Profits are private, costs are socialised.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

"The most important [project] in the history of humanity."
—

Chinese billionaire/impresario Wang Jing, on the Nicaragua Canal

Actually, in the early 20th Century, and still today, the Nicaraguan canal option is less troublesome than the Panama option. Politically, at the time, the Panama option was easier.

A Marxist Colombian governmemt could make a good argument for re-integration of Panama into Colombia.

Well that's just unacceptable that the Monroe Doctrine only applies to European countries

The Chinese were the first American immigrants... Get over it.

 

[Traitorfish]

The Chinese were the first American immigrants...

Eh?

 

[Tee Kay]

Please don't mention Zheng He please don't mention Zheng He

 

[Antilogic]

"Columbus, da Gama, Magellan and Cook were later to make the same ‘discoveries’ but they all knew they were following in the footsteps of others, for they were carrying copies of the Chinese maps with them when they set off on their own journeys into the ‘unknown’."

~Gavin Menzies