The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Eighty One Up

[Surlethe]

For that matter, what does the rate of expansion of the (a) universe have to do with its age?

I mentioned the AGE of the universe. If the hell-universe is older, than it's radioactive atoms are older and more likely to have already decayed into stable isotopes.

Unless there's some source of radioisotopes that we don't know about. After all, by your line of reasoning, our universe is 13 billion years old; there shouldn't be any 235-U remaining (but there is!). You haven't thought this through.

The tone is getting increasingly hostile and repetition has set in. I will not answer any more.

You're so ignorant you don't realize how ignorant you are. Admit that you're incapable of phrasing a meaningful question, and perhaps we can get somewhere figuring out what you're trying to say, but don't start whining because people who know what they're talking about decide to (gently) question you.

[Edward Yee]

I saw no sources there on the description of North Korean SOF...

In general darksoul answered the question of "inspiring loyalty" better than I could have, for which I thank him. I would say though in the case of the USSR/Stalin you still have nostalgia for the (image at least of a) rise to military power (at least before the 80s) and industrialization, and Stalin being credited with these.

[Simon_Jester]

]So what does any of that have to do with "entropy being more powerful?"

I stated it clearly and succinctly - "do things in the bubble-verses decay faster or slower or at the same rate?" Faster decay = increased entropy = shorter half-lives for hell-atoms than for Earth-atoms.

How does faster radioactive decay imply increased entropy? I'm not seeing it; could you show me your math?

For that matter, what does the rate of expansion of the (a) universe have to do with its age?

I mentioned the AGE of the universe. If the hell-universe is older, than it's radioactive atoms are older and more likely to have already decayed into stable isotopes.

You inferred that because it is a contracting universe, the hell-universe should be older. I'm not seeing it, myself.

The tone is getting increasingly hostile and repetition has set in. I will not answer any more.

Look, I'm sorry, but I really don't understand what your reasoning is, OK? Could you please explain? I mean, I'm hearing words that I know rigorous definitions for, used in terms that don't fit together as far as I can tell. So what's the picture, the math? How does it all fit together?

---

Wait, THAT was his point? I guess I did miss that one on the grounds of it being completely removed from reality.
Nazi Germany lost a war,

And do you think that was a coincidence? That the Nazis just happened to fuck up their war effort, just happened to pick fights with every other industrial power on Earth? That this did not, on some level, reflect the fact that they were a fucked up and inefficient state, that there were deep underlying weaknesses behind that glittering facade of superheavy tanks and marching blocks of men in Stalhelms?

Soviet Union collapsed because Gorbachev pretty much dismantled it (though kinda unintentionally, but I digress)

And do you think that was a coincidence too? WHY did Gorbachev need to institute such massive changes, why did he need to shake up the system so greatly that it collapsed under the strain? Doesn't that suggest that there was, again, something fundamentally wrong that needed to be fixed?

and North Korea didn't advance far since the 50s, but it shows no more signs of internal collapse today than it did throughout most of its existence.

They've regressed. Their people are hungrier, their ability to maintain their own advanced military equipment has declined, they have invented nothing new for themselves. Compare them to South Korea, across the border, which was a poorer state back then, and is much richer now. North Korea is a failure. They're strong enough to keep Kim Jong Il in power, and strong enough that no one wants to take the trouble to overpower them militarily. That doesn't make them a success, or a credible threat to a well organized modern opponent.

---

I've heard that also (tv tropes) but if nothing else, In the Presence of My Enemies there is no great force truly pushing against it the way that the US pushed against the USSR.

Yes there was the Japanese Empire, but clearly there were noticeable differences....

It's interesting to wonder just how much US pressure mattered, directly in any case. I mean, yes it forced them to have an extensive military buildup, but Germany's positioning of itself as a military superpower might well have the same effect. Sooner or later, the system would probably fall apart.

[GrayAnderson]

To offer a thought on the "centralization vs. industrialization" point: A society can get away with a degree of imitative industrialization under a centralized system. An example here would be the USSR from the 1930s to the 1960s. What it can't do is build on that in any meaningful way, and in the longer term it will have trouble treading water (something that in the case of the Eastern Bloc was worsened by the costs of keeping up the Cold War) and keeping up with its competitors. A society that's content to remain at a reasonably stagnant level can make that work, but that's going to result in a net decline vs. one's competitors.

To this extent, 1984 has it about right: A small elite is living in conditions that are, frankly, not bad by most standards and which include access to private helicopters (if I recall correctly) and fine food. However, the wheels are coming off of everything else...a process which is only being stalled by the fact that the elites of the three superpowers in the world are in an effective cease fire. That said, you can see the decline in things as small as the chocolate ration being cut by ten grams (oh, I'm sorry, increased to a level that's ten grams below what it was before;)). The system is in a slow decline, held up by the fact that the Party was willing to lobotomize society to ensure that they remain in power.

Put another way, North Korea could probably stagger on a bit better if they were able to cut the military's share of GDP...or keep a lid on it in the first place. The "Army First" strategy blew up in their face, but of course it's a good question whether some variant thereof could've been avoided.

But there's also a good, democratic example of such a society available today: Japan. All of these societies we talk about are autocratic in a sense, but at the same time there is an elite involved. The ruler does not rule unless he has a "good old boys" club to work with, a group of advisers, assistants, and sycophants to manage the details that no human can keep up with. Japan, however, does have something of an oligarchy like this. One need only look into areas such as its computer industry (there have been some interesting articles on their video game industry's problems that bear looking into); in essence, however, the problem is that you have a well-entrenched oligarchy that has little reason to innovate and little incentive to do so lest they risk that which they have already (and on a personal level, these incentives exist too, down to employees being expected to carry out arcane rituals in and out of the office for the sake of the rituals). And what has happened? Some game franchises are on their fifteenth entry, banks keep lurching forward cutting big checks to their old clique friends, and the Japanese economy stumbles towards its 21st year of stagnation with absolutely no signs of change. No, Japan is not stagnating at the bottom of the heap, but it's still drifting, and drifting badly because large sectors of the economy are locked up for social reasons as much as anything.

[Edward Yee]

Thanks Simon_Jester for what I should have said regarding Nazi Germany. iidave, have you heard of The Big One?

Re: Japanese oligarchy in the video game industry -- according to a "Noonsa" on Something Awful who worked on localizing for Tecmo KOEI, that pretty much explains the Dynasty Warriors series. (Although, "Fist of the North Star Musou" was a nice change of pace... yet it too suffered from the "Musou" part.)

[GrayAnderson]

Thanks Simon_Jester for what I should have said regarding Nazi Germany. iidave, have you heard of The Big One?

Re: Japanese oligarchy in the video game industry -- according to a "Noonsa" on Something Awful who worked on localizing for Tecmo KOEI, that pretty much explains the Dynasty Warriors series. (Although, "Fist of the North Star Musou" was a nice change of pace... yet it too suffered from the "Musou" part.)

I think I read that one. There's another good one by J.J. McCullough that hit a similar note here: http://www.filibustercartoons.com/index ... #more-2135; I think I linked from it through three or four articles and also saw the one you're talking about. And I suspect there are other similar sources. But yeah...the problem is increasingly well-documented, and from what I gather it is more of a visible example of the issues in Japan than it is an isolated incident.

[iidave]

... do you think that was a coincidence? That the Nazis just happened to fuck up their war effort, just happened to pick fights with every other industrial power on Earth? That this did not, on some level, reflect the fact that they were a fucked up and inefficient state, that there were deep underlying weaknesses behind that glittering facade of superheavy tanks and marching blocks of men in Stalhelms?

Hitler's decision to attack Soviet Union was purely out of his hatred for communism. It was also a very stupid mistake we can all be thankful for. US declared war on Germany because Japan attacked it and Hitler was already allied with Japan (hoping for its help against Soviet Union). The point: Nazi Germany didn't collapse because of internal problems but because it got destroyed by an outside enemy.

WHY did Gorbachev need to institute such massive changes, why did he need to shake up the system so greatly that it collapsed under the strain? Doesn't that suggest that there was, again, something fundamentally wrong that needed to be fixed?

Gorbachev didn't NEED to institute reforms. Soviet Union could have kept running for another couple of decades, maybe centuries. It would be a backwards country, but it wouldn't collapse on its own. The point: Soviet Union didn't collapse because Stalin was a bad man, but because Gorbachev was a good one.

They've regressed. Their people are hungrier, their ability to maintain their own advanced military equipment has declined, they have invented nothing new for themselves. Compare them to South Korea, across the border, which was a poorer state back then, and is much richer now. North Korea is a failure. They're strong enough to keep Kim Jong Il in power, and strong enough that no one wants to take the trouble to overpower them militarily. That doesn't make them a success, or a credible threat to a well organized modern opponent.

North's economy was doing pretty good in the 1960s, but yes, since 1990 they're in the crapper. But a true autocratic regime isn't really bothered by something as insignificant as famine (look up how many Soviet Union had). And yes, they're not exactly successful, but that's more of a problem of their planned economy rather than concentration of political power (China is very much autocratic, yet has something resembling a free market and its economy seems to be doing rather well). The point: NK won't collapse due to internal factors as long as Kim-Jong-Il is in control of his own body functions.
BTW Hitler described the Soviet Union in a very similar manner ("a rotten building that will collapse as soon as you give the door a good kick" or something among those lines).

My original point: All of these countries fielded large WW2era armies, had/have special forces and were controlled by one individual so it shouldn't be too hard to replace Soviet/German with Demon, Stalin/Hitler with Satan, Zhukov/Rommel with Abigor etc...

iidave, have you heard of The Big One?

The Michael Moore movie?

I saw no sources there on the description of North Korean SOF...

If you don't like that link, pick another one http://lmgtfy.com/?q=north+korean+special+forces

[GrayAnderson]

No, The Big One is a novel by Stuart.

As to a point about that rotted house, I do feel compelled to remind all present of the flowers which the SS got showered with in parts of the Ukraine. The USSR was indeed something of a rotted house, at least in areas, but Hitler and the Nazis were too preoccupied with their racial objectives to take advantage of such. Not that this would necessarily turned the tide, but there are certainly places it couldn't have hurt their efforts and might well have made a rough war go even worse for Stalin.

Edit: Realistically, if WW2 wasn't lost for the Nazis by the time they invaded the USSR, that sealed the deal (and as noted above, they up the creek in the long term). That said, I don't think the Russians being nearly defeated and then the Nazis being laid low by US atomic bombs is out of the question. It changes the equation of the defeat, but doesn't do much else.

[darksoul]

My original point: All of these countries fielded large WW2era armies, had/have special forces and were controlled by one individual so it shouldn't be too hard to replace Soviet/German with Demon, Stalin/Hitler with Satan, Zhukov/Rommel with Abigor etc...

Actually, I believe the fielding of large armies was a must for both of them. Russia need to defend against germany, adn germany needed the army to continue building its momentum. As a shark in deep sea, Germany couldn't stop the conquests or it risked death (This bugs me. Is it true the myth about sharks not being able to stop?). The war machine powered and justified its society, thus being able to center everything around the army, and the militarization of the civilians. In the other hand, Russian army was very motivated, and large because of people at first, only after it gained technology. And its probably incidental, but both countries (and armies) were young at the time, so the strain in society was still showing, not drowing it completely. This is a guess, I haven't thought hard on this.

Now the keeping of the army in peacetime, in the other hand... well, the Cold War speaks for itself.
No data on North Korea, so I won't make a point. I would say though, in an unrelated note, that there is a survival strategy used both by insects and small countries: We can't prevent you from eating us, but we sure can make you feel ill when you do, if you don't pay attention to the pretty colors we flash before you. Namely, a small country need an army just strong enough to make the effort of defeating it not worthy. Cuba, North Korea, Viet Nam (the ultimate example for Americans) and basically any small country with a big enemy. Chechenia might qualify as well, I don't know...

[darksoul]

No, The Big One is a novel by Stuart.

As to a point about that rotted house, I do feel compelled to remind all present of the flowers which the SS got showered with in parts of the Ukraine. The USSR was indeed something of a rotted house, at least in areas, but Hitler and the Nazis were too preoccupied with their racial objectives to take advantage of such. Not that this would necessarily turned the tide, but there are certainly places it couldn't have hurt their efforts and might well have made a rough war go even worse for Stalin.

Edit: Realistically, if WW2 wasn't lost for the Nazis by the time they invaded the USSR, that sealed the deal (and as noted above, they up the creek in the long term). That said, I don't think the Russians being nearly defeated and then the Nazis being laid low by US atomic bombs is out of the question. It changes the equation of the defeat, but doesn't do much else.

The WW2 was not lost before the Nazis invaded Russia. They lost because they invaded Russia, although it has been postulated that the time was right and what went wrong was the planning and understimating of the russian capability of resistance and mobilization. Also, Germany was blinded by Hitler (in pretty much the way Satan was, actually) and that kept the bad choices coming until it was too late to fix and Germany was taken in the warm embrace of Americans and Russians artillery. Not fighting the United States, and focusing in Russia, or viceversa, could have been better although Russia would have attack preemptively on Polland or Finland. France was defeated, and Britain was pinned to the ground and unable to strike back on its own (although very able to repel an invasion with heavy losses). The decision was not a bad one, was a badly executed one, in my opinion. Again.

I mean, Germans had big issues back then... two world wars in a row? You gotta admire the spirit of that (sarcasm).

[xt828]

Hitler's decision to attack Soviet Union was purely out of his hatred for communism. It was also a very stupid mistake we can all be thankful for. US declared war on Germany because Japan attacked it and Hitler was already allied with Japan (hoping for its help against Soviet Union). The point: Nazi Germany didn't collapse because of internal problems but because it got destroyed by an outside enemy.

I think you'll find that it was actually Hitler who declared war on the USA, not the other way around. Germany and Japan were at best co-belligerent, rather than allied. Take a look at things like the development of the technological side of the Luftwaffe, or the running of the wartime economy prior to Speer's takeover, or any of the other endless pointless shitfights the Nazi regime felt it important to indulge in while at war with virtually everyone in the world, and tell me again that they're an efficient regime. They lost because they didn't understand the implications of their short-sighted actions, because they continually undermined their own efforts due to infighting and idiocy, and because there was no mechanism for reviewing decisions made at the highest levels other than attempting a coup, while the high-up felt a need to meddle in the decisionmaking process of their subordinates. If the Nazi regime had been even as sane as Stalin's, the war could have been much more drawn out and nasty.

Gorbachev didn't NEED to institute reforms. Soviet Union could have kept running for another couple of decades, maybe centuries. It would be a backwards country, but it wouldn't collapse on its own. The point: Soviet Union didn't collapse because Stalin was a bad man, but because Gorbachev was a good one.

Gobachev instituted regimes because he thought it might be a good idea for the government to know what state the country it ruled was in. Brezhnev was happier hearing comforting lies. One of the reasons that the reforms met with such a bad reaction was the the situation really was that bad, and the action needed to put the country on a stable footing again so drastic, that after so many years of being lied to and told that their country was in good nick the people didn't understand. Saying that Gorbachev didn't NEED to institute reforms is like saying that the ALP didn't NEED a new leader - they didn't, but without change it was only going to get worse. Your last point their is a strawman, in any case - the USSR's collapse cannot be laid at the feet of any one man, but if we're going to assign blame to regimes it would have to be Brezhnev who turned to stagnation as a way of concreting his control.

[GrayAnderson]

Gorbachev didn't NEED to institute reforms. Soviet Union could have kept running for another couple of decades, maybe centuries. It would be a backwards country, but it wouldn't collapse on its own. The point: Soviet Union didn't collapse because Stalin was a bad man, but because Gorbachev was a good one.

Gobachev instituted regimes because he thought it might be a good idea for the government to know what state the country it ruled was in. Brezhnev was happier hearing comforting lies. One of the reasons that the reforms met with such a bad reaction was the the situation really was that bad, and the action needed to put the country on a stable footing again so drastic, that after so many years of being lied to and told that their country was in good nick the people didn't understand. Saying that Gorbachev didn't NEED to institute reforms is like saying that the ALP didn't NEED a new leader - they didn't, but without change it was only going to get worse. Your last point their is a strawman, in any case - the USSR's collapse cannot be laid at the feet of any one man, but if we're going to assign blame to regimes it would have to be Brezhnev who turned to stagnation as a way of concreting his control.

There's an old joke that Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev are on a train. The train comes to a stop in the middle of nowhere. Stalin has the engineer shot, and turns to the engineer's deputy, tells him that he's in charge, and demands that the train be started again. The deputy complies, and the train moves for a while...but it stops again. At this point, Khrushchev storms up front and fires the (new) engineer, and puts his deputy in charge, demanding that the train be started again. Again, the new engineer complies, and the train starts again. Finally, the train stops and Stalin and Khrushchev turn to Brezhnev, who sits back, smiles, and closes his eyes. "Can't we just pretend the train is moving?"

[Saint_007]

This argument seems to have drifted off-topic. The whole basis of the argument of North Korea, the USSR, and Nazi Germany being stagnant and inefficient comes from the concept that Hell, under Satan's regime, could not be expected to possess and maintain a large enough arsenal of WW2 weaponry and industry to take on the HEA. The development of the infrastructure necessary to reach such a level of technology requires a certain amount of free-thinking, unfettered scientific discourse and research methodology, which in a dictatorship are severely limited or non-existent due to the attempts of the regime to limit any dangerous lines of thought. Even regimes that have historically been technologically advanced - or apparently so - for its time suffered critical flaws, which developed in critical fault lines when problems compounded. Nazi Germany may have been winning the war until it charged the Russian border, but it suffered from deep-rooted flaws in the system that were blown wide open when it did that mistake. Gorbachev's reforms may have revealed the massive corruption inside the Soviet Union, but as was pointed out before, the Soviet government had become too stagnant, too full of rust and dust to adapt. North Korea, as I and several others have said before, is a failed state, propped only by international welfare handouts simply because nobody wants some nutcase firing off the nukes and guns in a last act of desperation.

1984 only worked as model because (a) the people were united through fear and hatred, both from external enemies and from each other, (b) everyone else was using the same model, and (c) the government was a monolithic oligarchy rather than a system of government with any single important target to take out in a coup. There was no impetus to adapt, no reason to do so, a government solid enough to survive any coup attempt, and an omnipotent, omnipresent police state. Plus George Orwell was deeply sick (in the physical sense of the word) at the time and afflicted with a serious case of depression, which caused him to reject a happy ending (which ironically made 1984 all the more powerful as a piece of literature).

In each of the historic cases, each nation came along more-or-less fine until they hit a major crisis. Nazi Germany's rigid system and lack of foresight caused it to waste too much energy and resources in Aktion T4 and the Holocaust, frittering away its industry in wasteful and ultimately futile wunderwaffen, and as such was unable to cope with the problem of fighting a long-term war because it invaded Russia. Had they not invaded the Soviet Union, they would have lasted a while longer - until they hit a wall anyways. As for the USSR; imagine what would have happened had the Chernobyl nuclear reactor meltdown occurred in Brezhenev's time? Furthermore, their constant famines and agricultural failures kept coming back like a bad case of tuberculosis because of Lysenkoism, purely because it suited the government's ideology better than the (in hindsight) much more effective science of genetics (which was actually suppressed in Russia for a long time). North Korea is still up and running, but I'm pretty sure it has yet to face a serious crisis; at which point, it'll break at the seams.

Russia, for its part, was run by an oligarchy rather than power in a single leader, but it's not there anymore, as they say.

Now take the counter-example; the USA. The Americans hit a rough patch with the Vietnam war. The Americans didn't lose the land battles, and had in fact had won almost every one. What had happened is that public perception went south very quickly due to the fact that North Vietnam wasn't any closer to giving up at the time of the Tet Offensive than it was when the war started. People almost rioted, everyone screamed for the war to stop; and the PotUS complied. American troops withdrew from Vietnam, the USA gradually left South Vietnam to its fate, and that was that. American society came out of it with some serious social scars and stigmas, Johnson and Nixon effectively had their careers (directly or indirectly) destroyed by the war (and dragged the Presidency's credibility down with them), but that's about it. The American system was balanced and stable, and Uncle Sam managed to walk away to fight another day. Crisis handled and averted, because the system was solid enough and adaptive enough to take the tremors.

Satan's regime, even if artificially propped with WW2 level weaponry and technology, is a medieval one by definition. He needs an enemy to take the heat and attention off of him. He either has Heaven (who are strong enough to punch back), Earth (which is off-limits until the events of Armageddon), or Hell's citizenry. He picks the third option, making Hell's nobility fight each other to neutralize the threat to himself. He rules by fear and absolute power, shares power with no-one, and any line of thought that could make anyone even remotely critical of his policies is stifled with extreme prejudice. He's not the USSR. He's not even Nazi Germany. He's a ****ing African warlord afraid his own men might try to take his throne from him. And we're well aware of how the track record for that kind of dictator is.

Stagnancy is inevitable, both in Heaven and Hell.

EDIT: And as for that joke about the Russians and the train, the version I heard was that Brezhenev closed the blinds.

Of course, the joke became a tragedy when Gorbachev opened the blinds and found the windows had cracked and the train rusted.

[GrayAnderson]

<snip>

Satan's regime, even if artificially propped with WW2 level weaponry and technology, is a medieval one by definition. He needs an enemy to take the heat and attention off of him. He either has Heaven (who are strong enough to punch back), Earth (which is off-limits until the events of Armageddon), or Hell's citizenry. He picks the third option, making Hell's nobility fight each other to neutralize the threat to himself. He rules by fear and absolute power, shares power with no-one, and any line of thought that could make anyone even remotely critical of his policies is stifled with extreme prejudice. He's not the USSR. He's not even Nazi Germany. He's a ****ing African warlord afraid his own men might try to take his throne from him. And we're well aware of how the track record for that kind of dictator is.

Stagnancy is inevitable, both in Heaven and Hell.

EDIT: And as for that joke about the Russians and the train, the version I heard was that Brezhenev closed the blinds.

Of course, the joke became a tragedy when Gorbachev opened the blinds and found the windows had cracked and the train rusted.

Now there is an interesting point that comes up. Let's assume that Satan has the sense to bring a couple of mid-rank weapons engineers on board. Let's assume that he arranges for a run of some guns. I'll go with the M1 carbine or a slight variation thereof. He stockpiles the weapons and doesn't let anyone outside of a personal guard of sorts train with them, and he only does this because if history is any guide he knows that Earth will be tossed to him at some point, and he wants to be prepared. So he has a run of these made, and also throws out a run of Tommy Guns while he's at it (not likely modifying the size of the bullets lest they be too effective against other demons), and stockpiles these from the 1990s into the 2000s. Even if he gets a fifteen-year run, the stockpile can only get so large, and the ammo will always be an issue.

This happens. The demons go marching forward, a decent number armed with guns (as many as he dares let be so armed). They storm out, they hit the US Army, and they even overrun Hit and a couple of other places. It's a bloody mess.

And then they run out of ammo, much like the Russians did in WWI (which is probably an advantageous comparison for the demons, but it's not too far off the mark here, I suspect...society was notionally non-feudal, but it was mostly rearranged deckchairs and had only transitioned on paper fifty years sooner; China trying to face down the Japanese during the 30s wasn't much better off). My guess is that they have enough ammo for a few weeks of fighting at most, but there simply isn't going to be the underlying infrastructure...especially if the demons use anything with a rapid rate of fire. Knowing what we know about their command structure, "conservation of ammunition" isn't going to strike them. Even assuming they have a vague idea that they're up against an enemy that might try fighting back for a day or two, the likely assumption will be "We'll shred them here in a day or two...oh, they may put up a fight elsewhere for a day or two, but we'll mostly run over everything quickly enough...a few dolts always put up a futile resistance, after all, and they do make such a good appetizer before we return to munch on them again as our entree..." and so on.

The point being that even if they bother to get the toys together, they won't have the means to support those toys for more than a few weeks at most before the whole operation runs out of gas and the demons are stuck using fancy clubs to swing at the enemy. And of course, none of this even gets into them likely learning the same lesson that Saddam learned in 1991, when he deployed a large army with a lot of shiny toys in Kuwait...and got his army torn to pieces in four days for his trouble. It might take us a while to get all of the armaments together to pull that (though we might well just use a tactical nuke or two on the invading army in a crunch and mop up the rest later), but the conclusion is the same...just with a bit more trouble in the process.

Edit: Slipped in some elaboration

[Stuart]

Then I can onl;y assume you are trolling or are completely illiterate. I took each of the three cases you used and showed that they fit perfectly into the parameter I described. Therefore the argument you attempted to make stands refuted. If you have an actual argument to make, make it. Otherwise concede the point.

You: Baldricks couldn't have modern industry or military because Satan wouldn't be able to maintain absolute power.
Me: These 3 countries had industry, military and leaders with pretty-much-absolute power including power to have any one of their underlings killed.
You: ...history of the Soviet Union...Germany was already far behind...North Korea is drifting rapidly backwards...
Me: That has nothing to do with my point
You: Youz trollin'
Me: <facepalm>
I believe we're done here

Grow up.

Nazi Germany lost a war,

And if you take the trouble to read a few military histories, you will find that the denial of initiative lower down the scale was the key factor behind them losing that war. Try Ericsson's "The Road To Stalingrad" and "The Road To Berlin" for the dire effects that Hitler's decision to deny initiative to his sub-commander's caused (the famous fuhrerbefehl). Nazi Germany is a perfect example of a country that stagnated due to lack of initiative in its governmental system as a whole and losta war due to lack of said initiative in its armed forces. A secondary factor, that Hitler kept his admnistration divided up into cliques constantly plotting against each other, absorbed what little initiative or originality was left.

Soviet Union collapsed because Gorbachev pretty much dismantled it (though kinda unintentionally, but I digress)

No, you don't digress. You completely misunderstand what was happening and why. The final collapse of communism in the late 1980s wasn't an isolated phenomom, it was the culmination of a trend that had been in place for the better part of a century and would continue on afterwards. That trend is a perfect example of a socity slowly devolving power downwards as its technological sophistication advanced. Thus, the Soviet Union was a successful society in those terms while Nazi Germany was not. A key date for you. November 1942. That was when the Russian marshals went to Stalin and told him he could either have rigid central control and lose the war or allow them operational freedom (ie use their initiative) and win it. He chose the latter. Contrast; Nazi Germany denied inititiave, stagnated and was destroyed; Soviet Russia allowed initiative and survived.

North Korea didn't advance far since the 50s, but it shows no more signs of internal collapse today than it did throughout most of its existence.

You need to do some research; your lack of basic understanding of what is happening in the world is positively painful. FYI, North Korea has major famine problems, has a completely collapsed economy, major internal unrest and a rapidly decaying industrial infrastructure. It has regressed to the point of being ruled by a hereditary absolute monarchy in all but name. It's already back to pre-renaissance conditions. It's a perfect example of a state that is regressing to a condition that matches the preferred governmental system.

BTW in today's Russia real power is still concentrated in the hands of one man (Putin), although he is nowhere near as powerful as Stalin was. And industrialization could bring major changes to Baldrick society, but that doesn't mean is wouldn't be able to remain a very strict autocratic dictatorship even during peacetime (like Franco's Spain).

Complete misunderstanding - again - of the current condition in Russia. While Putin has concentrated much power in his own hands, the key factor is that he allows a very high level of initiative to people lower down the chain. Under Franco, Spain was stagnant and a backwater. Their air force flew Me-109s until the early 1960s and was still flying He-111s as late as 1970. It's a perfect example of the effects denial of initiative has on a society.

Its political leadership died, its armies were destroyed and its cities turned to ruins. That happened because it lost the war against pretty-much-the-rest-of-the-world.

And why was it so defeated? And why was it fighting the rest of the world? Those are symptoms of the problem, not excuses.

Again: no closer to internally caused collapse today than it was throughout most of its existence.

Wrong; as any reading of political analysis will tell you. To give you one easily-available source, go to Stratfor. Your lack of awareness is positively painful. And, by the way, "Special Forces" has a specific meaning. The North Korean so-called special forces don't qualify. They're a closer parallel to the Nazi SS than to special forces as the rest of the world understands them.

Hitler's decision to attack Soviet Union was purely out of his hatred for communism. It was also a very stupid mistake we can all be thankful for. US declared war on Germany because Japan attacked it and Hitler was already allied with Japan (hoping for its help against Soviet Union). The point: Nazi Germany didn't collapse because of internal problems but because it got destroyed by an outside enemy.

No, the United States did not declare war on Germany; Germany declared war on the United States for no very good reason. And the point is that Germany got destroyed by an outside enemy precisely because of its own internal problems.

Gorbachev didn't NEED to institute reforms. Soviet Union could have kept running for another couple of decades, maybe centuries. It would be a backwards country, but it wouldn't collapse on its own. The point: Soviet Union didn't collapse because Stalin was a bad man, but because Gorbachev was a good one.

Once again, you display complete ignorance of what was going on. The fall of teh USSR was part of a long-running process than had been in progress for a century or more. It's not relevent whether Stalin or Gorbachev were good or bad men. The point is that the USSR was stagnant from the late 1950s onwards and it was the collapse of the USSR and the resulting downward delegation of power that jerked it out of that stagnation (just as the 1917 revolution jerked the country out of the stagnation caused by the Tsars.)

North's economy was doing pretty good in the 1960s, but yes, since 1990 they're in the crapper. But a true autocratic regime isn't really bothered by something as insignificant as famine (look up how many Soviet Union had). And yes, they're not exactly successful, but that's more of a problem of their planned economy rather than concentration of political power (China is very much autocratic, yet has something resembling a free market and its economy seems to be doing rather well). The point: NK won't collapse due to internal factors as long as Kim-Jong-Il is in control of his own body functions.

That's absurdly inaccurate on all counts. North Korea's economy was not doing well in the 1960s, it did very well at concealing how badly it was doing. The planned economy is a direct outgrowth of the concentration of political power. China only started to do well once it abandoned its centrally-planned economy and devolved power downwards. North Korea is in constant danger of an internal explosion and is only held together by manufactured tension with teh rest of teh world. Kim Jong-Il has already lost control of most of his body functions as a result of a serious stroke suffered last year.

My original point: All of these countries fielded large WW2era armies, had/have special forces and were controlled by one individual so it shouldn't be too hard to replace Soviet/German with Demon, Stalin/Hitler with Satan, Zhukov/Rommel with Abigor etc.

Your "original point" is utterly misguided and not relevent to the point under discussion. The key factor is whether they were able to use and employ those forces and to keep them competitive with the opposition. As I have shown you, the USSR did by allowing a level of downward devolution of authority that Satan would never accept. Nazi Germany did not and was destroyed. North Korea does not and is imploding as a state.

[Simon_Jester]

In each of the historic cases, each nation came along more-or-less fine until they hit a major crisis.

YES. This. There are a lot of forms of government that work well until something bad happens- a well designed government is one that can ride out a crisis effectively.

Satan's regime, even if artificially propped with WW2 level weaponry and technology, is a medieval one by definition. He needs an enemy to take the heat and attention off of him. He either has Heaven (who are strong enough to punch back), Earth (which is off-limits until the events of Armageddon), or Hell's citizenry. He picks the third option, making Hell's nobility fight each other to neutralize the threat to himself. He rules by fear and absolute power, shares power with no-one, and any line of thought that could make anyone even remotely critical of his policies is stifled with extreme prejudice. He's not the USSR. He's not even Nazi Germany. He's a ****ing African warlord afraid his own men might try to take his throne from him. And we're well aware of how the track record for that kind of dictator is.

Good analogy. You can make a case for a lot of Third World dictators today using this strategy to govern their countries. And 500 or 1000 years ago, no one would have found that remarkable- that was how all but the greatest rulers remained in power. The Greats were savvy enough to unite their countries against a single enemy, and accomplished amazing things... by the standard of the period, bearing in mind that most of their opposition consisted of "divide and rule" warlords.

But today, "divide and rule" warlordism is a sad joke compared to modern forms of government. It works for a while, in that the ruler remains in power for as much as a few decades... but it's not even slightly long-lived.

The WW2 was not lost before the Nazis invaded Russia. They lost because they invaded Russia, although it has been postulated that the time was right and what went wrong was the planning and understimating of the russian capability of resistance and mobilization. Also, Germany was blinded by Hitler (in pretty much the way Satan was, actually) and that kept the bad choices coming until it was too late to fix and Germany was taken in the warm embrace of Americans and Russians artillery. Not fighting the United States, and focusing in Russia, or viceversa, could have been better although Russia would have attack preemptively on Polland or Finland. France was defeated, and Britain was pinned to the ground and unable to strike back on its own (although very able to repel an invasion with heavy losses). The decision was not a bad one, was a badly executed one, in my opinion. Again.

I mean, Germans had big issues back then... two world wars in a row? You gotta admire the spirit of that (sarcasm).

I think it's questionable whether the Germans could choose to avoid a fight with the US in the long run. To win, they would have needed to avoid wars with both the US (which could hit them with a devastating nuclear attack long before they could put the US out of action) and Russia (which could defeat them on the ground, as no other European power had managed to do). Fighting either was probably going to be fatal for them; it was only a question of time.

And that would, realistically, require cooperation on the part of Roosevelt and Stalin. The Americans would have to stay head-in-sand isolationist, which would be idiotic for them; the Russians would have to be stupid enough to let a rabid anticommunist regime cement control over all of Europe. I know quite well that they had no plans to attack Germany in 1941, but I'm not sure there's any guarantee that they wouldn't have tried in 1943 or later...

... do you think that was a coincidence? That the Nazis just happened to fuck up their war effort, just happened to pick fights with every other industrial power on Earth? That this did not, on some level, reflect the fact that they were a fucked up and inefficient state, that there were deep underlying weaknesses behind that glittering facade of superheavy tanks and marching blocks of men in Stalhelms?

Hitler's decision to attack Soviet Union was purely out of his hatred for communism. It was also a very stupid mistake we can all be thankful for. US declared war on Germany because Japan attacked it and Hitler was already allied with Japan (hoping for its help against Soviet Union). The point: Nazi Germany didn't collapse because of internal problems but because it got destroyed by an outside enemy.

Dave, You can't disconnect internal and external problems; they interact with each other. Most states that get kicked to pieces by an outside force have internal weaknesses that made them easier to kick apart, and that the outsiders were clever enough to exploit.

In the case of Nazi Germany, the decision to invade Russia was integral to the nature of Naziism. It is almost impossible to imagine a system as belligerent and anti-communist as the Nazis not invading the USSR. They didn't invade Russia because of bad luck; they invaded it because they were actually fucked up to the point of thinking it was a good idea. Most of their other bad decisions are in the same vein- mistakes made, often mistakes by one individual (Hitler). And aren't bad decisions made by one individual a good argument for not giving all power to that individual, and a good argument for rule by that individual not being stable in the long run?

WHY did Gorbachev need to institute such massive changes, why did he need to shake up the system so greatly that it collapsed under the strain? Doesn't that suggest that there was, again, something fundamentally wrong that needed to be fixed?

Gorbachev didn't NEED to institute reforms. Soviet Union could have kept running for another couple of decades, maybe centuries. It would be a backwards country, but it wouldn't collapse on its own.

Can you support this? And what does "on its own" mean? There are always individual people making decisions involved in the collapse of any state. Does this mean that the state did not collapse "on its own" because in principle those individuals could have chosen differently? I disagree with that. Individuals may be able to alter the flow of events, but they can't stop the tide. If there is something fundamentally wrong with the way the state operates, sooner or later someone will either change the system or be brought down by the flaws in the system.

North's economy was doing pretty good in the 1960s, but yes, since 1990 they're in the crapper. But a true autocratic regime isn't really bothered by something as insignificant as famine (look up how many Soviet Union had)...

Yes, it is. The extent of the bother may be hidden to someone who skims the history books with a myopic eye, but it's there. Famines make it very difficult, if not impossible, for the nation to do anything but scramble to feed itself. Thus, we have North Korea's army, equipped with 1950s-era weapons... and not enough food to support the troops for more than a few days as they march across the border. Armies and secret police have to eat too, and there's a limit on how much food you can confiscate from starving peasants without gutting your own country.

Look at it this way. Yes, many autocratic regimes have survived famines caused by mismanagement. How many of them have gotten anything done during a famine, other than staying in power?

And yes, they're not exactly successful, but that's more of a problem of their planned economy rather than concentration of political power (China is very much autocratic, yet has something resembling a free market and its economy seems to be doing rather well).

Planned economies are concentrations of power. Economic power is a form of power, and in a planned economy all that power belongs to the government.

BTW Hitler described the Soviet Union in a very similar manner ("a rotten building that will collapse as soon as you give the door a good kick" or something among those lines).

And that makes me wrong how? We can point to ways in which the North Korean economy is hollow and fragile; could Hitler factually do the same?

[thegreatpl]

Ok, i have just been skimming through this argument mostly. I personally am on the side that Satan and Hell would not be able to support a WW2 level of technology. Not for long at least. Satan wanted the status quo, and anything that changed that would be wrong. Now, he could have gotten some small industry running, under his almost direct command, but that would be it, and it would not be enough.

What i have been thinking is, could Heaven support a WW2 technology? I think the answer is yes. sort of. If the society was geared right, then Yahweh could inspire some technological development. Not as much as we are used to. In fact, i would say it's technological advancement would be at a snails pace compared to ours, and i dont think it could have been done in the last few millennia, but if Yahweh had engineered the society of Heaven into a "For the Betterment of All" mindset, then i think he could have had some progress.

I doubt there would be any industrialization per see in Heaven, but you would have kitchen table industries. It would be manpower intensive, and expensive, compared to humans, but it is possible. Plus i do not think it could have saved them in the long run, but probably enough to give humans problems.

Such a society would be extremely class based. This person is of the Farmer class, this person is of the Internal Combustion engine class, this person is of the Bullet makers class. Or something like that.

Ancient Greece could have easily become extremely industrialized, i think i have read somewhere, except they are just too scattered.

The problem i see with this though, is actually Yahweh himself: He is just too stupid. If he was able to build and form a society with everyone working towards him, then he would be smart enough to keep more of an eye on humanity, and thus the entire war would have never arisen. Indeed, hell would not exist as He would have invaded at the first chance he could get, since Satan certainly is not going to be able to match the weapons in the quantities Heaven can build them. Or in the technological advancement. If he tried, it would end up just like explained above.

I can actually see Heaven invading hell with Napoleonic era armies and trashing the demons, with a few select demons with guns trying to hold them off.

[CSJM]

I think that it's not a question of whether or not Satan would allow others to have initiative, it's a question of how the hell would he be able to keep his seat of power if he were in command of tank armies in a nation thoroughly set on Chronic Backstabbing Disorder. I kinda thought the sole reason he keeps in power is through the simple fact that he's way too strong to be taken down with the available technology. Others fear him, and submit to him because of that. If his generals had even WW2-era tanks and machinery at his disposal, a rather universally feared (and probably hated) figure like him would quickly find himself on the receiving end of some heavy artillery.

[Simon_Jester]

I think that it's not a question of whether or not Satan would allow others to have initiative, it's a question of how the hell would he be able to keep his seat of power if he were in command of tank armies in a nation thoroughly set on Chronic Backstabbing Disorder.

Those are two very closely related problems, though.

Satan was incredibly strong and tough, but not invulnerable; a determined enough alliance of demon lords could have taken him down. What kept Satan in power all those millenia was his ability to prevent any credible threat to his rule from gaining any power, and to play off threats against each other until they ceased to be threats.

Think about it. Of all the demon lords, who's the one who's innovating the most? Belial. The weak one, the one with a small power base far from the center of demonic civilization. He's no direct political threat to Satan, so it's safe to 'let him play with his toys.' He can have initiative because he's too weak to pose a problem.

Whereas if Belial were stronger, he'd draw a reaction like "Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look; he thinks too much; such men are dangerous." Even if he wasn't working on any kind of technology that would actually make it much easier for the demon lords to kill Satan, he'd still be a threat simply by virtue of having a new power base not easily taken away from him and granted to his rivals.

[darksoul]

In each of the historic cases, each nation came along more-or-less fine until they hit a major crisis.

YES. This. There are a lot of forms of government that work well until something bad happens- a well designed government is one that can ride out a crisis effectively.

Agreed. External (or internal, for that matter) stimuli is always necessary to change any regime or government. We could call this the Fist Law of Polidynamics

[qoute]

The WW2 was not lost before the Nazis invaded Russia. They lost because they invaded Russia, although it has been postulated that the time was right and what went wrong was the planning and understimating of the russian capability of resistance and mobilization. Also, Germany was blinded by Hitler (in pretty much the way Satan was, actually) and that kept the bad choices coming until it was too late to fix and Germany was taken in the warm embrace of Americans and Russians artillery. Not fighting the United States, and focusing in Russia, or viceversa, could have been better although Russia would have attack preemptively on Polland or Finland. France was defeated, and Britain was pinned to the ground and unable to strike back on its own (although very able to repel an invasion with heavy losses). The decision was not a bad one, was a badly executed one, in my opinion. Again.

I mean, Germans had big issues back then... two world wars in a row? You gotta admire the spirit of that (sarcasm).

I think it's questionable whether the Germans could choose to avoid a fight with the US in the long run. To win, they would have needed to avoid wars with both the US (which could hit them with a devastating nuclear attack long before they could put the US out of action) and Russia (which could defeat them on the ground, as no other European power had managed to do). Fighting either was probably going to be fatal for them; it was only a question of time.

And that would, realistically, require cooperation on the part of Roosevelt and Stalin. The Americans would have to stay head-in-sand isolationist, which would be idiotic for them; the Russians would have to be stupid enough to let a rabid anticommunist regime cement control over all of Europe. I know quite well that they had no plans to attack Germany in 1941, but I'm not sure there's any guarantee that they wouldn't have tried in 1943mili or later...
[/quote]
Of course Germany would have to fight with the US eventually. The key word here is, eventually. I don't agree with the point of Russia being able to defeat Germany on the ground as an undisputable fact. Russia was not ready for the war Germany threw at them. Many factors helped, not the least one was the military genius of Zhukov and most importantly, Stalin realizing that there was not going to be a country to rule if he didn't stopped killing his own officers and started listening to his generals, as Stuart pointed out. This was fundamental, because it allowed for operations to be controlled faster, according to pragmatic conditions and in the opinion of skilled officers in different positions. While Hitler destroyed his own army, much as Satan did with Abigor.
Of course Russia would have taken the initiative. Stalin signed a no aggression pact with Germany, effectively setting them loose on Poland (in unison with the British not honoring an agreement with Poland, but then again, they were in no position to help, I guess) just to gain time to rebuild the army. My sources are Russian historians, however, so take it with a grain of salt. I mean, it was only a matter of time. You can't have two nations as powerful and opposed as those so near each other and not expect war to erupt at any time. Hell, if there weren't for the nukes, the Cold War would have become the Hot War very soon too. It just was that the stakes were so high that only a few were brave and/or stupid enough to consider the risks.
So we agree on that.

There is something interesting in Hell power structure that resembles Nazi Germany too. Hitler was very aware of the power of the intelligence services in peace and war times, so he was very careful to divide that power in a lot of hands, where each of the people in charge was powerful enough to do their tasks, but not so to overcome two or more of the others.
For example, in Nazi Germany there were the SS, the SD, the military Intelligence service, and the Gestapo, to name a few. There all had specific tasks, but also shared a lot of overlapping.
Don't know about you, but this seems to me as Satan sitting in his throne laughing as Dukes and ArchDukes bite each other's necks. Is a good enough system to ensure you are always the most powerful one, and it fits immortals better than humans because of their very immortal nature of no decadence, AS LONG AS PROGRESS IS STOPPED or at least tightly controlled.
This you can see in the novel (don't know if it was intentional) in the culture of war, loyalty and Asskicking Equals Authority that pervades Hell. It is stated that Belial was despised for his works, and that the only place in Hell were body armors were not frowned upon were his halls. Even his attacks on Sodom and Gomorre were looked at as party tricks, where they could represent a wealth of strategic and tactical knowledge to any demon willing to consider them. This is evidence of a society that keeps its subjects focused in things that can't lead to development, not even military.

And it would have been so easy... Take for example, the advantage a demon army would have gain over another if it were to hold a base on earth (a small one, so it wasn't detected by humans or Yahwe) to use in portal warfare. Or to send a lone baldrick as soldier, use him as portal target, and open a portal large enough to swallow the whole of the legion he is in while in battle, pitting them in a burning volcano (a nice equivalent of a medieval-magic nuke ). IF JUST THEIR ADOCTRINATION ALLOWED FOR IT.
But, as battles were fought pitting one army against the other until one gives in... So Yeah...
Satan had much in common with the modern Michael in his glorious days, I'm sure.

[bcoogler]

Okay, I haven't read every post, but I would like to comment on the whole strange twist that started off as the what-if-Hell-had-WWII-level-tech argument. To me, that argument makes about as much sense as how may angels can dance on the head of a pin.

Pointing to Nazi Germany as a role model for Hell completely misses the point that when Hitler took power in 1932, Germany was *already* a modern industrialized nation. Hitler did not have anything to do with getting Germany to that level of development -- he simply took advantage of bad times to manipulate his way into power. If the economy had not already been stressed due to the Great Depression, hyper inflation and war reparation payments, it's doubtful the NSDAP could have risen to power.

Germany had a strong industrial base, a centuries old university system and a tradition of support for basic research that lead all kinds of advances, from artificial dyes to thinkers like Einstein. A prerequisite for innovation is a society that allows flexible thinking, and Germany had that tradition going back prior to unification. That is, until Hitler took over and in 12 short years destroyed what took generations and the industrial revolution to create.

By contrast, Hell started from the get go with an inflexible, absolute ruler in Satan, and a nearly immortal one at that. In a society where being noticed by those in power is likely to lead to your death, you don't do anything that makes you stand out, especially in the area of independent thinking.

Creatures that have successfully exploited an ecological niche stop evolving. Examples include the cockroach and horseshoe crab, which have been around in their present state since before the dinosaurs. Similarly, a rigid Hell society has no reason to "evolve" either -- at least up until "the message" -- and by then it was far too late to play catch-up, even if Satan himself had realized the problem.

In short, given the parameters, a relatively high-tech Hell (WWII level) is extremely unlikely to happen, at least on a time scale we would consider reasonable. If it did develop on its own, it would probably take on the order of a few million years to develop, if only because of the long lifespans.

[Saint_007]

Point taken.

Though at least now we know how many angels *can* dance on the head of a pin: None. They're too damn big.

[Ilya Muromets]

Well, damn, I'm gone for about a day and the thread grows by four pages. Looking back, it seems other people have already continued where I left off. Geez, I feel left behind.

[EarthScorpion]

Point taken.

Though at least now we know how many angels *can* dance on the head of a pin: None. They're too damn big.

Actually, no-one defined how big the pin we were dealing with was.

Hmm... then we find out that "The Pin" is one of Michael's other clubs.

[Saint_007]

Actually, no-one defined how big the pin we were dealing with was.

Hmm... then we find out that "The Pin" is one of Michael's other clubs.

...for some reason, universal irony might actually make that possible. Extra points if it was entirely unintentional, though knowing Michael, he might have named it so intentionally.