{"id":14229,"date":"2026-10-10T14:04:37","date_gmt":"2026-10-10T18:04:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=14229"},"modified":"2026-10-10T14:04:37","modified_gmt":"2026-10-10T18:04:37","slug":"violence-is-the-last-refuge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=14229","title":{"rendered":"Violence is the last refuge&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.<\/em> &#8212; Framed statement seen on the office wall of Salvor Hardin, mayor of the planet Terminus, in Isaac Asimov&#8217;s <em>Foundation<\/em>.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_14230\" style=\"width: 810px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-14230\" class=\"size-full wp-image-14230\" src=\"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/hardin.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"640\" srcset=\"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/hardin.jpg 800w, https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/hardin-300x240.jpg 300w, https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/hardin-150x120.jpg 150w, https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/hardin-768x614.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-14230\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Illustration by DALL-E<\/p><\/div>\n<p>I was reminded of this quote repeatedly in recent days.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I was reminded of this when I was thinking about Putin and his murderous war in Ukraine.<\/li>\n<li>I was reminded of this as I was thinking about Trump and his ICE thugs shooting people in American cities.<\/li>\n<li>Or when I heard that Hegseth plans to livestream an upcoming public execution.<\/li>\n<li>Or, as I was thinking about Modi and the Indian crackdown on the &#8220;cockroach&#8221; protests.<\/li>\n<li>Or thinking about Netanyahu&#8217;s choice of perpetual conflict over the humiliation of being voted out of office and having to face punishment for corruption.<\/li>\n<li>Or the Saudis and their Yemeni friends vs. the Houthis, beating the crap out of each other in yet another pointless war.<\/li>\n<li>Or Trump&#8217;s on-again, off-again war in Iran against a regime that, when it&#8217;s not busy pissing off Trump, goes into overtime repressing and executing its own citizens.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Asimov was right. We may yet see a far future (if our AI creations don&#8217;t eat us first) in which humanity will rule over a Galactic Empire. But, chances are, we won&#8217;t be one iota smarter than we are today, just as we are not any smarter today than we were at the dawn of civilization. Just consider the motto of my favorite computer game franchise, <em>Fallout<\/em>: &#8220;War. War never changes&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<fb:like href='https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=14229' send='false' layout='button_count' show_faces='true' width='450' height='65' action='like' colorscheme='light' font='lucida grande'><\/fb:like>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. &#8212; Framed statement seen on the office wall of Salvor Hardin, mayor of the planet Terminus, in Isaac Asimov&#8217;s Foundation. I was reminded of this quote repeatedly in recent days. I was reminded of this when I was thinking about Putin and his murderous war in Ukraine. <a href='https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=14229' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,64,25,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-computer-games","category-history","category-politics","category-9-id","category-64-id","category-25-id","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14229"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14232,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14229\/revisions\/14232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}