Clear up things through 1) Using familiar tools to understand Kosovo 2) Be commited, in your efforts, to harmony between your personal Serbs and personal Albanians 3) Utilize to Internet links on the Balkan battle

4) And refer to an Identitarian paths traveled from 2023 and 2022

1) SOME OF THE "KOSOVO WAR FOR DUMMIES" FOR THE CONFUSED TO UNDERSTAND

Identitarianism is renowned for its divergent yet harmonious halves: self + others.  Yet it is felt for those who stumble upon the first part and get confused. 

Below, the notes add --background-- to the Kosovo idea.   Just in case your eyes roll over “consumer goods are the Serbs” and “the stimuli that comes in contact with your senses”. 

Point one

The “Kosovo” war as an outlet for your stress ^is no different^ than acting out fantasies through intense movies, video games, and music.

Point two

+ Memes! These Internet phenomena take existing image and adds a new message to it; result is the image has been appropriated for humorous or dramatic effect.  So in applying memes to the “Kosovo” idea, substitute similarly personal struggles, and commandeer the 1998-99 historical conflict to your own private life.

In the same fashion of the current girlfriend tagged with “my 13 other videos I haven’t start”, at the top ... take the very thought of the Serbs of Kosovo.   Like a news photo.

Ask yourself “what are the things I like?” from the catechism … and write your answer over that image in your head of the Balkan group. That’s the spirit!

Everything goes according to plan? Then an original photo is now seized to your own meme; rather than for the effect of amusement, but for *peace of mind* instead.

Point three

It’s an adaptation.  Your Kosovo is an adaptation of 1999’s Kosovo, ^in that same way^ the Oscar-winning movie “West Side Story” updates Shakespeare’s “Romeo & Juliet”. Or switch the musical for the “Romeo + Juliet” postmodern flick. 

For you, it's +a simulated Kosovo War+, like students similarly participating in mock trials or Model United Nations.  

But conduct your private self towards benign stress relief!

Point four

Why Kosovo and not other war-like, authoritarian places?  In Afghanistan and Iraq, entire Ameurocan counterinsurgency units have came and gone. 

Other “minority rule” areas never pursued the option of suppressing the guerrillas so hard.   Example being, the Israeli forces in the West Bank.    
> Also in "dominant minority" states, the minority is too large (the Sunnis in Saddam-era Iraq).  
It's harder to achieve that state of nihilism, if you empower oh-so-many things in life! 

Hope this holds up, so far.

2) ULTIMATELY, IN THIS IDENTITARIAN GAME, YOU HAVE TO WIN THE HEARTS AND MINDS OF ALBANIANS

+ ...But meaning has its costs.  
As I wrote on "a self to believe in", have AN IDEA, A VISION for conflicting parts in your personality to be eventually be content with.

Such a live + let live outcome can apply to Serbs + Albanians, but also to DCS; say, Dreamers + MAGAers.

+ The modernity we cope with… rose in the Balkan crisis. One that had real-life Albanian tragedies.

As economics tensed demographics--Kosovar Serbs went north for jobs.

And Albanian birthrates up? They outnumber others.

Like global selfishness up... an uptick in complex problems outnumbering us. Plus EACH PERSON has their own Battle of Kosovo moment in their past lives.

A personal equivalent of 1389, a personal episode influencing one today!

+  Jun 13, 2020: It was 22 years ago where, in my reaction to growing up DCS, my study of political/religious regimes went underway.

Today, Kosovo 1999 is the historical example to cognitively govern myself.

But I use that war to manage hardships, not support Serbian nationalism in real life!

I was born to Polish immigrants, so I have nothing political/personal with today's Kosovo. 

So it’s free to be independent, if not a province. 

And it was me at age 13 who made this discovery of belief … maybe because my mental puzzle is more monolithic and straightforward?

A melting pot DCSer puzzle may have quite a lot of *specialized* pieces, however. For them, using that ideology part may disrupt too many other parts.   Disrupt their kaleidoscope of things liked on social media. 

So being open to overlooked ideas is gratitude! 

3) GET A BETTER PICTURE, THROUGH THESE ONLINE LINKS ON THE 1999 CONFLICT

15 min news report of  the 1998 situation of police vs. guerrillas on the ground, none yet in the sky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjlbJDZaANQ&t=38s

The eyes have it: See the KLA ((0:55 to 1:10 of the video)) + NATO experience in the Kosovo War: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwP3P86u6e

Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway FULL GAME Gameplay Walkthrough

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wvopp5jVBcU&t=3193s

+ Actual screens of a third person shooter scattered throughout. 3PS is pertinent as the visual for this video games you’re playing … is lent from actual news photographers and video cameras that took place in the Balkans war.

+ In these two videos, dismiss the idea of taking sides. These reenactments of the Kosovo War here are about cinema, not ethnically based politics. Better study these videos to help you envision the “video game in your head.”

Racak

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwFEEfj6xJ4&t=4256s

Highlights: 

4:38 Casual ambush by the KLA
33:15 Exchanging of fire in a village street

1:10:05 Pursuing of guerrillas in the woods

Kosare

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULb6rrN0wCs&t=5482s

Noted points:

8:20 More concealed rebel ambush

1:28:20 Backing by tank firepower

1:40:40 Repelling the other side’s advances

Example of a combat in Kosovo: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Prekaz

Want more in-depth?  Here's the Kosovo region, it's history + it's people: washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/balkans/overview/kosovo.htm
 

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/kosovo-airstrike-articles.3.html

4) REFRESH TO 2023 & 2022

2023

                                                                               Freedom Remains Not Free

      After free, yet fractured society split during the crises of the 2020s, will even further liberty get things back on track?

Choice makes democracy possible; what election with only one candidate to pick from can be called democratic?  Yet the everyday ethos of democracy--having any given individual pick from options to make the best possible decision--is more critical than examining whether a country’s political system is fully democratic or not.  It shows that while Jerome Powell did not earn his position from winning an electoral race, the choices he makes as Federal Reserve chairman has the potential to offer the most relief on the inflation crisis.  Vladimir Putin also, as an albeit more malignant counterpart, is a public figure who also did not consolidate power from free and fair elections.  But he too must make selections: how serious should Putin be, in regarding a possible defense of Crimea, of using tactical nuclear weapons?   

It’s up to rest of the public to generally hold these figures accountable, to prevent them from miscalculating.   Limiting bad options for these officials to select from has its shortcomings; eliminating a choice means eliminating another invested business or player. Neither may any leader find essential ideals in democratic capitalist society (DCS): such values in the United States have been remade and are contrasting.   This is shown as the Democratic Party built a coalition by celebrating progress and the Republican Party, in a personal path to knowing itself, rallies more around nationalism. To offer the leaders a more reasonable course to chart, what could be most important for rest of the populace to understand about leaders like them?  Deciphering their maturity levels may offer gains.  That matter goes with how individual humans—and similarly, to industrializing countries—develop.  Yet an exact clean break from a youthful person to an adult lacks. Better to approach such murky maturity by being comfortable with a world that’s discomforting—not panicking from both personal and political uncertainty but rather, to at least get more used to it.

        *    *    * 

That’s a lot of things to grasp that are unclear and happen by chance.  Aside from death and taxes, what could be counted on as a certainty?  By extension, an absolute in the United States and Western Civilization?  Cultural relativity throughout that developed world may result in a lack of a political, economic universalisms that all would adhere to.  Historically, the white Christian males that rose to the top as a global elite have it harder today to speak for all diversity in DCSer countries today.  Even other ascendent trends haven’t fully cornered the market today; transhumanism hasn’t been wholly accepted by the scientific community like the periodic table. If, on the other hand, certain novel ideas start to be entrenched, detractors can’t vote out of office certain components of technology—artificial intelligence is more likely to displace workers than free trade, but when it comes to changing public policy, the former would be more untouchable. Yet with all this fragmentation that goes up and down, what could be a constant?  A more unanimous agreement is the fear of the wage earner world--and all its socioeconomic dependencies--breaking down on everyone.  The bank failures in the spring of 2023 were enough to stoke fears of a repeat of the late 2000s financial crisis, that eventually cascaded on the broader commonweal as the Great Recession.   Elsewhere, the disruption of Russian fuel supplies in one corner of Europe had a ripple effect on energy prices throughout the rest of the globe.  

Stemming from relativity, from things being in flux--and in response, social stratification being restructured and intensified--is inequality.  To actually restore matters all the way to the egalitarianism of hunter gatherers may hinge on a precise equality in outputs of production and a precise equality in types of tasks.  That may be a tall order, to reverse 10,000 years of developing civilization.  Yet consider a way to push for ultimate across-the-board harmony, individual by individual: distinguish from types of liberty.   Achieving “strategic” freedoms of affordable health care and quality education are worthwhile for all, regardless of political position or degree of autonomy allowed to pull off such outcomes.   As well, differentiate that broad way of “strategic” liberty from its supplemental and more necessary form to retain, “tactical” liberty.  Here in tactical liberty, when in a task, one must secure enough personal breathing space in their own respective endeavor to overcome past personal, mental baggage and subconscious memory.   This is done for the sake of better navigating each intricacy of specialized relativity; a central government cannot make every choice here.  Instead, citizen initiative can avert the “cascading” and “ripple effects” before they can materialize.

Wishes exist for people to come back in time to prevent calamities like the Holocaust and Holodomor from happening.  Instead, the world was confronted by powerful Nazi and Stalinist autocracies that seemed at certain times to be too monolithic to overcome.  But freedom—the democratic human spirit—proved to be an even more an intractable force for these totalitarian countries to vanquish.  A spirit that is so unbowed that there lacks any convincing force in the twenty-first century marketplace of ideas that could dethrone the notion of liberty.  Now freedom is ever more in demand for one citizen to hopefully handle complex economy, health care system, and political bureaucracy that is furthermore is beyond that of one person’s entire understanding and control.  In confronting this social-political labyrinth, professional politicians are seen as those who can do something about it.  Thus, at the ballot box, liberty comes in.  So as long as the planet is modern, free will remains sought for.  Beyond freedom, what might give an extra edge to cope with modernity?  Managing the social intentions that one’s volition is guided by.  Such social goals drive organizations, as they were present and striking in both at the early grassroots and federal-policy influencing stages of the American civil rights movement.

     *    *    * 

And, by extension, politicians as whole have social goals—make bread and butter concerns easier for their constituents.  Yet for individual citizens, such an overall barometer of the economy is ultimately not the most important thing in life.   As an overarching force, consider the driving force of necessity as paramount instead of the current levels of inflation—that is, as long as fundamental needs get met, consumers may eventually put up with expensive eggs.   Plus stomach worker alienation, as employment in a shoe company often is to not be a cobbler but to work in sales, IT, or marketing.  To feel byproducts, rather than feeling the finish of one’s firm's sneakers.  

Needs in a society move ever so fast—could a hierarchy pick which one is of first priority?  Or is it better to focus on transporting a completed need than make a new one?  Such is the invisible hand at work, wearing its “supply chain crisis solver” glove.  And in dealing with the problem, the amount of resources available can’t keep up with needs out there.  It also doesn’t help as much as the innate capitalist competition pits one person’s need against another, fracturing professional solidarity, which can all result in on more people fending for themselves.  But depending on one’s own well-constructed, comprehensive, and altruistic economic identity, may do more than mere self-reliance in coping with a need-restraining recession.  

A diversity of interests allows for more complexity—and seemingly, more for leaders to worry about.  Yet components of diversity can serve as potent societal checks and balances against a single entity, particularly against an ambitious one emerging.  Shows socialism, to play by the rules in a more consumer-meeting, voter-empowering Western Europe, had to lower its sights as social democracy; elsewhere, societies unacquainted with developed Western life lacked the inhibiting norms and institutions that would curb socialism from hardening into Marxism-Leninism.   Successful countries in the former have left other more neoliberal societies on the outside today filled with “Denmark envy.”  

These states may have successfully developed capitalist democracy to be socially compassionate—or is there an impression of it all being done?  Might citizens complying to a given political platform and government policy have them actually fearful of it?  It is true from one perspective, fear of disease has spurred the growth of medicine and life expectancy.  For other solutions, though, the world is more attuned to dealing in fear than asserting effective control.   The European Union, in being geared towards a carrot and stick way to bring its members in line, is a tempered global example of the former.  What if this pent-up fear among global peoples were to explode one day?  Technology, like that of a cell phone camera capturing the death of George Floyd, may only hasten the day when this happens.

      *    *    * 

In the meantime before such crises can unfold, democracy is seen as the best bet for resolving problems.  As this system is justified by many for its fairness. Like, in a classroom, a show of hands to pick the location for a field trip.  But consider an instance when one's sense of justice can get challenged when, as a result of democratic capitalism developing an entire society, bad news then proliferates on a mass scale.  Is it frowned upon for news article-suggesting algorithms to shield citizens from critical viewpoints, and keep them locked in echo chambers?  Further technology has given rise to smart homes, complete with digital safety measures enacted.  All this effort, however, to make an entire household financially secure isn’t the exactly same as making all individuals in DCS psychologically secure—mass shooter suspects included. As fast-paced society can’t manufacture respect like it assembles gadgets; it can be elusive for a certain producer to fully understand the other customer or client’s essence.   Comprehending their essence--and having respect for it--comes in handy when such respect can be flipped into politics.  As a climate of dignity would transcend whatever ill feelings the loser has towards the winner, in the outcome to the 2024 election.

As for the authoritarian fallout from developed world elections in the decade following the financial crisis, so many, have wanted to cut down to size Francis Fukuyama's original "End of History" thesis.  Yet history can begin--and then end again.  At one check, it can be measured at somewhere between start and conclusion.  As the world’s most powerful country now is led by Joe Biden—who rode a wave of pro-democracy backlash, gaining the most presidential votes against an incumbent in ninety years--a champion at home and abroad of the liberal democracy Fukuyama put forth.  What might be more crucial than the state of "history” is the speed of modernity, how it can change the sociopolitical calculus so rapidly.  That said, the values of DCS should not be strictly seen as leading to unity and order. 

Rather, it's about a life in a country that’s marked by rapid social pace--and fewer second chances.  As result, the actual situation ends up when the political climate plays it safe and opts for the familiar: an anticipated 2024 sequel to the baby boomer bout of agitator Donald Trump and Thermidorian Joe Biden.  Amongst his most recent controversies, Trump was indicted while as a private citizen. But more than his statuses as a businessman, a possible convict, or even an elected politician--the one most impactful role that he exercises is that of a fighter.  That's endearing Trump to his followers, transcending electoral politics.  Trump serves as a proxy on behalf of his adherents, taking on what is decried as a pervasive wokeism--something that can't be vanquished alone at the ballot box.  

        *    *    * 

Today’s battles polarizingly narrow down to democracy versus populism.   But the former already had a victorious notch on their belt.  Previously, it was only in the modern era could there be advances in communication and technology that could enable Bolshevism and Nazism to take root.  Inversely, only from the legacy of modernity’s Enlightenment could there be an intellectual alternative to flourish—democracy—to counter that totalitarian threat.   This was demonstrated by the 20th century’s world wars against autocracy were fought—and won—in the name of liberty.  But with the two paramount menaces of the 21st century so far--COVID-19 and climate change--what “freedoms” did these struggles arouse?  The free will to belittle threats as fake news?  

Struggles may be meaningless or not.  But people’s dreams carry powerful weight.  They are contagious, as the success from clearing one small hurdle generates hope that a bigger problem will be next to go.  Since not one person can control such all "bigger" visions in the world, an authority comes in to manage the dreams citizens yearn for.  Complicating the situation is how these malleable dreams get reshaped to fit the diverse places that 2020s people find themselves in.  Yet for this authority, reform follows crisis, rather than the other way around; the Sarbanes-Oxley policy that altered auditing could not have arisen without an Enron scandal in the first place.  It was under mass democratic capitalism allowed these problems to slip through the cracks.  But, as Winston Churchill first quipped and Margaret Thatcher later insisted upon, there’s really no changing the broad system in order to better tackle these specific hardships.  

While DCS permits an entrepreneurial spirit that allows new fresh starts & freedoms—yet, this penchant for incentivizing mass opportunity is not the same as mass prevention of problems.  For an impersonal DCS—too busy in reaching compromises and consensus to take in consideration in what’s ideologically over the top--is characterized by non-intervention.  So not every demand can be met.  Thus, a solution-inhibiting uncertainty envelops the human existence.  Such an experience of disconnection has been depicted over the years in works such as Robert Putnam’s “Bowling Alone”.  Perhaps taking all peoples, now tied to an economic market, and also coordinating them under a sociopolitical umbrella could be more self-correcting of global suffering before they can seriously materialize.  In a BBC documentary on Karl Marx, the narrator remarked that “if capitalism can’t work for everyone, then it may not work at all.”  The same could be said, on a similar scale, for politics.

      *    *    * 

Such sweeping economic changes arose from the Industrial Revolution, still lacking a universal agreement on how to properly respond entirely to it. It was a given prior to this 19th century rise of machines, that an average African was as poor as a typical European—or anyone else on the globe.   Now since then, it’s been a new a recurring pattern to address about the inequality brought out by that Revolution.  Yet the interest for one to secure a living for oneself often upstages the urge to make humanity unified in a sense.  This occurs in a certain entity, in concern over another threat, allows another power of unequal standing to act as a protector.  Entrenched Republican activists may continue their partnership with a beleaguered Donald Trump, a registered Democrat only fourteen years ago, if they feel he’s the best to prevent the country from a "radical left" onslaught in 2024.  

A similar mindset is for NATO arms exporters serving the non-member Ukraine, as Brussels-tied commanders seeks where fiscally possible to impose punitive damages on Vladimir Putin's future ambitions.  To ensure protection once and for all, moderation can lack.  In addressing the Taiwan question, such a mitigating spirit is also absent.  As it is quite uncharted territory to merely test the waters on how initial direct fire between China and America would eventually end up as, given that both are amongst the globe’s dominant nuclear powers.

The experience detailed in this essay came courtesy of the modern world---the one we currently tied to, for better or worse.  Where in such struggles, so much is mobilized, and so much can be at stake.  While modernity as a whole is rigid and monolithic, the arbitrary outcomes of its struggles are not.  Consider Germany in World War I, with the millions of casualties that it put forth—and still, the industrialized effort felt like it was in vain.  Added to that, modernity’s way of intellectually re-defining groups had a new media-driven manifestation of a scapegoat for the Germans’ misfortunes.  Specifically, what had fundamentally changed about Jews per se in 1918 as opposed to 1718?  Or any ethnicity on Earth in that time period, for that manner?   The Jewish people, at the rise of a new tyranny in Europe, were especially at the wrong place at the wrong time.  Who will be next to capriciously fall under the direction of the leaderless modern world?  The “tactical freedom” specified here would help give room to maneuver against contemporary agonies like being laid off, hit in a traffic accident, or being an aspiring homeowner faced with high interest rates.   Yet market capitalism and its effects like the ones stated are fundamentally here to stay.  In comparison though, political democracy is now more variable as populists will not sit idly by with market capitalism concentrating wealth in elites.  The future then rests on how we are each “politicians” in our own right, making decisions on a day-to-day basis.  By doing this and carefully choreographically our own character, successful outcomes can emerge to preempt the politicizing of the economy by those who would get stuck with the short end of the globalization stick.  Thus, in pushing the envelope with our own personas, living life can overcome the inevitability of time.

2022

                                                    Envisioning a Future with No Second American Civil War, abridged version

The 21st century has worldwide technology, worldwide economics. Yet why isn’t there a corresponding worldwide politics? Correcting this deficiency would do great help for those pushing for all the globe to be on the same page on all-encompassing issues like climate change. To make this a reality, could there be a drive, an inspiration for what globalization hasn’t pulled off yet: the collapsing of all borders? This type of ethos wouldn’t just have electoral benefits. At the lowest level, human judgments, assumptions, and stereotypes can be rife when at the verge of approaching a stranger. 

In a new situation when one crosses the line to interact—finally get it over with---the anxiety is over with. Correspondingly, situations get magnified to global proportions, and nations can get uneased at the potential of dealing with a foreign neighbor or differing ethnic group. This problem of space was evident in the 1990s conflict between Hutus and Tutsis, where Time magazine noted that "Rwanda is an explosive crucible that nations watching from a comfortable distance have no idea how to handle." Moreover, a de-boundarying spirit could extent to the workplace where fewer parameters in a job could lead to more autonomy . . . 

Like jurisdictions for politicians, capitalism depends on places and geography. As big and small systems respectively depend on a sense of family—nationalism for millions of countrymen to mobilize citizens toward macroeconomic goals, communalism for microeconomies like a kibbutz. For the former, the media is critical for this bond to work. Yet were pandemics foreseen and debated during press coverage in the Western democracies, during the 2018 American congressional and 2019 European parliamentary races? Such is the flaw of “stable” capitalist society as it is now and a lack of vision . . . 

       *   *   *

Society under such “abstractions” in 2020 was not so good, so 2021 had pressure to make up for it. But high inflation and supply chain problems arising at the year’s end were not the holiday cheer to end things in style. These issues do have a common denominator, a source from where the problem may stem from: the bold exercise of freedom. This manifested in consumers emancipated to demand more following stingy pandemic days. While at the same time, truck drivers hampered the supply and distribution of goods by quitting their jobs for a more promising career. This contemporary era of many participants in a process-- “mass economics”--is brought together by people acting in their own self-interests. Yet what central authority whatsoever is there when the invisible hand has more DCSers involved? Such was the case in the financial crisis at the turn of the 2010s, when specialization of the industry changed how loans were repaid: now banks made money from the transaction itself. 

New players were involved to handle these loans, now converted into mortgage-backed securities, thus necessitating more people getting their piece of the pie. As well, a need for responsibility for all of those players involved—including the house flippers who instead approached homes like ATMs, and drove up the prices into bubble levels. Even though this Great Recession volatility eased up, similar implications of “mass economics” were apparent in the present-day inflation crisis. The prevalence of rising prices was contagious, as when one firm raises prices, other businesses may follow suit. To offset what was seen to be instigating corporate greed, introducing stimulus checks were an initiative to democratize matters. Yet, as a result, might have been that the way the checks were spent may have increased the money supply . . . 

       *   *   *

Uncertainty though, is less celebrated than facts; it can also be said that facts are greater than opinions. Consider, though, how facts hold up against laws. As laws come from agreements: a leader has ideas, others carry them out. Yet to implement this, agreements can only become possible when all involved share the same opinion. This notion is backed up by the Oxford Dictionary, defining “agree”, as having “the same opinion about something.” Democracy isn’t so fixated on the facts of the majority. Rather, it is geared towards the opinions of the majority. And such sentiments march on: economic systems today depend on the customer always being right. This sets up the Anthropocene as the today’s supreme law of the land; the era of humans in effect means the era of opinions . . . 

Democracy, as it stands, may not be getting all these warring parties on the same page. Maybe expecting change through sheer voting isn’t working; it can get redundant when each election, even after 2020, becomes “the most important one in our lifetime.” Maybe it’s more necessary to change the one practicing “democracy”: the democrat. That is, by intellectually conditioning each person involved in the political system to more noble ends . . . 

Democracy somehow has to get its citizens involved. It depends on its subjects sharing the same goal: the seeking of a better life. Whether it’s conservatives thriving under less regulation, or liberals pleased with the safeguarding of “marriage equality”, seeking personal advantage is a notion that both sides of the table are in unison. This idea of private progress is personified on a mass scale by the European Union. Unlike other peoples around the globe united by a common language or history, member states identifying with the EU is made possible by the pursuit (similar to other points on “seeking gain” in this essay) of intrinsically advantageous notions of peace and prosperity. 

Was, for the EU and NATO, “advantageous” expansion towards Ukraine a Titanic heading in collision course with an iceberg? For democracy, whether be in Eastern Europe or elsewhere, overcoming the globe’s Putin bloc doesn’t mean pleasing the illiberal democrats of the world. Rather, it’s about the centrists getting out of the populists’ way--leaving the MAGA, Fidesz, PiS, and National Rally people alone. That would leave the “End of History” proponents with a more enduring ideal: people will adhere to the supply and demand principle, forswear the abolishment of private property, and value high that of public opinion. That’s capitalistic democracy. Yet navigating such public sentiment involves media magnification that exposes the warts of one side--ammunition for that particular perspective’s rivals to use.