Is the lowest anywhere on Earth with the possible exception of Israel. 90% of the US initially supported the invasion of Afghanistan. Things went bad and then everyone convinced themselves they opposed it from the beginning. There was more opposition to the invasion of Iraq from the start, but I think it's obvious most of that is not due to suddenly-obtained moral opposition to killing foreigners, but in reaction to Afghanistan not being the runaway success that all the good little Fascists thought it would be. Basically the same reasoning behind Operation Valkyrie: those in charge are not competent enough to fulfill their genocidal project of which I otherwise approve.
That stat alone is wholly damning to me, but there's so much more. Interracial marriage had majority disapproval until the mid 90s. Homosexuality has been treated with both casual and thorough disgust until the tide finally began to turn in the late 2000s and then everyone convinced themselves once again that they opposed bigotry from the very beginning.
Most people see the homeless as nothing more than annoying obstacles, and recognition of humanity is rare.
The people on the TV and NPR talked about China for a couple years and now most people see the PRC, a nation with an objectively observable policy of non-interference, as the US's greatest enemy (and no, they obviously don't mean the greatest enemy to American hegemony as almost no one even recognizes that the US occupies such a position). How many of the people, even Socialists, who bought into the Uyghur genocide, have even glanced at prison conditions in the US, or the ongoing treatment of Native Americans? How many have even the slightest inkling of the US's campaign of eradication of Black Nationalism?
All of the good, bleeding heart people showed their deep, abounding empathy for the people of Ukraine because the TV Man told them they should. What do you think the rate of Zionism is among people whose hearts ache for Ukraine? How many do you think are even aware that the US is actively starving Afghanistan, and of those who are, how many oppose it? The only time the TV Man has depicted Afghans as humans has been when they convinced those bleeding heart supporters of women's liberation that we needed to save the downtrodden women of Afghanistan by turning their nation into rubble and their people into viscera.
White people finally got an inkling of what a monstrous force of white supremacist brutality the police are only when smart phones made personal cameras ubiquitous and social media made those images impossible to completely repress. Even then, the TV Man told them that giving this monstrous force of white supremacist brutality less money is unreasonable, so it didn't happen.
I think the explanation is fairly simple: the US' owes its place in the world to its system of vassalage, exploitation, and eradication. It must convince its populace that this system is justified. And for many people, it's not that hard a sell when they're seeing dividends. Even many poor Americans live lives of comfort and ease when compared with vast swathes of the world (especially the places the US and its vassals are exploiting the most).
All this is to say: Americans are materially incentivized to favor Imperialism and the social order it has enabled. We see the effects of this all around us, every day. Fortunately, our salvation comes in the biggest contradiction we also see all around us: shit is falling apart. De-dollarization is finally, slowly beginning. The US's vassals are chafing under hegemony. Things are going to get much much worse, and people won't find Imperialism and its social order such a good sell.
The invasion of Afghanistan was the moment of peak American power. No major rivals to stop them from invading two countries across the world. Full spectrum dominance of the domestic political area. Hell they even stole the election for George W despite Gore being literally just a normal liberal (ooo no he's going to sign the Kyoto Protocol :porky-scared:) . Capital dunked on American democracy just cuz they could and everyone just took it.
But that was 20 years ago, and things have changed drastically in that time. China's superpower status is a fait accompli now, and the grip of American hegemony is already weakening. Domestically, in just the past few years the United States has seen nationwide riots against government oppression (George Floyd), violent attacks on government buildings (J6), and not to mention failed to control a extremely virulent disease which killed a million citizens. These are not signs of a stable empire, in fact, these sort of events tend to precede uprisings and revolutions.
The organization definitely is not there yet, but with this renewed labor movement and all this simmering discontent I would not write off America just yet. This is the place capital is most concentrated in the world after all, which Orthodox Marxist theory would consider the likeliest place for communist revolution. It is probably going to take some more decades, but as conditions continue to decline so will the government's legitimacy, and then people will begin to consider overthrow.
Yeah but... isn't that basically debunked by history? No previous capitalist superpower produced an internal socialist revolution, the only successful revolutions were in peripheral semi-capitalist nations like Russia and China or in colonized nations like Cuba and Vietnam.
Marx's idea that capitalism, by bringing workers together in the factories, inherently organizes them and prepares them for socialism, doesn't seem to apply. The peak of industrialism in the U.S. has come and gone and that kind of production has largely been moved outside its borders. (Plus, the Chinese revolution, lead as it was by the peasant class, seems to have debunked the orthodox Marxist idea that the industrial proletariat are the most revolutionary class anyway.)
The idea that exploitation is highest at home doesn't apply either. U.S. workers enjoy a good living standard relative to the third world workers in the U.S.'s supply chains. So if the concentration of capital in the U.S. produces neither a particularly strong motive nor a particularly suitable organization for revolution, why would we expect it to happen here?
the Russian revolution certainly threw a spanner into the gears of orthodox Marxism because Russia was the least likely place for a socialist revolution to emerge. Russia fell because of a combination of worker unrest and a very weak state after WW1. Other European powers still managed to muster enough state capacity to crush the communist uprisings by force (Germany for example). Around the same time Russia was forced to depart from Orthodox Marxism out of necessity and undertake a project of Socialism in One Country. Yet it was this situation that ultimately doomed the Soviet Union, their industrial capacity was always far behind what the west, especially the Americans could call upon, and it's only because of central planning that the Soviets ever gave the US a run for their money, it was never a fair fight.
However, perhaps the Right Opposition led by Bukharin was correct. The Russian revolution was premature, and instead of locking down the country like Stalin, they should have cut a deal with the peasantry and essentially introduced capitalist development in USSR with a long term NEP. With the benefit of hindsight we can definitely say that Stalin's path, though based, was not successful as it eventually led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Cuba, Vietnam, and China all received heavy support from the Soviet Union to achieve their victories. Now their liberation is unequivocally a good thing, but if the Soviet Union's revolution was premature than so were these even less developed countries. The Chinese peasantry under Mao was a very potent political base, perhaps the largest single interest group in the world, but even China decided to return to capitalist development to compete. To me, this suggests that these revolutions "should have" taken place after capitalism had been allowed to develop for sometime, but weak colonial regimes were unable to handle the growing unrest. Now this isn't bad, you can't expect people to delay their own liberation, but it was and still is a problem these communist governments have to overcome.
Which finally brings us to America again. We have advanced beyond what Marx even believed possible, and it seems like to be mostly the fault of financialization/credit, which Marx underestimated as an economic force. But where does this leave the American proletariat? You are right that the days of industrialization have come and gone here, but many American still find themselves in jobs that are wildly alienating and exploitative, gig work, big box stores like Amazon. And additionally, while Americans are relatively well compensated compared to other countries, we also are expected to spend insane amounts of money to live here. nothing is free, healthcare, housing, education, transportation all the stuff we complain about. The resources to feed this consumerist colossus are currently looted from the rest of the world, but this system appears to be very sensitive to disruptions. Look at how COVID impacted our economic stability, inflation is still going wild, and we even sacrificed 1 million people to keep the line happy. If America were to find itself unable to , continue imperialist exploitation at an increasing rate (to support growth), than the American population would quickly find themselves destitute. State power is the last piece of this equation, and it hard to tell because American state power is still the most dominant in the world, but it is on the decline, and you can look to the events I mentioned in my earlier post.
So I do believe there is revolutionary potential here at least. And frankly it won't do it any good to write off the American people completely, as that just cedes ground to the fascists. Marx was envisioned world revolution coming about through a revolutionary wave, such as the liberal revolutions of 1848, which he lived through. There was an aborted communist wave in Europe after WW1 that was stopped in Russia, and even that defined European and later world history through the rest of the century (cold war). If the 20th century was the ultimate triumph of capitalism, will the 21st see its fall? With Europe now in the tightest position it's been in in decades, and America on the wane against a rising, peer competitor, a nominally communist one at that, if there was ever an era for a second shot at world revolution, it is quickly approaching