like this is the best america could do for its elections right here. this is it lmao :che-laugh:
of course that also means we're gonna get bombed to shit eventually since no empire dies out peacefully, but hey at least i'll die laughing
After the USA assassinated Soleimani they were able to convince every single NATO member that it was justified, including Iceland. They can do whatever they want and will continue to do so forever.
forever
Military power stems from economic power. The US is declining not only relative to China, but also to the world as a whole. It might have the latest flying death robots for another 100 years, but the relative advantage and ability to exert violent force with impunity will shrink with every year. More and more countries will not be pushed around so easily.
This'll be true especially if there's even a succdem administration somewhere along the line, because some money will go to the people and not the death machines.
I agree that the USA is probably losing soft power to China in Asia, but it never had much success there anyway. It lost the Vietnam war catastrophically. But nothing has changed in Europe/Middle East. The USA is still able to form coalitions (2019 Persian Gulf coalition).
Fair, I would say America has declined diplomatically with the EU, China, Asia, Russia, the Pacific and Africa.
For the time being they still seem to be dominant in the anglosphere, Eastern Europe, and Latin America.
I don’t think you will see the American empire collapsing all at once, it usually takes a while (historically hundreds of years, but it will be accelerated by modernity). What instead we will see is partial collapse and weakening on the periphery, a multi-polar world and hardening colonization and imperialism on the areas where the US is dominant.
I agree with your first point, although I believe EU-USA relations are only damaged de jure i.e. all leaders are basically waiting for Trump to leave office and will resume partnership as normal. I suspect relations will be 100% restored once Trump is out. South Korea is also probably in the same boat given the enormous cultural impact the Korean War has had on South Korea (circumcision is widespread for example for no other reason than pro-American views).
Your second point is inaccurate I think, given the Western failure in Ukraine and the pro-Russia sympathies throughout the region. Latin America is also still enduring pink tide anti-imperialist politics and although Bolsonaro exists, South America in general is so isolated and geopolitically irrelevant that America doesn't need to bother doing much there.
Your third point; wouldn't hardening colonization/imperialism indicate the opposite of decline? If they can strengthen their power, that doesn't indicate a weakness of power.
Hardening often results in being more brittle. It will be more directly violent, with very visible massacres and carpet bombings and concentration camps ala the Boer War. This doesn’t necessarily mean the empire will be stronger, in fact it will be brittle. It will be expensive to maintain, spread thin, losing in attrition and causing massive revulsion from the rest of the world. Similar to how Nazi Germany had a very hard style of imperial aggression, and although initially successful it burned them out, spread them too thin and made too many enemies.
There is also the thing that the Nazi apparatus, its economy and political system wasn't going to last anyhow.
They were very inefficient, the leader principle and conflicting places of power who would by force decide who gets favors led to extreme economic inefficiency, to extreme dissatisfaction of the workforce and comparatively low innovation. One effect of this was that for investments or even unhindered continued production you had to pay party officials (often multiple) and also something more or less being Kontaktbeamte (officials and unofficial persons of political power) to not shut down your projects or letting them happen. Funfact: the Nazi police cadres were not seldom, even on local areas corrupt, which meant that you might've fared more well to seek allegiance with them by paying them off, too. This was also sometimes used as a bridge so they would harass your competition or seek reasons to destroy/imprison/expropriate them. All this also became much more visible and problematic with the "Ersatz"-Wirtschaft (substitute economy) since they couldn't get all their necessary products from the world market relatively soon, and the regular economy became riddled with inefficiencies and the need to use the third best option for production.
Besides those inefficiencies the frozen wages of workers did not lead to higher productivity and the abolishment of union laws for companies led to a disengaged workforce that was cheap, but became less and less relevant as consumers. The forced labor from prisons, camps and such was used to substitute the demand for more workers (also cause of workable men doing economic unproductive work of soldiering) - however: and this is important! The annihilation did not just happen for economic reasons, but on the contrary the extermination of groups of people who often had hundreds of years of past in German territories was driven by a will to exterminate that is a core believe of the Nazi ideology. The Shoa, the Porajmos and such are examples of planed and wilful attacks by the party and the majority society on jews, romnja and sintizze, gays, further (political) enemies like communists, socialists, anarchists, union leaders, partially liberal opposition, pacifists, church members, slavs, neuroatypical, people called "work-shy" which could be everything from unemployed to being part of the former groups or more etc. with the goal to eliminate them from Nazi-German society (often) once and for all. However especially in the cases of the first two groups there was a century old tradition of discrimination by majority society and pogroms weren't a thing invented by the Nazis, but something that continued since hundreds of years. I would like to add that there were also attacks on (female) reproduction with forced sterilizations, attacks on people in Anstalten (like asylumns, psychatric wards, orphanage hospitals, etc. etc.) going by names like operation T4 or operation Brandt which included the centrally planed and later decentrally executed extermination of life deemed by the Nazi leadership (and not seldom even by the ableist people working in those places) as not worth living.
All that I wrote to just get to the main point of the "imperial aggression of the Nazis". They managed to nearly bancrupt their state very fast. It was obvious that they would not be able to keep up even parts of their military, nor feed their population before the war. Without the war the Nazis would've been deemed the biggest economic losers of the century. They needed the loot of the other countries and expropriation of wealth and companies to keep their economy running, they still were driving their policies with having to default and being bankrupt in a very short time in the future. This aspects often gets overlooked in analysis or history about Nazi Germany, that a military machine sooner or later has to be used if it is about the biggest post of your whole economy and you are running hard debts. There was no way that economic growth would bring them out of their problems, so they had the three choices:
- stand down and let others take over a bancrupted Germany
- loot other countries and not pay your invoices and use military force to stay in power
- acquire capital from the international market (only possible by changing political leadership and privatizing your economy again), which amounts to (1)
I agree with your first point, although I believe EU-USA relations are only damaged de jure i.e. all leaders are basically waiting for Trump to leave office and will resume partnership as normal. I suspect relations will be 100% restored once Trump is out. South Korea is also probably in the same boat given the enormous cultural impact the Korean War has had on South Korea (circumcision is widespread for example for no other reason than pro-American views).
I'm not sure they'll be 100% restored. There's not going to be the same level of trust. Still, Europe is nowhere near united enough to present a coherent foreign policy. We're still dependant on American Empire so we'll participate in maintaining it. Nevertheless, strategic thinking has significantly changed in Europe.
As to South Korea, 'cultural impact' is one way of putting it when there's a huge US military base in your capital.
For the time being they still seem to be dominant in the anglosphere, Eastern Europe, and Latin America.
Brexit has actually hurt them a lot in the UK. All the pro-EU neolibs who normally love to lick the US' boots now see them as the enemy of the EU who want to forcefeed us chlorinated chicken and other gross stuff. There's a bunch of twitter bluechecks who now loudly complain about the government seeking a US trade deal, instead of wanking themselves off over it the way they would have done five years ago.
like this is the best america could do for its elections right here. this is it lmao
This is Capitalism flexing on the poor ; the oligarchs will keep putting mummies in there if that's what it takes to keep their shit
I dunno about you guys, but I'm voting for The Great Filter in 2024, their platform just really speaks to me y'know
There is a timeline where Kennedy didn't get assassinated and brought America closer to the USSR, maybe de-escalating the cold war. Is that delusional tier or nah?
Pretty delusional, he was hawkish with Cuba and Vietnam
The real winner of that debate was the immortal science of Marxism leninism.
It was surreal. I forget sometimes that is Aussies are steeped in American movies and TV and barely notice it, but everytime I see an American debate or newscast it seems fake to me, like, hyperreal.
The greatest country in the history of time is dying and you think that's funny?
America doesn't exist. It's just a bunch of rich guys trying to get richer
(Pointed to something randomly ) “that’s a Ponzi scheme, America is a Ponzi scheme” - Matt Christman in Iowa
This is one reason I think it's important that at least California breaks away. Lose California and the US loses like 15% of its GDP, and 15% of it's tax base. Which also means there's 15% less funds available to the military without taking money from other places. But the overall military strength that is needed is still the same as it was before. This only becomes a more and more acute problem as more states leave - less taxes but you still need to maintain the same global military presence.
I wish we could. It just sucks most of the north has those Jefferson state cooks and we get most of our water out of state.
I feel like it would be more trouble than its worth
I mean, If we stop wasting water on almonds and produced only for ourselves that would be a huge water saver. Damn, look at you making me all hopeful over here.
It would take nothing short of a literal revolution for that to happen, and them oregonians may have a say, but I would be all for this.
California by itself has enough in-state resources and wealth to run a fairly successful social democracy with just the barest amount of effort.
Its just that California dems don't do shit for anyone or anything its all people trying to get to a higher position
The real reason is the entirety of the U.S. chud military from every state but California, including tons of army dicks in California, are slavering at the idea of completely utterly invading and occupying California. Seceding would advance the fash agenda at lightspeed.
tell them all that Massachusetts called them all losers and sissies
Touche.
Yeah thats funny too when you see those signs on the 5 about the 'dust bowl' created by congress when they try to limit water use.
I always wondered about those. Thanks for teaching me something today!
Oh thats even worse. Yeah if you can find it I'd appreciate the read :)
As a dumb American, I completely agree. Death to this godawful country.
Trump is going to win for sure after that shitshow of a debate. He already had high chances from the minute they decided to stack everything for Biden during the Dem primaries. The only thing that shook it all up was COVID and yet some how, some way, the Dems haven't taken advantage of his poor pandemic response as they are too busy trying to appeal to suburban middle class white conservatives.
I don't think the debate mattered at all in terms of winning votes or whatever, but it did push me further towards the conclusion that 1) Trump will insist he won the election regardless of the results, and 2) he'll probably get away with it, and Democrats won't do shit.
They don't really have the infrastructure to truly rig the vote, but they'll have everything from fascist militias on the streets to overwhelming control of the federal judiciary. Fully expect Trump to still be in office on January 21st.
I remember Amber saying something on stream like the real winner of the debate was the third world lol
He said, in response to him being asked to denounce white supremacy in general and the proud boys specifically, for them to "Stand back and stand by"
Which is pretty obviously fucked up, and I definitely think he meant what he said, but here's the thing: since he's being slammed for that in the press tonight, he or one of his surrogates will come put tomorrow and say "Uhhh, well what he actually meant was for them to stand down, duh. Of course he doesn't support them, just like he doesn't support the radical Marxist-Bidenist ANTEEFUH who are clearly much worse and more violent!"
Upon which this entire scandal will disappear like a fart in the wind, just like all of his other scandals because the libs are dangerously naive cowards and NOTHING FUCKING MATTERS ANYMORE HAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH
It gained the front page on Reddit, which is something. https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/j2q1g8/standback_and_standby/
