Like, yeah, they can ‘get away with’ ending soft power. They can ‘get away with’ extrajudicial killings. They’re operating off of pure machismo right now. They’re getting drunk on their vices. They’re stripping masks where masks wouldn’t be advised to be stripped. I feel like I understand now that Fascism is, in part, an expression of weakness. They wouldn’t be doing this unless they were scared. It’s too volatile. It feels both too late on a power-level and too early on a popular-level. Never mind the ticking time bomb that is AI data centers. It feels like, and I’m sure this is cope, there is a timer on their ability to run the circus much longer.
My first instinct here is to doubt myself, intellectual pessimism and all. In that vein, maybe this is just revolutionary optimism, but we’re at the point where it feels like there is a palpable anger brewing in the basement. I don’t know. Maybe Palantir works as an anti-communist panopticon and we just death spiral forever. I don’t want to lose hope.
The days after October 7th, Israel announced its genocidal intent. From Herzog, Netanyahu, to the cabinet of ministers, the Knesset, Israeli media and Israeli luminaries/society.
Israel taught the US and the world that it could just rule through fraud and act with impunity. The masses mobilize to protest but do not stay on the ground in such a degree to actually force a rescindment of support or policy change. They don’t do much economic resistance or sabotage; taking to the streets is now ignored and managed and liberal democracies can delay and obfuscate responsibility indefinitely.
Genocide, brazen, transparent and open in deed and intent was not enough to evoke significant reaction or organize the masses to pressure governments to change course.
The ruling class believes that it can rule as it wishes, through fraud, violence, and decree, and it is because political activists, organizers, socialists & communists, don’t really confront power as it did ages ago.
Maybe Palantir works as an anti-communist panopticon and we just death spiral forever.
It runs in physical infrastructure that is too difficult for them to build, too expensive for them to operate, and too fragile for them to protect.
They’ve conflated economic potential with material reality. They’ve dreamed it, thus it must be real
No there is something there, public is too disgusted by it all even if they can’t fully explain why yet. Venezuela reminded people too much of Iraq and the fact they are just doing things and trying to justify it after the fact means media is trying to keep up and failing. I was thinking of something like facism burn out or immediately trying to set the pot into boiling instead of gradually turning up the heat.
Yes, but if it works - and USA gets a pipeline of oil and gold and cheap labour - people will forgive about Venezuela. I mean, let’s face it, people don’t really give much of a fuck in the first place.
I really don’t know if the spoils of imperialism will leak down tho or will leak down enough to make people forget. It’s still gonna be framed in “own soldiers” vs anyone else. The accumulation at the top pretty much is getting beyond gilded age levels of fuck you. The age of buying the public off is switching over to just keeping them in submission because treats are being denied
ICE has been openly kidnapping minorities for nearly a year, and yet you do not see any meaningful resistance to stop them, including from the so-called leftist organizations.
The US openly supports genocide, bombs Iran, kidnaps Venezuelan president, and yet you do not see the other world powers come together to stop them. (The most you can argue is maybe Russia against NATO expansion in Ukraine, but even that was a situation forced upon Russia, who would otherwise be happy to let the status quo persists).
So, no, the empire did not overplay its hands. The empire is free to do so because there is no organized left, not domestically, nor internationally, to stop them. It is pure cope to believe there will be some kind of divine justice against the empire. They are not scared, they are emboldened.
The materialist answer is much simpler: unlike in the past century when there were strong labor movements and international solidarity, today neoliberalism rules the world and every country is more interested in taking advantage for their own gains than to come together as a cohesive force against Western imperialism.
All the pretense about social democracy, civil rights and upholding international laws were relics of the past when Western capitalism had to compete against the Soviet Union. It simply took some years for these institutions to become fully eroded after the 1990s. In other words, the collapse of the Soviet Union and its consequences.
Xiao, I have to hard disagree. I will throw some of your own analysis back at you, and share some of mine.
China
China’s new 5 year plan includes building up domestic consumption. There is no indication that they will fail to implement this strategy.
China has swapped US debt for 2 African countries for the equivalent in Yuan. We may see even more of this down the road.
Africa
Russia has kicked Western forces out of much of West Africa.
UAE’s and Israel’s forces in East Africa, meant as a force against Iranian proxies - is at serious risk because of the Saudi-UAE conflict. This could also spark issues between Turkey and Israel.
The same Turkey that happily sold oil to Israel, while publicly condemning it for a domestic audience.
West Asia
The geopolitics of Turkey could shift against Israel, and Turkey’s internal politics could easily accommodate that shift.
Ansarallah is chilling with popcorn watching Saudi and UAE proxies demolish each other in occupied Yemen. Remember that despite Saudi spending a quarter trillion on genociding the Houthis over half a decade, they were able to not only resist - but get stronger. All that with an estimated tens of millions spent by Iran. Since the seccesation of direct Houthi-Saudi conflict, we’ve seen them send missiles into Isn’treal and scramble carriers.
Israel is planning another attack on Iran. Likely sometime this month, and during a weekend so as to not scare capital.
Even a successful annihilation of the Iranian political class as well as former leaders would not be sufficient. This is because Iran has Vietnam style tunnel networks that span the country underground, and big enough to drive trucks and drones in.
Think of what Yemen is able to do from underground. Even with a visible and loud and propagandized Iranian defeat on the surface, Israel’s fight would not be over.
And it is increasingly seeming like these riots won’t even go anywhere, even with all the support they are getting from the West.
Latin America
The plot against Maduro was a spectacular military success, as well as a spectacular strategic failure.
They took away Maduro, who could have been couped with some patience due to the political backlash of the economic situation caused by US sanctions. American PsyOps managed to create a meme in Venezuela that the weight loss people experienced due to this travesty was the “Maduro Diet”.
They made Venezuelan Liberals into Bolivarians. They brought a new wave of Latin American unity, with Columbia, Brazil, Cuba, and potentially Mexico (the last being least likely) to come together.
The best they could do in Venezuela was PsyOps about the Vice President being on the US’ side. Even there they couldn’t get consistent messaging across on that front.
Europe
They are shitting themselves at both Russia and the potential of a US threat.
They have no good source of oil/gas, and their industry is being hollowed out. Their war austerity is going to cause internal strife amongst a populace who has come to expect their former QOL as the bare minimum.
They feel betrayed by the US, and the Ukrainian “Stabbed in the back” narrative is propagating continent-wide.
European leaders will fold to the US whims, but the next generation will likely be rabid and oppositional.
Add on top of that that much of the younger generation acknowledges the plight of Palestine. They are disenfranchised and powerless, yes, but their leaders will age and die.
North America
Amongst the youth, both the left and the Nazi right hate Israel.
Israeli campaign contributions are used by people all over the political spectrum as a sign of untrustworthiness and corruption.
The generation of Donald Trump have been the political leaders of the US for this entire century thus far. With the average age of the president tending to go up by 1 with every passing year. But they are near the end of their lives, even with the best medical care available.
Regardless of who dominates US politics in the coming years, it will necessarily be younger, and it will necessarily be anti-Zionist.
The US economy is propped up by AI, for which we can all see the writing on the wall.
And think of the earlier point of China undermining the dollar as a reserve currency in Africa.
In earlier economic crises (ie. 2008), African countries had to accumulate US dollars as a reserve currency in order to keep jobs and hedge against their own inflating local currencies. However, with China having more of a consumption-based economy, and with these countries having Yuan-based debt and reserves - then the dynamic completely changes.
This means that the US economy can implode this time without it taking down the “3rd world” and making them even more subservient.
We are seeing a US that is on the precipice of dying, without the opportunity to recover through vampirism like it had done before.
The attacks on Venezuela and Iran were attacks on China’s customers. China isn’t getting involved according to publicly available information.
These countries are still standing and it would take a dramatic series of events to change that. So far the evidence shows a consistent pattern of failure to undermine this relationship.
The downturn of 20% of trade between China and Iran may be painful, but with the US burning through its global supply of interceptors for many years over the course of 12 days, it is hardly sustainable to militarily force a further downturn in Chinese investment and trade.
Thank you for the response, though a lot of that is too speculative that, while I would love for them to come true, simply does not refute the fact that we’re looking at a lot of inactions today, both domestically in the US, and on the international stage. Yes, there are movements, but not enough to threaten the empire.
The tragedy of the woman murdered by ICE yesterday is one such example. ICE has been kidnapping people for nearly a year now, although most of them aren’t white. They are emboldened because nobody’s stopping them, and the fact remains that if nobody will stop the Gestapo, we all know what that will eventually lead to.
Regarding the specific points on China:
China’s new 5 year plan includes building up domestic production. There is no indication that they will fail to implement this strategy.
China is already in over-capacity. It needs to build up domestic consumption market to absorb global export surplus goods and drive the domestic demand, not more investment on production. If China fails to do so, the US will remain the world’s largest consumer market and dictate world trade.
China has swapped US debt for 2 African countries for the equivalent in Yuan. We may see even more of this down the road.
Which is probably the worst thing any country should do about their external debt situation right now.
The yuan is currently under a lot of pressure to appreciate, and if (when) it does, these African countries that just swapped the loan for yuan are fucked, because the lower interest rate will not make up for the more expensive yuan they have to earn to repay. In this case, they’re probably better off sticking to dollar debt and take advantage of the USD depreciation instead.
Regardless, no country should take on external debt not denominated in their own currency. It’s a guaranteed way to lose your economic sovereignty.
Besides, since China is running a record $1 trillion trade surplus last year, the question becomes where are those countries going to earn the yuan to repay the loans? In the end, they still have to sell their goods to countries who are willing to run a trade deficit (that means the US) to earn the foreign currencies, sell the currencies on the forex market to buy yuan, and then pay back their Chinese creditors.
It’s extra steps to take advantage of the lower interest rate, but the risks are being shifted to hoping that the Chinese yuan does not appreciate down the road.
Furthermore, the internationalization of yuan (and the rise of China’s consumer market) necessarily involves the appreciation of the yuan itself. You cannot have it both ways - that you want an internationalized Chinese RMB with an artificially devalued exchange rate.
In other words, if you’re betting on the yuan supplanting the dollar, then you should expect the yuan to appreciate and the dollar to depreciate. In this case, it does not make sense to swap the dollar loans for yuan.
What China can do right now is to use its vast USD foreign reserves to pay off those African countries’ debt (the entire external debt of the African continent is $800 billion, well within the reach of China’s several trillions of dollar reserve as well as its $800 billion worth of US treasuries), THEN flood those countries with Chinese yuan in a Marshall Plan style to give them the money to import from China. This will simultaneously raise the income of the Chinese working class, build up China’s domestic consumer market, who will now have more purchasing power to import from the developing countries in return while their countries are freed of debt bondage to foreign financial institutions. This will raise the income of both Chinese working class and those in the developing countries together - a true win-win strategy.
Sorry I edited my statement. I meant China developing consumption not production.
Yes that makes more sense.
I will reiterate my position: China is rolling out a lot of policies to promote domestic consumption, but my take is that you cannot truly resolve that without resolving the elephant in the room, which is the massive wealth inequality.
The economists look at the record amount of household savings and think that they need to “trick” people into unleashing their savings, but this misses the fact the problem is a distribution problem. A lot people choose to save is because of the economic uncertainty. People are afraid of losing their jobs and since there is no social safety net, they prefer to save than to spend. This situation did not exist before 2020 by the way, when China’s economy was very much on the upward trajectory with the real estate booming.
I have said this before but just to write it out again, the solution to this will be:
- The government provides job guarantee to the unemployed, so people will not have to worry about losing their jobs and lose their household income.
- The government provides social safety net so people won’t have to worry about dishing out large expenses in case of medical emergencies and during unemployment.
- Wealth redistribution.
The first two require the central government to run high deficit. In order for people to have the money, somebody’s gonna have to spend it. Previously this was foreigners money through export, as well as the money from infrastructure investment. But since the export and investment-led growth are hitting a wall, it can only be the government running deficit (spending beyond what they earn) to offset that.
The third is… uh… let’s just say very difficult.
Do you think the PBOC will let the Yuan appreciate too much?
It’ll make it much more difficult for third world countries to import intermediate goods from China.
They’ll be forced to try obtain more Dollars to get same amount of Yuan. How much of that will be done through internal devaluation I wonder.
It’s a real dilemma (when divorced from the other macro policies). The PBOC has given in somewhat since late December Bloomberg article and there is a strong international pressure for the yuan to appreciate, but at the same time the PBOC is giving out reassurances that they will keep the exchange rate stable. Commentaries about it are split: some predict the yuan will rise to 6 by the end of 2026, others think the PBOC will hold the line.
For the third world countries, it’s a real dilemma as well. On the one hand, weaker yuan competes with their export industries, while a stronger yuan makes it more expensive to import from China as you said.
This is why I keep saying that China having a strong consumer market is going to be key because it solves this problem altogether.
They made Venezuelan Liberals into Bolivarians.
not sure about this. these people are professional american worshippers and very rigid ideological soldiers first and foremost. ten years of brutal sanctions and hyperinflation permanently galvanized them to the other side, if the country wound up magically better they would still work towards its complete demise. We’re looking at the new mustard viet diaspora and all the fascist militancy that comes with them, just, latin american instead.
Maybe I am conflating socdems and liberals.
most likely yeah, people who were already on the left don’t like this, even the trots that don’t shut the fuck up about the PCV. but the motherfuckers out there that identify as liberals are ecstatic.
unlike in the past century when there were strong labor movements and international solidarity, today neoliberalism rules the world and every country is more interested in taking advantage for their own gains than to come together as a cohesive force against Western imperialism. […] the collapse of the Soviet Union and its consequences.
If I try to imagine the 1930s and the buildup of fascism without the Soviet Union… it would look like today. Actually, and more accurately, today looks like the buildup to WW1 which was imperialist escalation par excellence.
The bad thing is that we are maybe / probably headed into a repeat of the previous century. Imperial contradictions reached a fever pitch, and due to poor timing, it became a testing ground for a variety of brand new technologies which made possible the “Industrial Revolution” of death, the most efficient production of murder known hitherto. I’m referring to airplanes, tanks, poison gases, and a lot more.
While no one has a crystal ball to answer whether the Russian Revolution happens without world war 1, I think it did play a big part in the “land and bread” messaging that enabled enough consciousness to overthrow the Russian Empire and pull out of the war. We very well might not have had a USSR without world war 1.
This is quite bleak and I don’t even want to call it a silver lining. But history has shown that it is precisely during the most catastrophic eras that the most revolutionary things occur. I won’t hold my breath for those things to happen in the West - this same history shows that it is more likely to happen in poorer countries. If world war 3 happens, we could see a surge in revolutionary activity around the periphery.
ICE has been openly kidnapping minorities for nearly a year, and yet you do not see any meaningful resistance to stop them.
We just saw a women get murdered while opposing them, and the entire world is condemning it while the Administration tries to spin the murderer as a hero, and the Christian Mom protester as a domestic terrorist who deserved to die. Now the whole world is angry at MAGA, including many on their own side.
That’s a pretty meaningful resistance. MAGA is slipping fast, and the fall is starting. One way or another, they are going to come out of the Midterms in bad shape. In fact, things are going so bad, they have so many retirements, that the House may actually flip BEFORE the Midterm. Then the Dems will control investigative committees with full subpoena and arrest powers. The Dems may not have done much during the Biden administration, but they did put Bannon and Ron Varo in prison for defying subpoenas.
Of course, Trump will pardon them, but that only strengthens the eventual court case that he was using his pardon power to tamper with witnesses and cover up his crimes, and then ALL of his pardons can be annulled by Congress as illegitimate criminal activities, and all those people - the Jan 6 Traitors, the ex-prez of Honduras, his criminal white collar conman buddies, etc., will all go back to prison.
We could make all that happen, and more, if we can force Congress to do their jobs this time around, and not expect them to wait for MAGA to have some sort of moral epiphany, which seems to have been the strategy until now.
Then the Dems will control investigative committees with full subpoena and arrest powers.
How in the world could you believe this? How have the scales not fallen from your eyes? What consequences were there for the targeted assassination of Michael Reinoehl by the DHS? Biden had four years to even do a rote investigation to make it look like the Dems care and they didn’t even bother to do that. The Democrats are not on your side and they never ever will be. They are on the side of the wealthy. ICE isn’t a problem for the wealthy.
The Dems learned a hard lesson from the fecklessness of the Biden Administration, and they know how furious the voters are at them. Right now we still have Jeffries and that cowardly, simpering little bitch Schmuck Schumer as leaders, but if Dems take over, they are unlikely to last.
IF the Midterms Elections happen, it is very likely to be a bloodbath, and a lot of new Dems are going to come into Congress, perhaps even replacing some of the weak Dems from the past. They will enter Congress with real political capital and power behind them, as well as the righteous indignation of the voters, and the Dems leadership will have to listen, or be replaced, which should happen anyway. These people have already proven they’re cowardly losers. Go sit down, and STFU.
The next time Democrats get power, they’d better use it against MAGA, and use it ruthlessly, or else. Right now, Revolution isn’t happening because we still think we have a chance under the Democrats, but if they fail again, and especially if they fail deliberately, then the Democratic Party will be in as much trouble with the American people as MAGA, and without any party to defend them, the American people will have no choice but to defend ourselves.
The Dems learned a hard lesson
I would love to hear the actions or statements by the Democrats that led you to believe this. From where I sit, there has been no change, nothing even coming close to acknowledging their past grievous errors, and certainly not a single whisper of any plans to do anything about this shit. They support ICE, they support kidnapping Maduro and are just a little bit peeved they didn’t get to put their signatures on it, they support economic warfare against China and Russia, they like bombing Iran. They’re all just Republicans with a civility fetish.
Hard to respond when you are just making shit up:
They support ICE, they support kidnapping Maduro and are just a little bit peeved they didn’t get to put their signatures on it…they like bombing Iran.
That’s really dumb, and has no basis in reality. This part:
they support economic warfare against China and Russia
Is true, and we should keep economic pressure on them. Nothing wrong with that at all.
Moving on, this request:
I would love to hear the actions or statements by the Democrats that led you to believe this.
A few months into MAGA 2.0, I saw an interview with Adam Schiff, who I generally respect. He’s an old school Democratic weakling, but he’s shown a bit of willingness to fight back (along with Raskin), so I want to encourage that inclination. Anyway, he was asked about the MAGA blitzkrieg of EOs and illegal actions, and he was very contrite in saying that they underestimated America 's willingness to handle “bold action,” and MAGA clearly demonstrated that it was possible. It was clear that HE, at least, had a change of heart, and I suspect he’s not alone. He knows they made mistakes, and the American voters are going to take it out on them at the polls. I doubt they will proceed with the same strategies, or they will get their asses kicked even worse the next time around.
And as I have said in other posts, it isn’t about what they’ve done in the past, which is worse than shameful, it’s been political malpractice, nearly to a criminal degree. It’s about the future, with new blood, like those we’ve seen come on over the last few years, like Frost, Slotkin, AOC, Smallwell, etc. Then there are the new rising stars like Kelly and Walz, who nobody thinks is going to back down.
The point is that there is every reason to believe that the incoming Democratic freshman Congressional Reps, and hopefully some Senators, too, will be Democratic Warriors. They wouldn’t make it out the primaries if they weren’t. This time around, people aren’t going to be trying to elect a “Good Democrat,” or vote against a bad candidate, they will be voting for Democratic Warriors who will aggressively take the fight to MAGAs and stand toe-to-toe with them. Those Old School Democrat Weenies who have fed us to the wolves, and manage to squeak out another term, better get with the program, or get stomped.
Is true, and we should keep economic pressure on them. Nothing wrong with that at all.
Oh, you’re an imperialist. No big surprise then that your analysis and beliefs are all complete fantasies.
Moving on, holy shit, you’re hilarious
MAGA clearly demonstrated that it was possible
So one single guy said doing more is possible, not that he will pursue it, and you bought that?
I’m not going to keep this up because you’re a simple rube. The Dems will do nothing and you will keep voting for them as they shed more and more of the mask until one day you’ll wake up and just be an outright fascist. Maybe you’ll be doing the roman salute at a DNC convention in ecstatic joy with all the other vote blue no matter who fascists. Either way, it’s clear you’re not willing to grapple with reality. I hope you have a terrible day, you sucker.
Imperialist? Because I recognize the perfectly normal competitive economic relationship between nations? You think competing economically with a country means we are Imperialists? Does that mean we shouldn’t pursue economic arrangements with Canada, Mexico, Europe, Japan, India, etc, because it would make us Imperialist? That sounds like a MAGA America First strategy. Seriously DUMB take.
And the “one single guy” was just the example I used, but it is by no means the only one (AOC, Crockett, Smallwell, Frost, Stefanik, Slotkin, etc.), but since I only offered one example that PROVES MY POINT, you think it allows you to move the goalposts, and once again disingenuously misconstrue my argument. Weak. Very weak.
Schiff isn’t just “one single guy,” he is an important member of Democratic Leadership, and a potential replacement for Jeffries. He is also respected by his colleagues AND voters. When he goes on Meet The Press, or some other Sunday morning political show, he isn’t just offering his own personal opinion, he is there on behalf of the Democratic leadership, and is speaking for the entire Democratic party. THAT is the reason that the show puts him on in the first place. They know he is speaking for the party.
You’re calling me a Rube, but you don’t understand the slightest thing about how politics is played, completely leaning on whatever political science nonsense you learned from some Community College professor, probably some local MAGA, while passing the bong with your equally genius pals.
And BTW, I will NEVER be defending the Democratic Party, at least the past party. I have been an Unafilliated Independent since I first registered to vote in 1977. I have never been a fan of the Democratic Party, and didn’t even vote for a Democrat until Gore in 2000 (I didn’t vote Republican, either).
My speculations are based on historical precedent, based on my own education and degrees in history, as well as closely observing politics since the 60s, watching the Vietnam War, and hoping it ended before I got drafted. Politics has been personal to me since before I was 10 years old, and I know what I’m talking about, not from some philosophy class and discussions with my stoned buddies, who know just enough to be dangerous, but from actually LIVING it.
And another BTW, I like how you attack on the “Imperialism” thing, but completely ignored the fact that I called you out for lying about Democrats approving of kidnapping Maduro, supporting ICE, and approving of the bombing of Iran, and you just let it go by, to go on the offense about Imperialism. Show me where Democrats have supported ICE, or wanted to “sign off” on the Maduro kidnapping (WTF?). Those are two of the dumbest takes I’ve ever heard. Really ridiculous assertions with absolutely no basis in fact. Hard cringe, Junior. You should be seriously embarrassed, and a person with the slightest self-awareness would delete their posts. But I doubt that’s you.
So get back to class, live a little life, and come back when you actually KNOW something real.
Is true, and we should keep economic pressure on them. Nothing wrong with that at all.
The fierce Democratic Warriors like:
*Slotkin - A former CIA operative heavily funded by AIPAC who believes Israel ‘has a right to defend itself’
*Smallwell - sponsored legislation that made it illegal to boycott Israeli goods and businesses
*AOC - has voted twice, once in July after the genocide had been ongoing and in the spotlight, to keep funding the Iron Dome that allows Israel to conduct their heinous actions without fear of retaliation
I’ll give you Frost since he’s changed his views, but it sounds like you don’t really care if the US war machine keeps destroying the rest of the world, as long as they turn the dial down on their own citizens a little bit. In a just society, they would be in the same jail block as the current administration.
I’m concerned about the very real existential threat facing THIS country. Sorry about everywhere else, but our own house is on fire.
Dawg what fucking world do you live on? Have you seen the Democratic leadership? Schumer was chumming it up with Rubio YESTERDAY. They are not going to hold anyone accountable.
I’m getting really sick of this attitude. You are speaking about the past Dem leadership, and I’m speaking about the future Dem leadership. They don’t have to continue on the same feckless path they’ve been on, especially if we FORCE them to act decisively.
If the Midterms happen, it’s going to be a bloodbath, and a LOT of new Democratic Warriors are going to enter Congress, carrying the righteous indignation of the voters.
Jeffries and Schmuckie aren’t likely to survive the leadership vote, and the next leaders will have to be willing to stand up to MAGA. This is what the people, and the incoming Congressional Warriors, are going to demand.
This is how the 90s Republicans spawned the Tea Party, which took over the party, then morphed into MAGA, and took over. The Dems are at the stage of creating their own Tea Party (Progressives) that can take control of the Democratic Party, and reconfigure it to reflect the true values of the Democratic VOTERS.
If Democrats manage to gain power again, they’d better hold people accountable, or we will hold them accountable. And weak citizens like you, trying to convince people that it’s already over, the Dems will never fight for us, we might as well roll over for whatever fate MAGA has in store for us, are as much a problem as MAGA. If you aren’t going to encourage people that there is still an enormous battle ahead of us to prepare for, and are going to just discourage people that it’s already lost, them YOU are as much a part of the problem as MAGA.
You are speaking about the past Dem leadership, and I’m speaking about the future Dem leadership. They don’t have to continue on the same feckless path they’ve been on, especially if we FORCE them to act decisively.
Wishcasting better leadership isn’t going to do shit. What are you going to do to force them? Millions of people protested all across this country against police brutality and the Democrat response was to increase police funding and increase federal law enforcement budgets. THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU OR WHAT YOU WANT.
You are that cowardly that you’ve already given up, and have now taken to try to talk others into giving up with you? Either you are MAGA, or just a coward. How pathetic and gross, just ew.
We have to make them care. They care about their jobs, so threaten to take them away, and mean it. They care about their legacy, so relentlessly call them out in social media. Go to their town halls and aggressively demand action. Dog their every action, call their offices on every vote, etc. If you have the ability, primary your feckless Democratic rep, even if you know you’ll lose. You’ll still get to publicly call them out on their abdication of their responsibilities. And you never know, sometimes primaries have surprises, like AOC kicking out the #4 guy in Congress, or Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle losing his primary while he was the highest ranking member of Congress in 2004. Crazy shit happens in elections all the time.
And it’s not just about our DC reps. MAGA has deliberately infiltrated every level of government, demanding stupid legislation on chemtrails and vaccines and other stupid flat-earth bullshit, and we need to mercilessly attack every MAGA in government.
We can force them, we just have to flex our Citizen muscles, and not just tell everyone to surrender because it’s already over. How fucking weak and cowardly is that?
I wish you’d actually address my other question about what actions or statements by the Dems make you think all this imaginary stuff about what you wish they’re going to do. You’re completely delusional. I hope you’re young, at least that would explain why you haven’t figured out the nature of the major political parties in America. If you’re over thirty, woof.
I’m going to give you two good ones, and then you can start paying attention, and find your own examples.
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez questions Michael Cohen
This was the Congressional testimony of Michael Cohen, who was about to go to prison, and wanted to tell all about Trump. Unfortunately, as usual, the Congressional panelists were far more interested in posturing and pontificating, and NONE were doing anything substantive. I was watching it at the time, and it was frustrating as a viewer, and it was obvious that Cohen was frustrated, too. He wanted to tell his story, but nobody was asking the right questions.
Then the newly minted Congresswoman from NYC, made her first appearance on the national stage. With remarkable confidence, AOC informed Cohen that she’d be moving quickly, and he agreed, and she dove in, firing question after question at him, which he answered in equally rapidfire responses.
By the time she was finished, the whole world knew a small slice of the financial crimes he had committed, and who knew about it. The answers to the questions that only she bothered to ask, formed the basis of the case that Leticia James later brought against Trump, and convicting him of 34 felonies. The entire thing leads back to AOC’s FIRST appearance in front of Congress.
I suspected at the time, and still believe it, that she was set up to offer this line of inquiry, so the old guard could do what they do best, blather on about bullshit, while giving her the opportunity to start collecting scalps in her new position. It probably didn’t hurt that she was a NYC congressional rep, talking to an NYC corrupt lawyer.
Now she is considered one of the absolute leaders of the New Guard, and the base loves and trusts her implicitly. Over and over, she has shown her enthusiastic willingness to go face-to-face with the MAGA Morons, and metaphorically spit in their faces, and she has inspired COUNTLESS America citizens to get involved in progressive politics, and even run for office themselves. Following her has been Frost, Slotkin, and many others. So tell me again how the new people are the same as the old ones.
And speaking of the old ones, here’s another example that the Dem party seems to be on a different path:
A few months into MAGA 2.0, I saw an interview with Adam Schiff, who I generally respect, something I RARELY say about ANY politician. He’s an old school Democratic weakling, but Trump seems to have inspired him to show some willingness to fight back (along with Raskin), so I want to encourage that inclination. Anyway, he was asked about the MAGA blitzkrieg of EOs and illegal actions and DOGE piracy, and he was very contrite in saying that they underestimated America 's willingness to handle “bold action,” and MAGA clearly demonstrated that it was possible. It was clear that he had a change of heart about strategy.
More importantly, Schiff isn’t going on one of those Sunday morning shows to spew his own personal opinion. He is there to speak for the party, and give the party’s line, and clearly they understood that they had been too cautious, and were now paying the price.
The problem doesn’t seem to be Congress as a whole. There are lots of people chomping at the bit to fight back, but they’re all hostages to the insipid, feckless, useless, cowardly leadership of Jeffries and Schmuck Schumer. Those two are closet MAGAs, or might as well be. It is highly unlikely they’ll survive the leadership vote after the freshman reps arrive after the Midterm Bloodbath.
And here’s a bonus one: Mark Kelly, and all the other ex-military members who released those videos reminding the military to only obey lawful orders. That was an extraordinary moment, a strategy calculated to force the administration to endorse the breaking of military law. Now they are stupidly attacking Kelly personally, suddenly making him a front-runner for the Democratic Nomination in 2028.
How about another bonus:
There are lots of examples of Schmuck 's trademarked “Stern Letter” responses to MAGA criminality, but there are also lots of examples of legal opposition, such as the defiance of Leticia James and Jack Smith, and others. Boutique law firms have popped up all over DC, formed by lawyers and law firms that were fired by the administration for prosecuting MAGA crimes, and those new firms are focussing on and addressing the corruption and immigration crimes of the administration. While the Biden administration couldn’t be bothered, these cases are getting to court, and they are successful most of the time.
There is a new progressive wing who are active and influential outside of the size of their representation on Congress, and their representation is likely to increase greatly in November, as will their power over the party. Current members are acknowledging that they needed to be more decisive the last time, and understand that the voters will reward, or punish, them depending on their behavior. And there are legal outfits dedicated to challenging everything this administration is doing, and winning.
That’s a lot of difference between the lazy Biden administration, with his useless Republican Attorney General, and the angry, restless Congress that is growing steadily, fueled by the righteous indignation of their constituents. The only thing holding them back at this point are Jeffries, and especially Schumer. Those two losers have got to get out of the way, or they’ll get stomped on, which they richly deserve.
TOWN HALLS! PHONE CALLS! Lmao
Your belief that those who doubt your tactics are giving up makes you a fascist in my view. If you think the only way forward is to believe in America, then I’m going to pave the future straight over you, and Trump too.
You are as delusional as MAGA. All you have is vague whiney complaints based on your lack of Critical Thinking Skills, and absolutely no solutions at all. Just scream about how everything is unfair, everybody is mean to you, and everybody is a big poopyhead.
Grow up and get in the real fight, and quit trying to pretend you’re doing something, by doing nothing.
feckless [Dems]
The US Democratic Party is a patronage network for political donations and jobs in the field. This operation is successful on its own terms.
Awareness of political realities will move the conversation away from the totally fake, very well reinforced narrative that they are an opposition political party in the business of opposing anything, much less anything risky.
We can expect that some of the bourgeois class are looking at the Republicans’ destructiveness as not working in their best interest.
We should expect some of the forces capital to support more Democrats to take more decisive action.
{YAWN}
Yeah, yeah, we know all that. You’re still stuck in the past, and have voluntarily surrendered to MAGA. Or perhaps, you’re just a MAGA troll or bot, trying to discourage Democratic activism. I saw lots of that on Reddit, and I’m seeing it increase on Lemmy - “Both sides are against us, it’s already over, there’s nothing we can do but lie down and take it.”
We have a two party system, like it or not. Both parties have been compromised, but that doesn’t mean they have to stay that way. I’ve watched the Republicans spend 40 years morphing into MAGA, because their activists didn’t just surrender to the status quo, they worked hard to take control of their party, and then turn it into the psychopathic race police they always wanted to be, and apparently pedophiles, too, as well as the opportunity to loot our government for personal gain.
They decided to go that direction, but there is no reason that Dems can’t do the same thing with their party, and force them to reconfigure their operation to reflect the values and demands of their voters. Republicans accommodated the Racists and Pedophiles in their party, the Democratic Party can reconfigure to accommodate the Humanists in theirs.
Your right, we’ll never get anywhere with the OLD Democratic Party, so let’s make a new one that reflects the values of the good, decent, moral people of this country.
Respectfully, you don’t know me. I am no MAGA and it’s not over.
In the 50+ years since the Southern Strategy, do you see evidence that the Democratic Party is capable of systemic change, much less of leading the country toward it?
The two-party system has driven untold misery at home and abroad. What most Americans see as our past stability, many other humans see as looting the globe and driving its people into poverty and servitude.
The idea that change can only ever come through voting and elected representatives, around here, that’s called electoralism. No shade, many people of goodwill thought that was the best they could do. The most casual reading of history shows clear alternative paths.
FYI the Indivisible campaign in the US has attempted your proposal, Tea Party strategy from the liberal “left”
You won’t catch me defending the Democratic party, I’ve been an Unafilliated Independent since I first registered to vote in 1977. I hate both parties, and don’t want to be a member of either club. Instead, I belong to the largest group of voters - Independents.
But I also recognize that it is a two party system, and right now, the party that would be the most likely to influence toward our side is the Democratic Party. That’s just reality.
Throughout the 80s and 90s, I watched the Republicans totally reconfigure their party into a powerhouse, mostly through the careful growth and deployment of the Conservative Propaganda Machine, until they created the monster called the Tea Party, which eventually embraced MAGA. They played a long term game, and won.
The Dems need to do get in the game, and reconfigure their party for the future battle, and they don’t have the luxury of decades to do it. They have to strike hard and fast, and WE have to force them to do it.
If they don’t, if we allow them to lay back and take it once more, we are likely to lead to Civil War, Balkanization, perhaps worse.
I’m still trying to fight back while we still have legitimate legal options like elections to justify any later actions that need to be taken. I’m also still hoping that these Dumb Apes will be undone by their own virtuosic incompetence. Give them enough rope, and they’ll hang themselves, and they’re already trying to tie a noose, so there is progress on that front.
The only problem is how much damage they’ll do along the way, so it’s imperative to do anything we can to speed their downfall.
"And weak citizens like you, trying to convince people that it’s already over, the Dems will never fight for us, we might as well roll over for whatever fate MAGA has in store for us, are as much a problem as MAGA. "
This is incorrect. PorkrollPosadist’s pessimistic opinions do not make him as much as a problem as MAGA.
You are being emotional, and some of your assertions only have a basis in emotion and not rationality.
I encourage you to retract the insult.
Damn right I’m pissed off, and emotional about the loss of my nation to treasonous pedophile scum. I’m not apologizing for pointing out that discouraging action, without offering solutions, is encouraging that enemy. Anyone who isn’t angry about MAGAs vicious destruction of our country IS a disgusting weakling.
And your whiny call for politeness toward MAGA appeasers and collaborators makes YOU just as much of a MAGA appeaser. You’re probably one of those people who follows the insipid Michelle Obama Doctrine: “When they go low, we go high,” possibly the dumbest political statement I’ve ever heard, outside of EVERYTHING uttered by any MAGA. When they go low, you metaphorically kick them in the teeth, then stomp their heads.
Corrupt Traitors, racists, rapists, misogynists, ignoramuses, and PEDOPHILES deserve nothing less. They certainly do it to us every chance they get. They even manufacture opportunities to deliberately hurt us. Don’t they deserve the same treatment in return?
But you want to be polite, just like Chamberlain and the Nazis. That pathological need for Democrats to always be polite, even in the to face of withering corruption, is the reason that the MAGA Traitors are BACK in power. We locked them out once, and weaklings like you let them right back in, because it was so important to be polite to bullies. How is THAT strategy working out for you?
Retract my posts? No, I stand by every word.
Lol I’m not polite, I just don’t like you.
Pressuring the democrats to take action is somewhere between neutral impact to positive impact.
Pure electoralism will not help you. You need to understand that the guy you’re chewing out has a point.
The point of the 2 party system is to preserve capital and the interests of capital. The democrats have spent decades pretending to be unable to fight back.
Remember that it was Chuck Schumer and the democrats who decided to amplify Donald Trump in the Republican primary of the 2016 election.
Real action involves organizing with other people to create a force that can stand on it’s own legs and push back against the system.
Also fuck your country.
Democratic Warriors
If the Midterms happen, it’s going to be a bloodbath, and a LOT of new Democratic Warriors are going to enter Congress, carrying the righteous indignation of the voters.
I’ve seen this one before. In 2016-2018, the entire party, media, and generally any member of the public who could be described as vaguely progressive was in complete hysteria about the end of democracy. A massive national soul-searching was undertaken (within the boundaries of Liberalism). A massive pondering of “how did we get here?” Setting the absolute fixation on Russia aside, ideas of an epistemological crisis driven by disinformation campaigns on social media weren’t unfounded. It also raised deep questions about the health and wellbeing of democracy in the US. There were so many problems to tackle, from felony disenfranchisement, to voter roll purges, to gerrymandering, media consolidation, the asphyxiating torrent of corporate campaign finance. All of these things contribute to creating the perfect storm which is our shambolic electoral system. For a moment, it seemed like people (like, powerful people) were beginning to realize we had let this shit slip too far, and that deep reforms were necessary to save the republic.
I was THERE. I was a true believer. A patriotic liberal who had come to realize what a smart thing Obama did. Taking a trust-fall into the arms of the institutions, rather than expediently circumventing them to side-step the oncoming disaster. I trusted the system. I felt a personal responsibility to contribute. I went to demonstrations, contributed to electoral campaigns, and spent nearly every waking hour trying to spread the gospel on social media. I had people on r/Politics asking me to run for Congress.
The Trump regime enjoyed total impunity for two terribly long years. At last the Democrats had retaken the house. Now was the time for investigations, transparency, accountability, reform, impeachment. They poured water on that REALLY quick. Delayed for demured for nearly a year before finally impeaching Trump over some extremely contrived bullshit, rather than the fucking across-the-board fraud and corruption.
With the incoming administration in 2020, it was time to fix all of these holes. To do something, ANYTHING about the onslaught of corporate money in elections, the ubiquitous corruption, gerrymandering (2020 was a Census year, after all), ALL the fucking bullshit they use to turn our elections into a fucking joke. It was also a time of acute revolutionary crisis, with the George Floyd Uprising fighting back in steadfast resistance to the impunity of the police state.
The time was ripe for long overdue reforms. What we got instead was a shriveled warm body who was run for the explicit purpose of preventing that from happening. The Biden administration spent another four long years doing everything in its power to sharpen every implement of state violence, reforming absolutely nothing of substance, only to hand the keys right back over to Trump.
This year a number of new Democrats will be elected as freshmen representatives. Some of them might even be GOOD, but the incumbents aren’t going anywhere. They are the ones who control the party, control the committee assignments. They are the ones who will choose the leadership, and their decision will be driven by the same calculus that it always has been.
Jeffries and Schmuckie aren’t likely to survive the leadership vote, and the next leaders will have to be willing to stand up to MAGA. This is what the people, and the incoming Congressional Warriors, are going to demand.
What gives you this impression? Congressional leadership is not a popular election. It is one of the first orders of business after swearing in a new Congress, when public pressure on the caucus is at its lowest. Schumer might leave just because he’s ancient and bad for the brand, but we’re not getting a radical. We’re getting somebody who can maintain the status quo, but do the messaging better.
This is how the 90s Republicans spawned the Tea Party, which took over the party, then morphed into MAGA, and took over. The Dems are at the stage of creating their own Tea Party (Progressives) that can take control of the Democratic Party, and reconfigure it to reflect the true values of the Democratic VOTERS.
Again, do you live under a rock? What do you think the Sanders campaigns in 2016 and 2020 were? They were EXACTLY this. They fucking crushed it. It turns out the bourgeoisie finds social democracy to be utterly repulsive, while they couldn’t care less about the personal power-play of a couple oil tycoons who want to “run America like a business.”
If Democrats manage to gain power again, they’d better hold people accountable, or we will hold them accountable.
We’ve already run though the cycle of expecting the Democrats to hold people accountable, and then trying to hold the Democrats themselves accountable. There is NO accountability.
And weak citizens like you, trying to convince people that it’s already over,
Ok. How many hours have you spent standing in Lafayette Square shouting at the White House in the pouring rain? How many times have you packed a tent and a sleeping bag and skipped going to party with your friends because something must be done, even though you know that something will change absolutely nothing. How many nights have you spent sleeping on the cold city concrete to maintain an encampment? I vote. I go to demonstrations. I used to write my representatives too, but I know my representatives well enough to know I am better off writing to my allies. I’ve been doing “my civic duty” for nearly two decades now. Long enough to know this is not going to cut it.
It IS over buddy, but don’t worry. It is not the end of the world. This sclerotic republic must die, so something new and beautiful can be born from the ashes.
PRP’s story demonstrates the (rueful) value of electoral work. People get in, do the work, see how the deck is stacked and how it plays out, move left.
You’re getting sick of the truth is that you’re sick of.
the House may actually flip BEFORE the Midterm.
Then the Dems will control investigative committees with full subpoena and arrest powers.
then ALL of his pardons can be annulled by Congress as illegitimate criminal activities,
the Jan 6 Traitors, [et al,] will all go back to prison
Go for the football again, Charlie Brown. I’m sure Lucy will let you kick it this time.
What did the Democrats do during the Biden administration (or the Obama administration, for that matter) that permanently took away powers that the Republicans had been building, such that Trump couldn’t just reinstate them with the stroke of a pen upon election? Literally nothing. The country is backsliding from neoconservatism into fascism and there’s nothing that an aesthetic and media-savvy Democrat contingent will do about it.
The fact that you’ve been
politicallyelectorally active for 48 years and still haven’t figured out that Democrats are compromised defeatists and controlled opposition in the age of neoliberalism is not something to brag about, in fact it’s extremely embarrassing. Most intelligent progressives figure it out within a couple election cycles.The progressive activist wing is at most 20% of the Democratic Party, and they have none of the money, because the money comes from the tech/pharma/banking interests that the party ultimately represents. The Democrats as an oligarchic party will outlive you as a human, and they will possibly outlive America as we know it.
First of all, let’s forget the Biden administration. He could have become one of the top 10 presidents, but instead he’ll be ensconced in the bottom 10, among those who dithered as the nation moved toward Civil War. IF the Dems ever get back in power, they should blacklist every member of the Biden administration. You had your chance, and you blew it badly. You’re fired.
20% is a lot, and it is almost certainly going to grow after the Midterms. The Tea Party started controlling the Republican party with less than that, partially based on the fact that the rest of the party recognized that the Tea Party was the only growing sector of the party.
That’s the situation that the Progressives are in. They should start throwing their weight around, based on the fact that they are the only active sector of their party, and their influence is certain to grow in November.
Money isn’t an issue, the money will follow the power. Besides, Progressives are attracting a lot of support from Independent voters, and regular people. Bernie has been a powerhouse, while refusing corporate money, and relying primarily on small private donors.
The money issue only highlights the BIGGEST problem in our election system. Campaign Finance Reform is the issue from which literally EVERY other issue flows.
Before we can address corporate corruption in government, we need to prohibit ALL campaign contributions of any kind. Campaigns need to be fully financed by the Federal government, shortened to a 90 day campaign season (these people should be working the jobs we elected them to do, not gallivanting around the country pursuing their own ambitions), and tightly controlled, including campaign language and promises. Lying, propaganda, etc. will not be tolerated, and candidates can be cut off from Federal campaign funds, and kicked out of the race for violations.
Campaigning to represent American citizens is a serious matter, and the process should be held to an extraordinarily high standard. The system we have now filters out the best, and promotes the most outrageous, and we end up with idiots in charge, almost exclusively. I’m not that smart, but I’m pretty sure I’m smarter than any of the presidents that I’ve lived under for most of my life, and I’m POSITIVE I’m smarter than ANY of the Republicans. The only one who might have been smarter was Jimmy Carter.
I’d love to be on Jeopardy with Trump and GW Bush next to me.
I think you’re being delusionally optimistic about the ability to grow the progressive representation in the government. We got a boost to the DSA in the first Trump term, and the Squad, which maxed out at 9/435, that’s 2%. The Congressional Progressive Caucus went from 68 to 96 in two elections, and then likewise plateaued. The path to victory there is something seven (7) times that jump. I think less than 4% of the electorate are socialists, and I doubt as much as 25% are progressives. But let’s set that aside.
The money issue only highlights the BIGGEST problem in our election system. Campaign Finance Reform is the issue from which literally EVERY other issue flows.
I agree with something synonymous to this on a core level: money pervades and corrupts everything. There’s just context that makes my structural analysis different.
Power follows money, money does not follow power quite as much. Economic power is the basis for political power, and always has been throughout the history of civilization.
America has always been an oligarchy. It inherited that orientation from its colonial precursor, its government was deliberately set up that way by the founders, and it has found ways to remain oligarchic, from the resistance to Reconstruction to the Red Scare to Dominion ballot machines and expanding primary seasons today. We may have had a brief few decades (from universal adult suffrage and the New Deal) where it got a little bit less oligarchic, then found ways to return.
The rich and powerful will never allow you to simply vote away their wealth and power. As soon as they see what you’re aiming to do, they will put more safeguards in against what you’re doing. This is why the largest upheavals in American history (Revolutionary War, Civil War) were largely two different elevated classes contesting for dominance.
There is no incentive for entrenched congresscritters to approve of campaign finance reform that actually works instead of making the whole thing more byzantine. You are trying to fight corporate interests by flinging yourself against a wall propped up by corporate interests and also the American political inertia. How do you expect you’ll make it happen by working within the existing system, with a large majority of voters who are centrist to reactionary, and who have vested interests in preserving the global functions of capitalism?
Warning: vibes based analysis
I wholeheartedly believe, and will continue to believe until I am presented evidence to the contrary, that the trump people fully expected either their inauguration, or any of the actions they’ve taken in the past year, to have resulted in 2020-style mass rioting that would allow them to go fully mask off. Showing that they fundamentally misunderstood why those protests and riots occurred and just in general the state of the American left. But that just…hasn’t happened, so now they’re at a loss since they really do have this mass fascist project they’d like to implement but they have no real enemy to position themselves against. So while they are completely unopposed in implementing their goals, they have no popular support, they are bleeding all but their most ardent supporters, essentially destroying the coalition that got them back in power in 2024. They’re locked in this contradiction where they can do anything they want unopposed, but everything they do turns around and damages their support. And they’ve tried to cast various laughable groups as the enemies of western civilization. No kings protests, which everyone can see is just a bunch of milquetoast liberals. They tried to act like the dude who shot Charlie Kirk was part of some grand left wing anti-American conspiracy which even the libs could see through. Every enemy they’ve tried to create is varying degrees of laughable, and they keep trying to poke the left and provoke mass rioting again, seemingly not realizing the American left has been on life support for at least 40-something years.
Sort of disappointing on our part tbh but I’m with you, they do seem to be overplaying their hand both domestically and geopolitically.
That’s funny, because it means the dem concept of “going for the high road” works here for them, but only because the reps have no understanding that the two parties have been too effective together at smooshing everyone down economically that they literally can’t fight back.
The Dems and reps together were a fucking fierce combo, without the duo working together he whole facade is really crumbling
Like imagine the Dems showing up with no opposition and acting like the enemy is too strong to push any agenda forward so we have to keep bombing people (I’m literally just referencing Obama). But without the violence internally that the Republicans demand, that shit actually worked.
I don’t have a point here, recovering from the flu and up too late
They’ve been playing Jenga since the 70s, this is definitely the endgame. Just remember the scale of the timeline, the “endgame” could last 10+ years, as much as
is slamming the table. In the end, the tower will fall and they will lose (that doesn’t mean we will win, necessarily, but they will 100% lose eventually)Maybe Palantir works
they’ve pretty notoriously not worked. like their whole business model for over a decade now has been grifting the guvmint for a bunch of bunk ETL products, and I don’t think the advent of slop generation has made them more effective.
I think Palantir (or something similar) is how the feds+local pigs death squaded that guy 100 miles north of portland a week after he shot a fash while defending another protester, but on the whole I don’t think it’s the specter that people are making it out to be in the last couple years. That’s just buying their marketing.
fascism is capitalism’s antibody reaction to the rise of socialism. this is an auto-immune disorder firing off. fascism deploying itself too early because of conditions.
fascism v neoliberalism, which is nonsensical because neoliberalism was used experimentally first integrated with a fascist government, and was “successful”
so i think instead we get get the inverse, due to both timing, material conditions, and a unifying human desire to fight back against potential extinction
socialism, a new synthesis that’s still in infancy, will be the new antibody
deleted by creator
I don’t think Europe ever actually goes to war against the US. US could annex Greenland and Canada and EU leaders would only issue strongly-worded letters. Most that happens is they try to onshore all armaments production. The idea that the US is actually going Germany 1939 mode won’t be entertained unless the US starts launching annexations of the UK or European mainland. USians won’t care. It isn’t as though if the dems regain power they’ll un-annex the territory.
For domestic stuff idk. I went through 2020 like the rest of you. We are in an awful spot with the dems, who can very effectively channel & dissipate revolutionary sentiment. Median lib accepts the Biden years as a failure but views the Obama years as a great success. Although the left is broadly more organized overall compared to then, and most have probably recovered from Gaza encampment burnout. I don’t know if any dem out there actually has the spine to sic state-level law enforcement against the feds, which would be a moment of rupture. Dems are freaks who have wanted to be “in politics” since fifth grade. Could one of them pull a wild stunt on the calculus that people would back them? It totally goes against the sort of incrementalist institutionalist personality cultivated by the party.
We don’t need the EU to do it. One day, like Germany, America is gonna bite off something bigger than it can chew. For the Germans it was the Soviet Union, for the Americans it’ll be China. It’s an unwinable war that the United States has been hyping itself up for around a decade, and many understand this, but it won’t matter. And it’ll all unravel from there. Doesn’t matter how many AI data centres you have when the Pearl River Delta alone can produce more missiles in a week than you can in a year.
The existence of nuclear weapons makes me terrified of this eventuality
Breaching and sabotaging nuclear launch sites should be something all forces opposed to the USA should be considering
For the Germans it was the Soviet Union, for the Americans it’ll be China.
For the American Hexbears, you need to learn this one phrase
在我最绝望的时刻，我恳求你们，给我一罐白色魔爪能量饮料，然后把我关进一个有那些酷酷的美国人的牢房里。
Now on a hat
Invading the UK or the Continent is totally useless. There are no real resources. The land is not strategically placed. The US has more than it could ever need. Germany didn’t go after Europe. It went after the vast wealth of Russia and Europe was a necessary stepping stone.
If the US could maintain a war machine that spanned from Greenland to Tierra del Fuego, they would have more resources than they could possibly use in an all out global war.
The problem will always be that the people will resist.
They are in the decline and falling apart. But that is why things are so bad and they are lashing out so. An animal is most dangerous when it is wounded and cornered. And if they were secure in their power and position they wouldn’t feel the need to openly flex and demonstrate their power.
At the risk of engaging in sectarianism and poorly quoting a half remembered Trotsky analysis, this reminds me of how wrong Trotsky was in diagnosing fascism. To my memory, his analysis was that fascism is not dangerous and can be ignored because it is unstable and doesn’t have a coherent class basis. Not understanding that because it is unstable that fascism is dangerous and that not having a coherent base that is contradictory means that it needs to target an external enemy to maintain unity in opposition. Even if the Nazis could have won WW2, they would have ripped themselves apart and decayed in peace time without Judeo-Bolshevism.
It was Georgi Dimitrov who said anything like that, not Trotsky (and even Dimitrov said “ferocious but unstable”) https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm#s5
sure glad we can’t do sectarianism, we wouldn’t want to actually try to figure out who’s right or anything
Trotsky said, in 1930, “Fascism in Germany has become a real danger, as an acute expression of the helpless position of the bourgeois regime, the conservative role of the social democracy in this regime, and the accumulated powerlessness of the Communist Party to abolish it. Whoever denies this is either blind or a braggart …” (emphasis his)
It absolutely feels that way. But the issue is that the greatest military power the world has ever seen is under fascist control. 35 percent of that countries people support it. That is a large number. Assuming the rest are against it, you need action within that country. From those people. From what I have seen from American liberals and leftists, that wont happen. All I have seen so far is “WE WILL GET EM IN THE MID TERMS.”
With a government operating this way, that wont do jack shit. Especially with what the democrats DO when they have increased levels of power, which is nothing at best, and enabling at worst.
To those of us in the rest of the world, this seems like an uncertain and terrifying situation that ends in either fascist takeovers of our countries, or war. And there are a few countries throughout the world with fascist or puppet governments that seem to be willing to SUPPORT the US in this. Like I hope you’re right, but the optimism of “this is so crazy it’ll have to just stop” doesn’t seem realistic or helpful to me. We need preparation and action. I know what I’m doing for preparing for whats coming. I know what I’m doing to stop it where I am. Do you?
there is a palpable anger brewing in the basement
For what it’s worth I’ve never heard so much unhappy murmur about the state of things in my life and seen so many move lefter faster than now. Might be cope, but I’m seeing this in people who are still techically relatively well off. It’s like the bougies are going so ghoulish and ripping the wires of the walls so fast that it’s become something even the libs can’t unsee.
I’ve been thinking about the fragility of it all a lot, feels like at least the start of something.
I’m relatively confident that this is a thing. We’re seeing an increasing usage of leftist terminology like “working class”, “alienation” or even “reserve army of labor” in non-explicitly communist political discussions. Add to that the big soft power boost China had last year with all the peoples realizing how much better than them the average Chinese lived, inevitably leading to questions about communism, and I’m positive that leftist sentiment and class consciousness in the west is rising at a rate not seen in a long time.
Yup, the terminology part seems very clear and it happens daily. People now agree when I say stuff like “it’s the material conditions” or any such comment. People at my work agree, people in my family who used to be very socdem at best agree and you can now just say this stuff and it gets very little pushback. The difference to something like 5 years ago is huge. And the shift on China has also been huge.
Also increasingly the libs are getting disillusioned with the warmongering and Ukraine stuff, nobody brings up the slava stuff anymore. Because objectively everything sucks and they are starting to put the blame where it belongs. This is the time to agitate, educate and organize.
I feel like I am doing well, but I’m pissed that others are not and that we’re ruled by evil people. All over the world, psychopaths rule everything. If we beat them, we just cycle back to being manipulated and in this situation again. When will humanity ever be free of the greed burden? It ruins over and over again.
It is not naïve. We are very arguably living capitalism’s last few decades right now. If you look at graphs of the rates of profits over time, it’s pretty clear that it will tend toward 0 sometime between 2040 and 2060. And as you might know if you have at least a surface level understanding of the labor theory of value and the tendency for the rates of profit to fall, it is not something capitalists can do anything about for it is caused the very way capitalism function at its most fundamental level.
Much like slave society reached its peak during the Roman empire’s “glory days” before declining until its collapse, so has capitalism reached its peak during capitalism’s best decades last century and has been on the decline since.
All the basic infrastructure that has been utterly crumbling in the same capitalist nations that used to build Empire state buildings and Eiffel towers, all the de-industrialization sweeping through the same countries that caused and lived through the first industrial revolution and invented the assembly line, all the hipped up stage conferences where obscenely rich peoples promise incredible new technology that ends up never seeing the light of day that passes for innovation these days. All of that are signs of decline, signs that capitalism as a mode of production has run its course and has nowhere left to go, signs that the rates of profits are getting so close to the critical point that the very AI driven automation the ruling class are currently drooling at the thought of is all but guarantied to become the sword that slay the beast.
The capitalist ruling class is trying to find a way out of this doom, wildly throwing anything they have at the wall hoping something anything will stick. But there is no way out, there is nothing that can stick. nothing they do can save them, no damage they cause will ever be enough. At best, and with a lot of luck, they may be able to delay the inevitable for a bit, but not for long enough. They are the ant trying in vain to climb back out of the antlion’s hole, oblivion waiting jaws wide open for them at the bottom.
The beast is dying, that is the undeniable truth. The poison of the profit motive in its veins is crippling it. Already the imperial core is increasingly incapable of producing the weapons and machines of war that have been keeping it alive and dominant through force. And the weapons they can produce are all affected by various level of ‘enshitification’ caused by that very profit motive.
As imperialism exports the worst of capitalism’s contradictions out of the imperial core to the global south, it will make socialist revolution in the global south more and more likely as time passes while the imperial core will only get weaker and weaker, and when the 21st century’s first socialist revolution finally happen at long last, it is unlikely the US, let alone the rest of the imperial core, will be in a position to do anything substantial about it. And once revolution has swiped through enough of the exploited nations? It will be the end. The definitive, irreversible end of capitalism as the dominant mode of production on Earth. With nowhere left to export the contradictions of their economic system, no more influx of cheap stolen resources, and no new markets to expend in, whatever remains of the capitalist world will shrivel, rot and burn. The remaining capitalists will be witness to the destruction of everything they striven for, they will see their wealth burn, their influence crumble and their assets be taken from them or destroyed. And a justly deserved end will soon be theirs at last.
But will the rate of profit falling, which is a tendency and not a law, actually end empire if no one takes action? What actions will people take in the core? Will the global south actually do the magical thing you suggest? I don’t understand what we gain by painting this telelogical end unless we are so hopeless, weak, and vulnerable that we need a heaven/salvation myth forged from a religion of economics to cope with the reality that we have no real grip on history.
But will the rate of profit falling, which is a tendency and not a law, actually end empire if no one takes action?
The laws of thermodynamic are “tendencies and not really laws” either, yet as any physicist worth their salt will tell you it is a certainty that entropy will increase over time. Don’t mistake the difference between law and tendency with uncertainty, a tendency can be as certain as a law of physics if the phenomenon it describe has the right statistical properties.
Also, yes, that can and will end capitalism and any empire that still practices it by the times it reaches the critical point. Capitalism necessitate profit, if profits can’t be made, capitalism stops working, it’s that simple. As for people taking action, well, they will have no choice but to take action eventually because if capitalism breaks before they have a replacement ready, it will end badly for everyone involved. And by that I mean, if there is no mode of production handling production and distribution of food, water, and all that, peoples will start starving to death very quickly.
What actions will people take in the core?
It’s difficult to predict. We can say for pretty much certain that the core will keep getting increasingly economically and politically unstable until it cannot sustain itself anymore, but how the local population will react the this decline is hard to tell at best.
Will the global south actually do the magical thing you suggest? I don’t understand what we gain by painting this telelogical end unless we are so hopeless, weak, and vulnerable that we need a heaven/salvation myth forged from a religion of economics to cope with the reality that we have no real grip on history.
First, I suggest that you read theory, genuinely. If you think the Marxist prediction that revolution is unavoidable is some Cristian rapture-like prophesy of salvation coming for the believers, you don’t understand Marxist theory.
It’s not magical or theological, it’s logical. I’m not gonna go through all the theory that explain this conclusion here, again, go read about all that yourself, but here’s a bit of a TL,DR.
One of the benefits Imperial nations get out of imperialism is that some of the contradictions of capitalism get effectively offloaded to imperialized countries, they get cheaper and more exploitable labor that at home to make the things they sell back home for example. This exploitation of the imperialized nation by the imperial nation makes quality of life in the imperialized nation worse as exploitation keeps intensifying.
This will inevitably make the peoples of the imperialized nation revolt because that’s what happen when the standards of leavings of an entire population get unacceptably low at the hand of a greedy ruling class, just look at any popular revolt of a people against their ruler throughout history for examples of this.
These revolts will necessarily be working class revolts, because the capitalist class is already the ruling class under capitalism, and there is no third class beside these two. Therefore, if these revolts succeed in overthrowing the capitalist rulers, they will put a working class government in its place because why would they overthrow capitalists to replace them by capitalists?
Thus, socialist revolution will happen. Not “by magic” but because it is the logical conclusion given the way capitalism and imperialism function at their core.
No, I do think you’re right.
Nazi Germany seemed invincible as well. The collapse is coming, there are to many economic time bombs.
idk about that example, it required the mobilization of the entire rest of the industrialized world
Good thing the overwhelming majority of the world’s industry is located in the one country who’s developed their entire arms industry to defeat the Americans.
Haven’t posted a
today but now seems as good a time as any
And Nazi Germany didn’t have submarines loaded with nukes lurking who knows where. The US has such bloodlust that people here will bay and screech for the nukes to be used as soon as there’s even the slightest bit of humbling felt.
Mobilizing of the rest of the world’s industry helped accelerate the end of the war, but I wouldn’t say “required.” Nazi Germany would have eventually lost against the UK, CCCP, or USA and tried to fight all three at once. Any of those could have defeated the Axis Powers on their own. It would have just taken a lot longer, possibly decades. The genocides would have higher death tolls than they did.
As far as actually requiring as many members of the Allies? Doubtful. The US and CCCP production outputs were both greater than the rest of the Axis combined. Britain’s industry was more than Germany and Japan, but less than both together. It was, however, on the world’s largest aircraft carrier.
Regardless, the Axis invaded too many countries, spreading them too thin. Even if the US and UK decide to stay neutral, the Soviets are still being assisted by China, Poland, etc. for troops and logistics while their factories sit well-protected east of Moscow. And eventually, the fascists would run out of stuff to steal, which is what allowed them to start the war to begin with. By 1945, they were running on fumes. Even in this alternate timeline, the Germans are still going to have problems with fuel and food. Maybe they make it to 1947 before they feel the strain. They still didn’t make it more than a year into Barbarossa before running into the kinds of problems from our history.
As pointed out below, I’d be more concerned about rogue American elements using nukes from submarines or other clandestine shit like “briefcase nukes.” I don’t think the US has the industrial capacity to wage war like the Germans did because the US can’t even keep up with the wars it fights against smaller countries like Afghanistan or Vietnam. A peer war with China or Russia or both is the end of the US. I’m not even sure it could do anything significant in a nuclear exchange. China may already have the tech to shoot every missile out of the sky while landing all of theirs.
I would be worried about a sub firing a nuke at Saigon or Hong Kong out of pure spite as the rest of America burns.
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China may already have the tech to shoot every missile out of the sky while landing all of theirs.
god I hope they do. I’m not sure what is even possible with nuke and anti-nuke technology anymore.
