The heroic SPD, who shoveled two million conscripts to their deaths in the pointless meat grinder of WWI (which killed 20 million, all told)
Yep, 100% accurate (and, a roughly-accurate analogy I think with modern Democrats doing insane things like supporting Israel)
and violently suppressed opposition to it
Er… which suppression are you talking about? I’m a little out of my depth on it but the only suppression I’m aware of came after the KPD started a violent rebellion against them. But like I say I’m not that well aware of it, can you tell me?
By the way, the 1932 German Presidential election had three candidates: the nefarious communist candidate Ernst Thälmann, Adolf Hitler, and Paul von Hindenburg. The winner was not Hitler, it was Hindenburg, who then proceeded to appoint Hitler as chancellor.
Once he won his 1932 term Hindenburg had Brüning as chancellor, then Papen, then Schleicher, amid a massive amount of infighting, and then after all that was Hitler. The vague picture I have is that infighting including but not limited to KPD vs. everyone else, strikes, street battles, and general chaos was a big part of what was making German politics nonfunctional and created the conditions where Hindenburg eventually had to work with Hitler.
Certainly the moderates in the Reichstag had to work with either the KPD or the Nazis, numerically, in order to get anything done, since none of those three factions had a majority. I’m out of my depth to say exactly how it played out or whose fault it all was. But I’m pretty confident in saying that “Hindenburg was secretly Hitler-friendly and got behind him instantly as soon as he was in office” is oversimplified, if that’s what you’re saying. For one thing, he’d been in office already for 7 years before that, and he had to die before the Nazis actually took over – it doesn’t seem to me like him in office was the key to Nazi takeover.
Would it have turned out different if it was 64% Hindenburg, instead of 51% Hindenburg and 13% Thälmann? And likewise with loyalties in the Reichstag? I’m sort of implying that it might have, but honestly I have no idea. And I likewise have no idea whose “fault” it was between the SPD and KPD that they were both pretty consistently at each other’s throats. I just know that part of the way it played out was rabid opposition to Hindenburg and the SPD from the left, rather than unification from them as the only alternative to Hitler, and that against that backdrop Hitler was able to make it work.
Obviously, the lesson to take away from this is that the people who tried to stop both world wars were on the wrong side of history, and the people who supported the guy who appointed Hitler chancellor in order to stop him from coming to power were right about everything and worthy of emulation.
I didn’t say they were on the wrong side of history, and I don’t think they were. I do think that their treatment of the SPD as “the real enemy”, and pursuit of “what we want in a perfect world” with no attention to “what’s the best outcome we can actually achieve” or “what will be the actual real outcome of chasing our perfect vision” is, in my opinion, part of what let Hitler come to power and got most of them killed a couple years later.
Er… which suppression are you talking about? I’m a little out of my depth on it but the only suppression I’m aware of came after the KPD started a violent rebellion against them. But like I say I’m not that well aware of it, can you tell me?
When a government gets millions of people killed for no reason, using violence against that government is completely justified.
And I likewise have no idea whose “fault” it was between the SPD and KPD that they were both pretty consistently at each other’s throats.
It was the SPD’s fault, for the whole, you know, “war that killed 20 million people” thing.
When a government gets millions of people killed for no reason, using violence against that government is completely justified.
Got it, I understand what you’re saying. Sure. Like I say, you’re not really wrong in this.
However, you could say, getting so bent out of shape when they use violence against you back against your rebellion that you’re still holding a grudge about it more than a decade later, even to the point of refusing to work with them against someone who’s going to get 75 million people (and nearly 100% of your particular political party) killed, seems shortsighted. That’s more my point than anything about “justified” or the right side of history.
Right, except that as established, the SPD were the ones who chose to back the guy who made Hitler chancellor. So it’s really more like, should they have backed the people who already got 20 million and a bunch of people from your party killed, so they can support the guy who’ll support the guy who’s going to get 75 million and virtually everyone in your party killed?
Your claim that Hindenburg winning by a wider margin could have possibly prevented Hitler’s rise to power is a counterfactual, even long after the fact, there’s no way to know if that’s true. I could just as easily say that the SDP could’ve thrown their weight behind Thälmann and that might have stopped Hitler, and maybe it would have, or maybe it wouldn’t. One way or another, the differences between the SDP and KPD were not one-sided, and those differences began over a disagreement where the SDP were clearly in the wrong and got millions of people killed for nothing.
I don’t really want to go in circles about this. The one additional thing I’ll say:
I could just as easily say that the SDP could’ve thrown their weight behind Thälmann and that might have stopped Hitler, and maybe it would have, or maybe it wouldn’t.
I think this is very true, yes. (Both the futility of speculating on what might have been, and the shared responsibility on the SPD side.) There’s some level of shared blame involved between the SPD for not unifying with the KPD, and the KPD for not unifying with the SPD. What the allocation is, I honestly don’t know enough to say.
On the other hand, I also do think it’s relevant that the countries run by the same people (ideologically) who were backing Thälmann turned into totalitarian nightmares, where people were risking death to flee from in order to get to places run by people like Hindenburg, in the decades after the war, when all the Hitler issues were in the past. If we’re going to analyze the viewpoint that the KPD was on the right side of history and the SPD should have dropped everything and unified with them, then I think that’s a relevant data point.
I suspect that you don’t see it that way precisely (in terms of the pleasantness level of postwar East Germany or USSR as places to live in compared with prewar Germany), and I probably won’t want to argue it out if you don’t agree with me on it – just saying my take on it according to my view of things.
On the other hand, I also do think it’s relevant that the countries run by the same people (ideologically) who were backing Thälmann turned into totalitarian nightmares, where people were risking death to flee from in order to get to places run by people like Hindenburg, in the decades after the war, when all the Hitler issues were in the past. If we’re going to analyze the viewpoint that the KPD was on the right side of history and the SPD should have dropped everything and unified with them, then I think that’s a relevant data point.
And if we’re going to bring that up, I think it’s a relevant data point that most of the countries you mention that were run by people like Hindenburg, where those people were fleeing to, were countries that had lots of wealth which had been built on centuries of slavery, exploitation, and colonialism, while most of the countries run by people like Thalmann were starting from a pre-industrial level and actively opposed, economically, militarily, and through assassinations, by the wealthy countries controlled by the people like Hindenburg. I would also point out the many, many cases of countries trying to enact policies that would benefit their people, without taking precautions against foreign subversion, who were murdered by the people like Hindenburg, and replaced by the people like Hitler.
Yep. All 100% accurate. In particular, the part about people who were trying to do socialism without good protection from a geopolitical superpower and getting some good results from it and then all getting assassinated by the US and forcibly replaced by a CIA backed mini-Hitler. All that shit happens and is probably still happening today.
I said I wouldn’t argue it out, but I don’t actually disagree with anything you said up there, and so I do want to say my take on it and explain a little more what I meant in context:
I think you’re 100% right on the evil nature of the big capitalistic countries. I think that a lot of that, though, is actually not to do with capitalism but is simply the nature of humans and power – big, powerful countries tend to be controlled by powerful men who want to accrete and use power in ways that are actively oppressive to all kinds of people at home and abroad, basically all the way up to the limit of what is the absolute rapacious maximum they can get away with.
It’s not to say capitalism’s not dangerous – it’s incredibly dangerous, both because of some unique dangerous features, and because it’s one effective engine for accreting power which then of course winds up in the hands of the wrong people. But, in my opinion (which you might not agree with), the history is that the non capitalistic countries that have risen to great power actually display more or less the exact same behavior – actually worse, for as bad of a standard as the big capitalistic powers set – within the limits of their power at the time. And the reason the US and Europe are such effective engines of oppression in the global south right now is not solely because they’re capitalist, but largely just because they’re the ones in a geopolitical position to be able to do it and get away with it.
This is not to say that it’s not a problem. It’s a huge problem and talking about a solution to it sounds like a great thing to do. But I think the modern history of the USSR and China is a caution against thinking “if we can just get rid of the capitalism then that’ll get rid of the colonialism and domestic oppression, obviously.” I honestly don’t really know what the actual answer is, but it looks to me from just looking over the history of the 20th century from a non expert perspective that “more democracy” (like, actual democratic institutions, not US imperialism dressed up in a coat that says “democracy”) is a more reliable solution to imperialism than is “less capitalism.”
That’s my take on it. In general I think left and socialist solutions are the right way; that’s why I was talking about the KPD being on “the right side of history” because I agree with you about them – especially the ones of them who would have been politically active in the 1920s – not being the type to start world wars, but just going after justice for people economic and otherwise. But I also think that there’s a danger there of thinking that every left solution is going to be a good solution to every geopolitical problem without looking over the history and seeing how things play out in practice.
I actually do agree with you on a lot of that analysis, but my conclusion is the opposite of yours. Allow me to explain my perspective and worldview, in that context.
Nobody becomes a major geopolitical power without some skeletons in their closet. The USSR and PRC do not represent my ideal systems of government. I don’t care much for “The Great Game” or getting the whole world to adopt one or another ideology.
But what I do care about is allowing countries, especially developing countries, to chart their own path ideologically, and to decolonize and assert control over their own resources. And the question that’s always in the back of my mind is, what can allow that to happen? And the answer I’ve arrived at is, “Having multiple options for trading partners.” And the country that is presenting a second option for these countries is China.
In a world dominated by one superpower, if you’re a small country going against the interests of that superpower, how can you have any hope? But when there’s two great powers, you can play them off each other, you can say, “the Chinese are offering me this, what can you offer?” and turn around and say, “the IMF just beat your offer, can you beat theirs?” And if they move against you, whether through invasion, assassination, or sanctions and seizing funds, then other countries in your position will take note and move towards your competitor.
China often offers fairly lucrative deals to these countries, and is also flexible regarding their domestic policies compared to the World Bank or IMF. A big part of that is simply that they’re trying to break into the market. But another part of it is that China’s own development was very messy and they don’t really see it as something for other countries to follow and emulate.
My dream is not a world dominated by China rather than the US. My dream is rather that some random developing country will have the freedom to experiment and will hit on the right formula to flourish, and will both grow themselves and provide a model for growth for similar countries. China is primarily a means to that end. At the same time, they did make massive strides in economic development and life expectancy, both compared to before the revolution and compared to before the economic reforms post-Mao.
I believe that, at least for now, China is doing more good than harm for developing nations, which are at the center of my concern in terms of geopolitics. There may come a time when China supplants the US as global hegemon, and it certainly looks to me like they’re on that path. When and if that happens, I’ll have to reassess my positions. But we’re still a good ways off from that.
In the meantime, I believe that the best way for the US to remain competitive in the long term is to refocus domestically. There are so many crises here at home that desperately need to be addressed, and those things are fueling America’s decline, and yet the only thing that gets substantial funding is the military, because of the perverse incentives in the military-industrial complex. And every time the US tries to throw it’s weight around, doing things like seizing Venezuela’s assets, for example, more and more non-aligned countries start to wonder if they’re going to be the next ones on America’s shitlist and if China might be a more reliable trading partner.
Frankly though, I don’t have much hope for the US. In fact, I’m terrified by the fact that the US spends more on the military than the next 9 countries combined, while China has focused so much on economic production. I consider it a real possibility that, at some point in the future, China is going to emerge as the global economic hegemon, and the US will be desperate to maintain their place and will recognize that the only weapon in their arsenal is, well, the weapons in their arsenal. Pretty much the only thing I still have hope for is that this doesn’t happen.
Now, the American ruling class doesn’t want a war with China, but they do want to line their pockets and there’s no better way to do that than military spending. In order to justify that, they’re more than happy to saber-rattle and get people fired up against China, and especially with COVID, they were happy to blame China to deflect from their own mishandling of the situation. But doing this is playing with fire. In the short term, it just means more wasteful spending and a rise in hate crimes against Asian-Americans, which are bad enough, but they are also creating people who actually crazy enough that they do want to start WWIII. And they’re just gambling that they can rile up these frenzied warmongerers enough that they won’t mind when they cut education to buy more bombs but not so much that they’re actually able to take power and end all human existence. But this gamble is creating the conditions for someone to come to power who doesn’t know or care that the saber-rattling is supposed to be an act, and as long as it keeps working out for them, they will keep raising the stakes higher and higher until they lose control. I have no idea whether that loss of control will come in the form of a rabid, frothing nationalist, or in the form of a well-meaning liberal who’s simply bought into too much of their own propaganda, like, for instance, the psychos I’ve seen talking about a “limited nuclear exchange” with Russia being an acceptable outcome.
There’s a certain point of recklessness where the only responsible thing to do is to refuse to be a party to it. Frankly, too much attention goes to voting choices in the US presidential election, but I believe there are strategic arguments to vote third party and I’m not motivated solely from frustration or spite, though there are plenty of other reasons why I hate his guts, and it’s a longshot that a vote will matter at all regardless.
If you disagree with me, or see me as misguided, stubborn, or whatever else, that’s all fine. But whatever I may be, I am a person and not a bot or a foreign agent or a conservative in disguise, and these are my real beliefs and concerns. If you’ve made it through this long comment, I’m grateful.
Hm, I generally agree with the first part. I was not meaning anything to say “the US should be in charge of the world” (I mean… more than it already is). China or the EU or the Arab world as a foil to the US just getting to do whatever it wants (particularly as pertains to small countries) sounds like a good thing, yes.
I have some minor disagreements about the details of the rest of it… honestly, I see the US and China as like two guys at work who constantly are pissed at each other, bickering or trying to get one over on the other guy, and everyone else makes jokes about how they should just get married. They obviously depend on each other. The system of trade they’ve worked out works great for both countries and is to both of their benefit, for whatever minor efforts they make to grab bigger slices of the pie from the other from time to time. With the exception of total idiots like Trump, I don’t think any of the decision makers on either side want to upset that in any genuine sense.
I’m not sure that China’s economic development is set up for success. I am sorry to not be able to explain it, but I do not understand the details; someone smarter than me whose judgement I respect broke down to me why China’s development is unsustainable on its current model, and I didn’t follow it well enough to remember it and tell it to you. That is not to say any big crisis is brewing, just that it’ll be difficult for it to continue without big changes just because it has been growing quite a lot up until now. But I wouldn’t take it ascending to dominance as being a definite trajectory. IDK, if I have a chance I can ask him again and then maybe explain it to you once I actually understand it.
The US’s military is massive by any measure but the pure numbers are a little misleading; a ton of stuff gets put under “military” that really isn’t. A ton of basic science and technology research goes under “defense”; e.g. the internet was developed under the military budget (DARPA). Maintaining bases overseas is military, sure, but a lot of the purpose and actual day-to-day practice of it is soft power and maintaining on-the-ground relationships with other countries. They’re not just fighting wars with it with every base on every given day. But yeah, it’s certainly powerful enough to be terrifying if the US government falls into the hands of someone (like you-know-who) or some grouping, who will apply it to pursue for-real domination instead of just hegemony and occasional oppression.
But yeah, broadly speaking I think I agree with a lot of what you’re saying. Just like anyone, the US can get oppressive if there is no counterbalancing force to provide an alternative or keep their power level in check. What I was saying was “big countries are dangerous things and that includes non capitalist ones,” not “big countries are dangerous things, except the US, that one’s okay!”
Yep, 100% accurate (and, a roughly-accurate analogy I think with modern Democrats doing insane things like supporting Israel)
Er… which suppression are you talking about? I’m a little out of my depth on it but the only suppression I’m aware of came after the KPD started a violent rebellion against them. But like I say I’m not that well aware of it, can you tell me?
Once he won his 1932 term Hindenburg had Brüning as chancellor, then Papen, then Schleicher, amid a massive amount of infighting, and then after all that was Hitler. The vague picture I have is that infighting including but not limited to KPD vs. everyone else, strikes, street battles, and general chaos was a big part of what was making German politics nonfunctional and created the conditions where Hindenburg eventually had to work with Hitler.
Certainly the moderates in the Reichstag had to work with either the KPD or the Nazis, numerically, in order to get anything done, since none of those three factions had a majority. I’m out of my depth to say exactly how it played out or whose fault it all was. But I’m pretty confident in saying that “Hindenburg was secretly Hitler-friendly and got behind him instantly as soon as he was in office” is oversimplified, if that’s what you’re saying. For one thing, he’d been in office already for 7 years before that, and he had to die before the Nazis actually took over – it doesn’t seem to me like him in office was the key to Nazi takeover.
Would it have turned out different if it was 64% Hindenburg, instead of 51% Hindenburg and 13% Thälmann? And likewise with loyalties in the Reichstag? I’m sort of implying that it might have, but honestly I have no idea. And I likewise have no idea whose “fault” it was between the SPD and KPD that they were both pretty consistently at each other’s throats. I just know that part of the way it played out was rabid opposition to Hindenburg and the SPD from the left, rather than unification from them as the only alternative to Hitler, and that against that backdrop Hitler was able to make it work.
I didn’t say they were on the wrong side of history, and I don’t think they were. I do think that their treatment of the SPD as “the real enemy”, and pursuit of “what we want in a perfect world” with no attention to “what’s the best outcome we can actually achieve” or “what will be the actual real outcome of chasing our perfect vision” is, in my opinion, part of what let Hitler come to power and got most of them killed a couple years later.
When a government gets millions of people killed for no reason, using violence against that government is completely justified.
It was the SPD’s fault, for the whole, you know, “war that killed 20 million people” thing.
Got it, I understand what you’re saying. Sure. Like I say, you’re not really wrong in this.
However, you could say, getting so bent out of shape when they use violence against you back against your rebellion that you’re still holding a grudge about it more than a decade later, even to the point of refusing to work with them against someone who’s going to get 75 million people (and nearly 100% of your particular political party) killed, seems shortsighted. That’s more my point than anything about “justified” or the right side of history.
Right, except that as established, the SPD were the ones who chose to back the guy who made Hitler chancellor. So it’s really more like, should they have backed the people who already got 20 million and a bunch of people from your party killed, so they can support the guy who’ll support the guy who’s going to get 75 million and virtually everyone in your party killed?
Your claim that Hindenburg winning by a wider margin could have possibly prevented Hitler’s rise to power is a counterfactual, even long after the fact, there’s no way to know if that’s true. I could just as easily say that the SDP could’ve thrown their weight behind Thälmann and that might have stopped Hitler, and maybe it would have, or maybe it wouldn’t. One way or another, the differences between the SDP and KPD were not one-sided, and those differences began over a disagreement where the SDP were clearly in the wrong and got millions of people killed for nothing.
I don’t really want to go in circles about this. The one additional thing I’ll say:
I think this is very true, yes. (Both the futility of speculating on what might have been, and the shared responsibility on the SPD side.) There’s some level of shared blame involved between the SPD for not unifying with the KPD, and the KPD for not unifying with the SPD. What the allocation is, I honestly don’t know enough to say.
On the other hand, I also do think it’s relevant that the countries run by the same people (ideologically) who were backing Thälmann turned into totalitarian nightmares, where people were risking death to flee from in order to get to places run by people like Hindenburg, in the decades after the war, when all the Hitler issues were in the past. If we’re going to analyze the viewpoint that the KPD was on the right side of history and the SPD should have dropped everything and unified with them, then I think that’s a relevant data point.
I suspect that you don’t see it that way precisely (in terms of the pleasantness level of postwar East Germany or USSR as places to live in compared with prewar Germany), and I probably won’t want to argue it out if you don’t agree with me on it – just saying my take on it according to my view of things.
And if we’re going to bring that up, I think it’s a relevant data point that most of the countries you mention that were run by people like Hindenburg, where those people were fleeing to, were countries that had lots of wealth which had been built on centuries of slavery, exploitation, and colonialism, while most of the countries run by people like Thalmann were starting from a pre-industrial level and actively opposed, economically, militarily, and through assassinations, by the wealthy countries controlled by the people like Hindenburg. I would also point out the many, many cases of countries trying to enact policies that would benefit their people, without taking precautions against foreign subversion, who were murdered by the people like Hindenburg, and replaced by the people like Hitler.
Yep. All 100% accurate. In particular, the part about people who were trying to do socialism without good protection from a geopolitical superpower and getting some good results from it and then all getting assassinated by the US and forcibly replaced by a CIA backed mini-Hitler. All that shit happens and is probably still happening today.
I said I wouldn’t argue it out, but I don’t actually disagree with anything you said up there, and so I do want to say my take on it and explain a little more what I meant in context:
I think you’re 100% right on the evil nature of the big capitalistic countries. I think that a lot of that, though, is actually not to do with capitalism but is simply the nature of humans and power – big, powerful countries tend to be controlled by powerful men who want to accrete and use power in ways that are actively oppressive to all kinds of people at home and abroad, basically all the way up to the limit of what is the absolute rapacious maximum they can get away with.
It’s not to say capitalism’s not dangerous – it’s incredibly dangerous, both because of some unique dangerous features, and because it’s one effective engine for accreting power which then of course winds up in the hands of the wrong people. But, in my opinion (which you might not agree with), the history is that the non capitalistic countries that have risen to great power actually display more or less the exact same behavior – actually worse, for as bad of a standard as the big capitalistic powers set – within the limits of their power at the time. And the reason the US and Europe are such effective engines of oppression in the global south right now is not solely because they’re capitalist, but largely just because they’re the ones in a geopolitical position to be able to do it and get away with it.
This is not to say that it’s not a problem. It’s a huge problem and talking about a solution to it sounds like a great thing to do. But I think the modern history of the USSR and China is a caution against thinking “if we can just get rid of the capitalism then that’ll get rid of the colonialism and domestic oppression, obviously.” I honestly don’t really know what the actual answer is, but it looks to me from just looking over the history of the 20th century from a non expert perspective that “more democracy” (like, actual democratic institutions, not US imperialism dressed up in a coat that says “democracy”) is a more reliable solution to imperialism than is “less capitalism.”
That’s my take on it. In general I think left and socialist solutions are the right way; that’s why I was talking about the KPD being on “the right side of history” because I agree with you about them – especially the ones of them who would have been politically active in the 1920s – not being the type to start world wars, but just going after justice for people economic and otherwise. But I also think that there’s a danger there of thinking that every left solution is going to be a good solution to every geopolitical problem without looking over the history and seeing how things play out in practice.
I actually do agree with you on a lot of that analysis, but my conclusion is the opposite of yours. Allow me to explain my perspective and worldview, in that context.
Nobody becomes a major geopolitical power without some skeletons in their closet. The USSR and PRC do not represent my ideal systems of government. I don’t care much for “The Great Game” or getting the whole world to adopt one or another ideology.
But what I do care about is allowing countries, especially developing countries, to chart their own path ideologically, and to decolonize and assert control over their own resources. And the question that’s always in the back of my mind is, what can allow that to happen? And the answer I’ve arrived at is, “Having multiple options for trading partners.” And the country that is presenting a second option for these countries is China.
In a world dominated by one superpower, if you’re a small country going against the interests of that superpower, how can you have any hope? But when there’s two great powers, you can play them off each other, you can say, “the Chinese are offering me this, what can you offer?” and turn around and say, “the IMF just beat your offer, can you beat theirs?” And if they move against you, whether through invasion, assassination, or sanctions and seizing funds, then other countries in your position will take note and move towards your competitor.
China often offers fairly lucrative deals to these countries, and is also flexible regarding their domestic policies compared to the World Bank or IMF. A big part of that is simply that they’re trying to break into the market. But another part of it is that China’s own development was very messy and they don’t really see it as something for other countries to follow and emulate.
My dream is not a world dominated by China rather than the US. My dream is rather that some random developing country will have the freedom to experiment and will hit on the right formula to flourish, and will both grow themselves and provide a model for growth for similar countries. China is primarily a means to that end. At the same time, they did make massive strides in economic development and life expectancy, both compared to before the revolution and compared to before the economic reforms post-Mao.
I believe that, at least for now, China is doing more good than harm for developing nations, which are at the center of my concern in terms of geopolitics. There may come a time when China supplants the US as global hegemon, and it certainly looks to me like they’re on that path. When and if that happens, I’ll have to reassess my positions. But we’re still a good ways off from that.
In the meantime, I believe that the best way for the US to remain competitive in the long term is to refocus domestically. There are so many crises here at home that desperately need to be addressed, and those things are fueling America’s decline, and yet the only thing that gets substantial funding is the military, because of the perverse incentives in the military-industrial complex. And every time the US tries to throw it’s weight around, doing things like seizing Venezuela’s assets, for example, more and more non-aligned countries start to wonder if they’re going to be the next ones on America’s shitlist and if China might be a more reliable trading partner.
Frankly though, I don’t have much hope for the US. In fact, I’m terrified by the fact that the US spends more on the military than the next 9 countries combined, while China has focused so much on economic production. I consider it a real possibility that, at some point in the future, China is going to emerge as the global economic hegemon, and the US will be desperate to maintain their place and will recognize that the only weapon in their arsenal is, well, the weapons in their arsenal. Pretty much the only thing I still have hope for is that this doesn’t happen.
Now, the American ruling class doesn’t want a war with China, but they do want to line their pockets and there’s no better way to do that than military spending. In order to justify that, they’re more than happy to saber-rattle and get people fired up against China, and especially with COVID, they were happy to blame China to deflect from their own mishandling of the situation. But doing this is playing with fire. In the short term, it just means more wasteful spending and a rise in hate crimes against Asian-Americans, which are bad enough, but they are also creating people who actually crazy enough that they do want to start WWIII. And they’re just gambling that they can rile up these frenzied warmongerers enough that they won’t mind when they cut education to buy more bombs but not so much that they’re actually able to take power and end all human existence. But this gamble is creating the conditions for someone to come to power who doesn’t know or care that the saber-rattling is supposed to be an act, and as long as it keeps working out for them, they will keep raising the stakes higher and higher until they lose control. I have no idea whether that loss of control will come in the form of a rabid, frothing nationalist, or in the form of a well-meaning liberal who’s simply bought into too much of their own propaganda, like, for instance, the psychos I’ve seen talking about a “limited nuclear exchange” with Russia being an acceptable outcome.
There’s a certain point of recklessness where the only responsible thing to do is to refuse to be a party to it. Frankly, too much attention goes to voting choices in the US presidential election, but I believe there are strategic arguments to vote third party and I’m not motivated solely from frustration or spite, though there are plenty of other reasons why I hate his guts, and it’s a longshot that a vote will matter at all regardless.
If you disagree with me, or see me as misguided, stubborn, or whatever else, that’s all fine. But whatever I may be, I am a person and not a bot or a foreign agent or a conservative in disguise, and these are my real beliefs and concerns. If you’ve made it through this long comment, I’m grateful.
Hm, I generally agree with the first part. I was not meaning anything to say “the US should be in charge of the world” (I mean… more than it already is). China or the EU or the Arab world as a foil to the US just getting to do whatever it wants (particularly as pertains to small countries) sounds like a good thing, yes.
I have some minor disagreements about the details of the rest of it… honestly, I see the US and China as like two guys at work who constantly are pissed at each other, bickering or trying to get one over on the other guy, and everyone else makes jokes about how they should just get married. They obviously depend on each other. The system of trade they’ve worked out works great for both countries and is to both of their benefit, for whatever minor efforts they make to grab bigger slices of the pie from the other from time to time. With the exception of total idiots like Trump, I don’t think any of the decision makers on either side want to upset that in any genuine sense.
I’m not sure that China’s economic development is set up for success. I am sorry to not be able to explain it, but I do not understand the details; someone smarter than me whose judgement I respect broke down to me why China’s development is unsustainable on its current model, and I didn’t follow it well enough to remember it and tell it to you. That is not to say any big crisis is brewing, just that it’ll be difficult for it to continue without big changes just because it has been growing quite a lot up until now. But I wouldn’t take it ascending to dominance as being a definite trajectory. IDK, if I have a chance I can ask him again and then maybe explain it to you once I actually understand it.
The US’s military is massive by any measure but the pure numbers are a little misleading; a ton of stuff gets put under “military” that really isn’t. A ton of basic science and technology research goes under “defense”; e.g. the internet was developed under the military budget (DARPA). Maintaining bases overseas is military, sure, but a lot of the purpose and actual day-to-day practice of it is soft power and maintaining on-the-ground relationships with other countries. They’re not just fighting wars with it with every base on every given day. But yeah, it’s certainly powerful enough to be terrifying if the US government falls into the hands of someone (like you-know-who) or some grouping, who will apply it to pursue for-real domination instead of just hegemony and occasional oppression.
But yeah, broadly speaking I think I agree with a lot of what you’re saying. Just like anyone, the US can get oppressive if there is no counterbalancing force to provide an alternative or keep their power level in check. What I was saying was “big countries are dangerous things and that includes non capitalist ones,” not “big countries are dangerous things, except the US, that one’s okay!”