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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 9, 2024

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Your post is a good example of how the discussion goes awry: not really focusing on "state capacity" in and of itself, but rather using it as a springboard to grind the usual axes. Talking about stuff like supposed FBI bias wouldn't be particularly high up on the list of concerns in regards to state capacity, but it can jump to #1 if you wanted to talk about it anyways!

I disagree with many of your object-level concerns, and think they're interesting discussions, but don't think they have much to do with state capacity.

In any case:

Sure nobody's trying actual insurgencies but the regime is considered illegitimate and unjust by half the population, though it changes which half.

The US is certainly polarized, but political stability of the kind capitalism requires to do basic business hasn't been impacted on a widespread scale, outside of maybe the BLM riots of 2020 which tend to be overblown by those on the right.

And your 'network of alliances' is actually a bunch of provinces you're busy ruining economically. Biden inflation reduction act was offering money to EU businesses to relocate to USA. You blew up their natural gas pipeline.

Equivocating the EU as a "bunch of [American] provinces" or as "puppets" as I've heard other claim is just flatly false. Also, nearly all evidence of the Nordstream bombing points to Ukraine, not the US.

And as to solidity of economy...... if democrats keep being in office and keep attacking energy supply, that's not going to last.

Under Biden, the US has produced more oil than any nation in history. Not just US history, but world history in its entirety.