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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28734 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023

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The whole vulgar geopolitical mindset that believes that we just have to achieve "multipolarity" and then whatever desired outcome (generally something like the advancement of socialist economics or socially conservative culture) happens also often comes off like the person advocating it has this huge complex game board inside their head where this piece moves here and that piece moves here and good things happen and everything just seems to be based on so much wishful thinking.

I understand why Russians and other peripheral countries would advocate for multi polarity. What I haven’t really grokked is why an American would expect that to improve our situation.

Because maintaining the Empire is really expensive, to the point that the US government cares more about it than actually doing the job it is supposed to back home. I'm not sure if you've noticed, but huge swathes of the US are in absolutely terrible shape - drug addiction, economic malaise, continual border crises, unsustainable birthrates, infrastructure falling into malign neglect... the portion of the US population that directly benefits from the empire is shrinking day after day, and the portion for whom it is an unbearable burden is growing. One of the reasons for Trump's enduring popularity among his base is that he has directly advocated for pulling American funding out of a variety of overseas shitholes and focusing on America - that's a large part of what America First actually means.

Everyone except them (the master strategist) is a robot NPC whose actions can be predicted by economics 101 game theory.

IME this sort or thinking is rampant within the US state department and I believe that it is largely responsible for the situations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya turning out the way they did.

Yeah, well, why do you think George Kennan believed US, after dealing with USSR, should be isolationist ? Because he didn't think the people produced by the US system of government are capable of not fucking up everything given half the chance.

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