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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28473 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023

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The most plausible path I see to WWIII is internal strife boiling over inside America, fatally compromising its ability to enforce the Pax Americana, resulting in a lot of countries lunging for the cheese while the cat's busy dying of a cerebral hemorrhage.

Granting unlimited social and political license to an irrational, irresponsible, and highly aggressive faction of ideological zealots seems like one of the best ways possible to cause internal strife to boil over inside America. Those of us taking the beating can see that you are compromising our values, interests and welfare in a vain effort to secure your own. Why should we not return the favor?

The most plausible path I see to WWIII is internal strife boiling over inside America, fatally compromising its ability to enforce the Pax Americana, resulting in a lot of countries lunging for the cheese while the cat's busy dying of a cerebral hemorrhage.

The problem is, crushing SJ would require exactly an escalation of the USA's internal strife. And it's too late to get it done before the mice can lunge; as I've said elsewhere on theMotte and on DSL, I suspect Beijing already is actively pursuing a plan to conquer Taiwan as we speak.

So, my advice: get out of major cities, prep for nuclear war, and let the culture war simmer down. Even with mild prep, you've got a better chance of survival if things simmer down just a little and the USA manages to avoid getting nuked. But if the USA does get nuked anyway and you survive... well, you'll have a far easier time crushing SJ then with half of them literally dead.

It's a shit situation, but that's the best pragmatic course I can see through this foggy old crystal ball. I'm not telling you to full-on bend the knee; I'd much prefer a non-Trump Republican in the White House than I would Biden if and when shit goes down, because Biden's senile. But I don't think going for Trump again is +EV. I can't very well stop you, but that's my advice.

A Second US Civil War or something close, with the government in shambles, both sides have nukes, at least one side is getting foreign aid and lots of it? Yeah, that could do it.

I don’t think we’d be looking at a second US civil war, I think we’d be looking at balkanization with predictable conflicts to either determine the boundaries of the big players’ SOI’s or adjudicate resource issues previously solved by the federal government(looking at you, California water supply), probably with insurgencies in red areas of blue states.

There might be foreign aid flowing in but you’re not looking at a two-side civil war.

It really depends on the situation. If there's a situation where there are for some reason two equally-officially-potent factions and everyone knows this, sure. But I think it's more likely that you get one faction with the official authority and another faction rejecting it because of some egregious action, and then the good old "traitor" instincts kick in.

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