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For years the idea that Western governments could actually lock a billion Westerners used to protesting for "muh rights" at every opportunity up for a year with almost zero major dissent also seemed absurd, until it happened and was 'always possible' of course.
The reality is that Western state capacity, in particular American state capacity, hasn't been tested since WW2 and the current sclerotic, inefficient functioning of the government, including defense, is a malaise both enabled and tolerated by American hegemony and prosperity. To paraphrase the apocryphal Churchill quote, Americans do the right thing only after exhausting every other option. The war in Ukraine is not important enough to create the fear of god that drives Americans to exert their state capacity in a meaningful way, it simply isn't a good indicator of what the country is capable of.
By casualties I meant KIA and WIA. KIA I think 70-120k is a common estimate for KIA.
Zero dissent? Up to a year ? It was some months, and it created a vast amount of radicalised people and extreme unwillingness to repeat it. To the point that if quarantine was now actually needed because of yet another lab leak of this time interestingly lethal disease, it'd probably not happen.
US had an entire industrial base and was entirely self sufficient in basically everything. Ball bearings, steel production, building materials, electronics chemicals, etc. Anything you can name, around 1950s US was making it, usually in world class quality. That's not true anymore.
That industrial base was hollowed out and largely outsourced since 1980. US industry now largely depends on imports from rival powers. So, in the event of a crisis involving said hostile powers, you'd be half a decade away from merely being self-sufficient.
And let's not even go into something such as level of trust in state institutions, the government, political polarization and so on. Incomparably worse now, especially since the USG seems to regard it's core sustaining population-whites with deep suspicion and paranoia.
Yes, Ukraine war isn't a big enough crisis, but a big enough crisis might just result in a collapse of yet another WW2 victor.
Can confirm. Sample size of one. Next "vaccine" they come up with for as of yet unnamed global pandemic they are gonna have to shove it up their own behinds. And if they make it mandatory they're are going to literally get home grown terrorism, not that fake glow in the dark shit FBI tricking special needs students to do a terrorism.
They'll shove it up ours. With the enthusiastic support of a majority, egged on by CNN.
The only kinds of home-grown terrorism which can exist in the US are glowie and leftist. There may be sporadic violence which is called terrorism, but the right simply cannot organize violence without being infiltrated by the Feds.
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More than a year in some places. And as far as I can tell the Overton window on the subject runs from "Of course it was worth it" to "We should have gone full China".
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