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Yes, but also no. America has put a lot of work into breaking every other basket.
America spent about a hundred years burning baskets everywhere until theirs was the only one left
Its duty?!
The US has no mandate to meddle in international affairs, any more than a bully in grade school has a duty to stop smaller bullies from picking on their own victims.
The US has never been an international savior, it’s the only country in the world to have dropped nuclear bombs on civilians.
Fascists within?
Everyone, everywhere, has a duty to stop fascism and help their fellow man, regardless of what ultimately insignificant speck of a human decided to put a line on a map.
I think every country has a duty to its people to fight fascism. I don’t think that means military occupation but there are other things. If we learned anything from WWII being isolationists allowed the murder of millions of jews.
But I’m not here to argue with you so please do not respond.
What other things, specifically?
Imo fascism is a natural consequence of hate and apathy. Introspection by individuals and willingness to change are how you overcome those issues. Governments can’t force people to empathize but perhaps better education and less superstition can help.
One of the major things that got us here was disinformation/misinformation. I believe in free speech, for sure. I don’t think that means everyone with a gripe should be platformed. I also think we needed to do much better protecting our data. One of the main reasons the algorithm works is there are no protections for individuals data. Breach after breach. Whistle blower after whistle blower. They weren’t being dramatic. We all became test subjects and what did big tech do with what could otherwise be described as ground breaking sociology reseach? Seize power.
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I thought nobody wanted to give us eggs… 🤔
Not anymore
sudo chmod +x
./Not anymore
Fuckin got’em
you are asking so many questions in so few words. but i’m not knocking you for that. just be aware that the full answer to that misleadingly small question is going to require a substantially larger answer.
Usually because of coercion tbh. Do you think we just sell our shiny militech?
Because it was safe and stable with a history of being safe and stable. It was easy to lose that reputation, and it will be difficult to get it back.
did the rest of the world just put all its eggs in the america basket?
No, you don’t throw your eggs into a basket when the basket is foo far away.
It’s quite the other way round. Imagine the North American continent drifting away from all other continents at the same time, and at an increasing speed.
This hasn’t been caused by the orange problem. It was observable several years earlier. But when they decided to afford their orange problem for the first time, it increased the speed significantly. And now it is increasing again, and both speed and acceleration increase.
I mean, if theres (positive) acceleration then speed is increasing. Acceleration and jerk are increasing
Jerk, yes, that’s the word I was missing. Jerk just didn’t want to come to me.
Canada and Mexico are part of North America and are not drifting away. The opposite.
After WW2 the world was split into 3 categories: first world (Western nations), second world (the Eastern bloc) and third world (everyone else)
America and the USSR both vyed and destabilised a lot of nations to solidify their place as super powers, America gained its power from the British when its economy shifted to war production to support them.
America made a lot of smart moves, like establishing the IMF so the US Dollar is used for international trade, and America has historically honoured all debts through the IMF.
So lots of nations had to kowtow to America to an extent if they wanted to have decent international trade.
Under Trump America is giving up its soft power for isolationism, and you can see a large portion of the world trying to shift away from Americas system through things like BRICS or incentivising different energy systems instead of oil
There is a lot more to this, but I think that’s at least a start to your question
I just want to compliment you for spelling and using “kowtow” correctly
If it wasn’t for even more autocratic nations filling the power void (China…Russia) the degradation of America’s importance would be a great thing. But unfortunately I think the rest of the world is unprepared to defend themselves with America’s sudden retreat into itself.
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They have enough on their plate protecting themselves. Effective militaries are not made in a few years. (Not without shifting your whole ass economy at least.)
Africa and South America and Asia better keep their eyes peeled.
Brazil, India, and South Africa might instead, creating a world where democracies and autocracies can get along fine with a tacit mutual non-intervention agreement
Not going to happen. Europe is barely holding together as it is, and Russia/China are using just as much energy and resources in undermining it as they do in the US.
At best Europe can stick somewhat together enough to form a working defence and foreign policy for its own territory and near neighbours, but it is never going to be a global force.
stop, wait, what, that’s why tankies believe in comrade trump? because any steps towards subverting American hegemony is mistaken as being inherently pro worker? even if it’s a genocidal fascist who makes workers’ lives worse
Are tankies pro trump? I see the grim irony of trump dismantling America’s empire, (grim for us, and the rest of the world doesn’t seem to be celebrating.)
I suppose I should not be impressed by mental gymnastics.
in 2020 when bernie lost, reddit tankies were banning anyone in support of Biden, saying that a Trump victory would be preferable in the name of Accelerationism. I mean they weren’t rooting for him exactly but the rationale was “voting status quo would be worse than trump winning because we’ll be closer to revolution if trump wins so it’s best to not vote at all”
i wonder if anyone posting that has spent a night in a depoconcentration camp yet
After the 20th Century it became clear that war could spread anywhere at any moment and destroy vast swaths of people and nature indiscriminately.
The world had no choice but to ally with really big baskets. The USA was the most obvious choice given their lack of hostile landgrabs unlike China and Russia.
The US literally said “you don’t need weapons, we’ll protect you.” They weren’t asked to protect us, they strong armed us. And now we’re lacking arms because of them. Most Americans, including Hesgeth and Vance have never opened a history book.
They actually enforce that members of NATO spend percentage of GDP on weapons. As for individual other nations, hard to say, but it was still no competition with the fucking dictatorships.
Lack of hostile land grabs? West of the Mississippi, Texas, Hawaii and the Philippines would beg to differ.
They specifically said 20th century, and were obviously referring to the post world war period.
After the wars, the US sought soft power, not territory.
Aligning with them was often a more safe move.Which were the Chinese and Russian 20th century post world war land grabs?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_changes_of_the_People's_Republic_of_China
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_occupations_by_the_Soviet_Union
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_territorial_acquisitions_table
Notable examples would be places like “Tibet”, several Baltic states, and an attempt on Finland. Hell, Russia is currently trying to annex Ukraine.
My comment was a reply to this argument:
After the wars, the US sought soft power, not territory. Aligning with them was often a more safe move.
Seems like Russia also didn’t grab new land after the wars.
Ah, choosing to ignore the territorial annexation that took place during the war or annexations that failed? And China?
Yes, because that was the original framing. I guess the West did their own annexing, or OP would have kept the focus on those annexations.
What are the failed Russian annexations?
China did Tibet and tried Vietnam, as far as I know, as well as some Indian disputes. I was wondering if there are more because depending on the country, there were reasons enough for the annexations that an alignment with China was not unreasonable. BRICS shows that those annexations are not show stoppers.
Oh wow, 1848, great example of post-20th-century hostility. /sarcasm
The Philippines are literally independent.
They were part of a land grab that took it from the Spanish along with Guam and some other places. Gained independence in 1946.
puerto rico was in that and still hasn’t gotten statehood OR independence. incidentally puerto rico is more populous than 7 countries in the EU
America made damn sure the world put its eggs here. We’ve always been the villain.
Well, South American countries made multiple attempts to put their eggs somewhere else and then found their eggs suspiciously smashed and their chicken appeared to have been replaced by a fascist dictator in the morning and when they asked what happened to the eggs they were put in a plane and quietly dropped over the ocean.
So there was that reason.
For more info, read Confessions of an Economic Hitman
Great book
Eggs in a basket??? Jesus!!! How much is THAT going to cost???
Yes, at least for the Europeans that is very much the case. The Germans, for instance, were always morally appalled by the more overtly violent aspects of US Imperialism, but were perfectly happy to hide under their coattails and let them do the dirty work. The deal was that Europe world accept US hegemony in exchange for military protection. Nobody could ever imagine that the US would just rip up that deal because it will definitely hurt them more than everybody else.
For further reading on this agreement it’s called the Bretton Woods agreement if anyone is interested.
Bretton Woods wasn’t about military protection. It was about stabilizing the global economy and monetary system. It absolutely gave the US a ton of economic influence, but it didn’t have anything to do with military protection. The Soviet Union even took part in the negotiations that turned into the Bretton Woods Agreement, although they chose not to sign the treaty.
The US’ military hegemony came out of NATO, the Cold War, and the Marshall Plan.
