Reporters are not allowed to report that the emperor is not wearing clothes! He is the clothiest of clothes wearing emperors in the land!

Feels fitting that the US military would prepare for a zombie outbreak, considering that most of its enemies are in some part fictions it conjures up in order to justify attacking.

The hellish forced attempts at immersion from people being told over and over as writers to “show, don’t tell” - I won’t indulge in a rant about it here, as it’s off-topic anyway, but that adage and the resulting prose drives me up the wall.

If true—and it’s sure not hard to believe it is given the endless fucked up stuff western colonialism and imperialism has done over centuries—all I can say is, they make ghouls look like casper.

“On a snowy October night, I was eating a microwaved burrito, when the editor called and ordered me to go meet some actually interesting people”

“As soon as I stepped outside, it started to rain. The droplets gathered on the ground and I had a profound realization. Gravity pulls things down. I wondered: Have the Chinese ever figured this out? No, surely not. The Russians? Not in a million years. But I, a white man living in New York writing for an imperialist publication, am the first to have ever had this realization. I quickly jotted my thought down on a used napkin, ignoring the properties of water that made it wet in the rain, and hurried to the patent office to get my scientific discovery recorded in the annals of capitalism.”

They have the basic groundwork laid years ahead of time, just ready to begin implementation at which point it’s probably a matter of months and the important thing is neither we nor these countries generally see the ramp-up happening until it’s too late and the machine is running.

So yes it’s easy and it’s hard to counter without something like the great firewall and extensive laws controlling foreign NGOs, and even an extensive, well-funded, ideologically loyal intelligence apparatus to root out traitors and foreign agents.

Again, this does not make sense as phrasing though. Laying groundwork for years ahead of time is not, by any meaning of the word, “easy”.

This is frankly a short-sighted way of looking at things that I think shows you’re probably on the younger side as many of us are. The 1930s were awful and they pulled through. without a revolution There were real winds of change after WW2 that the US successfully defeated.

The 1930s are not the same conditions as right now. Post WW2 is not the same conditions as right now. But if you want to compare, that period had FDR and the closest thing to that today as a reformer is Bernie Sanders, who the established party elites resoundingly rejected. In place of having a real reformer, they are saying Biden is doing meaningful work when he’s doing tweaks. Meanwhile, we have climate change and its consequences increasingly bearing down on the world, which the US is woefully unprepared for and continues to drag its feet on addressing.

Eh. It’s not practical to war with the entire world and too unpopular domestically. They keep their hegemony and power using economic coercion and various historical and material inertia around those (colonialism and taking over from Europe after rescuing them from communist take-over at the end of WW2 being a primary one).

Not what I meant. Economic might is unenforceable without military might behind it. Look at what the Houthis have done, for example.

Failing infrastructure doesn’t matter.

https://www.npr.org/2024/04/02/1242327964/the-economic-impact-of-the-baltimore-bridge-collapse

the U.S. secretary of transportation, said last week that, normally, between $100 million and $200 million in cargo moves in and out of the port in Baltimore each day. And that affects $200 million in wages, he said. He said there’s 8,000 jobs directly affected by the port’s activities. But I want to note there’s still some business happening at the port. There’s one part of it that’s called Tradepoint Atlantic. That’s beyond the Key Bridge. But of course, the biggest business is from the really big ships, and those still can’t get in or out via the main shipping channel.

This was from April 2, 2024, mind you. The situation may have changed by now, but the point is, it can impact a lot.

I see hope on the horizon but nothing like certainty.

Well then you’ve been arguing against someone who isn’t here. I’m arguing about trends here, not something set in stone. Primarily, I’m arguing against this tone I see that comes across to me as something like: “have some hope if you want, but the empire is mega mega mega powerful and it’s going to get you in your sleep if you don’t stay constantly anxious about it 24/7.” Maybe that’s an uncharitable way to put it, but you are putting so much focus on the empire in isolation with little on what anyone else is doing and downplaying the empire’s failings (such as in infrastructure). Don’t eat the onion on believing it to be more powerful than it actually is. Furthermore, you want to push back on the details that’s perfectly valid, but bringing age into it is silly. It is not out of reach to examine the conditions back in the 1930s and living through them doesn’t guarantee anyone being more politically literate about the empire’s power.

As we see with Bangladesh it’s not hard at all in many places even without a squad of expert killers supported by the US global surveillance network and medium and heavy armor to overthrow a country. It’s depressingly easy which is why I say there’s still a difficult and possibly long, multi-decade fight ahead of us against the empire as it clings to life and claws back gains here and there, creating enough of a buffer that it can hang on for many years to come.

(Bold emphasis mine)

I’d argue this is overstating it a bit. We don’t know how much went into Bangladesh leading up to it, how long may have been spent working to create the conditions that would lead to instability. We do know that the western empire uses sanctions as one means of putting the screws on a country to create unbearable conditions for its people, so that they’ll be more open to turning against their government. But an approach like this is not “easy” to do - it primarily exists on the back of the empire’s economic power and the military enforcement behind that power. And the tiding is turning on that with the strengthening of BRICS, even if not instantaneously. As well as the dependency-positioning that can result in sanctioning of some countries and manufacturing to backfire.

Military might and the forces of production behind them are what keeps the empire in power above all else, aye? And if we look at the maintenance issues and screwiness of accounting that goes on with the US military budget, for example - as well as its performance in actual combat - it seems to me that a lot of the remaining force of the empire is inertia. That’s not to say it isn’t a threat, but that - to put it one way - it’s more focused on cashing in than sustaining itself? Like it has a certain degree of organization and functioning still, clearly, but how much of it is actually going toward anything that can last, as opposed to power brokers wanting to take what they can and run, or try to consolidate it on a smaller scale like warlords.

When I look at what the US, for example, is actually building, what stands out to me is stuff like Cop City. In contrast with failing infrastructure, like that bridge collapse. I don’t see the mindset of people in power who believe there’s a long haul to be in it for, in the same model as it has been. I see the mindset of people who see the cracks showing, don’t see a way to repair them without losing money, and are preparing to turn to pure violence if the facade of decorum can’t hold together.

I don’t understand how you come to the conclusion that such a read of it is disingenuous. It’s a publication called Business Insider from the western empire, an empire that has a history of war profiteering and putting short term thinking over long term. I could see a point that it’s foolish to think nobody in the western empire is trying to think strategically in the long term, but I would figure those are more the people in think tanks and backrooms, not writing pieces for a publication that sound like a pitch to investors.

If there is a part of the article you think especially demonstrates sincere long term thinking, feel free to quote it and I will look at it. Calling a read of this that syncs right up with the chronic observable tendencies of the western empire “disingenuous” is odd to me, to say the least. Reductive, maybe, but disingenuous?

Bronk said that “it’s so much cheaper and easier” to invest now in the capabilities to deter Russia than it is “to actually invest in the forces capable of fighting an extended war for six months, a year, two years.”

This is the important part, isn’t it. “Invest more money, but don’t worry about the long term, just hand over the cash, the short term is what matters here.”

“Bully returns home, tells mom it was traumatizing when victim fought back.”

I’ll try to remember to if I can find it. Web searching has indeed become a pain. I tried to do some just now, but didn’t have much luck. Through a link in one article, I came upon one source that is vaguely related to what we’re talking about, but not really on the point of specifically combining product and community. It’s also sort of a shallow summary and may be stuff you’ve already heard of: https://www.businessinsider.com/birth-of-consumer-culture-2013-2

These quotes from it specifically stand out to me:

“We must shift America from a needs, to a desires culture,” wrote Paul Mazur of Lehman Brothers. “People must be trained to desire, to want new things even before the old had been entirely consumed. We must shape a new mentality in America. Man’s desires must overshadow his needs.”

Bernays shattered the taboo against women smoking by persuading a group of debutantes to light up at a parade — an event he leaked to the media ahead of time with the phrase “Torches Of Freedom” — thereby linking smoking with challenging male authority.

But, this isn’t really the specificity of intent I thought I had found something on before. Maybe I confused someone extrapolating intent from outcomes in the past, or it’s just out there in the mass of the internet somewhere and is hard to find.

Ya know, I don’t think this is that far off from the truth, though naturally there are degrees to product worship and dependency on it among USians. I do think it makes a kind of sense if you consider how many in the US (in varying degrees) are void of a sense of identity or social responsibility and drift in nihilism. I mean, people are to some extent encouraged to form their identity around what products they’re into. And on a national level, what else have USians got? Jingoism? Pride for being a colonizer and imperialism in a barbaric legacy? Some people in the US do have religion, but with varying levels of taking it seriously.

I myself have had times where I get very into a product (such as a video game) and the surrounding “community” (though the word “community” in this kind of usage is sort of silly with how loosely affiliated and discordant it tends to be). I’m lacking sources on it right now that I can recall, but I feel like I read once that this was intentional in some way, the conjoining of “product” and “community.”

But either way (intentional or no) you can observe it with ease online, where it’s virtually inevitable to run into zealots for a given product who will defend it so viciously, you’d think it was their firstborn on trial.

I do wonder if the democratic party could produce much of anything viable at this point even with a concerted effort to do so. Biden seems to have largely gotten in on “he’s not Trump”. Bernie might have been a real shot at a milquetoast reformist, but even without the capitalists doing everything they could to stop him, the anti-anything-remotely-socialist-sounding rhetoric in the US is strong. And if we look at how pathetic Bernie’s takes on the genocide against Palestine have been, who’s to say he wouldn’t have been funding it just like Biden is, but with slightly different rhetoric and so receiving much the same criticism Biden is.

Trump on the other hand, is willing to say he wants to do something drastically different. In practice, I’m not sure even he has any real intention of consolidating a new christo-fascist order, but he is at least willing to play the part of wanting to and that prolongs the belief for a little longer that the shambling burger empire can be changed significantly through voting.

I could see it being plausible that the capitalists would throw their support behind a Trump kind of figure getting rid of the facade of democracy because of not having much else of direction to go with it. How many times can they do the same Charlie Brown / Lucy Football maneuver while conditions continue to deteriorate for most USians before a critical mass of people go, “Yeah, this stuff is a bunch of BS and we’re not going to feed into the facade anymore.” The anything-but-Trump panic pushed by liberals seems to center on this idea that there is in fact a functional “democracy” and that Trump is going to destroy it, but nowhere in this panic do liberals explain why their candidates are so incredibly bad that a guy like Trump is viable in the first place.

It’s bizarre watching them effectively tell people “we are one of the worst things there is in your universe, but vote for us anyway.” And I’m not sure it’s tactical ineptitude or neglect, so much as it is having reached the limits of pretending to care without meaningfully doing anything for regular people while in office. Obama did nothing to shake up anything while putting on a show like he was the kind of person who would. Biden has done nothing to shake up anything while the media acts like he’s FDR. Liberals can pull out a list of minor stuff they’ve done, but none of it addresses the fundamentals and it’s the fundamentals that leaves people open to a guy like Trump to come in and say, “I’m not going to legitimize how ridiculous and humiliating this system is.” Of course, he’s perfectly capable of legitimizing it anyway, while pretending not to, and I think that’s much of what he did when he was in office before. But then there is the following he has who doesn’t see it that way and they may push him to challenge the fundamentals more than he actually wants to himself. Shaking things up wouldn’t exactly be a cozy thing to attempt. He’d be taking a lot of risk that the existing fascist forces of neoliberalism rally against him and make the remains of his life more painful, and I don’t think his heart is really in it on the beliefs.

More than that, I think western arrogance just has a hard time admitting to losing in general. That whole capitalistic + supremacy thing of “winning means you have value and losing means you’re worthless.” They can’t simultaneously dehumanize and value their entity as more than conquest. If the western empire cared about human life, it’d also be more secure in how it acts and what it can admit. But then it wouldn’t be doing the violence it has done to so many peoples.

So I guess what I’m driving at here, is I think this sort of duplicitous language comes with the territory.

referring to the “Leahy Law” that prevents U.S. military assistance from going to foreign units credibly found to have committed major human rights violations.

If that were a legitimate thing, the US would have to cease giving funding to its own forces, much less its proxies.

After seeing western empire news repeatedly call the genocide they’re doing to the Palestinian people a “war”, I’m getting to the point I just assume that if they call something a war, they are talking about something they or one of their proxies is being violent about and they are both sidesing it to make it sound less bad.

Interesting thought. Probably possible, I think the main question there would be reliability for sensitive matters as well as security. Reliability meaning, if the AI is even a little off, it could cause a miscommunication with terrible consequences, and the best AI is probably still far off from comparing to an expert human interpreter (the best I know of that’s fast and public is DeepL - similar to GoogleTranslate but arguably somewhat better - and then there are LLMs (Large Language Models) who can sort of do translation, but it’s more of a gimmick than something they are designed for). There may be better though that’s specifically in the sphere of Russian and Chinese language translation (I have no familiarity with AI translation tools originating from there). And security meaning, you’d need to be able to process what’s said locally in such a way that it’s not being sent off somewhere where it can be intercepted. For it to be local processing, it would require more local compute, which is going to be more expensive; might not be noteworthy difference between local and cloud compute if it’s something like DeepL, but if it’s a design more like an LLM, those can be greedy on GPU power.

So overall, I could see it being used as an assistive tool along with human translators to speed up the translation of especially long communications (if long communications is a thing in that context), but I doubt it’s going to be replacing them meaningfully without worsening the communication process.

“Condemn in the strongest possible terms” makes me think of that line from A Few Good Men:

“I strenuously object?” Is that how it’s done? Hm? “Objection, your Honor.” “Overruled” “No, no. I STRENUOUSLY object.” “Oh. You strenuously object. Then I’ll take some time and reconsider.”

Also, he calls it “Iran’s attacks”, but considering what Iran did was 100% self defense after a loathsome attack done to them, it can be taken to mean that he is saying he “condemns in the strongest possible terms” any right for Iran to defend itself, i.e. he views the fake settler state of israel as being a legitimate state and doesn’t see Iran as a legitimate state or even as actual people who have a right to defend themselves. Which tells you all you need to know about how these white supremacists view the region.