• Shrike502@lemmygrad.ml
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      10 months ago

      Define winning, please. Because it seems they’ve been fairly successful at protecting the interests of the capital. Which is, you know, the main function of military in dictatorship of bourgeois

      • werty@lemmy.ml
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        10 months ago

        Where are those success you mentionned ? Ukraine proxi war? The global war on of terror ? The vietnam war ? Reality say otherwise.

        • Shrike502@lemmygrad.ml
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          10 months ago

          Let’s see. Guatemala. Panama. Libya (ruined one of the most prosperous nations in Africa, terminated plans for pan-arabic currency). I’m sure I’m forgetting many more.

          Arguably Ukraine as well. It tanked EU, spiked sales for Yankee weapons, ruined Ukraine and demonised Russia in the eyes of many - most importantly in the eyes of Ukrainians and Russian citizens. You sure about that “reality” bit?

  • Maoo [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    10 months ago

    They’re gonna try to press the fascism button harder. Who’s gonna take bets that the button doesn’t even really work because industrial capacity has been debilitated?

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.mlOP
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      10 months ago

      I think Ukraine’s proven this conclusively at this point. We really might be entering an unprecedented time for fascism. Western countries were far more self sufficient back at the start of the 20th century than they are now. The industrial capacity isn’t something that you can just magically create overnight the way you print money. It’s a decades long process because you need trained workers, which means having a school system that prepares people for trade jobs, you have to build factories, you have to reorganize supply chains, and so on. There aren’t any simple solutions here.

      • SadArtemis🏳️‍⚧️@lemmygrad.ml
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        10 months ago

        The industrial capacity isn’t something that you can just magically create overnight the way you print money. It’s a decades long process because you need trained workers, which means having a school system that prepares people for trade jobs, you have to build factories, you have to reorganize supply chains, and so on. There aren’t any simple solutions here.

        Better yet also, not only is the industrial capacity something they can’t magically recreate overnight- but their specific systems of dollar imperialism, hyper-financialization, and neoliberalism are very effective in further hindering the process, as well. Never mind getting to the point of training the workers, even before that they need genuine systemic reforms and to wean off the present forms of capital- even if it’s just to try to return to the systems of industrial capitalism and imperialism they once had- their efforts will all be largely moot.

      • MarxMadness@lemmygrad.ml
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        10 months ago

        We really might be entering an unprecedented time for fascism.

        Trying to create socialism in the imperial core in 2024 really is uncharted territory. We’re far, far away from the conditions of any successful socialist project, and not even particularly close to the best attempts (so far) at socialism in the belly of the beast.

        We can learn plenty from prior movements, but we get too dogmatic about them at times. Interwar German politics aren’t just continually playing out everywhere, forever.

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.mlOP
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          10 months ago

          For sure, we really have to take the time to understand the moment we’re living through its contradictions. Only then can we start applying lessons from the past in a meaningful way.

        • KiG V2@lemmygrad.ml
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          10 months ago

          I think this is why I personally have always been interested in dangerous, unconventional, previously unsuccessful, or morally repugnant solutions–a la accelerationism, red-brown alliance, infiltration, cults, j*had, sporadic anarchist-like violence, and the like.

          Things are truly unprecedented in this country, the US. The spirit of socialism is unquashable and I see it in the misguided fervor of people here of all political affiliations; being socialist is human and the human quality cannot truly be extinguished even in such a highly developed anti-social society. But it is so difficult to imagine a straightforward road to things getting better. I imagine things splitting to pieces, and different sectors of society all moving sideways to equally heinous but different modes of being, and having to properly “try” and fail at all of them to prove their delusional ideas of how to make this society better are crapshoots. I imagine “Handmaid’s Tale” Luddite Christofascist Mujahideen puritanism, I imagine anarchist hedonists, New Age narcissist communes, cryptobro transhumanist Silicon Valley “imperial Chinese harem” freak experiments, I imagine ethnostates of every race present being tried, I imagine the horrors people will concot with A.I., I imagine mass suicide and senseless Mad Max larping.

          On the flipside, I also imagine a lot of people waking up quicker than the pessimist in me imagines, people learning quickly how to communicate, cooperate, and survive in whatever communities they are trapped in, those who don’t try to larp sickly fantasies and who don’t try to or can’t flee–it will be interesting to see how the world will react to a wave of American refugees now that they aren’t forced by gunpoint or persuaded by propaganda to love and praise them.

          I think the apocalypse here is going to be very colorful and multifaceted.

    • 201dberg@lemmygrad.ml
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      10 months ago

      All that matters is they their police is outfitted enough to kill any dissenters when we all start to starve.

  • tacosanonymous@lemm.ee
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    10 months ago

    I don’t really give a shit about our military unless we need to defend ourselves. That’s something we’ve pretty much never done.

    That being said, I will start shitting diamonds before I give one iota of a fuck what the Heritage Foundation thinks.

    • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
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      10 months ago

      Yeah, this is just their usual BS about increasing military funding they always do. Slightly more true than usual, but their solution will never be “less warmongering” only ever “more money thrown at the military.”

  • ShimmeringKoi [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    10 months ago

    Dear Mr army man, please draft me I have goooood mental health I can fully be trusted with an M2 Browning or a truck full of tomahawk missiles. I will not park it wrong.

  • 201dberg@lemmygrad.ml
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    10 months ago

    They will have to draft but I feel the people being drafted are more willing than ever to fuck things up intentionally.

    • supersolid_snake@lemmygrad.ml
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      10 months ago

      Yep, I may be naive but most people don’t like direct participation in oppression (zios are different) even if they are ok with the oppression not directly in their face.

      • KiG V2@lemmygrad.ml
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        10 months ago

        That is being generous, I would moreso just say the average American is raised by our system to be debilitatingly cowardly and weak of mind and body.

        spoiler

        I would hope my comrades who have physical, mental, or bravery issues know I don’t mean to deride them, I myself have plenty of these issues that I have the privilege of having leftover energy and nets to fight the uphill battle against them, it just simply is how we (IMO, both intentionally and unintentionally) were socially engineered.

        Perhaps I am also just being jaded right now.

          • KiG V2@lemmygrad.ml
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            10 months ago

            It really is a perfect storm, IMO, of a hundred little things, but yes.

            This became much longer than I intended, no expectations to read, but it is what I have to say on the matter.

            Highly generalizing here:

            Physically is the most easily to point to. We are fed highly processed, sugary, and thus addictive foods with poor nutritional content, often used for being cheap, widely accessible, and essy to make; our problem with obesity and adjacent conditions is quite famous, after all. People are addicted to their phones and spend no time outside, many physically engaging activities are prohibitively expensive and paired with a highly isolated and alienated community (or lack thereof), people then become lonely and only find a modicum of socialization online (reinforcing horribly long screen time consumption). This pairs with everything from predatory companies ensuring people end up vaping, smoking, drinking, and drugging to excess, not to mention advertising and Big Pharma + pill-happy therapists. And, finally, of course, our terrible healthcare system, and insurances fighting to deny coverage.

            Mentally, again we must bring up the phones and how TikTok rots our brains, our attention spans and our critical thinking. There is an extreme crisis of mental illness and people are barely functional enough to live a normal life. The destruction of community has made us unfit for socializing and this is reinforced by everything from our car-centered cities, hyper commodification of time, purposefully polarizing news media, extremely hostile and isolatory interest niches and job overspecialization that people fall into, all taking place in a culture that celebrates violence and porn and repressing emotions. Capitalism of course has an open secret where dishonesty, ruthlessness, and a lack of empathy are necessary to survive, and the people who then become successful reinforce these values. People are utterly hopeless, fed either a complete lie of how the world is that they must live inside a bubble to maintain, or they are fed a rabidly dystopian idea of the future, about a world full of enemies, about how danger and crime lurks around every corner. Our school system, both public K-12 and our universities, are laughably bad, famous of course for how bad our students are no matter how much money is thrown at them. Our media is geared towards lowest common denominator, shallow and safe, and from a young age children are being fed garbage music and movies through unrestricted access to smart devices that are omnipresent. People skim headlines, they do not read. Policies are taken to just force students to pass classes by default instead of actually building learning; children are focused on rote memorization to pass tests, before dumping the info for the next set of stuff to memorize, and nothing more.

            As for bravery, a much less measurable concept, well. Fear is the axis of which American psyche operates. We fear the boogeymen across the world, we fear our government, we fear other races, we fear the future, we fear each other. We fear speaking truth, because we learn from a young age that speaking plain truth is punished, whether by our peers or by the legal system. We fear our militarized police, we fear the “thug” boogeymen that they purportedly protect us from. Fed constant stories about cartels, mobs, gangs, terrorists. A new war! War war war! USSR is going to nuke you! Cuba is going to nuke you! North Korea, no, Iran, no, North Korea again, okay maybe terrorists? Russia? China? You are going to be instantly vaporized one day, very soon, we promise! The White Protestant values are so deeply ingrained, the anticommunism so deep, those who stray will quickly be chastized. It is social suicide to not adhere to whatever niche you find yourself in. We, especially the meek or those on the Left, we are trained to say “sorry” to excess, to be deferrant, we are taught saying the wrong thing online will send a hate mob against you who will doxx you until you lose your job and your family and friends will abandon you–and they will! I’ve seen it happen based solely on rumors!–which of course is just a mechanism of public executions that fascistic societies are so fond of since Roman times. Everybody is eager to tear someone who “deserves it” down…so do you want to stick your neck out? Despite being so incompetent, people are taught the CIA & Friends are like magic Gestapo who will teleport to your location and torture you in Guantanamo if you so much as say one wrong thing in front of the ever-present surveillance state, whether the literal microphones all well-known to be tapped and skimming your speech and texts for keywords, or the panopticon made by our friends and family who might turn on you in a moment. People are taught to either be passive aggressive, or passive. Being plainly aggressive is only seen in very poor communities, it is highly unacceptable in the majority of society, if you raise your voice too much people are quick to think you are dangerously deranged, people are quick to call the (again, militarized, incompetent, and trigger happy) cops. Being assertive is then impossible; people are not taught to resolve conflicts with measured confrontation, to stand up for themselves or others, only to keep their head down, OR play a sneaky game of deceit and cruelty. The assertive are rarely seen and quickly labelled as aggressive. Then there is the culture famous here of coddling, of parents who want to wrap their children’s lives up in bubble wrap (I can only speculate its origins), resulting in grown adults who can’t make choices for themselves, can’t speak for themselves, have never been in even mildly dangerous or unpredictable situations.

            This is a lot, and yet I feel like it is only half of it. So much goes into play here, some natural consequences of unfettered capitalism and fascism, but some purposefully orchestrated by the CIA etc. to degrade the body, mind, and courage of would-be dissidents, such as them pushing a Compatible Left which just encourages more of the same “tear everyone down like a hate mob” and “skim headlines” and “celebrate laziness and hypersensitivity” culture over people trying to build actual knowledge, understanding, and compassion.

            I’m going to stop talking immediately or I won’t stop 🫢😅

            • SugandeseDelegation@lemmygrad.ml
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              9 months ago

              Nah, thanks for taking the time to write all of this. It’s a lot to unpack and a lot of it is relatable to where I have lived, even though not always to the same extreme

  • pearable@lemmy.ml
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    10 months ago

    I’m skeptical of this narrative. More or less constantly this comes out as an excuse to increase military spending. Citation Needed’s episode 117 “always lagging us war machine” goes into detail. The fact that the heritage foundation is peddling this particular instance is solid evidence.

    • somename [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      10 months ago

      Well, most of the time that’s true. It’s a call for the government to spend another 100 billion dollars on 5000 dollar trash cans and like, 3 planes.

      But there really is a gaping weakness right now, in a more mundane way, one they don’t like to advertise much. The US has burned through a massive amount of their munitions stockpile, and the suppliers they use to replenish it are honestly terrible at making things lol. US productive capacity for the actual fundamental tools of war have been hollowed out by capitalistic grifting.

  • Neato@ttrpg.network
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    10 months ago

    For the second consecutive year, a study by DC-based think tank The Heritage Foundation has ranked the US military as “weak” and determined that “lack of action” could render the Pentagon unable to “defend vital US interests” across the globe.