I think the Founders' idea of extreme federalism was probably the closest we as humans have come to an empire that isn't too shitty. I would argue we have since devolved towards the typical historic version of empire, and would do well to correct that.
I further suspect that you are quite correct, that empires naturally develop then collapse when they have gone far enough towards the bad. Partially I am defining "the bad" there as "stuff people don't like that is bad for people" and "behaviors that make people angry enough the empire can't keep itself going". Related concepts, but not 1:1. The important distinction is probably that increases in technology probably make keeping an empire going easier, and thus empires can spread and get bigger than they used to. Eventually we probably will have one empire that can control the entire planet, at least for a time.
Very Bad indeed. I suspect a global empire without far flung interplanetary colonies as a pressure release would need a few local pressure release areas, a few "rogue nations" it was perpetually at war with where the more motivated dissidents could move to before they got serious about remaking/destroying the empire itself. I wonder if those could serve as seed banks, or it would be too likely to to controlled in many ways to work. Or maybe we really do just need to learn the hard way every few decades.
>> Or maybe we really do just need to learn the hard way every few decades.
I think this is how it generally works, but it is valuable to see it as a cycle that could be broken. Even if it possibly can't. Hey, Odin doesn't stop trying to derail Ragnarok.
I'm not actually convinced China is on-board with any WEF bullshit at all; if anything, I think Xi expects to be holding their leash leveraging their nonsense white-people politics and using them as cutouts to police the world of guai lo for him.
We are just as likely to be a miserable vassal state, strip-mined of resources like they do in Africa and Asia, as we are to be living in globalist bubbles eating bugs.
I was actually thinking along those lines as I pressed "Post." "They" want us to live a Chinese type life, watched 24/7, why not just let them (Chinese) run the place (world)?
"They" wilfully ignore the very clear racialist and psychopathic character of Chinese hegemony. It looks nothing like the Mandatory Colors of Benetton the WEF paints their one-world dystopia. It's more like House Harkonnen.
'Cause we're supposed to be "Happy!" With our overlords. So, paint the pic how "they" want it to appear, but hire out the ruling later to those who do it best.
1. I don't care. You can't hide on any platform...especially here on substack. We're advertising for the bad list
2. My entire business is built around the G-suite. I made that decision in 2008 when I phased out microsoft. I paid my dues and I'm too lazy to go a different direction now.
i watched one and a half episodes of Andor, does it get better? cos i was about to delete it
america isnt my country so i dont know the details but its saveable if things like banning businesses from lobbying, congressional voting, one item at a time instead of 4000 pages of shit, where they have to show up and vote etc..
oh and destroying the alphabet criminals like the CIA and FBI
as far as empires go, mine collapsed cos no one liked us they threw our tea overboard, which you know is about the worst thing that can happen to an empire
Can I love America and the promise of it, and hate the empire it has become?
I think too we are not a true civilization all our own yet, still too tied to the West and Europe. I think we will be a truly great civilization, but probably not for centuries yet.
America is the least bad of the big nations, and Russia's power is largely legacy-based from the Soviet-era. What little there is of it - the militaries of the Nordic nations, the Baltic states and Poland are bigger and stronger, better equipped and trained than Russia's if taken together. Economically and industrially Russia is poor and retarded. And as always with Russia, they make up for that by being calluous, though not to the degree of China; no-one can match China when using humans as a natural resource.
Currently (meaning post-1991) the US has been focused on keeping the islamic world's leaders happy, and at the same time working furiously to prevent islamic union against the west by all the time-honured methods inherited from the British Empire. Much of the "frenemey" status with Russia and China stems from them trying to hold on or usurp status respectively.
And China, being rather clever, has simply observed the tactic Russia used to ingratiate itself in western markets: stoke greed and corruption and spend money like water to buy important people by offering win/win-scenarios to them.
Which are all "heads China wins, tails you lose" in the long run.
As for the inevitability of Empire, any and all species that stop experiencing or seeking external challenges and/or stifles internal competition cease to develop and start to degenerate, to be replaced by a healthier breed that won't unlearn that lesson. So by not seeking Empire - neither culturally, economically, societally or military - all European nations and peoples sealed their Doom after World War 2.
It is not a prisoner's dilemma. It is the prisoner saying "I redefine what constitutes being a prisoner, and thus I become free".
I’m aligned with your thinking. I agree with those who believe that a US hegemony is the best alternative to China, Russia, etc. However, in the last 20 years the US has gotten way ahead of its skis in maintaining its position as global hegemon.
It certainly seems like the US government has 1)ignored their basic domestic responsibilities (safety, economic health, infrastructure, etc) and is totally focussed on “security” and the mistaken belief that global hegemony is the highest priority and provides citizen security. This myopic/singular focus lows the govt to go with an ends justifies the means approach. Thus it is now acceptable for the government to turn its considerable security resources against its citizenry - either manipulating citizens so their priorities align with governments (not visa versa); manipulating political outcomes via the governments considerable powers, and/or quashing dissent.
Seems likely that the government believes itself to be a munificent hegemon and that it is only leaning into totalitarianism because 1) it’s the only way to beat the up and coming hegemons and 2) the constitution is outdated and not aligned to modern times. Unfortunately the ends justifies the means stuff is anathema to the Constitution. So something (Constitution or the federal government) has to go.
I believe there can be a distinction between the maintenance of an empire and hegemony.
I disagree, though, that the rise of totalitarianism is occurring as a response to rising powers. I believe that's a red herring.
I think it's entirely a combination of consolidating power in the face of globalism as well as directly selling out to the anticipated globalist "new bosses."
We have been at war with great powers before without being simultaneously so reprehensibly at war with our own people.
Great powers unite their people. The US hegemony has been unable to meaningfully unite their citizens for some time. Recent revelations suggest ability to unify citizens Has been so bad over the last five decades that dishonest means were regularly utilized in attempts to unify (assasinations, wars, monetary policy, race riots, pandemics, gender wars, etc). Simultaneously US is struggling to unite their Allies. Meanwhile looks like China, Russia, and everyone else US hegemony has pissed off over the last 50 years might be uniting their citizenry. BTW There is no-zero way the clowns running the show for the last 20 years are going to be able to handle this. This will require lots of losing, failure, and attrition. (Reference WW2, Allies/US losing until peacetime leaders were replaced with wartime field tested leaders).
With regard to corporatists, I’m inclined to think they were fertilized to become tools of the hegemony. (Not so sure they know it either.)
Where we’re headed: global corporations, global hegemonies, global anything will hit a tipping point. They cannot sustain the weight of the overhead they’ve taken in. Lean and nimble will survive.
I’ll accept all your conclusions, at least for the moment and for the sake of argument.
Let’s focus on one: ‘An empire that .. abdicates .. will be almost immediately cannibalized by the empires smart enough not to draw down.’
That’s underway now. Michael P Senger, who blogs here on Substack at ‘The New Normal,’ a year ago published ‘Snake Oil: How Xi Jinping Shut Down the World.’ In 150 pages with nearly 600 footnotes, he describes how the CCP exploited a not-very-deadly virus to get western elites to go to war against their own economies. The prime example is the Biden administration, whose main policy initiatives - such its war on fossil fuels - benefit nobody more than the Chinese, by making us much less competitive. No doubt the Chinese have enough dirt on the Biden family to compel such policies.
The entire globalist movement among western elites is basically a CCP Trojan Horse project. So we’re facing the worst-case scenarios of your 5th and 6th conclusions combined: Cannibalization by the CCP, plus an imperial globalist police regime.
I support balkanization as a strictly short-term (years to decades) measure, to allow dissident enclaves to get out from under our corrupt rulers, who really serve a foreign emperor. It’s a first step toward thwarting the impending emergence of such a globalist police state.
In the future, it very likely WILL be useful for those secessionist enclaves to reunite, having purged the elite traitors, hopefully practicing the sort of rigorous federalism that prevailed from 1789 to 1861.
(But minus Indian and Mexican wars, I hasten to add.)
This is an astute and comprehensive expansion of the issues I was trying to express into the real world.
As I said elsewhere (maybe here, in the comments somewhere?) the whole WEF nonsense is, indeed a CCP trojan horse, getting the west to weaken itself with "white people bullshit" and use a globalist organization entirely captured by CCP money to police the guai lo so China can concentrate on rebuilding the Golden Palace.
Your notion of balkanization as a sort of emetic with a reformation and rebellion against the globalist agenda is a very interesting one. I guess my immediate reaction is, "won't we, or at least many of us, be gobbled up by opportunistic empires during that interstitial period?" China would go ahead and outright purchase strategically located or resource-rich states and essentially encircle us as with Russia. Would we get our shit together before we became a bunch of confederated vassal states learning Mandarin or Russian in elementary school?
Oh, I should add: If your worst-case scenario came to pass, we should be overjoyed if the Chinese or Russians teach our kids their languages ... or anything else. My guess is they wouldn’t, because I doubt they would want their American subjects knowing what they were discussing among themselves.
It’s revealing, in fact, that the Bolsheviks went out of their way to make sure all the Tsar’s erstwhile subjects learned Russian. There’s a line in today’s national anthem: братских народов союз вековой, which describes the RF as a ‘centuries-old union of brotherly peoples.’ Russians aren’t immune to racism, but they’ve dealt with it better than we have. There is no vindictive anti-Russian counter-racist movement like CRT in the former USSR ... except in Ukraine, where, of course, the CIA and DoS fostered and promoted it.
The Russian educational system is a fine one: Even the Soviets never totally abandoned critical thinking, as we have (although obviously there were topics they ‘fenced off.’)
I spent the spring semester 2018 in Russia and it was a huge eye-opener. Not directly familiar with China’s but I expect it’s comparable.
I have a ton of respect for Russia, I just don't want a nation like mine to be a conquered one.
I worked with a lot of former Soviet teachers when I taught English, and yes, the system was excellent.
The Chinese one is not. It is a factory in ways far worse even than we complain about America's- political indoctrination and mind-numbing rote memorization for an endless stream of meaningless tests. Good American professors find Chinese student visa students incredibly frustrating to teach- they're often unimaginative literal-minded robots.
It's a big chink, but whether it outweighs the CCPs ability to use its people as disposable assets and harness all their stolen technology is a big one.
But yeah, it's true. Chinese students can pass state exams and spout political indoctrination very well. They very rarely produce innovative research.
My much-more-successful tech friends have commented many times that there really isn't much "Chinese tech innovation" that isn't simply industrial espionage.
Well, being gobbled up by [secondary] opportunist empires - after freeing ourselves from the primary one - is certainly a concern. I hadn’t thought of it, but your use of ‘emetic’ in this context is spot on: In many respects, what the Covid psy-op (and Senger’s breakdown of it) showed us was that we’ve been gobbled up already.
So let’s deal first with the beast whose belly we actually find ourselves in. It would be a shame if we wound up getting digested by the CCP now, for fear of a hypothetical enemy we might (or might not) confront tomorrow.
If Texas, or Florida or other viable states were to secede, would China react by trying to encircle them with captured resource-rich or strategic states? Well, yes, but China could hardly do so harder or faster than they’re already doing right now.
Keep in mind that China’s entire strategy, for now, relies on their Trojan Horse - our traitor elite and their captive institutions - doing CCP’s bidding. If TX secedes, ‘nationalizes’ all Chinese-owned property, and starts rooting out their agents in business and academia, the CCP will be back to square one, circa 1996, at least vis a vis Texas.
That’s another reason why, as I’ve said before, secession won’t be easy. The Feds will mount total war to stop it, including carpet bombing and maybe even tactical nukes, in part because the CCP will pressure them to.
Russia won’t be a factor. Yes, the current RF retains aspects of both Tsarist and Soviet empires. But they’re not expansionist: This is obvious because both times (Georgia 2008 and Ukraine this year) they’ve ‘invaded’ countries on their border, they’ve done so to protect pro-Russian minorities targeted for genocide by NATO-backed nationalist rulers.
Mexico? All bets are off. Is Mexico capable of gobbling up Texas? Well maybe, if it’s been weakened by Washington’s carpet bombing. My guess is nothing will change. Mexico will keep doing what it’s always done, encourage Mexicans to enrich Mexico by repatriating big bucks from El Norte becuz gringos have forgotten how to frame houses n lay bricks.
Yeah, I'm really not worried about Russia being a direct threat to America- American elite interests, maybe, but who cares?
I agree that a huge concern of anything even indirectly resembling secession would be federal violence. I wonder how compliant the military as whole would be with an agenda like that? Despite the ongoing narrative of military breakdown and reprogramming, my active duty friends and associates assure me there are still a lot of smart, grounded patriots in middle leadership where it counts. But I don't know.
I think Texas would grind Mexico into chorizo if they tried something like that. And I'd watch that movie. And if they seceded, you'd see the tightest incoming borders outside of North Korea.
For all the people in the 'dissenting group' giving lip service to dismantling the empire, I'm still looking for that single other person taking the concept seriously enough to work out the details. We have 3500 years of Western Civ psy ops telling us that empire is inevitable, if not ours then someone else's. The word 'Balkanization' is a loaded term that signifies a failed, fragmented chaos. The book The Dawn of Everything has plenty of examples of thriving and peaceful internetworked peoples, and contradicts Dunbar's number as a limit. But it's not even One Military that's even the problem, it's One Economy run by the bankers who own your farm. It isn't inevitable that you have to shovel pig shit for 30 years to pay off the bankers. That's where the rub of empire meets the road.
I'm also experimenting with loosening up a little on the essays and speaking more freely on things that aren't necessarily fully-baked yet and leaving it to provoke discussion, rather than waiting until I feel like I've perfectly composed something that might drag or require a perfect uninterrupted day of inspiration.
Leaning more into what I don't know for sure, but have ideas about, than into just lectures or rants.
GM is amazing. I mention this place when I'm out n about. Me being me...that don't help you much...but... It wouldn't hurt if you were to ask your Gutterballs to mention here on Twitter and other social media.
Communism was expansionist from its inception, so the American Empire post-WW2 was a force for good and a necessary counterbalance to the anti-human, anti-freedom Marxists. The capitalist West had to play nice with its populace, and the middle class thrived like never before. With Communism's fall in Europe (mourned only by party apparatchiks on one side of the Iron Curtain, and western intellectuals on the other), Big Business could drop the mask and begin pulling the rug out from under the middle class, whose existence cut into its profit margins. So they did. Practically everything the US has done domestically in the 30 years since the USSR's collapse has been to the detriment of its hoi polloi.
America now is simply the Praetorian Guard for the global Oligarchy. We have become "The Great Satan" that Ayatollah Khomeini banged on about 4 decades ago. An expanding, trumphant American Empire would not be good for human flourishing, IMO.
Russia is a threat to Europe, only because Europe is feeble in body, mind, and spirit, after 2 suicide attempts last century. I don't see that corrupt nation of 150 million as any serious threat.
When considering this question the word I keep coming back to is exodus.
Let the empires play their stupid games. Focus on yourself and those around you in your community. Try and pull back from the games as much as you can live the best life you can - which is hopefully in service to your conscience.
Let the chips fall from there. You never know what impact you have, and I think that’s working as intended. Stop worrying about it, and you’re finally free to act.
I think the Founders' idea of extreme federalism was probably the closest we as humans have come to an empire that isn't too shitty. I would argue we have since devolved towards the typical historic version of empire, and would do well to correct that.
I further suspect that you are quite correct, that empires naturally develop then collapse when they have gone far enough towards the bad. Partially I am defining "the bad" there as "stuff people don't like that is bad for people" and "behaviors that make people angry enough the empire can't keep itself going". Related concepts, but not 1:1. The important distinction is probably that increases in technology probably make keeping an empire going easier, and thus empires can spread and get bigger than they used to. Eventually we probably will have one empire that can control the entire planet, at least for a time.
>> Eventually we probably will have one empire that can control the entire planet, at least for a time.
I think this is an inevitable outgrowth of technology, but also that it will inevitably be Very Bad.
This is another reason why I share Musk's enthusiasm for interplanetary colonization. We need seed banks.
>> I would argue we have since devolved towards the typical historic version of empire, and would do well to correct that.
I think we are on the precipice of "too late" to correct that without collapse, but it can still be done. This is my version of optimism.
Very Bad indeed. I suspect a global empire without far flung interplanetary colonies as a pressure release would need a few local pressure release areas, a few "rogue nations" it was perpetually at war with where the more motivated dissidents could move to before they got serious about remaking/destroying the empire itself. I wonder if those could serve as seed banks, or it would be too likely to to controlled in many ways to work. Or maybe we really do just need to learn the hard way every few decades.
>> Or maybe we really do just need to learn the hard way every few decades.
I think this is how it generally works, but it is valuable to see it as a cycle that could be broken. Even if it possibly can't. Hey, Odin doesn't stop trying to derail Ragnarok.
I've never been an optimist. When we collapse, it will be the one world government.
There are other, equally shitty possibilities.
I'm not actually convinced China is on-board with any WEF bullshit at all; if anything, I think Xi expects to be holding their leash leveraging their nonsense white-people politics and using them as cutouts to police the world of guai lo for him.
We are just as likely to be a miserable vassal state, strip-mined of resources like they do in Africa and Asia, as we are to be living in globalist bubbles eating bugs.
I was actually thinking along those lines as I pressed "Post." "They" want us to live a Chinese type life, watched 24/7, why not just let them (Chinese) run the place (world)?
"They" wilfully ignore the very clear racialist and psychopathic character of Chinese hegemony. It looks nothing like the Mandatory Colors of Benetton the WEF paints their one-world dystopia. It's more like House Harkonnen.
'Cause we're supposed to be "Happy!" With our overlords. So, paint the pic how "they" want it to appear, but hire out the ruling later to those who do it best.
Agree
Ryan, what are some of the alternate search engines, that I don't have to download an app for? I don't know who else to ask. Sorry.😔
Duckduck?
Metager.org
That's the only one I can remember. Thank-you!
i seriously still use google. two reasons;
1. I don't care. You can't hide on any platform...especially here on substack. We're advertising for the bad list
2. My entire business is built around the G-suite. I made that decision in 2008 when I phased out microsoft. I paid my dues and I'm too lazy to go a different direction now.
I do too because of gsuite. But all my non- work related internet activities are on private browsers and apps with a VPN.
I just figured I wouldn't get any results from google. (They'd be blocked.)
Yandex
Prison Planet
Kinda like the One Ring that Rules them all.😎
i watched one and a half episodes of Andor, does it get better? cos i was about to delete it
america isnt my country so i dont know the details but its saveable if things like banning businesses from lobbying, congressional voting, one item at a time instead of 4000 pages of shit, where they have to show up and vote etc..
oh and destroying the alphabet criminals like the CIA and FBI
as far as empires go, mine collapsed cos no one liked us they threw our tea overboard, which you know is about the worst thing that can happen to an empire
I agree, it was admittedly a slow start. The flashback stuff was boring but it stops before long.
The British empire had its upsides. There were far worse. I think it mostly died of inertia and was probably salvageable at some point.
The best thing is an enlightened Emperor, one who is too wise to do anything more than sit on the throne and look regal.
The next best thing is a vicious Emperor, one too lost in dalliances to overly bother the people.
Worse than this is no Emperor, for then pretenders will lay waste to our bodies to advance their claims.
Worst of all is a good Emperor, for then not even our minds will be safe from his efforts to improve us.
If you'd said this like three hours ago you could have saved me the fucking post.
😂🤣😂
Can I love America and the promise of it, and hate the empire it has become?
I think too we are not a true civilization all our own yet, still too tied to the West and Europe. I think we will be a truly great civilization, but probably not for centuries yet.
Well, if you can't do that, then I can't either, and I don't like being told what to do. :)
We COULD be a great civ. We have to survive to get there. That is currently a very open question.
America is the least bad of the big nations, and Russia's power is largely legacy-based from the Soviet-era. What little there is of it - the militaries of the Nordic nations, the Baltic states and Poland are bigger and stronger, better equipped and trained than Russia's if taken together. Economically and industrially Russia is poor and retarded. And as always with Russia, they make up for that by being calluous, though not to the degree of China; no-one can match China when using humans as a natural resource.
Currently (meaning post-1991) the US has been focused on keeping the islamic world's leaders happy, and at the same time working furiously to prevent islamic union against the west by all the time-honured methods inherited from the British Empire. Much of the "frenemey" status with Russia and China stems from them trying to hold on or usurp status respectively.
And China, being rather clever, has simply observed the tactic Russia used to ingratiate itself in western markets: stoke greed and corruption and spend money like water to buy important people by offering win/win-scenarios to them.
Which are all "heads China wins, tails you lose" in the long run.
As for the inevitability of Empire, any and all species that stop experiencing or seeking external challenges and/or stifles internal competition cease to develop and start to degenerate, to be replaced by a healthier breed that won't unlearn that lesson. So by not seeking Empire - neither culturally, economically, societally or military - all European nations and peoples sealed their Doom after World War 2.
It is not a prisoner's dilemma. It is the prisoner saying "I redefine what constitutes being a prisoner, and thus I become free".
a favorite poem of mine that seems somehow apropos:
"The man
Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys:
Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whate'er it touches, and obedience,
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men, and, of the human frame,
A mechanised automaton.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley
all apologies for the gendered language. I denounce Percy Shelley as a transphobe.
Transphobe or no, dude could write.
I’m aligned with your thinking. I agree with those who believe that a US hegemony is the best alternative to China, Russia, etc. However, in the last 20 years the US has gotten way ahead of its skis in maintaining its position as global hegemon.
It certainly seems like the US government has 1)ignored their basic domestic responsibilities (safety, economic health, infrastructure, etc) and is totally focussed on “security” and the mistaken belief that global hegemony is the highest priority and provides citizen security. This myopic/singular focus lows the govt to go with an ends justifies the means approach. Thus it is now acceptable for the government to turn its considerable security resources against its citizenry - either manipulating citizens so their priorities align with governments (not visa versa); manipulating political outcomes via the governments considerable powers, and/or quashing dissent.
Seems likely that the government believes itself to be a munificent hegemon and that it is only leaning into totalitarianism because 1) it’s the only way to beat the up and coming hegemons and 2) the constitution is outdated and not aligned to modern times. Unfortunately the ends justifies the means stuff is anathema to the Constitution. So something (Constitution or the federal government) has to go.
Very well said.
I believe there can be a distinction between the maintenance of an empire and hegemony.
I disagree, though, that the rise of totalitarianism is occurring as a response to rising powers. I believe that's a red herring.
I think it's entirely a combination of consolidating power in the face of globalism as well as directly selling out to the anticipated globalist "new bosses."
We have been at war with great powers before without being simultaneously so reprehensibly at war with our own people.
Great powers unite their people. The US hegemony has been unable to meaningfully unite their citizens for some time. Recent revelations suggest ability to unify citizens Has been so bad over the last five decades that dishonest means were regularly utilized in attempts to unify (assasinations, wars, monetary policy, race riots, pandemics, gender wars, etc). Simultaneously US is struggling to unite their Allies. Meanwhile looks like China, Russia, and everyone else US hegemony has pissed off over the last 50 years might be uniting their citizenry. BTW There is no-zero way the clowns running the show for the last 20 years are going to be able to handle this. This will require lots of losing, failure, and attrition. (Reference WW2, Allies/US losing until peacetime leaders were replaced with wartime field tested leaders).
With regard to corporatists, I’m inclined to think they were fertilized to become tools of the hegemony. (Not so sure they know it either.)
Where we’re headed: global corporations, global hegemonies, global anything will hit a tipping point. They cannot sustain the weight of the overhead they’ve taken in. Lean and nimble will survive.
In that, I think there's hope.
I’ll accept all your conclusions, at least for the moment and for the sake of argument.
Let’s focus on one: ‘An empire that .. abdicates .. will be almost immediately cannibalized by the empires smart enough not to draw down.’
That’s underway now. Michael P Senger, who blogs here on Substack at ‘The New Normal,’ a year ago published ‘Snake Oil: How Xi Jinping Shut Down the World.’ In 150 pages with nearly 600 footnotes, he describes how the CCP exploited a not-very-deadly virus to get western elites to go to war against their own economies. The prime example is the Biden administration, whose main policy initiatives - such its war on fossil fuels - benefit nobody more than the Chinese, by making us much less competitive. No doubt the Chinese have enough dirt on the Biden family to compel such policies.
The entire globalist movement among western elites is basically a CCP Trojan Horse project. So we’re facing the worst-case scenarios of your 5th and 6th conclusions combined: Cannibalization by the CCP, plus an imperial globalist police regime.
I support balkanization as a strictly short-term (years to decades) measure, to allow dissident enclaves to get out from under our corrupt rulers, who really serve a foreign emperor. It’s a first step toward thwarting the impending emergence of such a globalist police state.
In the future, it very likely WILL be useful for those secessionist enclaves to reunite, having purged the elite traitors, hopefully practicing the sort of rigorous federalism that prevailed from 1789 to 1861.
(But minus Indian and Mexican wars, I hasten to add.)
This is an astute and comprehensive expansion of the issues I was trying to express into the real world.
As I said elsewhere (maybe here, in the comments somewhere?) the whole WEF nonsense is, indeed a CCP trojan horse, getting the west to weaken itself with "white people bullshit" and use a globalist organization entirely captured by CCP money to police the guai lo so China can concentrate on rebuilding the Golden Palace.
Your notion of balkanization as a sort of emetic with a reformation and rebellion against the globalist agenda is a very interesting one. I guess my immediate reaction is, "won't we, or at least many of us, be gobbled up by opportunistic empires during that interstitial period?" China would go ahead and outright purchase strategically located or resource-rich states and essentially encircle us as with Russia. Would we get our shit together before we became a bunch of confederated vassal states learning Mandarin or Russian in elementary school?
Oh, I should add: If your worst-case scenario came to pass, we should be overjoyed if the Chinese or Russians teach our kids their languages ... or anything else. My guess is they wouldn’t, because I doubt they would want their American subjects knowing what they were discussing among themselves.
It’s revealing, in fact, that the Bolsheviks went out of their way to make sure all the Tsar’s erstwhile subjects learned Russian. There’s a line in today’s national anthem: братских народов союз вековой, which describes the RF as a ‘centuries-old union of brotherly peoples.’ Russians aren’t immune to racism, but they’ve dealt with it better than we have. There is no vindictive anti-Russian counter-racist movement like CRT in the former USSR ... except in Ukraine, where, of course, the CIA and DoS fostered and promoted it.
The Russian educational system is a fine one: Even the Soviets never totally abandoned critical thinking, as we have (although obviously there were topics they ‘fenced off.’)
I spent the spring semester 2018 in Russia and it was a huge eye-opener. Not directly familiar with China’s but I expect it’s comparable.
I have a ton of respect for Russia, I just don't want a nation like mine to be a conquered one.
I worked with a lot of former Soviet teachers when I taught English, and yes, the system was excellent.
The Chinese one is not. It is a factory in ways far worse even than we complain about America's- political indoctrination and mind-numbing rote memorization for an endless stream of meaningless tests. Good American professors find Chinese student visa students incredibly frustrating to teach- they're often unimaginative literal-minded robots.
I didn’t know that. I really expected better, after all the damn build-up. Perhaps that’s a chink (snicker) in the Empire’s armor that we can exploit.
It's a big chink, but whether it outweighs the CCPs ability to use its people as disposable assets and harness all their stolen technology is a big one.
But yeah, it's true. Chinese students can pass state exams and spout political indoctrination very well. They very rarely produce innovative research.
My much-more-successful tech friends have commented many times that there really isn't much "Chinese tech innovation" that isn't simply industrial espionage.
Well, being gobbled up by [secondary] opportunist empires - after freeing ourselves from the primary one - is certainly a concern. I hadn’t thought of it, but your use of ‘emetic’ in this context is spot on: In many respects, what the Covid psy-op (and Senger’s breakdown of it) showed us was that we’ve been gobbled up already.
So let’s deal first with the beast whose belly we actually find ourselves in. It would be a shame if we wound up getting digested by the CCP now, for fear of a hypothetical enemy we might (or might not) confront tomorrow.
If Texas, or Florida or other viable states were to secede, would China react by trying to encircle them with captured resource-rich or strategic states? Well, yes, but China could hardly do so harder or faster than they’re already doing right now.
Keep in mind that China’s entire strategy, for now, relies on their Trojan Horse - our traitor elite and their captive institutions - doing CCP’s bidding. If TX secedes, ‘nationalizes’ all Chinese-owned property, and starts rooting out their agents in business and academia, the CCP will be back to square one, circa 1996, at least vis a vis Texas.
That’s another reason why, as I’ve said before, secession won’t be easy. The Feds will mount total war to stop it, including carpet bombing and maybe even tactical nukes, in part because the CCP will pressure them to.
Russia won’t be a factor. Yes, the current RF retains aspects of both Tsarist and Soviet empires. But they’re not expansionist: This is obvious because both times (Georgia 2008 and Ukraine this year) they’ve ‘invaded’ countries on their border, they’ve done so to protect pro-Russian minorities targeted for genocide by NATO-backed nationalist rulers.
Mexico? All bets are off. Is Mexico capable of gobbling up Texas? Well maybe, if it’s been weakened by Washington’s carpet bombing. My guess is nothing will change. Mexico will keep doing what it’s always done, encourage Mexicans to enrich Mexico by repatriating big bucks from El Norte becuz gringos have forgotten how to frame houses n lay bricks.
Yeah, I'm really not worried about Russia being a direct threat to America- American elite interests, maybe, but who cares?
I agree that a huge concern of anything even indirectly resembling secession would be federal violence. I wonder how compliant the military as whole would be with an agenda like that? Despite the ongoing narrative of military breakdown and reprogramming, my active duty friends and associates assure me there are still a lot of smart, grounded patriots in middle leadership where it counts. But I don't know.
I think Texas would grind Mexico into chorizo if they tried something like that. And I'd watch that movie. And if they seceded, you'd see the tightest incoming borders outside of North Korea.
For all the people in the 'dissenting group' giving lip service to dismantling the empire, I'm still looking for that single other person taking the concept seriously enough to work out the details. We have 3500 years of Western Civ psy ops telling us that empire is inevitable, if not ours then someone else's. The word 'Balkanization' is a loaded term that signifies a failed, fragmented chaos. The book The Dawn of Everything has plenty of examples of thriving and peaceful internetworked peoples, and contradicts Dunbar's number as a limit. But it's not even One Military that's even the problem, it's One Economy run by the bankers who own your farm. It isn't inevitable that you have to shovel pig shit for 30 years to pay off the bankers. That's where the rub of empire meets the road.
Two awesome topics in one day!
I'm trying to regain some discipline.
En fuego
I'm also experimenting with loosening up a little on the essays and speaking more freely on things that aren't necessarily fully-baked yet and leaving it to provoke discussion, rather than waiting until I feel like I've perfectly composed something that might drag or require a perfect uninterrupted day of inspiration.
Leaning more into what I don't know for sure, but have ideas about, than into just lectures or rants.
The older I get the more I realize; good is good enough...most of the time.
I spent 40 years of my life often being a self inflicted victim of perfect being the enemy of good.
I would guess you're a perfectionist.
>> I spent 40 years of my life often being a self inflicted victim of perfect being the enemy of good.
The only reason it's been longer than 40 for me is I probably started when I was 3. :)
And BTW. I don't care what any Stack authors use as a metric.
The number one KPI is the discussion/debate/dialogue.
Most will say the "outbound"...even to the extent of shutting "off" their inbound commentary.
But it's not. Not bragging, but I know this firsthand from building several businesses.
Think about it.
Just accept that your "list" is always going to be longer than your time.
I realized that one night at 2 AM and it changed my life.
I agree. And no "self censorship". Fuck it. KWIM?
Ryan is wise. I'm glad we have him on our side.
GM is amazing. I mention this place when I'm out n about. Me being me...that don't help you much...but... It wouldn't hurt if you were to ask your Gutterballs to mention here on Twitter and other social media.
That kind of support is always welcome.
Communism was expansionist from its inception, so the American Empire post-WW2 was a force for good and a necessary counterbalance to the anti-human, anti-freedom Marxists. The capitalist West had to play nice with its populace, and the middle class thrived like never before. With Communism's fall in Europe (mourned only by party apparatchiks on one side of the Iron Curtain, and western intellectuals on the other), Big Business could drop the mask and begin pulling the rug out from under the middle class, whose existence cut into its profit margins. So they did. Practically everything the US has done domestically in the 30 years since the USSR's collapse has been to the detriment of its hoi polloi.
America now is simply the Praetorian Guard for the global Oligarchy. We have become "The Great Satan" that Ayatollah Khomeini banged on about 4 decades ago. An expanding, trumphant American Empire would not be good for human flourishing, IMO.
Russia is a threat to Europe, only because Europe is feeble in body, mind, and spirit, after 2 suicide attempts last century. I don't see that corrupt nation of 150 million as any serious threat.
China, on the other hand...they be scary crazy.
Your comment about “good consequences” reminded me of this. (“What have the Romans ever done for us?”). https://youtu.be/2ozEZxOsanY
Pretty much exactly what I was thinking about. :)
When considering this question the word I keep coming back to is exodus.
Let the empires play their stupid games. Focus on yourself and those around you in your community. Try and pull back from the games as much as you can live the best life you can - which is hopefully in service to your conscience.
Let the chips fall from there. You never know what impact you have, and I think that’s working as intended. Stop worrying about it, and you’re finally free to act.
Speaking of games and game theory regrding Empire, try 'Diplomacy' if you can find a group.
No dice, no random elements, just planning and lying through your teeth as a part of the game.