We sent a bunch of these to Ukraine. They didn’t perform well - got stuck in the mud easily, the armour wasn’t sufficient for the threats, and the height didn’t help with not getting hit. They’re appropriate for colonial policing operations, which is why they’re perfect for ICE, provided the Minnesotans start shooting back

How so?

They have no defined borders, the most extreme among them claim the whole middle east, and they just keep getting more extreme. The progression is obvious

At least it’s interesting to watch!

I agree, the separatists should go on down to the US

I got rid of it years ago, thankfully, but I’ve heard the talk. As it stands, we wouldn’t make it a week outside of a guerrilla war, and I don’t know if we have a strong enough society or motivated enough populace for guerrilla war. We could make ourselves a hard enough target for them to avoid if we invested heavily in expanding the military, but where are we going to get the weapons? America? They could turn them off remotely I’m sure. China would be a good option, but America might invade us right away once they found out we were doing that. It’s a big problem.

Even if we could get the Europeans to do anything more than write a strongly-worded letter, they don’t have much in the way of military might themselves. Frankly, I don’t trust them to help unless something changes, but the ticket is deterrence. We need to make ourselves a hard enough target that the Americans aren’t willing to try to take a bite, and it’s going to take a combination of alliances (we should ally with Mexico, since America is coming for them too) and armaments.

Regarding shifting social spending to defence, I think it’s a bad idea, at least without other major changes elsewhere. Part of our problem is motivation - we’ve had 40 years of neoliberalism telling us the state owes us nothing besides tax credits and we owe the state nothing besides paying our taxes and obeying the law. We’re already halfway to losing public healthcare, so we won’t even be able to fight for that. We need a fundamental paradigm shift to save this country, and I’m not sure if we have the will or the imagination.

“You have to earn my vote” is very different from “you’ll never get my vote no matter what you do.” You can kind of say whatever you want though, given that the Democrats never tried to earn votes.

You should realize there is a spectrum between “working within the existing Democratic party structure” and “violent revolution.” The former is as unlikely as the latter. But now that I put it into words, maybe you’re right. Maybe all change in America is equally impossible - the establishment is too powerful and entrenched, and the American people just don’t have it in them to fight for anything. Maybe you just have to ride this doom spiral all the way to the bottom and rebuild from the rubble before anything gets any better.

The rest of the “democratic” world supported Israel as they bombed Gaza to rubble, and supported America in basically every murderous invasion and regime change of the last 80 years, right up until America threatened to take Greenland - suddenly it’s different if America comes for someone in the club. All the “democratic west” amounts to is a few rich countries run by rich pedophiles, but God forbid we do business with big bad China, right?

I don’t know how so many people are still falling for this. Sure, the Iranian government isn’t exactly “good”, but they’re the only major counterbalance to the genocidal Nazi imperialists that’s left in the region.

Sure, but perceived volume of people on the internet isn’t necessarily indicative of real life, and I would hazard a guess that a lot of the people boycotting were in safe blue ridings.

The thing is, I don’t think it’s so much that they see a progressive platform as a risk. I won’t say that isn’t part of it, but the main thing is they really, really don’t want to implement progressive policies. It’s anathema to them ideologically, at least for the true believers. More important, it would lose their major donors money, and therefore would lose them money as their donors went over to the Republicans.

As tho why progressives should in general (upcoming elections are arguable of course, given the situation) withhold their votes from the Democrats, it’s because it’s the only leverage they have. As long as the Democrats can win without offering people anything, they won’t offer anything.

The law only exists so far as it is enforced. Who will enforce the law against the state? Political power grows out the barrel of a gun.

Nothing is forever, even cold November rain

Nothing is forever, even cold November rain

To be America’s enemy is dangerous. To be america’s friend is fatal.

God, I would hate if my country exercised power over entrepreneurs and private companies. It would suck so bad. If my government did anything to curb the power of business, I would kill myself.

Is there a German compound word for chuck chair? Cuckstuhl?

If America and Israel were supporting protests in hell, I would have no choice but to support the devil

Hell, they already had us, and we just didn’t know it. Every western country was in lockstep with the US, especially in foreign policy. Now the US has decided that soft power is woke, and everyone has to publicly submit to them. This could at least offer us an opportunity to break free, though the odds could be better.

I would take either, but we have neither. Carney is a progressive conservative.

One of the examples is how South Korea suffered tourism losses after stationing American missile defence batteries on their territory. I would agree with China’s decision in that case.