Do you know how to say "hello" in French? Then replace the n with an r and add "sie" to the end and you've got it! Borjoursie!
What is going on with the text in this image? It was clearly replaced very haphazardly, is it an automated translation or something?
If AES countries aren't a good enough example for you, then such a blueprint does not exist. I'm not sure why it would though. Was the ascendancy of capitalism over feudalism driven a meticulously detailed blueprint for the new world to come?
I've noticed this pattern forming as well as election season picks up and Ukraine turns into a stalemate. Can you elaborate at all on why this fight is happening though? Who are the winners and losers if there's a pivot away from focusing on Europe to focusing on China?
But then still, why invest so much into it? Surely many of those companies would rather pocket the extra profits than spending it on some kind of elaborate political theater performance. But they all play ball, they all invest in their own little cadres of corrupt officials, so there must be something to be gained from these little political battles beyond just a conspiracy to hoodwink the working class.
I think that's more to the core of my question though, if democrats represent tech, entertainment, etc. and republicans represent manufacturing, agriculture, etc., what are the contentious economic policies that cause that split?
What are USA politicians fighting over?
The USA is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, this is known. From the vast sums of money dumped into political campaigns by monopoly capital, to the cushy corporate lobbyist jobs awaiting elected officials after retirement, to the huge gulf between the values and desires of the people and the voting records of their so-called representatives. But there's one thing that I heard a lot of "progressive" liberals (or whatever you want to call them) saying over my many years in the USA: if voting didn't matter, they (referring to the republican party, naturally) wouldn't be trying to stop you from doing it.
Voting, and the outcome of elections in the USA, matters to somebody. Again, the capitalist powers that be invest quite a bit of money and effort into these political campaigns. But why? Why should contests over political office be so expensive and complicated if the result -- that imperialism wins -- is a foregone conclusion? Is it just the battlefield for the redivision of the domestic markets? How do the fights over civil rights issues and such factor in, or is it precisely because capital doesn't really care either way that bickering over those issues is so fierce?
Every time some old lib dies I hope it'll be the rule of threes that will finally claim Kissinger.
As much as I personally enjoy fictional post-apocalyptic wastelands (Mad Max, Fallout, etc.), I do find the whole genre a bit problematic because it often seems to function to reinforce the idea that humans are inherently violent, greedy, and incapable of non-opportunistic cooperation. I've even seen Lemmygrad posters speak as if Mad Max represents a realistic vision of a potential future for humanity.
I'm like 99% sure that's the entire quote, why would there be anything else? Fruit goes bad sometimes, it just happens, nothing you can do about it but move on with your life. Much like our society.
Yes, but my point is more that it can be dealt with, it's a relic of the old world that doesn't have to survive. A demand for excessive plastic surgery and genetically pure babies are not likely to be a thing, long-term, in a socialist society.
Maybe I misunderstood the OP, but I guess I'm trying to say that socialism itself - insofar as it abolishes the old systems of capitalism and inequality - already is the solution for most of those problems, I don't think outlandish medical procedures and genetic engineering for the masses need to be part of the conversation.
Like you said, reconciliation and understanding.
Edit: to be clear I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment, I think I probably should have replied to the thread instead of to your comment.
I challenge the idea that "discrimination based on attractiveness and height" would necessarily be a thing in a socialist society. Is the socialist state going to be rigorously maintaining and pushing western beauty standards once the profit motives and corporations that currently do so are gone? Why would it do so? What does the proletariat have to gain by dividing and fracturing itself according to arbitrary standards of appearance?
Standards of beauty are a cultural thing, and culture is malleable. If the material motivations for classifying and discriminating against groups of people are gone, then any remaining remnants of dangerous and discriminatory ideology should be substantially easier to isolate and combat.
If the collapse happened (whatever that even means), it wouldn't be like Mad Max because Mad Max is a movie, it's not real. This ideology that individual humans are by nature violent and constantly on the brink of murdering each other all the time has no real basis in science or history that I know of. It does, however, provide a nice excuse for why communism can never work and why you need cops with assault rifles at Wal-Mart.
TikTok's algorithm gives different people wildly different results. I watch and like about 80% videos of animals and 20% absurd comedy sketches, and that's what TikTok continues to recommend to me. If you're watching and engaging with stupid liberal bullshit, it's probably going to show you more of that.
Don't forget the goal of increasing European dependence on the USA for energy too. A lot of the work is done but maintaining the rift between Russia and the NATO countries is probably a lot easier if those countries are actively supporting a proxy war.
"One bad apple isn't a big deal. The rest of the apples are fine." - George Washington, probably
The extent to which the industry part of the military industrial complex has been hollowed out and replaced with nothing but grift is pretty astounding. I can't imagine the US could hope to fight a real multi-year war like Vietnam or Korea ever again. It kind of seems like if your military could survive the initial "shock and awe" campaign now, then you could just kind of hold the line while the US helplessly bleeds out.
Overall, Kusti Salm, a senior Estonian defense ministry official, estimated that Russia’s current ammunition production is seven times greater than that of the West.
Russia’s production costs are also far lower than the West’s, in part because Moscow is sacrificing safety and quality in its effort to build weapons more cheaply, Mr. Salm said. For instance, it costs a Western country $5,000 to $6,000 to make a 155-millimeter artillery round, whereas it costs Russia about $600 to produce a comparable 152-millimeter artillery shell, he said.
A US-based media article is claiming that Russia can produce seven times the ammunition at something like one tenth the cost. That's insane if true. I knew Russia was putting up big production numbers, but that big? If that's even close to correct then the idea that the AFU could ever push Russia out by force is utterly delusional now.
Why is intensifying war required by capitalism?
I haven't done a deep dive through Capital vol. 1-3 yet so my understanding on this topic is limited, and I want to see if I have the basics down.
The core problem as I understand it is the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, because capitalism requires that not only do things stay profitable, but that the profits continually increase. This of course is impossible to sustain in a real, finite world.
Imperialism offers a way to delay the inevitable by opening up new markets and exploiting new supplies of labor and resources to keep profits increasing long after the imperialist power lost the ability to accomplish this domestically.
But as the rate of profit continues to fall, ever more aggressive expansion and exploitation is needed to maintain this growth, inevitably leading to conflict between capitalists to divide up the limited markets and resources in a competition to, if not be the winner, avoid being the biggest loser.
Losing access to these foreign markets and resources however starts to become an existential crisis for a capitalist state though, because the internal contradictions have been raised to such extremes that they could only be temporarily treated with imperialist exploitation, and if access to that exploitation is lost, complete and utter financial ruin for the bourgeoisie of that state follows.
So part of it is that the imperialist capitalist state, to preserve it's own existence, must fight increasingly desperately -- to the very brink of death -- over control of markets to expand into and resources to exploit, correct? Because otherwise, the whole decrepit system comes crashing down?
But also, there's an aspect of war itself creating new markets to exploit, isn't there? An orgy of destruction and death creates a market for weapons, and new opportunities for exploitation in rebuilding and redividing the rubble? If that's the case, is eternal global war a possible solution to the problems of capitalism? Can a cycle of destruction and rebuilding keep the whole rotten wheel turning indefinitely until the whole planet is poisoned and exhausted of resources? Or do the unsustainable demands of capitalism somehow ensure that the war must spread and intensify to the point of total annihilation?
As a tangential point, could imperialism hypothetically stave off its death a bit longer by becoming interplanetary?
I know I'm missing some big points in here, please fill me in, even though this is all very broad strokes and oversimplified. And if anyone has reading on the subject that's more approachable than Capital (a pretty low bar), I'd love to read it.
Indescribable
It's amazing, truly one of the posts of all time.
https://twitter.com/GunterFehlinger/status/1695733432045752800