I got one friend who will not shut up about the MIC (military industrial complex). He'll go on and on about how much it ruins shit and how much is influenced by it. But concepts like Imperialism and its relationship to capitalism is some how beyond him. Instead its just "humans who are the problem"
The thing that I'm reminded of constantly is that there is a language we all use but all the words mean different things.
- Capitalism
- Imperialism
- Fascism
- Authoritarianism
- Totalitarianism
I couldn't begin to tell you what I used to think these meant and what the people around me think they mean still. No one (save for one person in our group) would be bothered to read a book on the subject.
Like, the MIC comes from somewhere, if it pisses you off so much, wouldn't you want to understand it, so you can combat it?
/rant
MIC is so low hanging fruit that even a war criminal popularized it, don't give him any credit.
these types of people don't want to change anything they just want an unstoppable force to blame for everything wrong in the world. The griping is the point, and the vast, powerful, and shadowy nature of their chosen boogeyman means they can't be expected to do anything about it.
and then they accuse us of blaming all our problems on capitalism
Military is a wasted labor, if you have all the rockets you need, suddenly your nice factory producing them is not profitable, thus needs for conflicts and finding buyers for weapons. Where is that logic breaks down for him?
Imperialism is synergestic with that desire (might as well use rockets to steal something), but its not necessary component. Sweden happily sells its weapons everywhere and let americans start wars and then sits with "clean" hands.
He's a rabid anticommunist/antisocialist and regularly pushes back on any America Bad Guy notions. He's also a small government guy. So I can only imagine he thinks Imperialism is a thing the British did and not something part of a larger rational system.
Does he think that if someone made better than boeing airplane (in small government world) boeing wouldn't drone strike their factory?
But libertarians are brain broken, as they don't perceive the sizes of corporations.
No idea. Our points of views align all the time but when it comes down to the "why" question he's always in some other reality. He thinks big corporations are bad but also big government is bad yet can't see the relationship between the two.
So libertarian
Its fundamentally petit bougie ideology of small garage shed producers competing in the marketplace of products, they are all like that.
Government should protect private property and fuck off otherwise. If they think for two seconds, they also agree to anti-trust law. When government doesn't do it they go fash upon material conditions.
Libs are TINA about capitalism, but also about bellum americana. It’s always been this way and always will be. It’s just human nature. It’s the worst system except for all the other ones.
Edit: TINA: there is no alternative. Also looked up bellum Americana and found this: https://medium.com/@vinsonrnash/bellum-americana-b509eda75a8b which I think is what your referencing or is at least a parallel line of thinkning.
Its wild to me, that someone can look at the 70ish years of the USSR and comflate all the tragedies and hardships into one long string of malicious acts, and completely ignore or justify that the average length of peace time since our founding is 7 years. Ignore the 400+ years of black slavery that the nation was built on.
Soviet Communism (Stalin's reign, specifically) was the greatest crime humanity managed to commit against itself since the glory days of Ghengis Khan.
Like, how do you belive this, but then also can't square it against the INTENTAL industrialized enslavement of people, for profit. A system that inspired Nuremberg. I just don't get it.
I was alluding to Pax Americana—a peace which never existed for those we were colonizing—which alludes to Pax Romana.
They just wanna complain about something with other people to vibe out and build social bonds together. Most people don't really mean what they say. It's just about hanging out and having fun
Honestly I sympathize with him because when I bitch about something stupid in this world, there's a significant chance the communist I'm hanging out with will launch into a class conflict or labour value lecture for 15 minutes and it's like bruh, I know, I'm just trying to vibe and build comraderie by complaining about something we both agree on
Move on and agitate somebody/on something else. 99% of people are unreachable at this point with regard to American foreign policy
