Is the lowest anywhere on Earth with the possible exception of Israel. 90% of the US initially supported the invasion of Afghanistan. Things went bad and then everyone convinced themselves they opposed it from the beginning. There was more opposition to the invasion of Iraq from the start, but I think it's obvious most of that is not due to suddenly-obtained moral opposition to killing foreigners, but in reaction to Afghanistan not being the runaway success that all the good little Fascists thought it would be. Basically the same reasoning behind Operation Valkyrie: those in charge are not competent enough to fulfill their genocidal project of which I otherwise approve.
That stat alone is wholly damning to me, but there's so much more. Interracial marriage had majority disapproval until the mid 90s. Homosexuality has been treated with both casual and thorough disgust until the tide finally began to turn in the late 2000s and then everyone convinced themselves once again that they opposed bigotry from the very beginning.
Most people see the homeless as nothing more than annoying obstacles, and recognition of humanity is rare.
The people on the TV and NPR talked about China for a couple years and now most people see the PRC, a nation with an objectively observable policy of non-interference, as the US's greatest enemy (and no, they obviously don't mean the greatest enemy to American hegemony as almost no one even recognizes that the US occupies such a position). How many of the people, even Socialists, who bought into the Uyghur genocide, have even glanced at prison conditions in the US, or the ongoing treatment of Native Americans? How many have even the slightest inkling of the US's campaign of eradication of Black Nationalism?
All of the good, bleeding heart people showed their deep, abounding empathy for the people of Ukraine because the TV Man told them they should. What do you think the rate of Zionism is among people whose hearts ache for Ukraine? How many do you think are even aware that the US is actively starving Afghanistan, and of those who are, how many oppose it? The only time the TV Man has depicted Afghans as humans has been when they convinced those bleeding heart supporters of women's liberation that we needed to save the downtrodden women of Afghanistan by turning their nation into rubble and their people into viscera.
White people finally got an inkling of what a monstrous force of white supremacist brutality the police are only when smart phones made personal cameras ubiquitous and social media made those images impossible to completely repress. Even then, the TV Man told them that giving this monstrous force of white supremacist brutality less money is unreasonable, so it didn't happen.
I think the explanation is fairly simple: the US' owes its place in the world to its system of vassalage, exploitation, and eradication. It must convince its populace that this system is justified. And for many people, it's not that hard a sell when they're seeing dividends. Even many poor Americans live lives of comfort and ease when compared with vast swathes of the world (especially the places the US and its vassals are exploiting the most).
All this is to say: Americans are materially incentivized to favor Imperialism and the social order it has enabled. We see the effects of this all around us, every day. Fortunately, our salvation comes in the biggest contradiction we also see all around us: shit is falling apart. De-dollarization is finally, slowly beginning. The US's vassals are chafing under hegemony. Things are going to get much much worse, and people won't find Imperialism and its social order such a good sell.
The thing is, as fascist as the US has been and still is, since slavery abolition(*) the people there have yet never been faced with the literal question "We either do a BIG fascism, or the treat flow is gonna dry up".
The time for that plain literal question is coming closer, and I'm pretty sure what will be the answer. People in the US have been grilling while there was fascism going on in the background (in the brown neighborhood or some brown country), done by a conscient minority. But the mask is gonna fall off, and the majority of people is gonna actively choose literal fascism if that's what keep the treats flowing.
"Bombing some latam capital or high inflation? TURN ON THOSE ENGINES"
"Nuclear war or eating one less McRib per week? HIT THAT BUTTON NOW"
"Round up the climate migrants in labor camps or stop eating steak? CHEAPER CLOTHES HERE WE GO"
* Terms and conditions apply
The thing about Nazism is that it's unsustainable. Unfortunately, I do think we have some of the highest quality psychos on Earth, and many of them are in charge of or stand to be in charge of portions of the nuclear arsenal in the event of a collapse. We saw how deranged the Nazis were in their defeat, Goebbels murdering his children rather than let them live in a world without Nazism. Will our psychos be willing to sacrifice the world in their death throes? The chances are much much higher than I'm comfortable with.
"I'm not owned, I'm not owned, I repeat, as my skin boils because the world nuked me back"
You know what's kinda bittersweet? I don't think MAD would happen, even if the US nuked China or Russia or India. Which is good cuz at least some people will survive.
You know what’s kinda bittersweet? I don’t think MAD would happen, even if the US nuked China or Russia or India. Which is good cuz at least some people will survive.
it's also a wignat's wet dream
Sadly yes.
They are the evil empire with the most mass destruction weapons, and the only psychopathic enough to actually use them casually, let alone while doing a tantrum.
But maybe if someone suddenly nuked Washington DC while there's the Superbowl going on, then maybe the rest of the world would be able to get rid of the US as a global threat with the least amount of inocent deaths
The invasion of Afghanistan was the moment of peak American power. No major rivals to stop them from invading two countries across the world. Full spectrum dominance of the domestic political area. Hell they even stole the election for George W despite Gore being literally just a normal liberal (ooo no he's going to sign the Kyoto Protocol :porky-scared:) . Capital dunked on American democracy just cuz they could and everyone just took it.
But that was 20 years ago, and things have changed drastically in that time. China's superpower status is a fait accompli now, and the grip of American hegemony is already weakening. Domestically, in just the past few years the United States has seen nationwide riots against government oppression (George Floyd), violent attacks on government buildings (J6), and not to mention failed to control a extremely virulent disease which killed a million citizens. These are not signs of a stable empire, in fact, these sort of events tend to precede uprisings and revolutions.
The organization definitely is not there yet, but with this renewed labor movement and all this simmering discontent I would not write off America just yet. This is the place capital is most concentrated in the world after all, which Orthodox Marxist theory would consider the likeliest place for communist revolution. It is probably going to take some more decades, but as conditions continue to decline so will the government's legitimacy, and then people will begin to consider overthrow.
This is the place capital is most concentrated in the world after all, which Orthodox Marxist theory would consider the likeliest place for communist revolution.
Yeah but... isn't that basically debunked by history? No previous capitalist superpower produced an internal socialist revolution, the only successful revolutions were in peripheral semi-capitalist nations like Russia and China or in colonized nations like Cuba and Vietnam.
Marx's idea that capitalism, by bringing workers together in the factories, inherently organizes them and prepares them for socialism, doesn't seem to apply. The peak of industrialism in the U.S. has come and gone and that kind of production has largely been moved outside its borders. (Plus, the Chinese revolution, lead as it was by the peasant class, seems to have debunked the orthodox Marxist idea that the industrial proletariat are the most revolutionary class anyway.)
The idea that exploitation is highest at home doesn't apply either. U.S. workers enjoy a good living standard relative to the third world workers in the U.S.'s supply chains. So if the concentration of capital in the U.S. produces neither a particularly strong motive nor a particularly suitable organization for revolution, why would we expect it to happen here?
the Russian revolution certainly threw a spanner into the gears of orthodox Marxism because Russia was the least likely place for a socialist revolution to emerge. Russia fell because of a combination of worker unrest and a very weak state after WW1. Other European powers still managed to muster enough state capacity to crush the communist uprisings by force (Germany for example). Around the same time Russia was forced to depart from Orthodox Marxism out of necessity and undertake a project of Socialism in One Country. Yet it was this situation that ultimately doomed the Soviet Union, their industrial capacity was always far behind what the west, especially the Americans could call upon, and it's only because of central planning that the Soviets ever gave the US a run for their money, it was never a fair fight.
However, perhaps the Right Opposition led by Bukharin was correct. The Russian revolution was premature, and instead of locking down the country like Stalin, they should have cut a deal with the peasantry and essentially introduced capitalist development in USSR with a long term NEP. With the benefit of hindsight we can definitely say that Stalin's path, though based, was not successful as it eventually led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Cuba, Vietnam, and China all received heavy support from the Soviet Union to achieve their victories. Now their liberation is unequivocally a good thing, but if the Soviet Union's revolution was premature than so were these even less developed countries. The Chinese peasantry under Mao was a very potent political base, perhaps the largest single interest group in the world, but even China decided to return to capitalist development to compete. To me, this suggests that these revolutions "should have" taken place after capitalism had been allowed to develop for sometime, but weak colonial regimes were unable to handle the growing unrest. Now this isn't bad, you can't expect people to delay their own liberation, but it was and still is a problem these communist governments have to overcome.
Which finally brings us to America again. We have advanced beyond what Marx even believed possible, and it seems like to be mostly the fault of financialization/credit, which Marx underestimated as an economic force. But where does this leave the American proletariat? You are right that the days of industrialization have come and gone here, but many American still find themselves in jobs that are wildly alienating and exploitative, gig work, big box stores like Amazon. And additionally, while Americans are relatively well compensated compared to other countries, we also are expected to spend insane amounts of money to live here. nothing is free, healthcare, housing, education, transportation all the stuff we complain about. The resources to feed this consumerist colossus are currently looted from the rest of the world, but this system appears to be very sensitive to disruptions. Look at how COVID impacted our economic stability, inflation is still going wild, and we even sacrificed 1 million people to keep the line happy. If America were to find itself unable to , continue imperialist exploitation at an increasing rate (to support growth), than the American population would quickly find themselves destitute. State power is the last piece of this equation, and it hard to tell because American state power is still the most dominant in the world, but it is on the decline, and you can look to the events I mentioned in my earlier post.
So I do believe there is revolutionary potential here at least. And frankly it won't do it any good to write off the American people completely, as that just cedes ground to the fascists. Marx was envisioned world revolution coming about through a revolutionary wave, such as the liberal revolutions of 1848, which he lived through. There was an aborted communist wave in Europe after WW1 that was stopped in Russia, and even that defined European and later world history through the rest of the century (cold war). If the 20th century was the ultimate triumph of capitalism, will the 21st see its fall? With Europe now in the tightest position it's been in in decades, and America on the wane against a rising, peer competitor, a nominally communist one at that, if there was ever an era for a second shot at world revolution, it is quickly approaching
imagine how russian socialists felt when most the overwhelming majority of the country's men would do pogroms and beat the shit out of their wives and kids
imagine how socialists the world over felt in ww1 as most social democrats even endorsed grinding millions into dust
The overwhelmingly Black and brown working class was always going to be the vanguard, and its them who any communist movement needs to focus on.
Co-sign.
Interracial marriage had majority disapproval until the mid 90s. Homosexuality has been treated with both casual and thorough disgust until the tide finally began to turn in the late 2000s
This proves that Americans have in many people's lifetime drastically changed for the better though
yes but things have improved from where they were in the past. There is still pervasive and dangerous racism but it is much better than it was in say the 60's.
The fight for racial equality isn't finished but it has made strides
I agree with all of this, but my fear is that despite how good and hard-won those positive strides are, backsliding can happen and is happening. There are some obvious recent examples like the overturning of RvW. Racism seems like it's on the rise as well, instead of continuing to wane as I used to assume it would.
I hope that this only shows the efforts of a reactionary but powerful minority as it is facing the inevitability of its death, and that the overall progress you're talking about hasn't been lost, only partially suppressed. But I don't know. It often feels like we're watching as that progress that so many fought and died for is being erased and that there isn't enough will or ability to prevent it. Are the drastic changes for the better that you mentioned now drastically changing again for the worst? In some ways, they obviously are - is that just superficial though, or is it emblematic of a full on slide into mask-off society-wide fascism?
And backsliding is what happens when people don't bother to think about things like liberation and oppression, or even just why things are good or bad. On one hand, acceptance of LGBT folks has gone way up in the last 20 years. However, those numbers are padded by a large number of people who don't actually think about things. They just have a vague notion that being against gay people is bad so they are for them; until societal winds shift and then they fall back to their old positions.
Sorry if this is meandering and disconnected. I haven't slept well in months and I'm on three hours sleep today.
:sleepi: people don’t take to heart positions taken via tv. This 90 percent this or that is basically “well, guess so” (with notable exceptions of wars, and even then bush oil memes were deeply ingrained in the 00s), it’s not actively doing stuff (conversely socialism/labor action/antifa is actively doing stuff, so percentages are kinda meaningless)
I don’t think much of what you are saying is untrue, but it also ignores the mass hysteria induced by 9/11 that led to the War in Afghanistan. That is why that 90% happened. I was against the war, but I was also a teenager, and nearly every other teen or adult around me seemed to be bloodthirsty in the most bleak way. And the media was rubbing its hands with glee, fresh with the memory of the first Gulf War spectacle ratings bonanza. I think it was because the 90s were the US’s “golden age” of neoliberalism, and the boomers that had to hide under their desks as children, being told the lie that the USSR would destroy their world, had “won” the cold war and could now order a Russian bride in the mail. Americans thought they were actually the greatest and it broke their brains. But that was always a Hollywood induced fantasy. As you said, more or less, the contradictions of capitalism always hold the seeds of its own destruction. Eventually the dollar will fall and maybe we will all get what our settler ancestors deserved.
I think the revolutionary potential everywhere is abysmal, and seemingly hopeless, right up until it occurs. Then everyone looks back and says it was inevitable. This was the case in Russia, China, Cuba, and nearly every other revolution in history. The thing that makes Yankee leftism so infinitely frustrating is the sheer volume of people who “get it” but instead of rolling up their sleeves, going outside, and building class power , just post online, endlessly doomscroll and wax poetic about how revolution is impossible here. I think it is correct that the lifestyle here is simultaneously either too opulent (in some ways) and soul crushing (in other ways) that it can become easy to give up on organizing and just focus on trying to be happy with interpersonal relationships or treats or whatever. If it feels hopeless just try to remember that Lenin himself never believed he would see revolution in his lifetime.
the US’ owes its place in the world to its system of vassalage, exploitation, and eradication. It must convince its populace that this system is justified.
I agree with this 100%, but I think it also leads to the question: how much responsibility do working class white Americans have for this, and how much is on the capitalist class and their apparatchiks in government, the media, etc? I genuinely do not know myself, but it's something I think about a lot.
I think I broadly agree but don't put too much stock in some poll. Most Americans are not people of real conviction, and their answer to that question likely would've changed if it was asked differently or if the situation were presented to them differently initially. Fickleness and apathy are much more universal characteristics than bloodthirst
