The typical socdem/communist divide. Morality only exists within “my nation”, and Ethan has identified himself as Israeli, for a bunch of different (shitty) reasons.

There’s a lot of Jewish communists that have written a lot about how crippling to leftist values the existence of Israel has become. Many early communists were Jewish, I mean look at Marx and Trotsky, but in general it’s a lot easier for people to support a stateless and uniform world when you have no state and feel (correctly so until the modern British born, then American run colony of “Israel”) masqueraded are always the victim. Much like the persecuted religious sects kicked out of England to the US, prisoners in Australia, etc. we see how fast the bullied can become bullies once they’re given their own place, money and weapons to bully.

Once Israel seemed like a project that wasn’t inevitable to collapse, there were people who advocated against nationalism, that were brutalized by ethnostates, being given an ethnostate they quickly go from “nobody should be a target, because we’re all humans” to “WE shouldn’t be a target because we’re amazing, all the propaganda I grew up listening to says the same thing.”

I live in NYC, I have never personally done this but I know people who have struggled, and the best thing is to maybe not dress in a suit but your nicest clothes, showered, and groomed enough so people think you’re middle class plus going through one unique moment of poverty and not someone chronically poor… and just go to a food place (not a restaurant, somewhere that sells food… deli, grocery store, maybe even a food cart) ideally in a nice neighborhood. Ask to see the manager or ideally the owner (since they have way more leeway than employees) and without giving this huge sob story, politely ask for food.

They will almost never say no, and in fact you might get lucky and be given a month’s worth of food. It sucks that we have more sympathy for a moment of difficulty for the better off than a lifetime of suffering for the poor but here we are. It reminds me of the state Senator in Wisconsin or Michigan or wherever arguing against free food in schools because kids that don’t get enough sustenance in their youth have a lifetime of reduced intelligence and even charisma and if they gave every kid food, “we’d have no mechanics or bricklayers!”.

When Israel says something warlike (although the truth is usually just in Hebrew) believe them. They’ve made up their minds that they want a wider war in the WA/NA region and will do whatever is necessary to start one. But they have an image to keep up, that’s critical to their national strategy, of acting like the perpetual victim… so they can’t straight up invade anyone.

Other than that EVERYTHING is on the table.

Unless their plan includes creating an army of soldiers raised from the dead (they don’t have access to glorious Juche necromancy) they simply have no plan that can compete with Russia’s tenfold population. And that’s that Ukraine has had a general mobilization and has switched to a war economy… of which Russia has only had to moderately elevate their conscripts and their economy is fine or even better than before the war.

Realistically they are hoping to drag the American military to put boots on the ground, a very very unpopular position. Even for liberals that hate Russia with every fiber of their being.

A conversation with an actual higher up in the American DoD that I know in my personal life has succinctly stated that the US is in a bind that really doesn’t seem capable of overcoming. The power of the US is the dominance of the US dollar, which allows the US to buy actual goods and services with pieces of paper that is printed out of thin air.

When the American Empire overstretched itself trying unsuccessfully to crush Korea and Vietnam, the gold standard became impossible to maintain. Then it decided it could just maintain the petrodollar… but that would mean that Israel, Saudi Arabia and to a lesser degree the other bribed petrostates have to stay in the US’s power bubble. Western Asia/North Africa (commonly known as “The Middle East”) needs to stay poor, crushed and divided to keep oil prices cheap and sold exclusively in US dollars.

What is happening is that Israel and Saudi Arabia were fine allies for the American Empire when the US was strong but as its power is waning, its becoming increasingly impossible to keep Israel and Saudi Arabia content with just being an American pawn knowing that the US needs them so desperately. The truth is that it’s inevitable that Israel, that is openly a belligerent fascist state is going to drag the US into a WW3 scenario, because they know that if their neighbors aren’t annihilated they will inevitably go the way of Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa… there were some voices in those nations who also advocated for broad African genocide but they lacked the hard and soft power to do it.

Israel is a Western cultured and loyal ally of the US willing to do whatever Uncle Sam needs in the region, now other than peace, in the MOST important region for American power. The US’s back is against the wall and CANNOT abandon Israel no matter how much world and domestic upheaval is against them.

Israel will spell the end of American power.

Edit: Which is why neither Kamala nor Donald can promise anything on Israel, the CIA would rather kill them… if Empire was Chess and the US is the King… Israel is the Queen. They’re basically early USA.

It’s wild to think that so many high ranking university officials legitimately thought this was some passing antisemitic fad and it was going to pass. A lot of them thought that the fad ended and that there’s no reason to believe the protests would start again after summer break. Many of the leadership being perplexed that the students would actually be defending Palestine… because “who cares about them?!”

What might lead them to be so blind?

Because most Americans have been fooled into thinking that all possible scenarios in politics are found by the two parties, as right as humanly possible are the Republicans and left as humanly possible are the Democrats with “moderates”* in between…

So any attack on Kamala means that you are literally MAGA.

• “American moderates” tend to know absolutely nothing whatsoever about politics. These people don’t even watch the news or follow politics at all but usually vote because they’re bored or some misplaced feeling of civic duty.

Reminds me of Kim il Sung that said, “It’s better to close up like a clam until the war is over.”, very wise words to live by.

So… realistically… what happens now?

What set US cinema apart from other established cinema markets past WW2 were the gutsy mid-budget movies like Rocky or the bold over-the-top high budget popcorn flick like Back to the Future or Star Wars. The fact that Hollywood studios were willing to gamble on something quirky but high quality that might not succeed like say Willow, was the reason American movies fucking dominated.

Most European cinema scenes stuck to low budget art cinema that was basically a student film that will never see wide release or relatively high budget but uber-safe productions with actors that are established in the nation and boilerplate subject manner.

But thanks to Marvel Studios and endless sequels, prequels, and remakes mean that Hollywood has fallen to a weird niche of ultra-high budget but safe boilerplate productions. It’s just so stale.

And yet a good deal of traitors (or “defectors”) to South Korea choose to move back because they say life is MISERABLE there.

It’s crazy how much of the American tech industry are all these unprofitable endeavors being propped up by investors with no hope of profit in the near future. I feel like it is going to end with a DotCom bubble bursting but a million times worse.

For the love of God, don’t the Ukrainians get that they’re being used as pawns to bleed Russia in a war that they have no hope of winning? Ukraine as a nation is on an IV drip of poison.

I would however love to hang out in that steamroller.

A few lunatics, sure, but not the average population.

The second debate should just have both Biden and Trump die of old age on air.

But Xinjiang is part of China…

What’s the difference?

I loved this.

The firebombing of Tokyo, and the nukes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were totally genocide events. The Japanese military had already been in total disarray since the Nazis and fascists fell and the war was already understood as lost and Japanese military were drafting a surrender. But the US saw that the USSR had taken advantage of the fact that the British and French were cooked, Germany, and Italy defeated and Spain still recovering from the civil war, meaning basically anyone that could stop them in Europe had been neutralized. So Moscow, despite being EXHAUSTED by one of the most brutal wars in world history, kept pressing on and liberating Eastern Europe.

The US had the nuke though by then, but it was completed far too late to really be used in battle. The US Army and Navy were constantly pressing the President to authorize their use, but Truman refused on the grounds that they’ll look cruel. However when Truman was informed on what the USSR was doing, he had the political urgency to finish the theater of war with Japan ASAP, he couldn’t target military facilities… not enough shock value… it would have to deliberately target civilians. The US only possessed those two bombs but had all the material and know-how to make 2 to 4 bombs a week if needed, however the Japanese didn’t know how many the US had or not. So the US committed a Japanese genocide by annihilating the three most populated cities in the nation, with the intent to be seen as so brutal that they surrender immediately so the US can concentrate on holding down Europe. Especially since many of the American military top brass were convinced that the US and USSR were going to go to war in Europe because the US just wasn’t going to allow the Soviets to take over Britain and France especially but Empires throughout history that the US desperately wanted to command under the new “Pax Americana”…