Miscellaneous News
- Thread starter bd popeye
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This is spot on. For whatever reason (maybe it's to do with monotheism, I don't know) the west have a burning need to prove that neoliberal capitalism is the "one true way" forward for mankind. They believe they alone hold the secret to modernity.
Rise of China demonstrates that this is patiently false (in China, dunking on Fukuyama is now such a popular pass time that we have a name for people engaging in it: batman). This should not be taken as "there are two ways to achieve modernity - neoliberal capitalism and socialism with Chinese characteristics" but rather "there are N number of ways to achieve modernity, you just have to find the one best suited for your country".
China is not interested in spreading socialism with Chinese characteristics, in fact if a country comes to China asking to copy the system CPC would only reluctantly agree to provide tips as befitting of a confident superpower. CPC would rather no one has any insight into China's secret sauce. For example just look at Vietnam. They don't ask CPC for guidance and CPC is not providing any guidance, but Vietnam's economic reform is very nearly a carbon copy of China's version and that's all from CPV just watching and taking notes themselves.
This ideological freedom means China is free to engage with anyone, from Islamic Theocracy to Jewish ethnostate, from Juche Socialism to Laissez-faire capitalism. China comes to you in the name of common prosperity and that's a language that everyone understands no matter their ideology.
To quote Lao Zi “Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water. Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible, nothing can surpass it. The soft overcomes the hard; the gentle overcomes the rigid.” US has never faced such a flexible and formless enemy before and doesn't know how to properly attack it, that's why they're panicking.
That idea isn't rare at all among Republicans. Just like China, Mexico is blamed for a lot of America's problems. Silent invasion AKA illegal immigrants the greatest military on Earth somehow can't stop (it is tacitly allowed, that's why), drugs, etc... If a Republican candidate said he would invade Mexico to solve immigrant and drug problems he would get the support of a lot of people.
As always, policy is driven by a combination of believers and opportunists.
The believers - the political philosophers, the ideologues, the liberal activists - are the minority, but they are influential within academic and policy circles. Not because their thoughts are profound, but because they have passion and conviction, the two qualities that make them useful idiots for the opportunists, because they can be counted on to preach to the public in a way that is genuine. In that sense, they are the priests of the modern Western system.
But ultimate power does not rest with them; it rests with the opportunists - the political, economic, and military elites for whom the only pursuit is the Great Game. These people just want what got them to where they are, in the first place - they just want to dominate. Whatever ideology allows them to justify their continued domination, they will put their support behind. These are the dukes, barons, and kings of the modern Western system. Its nobility, or those with the ambition to rise to noble status.
The reason the West supports neoliberal capitalism, then, is not because the believers control Western policy, but because the opportunists do, and to understand why the opportunists would support neoliberal capitalism, we'd have to look at how it functions. Fortunately, Marx already did the analysis for us, and the conclusion is simple - neoliberal capitalism is a system by which the rich gets richer, and the poor gets poorer. In other words, it is a system for preserving and perpetuating the class hierarchy.
That's how capitalism has always worked, you see. The wealthy do nothing, and get everything through ownership - of property, of companies, of institutions. All the while, the poor do all the work, and get nothing because they own nothing. They pay rent, they pay taxes, they pay to survive just to generate profits for those who own them. Capitalist exploitation, it's the oldest trick in the book, a straight road back into feudalism - that old European favorite - and the US, the West, has done everything in its power to defend it.
This is why they hated Marx so much. Why they wanted so badly to destroy Communism. Why they hate China and Russia today. Because they don't play by the rules of neoliberal capitalism, and as such, the West can't dominate them through those rules. This is the international order that the West speaks so often about, and what it fights so hard to preserve. The order in which they are at the top, and no one can threaten them.
Uuhm the french energy giant didn't pay so aren't they the one being non-compliant with gas payment obligations?
Would be a bad idea because they're hardly optimized for urban warfare. They were designed to fight Soviet/American armor pushes from afar.
Same bad idea as giving late leopard 2 models to Ukraine.
Tsai Ingwen rumored to visit US in May or June and make a speech at her alma mater Cornell.
Maybe Agent Tsai has been activate after China posted her grievances against the US Empire.
Can you feel the excitement in the air?
Maybe Agent Tsai has been activate after China posted her grievances against the US Empire.
Can you feel the excitement in the air?
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I'm glad you brought it up. I've always been unnerved by the Christian fervor to proselytize and indoctrinate- sorry, "save" unbelievers by forcibly converting them. These ideas neatly tie in with the colonial mentality of "bringing white civilization to the barbaric jungles" of Asia, Americas and Africa. At the same time, their belief that "the natural state of man is to sin" provides the perfect excuse/rationalization for the atrocities they commit along the way. You can see in Even today, we see the Church's practices continue in the form of cultural genocide in Canada.
This universalism, this savior complex (tellingly, also known as the Christ complex) is practically codified in Christian holy texts. The West's insistence with being "the one true way" and "there is no alternative" (TINA) is so unthinking and dogmatic it feels to me impossible to be just mere hubris. This exceptionalism has somehow so deeply ingrained itself in their psyches it's become a fundamental part of their worldview. What do you think will happen when a nation of godless savages achieves common prosperity (for the West, a utopia considered to be unattainable) faster, more peacefully and morally than the West ever could? What happens when they are forced to acknowledge that their precious "civilization" is just another parasitic, meaningless culture among many? There will a mass mental breakdown on the societal level. Their understanding of humanity and themselves will be irreparably shattered. That is a truly existential threat.
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