One theme of this blog, for the last four years or so, has been the end of the unilateral, American, order.
Let’s review:
The US & NATO poured support into Ukraine, and the Ukrainians are losing the war. This is clear now, and anyone denying it is either lying, stupid or a complete captive of propaganda.
The West can’t produce enough weapons or ammo. There have been massive drawdowns of stocks and production is not enough to replace it, nor is production ramping up either enough, or quickly enough, to deal with the issue.
Russia, however, was able to ramp up weapons and ammunition production fast. At the start of the war, and for far too long afterwards there were cries that the Russians would run out of missiles, shells and so on. No such thing. Their allies came thru, plus they massively increased their production.
China’s ahead in most scientific fields and has the larger industrial base. Ever since the industrial revolution, the most powerful countries have been those with the most production capacity, which is not the same thing as GDP or Economy.
China and Russia are closer together than ever. With China as Russia’s ally, sanctions can’t work. With Russia as China’s ally, China has a guaranteed, land-based supply of food and resources.
China’s ship construction capacity is more than the entire West’s, including Japan and South Korea. America doesn’t even figure in, they have almost no ability to build ships, the ships they build often aren’t combat-worthy, and they take two or three times longer to build and are far more expensive.
BRICS continues to expand, the percentage of trade conducted in US dollars continues to decline and BRICS is prioritizing a payment system which bypasses the West. Bottom line, the West now produces less than it needs from other nations, but dollar privilege has allowed us to get away with it. This era is passing.
Much of the third world would rather do business with China or even Russia. Multiple African nations have kicked the US and France out. China offers cheaper goods, cheaper infrastructure and loans are usually cheaper. Plus outside of Asia they mostly don’t interfere in other nations politics. Russian mercs are brutal, but they are preferable to Western garrisons, which are ineffective at putting down unrest and dangerous to their hosts.
China doesn’t want to use US goods in their supply chain. They’ll sell us stuff, sure, why not—till a war starts at which point our entire economy will seize up. But the Huawei and chip sanctions taught them that relying on US goods was a knife at their throat, and Chinese companies have spent the six years doing everything they can to reduce and end that vulnerability.
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Concluding Remarks
None of this was particularly necessary, but we made a series of decisions which lead here. We constantly aggravated Russia. They wanted to be Western, to join NATO and maybe even the EU eventually, but we treated them as enemies. With them as allies, China would be in a far weaker position.
We deliberately sent China our industry, thinking it didn’t matter where it was and that we (or rather our elites) would make more money that way.
We abused the payments system and dollar privilege thru incessant sanctions warfare, then made a grab for Russia overseas reserves. Everyone’s scared.
Where we still had technological superiority, we tried to use it as an economic weapon. That has backfired badly, but everyone worries it will be used against them.
No one except a few core allies trusts the US (and they shouldn’t, either). No one except the Anglosphere, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and the Europeans enjoyed the era of US or, for that matter, Western supremacy, and they’ll be happy to see it go.
As the saying goes, you see the same people on the way down as you did on your way up. We brutalized a lot of people over the last five centuries. Don’t be surprised if they get a few kicks in on our way down.
mago
Hey diddle the cat and the fiddle
The cow jumped over the moon
And got his ass kicked going down
StewartM
What strikes me is our loss of leadership competency, from the extremely competent people who managed us through the depression and through WWII to the clowns of today.
I’ve been involved in Youtube exchanges where some idiot creates a video claiming how we “saved” the USSR in WWII via Lend-Lease. First, that is that factually untrue. The USSR saved itself; Lend-Lease was such a trickle in 1941-1942 that it had essentially NO effect on the Battle of Moscow in December 1941, and very little impact on the Battle of Stalingrad in the fall-winter of 1942. Stalingrad at the very least marks the point where “the USSR will survive and not lose” so Lend-Lease didn’t “save” the USSR. Lend-Lease did help the USSR, but the bulk of it (60 %) came in the last 10 months of WWII well after the USSR had turned the tide and driving back the Wehrmacht out of the USSR. The most important part of Lend-Lease help wasn’t the weapons we sent, nor the locomotives, nor the steel, nor the petrol, nor even the trucks (the most common ‘fact’ brought up). It was the food we sent–in 1942 42 % of the USSR’s arable land was occupied, and the USSR instituted a rationing program where soldiers, workers in essential industries, and children got first priority on food. If you weren’t one of those, you didn’t get much, and hunger contributed mightily to the USSR’s civilian death rate in the war. The FDR administration promised the USSR 10 % of US food production to help, but could only manage to deliver 3 %.
But my point in mentioning Lend-Lease is that such Youtubes miss the main reason why we did what we did in aiding the USSR. It wasn’t some act of friendship or mercy, we weren’t just ‘being nice’; we did it OUT OF ENLIGHTENED SELF-INTEREST. George Marshall and the US military leadership were not sure we could win WWII without Soviet help; at the very least if the USSR went down to defeat and Hitler obtained access to the USSR’s resources it would prolong both the length and sacrifice of the US and UK. The military problem the US faced was war both in Europe and the Pacific, with far-flung bases and long supply lines that “ate” up manpower and required a powerful Navy and Air arm to protect. We thus couldn’t raise an army of hundreds of divisions and supply it overseas, to do the work that the Soviets were providing the West by grinding up the Wehrmacht. Keeping the Soviets in the war was quite vital; ergo Lend-Lease.
In short, Marshall and his ilk had a clear and correct notion of what the US could do, and what it couldn’t do. The manpower restrictions on ground forces meant “no land war in Asia” which meant we wouldn’t field armies in China. Instead, we focused on a ground force manpower-minimizing “island hopping” strategy where we only took relatively few key islands and just left Japanese ground forces in elsewhere stranded and cut-off from supply. The bulk of the ground forces we did raise were going be used to defeat Hitler, whom Marshall correctly identified as the biggest threat to the US, given Germany’s technological skills and industrial base.
This kind of calculation is what we’ve lost. In WWII, we knew we were powerful, in some ways relative to the world more powerful then than now, but we knew we couldn’t do everything and that we shouldn’t even try. But after WWII, inside the US spread the notion (largely spread by conservatives and the anti-communists) that we had really ‘done it all’ and won the war without much of anyone’s help. Why did we cave to Stalin at Yalta? Why didn’t we let Patton drive the Soviets out of Eastern Europe? We had the bomb after all! (cue in Henry Stimson rhetorically patting his coat pocket). WE WERE OMNIPOTENT!
The first generation who acted on this belief, a belief definitely not shared by those who planned and executed WWII, was the “Greatest Generation” who had fought it as common soldiers when they assumed leadership—JFK through Reagan/Bush I. It led to Vietnam and to interventions everywhere, because we could and should impose our will upon the world. It was exacerbated when (as you say) financial means of scoring economies replaced measures of actual industrial capacity and output, from Clinton to today. What gets me is that the US’s leadership is more arrogant and more convinced of its supremacy despite the fact by all objective measures, whatever power the US actually has is far less relative to the rest of the world than the US during WWII during Marshall’s and FDR’s time. Yet Marshall and FDR knew we weren’t omnipotent and couldn’t ‘do it all’. And I fear nothing less than a massive comeuppance will change their attitudes.
Ian Welsh
Good comment Stewart. Mind if I elevate it?
KT Chong
“Much of the third world would rather do business with China or even Russia.”
Also, in the eyes of the Global South:
It’s white colonizers (i.e., Israeli Jews) committing genocides on brown people, and other white people (i.e., Americans and Europeans) are helping those white colonizers massacring brown people including women and children… especially women and children. Most of the countries and people in the Global South sympathize with Palestinians because they have lived through the same history, being conquered, invaded, occupied and killed by white people. What is happening now in the Middle East is a visceral reminder to the people in the Global South of their own history… and their hatred for white people.
The Global South is upset, but they really can’t do much. America is too powerful, so no single country or a collection of small countries in the Global South can stand up to America. However, they sure hell do not want to have anything to do with America, Europe, and just white people in general. So for them, joining BRICS and the side of China and Russia is their path to resist the West and white people.
KT Chong
Another thing white people do NOT get:
Other people (i.e., NON-white) do not feel the same way about Jews. We do NOT feel responsible nor guilty towards Jews for what one group of white people did to another group of white people during World War II.
We did not have anything to do with the Holocaust. We did not put Jews into the gas chambers in World War II. The Holocaust is really a white-on-white crime, yet white people are making brown people pay for the white sin. So why should we (non-white) be made to pay the price for a war crime committed by white people?
The Holocaust is a white-on-white crime, and it has nothing to do with us or the rest of the world.
So calling us “anti-Semitic”, trying to use that mind trick to guilt us into giving Jews whatever they demand, does NOT work on us as it does on white people. In fact, we find it offensive for Israeli to accuse everyone of being anti-Semitic whenever they do not get everything they demand and want.
nobody
At the end of the day, American elites just got too greedy and too high on their own hubris.
It would not have been hugely difficult to either align with Russia to contain/fight China *or* to align with China to contain/fight Russia. Neither Russia or China can stand on their own. Russia has resources but not people or technology; China has people and technology but not resources. Splitting China and Russia would have only been a matter of offering one of them a better deal than they could get from the other.
Instead, the blob rejected any notion that American power has limits and became fixated on the idea of securing absolute world domination by fighting both Russia and China–possibly at the same time.
Combine strategic ineptitude with endemic asset stripping of the western productive economy (i.e. everything but financial services) and this isn’t a battle the American can win. I fear, however, that won’t stop them from trying, no matter how many people get killed in the process.
StewartM
(Blush) I’d be honored, Ian
KT Chong
Chinese universities are starting to pull ahead of American (as well as European) universities in the education quality of hard sciences, and China is producing many times more STEM graduates than the US does.
Here are some hard data in simple English from the bald guy again:
• China’s universities now dominate top science, engineering fields, deepening its grip on industries:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXpMiNpek64
• New university rankings have upended the world: Chinese universities hold 6 of top 10 spots:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7pxWtQwOgY
• America’s STEM graduates shortage is much worse than we thought:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2blrhwLL4JU
• China’s brain drain is getting worse. For us:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QR2tk9TcsDM
• US universities losing hundreds of billions as top Chinese scientists and researchers go home:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKQXnzNxb4g
When China has so many times more scientists and engineers than the US + Europe, and China continues to produce so many times more STEM graduates every year, that means China can pretty much pile human capital into every area and every category of hard sciences and engineering.
The US, on the other hand, actually has a shortage of scientists and engineers. That means the US has to decide: what areas the US wants to allocate its scientists and engineers, and what areas America has to cut back and make sacrifices. That is atop of the problem that Wall Street and finance firms have been draining brains and stealing talents from hard sciences and engineering: Wall Street has been hiring the best and brightest of STEM graduates to calculate and predict markets. It’s good for making money… but really bad for America that has to compete with China in science and technology.
(The bald guy talked about it in a video awhile ago, I saw the video but I can’t find it now.)
So, even if the US can somehow get its act together, America simply does not have enough human capitals and STEM people to put into enough areas of sciences, engineering and technology to compete with China.
Mark Pontin
Pursuant to Stewart’s comment about the loss of leadership competency, the short answer is neoliberalism.
Neoliberalism puts finance in control, so that bankers run nation-states as with Sunak and Macron, and Harvard MBAs run engineering-based corporations as with Boeing.
With the results we’re seeing. It turns out, finance and neoliberal states cannot fight wars or carry out any long-term activity that isn’t a Ponzi.
How long term can a Ponzi be, though? How long has the neoliberal Ponzi in the West lasted — fifty years? (If I make the assumption to date it to 1971, when the oil crisis and the falling rate of profit prompted elites to initiate it.)
These are its final 15-20 years.
Oakchair
What strikes me is our loss of leadership competency
–
American elites just got too high on their own hubris.
–
but we made a series of decisions which lead here.
—-
There was a recent article in the Atlantic about “elite college students who can’t read books”.
IQ for those without a developmental disorder (despite education geared toward taking the test) is decreasing.
Rates of autism, developmental delays/disorders, dementia, neurological problems, and a long list of chronic diseases have skyrocketed.
45 years ago many of these diseases were barely heard of, but are now so common schools/airlines are having to do things such as ban peanut butter.
Genetics can’t be responsible for such a rapid decline in health over such a short time period. We’re in the middle of a mass environmental poisoning.
Why do you think the major political parties, the medical industry, and the media doesn’t even mention the largest decline in health in modern history?
You think society is dysfunctional now. Imagine 25 years from now if current health trends stay the same.
Dan
“China and Russia are closer together than ever.”
A big reason we won the Cold War is because Nixon was able to exploit the Sino-Soviet Split and get the PRC on our side. It’s amazing how we’ve unlearned that lesson and chosen to be belligerent to both of them at the same time.
elkern
I agree with the (downward) trajectory of US power Ian describes in the OP, but I’m worried that “The West” will recognize this and choose war – soon – while [they think] the balance of power is still in our favor. More specifically, I fear that the impending war between Israel and Iran will be the start of WWIII.
I assume that Israeli leaders recognize the shift in global power; I assume that they have been trying desperately to find ways to gain influence in China, but are generally failing. If so, then their best bet is to pick a fight *now*, while the USA is still strong enough to help them (and still under their political control). I still think it’s crazy; the “best” outcome they could hope for in that scenario would still leave them surrounded by enemies (Arabs/Muslims, and pretty much everybody else in the world if/when they get blamed for WWIII).
Mark Level
So much said so well Ian, I have only “scraps & orts” (to quote NC) to add–
1. At one time I was rather suspicious of some of KT Chong’s comments, considered them to be a right winger. I stand corrected, everything you say is correct & indisputable. Being born with a German last name, I used to feel minor abstract guilt for events that had ended 14 years before my birth. I do consider German culture to be racist, ultra-conformist and homicidally violent. (As long as the violence is committed by police or the military, not individual homicides, of course.) Thus they are abetting (with the US, and UK being the 2 other most guilty parties) the ongoing genocide now in a mistaken belief that they are “making it up to Jews.” 2 massive wrongs make a right, what sick “reasoning.”
2. Because I am a student of the classics, I have long known that Western Asia was the true parent of the Greeks & thus of the “West” generally speaking. America is such a stupid, shallow & ignorant culture that they have no idea of where & how their “culture” (such as it is) evolved. That kind of puerile stupidity also led to the Empire’s “eating the seed corn” (deindustrializing to lower worker wages), deeming itself “exceptional” & above/beyond the realities & constraints that other nations mostly recognize. So Luce’s “American Century” likely won’t make it to 90 years, praise the Fates.
3. I like Ian’s quoting of Allen Toussaint lyrics, & mago’s riff on that. When I lived in New Orleans in the 80s I was very lucky to see him play both solo and with small groups on 3 occasions. For those not familiar with Toussaint’s work, here’s a link to “On Your Way Down”– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yV-bFdf6yu8
Slightly OT, but not entirely, whenever we use broad brush labels like “the West”, “Asian cultures,” etc. we may be mistaken or poorly informed. (I have no objection to KTC’s statements about “white” people, those are in no way my target.)
I don’t think Japan was directly responsible for the Shoah in Central Europe though their vicious militarism & attempt to conquer all their neighbors (similar to the US since conception almost, and Israel since the 19th century incursion into Palestine) but they are an Asian example of a sick & mass-murdering cult culture. Something funny that Felix Biederman of Chapo Trap House has often shared is that when “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” were shared in early 20th century Japan, the response of the leadership class was pretty amazing. It was, “Wow, these people are awesome!! We need to get some Jews in here, they will definitely help us conquer the world.” A rather revealing anecdote (& obviously I don’t want not relevant smears directed at me, so NO I don’t believe the Protocols were authentic, nor do I support anti-Semitic canards.) I do despise Anglo-Saxons & Germans (& think a majority of Western Ukrainians are fascistic morons), I blame only their actions, nor do I blame ALL members of those societies, since I haven’t supported the US Empire since at least the age of 15.)
bruce wilder
The collective inability to act sensibly on foreseeable risks — Ukraine and NATO expansion is an example — is one thing, but I would attribute as much mischief to incompetent followership as incompetent or malevolent leadership. Elites learned back in the 1990s that they could manipulate the moral self-regard of Democrats especially without limit and never pay a penalty. Tom Friedman’s feckless lack of judgment and incapacity with metaphor would never disqualify him from his perch at the NY Times. Hillary Clinton or Madeline Albright could drip blood from their vampire fangs and no one would blink. Biden started WWIII but who can blame him?
bruce wilder
“ I assume that Israeli leaders recognize. . . ”
Please. Have you listened to Netanyahoo anytime in the last 25 years? He has always been a vicious, stupid, corrupt and narcissistic man. His relentless hostility to Iran was based on a mix of impervious ignorance and personal convenience, but going along with his drivel was, in American officials and politicians, a betrayal of national interest and simple ethical imperatives. This is at the core of both elite and follower incompetence: that no one can observe the obvious and make the observation stick as consensus judgment.
Astute commenters and late-night comedians have taken Netanyahoo’s number from time to time over the years but the laughter is quickly forgotten and we go straight on toward Armageddon, the path paved by remembered lies.
shagggz
@Mark Level,
“nor do I support anti-Semitic canards”
It seems nigh on impossible to disentangle the original canard from its cynical deployment as imperial battering ram, nowadays. 1840s-era religious scholar George Bush (ancestor to Dubya) was already scheming on how to deploy existing antisemitic sentiment to enact “the same carnal inducements to remove to Syria as now promote them to emigrate to this country”.
No less a ‘public intellectual’ than Sam Harris (whom a naively antitheistic adolescent me once found cogent) had a recent podcast episode titled “Anti-Zionism is Anti-Semitism”. The podcast had already been a hate-listen for me for quite a while by that point, but I chose not to reup by complimentary subscription after that.
Jan Wiklund
@Mark Pontin, and others:
And neolibealism has very material causes, according to Alfred Chandler (Scale and scope, 1990). In the 60s and 70s the great industrial corporations met an overproduction crisis – they were simply so efficient that there were no market for everything they could produce. Came then the oil shock that increased costs for the same corporations. They simply didn’t make any more profits and had to turn to the rentiers to borrow, a thing they hadn’t done for two generations.
And the rentiers made demands, for paybacks from day one among other things. And high paybacks at that.
So the producing corporations didn’t have any choice.
It was this power transfer, from producers to rentiers, that got the name neoliberalism. Or rather, it was this power transfer that had to be covered up with some nice-looking ideology to look reasonable. After all, why should rentiers have any power at all, they are pure parasites.
Never look for explanations among ideas, look for it among material facts.
DMC
Two points: Jews and Arabs and Assyrians are ALL Semites, though the Ashkanazis are generally indistinguishable from Europeans.
Re: Sam Harris, I’ve noticed that many of the “New Atheists” seem to spend all their time denouncing Muslims, despite living in overwhelmingly Christian countries. I imagine the 1.5 billion Muslims of the world collectively saying in response “Clean up your own house white boy, then you can talk”.
Mark Level
Thanks, Shagggz, I appreciate your points, & DMC already beat me to some points I would’ve made. Those “new Atheists” are very shallow thinkers, & have an inbuilt bias which has become more open over the years.
I personally admire Aleister Crowley’s “Thank god I’m an atheist.” I reject Theism generally, and dislike the word “God.” Metaphorical terms like the Masons’ Grand Architect of the Universe are less odious, because they have a spirit of play to them.
Funny how the NA’s started out as iconoclasts sweeping out old shibboleths. But then, as DMZ noted, they forgot to despise Christian cant, superstition & hypocrisy, & formed an obsession (with their pal Chris Hitchens, turncoat former “anti-Imperialist”) that all those dirty Arabs and Semites have the most vicious & worst religion in the world. I guess the many centuries of Islamic culture were nothing in their eyes?
Harris & Dawkins are particularly odious. I know about Dawkins because Russell Dobular of Due Dissidence podcast started to interview him at the “Dissident Dialogues” conference in NYC earlier this year. Dawkins had given him permission to film with his IPhone, but as soon as he asked his first question to RD, regarding his presentation, “Do you think that it’s possible that all those people who don’t like Israel are reacting to all the carnage & killing they’re doing, & it’s not primarily an issue of ‘Anti-Semitism'”? Dawkins got all huffy & queeny as only a real Brit could. “Are you filming me? Goodness, I don’t want that!” & skittered away.
It’s bad faith all the way down with those racist, white supremacist clowns.
Soredemos
@Mark Level
Japan never embraced Jews.
The Japanese army encountered and brought back copies of the Protocols during the intervention in Russia, and these entered into Japanese culture in a minor way as material for schlock fiction. The supposed existence of a
grand international Jewish conspiracy was never viewed positively. If anything it provided yet more motivation for Japan to become an independent empire.
Once Japan allied with Nazi Germany there was some anti-Jewish propaganda because it benefited the alliance.
After the war notions that ‘Jews run the world’ would linger in Japanese boardrooms, where they seem to often be accepted as simple fact. This was especially the case in the 80s and 90s. A strange relic of this era is the anime miniseries Angel Cop, where the twist is that it was evil Jews all along (it’s also not very good, one of a hundred disposable shows of that era. Not really worth seeking out even put of curiosity).
Mark Level
Sorodemos– admittedly my claim was 2nd hand, coming from Felix Biederman, who I think has some concept (much more than I would) of how Jews are and have been viewed by other cultures.
I can’t prove or disprove his assertion, it sounded credible to me that the Japanese court, being heavily militaristic & trying to project a “Will to Power” over all the lesser beings to them in East Asia, may have credited the diabolical plots as being brilliant & workable.
Thanks for sharing your perspective however. It sounds like the “Jews are in the Driver’s Seat” narrative did at least have a long life according to what you say, in both Anime and the boardroom.
Of course, Israel wants to ramp up Anti-Semitism so ordinary (non-Zionist) Jews feel frightened & have to join the Supremacist tribe & emigrate to where they will be “safe” (attacking & killing all their neighbors). This point has been made by Norman Finklestein & Max Blumenthal among many others.
The Zionist entity is now a closed loop machine of pure racism, hate & carnage. That generally doesn’t end well; it won’t end well this time, obviously.
different clue
I once remembered reading or hearing long ago about how the Empire Of Japan’s government was just impressed enough by the seeming power-wisdom of the Protocols as if they were a real thing and the considered-to-exist high intelligence attributed to Jews. So the Japanese government decided that although they were dangerous people a few of them could be brought into Japan to improve various aspects of economic functioning. They called this plan the Fugu Plan, named after the pufferfish whose flesh tastes oh-so-delightful but whose internal organs are full of deadly poison. (Apparently some Japanese will still to this day dare death by eating Fugu.)
So I went looking for a link.
https://allthatsinteresting.com/fugu-plan
By the way, I also heard/read somewhere that the pufferfish toxin, tetrodotoxin, can in very tiny doses cause hallucinations. And supposedly some of the reason some Japanese eat pufferfish is not just for the taste but in hopes of getting the tiniest possible dose of tetrodotoxin in order to experience the hallucinations. But the tiniest bit more leads to death, the risking of which is supposedly part of the thrill. I couldn’t find anything about that aspect of pufferfish use in Japan, but I did find this, which seems to offer indirect support to the theory.
This is the article which I found . . . ” Dolphins Seem to Use Toxic Pufferfish to Get High
The dolphins’ expert, deliberate handling of the terrorized puffer fish implies that this is not their first time at the hallucinogenic rodeo”
And here is the link.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/dolphins-seem-to-use-toxic-pufferfish-to-get-high-180948219/
different clue
@ K T Chong,
I wonder if the Global South hates white people or if it is you that hate white people and are Munchausen-recruiting the Global South into expressing what is actually your hatred for white people.
So the Global South considers the EuroNazi Holocaust of the Jews to be a white-on-white crime? Fascinating. Actually, I think it is you personally who considers it such.
(I have long had the feeling that we all look alike to you.)
Now, if the Global South really does share your feeling that the EuroNazi Holocaust of the Jews was a white-on-white violence affair, would you and the Global South ( or maybe just you personally) consider the Interahamwe Holocaust of the Tutsis to be a black-on-black violence affair, or the Rape of Nanjing to be a yellow-on-yellow violence affair? Or more to the point, would you and the Global South ( or maybe just you personally) be okay with the West considering those two Holocausts I just mentioned to be intra-racial affairs, of no moral consequence or interest to us so-called “white” people? Turnabout being fair play and all?
Now . . . where your grievance appears to depart from any basis in reality is that you decide to consider Jews to be white but Russians to be not-white. How does that work? Who died and made the Jews white? Who awarded Russians the Honorary Not-white status you accept for them?
different clue
Does America have an empire? Or is America ” is” an empire?
If America has an empire, it should be possible to give that up if America’s upper class can be class-conquered and class-beaten into abject surrender and submission to America’s non upper-class, so that the upper-class has to share in the shortages and standard-of-living reductions attendant upon the loss of empire. Such shortages would be worth it to the non upper-class majority because we would get some peace, quiet and stress-relief in return for that lower standard of living and those shortages.
The upper class would not feel the same way, which is why the only way the upper class can be forced to give up empire is if the rest of us can swing the Mighty Tire Iron of Justice into the Grinning Teeth of the upper class.
But if America IS an empire, then the end of Empire means the dissolution of America into a number of separate states and regions. Perhaps the Indian Nations or at least some of them will reclaim their former Sovereign Power to go along with the Sovereign Status they technically speaking still have, according to those technically-speaking Treaties. If that happens, quite a few American Americans would probably defect to the Indians, and accept Second Class Citizenship in the various re-emerging Indian Nations. Such American Americans might well prefer that over being lifelong indentured servants for the regional upper classes of the regional successor American countries.
Would delamination work the same way in Canada, if Canada were to delaminate? I don’t know. I find it hard to believe that the Franco-Quebecois would accept the “humiliation” of being Second Class Citizens in a resurgent Cree Nation, for example.
shagggz
@Different clue,
Seems to me that you’re unfairly characterizing Chong’s portrayal of the Global South waking up to the Western Imperium’s implacably racist White Power essence as a hatred for individual white people. This mistakes the structural for the individual.
I saw no such individual hatred, nor anything I would take issue with factually, and I’m a “White” Westerner. The scam of racist logic is to get you to identify with its unreasonable premise of arbitrary separation.
Look at the post-2014-coup UkroNazis treating Russians as Untermenschen with all the violence that entails. Look at Zionist Jews declaring it “antisemitic” to protest the genocide of a semitic people, while themselves identifying as White. Hell, look at O.J. Simpson being described as an “honorary White.” As for your examples of black-on-black/yellow-on-yellow violence, I don’t think most in the Global South would see them through the lens of Western-denominated races.