ihaveibs
Orioles because orange and black looks cool
I always think about stuff like this. Westerners love to talk about how much they hate other people and how miserable everything is but will still turn around and preach to marginalized and oppressed people domestically and abroad that this is the best system and we are justified using war to “spread” it across the globe
I just feel like America’s history as a settler nation made it much more ripe for this kind of insane neoliberal society to be tenable than even modern Europe. Not that I don’t think they will be mostly successful doing this to Europe, but I feel like it is such a big contradiction for peoples that still have a much stronger connection to their history and cultural identities, as bastardized as they’ve become in recent times; add on to the fact that much of Europe is build on a pride that they are at least not as terrible as America. Making sure the growing rage can successfully form a revolutionary movement is one thing, but for the most part Americans don’t even have rage at all towards the absolute shitshow that is their daily life. I’m not saying Europe will suddenly be where it was at pre-World War but it can still create massive problems for the US empire. I mean look at the relative resistance to NATO that we see in Hungary and Austria, two of the most fascistic European countries. Can the US really keep ~800 million people pacified across the ocean the same way they do at home? I just think that it could pose a massive problem.
The US can’t address its issues without creating further contradictions. I think the biggest success they’ve had is definitely sucking Europe dry, but that’s just kicking the can down the road really. Domestically, conditions continue to decline at an accelerating rate. There is no plan to address this. That’s a major contradiction right there. When the next major crisis happens, who are they gonna steal from? I feel like if they had to turn to other countries in the imperial core for wealth extraction, doesn’t that say a lot about the long-term viability of their economy? How will Europe function as they decline from relative prosperity into a hellhole similar to modern America? Will people take it lying down? People in the global south have also definitely taken notice of the Ukraine war and how weak America actually is at defending its interests militarily. Can the US prevent the decolonization of West Africa and the Middle East forever? Will bigger holes start to form in South America or other parts of the world?
The US has definitely taken notice of the seeds of its destruction i.e. de-dollarization and growing Chinese and Eurasian hegemony and taken some measures to address this. However, the contradictions of neoliberalism and financialization have not changed. There is nothing they can do to change them. The death of the U.S. is a process that will take some time and there will be ebbs and flows. Unfortunately, even 100 years is a relatively short period of time in terms of human development, so we could go our whole lifetime without seeing America destroyed even if we can see its inevitability. Also, economic indicators are essentially religious divinations designed to prop up the system, so unless it’s coming from a Marxist or at least some non-mainstream source they really can’t be taken at face value.
