kava

i say be polite. you don't have to be super friendly or anything

being a "homewrecker" is bad, but sometimes there's more context you don't know about. i tend to give people the benefit of doubt and give them an opportunity to show who they are before I make assumptions.

i do this because in the past i have judged too quickly and been wrong about people- in both directions

Reddit may actually be doing a lot of people a big favor.

Today Trump's DHS went out and arrested a Palestinian student at Columbia for participating at a protest a year prior. Our federal agents are becoming like the KGB- hunting down political dissidents.

I believe that is just a start. I think people would be wise to be careful about the things they post online. If you do post content you believe the administration may not like, I suggest making an anonymous account with an email not linked to your personal name.

I have a hunch that people will be arrested in the near future for posting things online.

Gays had to hide from a secret police in the 80s? Hippies in the 60s? There was discrimination (and still is for gays) but I don't think it's anywhere similar to how pervasive and powerful the ideological grip was in the USSR

I'd say a more apt analogy would be blacks and our police state. They actually get imprisoned at rates that are in the same ballpark as the Soviet gulags.

Another more modern analogy would perhaps be illegals in US over the last decade or two.

Me personally, I find it fascinating how people survive under brutal regimes. It's very hard for a government, no matter how repressive, to truly kill ideas.

The country I was born in went through a military dictatorship for some decades. During this dictatorship, people would be disappeared and you would not know what happened to them.

They were building a highway in modern times some years back and they accidentally dug up a mass grave with hundreds of bodies.

Even during this dictatorship, though, people would make music and art and express themselves. But they would have to do it within the constraints of the system. Your message had to be coded and metaphorical and vague for rhe censors to let it pass.

The culture not only survived through the repression, it ultimately incorporated it and became (in my opinion) mode profound in ways that is hard to explain.

To be cliche- "life finds a way"

Example- "the gulag archipelago" by aleksandr solzhenitsyn

And really a lot of Russian literature from 1800s-1900s. Some of the most beautiful art created in some of the most repressive and brutal environments you can imagine

Started a much longer time ago in my opinion. I'd say around the time they threatened to ban the kratom sub and did ban the ketamine & steroids one

Reddit was much cooler 15 years ago. You could find anything on there

I think a lot of people should pay attention and get ready to live like the Slavs did under the Soviets. We might be heading towards a similar period in the US, I think.

If a new World War was coming, we would definitely want to be closer with our border countries than give our foreign enemies a chance

think of it this way. let's say WW3 kicks off with China tomorrow. Will Canada or Mexico suddenly ally with China?

Reality is that Canada and Mexico are totally dependent on US trade. It really doesn't matter if you piss them off they're gonna be forced to deal with you anyway.

80% of Mexican exports are to the US. 30% of their GDP is based on American trade. If US exports stopped tomorrow, Mexican economy would immediately enter a deep depression. They have no choice but to play nice, even with 25% tariffs.

Canada is similarly stuck. 75% of exports are to the US. 50% of their imports are from the US. 20% of their GDP is based on American trade.

If you took both Canadian and Mexican trade combined and compared it to the US economy, though, it wouldn't even reach 5%. If trade with both of these countries were to stop tomorrow, America will suffer- but growth may slow by 0.5% or 1%. Both Canada and Mexico would see a depression.

America is like the sun in the solar system. Canada and Mexico have no choice but to fall into orbit around it. The total weight of the economic power is hard to understate.

Do you see why Trump feels like he has the power to do this? This is the point I was trying to make above. Historically US presidents have been more diplomatic and subtle about how to abuse the leverage that America has by the nature of being a superpower. Trump isn't fundamentally different except he's exploiting this leverage loudly and in an ugly and aggressive way.

In the past, presidents would play nice. Pretend like there was sovereignty and diplomacy, etc. But when Bill Clinton signed NAFTA... it was for the same reason. To dominate the economies of both Canada and Mexico. The difference is the rhetoric sounds much nicer.

After NAFTA was signed, subsidized US corn flooded the Mexican market, totally bankrupting millions of Mexican farmers. Wages in Mexico stagnated for decades because US needed cheap labor to build cars. In Canada, they became more and more reliant on exporting natural resources to the US.

We always need to remember US is an imperialist power. This is what empires do.

As for the upcoming war, I think it's only a matter of time. But we're talking a time scale of 5-10 years. We're preparing for the future showdown. There will be one or two more flashpoints before the main war. Ukraine was one, Israel is another.

If we had to make an analogy with WW2, I'd say we're roughly in mid ~1930s. Our Spanish Civil War is the Ukrainian war. Our Italian invasion of Ethiopia is the Israeli conflict. (Gaza, Israeli invasion of Syria, war with Lebanon, Iran, etc)

There's a story from Soviet Russia.

A bunch of politicians are in the Kremlin and Stalin is giving a speech outlining some new policy. One politician stands up and angrily yells out- "Stalin! This is wrong! I cannot support this measure". Everyone gasps and looks at him.

Quickly, another politician stands up and replies "Comrade! Don't you know? You cannot say that Stalin is incorrect! We do not do that here."

Stalin ignores these outbursts, tells everyone to settle down and continues the speech.

Of course, this being Stalinist Russia, the man who disagreed with Stalin gets quietly sent to the gulag for a couple of years to learn his lesson.

The second man, however, gets sent to the gulag for 20 years and doesn't come out until he is an old man.

What's the moral of the story? Implicit censorship is so much more powerful than explicit censorship. This is reddit goal. Create an air where people self-regulate their speech. The key is not to say it out loud. It needs to be vague and amorphous and ambiguous.

Anyone who’s even remotely qualified to lead the military is being replaced with sycophants

it's a purge. we're watching our own version of what Saddam Hussein did when he took power. it definitely weakens the country overall but it strengthens the hold on power for the executive.

as for the military, we've been spending more than like the next 8 countries combined for decades. it's hard to understate the relative power of the US military. there are hundreds of military bases all over the world.

even a weakened superpower is still a superpower

If no enemies exist, they are created.

i don't disagree. that's why the rhetoric. but I would disconnect the rhetoric from the policy. trump says one thing and does another. he wants to deport everyone but at the rate he's going we won't even see a 10% reduction in the illegal immigrant population. mouth says one thing, hand does another

notice how tariffs were a trend that started a decade ago. Trump placed tariffs on China on his first term and then Biden increased the number of tariffs. the ban on Tiktok was a bipartisan effort- it's in the interest of US foreign policy. obviously tariffs on Canada and Mexico are insane and probably wouldn't have happened without Trump.. but more tariffs were a definite part of the future regardless who won in 2024

Trump isn’t doing this because he’s some brilliant strategist

couple of things. first, i wouldn't underestimate trump. he successfully hijacked the Republican party which is a party full of wealthy and powerful people who did everything in their power to try and stop him

second, the people around Trump are very principled ideologues (ie people like Peter Thiel and the dark enlightenment ideology they're enamored in)

these people are educated, intelligent, and dedicated to their cause. they also have near-limitless money and now they have the control of the federal government of the strongest country in the world- a country that has an executive branch that has gotten progressively more powerful.

they have a vision and they planned for this and they are enacting it. this is not a spontaneous thing. they view a future where there is a showdown with China and tariffs play into that future

the analogy was in reference to the size differential between david (boy) and goliath (giant)

sure david wins in the parable but to quote bo burnham

South of queers, north of Hell

The queer ones suck and the brown ones smell

We guard the border and we guard it well

But some slip through the cracks of the Liberty Bell

Did I say liberty? I meant taco, Paco, hey you better let that rock go

'Cause in real life, Goliath wins

And then sells all the silk that the widow spins

because there's a war coming soon that will destroy most global trade. trump wants the US in a better position in that near future by having more factories and such inside of the US.

in a peaceful world, you allow free trade and specialization to do its thing and everybody gets richer. you farm bananas, i farm apples, and we trade. we create value out of thin air, it's an amazing thing.

but in a world where superpowers are at war and the world splinters into factions, half of the global economy will be cut off from the other half. therefore it'll be a huge liability if we for example depend on Taiwan for 90% of our computer chips when China can blockade Taiwan and we cannot reliably break that blockade. that's one industry.. now imagine the thousands of other products we need for a modern economy. it would cause massive economic shockwaves.

so this tariff thing is accepting that this will happen in the near future and preparing for it, slowly weaning off the economy from that connection to the rest of the world. so when it does come, it doesn't hurt as bad.

it doesn't really matter if you piss off your allies. since you're the biggest military power they are going to have to rely on you anyway. you have leverage over them. the difference is that Trump is a reality TV star and so he is loudly exploiting this leverage whereas most past leaders would be more subtle and diplomatic about it.

Canada, Mexico, Germany, Japan, etc aren't really allies. Being someone's ally implies there's a sort of equal footing. When someone has no choice but to bend to your will, is that a voluntary relationship? the US essentially wrote Japan's constitution and they told the Germans what to write down for theirs. Canada and Mexico are heavily dependent on US trade- US growth might slow a half percent or two whereas Mexico and Canada are liable to fall into a recession because of these tariffs.

it isn't equal footing. it's a david v goliath situation

to give a recent example, Ukraine. Ukraine in 2014 had the Euromaidan coup and the president had to flee the country. The new government that was quickly appointed without an election realized one thing very quickly- Russia was about to invade them. they had only one option in terms of getting military aid and that was the US. so immediately, the same day that the government was appointed, they started cooperating with the US. a few days after that, little green men showed up in Donbas and the Russian army waltzed into Crimea

so you can say they "allied" with the US but a more honest way to say it is that they were desperately pushed into America's orbit. and the US ultimately doesn't care about a country like Ukraine. people are starting to see it more clearly today because of Trump, but I honestly don't think the situation would have been meaningfully different with Biden or Kamala. The primary difference would have been rhetoric. Instead of calling Zelensky a dictator, we would have just dragged our feet with military aid instead, like what has been happening the last year or so

tldr: the US is a imperialist superpower and this is what they do.

just means they are in bed with Nazis

Fascism is always the best business decision. This is the inevitable result of capitalism. The institutions on a good decade are strong and resilient. Oligarchy, yes, but still a more or less free society.

Eventually though, there will be a series of crisis in succession that causes the establishment to weaken just enough for a strongman to slip in and take the reigns. In the 20th century it was the fallout from WW1 and the Great Depression. In our time it was COVID and the Ukraine + Israeli wars (and to some extent, 2008 housing crisis)

One key part of fascism is that it is almost paradoxical

a) A populist-driven ideology, which means it appeals to the lowest common denominator

b) An elitist-driven ideology, which means it idolizes and puts value in the elites of a society

What ends up happening is the state picks and chooses elite groups of people who end up running the show. So for example, if you are Zuckerberg or Musk or Bezos.. you know that if you play nice with Trump that he will reward you and you will have certain advantages by having a friend in an authoritarian government. You also know that if you don't play nice with Trump, he will try and hurt you using both legal and illegal mechanisms.

Therefore, the best investment you could make is aligning yourself with the fascist state.

This was always going to happen. Sort of like how humans eventually will catch a cold or develop cancer. The immune system on a good day is strong enough to repel these types of problems. But eventually, you will be under some stress for one reason or another and your immune system is not enough to stop the inevitable cold or what have you.