immuredanchorite

I hope this won't run afoul the containment of burgerland-election-related posts, but this is more an observation/analysis of the media and the bourgeoisie's response to it in relation to foreign policy...

I have heard my whole life, and in the news mega, that burgerland-subjects don't actually care about foreign policy and that it had no effect on the election. And although I think there were plenty of other considerations, I think the fallout from this particular election has really solidified in my mind that that meme is another product of the empire's superstructure imparting its own ideological conformity onto the minds of its subjects. In almost every swing-state, over 30% of voters said they would have been more likely to vote for Harris if she had put an arms embargo on Israel (without a correspondingly high number of people saying it would make them less likely to vote for her). Harris also didn't really run a primary, and objectively ran on platform very similar to Trump's 2016 platform sans the performative talk about abortion. 16 million fewer people voted for Harris than Biden in 2020, which suggests a deep disaffection with the Democrats themselves. Other evidence is that the two politicians who were for an arms embargo against the apartheid state won handily in districts Harris loss. And Muslim voters voting in large percentages for Stein and Trump (I think this isn't a shift to the right, but people playing the logic of the two-party system, punish Harris by not only withholding your vote but giving her "only" opponent a vote too.)

I really think we are witnessing in real time the invention of reality about the election, and how the media perpetuates this meme that burger-landers don't care about the outside world. Pundits are saying the Harris ran a "flawless" campaign (she only ran for a few months), that she was defeated due to racism and misogyny alone, with the most sanctioned "outsider" opinions (Sanders) being that 22% inflation and no plan to help struggling people may have led to her defeat. (by "coming from" Sanders this serves a dual purpose of marginalizing the idea that the DNC ignored working-class issues and also allows the DNC to forcefully object to it without acknowledging the movement on the left which has been making a much stronger case for this, all along, than Sanders who is essentially part of the DNC and campaigned for Harris) So now we see articles talking about the "secret gen-z men who hate women and are MAGA" which I think is a real thing, but isn't a particularly significant phenomenon, but plays into the ruling-classes desire to reproduce the ideological conflicts of previous generations in the young-- to make that particular thing more prevelant via the Baader-Meinhof illusion. -- My point isn't to dive deep into the election itself, but I think we can all see the willful ignorance that foreign policy played in spoiling Harris' image, tying her to Biden's unpopularity, and making a lot of people sit the election out (why vote if the outcome is the same either way?). I think this is a ruling-class meme that reinforces itself, because if there is no democratic choice on foreign policy, then people who play the voting game have no need to pay attention to or consider foreign policy. There is no social pressure to educate yourself or create a moral red-line about murdering people abroad because everyone in the media says nobody gives a shit about it and you are stupid if you give a shit about it too.

So even though the media will replicate this idea that burgerland-subjects, particularly young men, are actually becoming more right-wing, that they don't care about Gaza or the outside world, I think what you are actually seeing is the aspirations of the ruling class in finding an analysis that will uphold the status quo and placate as many people as possible. They don't want to acknowledge that there has been a mass movement for Palestinian liberation, and when leftists repeat that yankees don't give a fuck about foreign policy I think it plays right into the hands of the ruling class.

At almost any point in the past year, the Biden admin could have ended this conflict overnight by withholding weapons. Kamala stating outright that an arms embargo was off the table, and also saying the worst tragedy in the past year was Oct 7th among other things, those all signal very much that she may as well have invaded Gaza herself.

bespoke: gen-z isn’t a generation

So, there seems to be a lot of speculation over the Trump admin and how it will handle Ukraine, the war in Western Asia and China going forward. I think these are interrelated and I feel like a lot of people are missing the point, or maybe I am just off base…. But I think that there isn’t going to be all that much room for Trump to delay US decline or even challenge China in a way it could arguably win.

1)Ukraine won’t have a quick ending: Despite the political will among some right-wing policymakers, it is up to Russia and Ukraine whether the conflict will end anytime soon. This might fly in the face of a lot of historical decisions by Russia, but why would Russia take a big L for almost no long-term material gains? At this point, they are probably better off taking most of Ukraine and leaving a rump-state or a puppet government that will eventually allow for some level of normalization. It doesn’t make sense for Russia to stop until it can have a reasonable guarantee for its own war aims. (no NATO, demilitarized ukraine).

2)Trump likely won’t be able to disengage from the genocide in Gaza or the war in west asia either. His attitude of “I will let them finish it. Vote for me and I will be the peace candidate by ‘ending’ the war. “ Really stinks of the same attitude that Nixon had during Viet Nam. If he really is sincere about that, ultimately he will facilitate the expansion of the conflict through his proxy at a point where Hamas is still operational and Hezbollah has prevented any kind of victory for the Zionist state. The idea that Israel would stop, when their current political class’ survival depends on the continued expansion of the war, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Trump might be less of a psycho than Biden, but he won’t want to “lose” and the resistance will likely win as the conflict is prolonged, as nearly every asymmetric national liberation struggle has ever proceeded. There is a chance he could threaten an arms embargo to force Israel to disengage, but I think that would be treated like a betrayal after Biden allowed all of this to go on unabated for over a year.

3)Trump’s China policy is probably going to be mediated by the above two points. At one point last year the US couldn’t spare an aircraft carrier in the SCS because of the other conflicts… Any continuity in Europe or west asia is going to continue to build that pressure. The other side of the coin here is that Trump has traditionally been really transactional with China and as long as they roll out the red carpet and he can tell his fans that he got the “best deal” he can continue to delay any sort of meaningful conflict. So if China only needs more time, it seems like they still have years to find some sort of settlement or prepare for the kind of highly aggressive moves everyone seems to expect. This is really what prevented “major power conflict” from taking off back in the 2000’s. The US got bogged down in two wars and didn’t revisit the idea until 2014…

The US decline seems inevitable, I think it doesn’t matter who is in office at this point

there is no way that this doesn’t end up targeting pro-palestine activists with the now federally expanded definition of antisemitism that “includes” antizionism

Ukraine is the first real near-peer war being fought with advanced weaponry and opposing industrialized state actors. Probably not too disimilar to what a conflict could look like between north and south. Having limited numbers of soldiers get experience in the field will probably ensure that those experiences are quickly absorbed by their own doctrine, considering the DPRK has been at war for 75ish years but has also been living in an armistice-limbo for nearly as long.

There are multiple levels to US support for Israel which can give the appearance of Israel “pulling the strings” when in reality it is a beneficial arrangement that is propped up by the US regime.

From a geopolitical standpoint, Israel is an essential component to the US unipolar order. Israel’s six-day war victory was a huge boon to the US, allowing the US to vicariously dominate western asia while it was overextended in Vietnam. This turned the tide against a socialist-oriented pan-arab movement. Israel saw a jr partnership to the US as a beneficial long-term arrangement, but for many years played both sides of the cold war up to that point. Israel’s importance to the US became dire after the Iranian revolution, which between the Shah’s Iran and Israel had encircled western asia more or less by US proxies. All of this control is essential for the US petro-dollar system, the system that forces the world to trade in dollar and therefore allows the US to essentially print a near-infinite amount of its fiat money without much concern for the integrity of its currency.

On the other hand, the US political system is a bourgeois republic that uses political elites, beholden to factions of the capitalist class and their monetary support, in order to legitimate its power. So each politician appears to be working under this or that party/principle/idea, but in reality it is a system that leverages individual (politicians) interest in order to align with ruling-class interests. The reason AIPAC and the Israel lobby appears to control politicians is because they have been given loopholes and exception to the point where it has been a defacto unspoken rule to support israel. the power AIPAC has over politicians is a representation of the power of the ruling class with its full weight behind this particular policy. Just like the interests of banking/finance or the MIC are unassailable to a large degree, they just call those things “bipartisan”.

Guess what I am saying is that despite whatever things they say in order to make whatever it is palatable, the US fully supports whatever the fuck Israel is doing. There is no secret or magic device making politicians bend to their will

There are other things that can contribute to the pain you feel during an injection, or lessen it: the distance of the needle insertion from a bundle of nerves, the gauge of the needle, the angle and speed of the insertion of the needle, the speed and depth of the administration. The temperature and ph of the vaccine also can change the experience, which can vary widely depending on the type of vaccine or the sort of preservatives/substrate the vaccine is in. Then there are differences between mrna vaccines, live attenuated, etc. The other things that affect the pain you are feeling: did you tense up or were you relaxed? What mindset were you in? Are you already in pain or was there something distracting you?

The truth is when someone gives you a shot or IV there are only a few things in their control that can actually affect how painful something is- most of it is up to chance or the vaccine itself.

possible, but de la cruz is on the ballot in 19 states, and has official write-in status in 23

Might as well “give a speech” when they will never answer the question anyway. The administration is literally playing with the lives of everyone on earth and this ghoul acts like that reporter is not taking things seriously. Matt Miller deserves a special place in hell.

the end of the end of history

There is probably truth to this, but it seems like “Israel” has also worked overtime to salvage the myth that they are an all-seeing, all-knowing super-advanced state. Having a bunch of people running around saying “actually they did know about xyz” helps spread that by appealing to contrarians.

The story also makes it seem like misogyny is the only culprit, and that there were smart “Israeli” women who knew what was up… but it is also just as likely that it was racism and a deep belief that the Palestinians were incapable of fighting back because they were “inferior caged animals” that led to Israel ignoring any warning signs. As this would suggest that there is a fatal flaw in the racial-supremacist ideology of Israel, you won’t hear them ever suggesting that they were too racist to see the threat, but they absolutely are too racist to properly analyze the world around them and understand the resistance. I guess that is good because it will be their undoing