freagle

That not at all how it works. The point is that dropping bombs for the purposes of imperialism is different than dropping bombs for the purpose of anti-imperialism. The USA is the torch bearer of the globe spanning empire that they took over from Western Europe. That empire at its height dominated 80% of the world's population and to this day that empire continues to cause more death and destruction than any other movement in the world. We are now in the fifth century of this empire's existence.

The Russian Federation is not an empire and it is not imperialist. Just a few decades ago it's entire system of government and economics was completely ended and rebuilt under the dominance of the empire (described above). The Russian Federation does not occupy any colonies or subjugated territories, as the US does (Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Guam, etc). The Russian Federation is not the continuation of a settler colonial state like the US is. The Russian Federation does not have 600 military bases all over the world where it operates without legal oversight.

Russia has done lots of bad things. All worthy of criticism. But that criticism needs to be contextualized, because while those bad things are worth analyzing and discussing, they can in no way ever be used to justify the actions of the global spanning baby killing family starving genocidal eugenicist world destroying empire.

A lot of reading, listening, arguing with people I disagreed with, forcing myself to contend with discomfort, to reexamine my beliefs, trying to disprove what others were saying or writing, and lots and lots of time.

I was already a relatively well-read kid by the time I hit college, and I had some counter cultura approaches to political beliefs (like taking care of people being more important than raw profit), but I was fully invested in the American project and had a ton of unexamined racism, mysoginy, classism, and cultural appropriation that I just replicated without question.

I studied philosophy and my particular path through that degree forced me to develop not only the ability but the respect for the process of arguing something from multiple perspectives equally well (or aspiring to that as best we can). So by the end of college I was committed to taking up the best version of anything I disagreed with so I could understand it better but also to boost my ego so I could defeat it more soundly.

But "no go" zones always bothered me. For example, we studied the classic skeptics Descartes and Hume, but never responded to them once. We simply examined how their skepticism led to the impossibility of knowledge and then just never solved it. Worse, whenever someone used an argument that was sufficiently skeptical, it was met with "well that just leads to solipsism". That bothers me as it's not a refutation. What bothered me more was the position that if anyone used arguments from solipsism that we could just dismiss them as bad faith and ignore what they had to say.

That particular aspect of my path built this sort of vigiliance for these "no go" zones of thought and I saw them popping up all over the place. If a Republican said something, some people would immediately dismiss it without examining it at all, and the same would be true for different people if a Democrat said something. The same was true if a Chinese or Russian report made a claim. The same was true about satanists, communists, addicts, and many others.

These were far more numerous than people arguing strong skepticism. And the positions being discussed didn't threaten all possible knowledge or the existence of reality, but they did threaten deeply held personal beliefs.

So, overtime, when I witnessed someone else saying "well, that's pro-China so it can't be trusted at all", I slowly started to examine these things. And then I found myself saying the same thing - "oh you're a communist, you can't be trusted with anything you say".

That's when I realized I had some built-in problems. And it was about that time I started to question my long held beliefs that I wasn't racist, that I wasn't sexist, that I wasn't mysoginst. And that was really hard. It took years of stop and start, years of resisting the evidence, years of not paying attention because it made me uncomfortable.

But eventually 2020 happened, I was forced to slow down, I had far fewer social connections reinforcing my behavior and beliefs, and the national discourse at the time gave me huge opportunities to "argue it from the other side" and examine what was really going on. And that was a hell of a ride. Anger, depression, rage, resentment, just everything came up. But my commitment to earnest engagement with ideas and reality and facts and history forced me through the process.

There were distinct periods where (1) I believed the USA was the greatest country in the world and also I and most of the people I knew were not racist, mysoginst, and white supremacist, and then (2) the USA was the greatest country in the world with some problems and I can see how I have unconscious racism but I can fix that and I'm not mysoginst or white supremacist and most of the people I know are not either, and then (3) the USA is a pretty bad actor but at least it's better than Russia, China, DPRK, Cuba, Iran, etc and racism is actually a system not a personal moral failing and while I can work against it I have been raised in this way and also wow ok I realize now that mysoginy is insidious and embedded in so many of my ways of relating to the world but I can work on that and then (4) oh wow the US is the evil empire and racism and mysoginy and white supremacy are actually these massive historical processes that I haven't even begun to wrestle with and I actually can't really say anything about them until I really dig in and am willing to be wrong in ways that makes me sick to my stomach....

And my process is still ongoing now, but, this is maybe a long winded story about how I escaped the matrix.

Oh ...

Have you ever seen a super cut on YouTube of 50 US news stations literally repeating the exact same line over and over and over again?

Do you really think you could propagandize a billion people with 55 distinct and recognized cultural groups speaking different languages after having nearly every single communication appartus totally destroyed in a civil war 75 years ago while England and the US, who have uninterrupted propaganda operations that go back centuries have been deploying their empire's propaganda against China since the Opium Wars?

No. Absolutely not. You imagine that China has deep propaganda control over a billion lemmings because your propaganda system is so strong it's convinced you of something so ridiculous.

You don't even understand the social credit thing. You have no idea what it is, how much of it is real versus propaganda, and how it differs from the credit score system in the US.

Democracy: China is constantly evolving it's democratic mechanisms, currently referred to as whole process democracy. In the West you can change the party but not the policies. In China you can change the policies but not the party.

Free Speech: defending the KKK with arguments for free speech is not the high minded position you think it is. Free speech includes fascism, cultism, chauvinism, and neoliberalism. Working against those things is a perennial obligation of any liberatory movement.

What are you talking about?

https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/counterintelligence/the-china-threat

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/07/27/americans-name-china-as-the-country-posing-the-greatest-threat-to-the-us/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_threat_theory

https://thedefensepost.com/2025/03/26/china-biggest-threat-us/

https://www.voanews.com/a/vice-presidential-nominee-vance-calls-china-biggest-threat-to-our-country-/7701298.html

The US has done this pretty deliberately as part of their genocide of the indigenous peoples. China and India are in peer conversations as sovereigns and negotiating their differences as equals.

China doesn't spend that much time on political dissidents in comparison to the US. The US has been chasing Assange and Snowden for decades now, they have Manning in prison probably for life, they had Peltier in prison until he was basically at deaths door. And they constantly renew and redouble their efforts to attack these dissidents. Meanwhile in China they spend way more effort on reducing the number of billionaires than they do reducing the number of political dissidents.

Democracy: China is constantly evolving it's democratic mechanisms, currently referred to as whole process democracy. In the West you can change the party but not the policies. In China you can change the policies but not the party.

Incorrect Thought: yes defending the KKK with arguments for free speech is not the high minded position you think it is. Incorrect Thought includes fascism, cultism, chauvinism, and neoliberalism. Working against those things is a perennial obligation of any liberatory movement.

Taiwan: China does not see Taiwan as a threat at all. They see the US and UK as a threat and they see Taiwan as a vulnerability. Not the least of which because the US has openly published strategy documents detailing the Pacific Kill Chain which projects lethal nuclear force at China and it uses Taiwan as the key component of that kill chain.

Uyghurs: Uyghurs aren't a threat, Uyghur terrorists trained by the US as part of their never ending program of training terrorists and radicalizing people - that's the threat. Uyghurs in China who are not connected to the terrorist trainings are for the most part completely unaffected by China's de-escalation program. And China's de-escalation program has worked incredibly well when you look at the raw numbers of terrorist attacks Xinjiang over the last decade.

It's generally not true. What is true is that every single person in a society organized to kill you through neglect is motivated to find some way to making a lot of money and escaping their plight. The way you do this in a capitalist society is you make some rich people much richer. So you try to come up with ways to make them richer.

Sometimes that means solving problems that the masses will pay you for, if only you could scale it (investors show up to scale it, take 70% of the value, you become a millionaire).

Sometimes that means solving a problem for industry that reduces their costs, if I only you could overcome the upfront costs (investors show up to build it, take 70% of the value, you become a millionaire).

However, what people who have never done this don't realize is that the real problem being solved is the problem of making rich people more money. Literally anything that makes them richer will get there investment, regardless of it solves social problems or creates social problems. Inversely, if you solve social problems for the masses but it can't make the rich richer, then your solution never gets any traction.

The selection criteria is fundamentally whether or not it makes the rich richer. That's why in the US such a massive percentage of GDP is artificial markets - copyrighted art and media, digital rights management, digital locks on tractors and machinery, digital locks on printer ink and Keurig cups - or total wastes of time - billions in rebranding, billions in consulting to merge and then divest - or in terribly damaging social engineering - billions in pink taxes, boys vs girls branding, manipulating beauty standards, manipulating children, sugary cereals, endless plastic toys, chemical engineering to create food cravings and suppress satiety, etc.

So yes, competition creates a frenzy of activity, but the activity is poorly directed, often negative value, innovative and novel ways to harm people, and ultimately not geared towards anything useful.

Meanwhile, look at socialism and compare where it actually matters - the Soviets dominated space exploration compared to the West. During COVID, the US spent billions racing for a vaccine and Cuba developed one on the same timeline without the massive grift while under the most brutal and long-term collective punishment regime in the history of the world.

At the end of the day, purposeful, intentional, directed effort will always beat the mass chaos of random actors all frenzily trying to save themselves out of desperation.