5 ms·

And if the USA becomes one of those authoritarian regimes?

by bovermyer 2y ago

krapp 2y ago
It is, and has been for a long time.
- bpodgursky 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - krapp 2y ago
    A nation can be authoritarian while being less authoritarian in degree than other nations. The US runs a global cultural and economic empire based on the threat of overwhelming military force and nuclear war - a threat every other power (including China and Russia) acts in response to, because the only credible threat of WW3 comes from the US either starting it, or escalating it. The US isn't "worried" about conflict with China and Russia, the US is planning for those conflicts because the American military industrial complex requires endless war to satiate itself. From my point of view, the US (which just happens to be funding a genocide through a nuclear armed puppet state at the moment) looks no better than Russia and far better than China which at least tends to keep its authoritarianism to itself (harassment of Japanese fishing boats notwithstanding.) China today looks like what American domestic policy is becoming, and Russia today looks like American foreign policy in general. And the political and cultural climate in the US has been creeping in an authoritarian direction for at least a decade. The US has a deeper and more invasive surveillance network than the Gestapo could ever have dreamed of. The US runs torture sites and a concentration camp where it detains enemies of the state under arbitrary duress without rights. American rights are nullified, arbitrarily, by an unelected and unaccountable panel of judges, and laws are arbitrarily enforced by a brutal militarized police force and government wholly insulated from consequence and the "will of the people." Americans clutch their pearls over TikTok and Chinese influence while literally every form of media they consume is propaganda, much of it being openly fascist, designed to confuse, distract and scare them with fears of enemies within and without, or indoctrinate them into a pro-militarist ideology based on a corrupted and twisted view of the world and their own place in it. The US is objectively authoritarian. You don't get to run the racket of Pax Americana without being an authoritarian regime, willing and able to commit violence abroad and able to quell any possible threat to the agenda at home.
    - vasco 2y ago
      Thank you for your service!
clarionbell 2y ago
So you'd rather if they didn't prepare? I'm sorry I don't understand the point of your comment. If USA turns to authoritarian principles, then it won't really matter what Space force does at this point.
- bovermyer 2y ago
  The point of my comment was just to address the original poster's assumption that the USA would remain anti-authoritarian. I'm not saying the USA should demilitarize or that the Space Force shouldn't prepare for cataclysmic interstellar warfare.
amanaplanacanal 2y ago
In my techo-anarchist headcanon freedom loving hackers will take down the bad guys.
badpun 2y ago
It’s two different dimensions. A country can be democratic or authoritarian, and also a country can be driven by conquest or not. For example, USA is a democratic, conquest-driven empire. While Russia is an authoritarian, conquest-driven empire. Living in democratic empires is usually nice for citizens in the metropolis (the USA), while it can be absolutely miserable for the conquered parts (millions killed in SE Asia in countries attacked by USA and its cronies, in Iraq etc.). While, in Russia’s case, life in the metropolis is only somewhat less miserable than in the conquered non-Russian-majority regions.
- Ancapistani 2y ago
  > USA is a democratic, conquest-driven empire I disagree - in the details, at least :). "Conquest" requires overwhelming military force, which of course the US has. What it lacks is the desire to annex "conquered" territory or to directly subjugate competitor nations. I'd consider the US more of a modernized colonial power. The institutional goal of the US federal government seems to be to remake the world in its image, but to do so in a way that requires as little ongoing investment by them as possible. An example of this would be the concept of "regime change". The US sees nations with incompatible types of political organization as almost defective. It believes that those nations would obviously organize as a representative republic if only given the chance to do so - in fact, it believes that representative republicanism is the only natural form of governance, which by extension means that any nation with an incompatible political structure is a nation that has been subjugated by outside forces. That's why we do things like invade Afghanistan, hang around for a decade or two, set up elections that mirror ours, and then leave... only for the Taliban to come right back, take power, and ultimately benefit from our involvement. The older I get, the more I come to believe that some forms of governance - including representative republicanism - require a relatively well-educated populace that supports the concept. Lacking that, they revert to their previous state once US involvement withdraws. That's good news for me, as I ultimately want to see my descendants living in a world without governments with a monopoly of the legitimization of violence. If countries that lean toward authoritarianism can be "transformed" into other forms only temporarily, that means the driving force behind a sustainable governance is ultimately not force, but culture. "Political change" must be a consequence of social/cultural change to be long-lived.

And if the USA becomes one of those authoritarian regimes?

krapp 2y ago

It is, and has been for a long time.

bpodgursky 2y ago
[flagged]
- krapp 2y ago
  A nation can be authoritarian while being less authoritarian in degree than other nations. The US runs a global cultural and economic empire based on the threat of overwhelming military force and nuclear war - a threat every other power (including China and Russia) acts in response to, because the only credible threat of WW3 comes from the US either starting it, or escalating it. The US isn't "worried" about conflict with China and Russia, the US is planning for those conflicts because the American military industrial complex requires endless war to satiate itself. From my point of view, the US (which just happens to be funding a genocide through a nuclear armed puppet state at the moment) looks no better than Russia and far better than China which at least tends to keep its authoritarianism to itself (harassment of Japanese fishing boats notwithstanding.) China today looks like what American domestic policy is becoming, and Russia today looks like American foreign policy in general. And the political and cultural climate in the US has been creeping in an authoritarian direction for at least a decade. The US has a deeper and more invasive surveillance network than the Gestapo could ever have dreamed of. The US runs torture sites and a concentration camp where it detains enemies of the state under arbitrary duress without rights. American rights are nullified, arbitrarily, by an unelected and unaccountable panel of judges, and laws are arbitrarily enforced by a brutal militarized police force and government wholly insulated from consequence and the "will of the people." Americans clutch their pearls over TikTok and Chinese influence while literally every form of media they consume is propaganda, much of it being openly fascist, designed to confuse, distract and scare them with fears of enemies within and without, or indoctrinate them into a pro-militarist ideology based on a corrupted and twisted view of the world and their own place in it. The US is objectively authoritarian. You don't get to run the racket of Pax Americana without being an authoritarian regime, willing and able to commit violence abroad and able to quell any possible threat to the agenda at home.
  - vasco 2y ago
    Thank you for your service!

clarionbell 2y ago

So you'd rather if they didn't prepare? I'm sorry I don't understand the point of your comment. If USA turns to authoritarian principles, then it won't really matter what Space force does at this point.

bovermyer 2y ago
The point of my comment was just to address the original poster's assumption that the USA would remain anti-authoritarian. I'm not saying the USA should demilitarize or that the Space Force shouldn't prepare for cataclysmic interstellar warfare.

amanaplanacanal 2y ago

In my techo-anarchist headcanon freedom loving hackers will take down the bad guys.

badpun 2y ago

It’s two different dimensions. A country can be democratic or authoritarian, and also a country can be driven by conquest or not. For example, USA is a democratic, conquest-driven empire. While Russia is an authoritarian, conquest-driven empire. Living in democratic empires is usually nice for citizens in the metropolis (the USA), while it can be absolutely miserable for the conquered parts (millions killed in SE Asia in countries attacked by USA and its cronies, in Iraq etc.). While, in Russia’s case, life in the metropolis is only somewhat less miserable than in the conquered non-Russian-majority regions.

Ancapistani 2y ago
> USA is a democratic, conquest-driven empire I disagree - in the details, at least :). "Conquest" requires overwhelming military force, which of course the US has. What it lacks is the desire to annex "conquered" territory or to directly subjugate competitor nations. I'd consider the US more of a modernized colonial power. The institutional goal of the US federal government seems to be to remake the world in its image, but to do so in a way that requires as little ongoing investment by them as possible. An example of this would be the concept of "regime change". The US sees nations with incompatible types of political organization as almost defective. It believes that those nations would obviously organize as a representative republic if only given the chance to do so - in fact, it believes that representative republicanism is the only natural form of governance, which by extension means that any nation with an incompatible political structure is a nation that has been subjugated by outside forces. That's why we do things like invade Afghanistan, hang around for a decade or two, set up elections that mirror ours, and then leave... only for the Taliban to come right back, take power, and ultimately benefit from our involvement. The older I get, the more I come to believe that some forms of governance - including representative republicanism - require a relatively well-educated populace that supports the concept. Lacking that, they revert to their previous state once US involvement withdraws. That's good news for me, as I ultimately want to see my descendants living in a world without governments with a monopoly of the legitimization of violence. If countries that lean toward authoritarianism can be "transformed" into other forms only temporarily, that means the driving force behind a sustainable governance is ultimately not force, but culture. "Political change" must be a consequence of social/cultural change to be long-lived.