Guns are useless.
Everyone who believes guns are some kind of savior or last-ditch protector is fucking stupid.
There is a reason why, during westward expansion, the first thing towns did when they got two nickels to rub together to buy bricks to build a church was ban guns.
There are so many real-world examples of guns being useless that it defies logic and belief that people cling to the myth.
There are so few examples of guns being useful that those examples are the irrelevant exceptions to the norm.
Every single valley in Afghanistan has a small village along the valley stream where every household has at least one automatic rifle. That is what a society saturated with weaponry looks like: paranoid, tribal, and rapey.
In the US, the second "the good guys" show up with their AR and wish.com tacticool gear and start to pose any actual threat, the bad guys will retreat behind fortified walls and fences and start dropping JDAMs.
Like with the Viet Cong and the Afghanistan people who were conquered and absorbed into the American or Russian systems, right?
And now let's imagine what might happen if the US military tried to occupy a country full of guerillas who look like them, dress like them, speak the same language, and share a cultural background.
The US wins on logistics because it has a lot of stuff already built, and anything we need we can build in the US and get it out of the US quickly.
This quickly falls apart in the US if we go civil war on each other. We are technologically fragile. If just a small portion of the people of the US went around shooting electrical distribution, fuel refining and NG compression facilities the US would have one of the worst humanitarian disasters of the last 50 years, maybe longer.
This said, there are a number of countries that would love to see us do this to each other.
The Vietnam war killed close to a million Vietnamese between North and South Vietnamese civilians and the Vietcong [1]
The Afghanistan war killed about 3500 U.S. & allied soldiers, and about 300,000 Afghans. [2]
The Iraq war killed about 5000 U.S. & allied soldiers, and about 1 million Iraqis. [3]
U.S. military power since WW2 can basically be summed up by "We can't win, but we can still kill you." If you end up dead, your side may win, but that's cold comfort (literally) for you.
The root of the discrepancy is the difference between winning as in annihilating your opponent and winning as in getting them to do what you want. Oftentimes, military force and lots of deaths actually just entrenches opposing ideology. Nothing like a common enemy that's trying to kill you to get people to band together. But you can still end up with a lot of dead people that are ideologically victorious. Always more people where they came from, and people may switch over to your cause.
Also, the huge irony of the Vietnam war is that by 1989, 15 years after the North Vietnamese "won", Vietnam was one of the most intensely capitalist countries on Earth. Because they realized that communism didn't work, and they'd all be better off with free trade and markets. Given the US's stated goal of preventing the spread of communism in southeast Asia, they would've been far more effective just letting the communists win and run the country for a few years and then dealing with the consequences of that.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_casualties
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20241203211818/https://ucdp.uu.se/country/700 https://web.archive.org/web/20241203211818/https://ucdp.uu.s...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War
Yeah but they're still independent.
> U.S. military power since WW2 can basically be summed up by "We can't win, but we can still kill you." If you end up dead, your side may win, but that's cold comfort (literally) for you.
Some of them, yes. But even for those who do die: haven't you heard "give me liberty or give me death"? Many people do feel this way.
> Also, the huge irony of the Vietnam war is that by 1989, 15 years after the North Vietnamese "won", Vietnam was one of the most intensely capitalist countries on Earth.
Yet where is the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie? Why do Vietnamese billionaires not run the government like they do that of America, and why does their government not have to kowtow to American business interests like Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea do? Because despite opening up their economy, their political system is far from a liberal democracy. You're making a false equivalence to try and pretend that the Vietnamese war was a no-op, that they should have just rolled over and accepted defeat like you're suggesting all the peoples of the world do.
The United States Military is the most terrifying institution of force in the history of the human race (history of the universe as far as we know). It achieves a level of training, discipline, organization, morale, combat effectiveness and general formidavlbility that makes the median Marine among the best soldiers on the planet anywhere, all backed by a logistical apparatus unrivaled by any conceivable combination of private sector actors working together. Unrivaled now, maybe ever.
And it got its ass kicked in Afghanistan. Trillions of dollars and countless lives later and a bunch of Pashtun tribesmen with AK-47s and RPG-7s have the country back, and a bunch of our materiel for our trouble.
Because the only thing on the planet more dangerous than a United States Special Forces operator is a man with nothing to lose.
The idea is that guns are useful because it makes pacifying the population more difficult.
If it's the coup or something your own army may not be willing to trade fire with civilian groups but may still be willing to engage in.softer subduing efforts like arrests, water cannons, etc.
It's rich to call people stupid when you're missing the obvious point while engaging in a fantasy of all out war between civilians with guns and an army trying to exterminate them.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
What exactly are you saying here? Are you saying that guns can't defeat a modern military, or that it would be better if we just always let those in power do what they will? Because you're mixing the two, here and in the comments. You accept multiple times that guns can be used with success to throw off a modern military, but each time you do you pivot to trying to argue that the revolt was pointless anyways. Are you saying that no matter what the government does, no matter what it takes from you, no matter what crimes they commit -- it would always be preferable to just lie down and take it?
Because I can tell you, most of your countrymen do not agree. Most of humanity doesn't agree. And as long as there are so many examples -- from the French Revolution to Vietnam -- of people rising up against their oppressors, people will hope that should times become hard enough, they could do the same.
And (even though I don't support him in any way), would say the election of Trump is in part due to the constant wins of the white collar work force. Most of the examples you gave of revolutions led to greater democracy and greater socialism, which benefits the blue collar, but ironically, in this case, the blue collar elected a autocratic conservative.
Again, am not a Trump supporter in anyway, but agree that when the wealthy keep getting richer while the blue-collar worker continues to struggle, this leads to discontentment and pushback.
> And (even though I don't support him in any way), would say the election of Trump is in part due to the constant wins of the white collar work force.
Definitely. He tapped the anger and resentment of an underclass. The shame is that this underclass does not really see how he is harming them and how his politics benefit their old ennemies, the economic elite that’s turning into oligarchs.
> Most of the examples you gave of revolutions led to greater democracy and greater socialism, which benefits the blue collar, but ironically, in this case, the blue collar elected a autocratic conservative.
True. But examples of this also abound pre- or during WWII, from all the fascist regimes in Portugal, Spain, Italy, Germany, and copycats such as Vichy.
Upheaval and chaos can lead to either progress or ruin.
> The shame is that this underclass does not really see how he is harming them and how his politics benefit their old enemies, the economic elite that’s turning into oligarchs.
I'd bet you that at least some are aware and just don't care. You crap on people long enough and they'll want to burn it all down out of spite. I suspect the eventual endgame here might be class warfare. Keep an eye out for more of these oligarch bunkers that are popping up.
> There absolutely is a difference between people that die because we, as a species, cannot afford to spend the combined sum of all of our productivity on health care (which means that you will have to tell some people "no", even though they will die as a result of that), and a tyrannical dictator specifically ordering the death of people because they are a political threat to him.
I remember the howls of 'Death Panels' when Hillary Clinton brought forth a single payer universal healthcare back in 1995 as first lady.
I also remember the counter republican / Heritage foundation's plan of a health marketplace. Perhaps you heard of Romney are or ObamaCare? Same plan.
And about death panels? Initially it is a discussion of rationing a limited resource. But the death panels we have now are purely based upon greed of the insurance companies. Delay, Deny, Defend. That depose wasn't so much a bad idea, if we look at human suffering/death as a loss of GDP.
These deaths due to delaying and denying are capitalist deaths.
> Maybe you feel that a pill that costs a few bucks to produce should be sold for that same price. In that case I'd like to remind you that in this case, a private company spent BILLIONS on medical research, without knowing if any of it would ever pay off. If you just take their one succesful product and distribute it for free, they won't bother trying again.
First, most new drugs come out of the public higher education in the form of studies and papers. And Reagan changed the rules allowing universities to make bank on the backs of students.
Since they were publicly funded, they should be owned by the public.
But they're not. The rights get bought by a monopoly maker, who gets nearly 2 decades of protection. Who cares if those drugs could save 5 million per year if reasonably priced. Monopoly control gets monopoly pricing.
Now specifically Solvaldi.. It costs $1000 a pill, once a day for 12 weeks. $84k. Insurance won't pay for this cure, since treatments are cheaper. However it costs $300 to manufacture with chemical supplies. We could save 5 million people a year here, with easy and cheap access to cures. We, as a society, do not value life. We value 'how much I can extract from your life'.
Four Thieves Vinegar Collective talks about this on their videos https://kolektiva.media/w/6iqzQtGqGSKbeFndBkEcm7 https://kolektiva.media/w/6iqzQtGqGSKbeFndBkEcm7
> How many great medicins came out of communist countries?
Playing GOTCHA games with 'name something or you're invalid' is boring, and only shows not knowing some name on demand. And that's also being completely ignorant of the propaganda here in the USA.
But one wide area the USSR invested in is macrophage research, as a whole class of drugs. And that's not 1 drug, but a whole class.
But seriously, how many needless deaths are caused by capitalism? And yes, I'm looking at: lack of housing (homelessness), overpriced medicine, overpriced doctors, hyperprocessed and/or food that would not be legal elsewhere, terrible products that create obscene trash, extreme consumerism leading to unmitigated climate devastation.
But hey, a billionaire got another 10 million in the time it took to write my post.
Unless you're referring to Mao's rule, "Chinese socialism" is another word for "capitalism".
The US, too, has some fields of the economy that are almost entirely state owned. E.g. roads, K-12 education, public safety, transit. The existence of a few public industries does not make a country socialist.
> Monopolies and labor abuses were mostly in check
Really? Transatlantic slavery by far the biggest labour abuse, then the company towns, then Standard Oil which was allowed to run amok for 30 years then broken up (which then consolidated into ExxonMobil and Chevron again). These are just off the top of my head.
The US from my point of view has been a puritanical, borderline genocidal, enslaving, cowardly and hypocritical, and yet nosy entity that discarded its inconvenient founding and history.
Its success I daresay has been entirely contingent on its remoteness from the rest of humanity (which fed into its exceptionalism narrative), and comparatively sparse population. By many measures the Roman and British empires were 'more successful'.
> The US from my point of view has been a puritanical, borderline genocidal
"Borderline"?
>By many measures the Roman and British empires were 'more successful'.
With the Roman Empire you are overlooking their slavery, genocide, etc, most of your critique applies. Britain at least outlawed slavery at home, but not in territories abroad, hence the slavery in the Americas and elsewhere
200 years? And went wrong in 1970? The USA absolutely wasn't a good system in 1770, and has sucked for a lot of people for large fraction of those years.
Who could vote was all over the place for a long time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_voting_rights_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_voting_rights_in_t...
Civil War was about as far from "balanced" as you can get, and the problems weren't even on the axis of "hammer and sickle" vs "single megacorporation".
The New Deal was a radical change in the economic organisation of the USA, basically ended Laissez-faire. Before that point, there was enough social unrest that, for the people at the time, I think it wouldn't have seemed at all implausible the USA would have faced an actual communist revolution similar to the one in Russia, because of events such as e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain
And this one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army
> The USA absolutely wasn't a good system in 1770
The USA didn't even notionally exist in 1770, but its pretty clear that the "200 years" thing was intended as 2x10^2 not 2.00x10^2 or even 2.0x10^2.
> it wouldn't have seemed at all implausible the USA would have faced an actual communist revolution
Read the first volume of Robert Caro's biography of LBJ, and you'll see that the militant farmers and tradespeople of Ohio were on the verge of declaring independent soviets when the New Deal began.
This one blew my mind when I first heard of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisbee_Deportation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisbee_Deportation