CleverOleg

Iran is the 17th largest country in the world and is very roughly a bit smaller than the part of the US east of the Mississippi (can’t find the square miles but using a tool to overlay a map of Iran onto it it looks smaller but not that much smaller). It has 10X the population of Israel (which is only the size of New Jersey)

but still that didn’t lead to the Japanese economy collapsing even with a 35-year run of zero growth.

I haven’t read it myself, but Radhika Desai has done some interesting research on Japan IIRC. I believe the conclusion she came to was that even if the overall economy hasn’t done great, the working class in Japan has done disproportionately better than their wealthier counterparts. In other words, it’s been a good economy for the workers and middle class to an extent, and not great for the wealthiest.

I’m a subscriber to Monthy Review, worth every penny.

I think that is an excellent way to explain the one-state solution to people who have never heard it before. Americans are so ingrained into the idea of “ethnostates good”, I think a lot of finesse is needed when introducing these ideas to libs who are open but ignorant.

Dude was on TV and advocated for the one-state solution, he’s golden in my book.

If you could probe into Stephen Miller’s mind, I am 100% certain you would find that his core drive in life is to see that the US and all “white” countries remove by any means anyone who isn’t white. This would apply to a black person whose ancestors have been here for 300 years as much as an undocumented worker from Mexico, but he can’t say that about the former out loud. I’m very well acquainted with how honest-to-god white nationalists talk and use language to mystify their real thoughts and intentions, and Miller checks all those boxes.

Mashallah, we’ve had such little good news recently…

In a lot of ways I feel the same way you do. The only “social media” I’m on is Reddit, and that place really exemplifies this very American (though others have it too) idea that you can be relatively ignorant about something but you can and should be 1,000% convinced your opinion is correct.

But I also find there’s a lot of great discussion among fellow travelers on places like Reddit. Some I’m really trying to manage my engagement and stick to places that have productive discussion (like Hexbear) and ignore everything else.

My understanding is that the particular nature of US electoralism is that mathematically, the system will always revert to two parties. In the past, new parties have supplanted old ones but situations where you have more than two parties is incredibly unstable and short-lived. Not to mention most of that “churn” occurred in the early days of the US. And the two party system is so robust that it maintains itself from the presidency all the way down to small town councils.

I don’t see how Musk’s political views are meaningfully different from that of the Libertarian Party. And while it would be difficult to get a progressive 3rd party going, Musk is deluded if “80%” crave gutting the meager social safety nets and public institutions we have in order to “cut the deficit”. No one wants that shit right now.

Love it but it doesn’t have quite that same Slammer energy though.

No offense taken, but honestly I don’t see where any of this is coming from, and I watch him pretty regularly. I don’t mind calling him out on stuff but like, there was definitely no vote scolding for Kamala on his stream. It feels like people who critically support him and who don’t are watching two different streams, I don’t get it.