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gobbagool posted:Australia is talking about developing nukes, it would be a trivial effort for Japan and SK, Vietnam and the Philippines could just buy nukes from some failing shithole country like Russia. China's going to be surrounded by nuclear armed countries, I don't think i'd lose much sleep about them gaining and sort of regional hegemony. Also, it seems like the people predicting and wishing the hardest for some kind of balkanization of the US are people who live in countries that have already done it, just like how your divorced friends are always seizing on every little argument people have with their spouses as proof of an imminent divorce. Again, i wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it in the US because most non-sad brained people realize they have too much to lose to rock the boat too hard. yeah the us being balkanized would literally mean roaming bands of militia executing opponents of the wrong race/political affliation say hello to the literal trumpenstaffel as the US turns into yugoslavia
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# ? Jan 23, 2018 23:17 |
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# ? Jun 8, 2024 07:14 |
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Typo posted:yeah the us being balkanized would literally mean roaming bands of militia executing opponents of the wrong race/political affliation
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# ? Jan 23, 2018 23:18 |
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Al! posted:cascadia welcomes all immigrants, except for white californians i hope that part of the balkanization plan involves flooding the central valley
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# ? Jan 23, 2018 23:29 |
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Finicums Wake posted:mark blyth is always fun to listen to. didnt know he had a podcast tho. thanks OP mark blyth is spot on on marcoeconomics but just outright wrong about politics especially non-us politics
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# ? Jan 23, 2018 23:45 |
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the bitcoin of weed posted:i hope that part of the balkanization plan involves flooding the central valley i think that's god's plan tbh
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# ? Jan 23, 2018 23:49 |
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Typo posted:mark blyth is spot on on marcoeconomics but just outright wrong about politics especially non-us politics huh? the only thing I ever remember him getting wrong was corbyn's chances and even then he changed his tune after he beat off the blairite coup
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# ? Jan 24, 2018 00:10 |
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Al! posted:cascadia welcomes all immigrants, except for white californians what is cascadia's stance on the inuit nation
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# ? Jan 24, 2018 00:16 |
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Lastgirl posted:what is cascadia's stance on the inuit nation if they want a sovereign nation up there, give it to em. too cold up there anyway.
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# ? Jan 24, 2018 00:53 |
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# ? Jan 24, 2018 00:59 |
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# ? Jan 24, 2018 01:02 |
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even as this world dies the us will retain all the same strategic advantages its had for hundreds of years and it would some wild poo poo for the us to balkanize, it'll become nazi germany long before we let that happen
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# ? Jan 24, 2018 01:14 |
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continued degeneration into cyberpunk panopticon dystopia is more likely than fascism or balkanization imo both republicans and democrats are continuing bipartisanly pushing whole-heartedly for that
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# ? Jan 24, 2018 01:22 |
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# ? Jan 24, 2018 02:02 |
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# ? Jan 24, 2018 02:03 |
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*if people do nothing
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# ? Jan 24, 2018 02:05 |
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Typo posted:yeah the us being balkanized would literally mean roaming bands of militia executing opponents of the wrong race/political affliation blue haired tumblr types and D&D posters should fair well, right?
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# ? Jan 24, 2018 02:18 |
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Trumps Baby Hands posted:actually I fantasize about a free Cascadia because I'm sick of our resources going to prop up red states thousands of miles away that don't share even our most fundamental values
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# ? Jan 24, 2018 03:45 |
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Typo posted:The US will decline but will remain as a vital off-shore balancer in the Pacific A sharp decline in US power means that isn't true for the US anymore. Its only natural that people jump ship. Russia wont be a player in the region, end of. Its too weak and its in the wrong position. It doesn't matter whqt it wants, it can't do poo poo.
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# ? Jan 24, 2018 03:53 |
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gobbagool posted:Australia is talking about developing nukes, it would be a trivial effort for Japan and SK, Vietnam and the Philippines could just buy nukes from some failing shithole country like Russia. China's going to be surrounded by nuclear armed countries, I don't think i'd lose much sleep about them gaining and sort of regional hegemony. Also, it seems like the people predicting and wishing the hardest for some kind of balkanization of the US are people who live in countries that have already done it, just like how your divorced friends are always seizing on every little argument people have with their spouses as proof of an imminent divorce. Again, i wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it in the US because most non-sad brained people realize they have too much to lose to rock the boat too hard. Australia is certainly not talking about developing nukes whatsoever. A very limited number of commentators have discussed the option in the media. The conclusion of any expert with a brain is that we have the potential to develop them within a few years, but it would be extremely damaging for regional stability and the ANZUS alliance. Japan could as well, however they are extremely unlikely to develop them for obvious historical reasons. SK could as well, however that would also be extremely destabilizing. One of the US's key challenges coming into this new era is convincing SK that the nuclear umbrella the US provides SK is a credible threat, despite the fact that NK could attack the US homeland. I think you're over estimating the threat of cascading nuclear adoption by non east-Asian countries, as ASEAN is very much about non-interference and it would not be seen positively. Regional hegemony could potentially be achieved by China, via economic control of strategic resources backed up with the ability to escalate and win small scale conventional wars. China may seem unstable, however their population is extremely resentful and have just as much of an imperialist attitude as the US. China is only trying to outspend the US in Asia, not globally. 100% of their budget will go further than 20% of the US budget, especially as time passes. Read Hugh White's Without America Australia In The New Asia, Quarterly Essay. It's pretty good for an overview of the Indo-Pacific from an Aus perspective. aLSO sorry for serious posting in C-SPAM
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# ? Jan 24, 2018 04:02 |
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# ? Jan 24, 2018 04:06 |
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lol
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# ? Jan 24, 2018 07:18 |
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hell yes
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# ? Jan 24, 2018 07:23 |
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# ? Jan 24, 2018 09:57 |
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# ? Jan 24, 2018 10:00 |
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# ? Jan 24, 2018 10:01 |
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I am seriously worried about the future of America and I don't even live there. You guys are making so many cries for help right now, as a nation. It makes me wonder what will happen to the rest of the world the worse you get. Will the diseased discourse of your country radiate out even more strongly and gently caress up the rest of us completely? Or will everyone else be better off? It's really hard to tell. I also worry for your sakes though, rather than just about your impact. It seems like despite your problems there are a lot of really cool people there, who I'd like to see doing well rather than suffering.
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# ? Jan 24, 2018 10:03 |
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my theory is that like the previous 3 times times got really lovely in our national history, we're going to get really close to a brutal civil war and either have it averted last second by weak appeasement or we burn down rural georgia
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# ? Jan 24, 2018 10:12 |
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well the weird thing is that by all accounts the government is on fire and the country is in systemic decline, but then you walk outside and everything is normal and people are acting normally, so it's a surreal feeling. kinda feels like someone dumped a really big turd in the pool and everyone is trying to pretend it isn't there.
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# ? Jan 24, 2018 10:47 |
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# ? Jan 24, 2018 10:55 |
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stuff i've seen with my own eyes and not on the internet, culturally, that have disturbed me over the past two years or so + sitting in a movie theater and seeing the trailer for this tom cruise movie called jack reacher, which was like this vigilante movie. dad was next to me in the theater and almost recoiled from how violent it was. but it wasn't just the violence but the kind of sick pleasure the movie seemed to take in smashing heads together. + the proliferation of punisher skulls on the back of vehicles around where i live. this is mimicking a trend in the military but i'll also see them incorporated with a blue line for the police. + more and more billboards for guns and ammunition along the highway, which seems like a relatively new thing.
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# ? Jan 24, 2018 11:01 |
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Yeah, that is all real frightening stuff. I'm only observing it from a distance and it has me all worried.
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# ? Jan 24, 2018 11:07 |
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but not just guns and ammunition but the branding: CRUSADER with a christian knight carrying an AR-15. so, in these virtual mediated spaces there is a firehose of poo poo and people are acting like they want to kill each other. that is the glimpse into the subconscious. but in meatspace everyone is putting around in their cars and going about their business and you'd be none the wiser. but then you see this subconscious stuff start to bubble up in the form of these representations.
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# ? Jan 24, 2018 11:09 |
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BrutalistMcDonalds posted:well the weird thing is that by all accounts the government is on fire and the country is in systemic decline, but then you walk outside and everything is normal and people are acting normally, so it's a surreal feeling. kinda feels like someone dumped a really big turd in the pool and everyone is trying to pretend it isn't there. yeah i was basically out of the US for a year and a half during all this poo poo, from summer 2016 to the end of 2017, and returning was weird because outside of cable news things seem surreally normal. i was expecting a lot more immediate and obvious stuff going on. obviously this is just because while our political institutions are making GBS threads themselves, ultimately they have little immediate impact on (more privileged) lives, and the economy is on a shallow level doing fine. that said if I was the son of Mexican immigrants, or muslim, or my children's healthcare depended on CHIP I'd have a different perspective. ultimately we are inevitably heading toward some sort of economic crisis, this boom cant last forever, and thats when reality will strike i think. and we will see the destruction of our government reflected in society at large
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# ? Jan 24, 2018 11:15 |
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rudatron posted:Why are you assuming that everyone has the same perception of China as the US does? Sometimes small nations bad together against a larger rival, but this isn't that common historically, because small countries are also rivals of each other, and fight each other. Not everyone views china negatively, and those that don't are likely to cozy up, in much the sane way tonnes to countries cozy up to the US - they think they're in a better position, especially against their rivals, than if they don't. As an aside to this, a year or two ago countries like Vietnam, SK and Indonesia saw cozying up to the U.S and encouraging a heavier presence of U.S Navy and Air Force assets as a viable, stable, long-term strategy of slowing China's aggressive expansion. No-one would actually fight each other, mid-range powers like Vietnam and Japan didn't have to formally ally against China, no-one would make any brave decisions or sudden moves, the presence of U.S armed forces just gave everyone leery about rapid Chinese expansion a platform to stand on, even if they didn't agree with each other on anything else. China probably would end up controlling the region, but it would take 20 years and a lot of bribery. Trump has thrown all of that in the trash can and lit it on fire. It's not just that he's unpredictable, and wants to poo poo on everything the last guy did, it's that his election shows that America itself is unpredictable, and has no long-term strategy to speak of. All those mid range powers in SE Asia who thought they had a nice long timeline and the backing of the USN and AF now realise they are essentially swinging in the wind. Under those circumstances arming up (especially with nukes) is a seriously loving dangerous thing to do, whilst switching sides to join China 20 years ahead of schedule is at least safe. tl;dr regional containment of China relied on a the perception of a stable, strategic, logical U.S. This has been shattered, and now the smart move for the regional players (everyone from Korea to Australia) is to start making friendly moves to China.
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# ? Jan 24, 2018 11:36 |
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also online, how so many on the right talk about the ease with which they'd roll over the squishy liberals who are not making america great again. seriously: this reminds me of how the south talked before secession. the south fired the first shots of the war because violence served as a legitimizing force: the south needed to prove it was tougher. and while this kind of talk doesn't inevitably lead to violent conflict, it is one of the hurdles a society has to clear before it moves to it. though there was an actual violent conflict going on in kansas and missouri before the civil war and that is not happening today. and of course you hear that kind of talk because they're afraid too, and that kind of talk bucks them up. but i'd watch out for more of that. when people talk about conflict as being easy that is a bad sign. and this kind of talk can lead to all kinds of miscalculation and underestimating. (i've seen right-wing british people on the internet talk like this, because they think HM's military will back them, which is just insane. so this is contagious.) you'll hear "we have all the guns" but really, the U.S. is absolutely flooded with guns and the dealers don't care who they sell them to. how would they know who they're selling to? we've already supplied one drug war in mexico that has killed perhaps some 100,000 people -- within the past decade. you can go to a gun show here and see booths for volunteer border militias, and cars with plates from nuevo leon, coahuila and tamaulipas in the parking lot. now, it's not easy to legally acquire or possess a gun in mexico, but people do have them for personal defense. still, there is a lot of shady stuff going on at these shows, and there has been plenty of reporting over the years about how these arms bazaars have basically supplied the drug cartels for years. dealers don't usually ask you questions about why you're buying. BrutalistMcDonalds has issued a correction as of 11:52 on Jan 24, 2018 |
# ? Jan 24, 2018 11:38 |
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BrutalistMcDonalds posted:well the weird thing is that by all accounts the government is on fire and the country is in systemic decline, but then you walk outside and everything is normal and people are acting normally, so it's a surreal feeling. kinda feels like someone dumped a really big turd in the pool and everyone is trying to pretend it isn't there.
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# ? Jan 24, 2018 12:14 |
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Even people who are on the same general "side" as me politically seem pretty scary a lot of the time. There was this guy I've been following on twitter for years and suddenly he starts posting about how any one who is worried about or tries to reduce people discussing the murder of their political enemies is in fact sympathising with the enemy. That sort of talk is kind of alienating for me. I just can't feel comfortable around such explicitly violent ideology.
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# ? Jan 24, 2018 12:49 |
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Moon Atari posted:Even people who are on the same general "side" as me politically seem pretty scary a lot of the time. There was this guy I've been following on twitter for years and suddenly he starts posting about how any one who is worried about or tries to reduce people discussing the murder of their political enemies is in fact sympathising with the enemy. That sort of talk is kind of alienating for me. I just can't feel comfortable around such explicitly violent ideology. nice post/av combo
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# ? Jan 24, 2018 12:51 |
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the comparison to the us civil war aren't too far off the mark. political polarization has just jumped up massively. see the pew poll: http://www.people-press.org/2017/10/05/the-partisan-divide-on-political-values-grows-even-wider/ as you can see, this isn't a sudden, dramatic change, but the culmination of a long running trend. that also means its not going to reverse quickly. the whole thing is a powder keg, waiting for the right crisis to set it off.
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# ? Jan 24, 2018 13:00 |
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# ? Jun 8, 2024 07:14 |
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Also another cool thing is that without the Iraq War, TRUMP would not have won. Casualties and injuries greatly lifted the amount of votes for him across the board. Which is why it makes sense for him to continue to wage wars. https://theintercept.com/2017/07/10/study-finds-relationship-between-high-military-casualties-and-votes-for-trump-over-clinton/ gucci bane has issued a correction as of 13:34 on Jan 24, 2018 |
# ? Jan 24, 2018 13:17 |