United States Politics Thread 47

[Travis B.]

To me 'yippy' is an adjective to describe a certain sort of dog.

[alice]

To me 'yippy' is an adjective to describe a certain sort of dog.

Over here it has the ablaut variant "yappy".

[keenir]

I do not understand this. Xi was one of Trump's best friends during his first term - him and Kim and Putin.

I can understand Trump continuing to alienate his minions and others he sees as underlings, throwing various of them under the proverbial bus.

But these 150+ % tariffs can't be good for Xi's opinion of him.


Also, I'm surprised that Trump hasn't praised Putin for forcibly bringing an end to North Korea's enforced isolation, by bringing North Korean soldiers to the Ukraine.

[zompist]

I do not understand this. Xi was one of Trump's best friends during his first term - him and Kim and Putin.

I can understand Trump continuing to alienate his minions and others he sees as underlings, throwing various of them under the proverbial bus.

But these 150+ % tariffs can't be good for Xi's opinion of him.

The people who built Trump into a reality TV star have a lot to answer for. He's aiming at being a mobster— but not a real mobster, a TV version of one, all threats and executions and me-win-you-lose deals.

According to the script he must have a respectful truce with other top mobsters, thus Putin. But the model allows an occasional gang war, and apparently that's Xi's role.

To shift metaphors, Xi has a lot better cards in his hand than Trump does, and Xi knows it (but Trump doesn't). So Xi can match Trump tariff for tariff, and as a bonus squeeze off US access to rare earths.

Lately Chinese diplomats are suddenly more welcome in East Asia, India, Canada, and Europe. Weird how normal great-power politics are suddenly more attractive than TV-mobster politics.

[Raphael]

Also, I'm surprised that Trump hasn't praised Putin for forcibly bringing an end to North Korea's enforced isolation, by bringing North Korean soldiers to the Ukraine.

Nah, for people who love today's Russia as (their fantasy version of) a great white country, acknowledging Russia's alliances with various places populated by darker-skinned people can't be done. Once you do that, you might eventually have to acknowledge that Russia is allied with China and Iran.

As for XI, Trump already liked to yell about China in his first term, especially during the early phase of Covid.

[Raphael]

And now, computers and smartphones and some other electronics are exempted from the tariff on China. What's next, a 300 percent tariff on all imports from Saudi Arabia except oil? Might be a grim kind of fun to watch Trumpers praise the brilliance of that move, though.

[Torco]

I don't think we mean the same thing by empire.

Yes. I mean empires. You mean countries you don't like.

only as a contingent matter. what I mean by imperialism is when a country [lets call it the empire] employs both military, diplomatic and economic power for its corporations to expand globally to secure markets, resources, and cheap labor, exploiting weaker nations to maintain economic and political dominance through imposing on the rest of the world, or at least on the weaker countries of the rest of the world [the periphery] economic conditions which benefit the empire, like the IMF austerity etcetera etcetera. This usage of empire follows lenin, but there's also less red authors, like cardoso and faletto, who have noticed this in their analysis of the international system. more generally, it only makes sense to apply the moniker of empire in the context of a globalized world to countries that exert significant global influence throughout the planet, not just on their weaker neighbours, which is why i mention the 700 military bases the us has throughout the world as compared to the one chinese base in djibouti. russia in this sense is as much of an empire as bolivia was when it tried to invade chaco, or ethiopia which is trying to invade eritrea, or chile when it invaded and annexed atacama from peru and bolivia, or argentina when it annexed the patagonia from chile. and yeah, russia did carry out a successful colonization of siberia etcetera etcetera back in the day. but I mean, i'm a lot more worried about the spread of us power over the world, which is vast, and a lot less worried about the spread of russian power over the world, which is comparatively tiny.

No, because Russia clearly wants to conquer as much of the world as possible. Anyone who's paid attention knows that Ukraine is just the first step. Also, because a lot of the people running Russia clearly have a "If we conquer a place, it's rightfully ours for the rest of human history" mindset.

even if we grant this, it's silly to think it has anything like half a chance. by contrast, the us already conquered the whole world, or near enough, not of course in the annexation sense, but, again, in the sense that the world entire, near enough, uses its currency, hosts its military, etcetera. this is relevant cause

Earlier in your post, you talked about the importance of more sophisticated methods of empire, such as trade rules. Now you're suddenly back to counting military bases.

cause of course controlling global trade *is* a form of exerting power over the rest of the world, but so is having military bases in all of them. the entire world having military bases of one country is not normal, it's not like the rest of the countries all have military bases everywhere. ¿is it not indicative of the us being in a position that's dominant?

to be honest, i feel as if "the us bringing freedom to a country" just *means*, at least when I talk to other third worlders, the us couping your country, funding fascists and all the rest of it because they want your oil, or your copper. okay, maybe i talk with third worlders that are woker than the mean, or something, but still... are americans so naive that they truly believe that the us does not use aid as a weapon to destabilize other countries? is this like a common view over in the empire? i'm only half-way being jocular here, I'm also genuinely interested.

But to answer your question, most Americans are neither fascists who want to fund fascists, nor communists who want to see the world burn. I know the tankie manual hasn't been updated since 1953, but if you looked around a little you'd find that world poverty and starvation are way down, diseases are being eradicated, once-dirt-poor countries are now industrial behemoths, democracy is far more widespread, and the US does not actually control the world. (Look up your own country's major trading partner.) This is not to say that everything is great; any American leftist has a long wishlist of terrible things that need changing. I'd say most of us think "feeding people" is not one of those terrible things, and "expanding fascism" is one of those terrible things, but your super-woke self obviously feels the opposite.

I'm not sure that answers the question... like, sure, most americans are not fascists (though a fair number of them are fairly fascist-adjacent... what's trump's approval rate these days? 45% or something?), and they're certainly not communists either, but i was asking if they realize that the us is constantly intervening abroad or not, and if they're aware or not that a lot of those nice humanitarian programs are -as well as being nice humanitarian programs- trojan horses for CIA spooks. like, when their politicians go "we're going to bring freedom to libya" do they really believe freedom will be brought to libya? or do they read that phrase as "oh, we're couping them to get access to their cheap oil".

again, USAID is known to be a front for CIA regime change operations, which you just ignore. the romans too built roads, which are a good thing ceteris paribus, but they were built so that the roman legions could operate deep inside galia [and germania etcetera], and so gauls nevertheless were justified -if they were anti-imperialist gauls- to want the romans to withdraw from galia. you here are playing the role of the roman going "but we brought them laws and roads and sestercii, the ungrateful bastards", or of the hispanist complaining about the latin americans like "we gave them writing and christ, how dare them now kick us out".

as for poverty and starvation being down, nearly 70% of that is the result of china going from, as you say it, dirt-poor country to industrial behemot. this isn't something we can put on the "good things the pax americana has brought to the world" column of the ledger.

But these 150+ % tariffs can't be good for Xi's opinion of him

an alternative take, which i don't find myself totally convinced of but seems interesting, is that trump feels the us cannot afford a russia-china alliance, and thus wants to draw russia into a russia-us axis that might serve as counterweight to the prc. it wouldn't be entirely unprecedented (the us played a significant role in the sino-soviet split, after all), and if you look at it from the perspective of resources china and russia, if friendly enough to be considered a single bloc, would control a huuuuge chunk not only of land, but of the global market of rare earth elements and a bunch of other stuff (graphite, for example). this would explain why he's cozying up to putin while risking alienating xi (though then again, he seems to have backed down from the 125% tariffs, so it could all just be creating the dip in order to buy the dip instead). asia is quite big

[keenir]

I don't think we mean the same thing by empire.

Yes. I mean empires. You mean countries you don't like.

only as a contingent matter. what I mean by imperialism is when a country [lets call it the empire] employs both military, diplomatic and economic power for its corporations to expand globally to secure markets, resources, and cheap labor, exploiting weaker nations to maintain economic and political dominance through imposing on the rest of the world, or at least on the weaker countries of the rest of the world [the periphery] economic conditions which benefit the empire, like the IMF austerity etcetera etcetera. This usage of empire follows lenin, but there's also less red authors, like cardoso and faletto, who have noticed this in their analysis of the international system. more generally, it only makes sense to apply the moniker of empire in the context of a globalized world to countries that exert significant global influence throughout the planet, not just on their weaker neighbours, which is why i mention the 700 military bases the us has throughout the world as compared to the one chinese base in djibouti. russia in this sense is as much of an empire as bolivia was when it tried to invade chaco, or ethiopia which is trying to invade eritrea, or chile when it invaded and annexed atacama from peru and bolivia, or argentina when it annexed the patagonia from chile. and yeah, russia did carry out a successful colonization of siberia etcetera etcetera back in the day. but I mean, i'm a lot more worried about the spread of us power over the world, which is vast, and a lot less worried about the spread of russian power over the world, which is comparatively tiny.

I think thats partly because Russia genuinely withdrew from some places, like Hawaii and Afghanistan...and partly from how they had to abandon other places when the USSR fell.

Earlier in your post, you talked about the importance of more sophisticated methods of empire, such as trade rules. Now you're suddenly back to counting military bases.

cause of course controlling global trade *is* a form of exerting power over the rest of the world, but so is having military bases in all of them. the entire world having military bases of one country is not normal, it's not like the rest of the countries all have military bases everywhere. ¿is it not indicative of the us being in a position that's dominant?

i suppose the obvious question is "why does every nation need military bases everywhere?" even the US doesn't use 90% of their military bases in Greenland.

the first country that I was going to use as a counter-example, was Tuvalu - they don't have much of a need for their military bases being in dozens of other countries...not when they're still denying that its rising sea levels that are flooding their country. (or has that policy changed?)

...but now I'm curious if Nepal possessing a few dozen military bases in other countries, would impact the Gross National Happiness of Nepal.

[Travis B.]

Advocating a 'multipolar world' or blindly advocating 'anti-imperialism' is often very much, well, tankie-adjacent, one must remember. One must remember that the supposed alternatives to 'American imperialism' are much of the time no better, and often worse (if they seem better it's generally for lack of opportunity on their part than any actual moral superiority). Go ask a Tibetan or Uighur what they think of the PRC and how benevolent it is.

[zompist]

But to answer your question, most Americans are neither fascists who want to fund fascists, nor communists who want to see the world burn. I know the tankie manual hasn't been updated since 1953, but if you looked around a little you'd find that world poverty and starvation are way down, diseases are being eradicated, once-dirt-poor countries are now industrial behemoths, democracy is far more widespread, and the US does not actually control the world. (Look up your own country's major trading partner.) This is not to say that everything is great; any American leftist has a long wishlist of terrible things that need changing. I'd say most of us think "feeding people" is not one of those terrible things, and "expanding fascism" is one of those terrible things, but your super-woke self obviously feels the opposite.

I'm not sure that answers the question... like, sure, most americans are not fascists (though a fair number of them are fairly fascist-adjacent... what's trump's approval rate these days? 45% or something?), and they're certainly not communists either, but i was asking if they realize that the us is constantly intervening abroad or not, and if they're aware or not that a lot of those nice humanitarian programs are -as well as being nice humanitarian programs- trojan horses for CIA spooks. like, when their politicians go "we're going to bring freedom to libya" do they really believe freedom will be brought to libya? or do they read that phrase as "oh, we're couping them to get access to their cheap oil".

American progressives are aware of US interventions, of course-- most obviously through the CIA and the School of the Americas. I think your suspicion of famine relief and teachers and hospitals is indeed tankie propaganda, especially as you approve of Soviet coups and Soviet humanitarian interventions, since you trumpet the Soviets' work for women in Afghanistan, a side program alongside their main humanitarian project of killing 10% of the population.

you here are playing the role of the roman going "but we brought them laws and roads and sestercii, the ungrateful bastards

You're a liar and a hypocrite. I'm equally disgusted by US-run and Soviet-run coups. And homemade autogolpes for that matter. And disgusted by your fake moralism in support of Soviet adventurism and Elon Musk's crusade against humanitarian aid.

[zompist]

It's probably worse: Trump knows what a tariff is and doesn't care. He wants to weaken America.

That is, unfortunately, a hypothesis which fits the facts pretty well.

There's an interesting video from Ha-Joon Chang on tariffs and whether the Republicans can get what they want from them. Short answer: no. It's interesting precisely because Chang has defended tariffs for developing nations; indeed, he's pointed out that almost every developed nation used tariffs at one point or another-- for the US and the UK, it was long ago enough that people don't remember.

Chang points out 1) that development takes decades, not years, so the Republicans will be imposing enormous costs and getting no benefits; and 2) development isn't a matter of just taxing imports; you need a whole infrastructure of workers, materials processing, universities, and investment.

Other have pointed out that what businesses hate is instability, so the Repubs' chaos theory of tariffs (on today, off tomorrow, on again the next day...) is just going to make businesses sit out the crisis. Plus, the global crash and stagflation that the increased taxes would cause will cause the reverse of development. People build factories when there's money to be made, not when the economy is cratering. Then there's the enormously complex international supply chains for products today, which just don't make sense with high tariffs. The Republicans are destroying the global trade system and doing nothing to actually build up US industry.

I also just read an article on pharmaceuticals, which makes the point that nobody's going to want to build pharma factories in the US, because... they require enormous masses of steel, which will be more expensive due to the tariffs.

[hwhatting]

It's probably worse: Trump knows what a tariff is and doesn't care. He wants to weaken America.

That is, unfortunately, a hypothesis which fits the facts pretty well.

Honestly, according to all I've read about Trump, it's worse - he is actually a true believer in tariffs; the belief that free trade is a mug's game where other countries take advantage of America and that tariffs are the only way to change that an re-establish a manufacturing base is one that he seems to have consistently since the 80s. This is worse, because this means it's not one of the things he'll be ready to give up when he sees that it damages his popularity or in order to get something else in a deal; he will make tactical concessions, but will always return to using tariffs to bludgeon other countries until someone takes his hands off the wheel or the pro-business Republicans in Congress receive enough heat form their sponsors and voters to take away tariff-setting from him (which they could; tariff-setting is a prerogative of Congress and Trump uses executive powers delegated by Congress that can be rescinded or limited). But I guess the suffering still needs to increase a lot before that happens.

[jcb]

"Trump floats deporting ‘homegrown criminals’ to El Salvador"
- https://www.newsnationnow.com/us-news/i ... -citizens/
- https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald ... rcna201183

[alice]

"Trump floats deporting ‘homegrown criminals’ to El Salvador"
- https://www.newsnationnow.com/us-news/i ... -citizens/
- https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald ... rcna201183

That almost also belongs in the "Confusing headlines" thread. Even more so if you combine the headlines: "Experts pan Trumps floating of plan to deport homegrown criminals" reminds me of panning for gold.

[Raphael]

Whatever about other parts of the world, right now, Europe is multipolar - there are at least four serious poles here. Putin is currently trying very hard to end that state of affairs and make Europe unipolar. When someone cheers Putin on in that effort, as Torco does, then it's completely ridiculous for that person to pretend to be oh-so-concerned about multipolarity.

what I mean by imperialism is when a country [lets call it the empire] employs both military, diplomatic and economic power for its corporations to expand globally to secure markets, resources, and cheap labor, exploiting weaker nations to maintain economic and political dominance through imposing on the rest of the world, or at least on the weaker countries of the rest of the world [the periphery] economic conditions which benefit the empire, like the IMF austerity etcetera etcetera. This usage of empire follows lenin, but there's also less red authors, like cardoso and faletto, who have noticed this in their analysis of the international system. more generally, it only makes sense to apply the moniker of empire in the context of a globalized world to countries that exert significant global influence throughout the planet, not just on their weaker neighbours, which is why i mention the 700 military bases the us has throughout the world as compared to the one chinese base in djibouti.

By that standard, most of the empires in history weren't empires. The Mongolian rulers - the worst mass-murderers of the pre-Columbus era - didn't rule empires by that standard. Even most of the European colonial powers - with Britain being the notable exception - had fairly little power outside the political boundaries of their colonies. If your preferred writers' great theoretical arguments lead to conclusions that fail a basic smell test, that's an argument against your preferred writers' great theoretical arguments.

russia in this sense is as much of an empire as bolivia was when it tried to invade chaco, or ethiopia which is trying to invade eritrea, or chile when it invaded and annexed atacama from peru and bolivia, or argentina when it annexed the patagonia from chile. and yeah, russia did carry out a successful colonization of siberia etcetera etcetera back in the day.

If Bolivia, Chile, or Argentina would have had serious ambitions to conquer all of South America, and a realistic chance to reach that goal, your comparison would make more sense.

but I mean, i'm a lot more worried about the spread of us power over the world, which is vast, and a lot less worried about the spread of russian power over the world, which is comparatively tiny.

You can afford that position because you live oceans away from Russia.

[kosen444]

The term “left” in the U.S. has shifted a lot-what counted as progressive in The West Wing era now feels pretty centrist. On this site, it’s explained how certain legal acts, like the Impoundment Control Act, could play a big role if Trump were to return. Might be worth a look if you're following how power could be used or limited in a second term.

[Raphael]

The term “left” in the U.S. has shifted a lot-what counted as progressive in The West Wing era now feels pretty centrist.

To leftists, yes. Right-wingers, on the other hand, still often see every position to the left of their own as "radical far-left extremism" or something like that.

[alice]

The rise of end times fascism; very interesting and pertinent.

[malloc]

Trump ‘Alarmists’ Were Right. We Should Say So.

[rotting bones]

Trump ‘Alarmists’ Were Right. We Should Say So.

Er, don't the liberals remember advising people to pay no attention to what the right was saying? They threatened to ban me for discussing Mencius Moldbug. They laughed at me for being alarmed about Jordan Peterson before he got famous. I got it right (if you can call it that) because I didn't listen to any of that advice. These weren't centrists. There were Jewish lesbian feminists involved. Repeatedly being wrong about such things is part of what turned me off mainstream liberalism.

Rawls' "overlapping consensus" view of politics was helpful, but I think Cockshott's "Markov model" framing was more systematic in predicting why certain people would want certain things. It's in How the World Works by Cockshott. Unfortunately, the dude's really old and a Second Generation Feminist TERF. Liberals might have similar worked out models, but I'm not familiar with them. I have to look into Michael Freeden's work. But if it argues against revolutionary leftism, I don't know how predictive it will be. It seems to me Trumpism succeeded by following revolutionary tactics, while liberalism failed by giving undue respect to smart-mouthed centrists. Also, arguing against revolution might put people off attending protests, the surest way to strike fear into Trump's black heart.

If anything, maybe we should form a Hysterical Party, a party that promises to be maximally hysterical in every situation. Our primary base will be the wine moms. I suggest we start by promising to eat every cat that crosses our path until people vote out the far right.