I’ve listened to the Poor Proles Almanac and they’re basically left-unity (anarchist) preppers. Their information is probably useful either way, though. I just started listening to It Could Happen Here, and the first episode is pretty cringe. Robert Evans is anti-Assad and thinks a Syrian civil war type scenario could happen here. He praises maidan coup fascist protesters (without mentioning their fascism or US backing). And of course, he thinks a collapse could be soon in 2019 and a lot of crazy stuff has happened since, but no civil war. I’ll keep listening critically to see if he has anything decent to say, but not looking good. As the empire crumbles and climate change gets worse is a collapse scenario realistic?
Personally i think this collapse mentality quite dangerous, because it is paralyzing, like lets all relax that capitalism will fall by itself.
One thing that we must acknowledged about capitalism is that it is resilient as fuck, and when in crisis it will turn to fascism, and in the particular case of u.s, the elements of fascism, being chauvinist, reactionary and mass, is already part of it’s culture by itself, the american exceptionalism, the ideas of the destiny manifest, the founding fathers and etc.
My take is, turn openly fascist, we are already seeing this on florida with it’s bizarre anti-trans laws, squeeze it’s “allies” even more, cause conflicts throughout the world to revitalize it weapons based economy.
civil war, i don’t think so, perhaps some pockets of armed resistance from the persecuted.
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We’ll have bread for a while, true, but how bout the circuses?
One thing I’m wondering about with that, is what happens when the US public becomes too poor for Hollywood to market to them? What happens when foreign markets are their only target, because Americans don’t have the money for movies and tv anymore?
I can’t really imagine a US public that isn’t constantly glued to the tv, so I have no real idea what such a thing would even look like.
Maybe that’s why the streaming services have started to strongly encourage viewers to go back to pirating.
Honestly with our weak global supply chain and danger of climate change and diseases, along with “the market’s” terrible priorities, I wouldn’t be surprised if they keep cranking out marvel movies and TikToks while people are hungry and the streets of the imperial core.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they keep cranking out marvel movies and TikToks while people are hungry and the streets of the imperial core.
The newest things in that comment are Marvel movies and TikToks. Unlike some countries, the U.S. doesn’t care about its people (unless they’re bourgeoisie)
True, I just mean on a larger scale. Intodalagoon suggested food would last longer than entertainment.
That’s the problem with just-in-time logistics and production. There are no reserves and no capacity to create them. It’s the same throughout the western world. I reckon it’s one of the reasons the western states were so shit through the pandemic. They couldn’t do what China did even if they wanted to. Simple lack of capacity. It was easier to give the appearance that politicians just didn’t care about people’s health, which comes with the added advantage of garnering even more support from the death cult half of the population.
IMO one of the most important characteristics of this century will be the mass-migration of networked labor. For the first time ever, an immigrant worker can be in real-time contact with their friends and family back home. That makes every immigrant an ambassador for labor, a bridge between the unions of two countries. Global warming will force hundreds of millions to migrate by the end of this century.
When their unions become large enough and conscious of their power, they will be able to organize strikes that span continents. Imagine a strike against Tesla that shuts down not just the sales floors in the US, but the factory in Mexico, the lithium mine in Bolivia, and anybody else who makes any parts Tesla needs. The capitalists won’t know what hit them.
As an outsider I think civil war would be unlikely just because the broader USA society already has a tendency of allowing fascists to do whatever they want because “it’s the law” anyway. I think they’re more likely to just go into full “how many deaths is it economically viable” again like they did with the Covid 1 Million while the media industry just goes
Its just my opinion, but it’s a hard no from me. Even if the US declines nominally on certain fronts, it is not necessarily declining relative to its peers. So it’s it’s influence is not really declining noticeably enough to signal qualitative change.
Yes there are plenty of things to be optimistic about, such as dedollarization and seeming to fail in Ukraine, but this will not be a fast enough process to blindside it. The US has time to adapt and disrupt the coalitions that are necessary to push forward and there is still time for mistakes on the part of coalition builders, or antagonistic contradictions developing among them.
Basically, even as the US becomes more and more vulnerable, everyone else is still vulnerable as well.
Also, the US has other weapons such as it’s propaganda machine and imo it’s never been more dangerous than it is right now. It doesn’t need to be persuasive either, only disruptive.
Most importantly, very few people in the US seem to actually want it to fall. This important because even if the US seriously stumbles, it is more likley that Americans generally will seek to recover it’s footing instead delivering the killing blow and moving forward in a decolonial and anti-imperialist direction.
At the same time, however, I feel like most of the security the US enjoys is something that could collapes relatively quickly. I just think I would be too optimistic to believe this must happen anytime soon instead of under other circumstances such as a highly developed alternative international coalition and an organized front at home. The BRICS still have work to do imo, but indeed the ball is rolling, just gotta pick up the pace.
Collapse or civil war doesn’t necessarily mean revolution. Robert Evans thinks it would be simultaneous fascist terrorism and a strong urban left movement causing destabilization of the federal government. I’m not really convinced as fascists are probably just going to seize state power and have no need to fight it, but it’s a possibility. The closest thing I can realistically imagine to revolution is the federal government losing control as it runs out of oil and socialists and anti-colonial forces are able to get hold of smaller territories.
I agree that unfortunately fascists will likely take state power (if they havent already)
I like the idea that we could control small territories in some way during the chaos. It could be that coalition between socialists and the Tribes could be dangerous to the state in combination with pressure from an international coalition but the only way the US runs out of oil is if someone is insane enough to set the Permian basin on fire along with all the refineries along the gulf. The US is a petrol superpower that basically competes with OPEC+ by itself. Thanks Obama.
Robert Evans
Whn the CIA thinks that, it may hold some truth.
The thing is, it’s hard to know if he actually believes in the feds and is just being fed public facing information, or if it’s more truthful based on what the feds actually think.
So either he is a reactionary or a useful idiot? Doesn’t help his case.
I see balkanization of the US and maybe a socialist republic forming within the North American land mass as much more likely than a fascist or socialist seizing of US state machinery as it exists currently.
It seems possible for fascists to seize the state machinery, but if the government started invoking hitler and Mussolini people would revolt, as the know those people are obviously bad. Socialists wouldn’t be able to take the whole country at once for certain, and no strong socialist movement invoking the name of the United States could survive, as those most oppressed and likely to fight are not your average white “middle class” “patriot.”
Slow collapse is the most likely scenario and I’d say we’re probably in the middle of it right now.
The thing I wonder about is what that would look like. Who would take control of the 4000ish nuclear weapons and the 800+ bases around the globe? It wouldn’t really be good for anyone if the US military was decapitated, and split into various factions or whatever else might happen from that point on.
I really don’t know how that can work in anyone’s favor without a nuke or two being used somewhere.
Bases will be destroyed, idk about bombs. The thing that must be done is mass scale cyber attack on USA’s nuclear system and disable it, and then, ONLY THEN, the world won’t be in danger anymore.
that would require coordination and timing… who can predict when the US will collapse with any amount of certainty?
i know nothing about how the nuclear arms are operated, but i would be aghast if it were remotely possible they could be disarmed via the internet
yes because that means that they could be launched via internet. Last I heard the system is airgapped using old technology and I hope that they did not do an upgrade to improve effeciency of launch to depreciate security of unauthorized launches.
It’s an interesting scenario. Would it lead to a withdrawal of forces back to the homeland to prosecute the war for either side? Or would it lead to petty warlordism both in and outside of the US?
Obviously I don’t want the people of the US to suffer in a horrific civil war like has happened to so many countries the US has meddled in, and a destabilized US is probably more visibly dangerous than one that suffers a slow relative decline into multipolarity.
I think poor proles is neat.
I think a “collapse scenario” is quite probable, but I think some specific dominos would need to tip in order for it to happen. No real clue when that could happen.
I think any of the huge climate-related weather issues we’ve seen almost had the potential to develop into huge long-term infrastructure issues with massive loss of life, specifically:
- NW heat dome in 2021.
- Texas ice storm power failures in 2021.
- Various California forest fires.
- Various gulf hurricanes.
The U$ doesn’t have the ability to handle something to the level of Hurricane Katrina at this point, and much worse is more probable with climate change.
I also think a few things could trigger it as well, like:
- Engaging in or losing a peer conflict - the internal political will just isn’t there.
- Full de-dollarization - the U$ is a parasite economy, and needs to be propped up.
I don’t think it would take much. The U$ population is insanely stressed and wound tight, and beginning to lose the benefits they saw from being part of the empire. The capitalists basically can’t allow any meaningful changes to the material conditions of people who need it here.
No real clue as to when. I’ve got 2025 on my dream board.
I agree with this assessment. I don’t think any of the anarchists talk about empire or dedollarization. I also think it’s telling Robert Evans never talks about intelligence whether in OKC or the Arab spring (I doubt he’s even heard of PatCon). As the saying goes, there will never be a coup in the US because there are no US embassies there. Of course I already know how he works for bellingcat and works to divide whatever “left” we have here (anti-tankie rhetoric). He seems to think there will be fascist terrorism alongside an Occupy Wall Street type movement.
Yeah, Robert Evans is pretty suspect. I remember liking the initial “It Could Happen Here”, though.
There’s some interesting bits to it, but it’s basically speculative fiction.
I wouldn’t be surprised if do we see some armed clashes between the full-fash types and the colonized people they’re trying to terrorize.
For both the Syrian and Ukrainian wars you have to remember what each of the challengers to state power wanted to do, destroy anti-Imperialist forces. So I think the only way the US has another civil war is in reaction to a serious disturbance of Capitalism where a progressive force challenges the the sovereignty of the state/property order (like the German Revolution). The US police/militia forces would do what the French police threatened to do a month ago, break from the authority of the state to “restore order”. I don’t think this is a civil war as much as it is the property order recovering from a crisis. A civil war will only come from revolution.
I think we have to be prepared as a movement for serious disturbances to society from the environment. I don’t think people realize how badly the Gulf of Mexico states collapsed during and after Katrina. Millions of people left the region, white supremacist gangs were lynching Black people. Only the military had the capability of entering the New Orleans. There are many disasters like this brewing in the US (fires and earthquakes in the west, Colorado River crisis, aquifers depletion in the prairies, tornadoes in the mid-west, hurricanes in the south and east). We need to prepare our communities for these crises, which Capitalism will actively attempt to prevent us from doing, this is where we can prove that Capitalism is holding us back.
Civil war? Idk
Collapse? God I hope so.
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I disagree that an actual civil war is in the cards. Wars are fought over territory, and while the country is divided politically, those divisions don’t clearly map onto particular territories within the US. What I could see happening is something like the Years of Lead, with various political factions engaging in street fighting and mounting terrorist attacks amid generally worsening economic conditions.
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I can’t wait for Trump to win for 2 reasons. First, I can’t bear to see or listen to Biden anymore, at least Trump is funny and because I can’t wait to see the fuckup he will cause.
I’ve heard people say Trump is funny but honestly, how? At best he’s just annoying and at worst he’s completely vile.
Only thing funny about him is how much of an incompetent idiot he is.
He is a meme goldmine lmao
