People claim Israel has America by the balls and that's probably true.
The other country that has us by the other ball is Pakistan.
It isn't exactly the inability of the dishwasher to dissolve crimes against cuisine where the problem is rooted.
And in retrospect, it was a huge boon to India and Bangladesh to separate themselves from Pakistan.
It's the state policy part that I find the worst. Individual acts of senseless violence you can blame on the individual; state acts that in retrospect are senseless violence you can - in some cases - blame on what was known at the time.
To purposefully do that when you now it's useless is a rare evil; to declare it's useful when you know it's useless is an Orwellian, totalitarian turn.
And it was torture, not 'labelled' 'torture'. Waterboarding, sleep deprivation, high-volume constant music, others I'm glad I don't know about. It was torture.
America permanently traded away basic freedoms for the bogus promise of safety in the shadow of fear. And the Supreme Court was too scared to stop it despite its obvious constitutional problems. Crying eagle photos in chain-emails were sufficient propaganda to keep it in place.
Too scared? They may have been on board...
The current military "excursion" seems to be transitioning the US out of being an empire.
although they didn't just do that, the American founders also articulated the point that the article seems to present as some new insight. That permanent foreign military involvements and the state it requires will eventually diminish freedom at home, that was why many of them wanted to avoid emulating the British empire.
Given that papers like the Economist used to regularly be staunch defenders of these interventions until they went wrong, and only ever seemed to disavow them for their practical outcomes rather than in principle they might want to do some reflecting on that.
However, they reversed position in 2007, calling the invasion a debacle.
In terms of realpolitik or execution it can be.
On top of this, the limitations of the petrodollar system are becoming increasingly apparent. When it worked well in the past, economic distribution could be used to suppress dissatisfaction — the American middle class generation is a case in point. But as dollar hegemony weakens and resource allocation becomes more difficult, the ruling class typically begins to replace economic rewards with emotional rewards like fear and hostility. They point fingers and say, 'Your enemy is these people.' When the system cannot grow the pie, the most efficient resource allocation for authoritarianism is to forcefully suppress internal divisions through coercion. Perhaps the dollar system itself might be a fundamentally flawed system.
An overzealous cop and prosecutor can, with a little luck, use the power of the state to get you executed or imprisoned for life for a crime you didn't commit.
If you had to choose one of those, which one would you prefer?
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin#1750s
It's time to reconsider some of what we bought.
Consider the situation at the end of the Clinton administration. The US was at peace. The Soviet Union was gone. The US got along with China and Russia. No major enemies remained. The federal budget was balanced. Bin Laden looked at that, and realized that America had to be weakened before it could be defeated. That was his plan.
Mission accomplished.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bin_Laden:_The_Man_Who_Declare...
are his people better off or are they worse off?
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20060311045338/http://news.bbc.c...
I don't want to make a sweeping statement that the U.S. is Israel's lapdog, but it is true that regarding many policies—especially those concerning the Middle East—the U.S. is essentially swayed by Israel.
Of course, right now J.D. Vance might represent a kind of domestic counter-force in the U.S. that leans more toward 'America First' rather than prioritizing Israel. Rubio is also a more pragmatic individual, and Trump is not your traditional politician who just blindly follows Israel's orders. Unfortunately, Trump might lose the next election, and the Democratic Party will absolutely revert the country back to its past status as a vassal state to Israel."
Let's discuss it openly, as you prime: how do you contrast what you just shared with the war, and Israel's actions after the agreed to ceasefire and declaration of war's end?
But Europe couldn't keep herself together, Taiwan was constrained by circumstances to not defence-spend-up and Japan is just moribund despite attempts to rebuild. Realistically, the US kept everyone together for some 40 years after the Berlin Wall fell and that's a pretty good run. Two generations in "Whitey's on the Moon" is a resurgent and wide culture, and China outproduces any other nation while domestically and internationally repudiating that culture.
Perhaps we were doomed to this path by the inexorable nature of success. Two generations have been born and enough time has passed that people have forgotten what it is like to fear the "awesome Soviet threat". The modern empire was a loose confederation of US-Europe and the East-Asian satrapies with a capital in DC perhaps but other capitals in London and Paris as well. And just like that Boer War showed the old British Empire could bleed so will Iran have done the same this time.
Doubtless when the need arises we will sweep away environmental law and historical protection law in order to build our factories but already the appetite for war is gone from America. Why Europe couldn't keep herself together and why America couldn't retain the alliance and why the modern Not-Empire fell will probably be written about, but I think it's worth remembering Kipling at the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria who was then queen over an indomitable empire:
Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
At best, I hope that the Iran War teaches us where we are weak and we are wise enough to learn this, and I hope that the Not-Empire heals and order is restored in this world.
American industrialists going back to the robber baron era and beyond have always loved autocracy, specifically fascism. This was heightened by the fear of communism. When FDR was elected, there was an attempted coup (ie the business plot [1]). Hitler was a fan of Henry Ford and named him in Mein Kampf. The Nazi regime enjoyed a certain amount of popularity in the US. There was a rally by the German American Bund in Madison Square Gardens in 1939. But FDR gave concessions to the working class that we still enjoy today (eg Social Security).
After WW2, we decided to make an enemy of Stalin (again, because communism). Thousands of former Nazis emigrated to the US (and, no, not just Operation Paper Clip; they were also in the CIA and FBI). Former Nazis gained high positions in the West German military and ultimatly NATO (eg Adolf Heuzinger [2]).
The mere existence of the Soviet Union forced the US government to give more concessions to the working class. The 1950s were incredibly prosperous as a result, in an era when the top marginal tax rate was 91% and the ratio of CEO to median wage was a fraction of what it is now.
The Fall of the Soviet Union was about the worst thing that could happen for normal Americans because suddenly there was no counterbalance to US global hegemony. The 1990s saw the Democrats abandon the New Deal in favor of Reagan economics and policies despite ~60 years of almost unbroken control of Congress up until that point. They then sowed the seeds for the destruction of American manufacturing and having an economy completely focused on hoarding land and housing. The 1990s is really where that began to go out of control.
My point is that history didn't begin with the war on terror. 9/11 itself was blowback from American imperialism that had been around since the 19th century.
I'd say if anything primed America for autocracy it was the domino effect from desegregation. This led to the political activation of the evangelical movement (no, it wasn't abortion) and evagelicals are primed to be followers. Add to this that there's no effective opposition because the Democrats decided to be Republican Lite and here we are.
All of this came about because a handful of very wealthy people wanted to be even wealthier at the expense of everyone else.
I wonder what war they'll regret next?
"Well, I picked the one I hated most and put that at the bottom of the list. Then worked up from there."
"In 1776 the American colonists rebelled against what they saw as the arbitrary and tyrannical British monarchy."
I like the sly use of "what they saw" - typical British snark.
https://jach.law.wisc.edu/exec-power-royal-prerogative-found...
We were rightfully warned on the dangers of political parties and it's well demonstrated that that warning was correct in its assessment.
The fact that millions of Americans declare themselves to be loyal to their party first and foremost is terrifying. Evil people have weaponized the tribal stupidity of humans to trick them to vote against their own best interests.
I take no satisfaction in saying this, and would love to be proven wrong.
Before I got banned from redstate.com 20 years ago for sharing an unflattering fact about a particular Congress, I remember one person there being genuinely uncomfortable with the fact that I wouldn't declare myself to be in one camp or the other. They really wanted me to be in a certain bucket so they'd know how to treat me. It was unnerving to them.
The War on Terror was also an early sign of kleptocracy in the US Executive by conservatives. There was massive waste, fraud and abuse, in the billions of dollars. People working in the executive directly profited by making sure their corporations won bids, and dollars sent overseas just vanished. The people who decided to wage war got rich off it. (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/13/opinion/afghanistan-war-e...)
...and again (despite the Economist being British), the US-centric view that led to Trump declaring that NATO has never done anything for the US. In fact, after the US was the first (and so far only) country to invoke NATO article 5 after the 9/11 attacks, NATO troops were also sent to Afghanistan, and Wikipedia lists the following military casualty numbers:
USA: 2420
UK: 457
Canada: 159
France: 90
Germany: 62
Italy: 53
Others: 338
more details, including deaths per million population, where Georgia and Denmark are before the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_casualties_in_Afghan...
Frankopan describes most of modern US history as a series of blunders. This approach is maybe a bit harsh, but it shows how difficult it is for a dominant power to stay on top.
I would summarise the book with a sentence „When you reach the top, the seeds of your decline are already planted”. In fact you can look at China or India - future dominant powers, and guess which of their flaws will make them fall.
Thank you for the recommendation!
> In fact you can look at China or India - future dominant powers, and guess which of their flaws will make them fall.
Are these flaws talked about in the book or are they something you've worked out since after you read the book?
Never Forget.
I can't tell if he is just simple minded or what. He always appears to be well meaning, and it's tempting to blame his advisors for all the awful stuff that happened on his watch.
Maybe the real test of a leader is to see who he chooses as his advisors. Bush was terrible, and Trump is even worse.
Sooner or later any ingroup will itself be divided into an inner ingroup in power and a powerless outer ingroup who'll be treated just like the old outgroup.
Americans need to start prosecuting their war criminals. This is the only way out of the quagmire.
The closest parallel to America right now is Argentina prior to the dictatorship. If or when the real dictatorship comes, you'll know it, because just as in Russia you won't be publishing articles about it.
https://www.transparency.org/en/corruptionary/revolving-door
From a certain angle, it actually looks less like an autocracy and more like a military junta which has captured both 'sides' and puppet-masters either one depending on the mood of the masses, according to the needs of the MIC - which gets everything it wants without interference by "The People".
If we test the theory that American Presidents are beholden to the military industrial complex and not vice versa, compared to actually authoritarian countries in which the military basically is the government, we can see all sorts of civilian controls which restrain our government versus the others.
When I said it was like Argentina in the 60s, I meant that it definitely could become a quasi-mitary autocratic regime, but at the present moment it is not. It's just in the throes of populist movements which might ultimately lead to such a thing. Any objective glance at actual military regimes, any knowledge whatsoever of the rest of the world's history, proves immediately to a casual observer that the United States is not currently comparable to a military dictatorship.
The attempt to frame it as one, however, is blatantly ignorant of the current state of the world, to the degree that the motivation behind doing so is suspect. Really, only a shill for a dictatorship is interested in trying to prove that America is analogous to an autocratic state. An objective observer who wasn't being paid or hadn't bought into authoritarian propaganda would at least compare and contrast our legal system with the true, terrible, and numerous actual dictatorships all around the world.
The long and short of it is: A bunch of people organized (over group chat) a protest in Texas, where their plan was to conduct noise protest with fireworks. Some of the people knew each others, some did not.
When they met up, some of the protesters broke off from the group and started vandalizing gov. property, like slashing up car tires.
This all culminated with a gov. guard approaching the people, guns drawn. One protestor fired at the guard from distance with a AR-15, and the guard was struck in the shoulder. The shooter argued that he believed the guard would fire at the group - he was handed a 100 year sentence due to attempted murder.
The rest of the group were found guilty in planning and aiding a violent terrorist attack, and handed 50 year and up sentences. If you look into the actual details of what they were charged with, and the things actually done, it gets even more wild.
This was possible due to "antifa" being designated a terrorist organization.
What this means in practice, at least in Texas, is that if you're part of a organized protest, and something goes wrong, you can and probably will be charged as a terrorist, or aiding a terrorist, and face life behind bars.
I have no doubt that if / when dems dethrone Trump and MAGA GOP, all but the shooter will be pardoned, and the terrorist designation of antifa will be removed - but we now see that designated antifa works as they intended: To charge anyone protesting Trump or his controlled organizations as "antifa", and thus label them as domestic terrorists.
And the partition of India is the well accepted term for the event. I'm not going to be drawn into some post colonial syntactic argument in a discussion about the very real deaths if very real people as well as the human tragedy of the subsequent forced displacement from land people had lived in for thousands of years.
Jinnahs argument with the Indian Congress was because someone sang a song once referencing a Hindu goddess from a novel. It's honestly bananas and difficult to understand especially when his own daughter lived in India after partition
Ideally India would have balkanized into ethnolinguistic nations with a common union like the EU. That would have probably been the best outcome but the religious partition has led to increased religious extremism on both sides, seemingly unsolvable instability for 1/4 of the world population, and again, millions of deaths.
The US still more or less remembers how to improve and that book is an example of how such improvement could start, what changed in the last decades is that more and more Americans don't want to. The word "Again" is crucial, MAGA don't want to make America great, they want the America from their nostalgia. It's hollow, that's not what they wanted but it could never have been otherwise.
There were real excesses, and I ultimately agree with you that many of them were predictable in advance, but there was no feasible version of a response that did not go at least a little into crazyland. It was a crazy time.
> The Middle East should not be the punching bag for America to take out its "crazy" feelings (where "craziness" appears to be a polite way of saying "bloodlust").
Yes, this I agree with. The Iraq War in particular was clearly not justified.
How many plane hijackings have occurred in other countries, which don't have the TSA?
In the aftermath of Vietnam, the US was reluctant to get involved militarily (at least overtly.) That seemed to last until Kuwait. The success there seemed to embolden US hawks, and there were a couple long-term excursions after that.
The current dude apparently fell for the ever-present hawks, without the savy to ask the right questions. His total capitulation, after demonstrating the ineffectiveness of the military, while at the same time proving the effectiveness of asymmetric warfare, will (perhaps, hopefully) be an educational moment for future presidents.
Certainly it is a valuable educational moment to other defendents. You don't need to fight back. You just need to affect something else the world cares about. And, it turns out, global shipping is especially vulnerable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_hijackings
(I can not say how comprehensive that wikipedia list is).
There's more in the 70s and 80s than I was expecting (having lived through the 80s), but given how many flights there are, hijackings have been and are exceedingly rare; and most of these are not even US flights. These are "driving is orders of magnitude more dangerous than flying" and "10x a very small number is still a very small number" numbers.
https://businesstats.com/global-air-traffic-number-of-flight...
https://easbcn.com/en/how-many-planes-fly-per-day-around-the...
https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/world-air-pas...
These numbers only serve to re-enforce that the response of giving up liberty for (the feeling of) security due to terrorist action in the US was probably outsized. General population awareness in general was probably more of a deterrent after 9/11 than any of the first order 9/11 response actions, especially considering that the US gave countries in the middle east further reason to hate Americans and US foreign policy after 9/11. Obviously, terrorist attacks get a lot of air time and column inches, which feeds the perception of the risk.
The Entebbe raid was the canonical example, playing out as it did over a full week: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entebbe_raid
And there had been another hijacking just the week before that one.
You can quote statistics at people all you want, but when something like a plane hijacking is happening nearly two out of every three months on average (throughout the entire 1970s), and sometimes on a weekly basis, and making a big splash in the media every time, people are going to want something to change.
Even Trump's CDC admits it was 1.2 million deaths FROM covid.
Make it make sense.
My reason for asking is because I believe that "that's unconstitutional!" has been a failed protest message for more like 100 years than 25 years (and there's threads of state violence at the local and state levels that go back far longer). And IMO that is even stronger evidence that words on an ~240-year-old-doc—and the way some interpret the second amendment in relation to those words—is a completely powerless measure against state violence. The United States is not exceptional in that regard. We'll only have a better country if we constantly, actively, choose to vote it that way.
Your sentiment starts out fierce: "constantly, actively..." and is immediately cut short "... choose to (only?) vote it that way."
You point out that voicing one's interpretations of the 2nd amendment is powerless - but voting, reduced to such a miniscule gesture, is also. The choice between a galloping right wing and a stagnant center-right is no choice at all. American elections are a facade for decisions already made on top. You can't vote it out.
If you nevertheless are certain that that was or is the goal of one of the US's two major political parties, then you've reached a perplexing conclusion based on, I can only guess, no evidence, evidence imagined, evidence misunderstood, or evidence contained in a source that should be tossed into the garbage can.
Let's say in the main election 45% of the population will vote for whatever candidate represents side X, 45% of the population will vote for whatever candidate represents side Y, and 10% is more-or-less in the middle.
If, during the primaries, side X votes for a far-X candidate, they will definitely lose the middle 10% to a moderate-Y candidate, leading to a strong Y victory. But if side X votes for a moderate-X candidate during the primaries, the main election will be moderate-X vs moderate-Y, and they have a pretty good chance of securing the slightly-more-than-half of the middle they need for an X victory.
Of course you now end up with a lukewarm moderate X victor who isn't going to represent your far-X views, but at least you're not dealing with an even worse Y-side victor.
The real solution is to get rid of the winner-takes-all system inherently resulting in a two-party election, but Good Luck doing that kind of overhaul!
For example, ranked-choice voting would reduce the spoiler effect and allow you vote for your real choice, however it would not (on its own) change that races have a single winner, who eventually "takes all."
This matters because even if it's preferable to have both, ranked-choice is easier to introduce incrementally and with fewer amendments to various constitutions.
The UK has winner takes all parliamentary elections but still has multiple parties represented in it. There seem to be a lot of other barriers to other parties in the US doing the same.
This critique had its heyday in the 2000 election. I can't fathom still holding fast to it. The last 26 years have been a continuing, relentless stream of evidence to the contrary.
State capacity. USA prior to the internet and the surveillance state was too big, too populous and too sparse to be effectively administered.
Trump is doing what every other president since WWII wanted to do ... but they didn't have the technology. Just for a moment imagine what USA will look like if you didn't get someone incompetent like Trump right now but Nixon or Johnson. With the modern security state - it would be their dream.
"I don't care if they respect me so long as they fear me." - Caligula.
To be fair they had been in the empire for a good amount of years at that time if i remember well. ...so when comparing to other previous influxes that did get integrated and/or assimilated it does seem apt.
Rather, hopefully, Iran will be to the US what Turks were to Byzantium.
The Turks conquered Byzantium (and India, etc)?
An invading force that settles within it and ultimately destroys it before launching expansionist invasions to all of its neighbors?
Gulf States will now strategically look out for other partners. Just like Europe / EU and Canada.
Trump tried to leverage a lot of influence in the most stupid way and failed over and over. Does the US even have relevant allies left at that point? Pretty sure they took notes.
I wonder if the USA is going the same way. Democratic Church of America?
Rule, under the definition of control or dominion, is "The exercise of authority over a region or people, or the duration of a monarch's reign (e.g., colonial rule)", the word rule is often applied to mean what the leaders of a democracy do, but in most cases rule seems too strict if taking the normative definition, thus there is an informal usage that applies to democratic leadership.
The President is often referred to as a ruler, corporate elites are often referred to as rulers; in these informal groups of rulers I think it is reasonable to place the Catholic Church.
I am agreeable to say they do not rule, but then we must admit they exert a great influence, in many places and ways greater than the governments that officially hold power.
There has been no more totalitarian rule ever implemented, anywhere. The North Koreans aspire to what the Catholic Church had.
Τhus the various attempts to re-manifest a Holy Roman Empire in Europe across the subsequent centuries.
once it became clear that conquest with an explicit intended return of large numbers of enslaved people would allow caesar to pay debts and fund further expansion, the pyramid was capped and required exponential expansion to perpetuate its economic aims. and this was the beginning of the end. a model which required autocratic steering to operate.
Note that we heard before Brexit that it would not cause problems, yet it in fact bring benefits as expected by anyone with any idea how economy works.
UK has a 6% decline of the economy due to Brexit
The UK might have paid the biggest price due to Brexit, but the EU also lost a significant trading partner for it's goods and services. Arguably it was a lose-lose outcome.
If you're looking for the seeds of imperialism, you'll find them all the way back to US independence.
The point the article is making is that 2001 was a tipping point in that evolution.
Once a major power has credible nuclear deterrent, the functions of the Westphalian state focuses on that singular threat of destruction - it's a cannon that ends the state. Having it be a single cannon is antithetical to an open society or democratic patterns in government. Hence, Security State Zombie, unable to perform anything other than its duties of destruction.
Russia started the game in a depleted state and hit the lifecycle stage first - less open society to burn down. We teetered for a long time, but the 9/11 attacks, combined with a reactionary wing that no longer had to run a moral race with the Communists, sent the balance over the edge.
I suspect, right now, we are seeing the "Yeltsin Era", where people finally lose their last patience with the established system, and during which the nomenklatura/technocrats/security state solidify their holdings in communications and media. Terminating this period in an orderly fashion will require some organizational energy and talent. Increased direct cooperation between national security "black" assets and local law enforcement like Texas Marshalls (hey like in Sicario, except not in Mexico), or between black assets and federal groups not operating under legislative or judicial oversight (which I leave to you to name). It will not be a modest effort - the local assets will need to be linked up with aggressively, as they are less numerous than the law enforcement under direct local jurisdiction. I do wonder who our Putin will be, or if we will even see his face without a thermonuclear bonfire.
I've been seeing plenty of Americans cheering on temporary safety over essential liberty since then, and I can't even provide examples without getting [flagged].
I've seen other people critiquing it over the years, perhaps it has something to do with other aspects of the delivery or message?
1. The person claims that a broad swathe of facially reasonable and views are being rejected or forbidden in a way that is an unfair overreaction.
2. Pressed, they refuse to provide any concrete details, even in a safe context.
3. They are actually facing difficulty from a much much narrower--or entirely disjoint--set of view.
In this case, OP has claimed the average HN commenter is hostile to a general class in the form of "our liberty has been improperly infringed by a false appeal to security", especially national security.
I don't think that claim is credible, and I'm offering to demonstrate it by rattling off a bunch of counterexamples... However, that won't mean much if it turns out OP real grievance has some important details they are trying to keep secret.
[0] https://xcancel.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/105039166355267174...
And yet we all know why that is. We have decided that certain ideologies that are ... let's call it "easy to criticize" (because they deserve some damn serious criticism and have done enormous damage. Oh and not just one such ideology). To make things worse, in many places such discussions have been legally banned. And some of these ideologies are very visible in politics or even on the street. And discussion of such ideologies immediately devolves into pinning the blame for all that went wrong in history on a particular segment of the population.
We have collectively decided such ideologies are to be considered above criticism, and you're quite right, it's not working.
It used to be commonplace to bring the horrors of certain ideologies and expose them everywhere. In movies, on the TV, exposing the blatant failures and aggression of ideologies was commonplace.
Depicting communist dissident prisons happened in children cartoons. Associating islam with slavery, including depicting how commonplace rape and open commercial exploitation of female slaves was in islamic nations was normal. The reality hasn't changed: IS/Daesh reintroduced slavery, as one of their first acts, but it is utterly forbidden to discuss why they might have done so. Frankly, islamophobia is just a word meant to shut down criticism of the very bad parts of that ideology, as well as the supremacism built into that faith, something that has no place in America, or anywhere on the planet. And on the other hand communist and ex-communist nations are still full of dissident prisons, but it can't be discussed anymore. What communism has to do with socialism also can't be discussed, or even that socialism has evolved over time (e.g. why socialism, was rabidly anti-immigration not 30 years ago, and the reasoning behind it)
And the problem is that any suggestion of going back immediately and directly runs headfirst into extreme aggression.
Hence, no discussion.
What gets 4 flags? Certain things. Such as inconvenient facts
Try posting in support of data protection law and criticising the attech industry and see how quickly it gets flagged. It's almost like some HN'ers salaries are dependent on opposing such laws!
Posts flagged for showing how politics has meddled in science (unfortunately one of those facts was overstated, as a commenter kindly alerted me to. Including the correction did not prevent flagging):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48578344
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48524049
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48434792
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48434589
Demonstration of NYTimes bias, flagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48164242
Showing how an article omitted any links to Israel in its discussion of the Iran war, flagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48076950
Citing a Dutch study on economic impact of immigrants, flagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48070799
Showing how a study omitted data that interfered with its conclusion, only revealed due to FOIA'd emails, flagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47281899
Elucidating on the nature of social media censorship, flagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47016171
Providing relevant context to UK's complaints about officials being banned from the US, flagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46615611
Showing the racial bias of a hacktivist, flagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46509295
Citing a Pew survey about the expressed importance of racial identity, flagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45575489
Correcting a misleading statement in an article, flagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44932696
Can someone elaborate? Whwre is this reference comming from? A simple web search did not yield much
It was inevitable. I remember, in the UK mid-afternoon after we'd found out about the first plane hitting the first tower, saying that would be the end of the Palestinians. Then the second plane hit. America would have to have reprisals, and Iraq was the target.
Mind you, the PNAC (Project for a New American Century; that era's version of project 2025, now quite hard to find on the Internet) always did want to go to war with Iran, and Iraq was a convenient vector for that.
That... doesn't sound so bad?
Lots of experts favour austerity. The trick with economics (and many other things) is to find the experts who agree with out.
The government did listen to experts over covid. Whose idea was lockdown? Who advised them that a rapid vaccine rollout was required. The government did get confused by experts having different opinions (as one would expect with a novel disease) but once convinced which experts they listened to they did follow them. The main fault was not balancing advice from experts in different areas (e.g. balancing physical health, mental health and economic impacts of lockdown correctly) which is exactly what I was complaining politicians fail to do
The term 'expert' here actually means well-funded lobbyists who pay to have access to the politicians. They are able to present decision-makers with convincing arguments to pass laws that are favorable to the ones funding the lobbyists. They are smart and they are experts, but they are also laser focused on using that expertise to get what the funders want. This is almost always an outcome that is bad for regular people.
just as the UK the US is also full of career politicians sitting in very powerful (sub)committees
Can you link a couple of examples? Presumably those articles should be easy to find on economist.com
“The threat posed by Saddam
The Economist certainly said it was. We did so most strongly and clearly in a survey (Present at the creation, June 29th 2002) on America's world role; and in leaders on August 3rd that year (The case for war), February 22nd 2003 (Why war would be justified) and March 15th 2003 (Saddam's last victory).”
And that has happened many times. It is not as improbable as you seem to think.
I really can't understand the thought process of someone who thinks it would better to have their life taken than their job. You know you can just...get a new job, right?
I was baffled by this conversation until I saw that you've rapid-fire posted 30 comments in the last 2 hours. Now I understand: you are not putting any thought into this conversation at all. So I will match your effort.
Google Accounts aren't linked at birth, and many people don't even have one.
"Saudi Arabian citizens" == literally the House of Saud, and their direct associates.
Bin Ladin came from a wealthy family of construction magnates with ties to the royals. It's like if Barron Trump decided to move to rural Ontario and start a Christian Identity movement.
What really hurt Bin Laden was the knowledge that the Saudi elite WANTED American troops in the holy land. His real enemy was never America, the West or crusaders it was his fellow Muslims- who have for the large part rejected his insane ramblings.
[1] https://ctc.westpoint.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Declara...
Bush’s famous “Mission Accomplished” photo op was, ironically, on the same day US troops complied with bin Laden’s demand for them to leave Saudi Arabian soil.
It's clear that Bin Laden did not "win" in any immediate sense, but America might have still lost, so there's a claim to a Pyrrhic victory.
The truly erratic and unstable nature of the US regime in this moment unlocks strange possibilities that would otherwise have been unthinkable - for example, the current regime seeming to throw Israel to the wolves in order to cover its own military blunders.
Might have??
America has spent - at the lowest possible estimate - at least 8 trillion dollars on the "war on terror". Probably more like 20-something. Trillion.
That's enough money to have transitioned to entirely clean energy, housed every homeless American, and solved world hunger. With change.
The DOW is over 50 thousand though, I guess, and the Epstein class are richer than ever.
> for example, the current regime seeming to throw Israel to the wolves in order to cover its own military blunders.
Uh, what?
Israel threw themselves to the wolves, if 'wolves' are what we're calling the consequences of doing ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and genocide.
America have been the single greatest force by far holding the 'wolves' at bay. If they stop because the 'wolves' are threatening their own stability, that's not really "throwing Israel" anywhere.
Or as The Onion has put it:
https://theonion.com/fbi-uncovers-al-qaeda-plot-to-just-sit-...
I think Bin Laden will get a chapter in the book on the fall of America, but Reagan will be on the front cover.
It’s like saying History will record Gavrilo Princip as having won WW1. Huh?
America’s current troubles are political polarization and ballooning deficits. Both of which are happening in every developed country, having nothing to do with 9/11. The foreign interventionism is a 100 year tradition in the US, nothing new under the sun.
The only thing Bin Laden accomplished is making air travel annoying, making some military contractors filthy rich, and getting hundreds of thousands of his Muslim brothers killed over values that are slowly eroding in the Middle East anyways.
The American global military empire was always going to decline over time, if anything, his actions reversed that decline and led to more American intervention. He got the opposite of what he wanted.
The US did spend a Trillion on Iraq. But during Covid they spent nearly $5T...in 1/4th the time they spent 1 in Iraq. They also spent $9T on QE.
Iraq is a drop in the bucket. The real problem is a structural one with modern democracies. Turns out when you can legally take your citizens money at gunpoint and also tax the entire world via inflationary money printing with few short term consequences, this power gets abused.
Their economies have problems, but USA leads in debt.
You're not adjusting for growth rates.
Also, Germany's debt isn't in the global reserve currency, so their problem is arguably worse. The actually have to pay for it using their 0 growth economy.
The US will just tax the entire world to pay for its debts by printing more of the global reserve currency and inflating it away.
American problem is one sided right wing radicalization, not polarization. If left of center moved the the right even more, the issues would remain.
Now we just need a right-leaning person who lacks self awareness to offer a rebuttal to you and we can complete the picture.
It's certainly true that the political parties are more polarized, didn't used to be as ideological as they are now. To a large extent, the southern Democrats all left to join the Republican party, and the "compassionate conservatives" have mostly abandoned the Republican party. I expect with the split between MAGA and the America first people we are beginning to see another realignment.
You always here people say one half of the country is red and the other half is blue, but in reality is probably more like 1/3 each red/blue and another 3rd who don’t subscribe to the dogma of either side and are fed up with the endless bickering between the two teams.
One thing that’s for certain is the tech giants tech giants and news companies are attempting to manipulate us more than ever. It might feel like we’re more polarized that ever, but I think much of that is because it’s good for business, and they are shoving division in our faces on a daily basis.
There is real evidence of this by an awesome project called “Tech Watch Project” (https://techwatchproject.org/). They have a data dashboard with real time charts at https://americasdigitalshield.com/.
The idea is that tech giants are purposely trying to manipulate voters in the middle by feeding them more biased search results, notifications, et cetera. The thing about this, is that on close election they can literally swing elections the way they want them to go by manipulating undecided voters algorithms.
In elections with wider margins it’s not going to have an effect, but in close races it only takes a point or two to get the desired result. This is a power they should not have and it needs to be talked about more.
Many Muslims weren't political before the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_Brotherhood got enough influence.
Give it a few years.
> J.D. Vance might represent a kind of domestic counter-force in the U.S. that leans more toward 'America First' rather than prioritizing Israel.
Do you mean like he’s going to drain the swamp?
I'm not entirely sure either; after all, perhaps only Americans themselves know best. In China, Vance is generally considered to belong to the nativist camp. He doesn't support the U.S. attacking Iran and has been surprisingly quiet on this matter, as it would primarily benefit Israel rather than the United States. Therefore, if he were elected as the next president, we might see the U.S. and Israel gradually drift apart. Of course, powerful lobbying groups might prevent him from getting elected. To be honest, I don't really think Vance can succeed. I'm not entirely sure how much actual power the MAGA movement holds, but it seems they rely far too heavily on Trump's personal appeal.
> more concessions to the working class. The 1950s were incredibly prosperous as a result
This is absolutely not a common read of the boom in the 1950s. The common read of the boom in the 1950s is that America leveraged its success in WW2 into a global imperial economy, exporting its goods everywhere in the world. The combination of massive manufacturing expansion at home during WW2, the brain drain into the US and the trade deals, power brokering and treaties that carved out the post war world order made America very wealthy. There is no world in which a “labor value” oriented economic order on its own would have resulted in an ‘incredibly prosperous’ 1950s without WW2.
The fall of the Soviet Union ushered in what I would consider more of a golden age, overseen by Clinton in the US, when we had a balanced budget, low global conflict and massively reduced inflation compared to Carter / Reagan early years. If you went back to 1994 and could have gotten 10% of working Americans to vote to return to 1980’s labor market, I’d be shocked. These were qualitatively different economic times. Post Iraq war, gas was at $0.99/gallon. In the earlier era you’re lionizing, there was rationing throughout the US.
I agree with your perspective on 9/11 being blowback, although I’d characterize it as blowback from our Middle East policy - I haven’t read a lot about Bin Laden, although I did read his manifesto — and I didn’t take away that he cared much about 18th century American imperialism (such as it was; we got much more effective at this in the 20th century in my opinion).
I absolutely agree that the US massively benefited from WW2. For one, no war was fought on the American mainland (as opposed to, say, Europe and Japan, which were levelled). We benefitted from being the arms dealer. The post-1945 world order was reconstructed or built to our benefit. All of this is true.
But where did this wealth land? Wealth and income inequality actually shrank from 1945 to the 1970s and has exploded since [1][2].
> The combination of massive manufacturing expansion at home during WW2 ...
And why was there manufacturing then but manufacturing has been hollowed out now? Where does the money go now? We had way more capital controls in the post-WW2 era. Now all the money just seems to speculate on real estate. And this is something Adam Smith and Karl Marx agreed on: landlords are parasites on the economy.
> The fall of the Soviet Union ushered in what I would consider more of a golden age, overseen by Clinton in the US
Clinton was a disaster. I suspect you feel this way because you came of age in the 1990s maybe? The 1994 crime bill, financial deregulation (eg repealing Glass-Steagall), welfare "reforms", replacing federal programs with state block grants, effectively ending public housing (ie the Faircloth Amendment), NAFTA, three strikes rules, the list goes on. It was the Clinton administration where the so-called "New Democrats" divorced themselves from the labor movement and decided they wanted that sweet, sweet corporate PAC money.
If you opposed what the current Republican governments are doing and you're scratching your head wondering why there's no real opposition, you can point the finger directly at Bill Clinton as to why. Obama was also a generational missed opportunity here but I digress.
> In the earlier era you’re lionizing, there was rationing throughout the US.
... because of US imperialism, specifically the US support for Israel.
> I’d characterize it as blowback from our Middle East policy
No argument here. But our Middle East policy was US imperialism. Also, it's worth noting that we directly created bin Laden as one of the mujahadeen we used as a foil against the Soviets in Afghanistan as payback for Vietnam (basically).
[1]: https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/a-guide...
[2]: https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/exploding-wealth-inequality-u...
The CBPP leads that page you linked with “The years from the end of World War II into the 1970s were ones of substantial economic growth and broadly shared prosperity. Incomes grew rapidly and at roughly the same rate up and down the income ladder, roughly doubling in inflation-adjusted terms between the late 1940s and early 1970s.” So (household) wealth grew in the postwar boom in real dollar terms. But I think you meant to say that, and you made a small typo: wealth grew, inequality shrank?
The CEPR link also has what I think is the most important politically (and material to people) chart, which is the real wealth growth numbers. Real wealth of the bottom 90% grew until the early 70s, dipped until the early 80s, hitting its low point in the era I was picking on, and then turned and grew, with catchup growth compared to the 1% through the 90s (my proposed golden era), only reversing course in 2001 or so, post dotcom boom and staying low, never recovering through the two crashes.
I am not someone who believes raw inequality is a number to be super worried about — I’d much rather everyone was better off, even if some become much better off; inequality arguments that don’t think about the poorest constituency having more wealth leave me cold, so I see that era of 1980-2001 as good for the 90%.
Since 2008, the 90% in the US have had hard times, reduced wealth, no recovery, and seen the top 0.1% yield all of the benefits of compounding capital. I propose this lines up very well with the political shifts we see in the US voting populace and the demands for populism, and is more dispositive than the removal of capital controls in the mid 70s.
Manufacturing: I’d like more manufacturing on shore; it adds resilience to the economy. But hollowed out is not accurate. US Manufacturing has the highest dollar value added to the GDP ever this year, nearly $3 trillion. Inflation adjusted, I’d guess growing over the 1970s to now period. Percent of economy? That’s down. But it is not down because the economy has shrunk. It’s down because new areas of the economy have grown.
Real estate as a percent of GDP is relatively stable over the last decades, although the number is a little harder to source exactly, but it looks to be 12-13% of the economy now and historically. That said, wage-adjusted homes are vastly more expensive now than they have been possibly ever, another contributor to today’s political dynamics. The reasons for that are a combination of political decisions, monetary policy, capital markets and zoning laws in the places Americans mostly want to live (cities).
Anyway, fun discussing some history with you. I’ll propose in return my favorite terrible Clinton-era policy - making it impossible to clear student loans with bankruptcy - driving university costs out of control for Americans in the process. Sanders pushing for the US to pay these costs for all Americans is so, so dumb - adding guaranteed money to a system that already has become excellent at gouging. Better would be to allow bankruptcy, resetting the relationship between students and their hefty tuition bills.
History indeed did not begin with the War on Terror, but I'm not sure you're entirely familiar with it.
Also, the slave owners who got strung up should probably have included Andrew Johnson. Without Lincoln's unfortunately untimely demise or without Johnson we may well have avoided Confederate leaders regaining power and the whole Redeemer era of winding back rghts for the former enslaved.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/700499/new-high-identify-politi...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathising–systemising_theory
>An objective observer who wasn't being paid or hadn't bought into authoritarian propaganda would at least compare and contrast our legal system with the true, terrible, and numerous actual dictatorships all around the world.
A superficial argument to make given the million dead Iraqi's, the countless ruined states in the middle east, the funding of terror around the world by the American people and the ongoing genocide which wouldn't be happening if America's military might was truly bound to morality.
>United States is not currently comparable to a military dictatorship
Perhaps this is true from the perspective that the military dictatorship isn't directly oppressing its citizenry as you would expect from a 'traditional military dictatorship' (except of course, in reality it really is oppressing American citizens' lives), but if you are a non-American, the evil effect of the US' oppressive military organ is very, very evident...
You can't blame the state of the Middle East on America, or on the one non-Muslim country there, as much as you wish to. The Middle East has been a basket case since one branch of Islam went to war with another branch over succession, and it will continue to be a basket case until that religious feud stops, which is probably never. American intervention, as much damage as it caused, is a late arrival.
Also, lets note that prior to American intervention, Iraqis were being gassed by their dictator, as well as thrown into a war against Iran which killed half a million people. America's crime there was that it didn't care whatsoever until the same dictator made the mistake of invading Kuwait.
9/11 itself was. The general view before 9/11 was that a hijacking is an inconvenience: you get an unexpected detour via Cuba and have a nice story to tell at the next holiday party, but that's about it.
The second it became clear that the plane itself was the weapon and that there was a very real possibility you wouldn't walk away from it, hijacking became virtually impossible as every. single. passenger. would now be very much motivated to fight in order to prevent a certain death. United 93 already made this clear: they found out about what happened to the other planes, so they tried taking back the airplane. They didn't get it back, but the terrorist attack itself definitely failed.
Even without any kind of TSA future hijackings would almost certainly be closer to United 93, as American Airlines Flight 63 showed in practice.
I'm not sure what exactly you are saying about socialism, it has lots of proponents and implementations in different countries, it's not just one thing that I can see.
I wear glasses, so perhaps that's the reason I have so much trouble finding them?
(btw: yes, I know that such movements exist, like the Ahmadiyya sect. The majority sect of muslims is attempting to eliminate them, which is even worse, imho, than them not existing at all)
And given the values of liberty and human rights that Americans have, I would expect people to have a significant problem with any ideology that continues to leave the door open for slavery.
Valid posts get flagged frequently, enough for people to notice it. But not every, or even most, posts in this category get flagged.
and some of those comments are just incorrect (like the last one about Loomer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_German_National... )
But I'm genuinely confused - you say my last comment was incorrect. Can you explain how saying that someone would have tried to stop Jews from fleeing Nazis, doesn't create the impression in the average reader that that someone isn't Jewish?
The claim isn't even grounded in any kind of reality - Loomer frequently advocates for Jewish and Israeli interests - i.e. for her own people:
According to Loomer, she was banned for a tweet about Omar in which Loomer called her "anti-Jewish," [..] According to Media Matters, Loomer has said that "if you don't vote for Donald Trump, then you just hate this country." Loomer claims that the Democratic Party is supportive of Jews "getting wiped off the face of the Earth" and that Jews who vote for Democrats "might as well just go put yourself in a gas chamber yourself if this is how you're gonna behave." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Loomer
Laura Loomer, a far-right activist and Zionist Islamophobe, denies Israel's genocide in Gaza, spreads dehumanizing narratives that frame Palestinians as inherent terrorists, and calls for their ethnic cleansing to bolster Israel's settler-colonial project and genocide. - https://www.reversecanarymission.org/person/laura-loomer
Laura Loomer, the far-right media figure, has emerged as one of the president’s most aggressive, pro-Israel enforcers. - https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/06/us/politics/israel-maga-r...
Why would we think she'd switch sides in 1940? Nor do I see how the existence of an extremely niche ("Contemporary estimates range from 3,000 to 10,000 members.") organization changes any of this - can you walk me through your logic?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48578344 is being deliberately obtuse; it's not engaging with the parent's statement at all, just claiming false equivalence and expecting other people to know what you actually mean.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48164242 is like a powerpoint slide with too many bullet points. It's a list of article titles without making any effort to explain how they show bias and in what direction. Again, you are expecting other people to fill the gaps in your own story.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48524049 already opens with a childish and illegitimate claim. I didn't even bother to read the rest, if you open with such a bad assertion you are just asking to be flagged.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46615611 is yet again not an argument. There is a hollow claim and a link. Why are you expecting others to make the effort to read an article and make your argument for you when you can't even be bothered to articulate your own thoughts on the matter?
This theory is false, it does not work. It was tested to destruction in the UK this year and tl;dr: it's how to annoy everyone. When the centre-left party chases the right-wing, they disillusion their base and lose votes there, without gaining any significant number or right-wingers, who still prefer what they see as the "real thing". And the right-wingers are emboldened, not collapsed - they take one step back for every step taken towards them.
The long version is here: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/zbmp3_v2
> Every thing Starmer said indicated he was soft on immigration and he took no meaningful steps to stop it and send refugees back.
Immigration into the UK is steeply down (1), the "took no meaningful steps" is just not true. But this is not how the topic is reported. I do believe that Home Secretary Mahmood truly does believe the hard-line things that she says (2) and that it is in no way winning any votes for Labour. Again, actual Labour voters are repulsed, and Reform voters are not attracted.
This underscores my point that ceding this issue is not how centre-left parties win. I refer you to the study linked above as to how this backfired due to these perceptions.
1) https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyp1ekd584o
2) https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/apr/21/shabana-mah...
What i’m describing is literally how the Danish left got back in power. In the UK you’d need someone in Labour at least as aggressive as Fredrickson: https://theconversation.com/denmarks-prime-minister-has-led-.... Immigration isn’t “left wing” or “right wing.” It’s just neoliberalism. It’s based on viewing people as fungible units of labor output.
I do not agree. This is obviously an issue that the far right continually talk about. In racist terms.
In academic language from the linked study:
> Thus, accommodating the radical right on immigration could benefit the radical right by increasing the salience of an issue on which it has long been perceived as having a comparative advantage
That’s labeling. Neoliberals coined the term “far right” to refer to a group that to the left of the conventional right on economic issues.
> increasing the salience of an issue on which it has long been perceived as having a comparative advantage
The Danish left predicted (imo, correctly) that the issue would remain and get more salient due to external factors. Then they got on the right side of it.
The alternative approach is to hope the issue will reduce in salience. The problem is that the unruly coalitions that you need to stop far right parties can’t meaningfully give their constituents anything else they want. This is the problem in Germany, France, and the UK.
Yes, the far right parties in the UK are trying to do most of that (1) as well as inciting race riots against immigrants. I don't think that you have a point here.
1) not so much on the free trade, they talk a good fight on potential global trade deals, but their record is not so great - spurning actual EU free trade, going along with the USA's attempted trade wars.
On that last point, the USA now is a counterexample to your criteria.
IAmGraydon•1d ago