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this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2024
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chapotraphouse
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Just going to put this out there, and it's possible I'm misremembering something I read or misinterpreted when I originally read it but
I think this is completely at odds with reality. Just on this site I'm pretty sure I've read and seen upbeared a number of times people suggest that not just Americans but all Westerners in general are so benefited by imperialism that they're all subconsciously supportive of the current order and lack essentially any capacity to support revolution.
Do you really never see that sort of sentiment expressed?
EDIT: more frequent than this is "some individual westerners might be capable of class consciousness, but the bulk of them never could be"
good point. upon reflection, i think yankkkees do benefit from US imperialism, but only for a particular definition of the word "benefit". if US imperialism disappeared overnight but the distribution of wealth within the US remained unchanged, obviously people's lives would get materially MUCH worse. however, i'm operating under the assumption that whatever revolutionary change that is capable of destroying US imperialism would also be able to change the distribution of wealth within the US. essentially the same forces that are capable of levelling out the inequalities in the bottom half of this map (sorry for reddit link) are also capable of levelling out the inequalities in the top half.
additionally i think most yankkkees' perception of how much they benefit from imperialism and the current status quo does not align with the reality. people look at things like the grocery bill going up, the rent going up, the impossibility of owning a home, the cost of health insurance (obviously), and think to themselves "wow, we're really getting fucked over, something's gotta change." they don't even perceive that without US imperialism their lives would be much, MUCH worse. out of sight, out of mind, essentially.
as a result I think the left can win over the average yankkkee to our side, but only after a lot of education.
sorry for rambling, your comment gave me lots of food for thought so ive written and rewritten my comment a bunch of times, hopefully it makes sense
Death to America
I do think that an equitable world would mean far less treats for individual Americans and some of them might be mad about that, but I don't necessarily think that it would have to mean a worse lifestyle, just a different one.
You'd save a lot of resources just getting rid of planned obsolescence and encouraging what I'm going to call "communal treats" where the cost of say, a movie theater, can be spread across a huge population in a way that you can't with like, an iPad or a huge collection of worthless vinyl statuettes, and engaging in community events is probably way better for us psychologically anyways.
Like if the average household's Funko Pop budget shrinks by 99.95% does that actually make their life worse?
I figured it was half apathy/being benefitted to some extent, half just being completely unprepared and too weak/beaten down to do anything. Shit, I'm too weak to do anything that'd actually make a difference.