I keep wondering if it's a thing where Trump is expecting China to blink and he keeps raising the stakes, thinking he'll get them to bend the knee, not realizing that they can take it a lot more than the US can. I know there are other theories floating around that have a real strategy behind them, like decoupling from China to do a hot war or to re-industrialize or something, but I don't know, even if strategic, it all seems pretty apple pie in the sky from the US's end. It comes across to me like the actions of an entity that feels cornered, with the attitudes of an entity that is used to being king, that has yet to come to terms with its decline.

I don't want to have unfounded optimism about it. I imagine the US can still do a lot of damage militarily across the world, at least in the short term. But the "soft power" part seems to be going increasingly in the shredder.

Reminds me of someone who once said like, "The US is three corporations in a trench coat."

Same idea.

That's wild, wow.

Defending the levies, Vance said: “We borrow money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture.

I'm actually lost, like the racist/classist peasants remark aside, what is he even trying to say here? Who in the US is borrowing money from China to buy things from China ???

Playing chicken with a train.

Thanks for the context. I've figured they're an extension of the white supremacist, colonial fucked system (which implies a lot of shittiness all on its own), but am not very clear on the details. Do you have any sources you could recommend on the history?

an innocent man

* man who has headed up an organization of mass murder through conscious neglect and profiteering

father of two young children

* who helped murder god knows how many fathers, mothers, and more through exploiting people's health conditions for money

Make America Safe Again

* for rich white men who exploit others, as if most of them don't already walk scot-free anyway

seek the death penalty

* to scare straight anyone who thinks of holding accountable rich white men who exploit others

The capitalist class is nothing if not consistent when it comes to projection.

Over the past 25 years, the world has bent to the vision of one man. In the course of a generation, he not only short-circuited the transition to democracy in his own country, and in neighboring countries, but set in motion a chain of events that has shattered the transatlantic order that prevailed after World War II. In the global turn against democracy, he has played, at times, the role of figurehead, impish provocateur, and field marshal. We are living in the Age of Vladimir Putin.

What this ridiculous "great man theory" style analysis tells me is that even in decline, they refuse to take responsibility for anything. They tried to have total control over Russia and couldn't, tried to encroach on it and overextended in the effort, and now they're acting like it was a grand game of chess they were outplayed on instead of the material conditions on the ground. Infantile reductionist framing of complicated factors involving many countries.

Beijing is conducting espionage activities on what Western governments say is an unprecedented scale, mobilizing security agencies, private companies and Chinese civilians in its quest to undermine rival states and bolster the country’s economy.

Reads like pure projection. Like if you change the wording to:

Washington is conducting espionage activities on what anti-imperialist governments say is an unprecedented scale, mobilizing security agencies, private companies and American civilians in its quest to undermine rival states and bolster the country’s economy.

It's basically just what the US has been doing for decades.

I'm sure China is doing some covert offensive things. It'd be a bit odd if they weren't considering they can't have any lasting peace while the western empire is still going. In that sense, it's more like defensive offense, most likely, in the same general meaning as Palestine trying to survive a genocide when they take out an occupier tank. Some of it's probably real, some probably fabricated to manufacture consent for cold war, but either way, the characterization of it reads like very clear projection.

I don't even know what to say. Just thinking about the amount of planning going into this terrorism.

"Bully returns home, tells mom it was traumatizing when victim fought back."