And it is consuming my life.

Feel free to think that the world is simple and unchanging - the bad guys are in power and always will be. That’s what they want you to think, after all, so why shouldn’t you? It’s out of your hands now. Americans could have changed America, and they still can, but not with that stupid defeatist attitude. The world will change without you, and you will be left in the dust.

Because the explanation is more complex. Things aren’t the way they are for no reason, there’s historical context and theoretical frameworks that allow you to understand how and why the world came to be as it is, and how it is likely to change. If you understand this, then you also know not only that things are not going to be this way forever, you know that the world is changing right now. That we are closer to liberation than you think.

Knowledge is power, and understanding the world also means that you are more able to change it.

Do you really feel like this Iran incursion is somehow significant feeling compared to Iraq or Afghanistan?

The Iran situation is more significant than Iraq or Afghanistan, because Iran is going to win. This is a far worse situation for the United States government than both Iraq and Afghanistan combined, because it is breaking their aura of invincibility. They aren’t being slowly exhausted in a guerilla war, they’re being struck both militarily and economically by a country they haven’t even invaded, and will not be able to invade.

Do you actually think that the hegemonic status of the US really enters into the consideration of most people, to say nothing of having a significant impact on their emotions? Do you think an awareness of that would actually make people feel better?

You’re mixing up what is and what should be. No, most Americans don’t particularly care about the world outside their borders. If people understood that the power of the US government, of Donald Trump and his cronies, was based on American global hegemony - on the empire - and they further understood that that hegemony was crumbling and is indeed at a breaking point, they would understand that there is plenty reason to be hopeful.

Your oppressors, who are also the world’s oppressors, are being defeated! They depend both at home and abroad on the illusion of invincibility and the illusion that nothing will ever change. Those illusions are more broken today than they were yesterday, and were more broken yesterday than the day before. In the coming weeks and months, they will continue to break.

Yeah, definitely, but the world is much more complex than that. The current state of affairs is a result of historical contingency, and it isn’t going to last forever. As I have attempted to get across, the tide is already changing.

Oh. Yes, I think we can. It will come with progress. Racism is a powerful tool the ruling class uses to keep people divided and weak, but it can’t last forever.

I’m imagining an Iranian Sam Porter Bridges lugging around a huge nuke

I don’t know about “important”, at least in the american case, but it is indeed low effort enough that you may as well.

How would we what? I’m not sure what you mean.

e: I misread your original post, I thought you were saying that both sides in the war were shitbags. I still think it’s too simple of an explanation in general, though. Such circumstances deserve a deeper look.

My point is that, even if the meme is true and woke people tend to be sadder than reactionaries, it’s because they aren’t woke enough. For instance, you have generally well-intentioned progressive liberals who support equal rights and oppressed people at home, i.e. they support gay and transgender people against social reactionaries, but when they see Iran and its religious and socially conservative allies actually striking hard at the fascist empire, actually turning the tide back, and rather than being happy about it they just see it as two equal evils fighting each other. They don’t see the broader situation and context - they’re woke to discrimination, but they aren’t woke to imperialism.

For the last 600 years, the world has been dominated by European empires. These empires enriched themselves through their colonies, using that wealth to grow ever more powerful and take over a greater and greater proportion of the world, eventually overcoming and dominating their former equals in India and China.

World War I was fought to divide up the world between blocs of these empires, with the Anglo-French-American bloc triumphing and taking the holdings of Germany and the old Ottoman empire (a relic of the previous era), and breaking up Austria-Hungary. But this arrangement was not stable - Germany wasn’t down for the count, and more importantly, the old European empires were declining while America was rising.

This was settled into a more stable system with the end of WW2 and the decolonization that followed, but this decolonization was only giving way to a new kind of imperialism - that of finance, currency manipulation, loans with conditions that made extraction easier. Soft power, in other words, with the occasional bout of violent domination. But the violent domination wasn’t official conquest - rather, new and more amenable governments were installed, enabling the continued expropriation of labour and resources from the colonized countries. Thus, the new empire, formed from the old European empires but headed by America, came to dominate the world from World War 2 until today.

Social progress tends to follow from economic progress. The women’s rights movement was born out of women entering the workplace. The gay rights movement emerged in the post-war period of prosperity. The colonized countries of the global south did not have these same prosperity, and social progress came to them later than in the imperial core. At the same time, aspects of social progress often came to seen as aspects of colonialism and foreign domination, clashing with traditional culture. Indeed, the imperial core uses socially regressive attitudes and policies in the colonized world to justify our domination over them. Just look at the war with Iran (the repressive mullah regime that executes gays and makes women wear veils) for an example. They aren’t as developed as us, and therefore we must crush and dominate them, and seize their natural resources for private capital. Thus, a lack of social progress in the global south (or third world, or whatever you want to call it) creates the justification for imperial domination, while imperial domination creates the conditions that hinder progress.

The victory of the colonized and the overthrow of the imperial yoke will create the conditions that foster social progress. It’s a precondition, so interpreting the socially conservative Iranian state resisting the American empire as “one evil fighting another” is wrong-headed. It’s historically progressive. The victory of Iran will be a victory for the world, which will help move history forth into a new post-imperial era. 600 years of this, over half a millennia, and it’s finally coming to a close. There is therefore every reason to hope and little reason to despair. Woke liberals do not see this, because they are not woke enough.

That’s only because most “woke” people are radical liberals, who have good intentions but don’t have a scientific view of political economy and still have a soft-imperialist worldview. As conditions in the imperial core decline, they succumb to despair. The failing power of the empire and the rising resistance of the global south instills them with a sense of nihilism, because we are supposed to be enlightened and civilized (though we can no longer be said to be, with the rise of overt fascism in the west), while our enemies are regressive, authoritarian barbarians - two equal evils fighting each other, with no hope for anything better.

You only need to gain a greater understanding of the world, and particularly of imperialism, to break out of this mindset. We’ve occupied a privileged place in the world, bought off by the oligarchs to ensure support at home while they plunder the world. But this was always a gilded cage. It’s easy to look at the gold leaf peeling off the cage, revealing the rusting steel beneath it, and despair at how the world is getting uglier, but this only reveals that you haven’t imagined a life outside the cage. The rust is ugly, but it also weakens the substrate.

In short, the tide has already turned, and the day of liberation is approaching. It can’t come quick enough, but it’s coming nevertheless. If wokeness has made you despair, it’s only because you’re half awake - gripped by sleep paralysis and tormented by shadows. You only need to wake up, to become more woke, to see that the sun is beginning to rise.

Probably, but it’s also the truth. Enthusiasm is worthless if it’s directed in the wrong direction.

I personally don’t agree with banning except in cases of open fascist apologia, but both “sides” basically are morally the same in the big picture. The mod should have attempted to argue this position rather than banning you.

When I say big picture, I mean specifically for the world, rather than for Americans. Obviously the Democrats are better when it comes to preserving the rights of Americans. However, both parties want to maintain imperial domination over the third world - the Democrats prefer to do it through a mix of soft power (finance and diplomacy) and relatively minimal military power, while the Republicans have decided that soft power is woke and prefer brute military force.

You might argue that finance and diplomacy are objectively a less brutal and more civilized way to keep control over the world, and you would probably be correct (though sanctions, a supposedly bloodless and anodyne foreign policy measure, kill 560,000 people per year.) However, it’s also a more effective means of control. Trump, in deciding to go country-to-country imposing US dominance at gunpoint, has bitten off more than he can chew. He’s exposed to the world that the US military can be resisted, and that the US cannot protect its pet comprador dictatorships. Thus, the Republicans’ unsubtle brutality has doomed the empire to die decades early.

Is that to say that I think the Republicans are better than the Democrats? Certainly not, rather I reject the premise of the question. They are both the enemy. Would you take sides in a factional struggle within Nazi Germany, or choose a favourite between the Imperial Japanese Navy and Imperial Japanese Army?

What is one even supposed to say to this? Iran and its allies are fighting the fascists. Their opponents are genocidal nazi pedophiles bent on world domination. You’re willing to “both sides” that and not the stupid US electoral system?

They’re defeating the fascists militarily, I see no need to purity test them

So you’re saying China treats Hong Kong as an internal colony? I don’t think that’s borne out by the facts but I’m happy to hear your argument.

I didn’t say that the Republicans weren’t worse than the Democrats, they measurably are, as your statistics show. A two foot hole in a sinking ship is worse than a one foot hole in a sinking ship. If the repair team comes along and mostly patches the hole so that the water comes in slower, then the next repair team comes along and rips the patch off, it’s still a sinking ship.

Well obviously the best but also least likely answer is a revolution. That doesn’t look promising, so I’ll focus on smaller and more achievable things.

First thing is not to worry about the national democrats or waste any time or energy supporting them. Go ahead and vote for them if you think it’s a harm reduction measure, but don’t put in any money, hope, or real effort for them - they’ve already abandoned you. You still have some say in state politics, so that would be a better place for your efforts. Likewise with municipal politics. In general, you should be more worried about what’s going on around you rather than distant national politics that you have no effect on.

Try to build relationships with your neighbours, and your community. Strengthen relationships with your family and extended family. If you could unionize your workplace, that’s tangible power that you can wield that’s a lot more significant than your vote, and it’s another community that you can lean on when the going gets tough.

Develop the kinds of skills that will be useful in a failing country: repairing things, growing food, etc. During the 90s, Russians supplemented their diets by growing vegetables at dachas. They already knew how to repair things since Soviet consumer products usually came half-broken from the factory, but would last forever if you could repair them. Most Americans have yards, so the food situation shouldn’t be terrible, but the consumer goods aren’t designed for repair. This doesn’t discount repairing as a skill, though, it just means you’re at a disadvantage compared to 90s Russians when it comes to repairing consumer products.

Finally, remember that you’re just one person in a country of 350 million. You didn’t cause this, and you can’t stop it. Focus on the things you can affect.

Yes, that’s fair. The Republicans are objectively worse than the Democrats, but the general dynamic is towards worsening conditions and increasing decline regardless. The Democrats at the bare minimum don’t have the guts to meaningfully oppose the Republicans or do any real reforms that would make people’s lives better and therefore put them in a position where they’ll win consistently against the Republicans, to say nothing of doing something like tying Trump for his crimes.

In fact, I’m more partial to the position that the Democrats aren’t an actual opposition party at all. They don’t really object to anything the Republicans do. Rather, they focus their respective bases on culture war issues to ensure that people are distracted from the things that the Dems and GOP have a common interest in: more money and power for oligarchs, continuing and extending imperial domination, etc.

Clinton does nothing good, people get tired of Clinton, Bush wins.
Bush starts two wars, erodes civil liberties, renditions people to Guantanamo bay, accelerates the creation of the modern technological panopticon, crashes the economy, people get tired of Bush.
Obama wins promising change, does nothing good, further cements the precedent that wars and assassinations are done by executive fiat (this one has really backfired in the last month), life continues to get worse for everyone, people get tired of it and want change.
Trump wins, does nothing good except send people cheques during Covid. People get tired of him and elect Biden.
Biden does nothing good, and also ends the Covid assistance, and supports Israel in a genocide. Trump wins again.

I don’t know how anyone can look at the last 30 years and think that having a Democrat government results in anything other than things getting worse at a slightly slower rate than under the Republicans, followed by another Republican administration where things get worse at an accelerated rate. Refusing to criticize the Democrats is basically the worst thing you could do if you actually want to get out of this death spiral.