I often look at submissions like these (and there are many), gloating about the fall of the us empire, which is fair enough, but the articles/studies themselves are usually lamenting this fact (at the very least implicitly), and are essentially trying to drive support for maintaining it, like brainstorming solutions. I get confused, because it seems we are looking for direct confirmation of the decline of empire… from channels of the empire? I think it’s better to link to and discuss sympathetic material showing why and how the machine is failing and what we can build in its stead, not submissions linking to the machine’s awareness of it and attempts to “correct” it from within the same narrow scope. The former will increase knowledge of theory etc, the latter is just a strange circlejerk. Seems like it might backfire. And is easily abused.
This is partly why I worry that these kinds of “confirmations” of the decline is doing anti-imperialism a disfavor (and also becomes an easy way for ops to confuse, misdirect, redirect) – the alternative is not going to magically be a shift to a socialist economy, that needs concerted effort. The “alternative” is more likely to be what you described.
Of course I still think that there is value in discussing these kinds of pieces, but often the comments will echo simplistic “lolz” type sentiments which will just be used to represent socialists and sympathisers as a brainless, directionless, destructrive force, at which point you might as well be an anarchist, “rationalist libertarian” or some other individualistic aesthetic self expression, bleh.
Fwiw I’m not against gloating/mocking humor when it’s principled, informed, on point, and cuts deep like what I assume hexbear tries to do with its memes and shit (I’m not too familiar yet).