NATO countries have agreed a statement ahead of their upcoming summit that sets a target of increasing annual defence and security spending to 5% of GDP by 2035, overcoming opposition from Spain.
Until the USA goes full dictatorship (admittedly less hypothetical than I’d like)
I have bad news for you.
I’m not trying to exaggerate the situation, but they’re imprisoning journalists, kicking random people out of the country or keeping them in conditions so bad that it sometimes kills them, they just bombed a random country ignoring the system that’s supposed to make that illegal without authorization, and so on and so on. They just assassinated a Democratic politician.
It’s all a spectrum. People are still in the streets without being shot, they’re still backing down or being forced to free some particular people. But the standard of “going to war without authorization” is a guard-rail that fell years ago, and more are falling every week now. If you’re waiting for the moment to fight back against the dictatorship, this is it.
If you’re waiting for the moment to fight back against the dictatorship, this is it.
This is always it. There’s no time and place without the threat of dictatorship. There’s always evil around you, near you, to be fought or else someone else will have to fight it, or you again - but much stronger.
Western underground counterculture of 70s and 80s was very good in the sense of understanding this, the general anti-war fuck-your-pretense rock-n-roll arrest-me-officer mood, unfortunately in the 90s people got complacent.
Same with critical\progressive worldview, it got neutered, diluted, saturated with “normal”, “allowed”, “by the rules” struggle for the rights of protected groups and cancelling bad people from among celebrities.
While logically intersectionality dictates that your first duty as a citizen is to look for more basic dangers, and react to them not “by the rules”, but with Molotov cocktails and sabotage.
Journalism “by the rules” is just PR, protest “by the rules” is just fashion, and politics “by the rules” is just collaborationism.
OK, it was very brave (/s) from me to write this, but living in Moscow, Russia, I suppose this is just talk.
So, you’re right that higher NATO spending is bad for the US. That’s why historically they haven’t pushed for it.
But now the US is im the grip of nepo baby morons that have no understanding of anything. They think army guys & bombs are le hecking epic & that’s the extent of the reasoning. See also: like every hereditary monarch ever.
European democracies obviously do understand the long term implications which is why they’re taking the opportunity to arm up.
Until the USA goes full dictatorship (admittedly less hypothetical than I’d like) that’s not going to happen. Democracies don’t fight like this.
Also the US is who is pushing hardest for higher NATO defence spending. So that makes no sense.
I have bad news for you.
I’m not trying to exaggerate the situation, but they’re imprisoning journalists, kicking random people out of the country or keeping them in conditions so bad that it sometimes kills them, they just bombed a random country ignoring the system that’s supposed to make that illegal without authorization, and so on and so on. They just assassinated a Democratic politician.
It’s all a spectrum. People are still in the streets without being shot, they’re still backing down or being forced to free some particular people. But the standard of “going to war without authorization” is a guard-rail that fell years ago, and more are falling every week now. If you’re waiting for the moment to fight back against the dictatorship, this is it.
This is always it. There’s no time and place without the threat of dictatorship. There’s always evil around you, near you, to be fought or else someone else will have to fight it, or you again - but much stronger.
Western underground counterculture of 70s and 80s was very good in the sense of understanding this, the general anti-war fuck-your-pretense rock-n-roll arrest-me-officer mood, unfortunately in the 90s people got complacent.
Same with critical\progressive worldview, it got neutered, diluted, saturated with “normal”, “allowed”, “by the rules” struggle for the rights of protected groups and cancelling bad people from among celebrities.
While logically intersectionality dictates that your first duty as a citizen is to look for more basic dangers, and react to them not “by the rules”, but with Molotov cocktails and sabotage.
Journalism “by the rules” is just PR, protest “by the rules” is just fashion, and politics “by the rules” is just collaborationism.
OK, it was very brave (/s) from me to write this, but living in Moscow, Russia, I suppose this is just talk.
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So, you’re right that higher NATO spending is bad for the US. That’s why historically they haven’t pushed for it. But now the US is im the grip of nepo baby morons that have no understanding of anything. They think army guys & bombs are le hecking epic & that’s the extent of the reasoning. See also: like every hereditary monarch ever.
European democracies obviously do understand the long term implications which is why they’re taking the opportunity to arm up.