The corporate neofeudalism century, same as the rest of us.

Dude looks like a somehow even more evil version of Dr. Phil.

Welp, Im a 34 year old man whose misspent and regretable couple of youthful years on 4chan basically scarred me for fucking life.

And I fell into the age old 4chanesque assumption that you were another current or former anon.

At least I can be honest about it, I guess.

embarrassing

Totally off topic but… dear god… HotDogFingies?

Thats like… NuggieMuncher 9000 or NoWaifuMeCryfu.

Best of luck on the intermet, uh, fren.

Yes, I am aware of all of this.

Here’s the crux of your argument:

There is no chance that the commander of the Texas National Guard unit would order their soldiers to fire on federal agents unless they’re a complete idiot.

So uh, this can’t happen because it would be dumb if it did.

I agree it would be dumb if it happened.

Doesn’t mean it can’t.

Doesn’t mean the situation is not a powder keg, doesn’t mean that if basically one exceptionally stupid command, conflicting with a far less stupid command from another authority, is acted on, it could escalate rapidly.

Again, these kinds of /which authority will be recognized in case of conflicting commands, by which individual commanders and sometimes even soldiers/ are a defining element of civil conflicts around the world throughout history, and they are simply not predictable at an individual basis when in an extremely polarized, tense and complex situation.

Your argument is basically just: this would be dumb if it happened, so its unlikely/impossible.

Again, yep, itd be dumb.

Again, viewed through a lense of history of civil conflicts, especially a Chinese lense, it actually certainly qualifies as a very obvious situation to be highly concerned about.

The comparison with Ukraine and Russia was not chosen because the similarities of the situation leading up to armed conflict, but simply to illustrate that a lot of people can believe an armed conflict would not happen because it would be dumb if it did, and also to provide an example that sometimes, in war, surprises can happen that astound even the experts, as well as the general public.

So… quite honestly this is probably a translation issue and cultural differences.

In China, throughout Chinese history, if a local government body /openly defies/ a greater authority, to the point of defying direct orders regarding the deployment of highly armed and combat capable forces… and you now have a scenario where armed forces loyal to the local government are literally right next to armed forces of the greater authority… and both official governments are claiming they have the right to do what they are doing, and the other does not…

This is functionally nearly always a situation that ends up spiralling into war, and basically the inherent assumption is that the local government should be subservient to the greater government, and they should know that what they are doing is likely to lead to armed conflict, it is likely to escalate, thus functionally when you add together the assumption that the local government should submit and is not, and the proximity of opposed armed agents of the state on both sides… basically this would be viewed as Texas declaring war on the Federal government.

We interpret the situation as, well, Texas didnt declare war because they cant actually do that legally!

In so doing we kind of forget that /thats not how civil conflicts fucking work/.

Basically put another way, if an armed conflict does start here, and then it broadens, and then 10 years later youre reading about it in a history text book…

Is the term civil war going to be used?

Or will we all agree to call it the special military and police action to quell an illegal use of force by rogue and criminal elements within the united states government?

Which of those do you think is going to more easily translate to Mandarin and Cantonese and what not?

EDIT: I am /far, faaaar/ from a fan of the current Chinese government for a great many reasons.

But, it can always be a useful exercise to read how other country’s media outlets report on your own country’s domestic affairs.

Is there outright propaganda and lies in some instances? Absolutely.

Is that happening in this case?

In my opinion, not really, no.

I personally, as an American living here my whole life, would basically agree that at the very least, what Texas is doing is done with the implied threat of, and known public support for /functionally/ starting what /basically/ amounts to a civil war, by engaging in escalating brinksmanship, seeking other allies (whats it 25 states now are waiting for Abbot to ask them to send their NatGuard to Texas), and both sides are moving combat capable chess pieces on the board in highly public ways.

Sure its not technically a declaration of war or secession, but uh, thats because /technically/ those things are impossible, even though they realistically are not.

My only possible actual quibble here would basically be that eh probably most Americans wouldn’t view it as a war or secession attempt until shooting starts and a formal declaration of ‘we are forming confederacy 2, this time so we can shot hispanic migrants and form a theocracy instead of uphold slavery of blacks’.

Which… again. A declaration is about /intent/, not necessarily precisely timed with action toward that intent.

Basically, at best, this is a nearly totally unprecedented situation in US History, basically totally unprecedented in a century.

Most Americans suffer from massive latent, unconscious American Exceptionalism across the political spectrum, assuming kinds of status quo type norms that simply are not actually evidenced by both history in general of societies around the world, as well as literally our own.

There are of course many issues where I think generally, the modern culture of China suffers from its own kinds of blinders… but not on this kind of an issue.

Even in this thread we have a comment of basically “yeah right, they wouldnt win in the long run” which both denies the proximal possibility of a civil conflict, but also admits that it could happen, but that itd be /dumb/ if it happened.

As if wars have never been fought for reasons one or even both sides think are dumb, or wars have never been fought when it seems very likely one side would lose.

Remember when nearly everyone thought Russia would never invade Ukraine because it would be dumb, and then he did, and then nearly everyone thought Ukraine would basically be steamrolled, and it wasn’t?

Wait so, is this a conjob to later try to switch the country over to some cryptocoin, or was that the stated goal the whole time?

I genuinely feel bad for Argentinians, but jesus christ never put an AnCap in charge of a state.

As a person who has played the Arma series my whole life it is truly astounding, sad and hilarious when footage from one of those games is seriously presented as actual real world footage by any actual news outlet.

ONE

Is down!

TWO

Taking Command!

General Frost?

Man Putin must be scraping the bottom of the barrel if he’s using CO’s from Advance Wars.

My GOD think of how many YouTubers selling merch will be driven into destitution rofl.

Please. Please buy my 25 cents of plastic molded into a cute action figure by sweatshop workers for $25 dollars PLEASE.

You are correct.

A more in depth version of what I meant would be something like… margin squeeze + delays -> more delays -> more delays /of everything/ causing a kind of general, network style problem of firms that rely on inventory arriving on schedule paying premiums for more reliable delivery dates for their either assembled or premium products to hit their own delivery dates.

This kind of thing can spiral out of control easily as it did when the Suez got the ship wedged in it during covid. Its hard to summarize it neatly other than the logistics version of death by a thousand cuts.

Its wild that the angle here is that specifically China is in a pickle.

The reality is that every person and economy that depends on low shipping costs and reliable logistics is in ‘a pickle’.

Which is … basically everyone, every economy.

Just In Time Inventory

• plus +

Must Make Next Quarter’s Numbers Look Good

• plus +

Oh God Our Razor Thin Margins Just Got Obliterated By Shipping Costs

=

Layoffs

Pass the Cost to the Consumer

Shortages

Welp, back to the drawing board on building a solar powered gaming PC.

My plan is to survive the apocalypse in Plato’s cave, but the cave will have Half Life 2.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNDIIDbSc78

Preeetty sure a lot of Finns right now would love nothing more than Putin to give them an excuse to uh, expend their munition stockpiles in an Easterly direction.

The easiest way to explain this to a non American is that Americans are highly selfish, vain, anti intellectual, ignorant and superficial compared to much of the rest of the world.

Hence me asking about getting out.

Years ago now I was telling my friends that QAnon was such a serious problem that it would endanger the country and even the rest of the world very seriously. I have a degree in Econ and another in Poli Sci, so I was able to explain in detail a worst case scenario.

Then Jan 6th happened, far exceeding my worst fears.

A week or so before one friend told me nah man nobody believes in QAnon before, old meme bro.

Then after Jan 6th they spent a year calling me hyperbolic for describing what Trump and other MAGA Republicans were doing as fascist.

I no longer speak with them, as in addition to being infuriatingly politically illiterate, they are generally insufferable people who bicker about each other constantly.

Anyway… yeah. We live in a cyberpunk dystopia over here, half corporate exploitation of everything material, half cruel, absurd and hypocritical hyper christian fundamentalism over our minds.

How is this surprising to you?

Half of the US votes for christian nationalist theological fascists that have already successfully banned everything to do with lgtbq people existing in many parts of the country, and about 1/3 of the US population believes in all or significant parts of the insanely hateful and delusional QAnon conspiracy universe.

You must not be American, or follow American domestic politics closely?

The Republicans control Congress which means the Democrats cannot pass any legislation, and are in fact bogged down fighting off insane nonsense to basically either somehow give more money to the already wealthy, or fighting off insane shit to take away even more basic rights for minorities.

Its basically illegal to get an abortion now in half the country.

And Trump has now multiple times just said he will be a dictator if he wins in 2024, and is currently leading in the polls.

Like, if you are European, can I fake marry your daughter or something to get the hell out of this collapsing basket case of a society?

Dont worry, even if Elon tanked the whole company by publicly telling its main customers, advertisers, to all go fuck themselves, its gonna be the new paypal with 100 trillion dollars in transactions!

Yes thats right, the company that can barely ever turn a profit, that just corporate public image suicided, and also fired nearly all its staff and now has an insanely toxic work environment that everyone competent is avoiding like the plague…

Fuck i cant even keep up the gimmick.

Elon and everything connected to him is so fucking fucked.

… and it looks like my concerns were justified:

https://www.barrons.com/news/more-shipping-giants-suspend-passage-via-red-sea-after-attacks-b02b3b93

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/15/yemen-rebels-hit-cargo-ship-in-latest-red-sea-attack

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67738792

Ok then! Get ready for Western economies to have even more problems, shortages, things lost in shipping and taking 3 times as long to arrive, and get ready for the public to not understand why and basically blame whatever they already do not like for a shittifying economy!

Uh I guess the long predicted US stock market collapse is now more likely. Maybe end of Q2 or beginning of Q3 in 2024?

That was 8 years ago. Have not been in or followed the industry in depth that much.

That being said, I mean, its possible that other shipping carriers could follow suit, but at that level of stuff you are talking the gossip i heard from sitting on the same floor as the CEO and VPs, and emails being sent only to my former position, executive level report analyst, basically the reports for the VPs and CEO, and meetings with the same.

If such information were widely available it would fuck up the stock market to hard, and it would make it too hard for the few people who in reality are the only ones who know such things im advance to do insider trading and make huge world economy shaping plans with all their friends on all the other corporate boards they sit on.

I mean uh what no that never happens… yes uh for legal reasons disregard that last sentence.

SO ANYWAY, I currently do not have the info required to make more than a guess that it is a plausible scenario, the actual decision to uh kind of cripple global capitalism involves powerful people who do not cc on their email chains anymore.

Lets just put it this way:

After a bit more than a decade doing data analysis and programming and database management for a very prominent tech firm, previously mentioned global logistics firm and a non profit aimed at helping the homeless, I am now an anarcho communist who believes the MIT model that civilization will basically collapse by 2040, so I am currently attempting to fulfil one of my own personal dreams and make my own video game, before that happens.

I was replying to a user named Grammaton Cleric.