All US client states in the region only have the individuals at the very top - kings, some of the national bourgeoisie - who are allied with the US. The overwhelming majority of the people despise the US. Not a stable situation for an ally. The client states also have their own allegiances and enemies across the region. Those entanglements make unilateral action harder. Israel is a completely foreign entity to the region without any sort of entanglements - everyone hates them. And as you have seen over the last year, these clients have to tread very carefully with their own populations in terms of being seen openly helping the US. Israel has a population that is bloodthirsty and loves it when their military causes death and destruction in the region.

I started by looking at a James Lindsay tweet, and then spent waaay too much time reading the replies, and then going down too many rabbit holes of seeing profiles of boomer MAGA weirdos with the worst takes on communism you can possibly imagine.

Americans brains are so deeply broken. They are convinced there’s some massive conspiracy, led by the Democrats and noted communists like George Soros to bring about a communist revolution, which apparently is going to happen definitively if Trump isn’t re-elected.

I don’t know why it bugs me as much as it does.

Early thirties, sure. Yes… that will do

I think with sufficient investigation and theory-studying, I could come up with a decent Marxist analysis of White Evangelical Christianity in the US. I think I’ve identified the principal contradiction in it. I think I’m seeing how it can barely be considered a “religion” and instead it exists to reinforce settler colonialism, white supremacy, and reaction. Just need to put it all together.

And I fully admit none of this really gets us closer to revolution. This analysis would be less valuable than more effective on-the-ground organizing. But this is a topic that I think about a lot and have an interest in, and applying Marxism to it help me work through my own issues with White Evangelical Christianity.

This is why for years now, I push back so hard on people here who are like “hey why can’t I use the power of Marxism to make money picking stocks?”. Because you can’t, first of all. But also because this stuff is really easy to be a gateway into getting hooked on just staring at red and green numbers all day while losing everything you put in.

I think part of it is, in table tennis China is so dominant that it allows more Chinese competitors. I don’t think HK competes in anything else. It’s like if they allowed Texas to compete as its own country in flag football (yes, that will be an Olympic event in 2028).

I challenge any zoomer on this site who has never seen this show to try and get through ONE episode. I bet you can’t do it.

He was a radlib who was ok I guess on some domestic issues. More in the mold of like Jamaal Bowman or something.

But he was always a big time Israel supporter, I remember the general gist of people describing him is “progressive but pretty bad on Israel”

I started using Telegram a couple months ago and I was like a boomer who just found Facebook, I binged hard for a while.

Meh. Wrote an overrated book about central planning (thesis is that central planning is possible because Walmart and Amazon do it - of course central planning is possible but not for that reason, Phillips kinda misses the point) that spends a chapter devoted to shitting on Stalin.