>US President Donald Trump signed the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act
(NDAA) into law Thursday, completing the passage of the largest military
spending bill in US history—$901 billion, or over $1 trillion when combined with
supplemental funding passed earlier this year. >The Senate voted 77-20 on
Wednesday to pass the bill. The Democratic leadership, including Minority Leader
Chuck Schumer of New York and Minority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois, voted for
the bill. They were joined by Senators Mark Kelly of Arizona and Elissa Slotkin
of Michigan, both of whom released a video last month calling on military
personnel to disobey illegal orders—as Trump was sending the US military on a
murder spree off the coast of Latin America. >Citing Trump’s statements about
using troops to shoot protesters in America, Slotkin invoked the legacy of the
Nuremberg tribunals, which convicted Nazi leaders for war crimes and crimes
against peace. But when it came time to vote, this invocation was revealed to be
completely meaningless. Slotkin voted to hand Trump the resources to pursue his
military adventure against Venezuela…
User who’s post history is full, to the point of appearing completely like a propagandists troll, is upset people post links from gasp a place that isn’t 100% critical of China to rightfully bash democratic senators for voting to increase the military budget.
People pointing out hypocrisy are called uninformed or told it’s okay because China has to be bad so any source saying that is fair game.
I think this is a salient point. OTOH westerners are probably too racist to expect the vast majority of them to recognize the effort China is undertaking to build a decent society in the wrecks of the cold war. If they can at least be convinced that they shouldn’t support their governments in brinkmanship against China, that will suffice. But that’s the part that’s becoming increasingly difficult because they generally WANT to seek out reasons to believe that Russia, China, Iran, or whatever other country is worse (even in some vague way that can’t be pinned down) to feel good about themselves. So they end up shrugging off interventions and increasing militarization of western economies, because in their worldview there’s bad guys all around the world so it’s probably better (again, in some vague way) for the western countries to maintain hegemony. I don’t know how you can invert that last bit in their minds.
I don’t know how you can invert that last bit in their minds.
I wish I kept a diary or something from when I started abandoning lib ideas about “evil enemy” countries, it would’ve been very helpful to see my process and be able to apply it to others. I honestly don’t know how you convince someone beyond completely shattering their worldview and analytical tools entirely.
There are two approaches one can take to people who say “socialism = Stalin = bad”: you can try to break the first leg of the equation or the second. Trotskyists take the first option; they’ve had the blessing of the academy, foundation and CIA money for their publishing outfits, and controlled the narrative in the West for the better part of the last century. But they haven’t managed to make a successful revolution anywhere in all that time. Recently, socialism has been gaining in popularity… and so have Marxism-Leninism and support for Stalin and Mao. Thus it’s not the case that socialism can only gain ground in the West by throwing really existing socialism and socialist leaders under the bus.
Thinking back on my own journey I think there was a pretty big period of time where I had a negative opinion of those countries (I guess I still am fairly critical about a lot of aspects of them of course) but I realized that any material way that my opinions could be reflected in terms of policy would be things like sanctions, proxy wars, propaganda campaigns, covert operations, and the other things that I knew the US had done to its enemies during the 20th century. So I realized that my opinions are best kept to myself when they aligned with empire.
But in my case I live in a colonized country and was pretty aware of how US imperialism directly makes my life worse from an early age. I guess for American and European white people it’s a lot easier to justify aligning with empire for obvious reasons.
I think this is a salient point. OTOH westerners are probably too racist to expect the vast majority of them to recognize the effort China is undertaking to build a decent society in the wrecks of the cold war. If they can at least be convinced that they shouldn’t support their governments in brinkmanship against China, that will suffice. But that’s the part that’s becoming increasingly difficult because they generally WANT to seek out reasons to believe that Russia, China, Iran, or whatever other country is worse (even in some vague way that can’t be pinned down) to feel good about themselves. So they end up shrugging off interventions and increasing militarization of western economies, because in their worldview there’s bad guys all around the world so it’s probably better (again, in some vague way) for the western countries to maintain hegemony. I don’t know how you can invert that last bit in their minds.
I wish I kept a diary or something from when I started abandoning lib ideas about “evil enemy” countries, it would’ve been very helpful to see my process and be able to apply it to others. I honestly don’t know how you convince someone beyond completely shattering their worldview and analytical tools entirely.
I’ve found this helpful:
Thinking back on my own journey I think there was a pretty big period of time where I had a negative opinion of those countries (I guess I still am fairly critical about a lot of aspects of them of course) but I realized that any material way that my opinions could be reflected in terms of policy would be things like sanctions, proxy wars, propaganda campaigns, covert operations, and the other things that I knew the US had done to its enemies during the 20th century. So I realized that my opinions are best kept to myself when they aligned with empire.
But in my case I live in a colonized country and was pretty aware of how US imperialism directly makes my life worse from an early age. I guess for American and European white people it’s a lot easier to justify aligning with empire for obvious reasons.