The United States might be stumbling toward a decline from which few great powers have ever recovered.
The United States might be stumbling toward a decline from which few great powers have ever recovered.
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Is Rand a trustworthy organization? I feel like whenever these types of studies emerge that it's for the express purpose of securing funding. Especially considering this was commissioned by the Pentagon.
Not doubting that the US is driving itself into a situation where they won't be able to recover, but I don't think a study of this nature was necessary to prove that.
RAND tends to be fairly sober all things considered. I think the interesting part of the study is the admission that there isn't really a clear path towards arresting the decline.
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.
Ngl it feels like places such as WaPo that benefit from empire do not want the imperial decline but also do not in anyway wish to try an alternative except for imperialism and so will likely slowly support the shift towards direct fascism/barbarism that will come as none of the leadership nor media apparatus would ever willingly support socialism.
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).
Yeah that's true, in all honestly I fluctuate between being down to honestly discuss what the decline of US hegemony will lead to (fascism) while also being down to mock or meme the decline as well (given that both instances I can't really do out in the open where I'm at or risk being killed by some nutter because I'm an "ebill commie!!!"). Overall not looking forward to the next decade or two but then again to quote Lenin "There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen", so who knows how this clusterfuck will eventually end.