i·con·o·clast
/īˈkänəˌklast/
noun
1. a person who attacks
cherished beliefs or institutions.
Where did you get the idea that those you attack are widely cherished?
They are more like a corpulent dead horse that everyone kicks and complains about the smell of but no one has idea how to move out of the way.
Western nations' use of force is generally in service of a tiny handful of elites and against our own national interests. They spend American lives and American treasure like water, all to line their own pockets, while driving up inflation, eroding the middle class, and pulling up the ladder to upward mobility.
Again, your overdramatization badly tips off the fact that you have no friggin idea what you are talking about.
"Spending American lives like water"? Have you compared the loss rates of GWOT USA and Russia or Syria right now? THAT is spending lives like water. America is insanely conservative with lives of their soldiers.
I'm a tradie. I have more in common with an Iraqi taxi driver than I do with any of these snooty Ivy League people running things and deciding who our armies should annihilate next.
No, you don't, and if you think you do, don't be surprised if you get thrown in one bag with the people who shout about uniting the proletariate of the world.
The US DOS continued to give DynCorp contracts after that, and they continued to exploit children in Afghanistan, too.
"It’s not that we’re idly sitting by, we’re actively paying for it."
newrepublic.com
In the decades since the scandal broke, Kathryn Bolkovac worries little has been done to hold the company accountable.
allthatsinteresting.com
Episode fuelled Afghan demands that private security firms be brought much more under government control
www.theguardian.com
So fucking what? Yeah, nation building was stupid because it didn't work, that doesn't make killing of jihadis of the world stupid, that makes the "liberal tolerant" way of waging war of them stupid - as you see with the connection in hiring local contractors in the name of shitlib idea of making things better for Afghans - disregarding the fact a lot of them are savages.
They weren't even 100% sure if he was actually there in the first place.
"They"? No, you, i see how much you like trusting leftist sources like guardianistas.
If that is the case, then perhaps it should not be waged so flippantly?
Or perhaps that's just the historical norm. Again, don't even bother trying to sell pacifist sentiments to me, it only raises my bullshit alarms.
People elected Barack Obama on the hope that he'd close Gitmo and end the Bush-era wars. Not only did he not close Gitmo, he started more wars and droned tons more people. And for what? What did it accomplish? American credibility on the world stage was ruined. Everyone hates us. Everyone thinks we're meddling, bloodthirsty busybodies. It practically bankrupted us. Did it make us safer? No. On the contrary. Violent non-state actors and maniacal warlords, invigorated by the conflict and flush with money and recruits, used the countries we collapsed to build drug-running and gun-running empires. In fact, our government basically armed them.
Then the people were stupid in both electing him and the reasons they elected him for. Obama is a perfect example of worst of both worlds - a leftist and a managerialist corruptocrat all in one. He tried to wage wars, but waged them in very unoptimal, naive, and easily scammed by islamist shitters way.
A report shows the U.S. and Saudi Arabia likely violated international agreements by buying European weapons and giving them to Syrian rebels.
www.newsweek.com
What was the point? What did our boys go over there and get their balls blown off for? On whose behalf and for whose benefit did they do it?
Take this discount Hanoi Hannah commentary to people who know less. Note that the whole SCW started many years after bulk of US fighting in Iraq.
Because they know better.
Then they aren't powerful at all.
Yes. They pay a toll to our intelligence services.
You wish. They pay a toll to corrupt politicians and officers, not to the services.
Cart before the horse. We could afford to buy American if our companies actually paid us.
Random bullshitting about le evil rich people for clueless teenage socialists.
Why doesn't it work in the more socialdemocratic countries in Europe in any way resembling what these people promise, including the countries they put up as their examples? Buying from China and the like is as, if not more popular there than in USA.
The WEF have quite literally come out and said that we're going to have a "multipolar world", the implication being that the US is going to relinquish its superpower status and just become one of many satellites of Chinese influence.
Which ironically is an argument shouted from the rooftops by people who want NATO to back down on Ukraine, both in Russia and USA, and as something desirable by them of course.
Ditto for all other western interference in places Russia and China want to grab.
A multipolar world is a world of constant war (and not meme forever war leftists scream about because some jihadi shitsters in bumfuck nowhere are getting bombed, but actual constant high level warfare that will compare passably to 40k and Battletech) , and timidity and weakness on western side will bring it about.
Hence, i oppose the world WEF wants, i want total global western domination, with dictators of Russia and China worrying whether they are going to wake up every time they go to sleep.
Why the WEF wants that? Because in a world of shaky balance of many powers, a bunch of well connected people with some meaningful influence can pick the winners by merely putting their thumb on the scale, as kingmakers, giving them more power than they have by themselves.
In the dreaded by leftist "unipolar world", the western powers can just decide to ignore them if they wish so one day, even if they decide to retaliate by putting their thumb on the other's scale, it won't change anything.
The conflict with China is just kayfabe. It's not real. It's a pretend conflict. Its sole purpose is to keep the plebs frightened and under the establishment's thumb.
Oh it is very real for the CCP. It is not real to the elites - fighting it would be too difficult and costly for both their capabilities and dirty alliances. So they eternally kick the can down the road, and call getting a decent price for the next kick a victory.
I am sick and tired of the managerial center-left. I find them deeply repulsive and totalitarian. When Thierry Breton mumbles something about the EU taking the lead in policing speech on the internet, I want to slap him so hard his feather duster wig falls off.
So am i. They should worry about policing the seas and China's cyberwarfare instead. But hey, that's actually hard, useless fucks they be, easier to police spicy memes on the internet.
Our cities in the fifties were practically paradises compared to the graffiti and crime-ridden hellholes we have now:
It's the people being different, and the place reflects that change.
The modern American city is designed to be soulless, architecturally bland, incoherent, and depressing. Look at the old Penn Station in New York:
Wow. Nice neoclassical columns and arches and shit.
Now, look at the new one:
View attachment 1923
Let's all ride an escalator into the giant blue anus in the sky.
Our cities are so disgusting, people have actually started claiming that buildings made out of plaster staff for World's Fairs were remnants of a prior, superior civilization that was demolished to make way for ours.
Invite even more third world people, they will reach a whole another level of disgusting, with more slum vibe.
Material culture reflects the culture of people who build and live in it, and this theory fits well with what we know of the recent cultural transformation of western societies and city dwellers in particular.
The Capitol in Washington, the Pyramids of Gaza, and the Great Wall of China. What if someone were to tell you that everything you've been taught about them is wrong and that these structures were built by an ancient civilization long before our time? Naturally, you would be inclined to roll...
www.historydefined.net
It's all bunk, of course, but think about it. Imagine how depressing a society would have to be, for people to become so despondent that they actually
hallucinate a utopia that never existed?
The modern American city is little more than a conduit for brutal psychological warfare against the American populace.
It's the other way around. It looks this way because the psychological war made them tolerant, even welcoming of it in the most successful cases of brainwashing, see Bezmenov, demoralization. Or the recent "package cuck" news story for a demonstration that such people exist, and how they think. The modern shitty city is a place made for "those people", not for us, and "those people", however insane it looks to us, are fine with it.
We could call them the Soviet Man 2.0.
How exactly was he better? Is it just because he wasn't backed by Russia?
That's a good start, he is also more nationalist than pretty much any sitting western leader right now.
I guess so; fair enough, I suppose, if that's your only metric.
Well in that part of the world that's the realistic metric for alternatives. Perhaps in time they will get even better ones, perhaps not, but certainly not if Russia gets to have any say about it (which is what it wages the whole war for) - Russian leaders and population alike would take it as a personal humiliation if Ukrainian "little brothers" were ever allowed to have visibly better governance than their corruptocracy.