CarmineCatboy2

As the US declines and starts becoming militarily aggressive, I do think countries historically dependent upon the US will begin to risk moving away from that dependency.

Let's say the US declines. Hard. And becomes as much a Great Power as, say, Russia.

Isn't the Ukraine War a pretty good example of the limits of that risk taking? How about a war over Taiwan? These are disastrous scenarios and we are assuming that the US isn't in charge of the global finance.

Not to continue belaboring the point but living in a single place and 'looking around' isn't sufficient to, again, dismiss half of all Latin America. That seems reactionary, to be honest.

I wouldn't be dismissed if I was another american here, claiming that the US has a massive, reactionary right wing constituency that is only (slightly) outnumbered by another massive, liberal and also right wing constituency. And yet because I'm from Latin America and if I make a similar claim I'm a reactionary? Hell, my outlook is that only half of the region is deeply right wing. This means I have a more positive opinion on latin america than any american leftist has on the USA population. And yet that's enough to be outright dismissed. Sorry but if you're Latin American, I'd call you naive. If you're American, I perceive your position as deeply patronizing.

You can point to México, where a successful developmentist programme bends the opinions of the right wing because it delivers material gains for everyone. Brazil surfed a similar wave not too long ago. These scenarios do not mean that the right wing does not exist. They do not mean that evangelical churches aren't a fulcrum of power. They do not mean that a 500 year old oligarchy does not own these countries. They do not mean that the legacy of US dictatorships and propaganda don't exist. What they mean is that latin americans are as human as everyone else, and as contradictory as everyone else.

even evangelicals don't have that strong a hold outside of some Central American countries

That's just not true. Not only is the neopentecostal movement much, much bigger than you think, its propaganda efforts are hegemonic and affect - for better and worse - the conduct of catholic and historical protestant groups as well.

There are certainly Right-wing movements in Latin America that are still supporting the US but if it was as strong as you say we wouldn't see even the bit of progressive movement we've thus far seen over the last few decades

I'd be careful about decades, because if your analysis veers towards half a century of history you'll find yourself in the terrain of progressive reforms by latin american general-dictators who were ok with divorce because they were raised Lutheran and hated the catholic church. Latin America as a region is not one where revolution has reigned supreme, but rather where relative progressivism has made waves following the gato pardo principle. 'Let us do the revolution so that adventurers don't take the initiative', or, rather, let us change so that things stay the same.

The long arc of history bends progressive because, eventually, all these resource economies go through the cycles of boom and bust and in order to avoid collapse end up reforming in a number of ways. A century ago it was the benefit of urban workers to the detriment of the peasant majority. Twenty years ago it was an effort to follow IMF dictats to increase consumption. Either way, the more we discuss the issue the more reasons come up as to why Latin America cannot and is probably better off not being revolutionary in the medium term, much less the short term.

What makes you say this?

Well, I live in the region and I look around.

I am not dismissing the potential for LatAm or the Global South to move away from the West. If anything I'm a bloomer about it: because I recognize that the pragmatic game is a requirement for that to happen, and I think most governments in the region are well poised to play it. As despairing as it will be to watch Trump collapse the world's economy over 'trade imbalances' its a good thing that China's influence is strong enough that even with American boots on Peruvian soil the megaport and the rail projects are still going ahead. Or that even a dumbass like Milei can't pretend he'll export soybeans to the US for a living.

At the end of the day the single most successful example of building an alternative to the West is China. It was not built via a revolution that turned China away from the West. Far from it. Even now the Chinese would have to be pushed kicking and screaming away from their trade surpluses, ability to recycle those surpluses into foreign assets and projects, not to mention massive possibly even under-reported foreign currency reserves. Even Russia, the designated enemy of the past 20 years, had to be driven to a corner.

My rationale is that what Cuba and Venezuela are under is war. It is often cushioned in the language of sanctions, resistance and so on. But it is nothing short of war. This is something that leftists don't have any trouble accepting. If anything, leftists want to make sure everyone understands that the United States wielded its full military and economic might to make it so the cuban and venezuelan populations were denied access essentials like food and medicine. To strangle their economies and ruin their futures. What's hurtful is the corolllary to that:

No Latin American country will go to war with the US unless it is backed into a corner.

Trust me. It never even 'looked' like it could have happened. You see, there's something of an online phenomenom that newsreaders know as Bricsgrifting. Five minutes after Petro's announcements you had videos from all sorts of channels claiming that this was Latin America's grand stand. It was nonsense. Even if it was peddled by otherwise well informed channels like Geopolitical Economy Report. My reaction as I woke up and saw those recommendations on youtube was to scoff even before I saw comments on Hexbear about Petro giving up.

You talk about how Latin America is very different from the EU and 'has its moments'. Well, I assume you assume a greater degree of sovereignty. That's overblown. The reason Latin America lacks the bonds of vassalage that the EU has towards the US is because vassalage is too good for Latin America. Its a two way street. The Europeans actually benefitted from US Hegemony, that's why there's so much inertial loyalty to it still. That's why Latin America was once loyal to the US even before WW2, the problem is that the region would never be permitted the level of economic prosperity that was once afforded to the rest of the Golden Billion. It would be the thin end of the wedge.

Latin America as a whole exists in the afterglow of the Jakarta Method. Not even two generations ago the entire continent was under the direct rule of US backed military juntas. It is a defeated continent, brought low by the Volcker shock and the Great Latin American Debt Crisis. At least half of the population of Latin America is made up of evangelical pro US stooges who want sanctions against themselves. The entire region is ideologically compromised, and materially dependent on resource exports.

So at the end of the day, yeah: Colombia and México won't oppose the US because they are dependent on it. México is the USA's sweatshop, with 90 percent of its exports going north. Argentina and Perú won't oppose the US because those are outright occupation regimes with american boots on the ground. Brazil won't oppose the US because it never has, and to be quite honest it knows better. It's not about choosing the easy path. It's about surviving at all.

Of course there won't be resistance from Latin America - anyone who's making that proposal is lobbying for a poisoned pill. If the great harvesting of the EU is shocking news to the average person, then newsthread readers should know by now that that's the default position of Latin American states. As Argentina shows it doesn't really pay to be a friend of the United States. It will hurt to read this, but Venezuela also shows that it doesn't pay to be an enemy either. What pays is to keep your head below the tall grass. Survival is what's paramount and pragmatism is what's required.

causing a stock market crash because someone in your hedge fund had a side project is wild ngl

so you got all my jobs

No no, one thing does matter: the Supreme Court itself. If they can arbitrarily withold and cite precedent, that means nobody else can cite the consequences of their actions. Its a nifty way for the institution to maximize its own power.

The Supreme Court got into the habit of adding a 'this decision is only valid for this instance so nuh uh no problems in the future sir' asterisk. This means it retains the power to do everything on a case by case basis.

I already expected he'd want to at least appear strong. No one wants to be the President that withdrew, or the President Who To Be Fair Was A Pretty Good Off Ramp. That's one foreseeable problem because the american ruling caste is extremely aggressive so if Trump really means to then Ukraine could stay in this war for another few hundred thousand deaths.

In great british extravagance, they have 3 right wing parties at the top spot.

I think the key thing here is that this technology is not supposed to answer questions, do research or make decisions. Regardless of what the marketing implies it is better understood as a word calculator. You input the data yourself, and then it arranges everything for you. It's useful if you tell an LLM to categorize 10,000 legal documents according to well developed criteria. It cuts on labor and becomes an actual material gain. It's completely useless if all you do is ask 'what is Dark Matter', because at that point you're expecting the word calculator to create something useful out of its entire training dataset.

It's supposed to do clerical work, not creative work. Basically.

thats when you (further) annex canada to no actual resistance