TabularTuxedo

Agreed. I don't think the US has lost the ability to project power in Latin America for example. It's still their home turf.

Small pain point about living in a neoliberal hellscape is that we can't have a Pokedex-style encyclopedia app about everything.

Wikipedia comes close, but it only explains "relevant" things (so no specific documentation for a niche program), it's horribly biased against material reality in anything politics, and there's no manuals or how-tos in it.

A while ago, a soldier from the USA did self immolation to protest against the Palestinian Genocide.

Even though he was literally screaming "Free Palestine", the reporters said that his protest was for "unknown reasons". The audio of the video of his self immolation was muted.

I won't disrespect this man's choice, but it simply wasn't effective.

I have a belief that neoliberalism is fundamentally born out of lack of education or class interest.

Like, this sort of greed argument doesn't work when you consider indigenous tribes or when you actually study about why did humans and other mammals evolve the hoarding habit.

I used to be friends with a guy that thought that anti-monopoly laws against Google and other Big Tech companies was unjust because they were the first "innovators" and that all-day public education was bad because schools become open grounds to "drug dealers".

It doesn't help that he's also a massive homophobe and denies that evolution happened.

He lost a business and is stuck doing gig jobs for now. Petit Bourgeois brainworms are hard to kill, I suppose.

I think only you can decide that. But isn't the US National Anthem played? Doesn't the flag get displayed? Would you play in the US team if you were a professional football player knowing that you are representing the nation?

Note that we aren't going to abide by some religious dogma. I would be okay with cheering Jesse Owens at the Olympics, for example (not for the US, but for him). But the fact that the US is hosting the games does change the moral calculus a bit.

The wall in question. Not to scale.

True. That decision really paid off. Honestly, I think that having a sovereign internet ecosystem is gonna be on par with having nukes as a prerequisite for a sovereign nation. We'll have to see if other great powers are gonna ditch Statesian services in this century. Iran and Russia seem to be heading towards China's path, at least.

Maybe it's spectacle. Some guys harm their own health in order to get more views, including but not exclusive to raw meat eaters.

I'm sure that most of the audience isn't gonna adopt a raw meat diet, but watching someone rant about dietary conspiracies or eating garbage is part of their entertainment. I think it's like mukbangs.

tldr: If it attracts views and doesn't harm bourgeois profits, it will be done. If it draws attention away from class war and into culture "war", it will be done.

Yeah. You are right. Capitalists do their best to make us believe that there is no hope of any better system even though they can't stop creating their own gravediggers. Heck, USA had near total monopoly on power in the post-Soviet era and they managed to fuck it up.

But as you said, technology seems "magical" in a way. It's hard for me to remember that it isn't.

Low key sad that I'll never be able to learn every language on this planet. So many cultures, so little time.

I'm not well-read on this topic, so take this with a grain of salt. Another comrade might give a better answer.

The answer is no. Lenin wrote that Imperialism is a highly developed phase of Capitalism ("highest state" is a bad translation). Neo-colonialism is defined by Kwame Nkrumah as the following

The essence of neo-colonialism is that the State which is subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. In reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside.

if you want to read more, read both Lenin's Imperialism: the Highest State of Capitalism and Kwame Nkrumah's Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism

Nkrumah takes an African perspective on this issue. So I believe it's important to study the historical context since Africa suffered from both regular colonialism and neo-colonialism.