LeninWeave [none/use name, any]

Thanks for the info. As an American, even using open source software, I just assume my whole shit is compromised. I have stopped hiding my tracks and recently begun being very vocal about my positions both at home and abroad. I have turned off VPNs and I have welcomed them to my home with the caveat that I will make Ruby Ridge look like a trust worthy day care center.

I respect the need for privacy. I demand it for myself and my children. But I know that I don’t have it and that the only way I will ever get it again is talked about in this video. I speak in ‘code’ kind of. Not because i want to be alluring. But, because I have learned to when facing the algorithms on the front I am used to.

Not if your instance doesn’t embed it. And if it does embed it, that’s still loading YouTube. As soon as the embed is loaded Google can spy on you as if you clicked the link.

At the beginning of this conversation, I felt considerable empathy towards you. Every time you reply I feel it less. Maybe try imagining the lives of people who end up under the American boot, people outside your country are also human beings.

Like America has done some bad shit you could call out, but Libya?

America turned Libya from one of the most prosperous nations in Africa to a place with open air slave markets. It’s clear that you don’t know anything about the actual impact America has on the lives of people in the third world.

Also, to withhold my vote from Obama would’ve been a vote for someone even worse in respect to foreign policy.

Yes, that’s the point, both “sides” are bad because they’re actually fundamentally on the same side.

Voted against that administration.

As opposed to the other party that destroyed Libya.

Not ashamed of that either.

The constant warfare? You should be.

You are from a country that has been at war almost continuously for as long as anyone in it can remember.

But insofar as I was part of the big stick that enabled speaking softly to succeed, yeah I’m proud of that.

For a brief shining second I thought you had said “not proud”. Was Fallujah “speaking softly”?

Hmm… sorry, no. I was no more a part of that situation than any other citizen. And I’m not ashamed in the least. Not. In. The. Least.

Other than being part of the army, lmao. Didn’t know all of the citizens of the US served in the military, you learn something new every day.

“I’m not ashamed I contributed to and participated in the oppression and domination of most of the world” is not the good reply you think it is. The American military just weeks ago finished helping Israel strike their neighbors to allow them to more easily continue their genocide. Rethink your pride.

Mostly, cleaning things.

This is a weak deflection. You were part of a system whose purpose is to destroy the lives people around the world who might harm US hegemony. Some members of the British navy at the height of their colonial power only cleaned warehouses, they still maintained a system that enslaved and massacred hundreds of millions. You should be ashamed of having been an American soldier, not proud to have served your country.

And so, painfully and wasteful, we will have to shoulder the burden of becoming great again. Really great, not the MAGA/Temu version.

Every time the violence of the American empire is turned inwards (unless it’s only on marginalized people), its privileged citizens say it’s not who they are and liken it to Russia, or China, or whoever the enemy of the day is. What do you think you participated in as a soldier? This IS America, you’re just part of the group that experiences it this time - and it would have to become much worse than it is now to be a fraction of what black people (or indigenous people, or many other groups) have experienced in your own country or Iraqi people have experienced at the hands of your soldiers and sanctions.

I love an America I grew up in.

I understand this feeling, and I do think it’s a valid way to feel. I don’t doubt that you had a happy childhood and early adulthood in the America you remember. However, I think that your explanation - that America changed fundamentally - is not the correct one. America, as other users have pointed out in their comments, has always been a vile state. You can see where it’s going now because you’re a politically aware adult. If you had been one in the times you remember from your childhood, you probably would have seen it then as well. It’s not America that’s changing fundamentally (it is changing, just not fundamentally), it’s you.

China is not dominating and plundering Taiwan.

Really all that needs to be said. Imperialism is easy to recognize, because the enforcement is obvious. There’s an international organization headquartered in DC whose business it is to tell countries they’re not allowed to have welfare, and it’s not the Bank of China^[1]. There’s a spy agency that overthrows governments all over the world when they don’t comply with its government’s desires, and it’s not the Ministry of State Security^[2]. There’s a military that has hundreds of bases all around the world and has been in an almost continuous string of unprovoked wars for decades, and it’s not the PLA^[3].

Imperialism is actually when you are the victim of imperialism, checkmate tankies. The real imperialists are the country that avoid projecting power outside their own border and hasn’t gone to war since the 80s, not the one with hundred of military bases around the world that they use to violently enforce their global hegemony.

Imperialism is when you have a civil war.

Liberals always think “imperialism” is when you say things about places you don’t directly rule. I am begging you to learn about unequal exchange and foreign interference. Imperialism is a process of incredible violence where labor and resources are extracted, finished products are sold back at a high price, and governments who resist are interfered with. Imperialism is enforced by organizations such as the IMF, CIA, and US Military.

If China were like American imperialists, Taiwan would have been reduced to rubble long ago. A better example of imperialism would be the attempt America has been discussing to steal Taiwan’s semiconductor manufacturing industry.