wat0n wrote:I still don't see your point. McVeigh seems to have always been fairly radical, as even other soldiers he was squarely in the far right and would give all the chores to Black soldiers. He seems to have become disillusioned after the Gulf War and especially after failing the test to join the special forces, and Waco did it for him. He wasn't all that obsessed about elites but about the government itself.
Most far right militia people in the USA are very very anti-government. They believe fully in either an extremely small government or one that only regulates private property and some traffic cops. That is it.
He blamed the elites for not winning over Iraqi hearts and minds in Iraq. He did not understand that if you occupy a nation and destabilize it and it gets so dysfunctional that the water doesn't get to the homes, the electricity doesn't work, no one can go buy food in a market for dinner, the schools are closed, a bunch of collateral damage is done, and then the occupying army is building perfect little reproductions of American style suburbs? While the locals live in chaos and deprivation and the message to the locals is "See? Democracy is what we are about?" And no one believes it? He thought he was going to be a part of a powerful government that will teach the other nations about what true freedom is. How do you teach that without real investment in building up the other society. if you are uncommitted to that? You won't convince anyone of a damn thing. You will piss them off. You topple the dictator but replace him with chaos, poverty, and terror of bombings from the skies and then you allow infighting and civil war to break out to deepen the crisis. No one trusts the Americans. How can you? What have they done for them?
These far-right people don't really understand EMPATHY at all. That is the problem with the far-Right. They lack that chip. They lack the ability to see the humanity in the 'other'. They always have. It is almost a form of sociopathic inability.
What is my point? You better stop with the fairy tale thoughts Wat0n. We are all one species. The USA is not a better society. It is the society that through aggressive and old Imperial tactics built wealth off the problems and sufferings of the many. Within its own nation and without it. By subjugating the other nations. It is not doing anything different from the many other failed ex-Empires in history. You do the same mistakes in human history as the others? You wind up being defunct and ex Empires. Another emerging one takes over.
China has a very, very old and long history. It has been invaded and colonized by Japan and by Great Britain, and they have dealt with Russians and invading killing armies. They have been through many things. The reason they decided to adopt state capitalism is they understood that if they did not get the wealth necessary for nuclear bombs and armies and infrastructure that the other powers like Russia and the USA and the EU would find a way to retake their resources. They now want to lead the world. Will they? That remains to be seen.
The USA never has been through being colonized, invaded by bloodlust fascists like Japan was in WWII (with the exception of Pearl Harbor and that was traumatic for them and they reacted by throwing two nuclear bombs, I really wonder if they will do it again if China tries to expand more?), and during the Opium Wars. Neither does it have Russia's history with the Battle of Stalingrad and Nazi occupation.
What the USA has had? Is being used to invading lands that don't belong to them. Killing off or moving by force the natives off the land and taking it. Letting capitalists make money off of it. And sending in the troops to make sure they keep the stolen shit. They deny votes to Blacks for a long time, they still deny votes to Puerto Ricans, American Samoans, Guamanians and US Virgin Islanders, etc. They claim to be for the average worker when they have actively worked against any interest that furthers the average workers quality of life. They are actually again, unlike the Chinese not creating new middle classes. They are starving them out. Why?
The answer is that they have to continue with the Globalism and the corporate dictatorship. They have to. The politicians in DC live off of those people. They are sold out.
The Chinese know this. And they are using that lack of ethics to encroach with the caution of those old Confucius following Mandarins...the administrators looking for weaknesses in the leader of economic markets and military expenditures. Where is the USA's worst weakness. It is not in amount of bombs present, or ability to mass kill the entire globe, it is not in propaganda (the USA has the best propaganda and brainwashing of its population in the world),---so where is it? In its elite. They are so greedy and so selfish that the USA is for sale and is vulnerable to outside actors because there are no principles in the very top of the government authority. The rot is from the top. That is where the opening is. And they are going for that rot.
Authoritarians never give up their authority merely for cash and selfishness. They value control and authority above greed. They do.
Greed is a poison that if you allow it to be the ultimate measure of success? You lose it all. Because without principles about national interests? You wind up losing the entire thing to others who never compromised that at all.