Objection

Yes, and that doctrine is bad and wrong, and a big part of why I don't have fucking healthcare.

Why the fuck do I care about "fighting two superpowers at once" (by which you presumably mean, fighting nine superpowers at once)? Do you think I'm more likely to die as an American because the entire rest of the world attacks us at once, or because I can't afford to go to the doctor if I get sick?

The spending is absolutely ludicrous and forces everyone else to spend more to achieve anything resembling parity.

Fuck off with this far-right jingoism nonsense about how "reasonable" it is to try to dominate the entire world through military force.

And yet you’re still talking about absolute costs, not relative costs.

Yes, for reasons I already explained:

Apologists for the US military always try to pull out these bizarre metrics, like framing it based on GDP. Who gives a shit about percent GDP? Are you saying that richer countries ought to spend more on the military for no reason, just because they have more money to burn? It’s insanity. Military spending is meant to counter specific threats, if a small, poor country is threatened by an aggressive neighbor, they might spend more as a percentage of GDP in order to achieve something close to military parity. But when you’re spending more than the next nine countries combined, it has nothing to do with parity or security and everything to do with supremacy and domination - not to mention corruption.

Let me ask you this: is your stance that any country should be gradually decreasing its military spending as it grows richer?

No, my stance is what I already explained, that military spending should be (at most) what is necessary to maintain military parity with specific threats, as I already explained:

Apologists for the US military always try to pull out these bizarre metrics, like framing it based on GDP. Who gives a shit about percent GDP? Are you saying that richer countries ought to spend more on the military for no reason, just because they have more money to burn? It’s insanity. Military spending is meant to counter specific threats, if a small, poor country is threatened by an aggressive neighbor, they might spend more as a percentage of GDP in order to achieve something close to military parity. But when you’re spending more than the next nine countries combined, it has nothing to do with parity or security and everything to do with supremacy and domination - not to mention corruption.

So the plot to get Trump elected started in the 80's, under the Soviet Union? Lmao. Yeah, I'm sure they maintained that plot consistently through the entire collapse, through the massive changes in leadership structure and everything.

At a certain point, this shit is just racist. I'm sorry, you can say, "I just hate the government, not the people," but it you hate every government they've ever had, even when it's gone through drastic, fundamental changes, then it's not really about the government anymore, is it? It sounds like you're trying to argue that the Russian people are inherently duplicitous and evil.

Bit of a strained metaphor, seeing as Amidala was actually anti-war and not a fan of genocide. Libs in the Star Wars Universe would be calling Amidala a separatist droid.

relative to the GDP. It’s something around 3% of the federal budget.

Apologists for the US military always try to pull out these bizarre metrics, like framing it based on GDP. Who gives a shit about percent GDP? Are you saying that richer countries ought to spend more on the military for no reason, just because they have more money to burn? It’s insanity. Military spending is meant to counter specific threats, if a small, poor country is threatened by an aggressive neighbor, they might spend more as a percentage of GDP in order to achieve something close to military parity. But when you’re spending more than the next nine countries combined, it has nothing to do with parity or security and everything to do with supremacy and domination - not to mention corruption.

I did not, in fact, "forget the rest of your sentence," I spent that entire paragraph addressing how you're full of shit.

the election of Trump doesn’t affect ordinary people in the slightest.

Because Russia was the only force supporting Trump, right? Of course, the domestic bourgeoisie had no influence over that election. Right.

If so: the US is not spending that much

The US is spending more on the military than the next 9 countries combined and has continued to do so consistently even in the 90's when there was no credible threat anywhere in the world. This is complete bullshit, you are 100% wrong.

Apologists for the US military always try to pull out these bizarre metrics, like framing it based on GDP. Who gives a shit about percent GDP? Are you saying that richer countries ought to spend more on the military for no reason, just because they have more money to burn? It's insanity. Military spending is meant to counter specific threats, if a small, poor country is threatened by an aggressive neighbor, they might spend more as a percentage of GDP in order to achieve something close to military parity. But when you're spending more than the next nine countries combined, it has nothing to do with parity or security and everything to do with supremacy and domination - not to mention corruption.

Russia constantly sabotages the west in any way they can.

Nothing they do is more harmful to ordinary people than our ruling class is. The vast majority of corruption and misinformation is driven by domestic forces, not foreign ones. Russia wishes it could have anything near the influence of Fox News.

No, the main thing regarding Russia that impacts my life is the scaremongering, used to justify dumping obscene sums into the military while gutting all our social programs and trying to make us rally around the flag. If the ruling class wants me to be invested in caring about their side in "The Great Game," then at the very least they can damn well give me my fucking healthcare. And my fucking unions. Don't fuck me and then expect me to care about your shit. When we ask nicely for healthcare, they tell us we're commies and to go fuck ourselves, so now this commie is telling them they can go fuck themselves, simple as.

Articles like this are just funny to me. I mean, look at the way it starts, "China's EV market is imploding: Beijing's grand ambition threatens to take down the global car industry." Both the title and the subtitle are telling you "China bad" but for completely opposite reasons. The subtitle wants you to be afraid that China's EV market is going to be strong enough to dominate the global auto industry - China bad! But the title wants you to know that the EV market is failing because - China bad! It's ridiculous, it really is a Catch-22 where the author will try to evoke negative feelings about China regardless of what they do or don't do, regardless of what's true or untrue, which is exactly what I've come to expect from this trash outlet, always full of the most chauvanistic takes imaginable.

As other commenters have pointed out, the auto industry is also propped up by government intervention in the US, particularly with tariffs. And naturally, this wave of protectionism (there and elsewhere) shrinks the market for Chinese cars, resulting in overproduction. A problem which the Chinese government has identified and has moved to address, as mentioned in the article. But of course, when the Chinese government makes an honest assessment of an internal problem, Western sources use that to blow it out of proportion. And the cheaper prices resulting from the reduced size of the market is presented as some sort of underhanded scheme, which in turn justified tariffs.

What would this article even look like, if you removed all the loaded language, all the scaremongering and shitting on China? "Tariffs lead to reduced demand for Chinese EVs, leading to lower prices." There, done, saved you a bajillion words.

The guy Russia picked is destroying workers’ rights

Yeah, all I said was "all else being equal." If one side is more disruptive or more friendly towards Russia, they'd prefer that side regardless of other domestic policies. They are not out friends.

However, the guy they picked is also the guy the right picked, and his most destructive and harmful policies are to appease the right and to advance his own interests and those of his class.

Bush, as far as I'm aware, had no ties to Russia. Acting on his own initiative, he gave tax cuts to the wealthy, he created an illegal system of mass surveillance, he started multiple wars of aggression to send ordinary people to kill and die, he abducted people to black sites to be tortured, he transformed the country and greatly reduced any sense of civil liberty or privacy that we used to have. Perhaps whoever the Republicans nominate after Trump will not have ties to Russia, but either way, they will continue this project of hollowing out our rights and advancing bourgeois interests.

Also the greatest threat to the rest of the world. Which is why it’s bad that Russia is friends with them and helping to get it done.

Agreed.

It's insane how obsessed libs are with this shit. If you give them any opportunity to reaffirm their loyalty to the government they'll leap at it with everything they've got.

The NYT is what billionaires want to tell me, and if they expect me to pay for the privilege they're out of their minds. Oughta be paying me to read that trash.

If you were talking about actually independent sources providing other perspectives then you might have a point.

I completely disagree with that assessment. What the Republicans want is the complete domination of the American proletariat by the bourgeoisie (i.e, themselves). All the Russians want is to impede the government's ability to project power halfway around the globe. Russia doesn't care about American labor laws, unions, strikes, tax policy, etc, if anything, all things being equal, they'd probably prefer that the workers have more power, as that could be more disruptive to the state.

If you're more preoccupied the with the geopolitical influence of the state than you are with the things I mentioned, then I think your priorities are very out of order. Those are bourgeois concerns, they want to play "The Great Game" because they'll reap the spoils and take the resources of wherever they "bring democracy" to. If their interests are in jeopardy, let them go scramble to look after them, if anything, that's good because they'll be more focused on that than on fucking us over. We should be looking after the interests of our own class.

The American right is, by far, the greatest threat to the American people that exists in the world.