Those were good times. Lib cringe weekends, the flairs (I particularly liked the one with Jiang Zemin staring at you with a wtf expression), the George Orwell 1984 bot and the Isn'treal bot -- all that good stuff.
I disagree that an actual civil war is in the cards. Wars are fought over territory, and while the country is divided politically, those divisions don't clearly map onto particular territories within the US. What I could see happening is something like the Years of Lead, with various political factions engaging in street fighting and mounting terrorist attacks amid generally worsening economic conditions.
This is so dumb. You can't "coerce" someone to do work at this very high level -- either they have the aptitude and some kind of desire for it, or they fail. It's like the claim I've run into in musical circles that David Oistrakh was only a great musician because the Soviet authorities put a gun to his head. You simply don't produce real competence in a skilled profession this way.
And, in light of some recent lib incursions (and resulting discussions) here on the 'grad: it's funny that libs will in all cases defend prostitution as a "free choice" and yet cry bloody hell when it come to women being given the education and opportunity to become scientists, academics, etc. Almost as if they are the ones who really don't view women as full human beings.
If Americans want a "hard break," they'll first need a plan for building up their industrial base. And good luck with that -- the US government is not exactly famous for its competence or ability to mobilize the masses.
Or maybe they're hoping that the power of AI and NFTs is somehow going to magically save them? (It won't).
Honda too. A lot of people I know swear by their cars. They have a couple plants in the US, and they seem to treat their workers fairly decently -- by capitalist standards, of course, which are a very low benchmark.
People like Orban are at least somewhat in touch with reality. The neocons, etc. who drive US foreign policy (and thus the policy of the entire collective west) live in an echo chamber of delusion, where the only people who would dare critique their ever-more grandious geopolitical schemes are all paid agents of Russia and China.
Those were good times. Lib cringe weekends, the flairs (I particularly liked the one with Jiang Zemin staring at you with a wtf expression), the George Orwell 1984 bot and the Isn'treal bot -- all that good stuff.