this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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GenZedong
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I think you are greatly overestimating the failing and floundering West. The unipolar American hegemony lasted 30 years and its been seriously challenged for less than 5 years and already severe cracks are showing. Country by country is breaking free from Western imperialism or openly switching sides. Things that were imagined as impossible in the jurisdiction of the wrathful Empire have been done again and again in these past ~5 years. These trends reinforce themselves exponentially; as the Empire loses its grip, it has even less means to imperialize and sustain itself, thus losing the means to fund its military dominance, and so on.
I agree that the nuclear arsenal of the US is a little worrisome, especially if and when our federal gov't decays to the point that it is vulnerable to theft by fascist paramilitaries--I see this as the most likely reason for an invasion of the U.S. by the East. But even then, said Nazis would have no means of launching said weapons or even keeping up with their maintenance, let alone the rest of the world which will have technologically lapped them by then.
The only variable that remains unclear, to me at least, is A.I. But using what we know with the rules of life we are accostomed to, it is not at all a personal opinion for me to say that most if not all of these goals being accomplished by 2050 (or even sooner!) is far more likely than not.
The reassuring factor is that the nuclear arsenal was built by firms that specialized in contract and bid engineering, not weapons engineering.
I feel like there's an interesting premise for a post-apocalyptic story; we find a missile base, fully intact, but it's obvious all the launch processes were attempted. As they explore further, we discover the missiles had been sabotaged by industrial incompetence and willful corner cutting. The crew is greeted by the attackers as heroic collaborators, and there's a comical "don't say anything" moment when someone starts to mention the truth.
Two points about AI from a very much non-expert (me):
Which is to say the west is doubly fucked and AI won't save it.
Hm, i'm no expert on AI either, but I also don't think it could save the west. Nothing can save the west, it's either socialism or barbarism. Either we start controlling ourselves and stop exploiting literall everything, or we keep digging our own graves.
8 Nuking the world because you can't get everything you want and won't learn from your mistakes is unbelievably childish behavior. Can an individual be like that, yes. However the chain of giving orders goes through many people and I hope some of them have the sense not to destroy the planet. I'm pretty sure that anyone that wants anything in their life requires the lack of a nuclear war.
In case of every single other country, even India and UK i would believe that no problem. But look what US does currently, getting closer into two WW3 opportunities simultaneously, not to mention knowingly fucking up the planet itself. They did intentionally made it harder, but if entire fish is rotten...
Karl Marx wrote in Das Kapital (Vol. 1, Part III, Chapter Ten, Section 5) "Après moi, le déluge!" is the watchword of every capitalist and of every capitalist nation. Hence Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the labourer, unless under compulsion from society."
Is there anything you can really do to prevent nuclear war? is there anything you can do to prepare for nuclear war? I don't think there is much that can be done. Maybe a state agency anonymously finds some manner to disable the Uncle Sam's ability to initiate an apocalypse enough times to make it functionally impossible. The possibility exists for it to not occur, so we can act as if it won't happen.
If you are a Posadist that thinks that we can establish socialist relations after the nuclear apocalypse, I guess you can have fun living in a bunker praying for a disaster that may never come like a doomsday cult.
The United States' inability to acknowlege reality will convince them to make tactical blunders in their own hubris.
If nuclear power goes unhined enough to press button out of "apres mois, le deluge"? Absolutely nothing. First strike wont work because US have significant second strike ability. They have 450 land based ICBM's launch sites and 14 ICBM armed submarine, this is basically not possible to neutralise unilaterally by any means.
They are already doing it, and as their position worsens, those blunders have increasing consequences, like the Ukraine War activating the spiral of dedollarisation. So that's positive since it will bury them eventually, i just fear the last blunder might be nuclear and it will bury us all.
I would believe this if it wasn't for how many times the US almost started a nuclear war randomly before like one dude stopped them
That is the safeguard system working as intended.
No it's just fucking luck. Think about those people in air conditioned offices controlling the drone strikes that double-tapped weddings in Iraq and Afghanistan with their Xbox controller while watching it all on live video. How many of them are sitting in front of the nuclear button, just waiting for the order?
Yeah I'm all for hoping but I can't call this tweet an "accurate prediction". But I guess I lean on the pessemist side of things.
Doomerism is a psychological tool within our enemy's arsenal. It is a tool to render inert would-be revolutionaries. The exact fate of us here in the United States and to a lesser extent the collective West is unclear, but as for the rest of the world and the cause of world socialism, the future is objectively brighter than it was even pre-1991. Do not despair for the world comrade, the writing for this dream's actualization is already etched deep into the wall.
<33 I love this attitude, wanna see more of it. I too tend to be a bit on the pessimistic side, just cuz the voices against us commies are so loud and widespread. Most of my comrades don't think we'll reach communism in our life time, though I am absoluetely willing to fight for being able to see even one country in europe establishing socialism, at which point hopefully more will follow..
Are there any recent books talking about what could be realistically achieved this century?