Unless something more material like a whole continent turning anti-imperialist, if not socialist, and deciding collectively to nationalize the fruit and veg produce, and thus disrupts U.S’s produce imports -
I don’t think any internal problems in America would reach to a boiling point, as to end on a conclusive note
So what if it’s a big deal to you, huh, America is the most armed-country, and has a lot of guns, yet no civil war(s) has occurred recently… it’s just reactionary settler business as usual
Im America, nichts neues
The inflation is coming from the sanctions and dedollatization. That’s the biggest material reason I could see the internal contradictions boiling over as paychecks and savings don’t go far enough to keep people housed.
Then there’s the Supreme Court’s war on the administrative state, looking to gut everything from the NLRB to the DoE to the EPA. Those institutions are one of the ways superprofits are redistributed to the labor aristocracy; my pet theory is they’re going to be debourgeoisified by the one-two punch of declining superprofit and declining distribution of superprofit.
And then, of course, there’s climate change and ageing infrastructure. The way those will interact in the US, combined with a weaker dollar and no administrative state, could lead to cities becoming nearly ungovernable.
Things are going to get rough.
I also expect that economic conditions will ultimately serve as the primary catalyst for internal strife. Incidents such as the attempt on Trump act as catalysts that exacerbate tensions, and that can escalate into actual civil unrest. Another contributing factor is the pervasive mythology of American exceptionalism which is essentially a religious doctrine positing that the US is essentially a perfect nation. Consequently, any issues arising within the system are perceived as external threats rather than inherent flaws. This mentality fuels the polarization between mainstream Republicans and Democrats, much like a religious schism. Both sides view each other as heretic traitors intent on destroying the nation.
Reminds me of an exchange earlier today between Caitlin Johnstone and Scott Ritter.
Ritter seems to believe that a successful assassination would mean civil war in the USA, and this would be very bad for the rest of the world, for some unspecified reason.
Scott Ritter believes that when America’s existence is threatened by any source, they’ll launch nukes at the rest of the world, to prevent any other nation from overtaking their primacy.
He bases this on American nuclear doctrine: He says that America’s goal in a nuclear war is to be the nation that retains the biggest capacity for civilization on Earth. Therefore their nukes are aimed at everybody.
Honestly, for all of Scott Ritter’s American brain worms- he might just be right (that a US civil war would bring on the very real possibility of nuclear strikes on every other relevant state). This kind of sociopathic, malevolent behavior is exactly what the US track record suggests it would resort to, and exactly what anyone with sense expects from it.
That said, IMO- this just further goes to show how necessary it is for the US regime to be overthrown, and American society to be de-Nazified (or rather- de-Americanized). A maniacal regime that banks on forever wars, constant destabilization and suppression of the rest of humanity through funding (or creating) terrorists, settlers, and fascists wherever they go, which sustains itself off of exporting its debt and thus inflation, and which is dominated by a hegemonic, totalitarian mentality, is incompatible with humanity- either we destroy it, or it will destroy us all, likely sooner than later.
Scott Ritter is a bit of an Amerikkkan apologist, but he is scarily accurate on things like this.
Read “Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner” by Daniel Elsberg for more details.
Essentially the US nuclear war plan is:
1. Strike first if:
- the US is about to be wiped out as a state
- the US is about to lose its capability to strike first or lose its capability to defend itself from a nuclear strike or lose its capability to effectively retaliate in a nuclear exchange
- the US is about to lose its capability to effectively defend itself in a conventional conflict
2. Retaliate if:
- nuclear-capable missiles are en route to US soil
- US assets anywhere in the world were hit with nuclear weapons
3. Ensure in the aftermath that the US has the biggest capacity to rebuild civilization among all survivors. Which means that nuclear targets are in order:
- enemy nuclear weapons launch assets, nuclear weapon defense assets, global surveillance and communication assets
- other military targets and possible areas of military concentration
- enemy civilian infrastructure that would support military capacities (i.e. industries) and nearby workforce (i.e. cities, towns, neighborhoods where workers live)
- enemy civilian population centers in descending order of size and density
- enemy economic, resource-rich or food-producing areas to destroy infrastructure and use radiation to prevent enemy access to these areas (meaning, they plan to hit fields, seas, forests and mountains, just to prevent others from using them for survival and rebuilding)
- neutral population centers, civilian infrastructure and economic areas
- allied population centers, civilian infrastructure and economic areas, if it seems like the enemy is not targeting those. The logic being that in the aftermath of a nuclear exchange, nobody will know who struck what, therefore the US will not be blamed.
So Scott Ritter’s argument here is that in a civil war, the US will lose its capability to effectively defend itself in a conventional conflict, in which case a first-strike policy will likely be activated. And in that case, the US will most likely carry out its full strike plan (for which it has ample nukes).
The thing is, it’s not just Scott Ritter who is worried (who is already a nuclear weapons expert and a former member of US nuclear forces). Other nuclear war experts are equally worried, including the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, who handle the famous Doomsday Clock, which is currently set at a record 90 seconds to midnight.
Well the first time the US launched nukes, wasn’t it the only nuclear-capable country? And that was before anyone had expectations about it or defenses in mind for it. The world is a lot different now in that way. If we look at how the US is doing in direct combat, it doesn’t look good, from everything I’ve read/seen recently. I don’t see why the US military’s capability to unleash hell with nukes would be dramatically different; they’d be facing obliteration level counter military efforts, if they can even get their nukes to launch in a competent manner in the first place. Not to mention how much the US is dependent on trade, so nuking large parts of the world could tear apart the bread and circuses in short order.
I mean, I’m not saying “view it as insignificant and don’t take it seriously,” but like, I’m skeptical of how their on paper doctrine type stuff would actually translate to reality.
I don’t think we should be correlating nuclear capability with conventional military power.
Yeah, the US military is on the decline. They have shit equipment, bad logistics, and not enough soldiers to carry out a global conflict.
But a nuclear exchange does not need any of these things, except equipment/technology, which is largely shrouded in secrecy, so we don’t know what exactly their state is. We know that a bunch of their systems are automatic, and I wouldn’t put it past them to be implementing AI for targeting.
They also have a bunch of politicians, officers and bureaucrats that seem to be trigger-happy.
At any rate, even if the US is unable to carry out an effective launch, even if 5-10% of their nukes successfully strike anything, we are talking about massive devastation.
Boo boo is what ye say, when ye bump your head as a kid silly, and it grows a red bumpy mark…
