At that point it’s going to become obvious to everyone that the US is not going to protect Europe going forward.

I don’t think Ukraine will change the Russophobia of European political leaders and the desire to have a deterrent against an imagined Russian attack. All that othering and saber rattling has tremendous utility in domestic politics. They’ll want to keep NATO for those reasons, and the U.S. will want to keep it to maintain imperial hegemony, so I see it continuing for some time.

I think the person quote in the OP is discounting the extent to which European political leaders are in on the U.S. plan in Ukraine: the fantasy that they can defeat Russia on the battlefield, which will cause a crisis in their government, which will allow Western capital to scoop up a bunch of cheap assets in the country like the bonanza after the fall of the USSR.

Two-thirds of ILA members are constantly on call, with no guaranteed employment if ships are not available for work

a job that is dangerous and requires dockworkers to toil long hours in all kinds of weather

It makes sense why unions want to keep their jobs as they exist, but these are jobs automation is perfect for. We don’t want people working dangerous jobs if we can help it, and it sounds like scheduling is a perennial issue. I wonder what is being discussed – you might be able to square the circle with early retirement buyouts, paid re-training for other positions, or even just big severance packages.

It’s easy:

1. Start with a conflict where most people don’t know the specifics
2. Establish that the State Department side of the conflict is The Right Side To Be On with wall-to-wall favorable reporting
3. Bury negative stories where few look, if you run them at all
4. Let the conflict simmer indefinitely

After the last step, most people still don’t know the specifics of the situation because you never really informed them and they have other priorities than a war far away that they perceive they have no effect on. They see a story every month or so about another arbitrarily large amount of money getting sent overseas and it just blends into the background; they’ve seen that story countless times about many countries.

Parenti’s quote about “supporting every revolution but the ones that succeed” really hit home with me. See also the broader concept of critical support, and viewing states as X% good and Y% bad instead of simply good or bad.

The only way this can turn around for Ukraine is a the war expanding into a (more) direct conflict between Russia and NATO, which would create a high risk of a nuclear exchange, which is unacceptable.

Ukraine lost. The only question now is how many more of their people they’ll send to pointlessly die before they start serious negotiations (i.e., not wild demands like getting Crimea). This is the months leading up to the end of WWI.

Entirely understandable, because an invasion of their country would almost certainly result in the deaths of millions of their citizens. It’s easy to pound the table for a stronger response when it’s not your head on the chopping block.

love Cuba (but denounce all other AES

Many such cases

There are a lot more lurkers on any forum than active members who comment. Everyone here has read a thousand more posts/comments than they’ve made. Getting lurkers to consider what you say is a very real thing, and people do change their political beliefs based on what they read online.

You’re right that interrupting shipping along this route would be much harder than closing the Suez, but the U.S. still has carriers and submarines, so it could act alone without any of those nearby countries you mentioned.

In my mind, the big shift here is (1) cost and (2) forcing a longer route now means you have to shoot at boats, you can’t just refuse them entry to a canal. It would mean a much larger escalation.

The former group isn’t negatively impacted by patsocs because the former group aren’t fucking stupid, and the latter group will never engage with you or anyone seriously no matter what you do

This is good to keep in mind, but I think you can still say Patsoc types hurt the cause. The problem is most people who are exposed to their stuff don’t engage with anyone about it, so there’s no opportunity to have the sort of discussion you describe (where you can reach the reachable, and the unreachable respond predictably).

A bunch of reachable people get turned off by this/get misinformed about socialism by it, and then we never hear from them (and get to explain what this shit is and why it’s bad) because they don’t talk to anyone about it the way most people don’t talk to anyone about stuff they read online.