Sounds like an ad

Jeez, I think i joined right when this was dying, or something similar

Why do you ragebait?

Leave me alone bro

Oh nice i see. Maybe i have to start learning German just to see whether what’s going on on your side is more to my flavour😅

Different platforms, same problems

Good for you

The what?

The average American has the weirdest, silliest of takes

Are you calling me American?

Maybe i do need to try that. I’ve only ever blocked specific users/belligerent communities. Any ideas on what filter out?

I think the biggest problem the fediverse has is a lack of diversity. This is the same problem platforms like Bluesky have. It’s chock full of Americans, so most of the content leans American. I’m not American and don’t really have too much of a problem with American content (it’s entertaining), so while I’ve gotten slightly used to Americentrism on the internet, at least on Reddit there were niches and local communities i could use to detox when it got too much. This is lacking here.

I’m not really sure what the solution is. Back when i first joined, the niche communities were burgeoning and quite active. Now it seems like they’ve mostly stagnated.

I care about politics, but not enough that it saturates my feed. I think these two can coexist👍

Case in point ☝️

I’ve been here almost 2 years…

Thanks for the thoughts. I’m well aware that there are a lot of good people making a genuine effort to build something and genuine props to them for that; really. I just feel like things have slowed down a lot since when i first joined, and I’ve grown tired of the “sameness”.

Stfu. USSR and China weren’t communist

Your paragraph about fascism reads like a regurgitated book quote. Fascism is a specific ideology created by Benito Mussolini. What you’re describing seems to be an umbrella concept that simply includes fascism. Pick a different term.

About the Belt and Road, what you described is just multipolarity and global south countries diversifying, not the US on its last legs. What would look like the death cry for the US Empire is: the dollar no longer being the backbone of global finance, US tech companies no longer leading the global stock market, and NATO becoming redundant. None of those things are happening yet.

Ethnonationalism usually rises in fascism, but isn’t definitional to it.

Then we’re not talking about the same fascism. One can only wonder why you use the term fascism as Mussolini who invented the term includes ethnonationalism.

You can disagree with that if you wish, but that’s where I think we are at right now.

It’s not about the time period. It’s about countries visibly shifting away from the US camp. That isn’t happening yet

The US Empire is also short on what it needs to keep producing arms, due to tight controls on rare Earths and other raw materials from China.

Which was part of the reason behind the whole Greenland ordeal. A problem which they’ve now seemed to be able to circumvent.

The US Empire has fancier tools, but cannot produce them at the same scale they once could. Quantitative buildup results in qualitative changes

That’s because the fancier tools are higher quality and therefore more expensive to produce. Furthermore, since the cold war ended, thousands of small suppliers have been closing up by the decade because there’s no more business. This lead to consolidation in the hands of a few big players e.g., Lockheed Martin. The US could build back up to Cold War levels of preparedness if it wanted, but it’d take at least 5 years. That’s the real historical materialism here.

ideology itself has a material basis… but by treating the ongoing problems with the US Empire as a result of Trump alone you’re literally ascribing to Great Man Theory.

Ideology has a material basis, but do you know that that same ideology acts upon the material base as well? This is why i mentioned Althusser because he goes into this stuff. Also, i never said the ongoing problems of the US Empire are solely due to Trump, i only said that he’s accelerating its demise and acting as a baseboard from which other Western powers start to chart their own course. I am fully aware that real material conditions gave rise to Trump’s reign. The next step is realising how the material realities that DO come out of Trump’s presidency affect the US’s downfall and i assess them to be more than substantial.

Fascism is simply capitalism defending itself from decay

And its defense somehow necessitates an ethnonationalist character? Are we talking about the same fascism?

the fall of the world’s largest empire is quickly approaching and will likely happen within our lifetimes.

Once again, quickly approaching is a stretch. It will most certainly happen within our lifetimes, but not in 10 or 20 years.

When you pin the current downfall of the US Empire on Trump’s actions

I did not do this. I only pointed out how Trump’s actions will serve as an anchor point in the future for Western powers. World leaders themselves aren’t sitting around contemplating material contradictions and dialectical movement. All they see is Trump’s actions and how it’s harmful to their own interests. In a sense this is dialectical as Trump’s actions represent a qualitative change resulting from the accumulation of multiple quantitative factors.

Lots of it is shipped over to China, Vietnam, and other countries

That’s just regular capitalism? Labour is cheaper in Asia. Even then the US still maintains a tight hold on the aerospace, armaments and tech industries and still reversed some off-shoring; most notably the semiconductor industry.

[THAAD units are being shifted over to the Middle East, which are critical for defense

The US also redeployed forces stationed in Europe deterring the USSR during the Gulf War, and yet it’s still standing strong 35 years later. They also did this during the Iraq war and Vietnam war. The real question is, “Are the US going to be overextended if China, Russia or the DPRK start escalating tensions elsewhere?” Even at that point nukes enter the conversation and it stops being predictable.

You’re identifying a partial link, but you need to take this further, that’s how dialectics works.

That’s not how dialectics works. You’re going too far and into economic determinism. Austerity policies aren’t always pursued for economic ends; they can also be done in pursuit of ideological ends.

active resistance to the war effort does change the war.

It changes it, but not damningly so. At best this shows contempt towards the current administration and not to the US Empire as a whole.

Trump is not the cause… As capitalism decays, fascism increases as the petite bourgeoisie faces proletarianization.

If you haven’t already, I suggest you look into Louis Althusser’s idea of “Relative Autonomy” in texts like For Marx and Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. Trump is not the cause yes, but his actions still have real world effects that are not immediately tied to economic considerations. Similarly, fascism is a very specific thing. You can at best argue for general authoritarian outcomes due to the class conflict, but not fascism, as it is a specific ideology that can exist somewhat autonomously from the contradiction between capitalists and workers.

Europe is… dependent on the US militarily …they are split between needing Russian LNG …and their loyalty to the US Empire.

Your own argument just proved why the US Empire is not in its dying stages. Europe is completely dependent on the US and their influence geopolitically has only seemed to increase since their increased alliance and integration with Israel in attempts to tie down the Middle East as well. Ask yourself this question: If the US was well and truly close to its end, why didn’t EU members end up selling US bonds when Trump threatened Greenland? That’s because they’d end up tanking their own economies in the process. US debt is the backbone of the entire global financial system.

I can concede to you that the US isn’t as dominant as it once was since the fall of the USSR and that things are more multipolar now, but the current argument is about whether the US is close to its fall, and i just don’t see enough evidence supporting this claim. Don’t get me wrong, the US empire will fall at some point, but you make it sound like it’s imminent.