Saw another random grandma with some bullshit-ass “USA love it or leave it” t-shirt, but punchier than usual. She has to feel surrounded and backed up against a wall by libs, here in a very blue state. Good. But it got me reflecting on the ways tvfkp is Making America Tiny Again – and that nazis like this lady actually want to see this happen. Weirdly, we are somewhat in agreement about that? Allow me to explain…
Her vision of this is in the Try That in a Small Town song, and similar sentiments. The USA would be better off if no big cities existed, if it was an endless string of farms and little white houses with small-minded white people in them. All the messicans and faggots and queers and hindus and mooslims and jews and natives and chinamen and darkies can be forcibly relocated to canada or mexico or hell ASAP. This will by definition be a country with less power in the world, a place defined by smallness, surrounded by machinegun turrets and razorwire. Speak English or die. This vision is of course impossible, and maybe she recognizes that, viewing it as aspirational. Any atrocities committed in pursuit of the dream are noble.
My vision is of a place where conservative beliefs are shamed for the nazism they are, back into the muttered shit-talk of the worst white people you know instead of the broad coalition of screaming freaks you see in charge of everything now, mainstream society as some kinda blando liberal mush that isn’t good enough but at least isn’t actively smoking the biosphere like a cigarette and ensuring we are all as miserable, hateful, and petty as possible on the way down. I know, I dream small. Like to keep my hopes in the dimension of what feels possible, so I am not too disappointed. This doesn’t feel super likely, but does feel at least sorta remotely like.. maybe? In my vision, one aspect of the damage caused by shitler persists – we are no longer the economy on which the world depends, because they learned we are not dependable. The USA is forced by this humbling to play ball, to negotiate on equal footing with other nations and power blocs – to become less belligerent than it has ever been in its existence.
From this inferior place, the second rate status we so clearly deserve, we can’t help but acknowledge the reality that we are only one nation out of many, that we are part of the world and that part isn’t the axis. (deathlol) And this would open the door to other places coming into their own – the so-called third world, the global south, finally having a shot at setting their own terms and protecting themselves from the depredations of colonial powers and empires like ours.
Basically, an end to the USA as an empire. And that is something she’d genuinely agree with. She doesn’t want us to be trading with foreign powers. She really would prefer to buy garbage manufactured in the USA. She really won’t like what that costs, at first, but she could get used to it, especially if it helps maintain the integrity of the fortress. Nobody in and, once the purges are done, nobody out. Every activity our nation engages in overseas seems so pointless to her. Charity, trade, diplomacy. Why you gotta be out talkin’ to undesirables like that? Take care of yer own!
I had no idea shitler was going to do something I agree with. And he’s not going about it in a way I’d ever like to see. But the end state, where the empire has properly imploded? Where we’re stuck on our own shitbird equivalent of Brexit Island? Where nobody in any other nation looks upon us as something to aspire toward? A world in which the harm we do can never be so terrible that it threatens everybody else?
I’m into that. I care about other people in the world too much to want us large and in charge. Make America Smol Again, with your tiny tiny hands. God damn, I would love to see a peaceful and prosperous Africa so much it makes my soul hurt.
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What does “tvfkp” mean?
Ten years ago I would’ve agreed with this. I even put this argument forth, in my infinite naivety, as a reason a Donald Trump presidency would maybe not be that bad.
I’ve learned a lot since then and now I strongly disagree with this perspective, for a number of reasons, but I’ll list two big ones.
The first is that the US does [well, used to do] a lot of “quiet good” through mechanisms like USAID, USIP, WHO, Peace Corps, NIH, CDC, science diplomacy, etc. Thousands of small projects to solve problems, protect people, stabilize national and international relations, and make the whole world a bit more stable. Good for us, because trade partners and political allies, but good for everyone else, too.
That’s all going away, and it won’t come back easily because the world now knows we can’t be trusted.
The second is that there needs to be a counterbalance against other colonialist empires. Right now that’s mostly Russia and China. I don’t think Russia should conquer Ukraine and I don’t think China should conquer Taiwan. In the future there will be others. I don’t know the extent of China’s economic colonialism in Africa but I know there are those who are concerned.
If we “Make America Smol Again” then we have no say in these conflicts and run the risk of even more aggressive regimes doing even worse things. And what hope would we have at cooling tensions between Pakistan and India?
I too would love to see every part of Africa prosper but this is not the way to get there.
@Allisson, it means the unconventionally colored fascist in the lead of the country. It is not an abbreviation; it is a random-ish sequence of letters. I assume the purpose is to stop searches for his name leading to this site.
My stance on this issue is similar to what invivoMark said. I do not agree with a lot of what the USA has done and was doing, but I honestly think Russia and China are much, much worse. No matter how bad it was for some minorities in the USA, it was always worse in the Russian Empire. One example – discrimination against LGBTQ+ people in the reddest of towns in the USA pales in comparison to what is the official stance in Russia. I prefer NATO over the Warsaw Pact, Washington over Moscow, and flawed democracy over dictatorship and day.
I hope that the EU does pick up some of what the USA has dropped – siphoning off some of the brains and forming stronger alliances around America. Maybe the world as a whole and the EU in particular can manage to lessen the blow and see to it that the USA suffers most from this self-inflicted disaster – but there is no doubt whatsoever that there will be a lot of bad outcomes of what the small-handed blonde toupee is doing everywhere around the world and a lot of people will die and suffer as a result of his tantrums.
the balance of power in the world is a fraught issue in the same way as governance of individual nations. a world where all nations are equal in power and self-determination would be like direct democracy, one where the US is big daddy like a dictatorship, one where imperial powers are on dicey roughly equal ground lording over small guys is like our oligarchic “representative” democracy. people of good conscience would favor the most egalitarian version, but in practice we never get anything but the ugly ones.
when i say he’s not going about this in a way i’d ever want, it’s the loss of those good programs i’m referring to. literally killing children to diminish our presence in africa, no fucken bueno. to be ok with that would be accelerationism.
but the endpoint of that, better or worse than now? i admit, i don’t know. given our history of supporting corporate-friendly fascism around the world, my tendency is to think it’d be better. human rights in red state usa is not equivalent to human rights under the next pinochet or bolsonaro or shah.
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Political oscillations, Bébé.
(Definitiely not osculations!)
@2 invivoMark
The world knew we couldn’t be trusted long before that. People who act on that belief have a distressing tendency to be labeled our official adversaries, and our “foreign aid” would consist mostly of funnelling weapons to insurgent opposition groups in their countries.
@3 Charly
Really? After what happened in Gaza, you think Russia or China could have pulled that off? Neither of them have an imperial structure. The U.S. is the only nation on the planet that can engineer a genocide of that magnitude on any point on the globe, at a whim. Apparently with impunity, though I don’t think that odious privilege will last much longer.
The diminishing of America has been happening at least since 9/11. Electing someone else wouldn’t have slowed it down — it’s just happening a little differently, and it’s more obvious that we’re punching ourselves in the face in this timeline. I agree with Bébé, well, no, I’ll go a little farther and claim the end of U.S. empire will be an unambiguous net plus for the rest of the world, and a humbling episode that may teach some of the smarter Americans how to engage in peaceful international dialogue with other world powers.
john – i prefer to think of them as vacillations. not vasculations!
b’hold – i wouldn’t say we engineered the gaza genocide, just bankrolled it. give nasty credit where it’s nasty due.
@beholder, you’ve got to be kidding me, Russia and China do not have an imperial structure and could not pull off a genocide? Even if you are uninformed about history, have you not at least been aware of the events of the last decade?
Have you seen what Russia has done to Mariupol and read up on what they are doing to Ukrainians in the occupied territories? Did you listen to what they wish they could do to all Ukrainians, if they could not fight back? And the Uyghur genocide in China might not be as bloody as the Palestinian one, but it still is a genocide of massive proportions, with 11 million people being persecuted.
Both Russia and China are multi-national states where members of some nations are de facto superior citizens (Russians and Han Chinese, respectively) and everyone else is second-class. That is why Uyghurs can be persecuted with impunity and why Buryats and Chechens are sent to die in an expansionist imperial war at a greater rate.
I know that you are at odds with reality, but this is on an entirely different level of denial.
ill let an ftblogger get last word. closing comments bc i don’t feel up to moderating.
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