6 states siding against a supreme court decision to deny access to federal authorities seems big, if thats happened in my lifetime I’ve not heard of it before
Not by itself enough to cause balkanization or civil war, but still represents growing divisions in the US-American bourgeoisie which could lead to those events in the near future.
please can something funny happen, my life is so boring, i’m not asking for much, i want to see abbott taken to a government black site and returned with an obvious flesh tone antenna sticking out of his head, something of that nature
I think anyone who thinks this is going to cause the US to balkanize needs to step outside for at least 3 hours. Screenshot this comment and feel free to @ me in 2-6 months when the current state of affairs has led nowhere.
Less “nothing ever happens” and more “it is ridiculous to think Texas will balkanize over what is essentially a slap-fight over immigration when the state receives ~40% of its revenue from the federal government and, among other things, has critical infrastructure fail statewide during cold snaps and is reliant on federal aid anytime a moderately strong storm forms in the gulf of Mexico” - but be sure to tag me in case I miss Abbott’s announcement of Texas’ secession from his militarized wheelchair lmao.
I think anyone who thinks this is going to cause Russia to invade Ukraine needs to step outside for at least 3 hours. Screenshot this comment and feel free to @ me in 2-6 months when the current state of affairs has led nowhere.
bro they were massing like 200k soldiers on the border for several months before that, it’s not comparable
I think anyone who thinks this assasination of Franz Ferdinand is going to cause a great war needs to step outside for at least 3 hours. Screenshot this comment and feel free to @ me in 2-6 months when the current state of affairs has led nowhere.
It might be obvious in hindsight, but everyone at the time thought it wasn’t going to happen… until it did.
Ever since Ukraine, my partner scoffs whenever I say “nothing major is going to happen.” I can’t say they’re wrong
Happens to the best of us, literally. Lenin said revolution wasn’t going to happen in his lifetime.
I don’t blame you. That was a lot of us. US dem-party-leaning media screeched about Russiagate for 6 years, wearing everyone’s patience thin on anti-Russian scaremongering and creating a “boy who cried wolf” effect. All the libs I know were very smug that day.
I actually anticipated a war in Ukraine (because I had been listening to Alex Mercouris and for months throughout 2021 he was very pessimistic about the various diplomatic negotiations leading up to February 2022), I simply did not expect it to happen this soon. I thought it would be another year or so, but those who had been following closely the US-Russia summit in 2021 knew that the US was dead set on provoking a war in Ukraine.
Ukraine is like the only thing this site has been wrong about, and that’s only because we forgot the number one rule – the stupidest thing that can happen is the one most likely to happen
We always knew he was a succdem and was very likely to get crushed by the machine. There was a small window where we were beating the odds and felt like our original, correct take was too pessimistic. God that was a good couple of weeks
Naw my vibe based interpretation says not shit happens
Disclaimer: I was wrong about covid
Wrong about the beginning of events, but correct about their trajectory once they have begun
But often only because we go “No, that won’t happen, that would be stupid and counterproductive for the West” but then they just do the thing anyway and so we just go “…okay, well, they’re gonna lose then”
It was a Thatcher bombing situation. The libs crying wolf about Russia only have to get lucky once, we have to get lucky every single time. They like to forget that they were howling about an imminent Russian invasion for months and even US analysts no longer considered it plausible. And then it happened.
I can guarantee you that no balkanization is going to happen in the US.
Why? Because this is no longer the time period where individual states can build up their gold reserves as a store of their wealth. No, the US dollar is unparalleled in history in the sense that it allows the US to get “free lunches” from all over the world with junk papers.
I love quoting from this article from 2022 because the Californian finance department accidentally revealed a very crucial fact:
If you look at all of the personal income tax returns that were filed in California in the year 2020, just 1% of the total number of income tax returns that were filed were responsible for more than 49% of all of the personal income tax that was paid in that year. And unlike most of us who get our income from wages and salaries, that very narrow band of taxpayers derives a lot of their income from things like capital gains, stock markets [and] bonuses that are tied to corporate or stock performance. So when the markets are doing very well, those individuals are doing very well and state revenues are doing very well. Conversely, when the markets go south, their fortunes don’t do very well and the state’s revenues decline as a result.
Let’s parse this paragraph: California, the richest state in the US, derives much of its tax revenues from capital gains such as stocks and bonds. Yeah, good luck losing access to the dollar, if any US state even dares to contemplate about seceding for real. Their wealth and living standards are going to plunge overnight. Good luck with that.
Just because it’d be irrational for it to happen, doesn’t mean it won’t happen
This is just the equivalent of rich kids who live off their parents’ wealth throwing tantrum. At the end of the day, nobody dares to cut ties from the family wealth. Sure, some might be crazy enough to do it, but most of the time it doesn’t end well for them.
No country is ever going to give up the dollar just to trade with Texas. Literally nobody. This is how the US impose its sanctions and embargo against Cuba and all the Bad Countries.
I see what you mean
fwiw I don’t think it’s happening anytime soon, but crises such as these repeating (growing larger each time) plus the US’ power globally declining = after a few decades, probably balkanisation, sure
