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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 7, 2023

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they are just disputed zones fought over by countries that do have nukes.

This is why it's bad for the USA for Iran to have nukes.

Charitably, playing an M player game of thrones is easier than an M+1 player game. The USA doesn't even give nukes to it's non-nuclrar allies, and neither do the other nuclear powers.

I think that it is actually a better thing for the people of the US that the USA empire comes to an end, and a nuclear-power Iran would be a good step forward in that direction.

I'm pretty skeptical of this.

If you believe this, then there is a laundry list of less powerful nations we might theoretically swap places with. Which would you choose?

I have no idea what relevance this has to my point. Why would the US be swapping places with anybody?

It's a hypothetical. you proposed reducing the USA's global power by calling for an end to the American empire.

This is directly related to my post, where I asked you to consider what life would be like for the citizens of a nation with much diminished power relative to the USA today--- of which there are many real world examples you can choose from.

I don't believe that the USA would be equivalent to any of those other nations - you can maybe point at different parts of the country and say that they'll be closer to one or another states, but the USA as a whole is just far too heterogenous to be directly comparable to any competitor nations. Whether or not there's an actual breakup of the country would play a huge part as well.