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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022

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Inspired by a comment from Twitter;

Everyone is talking about the US relative decline, but they are really flexing his power in a way that we have not seen from Iraq

In one year they;

  • Destroyed every possible reconciliation between Europe and Russia

  • Became a next exporter of natural resources and the ones from who a lot of allies depend

  • They basically sent a fuck off to Germany, and the Germans not only are not complaining, but are applauding

  • They strongly limited the military of power of Russia with few money.

  • China is slowing her growth, and they created a ring of allies in the Pacific

  • The cultural grip on the West is becoming stronger, and the US successfully fused Neoliberalism and Leftism in a zombie ideology who is, against all odds, successfully working

  • The pro-Atlantist view have never been so strong.

I doubt that these strategies will work or be healthy in the long term, but it is incredible to see how an ill and polarized country can still do whatever it wants without any reaction.

In one year they;

Destroyed every possible reconciliation between Europe and Russia

Now now, give Russia some credit. Putin worked quite hard to discredit every alternative-seeking Europeans.

Became a next exporter of natural resources and the ones from who a lot of allies depend

That one was already in effect. US has long been a food exporter, and has been edging natural gas exports for some time.

They basically sent a fuck off to Germany, and the Germans not only are not complaining, but are applauding

I think this reaches a bit too far. After all, one of Biden's earlier moves in office in July 21 was to drop the opposition to the Nordstream 2 pipeline as a gift/favor/trade with Merkel, in favor of the German government making promises to take national level action, including sanctions and energy cutoffs, should Russia attack Ukraine.

"Should Russia attempt to use energy as a weapon or commit further aggressive acts against Ukraine, Germany will take action at the national level and press for effective measures at the European level, including sanctions, to limit Russian export capabilities to Europe in the energy sector, including gas, and/or in other economically relevant sectors," it said.

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-us-strike-nord-stream-2-compromise-deal/a-58575935

In so much that the Germans are complaining, it's complaining that the German-American deal is being upheld when the Germans were betting it wouldn't need to be. While this is consistent with the last few decades of German national strategy regarding Russia, the very German parties that committed to the agreement a year and some change ago are still the parties of government now, plus the greens.

Now, you could make a case that this is an American flex in a different way- that the US made the concession to Germany already knowing that Putin was likely to escalate the conflict with Ukraine, thus making a concession they knew they wouldn't have to leave for long in order to secure future compliance by Germany with sanctions it had already agreed in principle to on the belief that it wouldn't have to follow through- but this is a bit of a reach, and denies the Germans the agency to have been paying attention to Ukraine.

They strongly limited the military of power of Russia with few money.

This is true, relatively.

China is slowing her growth, and they created a ring of allies in the Pacific

This is also true, though not recently, since the US has been treaty allies with South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, and Australia for decades.

The cultural grip on the West is becoming stronger, and the US successfully fused Neoliberalism and Leftism in a zombie ideology who is, against all odds, successfully working

This is not so true, because it conflates a lot of things. The cultural grip of 'the West' doesn't exist, since the Europeans aren't the cultural center and two of the main pillars that have tried to claim more cultural/soft-power independence from the US- France and Germany- were discredited in their regions of desired influence over failures in advance/response to Ukraine.

That neoliberalism 'works' to some extent isn't exactly surprising, as the discreditation of it after the financial crisis was a puncture to infalibility, not to inherent tendency to failure.

The pro-Atlantist view have never been so strong.

This one is true, if only because the European Atlanticists are using this conflict as an opportunity to clean house and settle political scores for their domestic political needs. It's never been easier to defang an opposition party- or coalition rival- who was ambivalent about Russia than it is now.

The cultural grip of 'the West' doesn't exist

I think you misread it, Ilforte wrote "grip ON the West".

That isn't Ilforte? Ilforte is Daseindustriesltd