First the imperialists came for other imperialists while acting like they were coming for radical opposition and I said nothing because I was very confused.
(I know they’ve been gunning for more than that, let me have my dark humor joke. 😛 )
But to be more serious, could this be part of a broader attempt to restructure imperialism in different hands / consolidate personal power? Or just “I believe my own bullshit” administrators hurting themselves in confusion?
Or just “I believe my own bullshit” administrators hurting themselves in confusion?
I think this is closet to reality – basically the internal contradictions within the Republican Party manifesting.
You preach “starve the beast” to your base for 40-50 years, eventually True Believers gain significant power in your coalition, and you get this. They don’t understand the role USAID plays in maintaining empire (and the benefits empire produces) because they are too concerned with cutting the government to really examine what it does.
Opposition to this type of spending is easy to sell to your base because while they indirectly benefit from imperialism, they often are directly harmed by it. They’re the ones getting their legs blown off and dealing with price shocks. But the money behind the party loves imperialism – they’re getting paid to do it and the result directly benefits their businesses.
I think we need to wait and see to get an answer to this. Musk has been managed by intelligence for a long time. It’s unlikely they would be totally blindsided by him dismantling a major tool of there’s. If they were blindsided, then their will be a corrective action taken.
One possibility is that he’s still just as ignorant but they steered him towards doing this. Perhaps USAID was infiltrated and they couldn’t fix it. Or perhaps it was reaching the end of it’s usefulness. Or they needed to reallocate and they needed cover for it.
Another possibility is that there are camps and factions in the bourgeoisie that have some manifestations in the structure of the state, and USAID was an agency that was associated with one of those camps, and the Trump presidency is representative of another camp. This would just be territorial consolidation and discipline in that case.
Yet another possibility is that they intend to shift the operations of the USAID and NED back under the umbrella of the CIA and the State Department, removing the layer of separation and plausible deniability but also getting rid of any accountability or obligation for public disclosure that these orgs may have nominally had. They are foregoing soft power in favor of going back to more direct imperialist means.
Or to put it another way, the myth of liberal humanitarianism has outlived its usefulness. The majority of the world isn’t buying it anymore (except for us here in Europe, we’re the only idiots in the world who still buy that con), so you might as well just admit you are only pursuing self-interest at the expense of everyone else. In a way that is liberating if you’re the kind of imperialist that Trump and Musk are.
This is my feeling on the matter. I think musk and trump are just getting rid of the obfuscation on all fronts. They see it as a waste of energy/money and that it isn’t even working anymore. They understand that america is and always has been a genocidal imperialist project and pretending it isn’t is just lowering efficiency.
I think this is the most plausible theory and a good hypothesis test will be Haiti. USAID has been active there since at least the 2004 coup, but now the new dependent government was collapsed through presidential murder and the country became a non-state “ruled” by a collection of bourgeois representatives de facto appointed by US-led CARICOM, with the main US representative being the NED/USAID-funded RNDDH.
Now this council is relying less on soft-power and political influence and more on a foreign legion composed mainly of Kenyans (with other CARICOM nations joining recently) under the leadership of the 51st US state up north. If the hypothesis holds up, this same form of control should manifest itself in other “allied” dependent nations, like Argentina (though obviously in a less explicitly racist manner).
That is a very good point about Haiti. As i always like to say, we will have to wait and see. For now we can hypothesize but we need more data before we can draw a reliable conclusion.
First the imperialists came for other imperialists while acting like they were coming for radical opposition and I said nothing because I was very confused.
(I know they’ve been gunning for more than that, let me have my dark humor joke. 😛 )
But to be more serious, could this be part of a broader attempt to restructure imperialism in different hands / consolidate personal power? Or just “I believe my own bullshit” administrators hurting themselves in confusion?
I think this is closet to reality – basically the internal contradictions within the Republican Party manifesting.
You preach “starve the beast” to your base for 40-50 years, eventually True Believers gain significant power in your coalition, and you get this. They don’t understand the role USAID plays in maintaining empire (and the benefits empire produces) because they are too concerned with cutting the government to really examine what it does.
Opposition to this type of spending is easy to sell to your base because while they indirectly benefit from imperialism, they often are directly harmed by it. They’re the ones getting their legs blown off and dealing with price shocks. But the money behind the party loves imperialism – they’re getting paid to do it and the result directly benefits their businesses.
Fair point, thanks for your thoughts on it.
I think we need to wait and see to get an answer to this. Musk has been managed by intelligence for a long time. It’s unlikely they would be totally blindsided by him dismantling a major tool of there’s. If they were blindsided, then their will be a corrective action taken.
One possibility is that he’s still just as ignorant but they steered him towards doing this. Perhaps USAID was infiltrated and they couldn’t fix it. Or perhaps it was reaching the end of it’s usefulness. Or they needed to reallocate and they needed cover for it.
Another possibility is that there are camps and factions in the bourgeoisie that have some manifestations in the structure of the state, and USAID was an agency that was associated with one of those camps, and the Trump presidency is representative of another camp. This would just be territorial consolidation and discipline in that case.
Yet another possibility is that they intend to shift the operations of the USAID and NED back under the umbrella of the CIA and the State Department, removing the layer of separation and plausible deniability but also getting rid of any accountability or obligation for public disclosure that these orgs may have nominally had. They are foregoing soft power in favor of going back to more direct imperialist means.
Or to put it another way, the myth of liberal humanitarianism has outlived its usefulness. The majority of the world isn’t buying it anymore (except for us here in Europe, we’re the only idiots in the world who still buy that con), so you might as well just admit you are only pursuing self-interest at the expense of everyone else. In a way that is liberating if you’re the kind of imperialist that Trump and Musk are.
This is my feeling on the matter. I think musk and trump are just getting rid of the obfuscation on all fronts. They see it as a waste of energy/money and that it isn’t even working anymore. They understand that america is and always has been a genocidal imperialist project and pretending it isn’t is just lowering efficiency.
I think this is the most plausible theory and a good hypothesis test will be Haiti. USAID has been active there since at least the 2004 coup, but now the new dependent government was collapsed through presidential murder and the country became a non-state “ruled” by a collection of bourgeois representatives de facto appointed by US-led CARICOM, with the main US representative being the NED/USAID-funded RNDDH.
Now this council is relying less on soft-power and political influence and more on a foreign legion composed mainly of Kenyans (with other CARICOM nations joining recently) under the leadership of the 51st US state up north. If the hypothesis holds up, this same form of control should manifest itself in other “allied” dependent nations, like Argentina (though obviously in a less explicitly racist manner).
That is a very good point about Haiti. As i always like to say, we will have to wait and see. For now we can hypothesize but we need more data before we can draw a reliable conclusion.
Yeah, I think that’s definitely a move if we assume us intelligence is still in control, which I think is the safest best for us all to make
That’s fair, lot of potential unknowns involved, so hard to be certain.