It's really just amazing how this crisis has basically laid us flat because nobody wants to protect the people who need it. I've been reporting about the unemployment aid myself for months now, and yes, the Republican idea that more money will make people lazy or not want to work is ludicrous. It's just a mean spirited, shitty idea that turns people into bad caricatures. Overly cynical hogwash.

Due to the USAs generally lacking social system you probably haven't had the best part yet. Over here, when it comes to that subject of right-wing jackasses going on about lazy social parasites, they'll always without fail dig up that one guy on social welfare and has a Ferrari or that one guy on social welfare who travelled the world. Completely ignoring the millions that live in ghettos and barely get through any given month. That one guy that's the smoking gun, that's the proof, it's a completely abused system benefitting only crooks.

I don't know where I would go, but I'm not excited about being around to watch this shit hole (America) die. I guess nowhere. Like you said, we are pariahs now to the world.

When the world is running down, I will NOT make the best of what's still around.

Yeah, there's always that whole argument any time the right does anything like this. 'I can cherry pick the one case that proves my point, so there you go.'

And yeah, I mean this virus thing is at the least going to drastically reshape America and it will never be what it was. It's actually kind of shocking exactly how far we fell from this.

I dunno where you people get your ideas from but anti-Americanism at least around my parts isn't even 10% of what it was in the Bush years. Not because Bush was so much worse but because with Bush people here believed average/representative American people voted for the guy. With Trump the impression is the only people who voted for him are either three tooth rednecks, KKK members or loser guys who shoot up college girls for not having sex with them.

I saw an article from The Atlantic that said America was now, for the first time, eliciting pity from the rest of the world and that might be an accurate descriptor here.

Yeah but that didn't start with Covid-19, that started in November 2016. Everyone here blamed and hated Americans for the Dubya election, the Trump election people felt like the country was hit by a disaster and needed help and sympathy to get through it.

I think it's become clearer than ever that America is severely divided, and while the majority of people have enough common sense to not support a malicious chaos monkey like Trump, they can be quite helpless. I think the discussion has shifted from Americans being obnoxious and barbaric, to the American system being obnoxious and barbaric and a vast portion of the population being its prisoners.

Regarding Europeans' perceptions of Americans, my Finnish relatives expressed some concern about the nasty things our relatives living in America post about Hillary, Biden, and the seemingly right choices to support in the current situation, on social media. I don't think they quite understand left-leaning Americans' frustration and dissatisfaction with the cursed centrism and rampant right-ward shifting of the Overton window.

Well yeah it's a bit complicated, but I still stand by my point that it isn't like the Bush era anti-Americanism. Like people here can't stand Woke Hollywood, but then again so can't the 95% of the American left that isn't on Twitter with a blue checkmark. People definitely understand the division, though can't relate to it, though a lot of that inability to relate has to do with denial about having very similar problems here (see German politicians' responses to the George Floyd protests, "there's absolutely no racism in German police!!!" oh yeah despite two dozen studies saying otherwise), but there's still that impression that Trump was voted in by Americans that aren't really normal Americans but more by people who chant "Jews will not replace us" and drive cars into counter-protesters.

I also think folks that don't live here don't really grasp the internal implications of America's role as hegemon-of-hegemons and global enforcer/guarantor of capitalist imperialist dominance. The United States spends roughly $1.5 trillion annually on maintaining its position as capitalism's global cop. One consequence is that, even though Americans aren't really any less tax burdened than citizens of most fully developed capitalist countries, they get a very minimalist safety net in return for that tax burden. Intellectually, I think folks abroad are aware of this (quite smugly so, at that—they needn't be; their much more generous welfare states are subsidized and made possible by American blood and treasure), but I don't think they fully grasp just how sparse that safety net effectively is.

At the same time, America's status as the strongman of global capitalism provides its ruling class access to the first fruits of imperialist exploitation and superexploitation, to the positively obscene enrichment of that class. This, in combination with America's sad sack safety net—with institutionalized white supremacy, with institutionalized patriarchy and queer oppression, with the distortion of the "democratic process" the obscene wealth of our ruling class engenders—produces another notable feature of American life: drastic economic inequality. Again, I think Europeans and others understand this fact intellectually and in the abstract, but I don't think they know what this really looks like on the ground, so they cannot fully grasp the anger of the American Left.

On the ground, this looks like half the country either in poverty or poised precariously on the cusp, one mishap from utter penury. On the ground it looks like a vast, racialized proletariat groaning under the weight of racism and white supremacy. On the ground it means the bodily autonomy of the vast majority of American women eroded almost into nonexistence and the continuing systemic brutalization of queer and trans folks. On the ground it means catastrophically high rates of interpersonal violence. On the ground it means shit schools and for profit prisons. On the ground it means massive internal security forces to keep a lid on it all, forces increasingly equipped, organized, and trained in a manner largely indistinguishable from that of the military forces that bring the imperial boot to the neocolonized world. On the ground it means no healthcare access and a healthcare system that has proven completely unable to respond effectively to a pandemic. On the ground it means nearly half of American renters are currently, at this very moment, in danger of eviction. On the ground it means hundreds of thousands of Americans rendered homeless while millions of homes sit vacant, waiting for their chance to generate a profit for the ruling class.

That's what it's like on the ground, and on the ground, the institutional Democratic Party—represented so perfectly to a "T" by the Biden-Harris ticket—has been instrumental in developing, implementing, maintaining, and expanding the policies, institutions, and mechanisms by which we came to be in this situation in the first place. They are complicit. They are part of the problem. They have systematically moved to crush every genuinely progressive impulse within their own base and ranks. Now, they're holding 320 million people hostage with the threat of Donald Trump and the promise of a shit sandwich. Fuck Joe Biden. Fuck Kamala Harris. Fuck the Democratic Party.

There is a revolutionary consciousness exploding in the United States. We owe it to ourselves and to the world to do everything we can to ensure that consciousness and energy is not funneled into the reactionary vessel of Joe Biden and and the Democratic Party, where it will die aborning. The American people are demanding revolutionary change. They need revolutionary change. They will have revolutionary change. That clock is ticking.

Ah yes us lesser beings can't really grasp Murca Fuck Yeah, thanks Falco.

Co-worker has tested negative fortunately. Still goes to show how nobody is safe from contracting this virus, and its only made worse by how badly our government is mishandling it, though i'm really starting to think Trump's supporters are even dumber than he is at this point.

You don't live here. You aren't experiencing the day-to-day realities of Americans. Your understanding of this country comes from the news media and 20 year old memories, yet somehow you think your opinion of our politics is more valid than that of folks that are actually here on the ground, living the reality of America 24/7/365.

Yeah but to be fair Sedition, I don't think there's a single monolithic experience we all share living in this country. Therefore, someone like droneriot, who lives in Germany, probably has about as equal of a grasp as I do on the mentality of people living in certain regions.

There was something I said to a friend recently about how America's particular conditions - as both a country where you have a lot of resources to learn and do things, and also one that is severely lacking for health care and other types of things - has engendered a certain more liberal type of person now. There's a movement going on. People are moving way further to the left here. I've spoken to people from other countries who don't mean anything bad, but who have more reserved views on things. In America, our particular melting pot - accelerated by COVID - has made a more left-wing set of people in a lot of corners.

Between the paid Trump ads in the US Politics thread and the "all the world lives on Murca's dole"-Trumpism here it's clear that we're in the first phase of "the great unveiling" that I've predicted from the beginning. You can't teach an old underground nihilist new tricks.

I'm not talking about a monolithic personal experience, I'm talking about the difference between actually living in a place and obtaining your knowledge of it through media sources. It is certainly possible to live in a place and still not know what actually happens there, but it's damn near impossible to not live in a place and actually know what life is like there.

1. I defy you to find a single example of me defending Trump or a Trump policy. Saying that Joe Biden is also shit isn't a defense of Donald Trump. They're both shit. Neither deserves my vote. Neither should be in charge of a supply closet, much less the United States.

2. If Germany had to cull out 8-10% of GDP right off the top for its share of the defense and maintenance of global capitalism, how robust a welfare state do you think it would be able to maintain? The fabulous productivity and profitability of the developed capitalist economies is a direct product of geopolitical conditions that enable the superexploitation by the leading capitalist nations of the rest of the world. Those geopolitical conditions were created and are maintained by American military power. The cost of maintaining the dominance of capital is enormous. The European welfare states don't bear that cost, though they benefit directly (and enormously) from it. Like it or not, that is, in effect, an American subsidy of their economies, and touting European welfare systems without acknowledging what makes them possible is just dishonest.

Surely you recognize that we don't just get our information from media sources, but primarily through friends who live there right? The US isn't a bubble where only those who live there know what's going on.

In a race between two candidates, not voting means supporting whoever ends up winning.



The country who gets the most benefit from American wars is the US. It's just distributed unequally.
I was listening to an interview with Noam Chomsky some days ago. He quoted a study made by Sean Starrs, a Hong-Kong based economist: according to it, around 50% of global GDP goes to American corporations.
Almost every country in the world, not only Europe, has a better welfare than the US and none has more wealth, albeit highly concentrated.
In some cases, that's despite sanctions imposed by the US. So having large expenses is not the cause.
Being allied to the US also means you're only allowed to make business with US-approved subjects.
A recent example of that is Italy and the UK not allowing Huawei to be a competitor to provide 5G technology.
That's not to mention historic interferences by the US into the internal politics of European countries (which, goes without saying, were aimed to oppose progressive policies).
You also have to take into account the impact of US intervention destabilizing areas surronding Europe (take Libya).
Finally, European countries generally have a larger percentage of GDP that's taxed. In fact, I think I remember an article by Paul Krugman where he mentioned France being described by Fox News or some other right-wing media as an example of a socialist tyranny.

All that said, it doesn't seem completely fair to say that Europe's generally higher welfare standard is permitted by American military expenses and it isn't fair at all to say the US don't have a comparable welfare because their citizens' taxes go to fund that of Europe.

I haven't really kept track of the evolution of this thread, so I'm not sure if I'm on topic here, but being European it doesn't please much me to read such inaccuracies that only end up fostering existing prejudices.



Again, this is just a prejudice.
Who says that it isn't possible to have a better perspective of something by looking from outside? Also, US citizens don't universally agree on one political stance despite all supposedly having equal experience of living there.



I can again refer to what I've said above about France being considered a tyrannical socialist society by the right in the US.
Some American commentators have argued that a self-described socialist like Bernie Sanders would be considered a social democrat or a democratic socialist at best in Europe.
Public healthcare and education aren't considered far-left policies over here. At least, not so far.

You're the one educating people about America here, so you shouldn't need to be educated about first past the post. I can vote for a splinter party and have actual hopes for them entering parliament. For you, any vote not for the direct first past the post rival of Trump is a vote for Trump. You portraying yourself as the great educator about America right here obviously know that one, so I don't get the point of pretending you don't.


I can't believe you respond to the accusation of picking up Trumpist talking points by doubling down with another Trumpist talking point. Funny enough the EU has half a dozen of times the military power of Russia, and that Trumpist talking point is only about matching the military industrial insanity of the United States, which nobody actually needs for any strategic or practical purposes. Any military confrontation between the EU and what the United States try to advertise as "enemies" wouldn't last a week with said "enemies" bombed into the stone age.

And no, you don't actually need the ability to destroy all humanity 50 times over to maintain anything. You just need a military stronger than others. The military industrial madness of the United States is not necessary for anything, and matching it is even less necessary for anything. So as for that talking point, you can shove it up the ass of your plush Pepe the Frog doll, it's devoid of reality.


I guess migration and communication don't exist and all we ever get is from the fake news media. My American friends are all just actors hired by CNN or something.

I really can't get behind this kind of reasoning. It is not a vote for Trump if one chooses an alternative that isn't his main opposition (in this case Biden). Sure, there is no chance for anyone else to compete but I think its better to vote with a conscience and with real support than to vote for the lesser of two evils (if that is how one percieves the coming US election). I think there should be massive respect given for anyone who refuses to be part of the mainstream political climate if one doesn't agree with it. Not voting for any of the two doesn't mean one supports the winner - it means one supports neither.

But heck, I'm probably in the minority where I choose not to vote at all since I really don't like any of the alternatives (and over here we have at least 8 political parties who can effect things and 2 or 3 others where a vote could make them get over 1% thus leading to them getting more funds).

It is how it is. That horrible outdated voting system needs to be abolished, every last trace of it because it's not fair or democratic or anything other than a complete disgrace, but until it is, every vote for anyone other than Biden is a vote for Trump.

Here's the thing I understand it of course. Neither Republicans nor Democrats would ever abolish it because of how much they profit from it. Only way I see is if all splinter parties no matter how much they disagree with each other (like greens and libertarians) got together in a coalition with the sole purpose of abolishing first past the post and a bunch of popular politicans like Bernie or AOC joined up with them and said we're standing together for the sole purpose of abolishing first past the post. But since in this election none of them had the cojones to do that, and I don't know if they ever will, you're stuck with either voting for Biden or voting for Trump.

I'm not saying it out of negativity either. I actually believe if everybody who is sick of DNC vs GOP got together and organised in an "anti first past the post coalition" they'd stand a real chance. They just need to DO IT instead of out-purism-ing each other.

Information at second hand still isn't the experience of daily life. One of my exes was a Navy fighter jock. I dated her for a couple of years years, but it doesn't mean I can fly the ball.

For an ANUS troll job, press 1.
For Sedition and Pockets having written herself into a corner and not knowing how to get out, press 2.

If you pressed 1, and have moderator priviledges, exercise the ban function.
If you pressed 2, remember everybody who has written him- or herself into a corner can get out of it by admitting said action and coming out of that corner.

It's not about respect, it's about math. You don't vote for the opposition, it's one more vote for the eventual winner. You can have all the respect in the world but the result is the same.
Plus, that is why the primaries are such a big deal in the US. In Italy or Germany there's none of that hype because even small parties eventually get into a coalition if they enter parliament.
Sanders understood that he lost fair and square and threw his support behind the winner; that's what you do if you believe in democracy.
If you think the game is rigged and things can only be set right by other means (whatever they might be), then you can do that while still playing the game by the rules. One option doesn't exclude the other and it's better to be safe than sorry.
But people who claim to be on the left and refuse to support Biden for these elections aren't thinking that rationally: they are doing it out of spite and pettiness. They just want things, now; to hell with whoever might have to suffer the consequences.
The fact is that the US are so big that even small differences could mean life or death for thousands of people. Going to vote (or not) for the general elections with the same attitude you would have for elections for your local small town politicians shows narrow-mindedness and disconnection from the global reality.



Timing is also a factor with some things in life. Is three months before the elections a good time to think about a radical reform of an electoral system that's been there such a long time?



That's assuming that you'd get less accurate information from the media than from a personal acquaintance who believes everything News Corp reports.

The fuck are you talking about, my friends living in Chicago or Tampa or LA don't get their info about living in Chicago or Tampa or LA from News Corp, they get their info from living in Chicago or Tampa or LA.

Tone it down, mister . I mean that you can have a meaningful insight into something even if you don't have direct experience of that. A doctor can diagnose you a disease even if he's never had it himself.
I was using the example of someone who tried to grasp the reality of America by talking to an American whose political views are more influenced by the media than actual experience; would that really be that valuable as a first-hand source?



Wait a minute, that's a woman?? That changes everything.



Ok, nevermind.

That's still that ridiculous 20th century notion that there's no real interaction between the world. Hate to burst your nationalist bubble but borders don't mean much anymore, we all interact and develop friendships and even have relationships and marriages all across the planet. Welcome to the 21st century, you're only two decades late.

I don't deny any of that!
I was just refuting the argument that if you don't live in/you're not X, you can't have an idea about X.
Why couldn't somebody school me about something concerning my country even if I live here and he doesn't?
I hope that clarifies.

By this logic, a vote for the losing bourgeoisie party candidate is also a vote for whoever ends up winning. It's a false choice, in any event. Voting is not the only—or even the primary—means of achieving change in society.



No question, the US absolutely skims the first fruits of global superexploitation. I believe if you track back to the original post of departure for this little sidebar, you'll note that I specifically raised this point re: its impact on the internal inequality of the United States. The superprofits of imperialist exploitation accrue mechanically and predictably only to the very top tier of corporate interests; no one else can operate on the requisite scale. By their nature, superprofits are the largest generator of wealth inequality. The fact that, while there is plenty of pass through and trickle down, most superprofits are reinvested in the export of capital abroad (where more superprofits await) exacerbates this inherent tendency of imperialism. It is further exacerbated by the cost of maintaining the American role in the global capitalist order.



It's a devil's bargain, for sure, especially with regard to national sovereignty, but it's a bargain the global capitalist elite and their puppet politicians have been more than willing to meet. The opening of fault lines among the imperialist powers has been one of the rare tangible, albeit unintentional, benefits of the Trump regime.



The United States could easily fund a European-style welfare state out of its current receipts; that it does not is largely a product of a budget process where roughly 10% of national GDP goes into "defense" spending of one sort or another. Literally, that defense spending is the difference between the US safety net and the safety nets of the other leading economic powers. At the same time, the other core capitalist countries receive absolutely vast economic windfalls from the global order American power built and maintains, to the tune of trillions in aggregate. The American ruling class may derive the most benefit from the position of the United States within the current order, but its allies derive great benefit at no direct cost to themselves. The effect remains one of a subsidy even if the United States (or rather, its ruling class) benefits itself from that allocation of American state funding. It's also really a side-issue, something I noted only in passing.

The point I was really trying to drill at is that, in my conversations with folks from outside the US, I consistently run into a particular misapprehension of the nature of American wealth inequality. That is, I find that people who don't live here are well aware that extreme inequality exists here, and they understand that we have a woefully inadequate safety net. but they understand this is a very skewed way. The most common variation I encounter is something along the lines of, "How can a country that can produce a Jeff Bezos also be the same country that has places like the Pine Ridge Reservation?" And it is true that this is a story, but it is not the story of American inequality. My impression is that they view America as sort of a bigger, sloppier version of their own societies, with more obscene wealth and more extreme destitution at the economic poles, but a big, basically comfortable middle. Viewed from this perspective, I can totally understand the consternation Europeans and others feel when American Leftists refuse to support the ostensibly "progressive" American mainstream political party, especially against a fascist shitgoblin like Donald Trump. If that's your context, yeah, it would seem like an overreaction to a problem that's kind of at the margins.

The problem is that the real story of American inequality isn't at the margins. Yes, we have obscene wealth coexisting with Third World style poverty in places, but the much, much bigger story looks like this. 30% of Americans will never conceivably know any real want, while 50% of Americans live in or on the precipice of poverty. That isn't a problem of the margins, it is a fundamental contradiction of the system. It isn't a problem that can or will be solved within the bounds of electoral politics. It isn't a problem that can be addressed by continual deference to the lesser evil. When folks who don't live here, who don't have the experience of American life, who have only a facile understanding of the conditions Americans face presume to lecture us on on our duty to empower our own subjugators, I find that presumption, well, presumptuous.

Nobody here is preaching accelerationism. No one is saying Donald Trump is better than Joe Biden. No one is advocating that we practice "Thanos Math" or whatever other phantasmagoric formulation droneriot cares to forward. What I am saying, what millions of other Americans are saying alongside me, is that we understand that we cannot get what we need through the ballot box. We cannot get what we need by clinging to the coattails of the Democratic Party. We cannot obtain the systemic change we need within the bounds of the system that we have. We're tired of being lied to. We're tired of being told we have to wait to have our needs met. We're tired of a promised liberation that never comes. We're tired of being held hostage for that shit sandwich.

Worth noting:

If Joe Biden is down to needing the votes of every last Marxist-Leninist in the United States, I hate to tell you this, but Joe Biden is gonna lose.



It is certainly possible, but it is the exception, not the rule. The rule is that expertise, familiarity, and experience are not developed from the outside, and they are the trump cards.



No one said they did. I expanded on a comment Ilwhyan made about Europeans not understanding the depth of left-leaning Americans' frustration to note that one reason this is so is that they often don't understand just how bad conditions actually are here. The comments weren't made in the context of the political opinions of Americans across-the-board, but specifically in the context of the discontents of the American Left.

This mentality has been prevalent here to. No need to vote for any of the smaller parties - they won't gain influence anyway and if you vote for them you only enable the eventual winner by not voting for the direct opposition. Sure, if you'd rather just exist within the small confinements of the established political life perhaps thats what you do but if you actually believe in something and hold ideals I applaud everyone who keeps doing what is right according to them.

I'd hate it to be confined to the petty intrigues of the two major political parties. If one wants a change of the system in the US one cant very well vote within, and to keep, the status quo. It will only be broken by those who dare to do something else and not be dragged into the are you red or blue debate. It is dumbing down people to be confined to one of two choices.

If anyone chooses to vote green, libertarian or whatever that isn't a vote for the winner (be it Biden or Trump) it just isn't a vote for the main opposition but its still a vote that opposes both of the two main alternatives.



Yes!

Exactly this!

And you are so right in that we need to get away from the thinking that the primary way to change society is to vote.

The fuck? Please explain to me how social welfare in Australia is "subsidized and made possible" by America.

Believe it or not, I get the point that living in the US sucks etc. etc.
But the US isn't the whole world. Trump and the Republicans are taking actions that risk wiping out life on earth as a whole. You can dislike Biden and Obama all you want, but they were not the ones that took those actions. They were not the ones tearing up non-proliferation treaties, not the ones who withdrew from the Paris Agreement and maximized the use of fossil fuels and disbanded scientific projects aimed at preventing pandemics. Even Reagan never went that far! Look up those things, I'm not making up anything.
Whatever it is that people like you have in mind to bring change to the society you live in, you can keep doing it anyway and even more effectively without a bunch of sociopaths in power. Politicians don't take a piss without looking at polls, they must take the public opinion into account: if they are pressured, they can be swayed; but only if the world as we know it survives.
If there was more time to deal with those existential threats (especially climate change), people wouldn't make such a big deal out of these elections, but unfortunately that's not the case and everything else should take a lower priority.
The left needs to take a strategy of "live today, fight tomorrow". I don't think it's an exaggeration, if one takes scientific evidence seriously.

I keep repeating these points to people like a broken record these days, but I can't help it when they don't seem to realize how grim the prospects are.



Voting is just one thing; there are other things, they can be pursued together.
This time it happens that the choice is between a bunch of complete sociopathic criminals and another of more or less normal human beings.

I spent this weekend around the town of Glastonbury (yes, that one). In Glastonbury, which is home to a large population of vaguely spiritual goddess-and-incense people (Wiccans, Druids, Shamans, etc etc etc), I got to see how COVID is approached in a different community.

The local vape / stoner shop ? Poster declaring that you can wear a mask if you want, but don't feel forced to, you shouldn't let yourself be oppressed.

Another house had posters up running stats and pointing out that more people die of the flu, blah blah blah blah. It's all a government / media / corporate conspiracy.

Yet another had posters declaring that it was all an evil Tory conspiracy to take our rights.

I do despair. Happy to say that at least one shop was telling people to get out if they didn't want to wear a mask. "it's my choice not to let you in". Since it's the UK, no-one was armed to the teeth, so no-one got shot !

You could, you know, read the fucking thread, where this has already been explained. But I'll help you out despite your laziness.

Like every other major capitalist economy, Australia's economic prosperity is dependent on a global economic order that permits unfettered capitalist exploitation of the entire globe, and particularly the imperialist superexploitation of the Global South. That order was built on the basis of US military power. It was imposed on the world by US military power. It is sustained almost entirely by US military power. And it is paid for with funds expropriated from American tax payers, to the tune of roughly 10% of US GDP annually. Meanwhile, Australia receives the economic benefits of a world terraformed for capitalist exploitation, but pays only around 2% of its GDP annually for that privilege (ie only 20% of what the US taxpayer spends on a relative basis). That is, in essence, a massive subsidy of your economy. You receive the benefits without paying a commensurate share of the costs, and this permits a much more robust welfare state to be funded out of your existing tax receipts.

Jesus christ, you could try not taking the nuclear option. But despite my supposed laziness I'll refute your points and take the high ground.

"imperialist superexploitation of the Global South"

In case you haven't looked at a map recently, or the "Australis" part of our name isn't quite quite making sense to you, we are part of the global south. And funnily enough, the exploitation I see is the US imposing shitty trade deals on us. "Trans pacific partnership" my arse.

"That order was built on the basis of US military power"

No, that order was built on the basis of the Royal navy thank you very much. We are a commonwealth country, and settled here long before the US was doing anything in the Pacific ocean. If you want to argue about how mercantilism shaped modern capitalism that's quite alright, but it wasn't the American version, it was the Dutch East India company, The British East India Company and the Rum Corps.

"That is, in essence, a massive subsidy of your economy."

This is the logic of "stop hitting yourself". And it's the US that keeps us hitting ourselves. Your criticism might make a lot of sense if applied to Europe with the quibbling about NATO funding. But Australia, for some daft reason, keeps sending troops to fight your adventurist wars when a more sober analysis would ask what we are getting out of this deal. 17,000 in Korea, 60,000 in Vietnam. We had fucking conscription for Vietnam in case that escaped your notice - nobody else followed you into that quagmire. How exactly is the crippling of your countries economy in Iraq and Afghanistan something we should want to emulate? What did that achieve for our strategic interests, other than pissing 7 billion dollars down a hole to satisfy the requirements of the ANZUS treaty?

As for "massive subsidy of our economy", how about starting a new cold war with our biggest trading partner? That's doing us wonders, thanks heaps for that. If your supposed subsidy was helping us so much, why are we stuck in an embarrassing series of diplomatic incidents with China because of your Gibbon in chief running his mouth?

Now on to the point about our welfare state "depending" on the US. This is a steaming load of shit and if you weren't so wrapped up in your parochial mindset you would take 5 minutes research and walk that right back. Let's look at the Harvester judgement for a start. In 1907 an Australian federal court handed down a judgement that the minimum wage payable to a working man be sufficient to keep the worker and his family in "modest comfort" - the "needs of an average employee, regarded as a human being in a civilised community. If, instead of individual bargaining, one can conceive of a collective agreement – an agreement between all the employers in a given trade on the one side, and all the employees on the other – it seems to me that the framers of the agreement would have to take as the first and dominant factor the cost of living as a civilised being. If A lets B have the use of his horses on the terms that he gives them fair and reasonable treatment, I have no doubt that it is B's duty to give them proper food and water, and such shelter and rest as they need; and, as wages are the means of obtaining commodities, surely the State in stipulating for fair and reasonable remuneration for the employees means that the wages shall be sufficient to provide these things, and clothing and a condition of frugal comfort estimated by current human standards."

This is something we managed to work out in 1907. We had the 8 hour working day in 1860 - I time, I might remind you, it was legal to own another fucking person in your country. Don't you dare to presume to lecture me about how calling out the complete shitshow you people live in is somehow a European privilege built on the Marshall plan's dime and protected by the NATO budget.

Very interesting article by David Quammen, the author of "Spillover", about the connection between wildlife (especially the pangolin) and pandemics.
It goes more in depth and makes things clearer about the subject than anything I've found so far in the news.
Long read but effortless, being so beautifully written.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/08/31/did-pangolins-start-the-coronavirus-pandemic

Girlfriend and I got tested this morning. We're staying locked until we get our results. Meh.

After experimenting with a 'do you as you please' being the rule, Britain is now going to Lockdown II: The Lockdowning

Sticking with the by-now-traditionally confusing instructions, more than 6 people from two households can't meet indoors at the same time.

Turns out that basically saying 'it's over, yay' was a mistake, as new infections shot up from the hundreds to 5000+ in the space of ten days.

Rather worryingly, they intend (they have publically announced this) to police their 'rule of six' by having someone hanging around ready to call the police at all times. It's all very East German - I was joking in the local shop about the government needing a Stasi to make it work. Turns out that this is exactly their plan.

Rather puts me off downloading the track & trace app as a side effect