Which was part of the reason behind the whole Greenland ordeal. A problem which they’ve now seemed to be able to circumvent.

Not exactly. The rare earths aren’t the biggest problem themselves, it’s the tech to refine and utilize them, which China has a near global monopoly on.

That’s because the fancier tools are higher quality and therefore more expensive to produce. Furthermore, since the cold war ended, thousands of small suppliers have been closing up by the decade because there’s no more business. This lead to consolidation in the hands of a few big players e.g., Lockheed Martin. The US could build back up to Cold War levels of preparedness if it wanted, but it’d take at least 5 years. That’s the real historical materialism here.

Not quite. These are more expensive because the US is far more financialized. They are marginally better, but far more expensive. A big mac in Switzerland isn’t over three times as good as a big mac in Taiwan. Further, the US cannot re-industrialize in 5 years, if the US wanted to re-industrialize they’d need to cut the cost of labor, implement strong central planning, and sacrifice profits for re-industrializing.

In modern warfare, Iran is holding its own with drones that cost them a few thousand to make against multi-million dollar patriot missiles. The patriots are not hundreds of times more effective. Historical materialism requires recognizing the different circumstances of today.

Ideology has a material basis, but do you know that that same ideology acts upon the material base as well? This is why i mentioned Althusser because he goes into this stuff. Also, i never said the ongoing problems of the US Empire are solely due to Trump, i only said that he’s accelerating its demise and acting as a baseboard from which other Western powers start to chart their own course. I am fully aware that real material conditions gave rise to Trump’s reign. The next step is realising how the material realities that DO come out of Trump’s presidency affect the US’s downfall and i assess them to be more than substantial.

The reason why I said you put too much of an emphasis on Trump is because you listed him as the reason, and not the symptom. Trump has an impact, of course, so as long as you aren’t putting him as primary then we’re fine.

And its defense somehow necessitates an ethnonationalist character? Are we talking about the same fascism?

Ethnonationalism is a symptom of fascism, not necessarily how you categorize it. Ethnonationalism usually rises in fascism, but isn’t definitional to it.

Once again, quickly approaching is a stretch. It will most certainly happen within our lifetimes, but not in 10 or 20 years.

I think 10-50 years is a pretty reasonable window, and soon enough to call where we are at the “death throes.” You can disagree with that if you wish, but that’s where I think we are at right now.

I did not do this. I only pointed out how Trump’s actions will serve as an anchor point in the future for Western powers. World leaders themselves aren’t sitting around contemplating material contradictions and dialectical movement. All they see is Trump’s actions and how it’s harmful to their own interests. In a sense this is dialectical as Trump’s actions represent a qualitative change resulting from the accumulation of multiple quantitative factors.

If we can agree that Trump is not the cause, but instead a symptom, then we are more in agreement than not. Symptoms have material impact, but they aren’t the primary reason. Putting it in Marxist terms, Imperialism is principal and Trump is secondary to that, but that doesn’t mean Trump isn’t impacting it.