@adam-l It’s relief that the atrophy of a failed system is showing signs of death, at long last. We don’t get to experience the future if we wallow in stagnant economies and unimaginative cultures.

@adam-l If that is the only outcome of the potential future, we’d deserve every single piece of misery foisted upon us.

@Stigma this sounds so much like the exhilaration of the masses at the outbreak of WWI.

@Stigma

My worry is exactly that more wealth and continuing dominance will mean even more luxurious living for the overlords of US society.

The women.

Meaning they'll be able to sit on ther fat asses and doom scroll much more, as well as put longer and girthier cucumbers up their vaginas for their OnlyFans patrons to view while jerking off.

@adam-l It's a brief projection into the future. Permafrost is declining, resources will become accessible and those without will be behind. It's a simple equation! The ECHR, EU, NATO and progressives can wring their hands and have all the committee meetings they want, and then continue to decline through inaction thereafter.

Call me something, but I'm quite excited about the current happenings. It means the cogs are finally turning and the neoliberal status quo is about to get crushed by its momentum. It feels somewhat like living in the future. Might does indeed make right, and all of the post-modernist gnashing of teeth over moralising and charity will be quashed by empirical evidence. It's all been stagnant and declining for long enough, in my humble opinion!

@Stigma

Any geopolitical motivation is going to boil down to a resource in one way or another

Geography in itself is sometimes a reason (mountain chains, sea passages, islands etc.).

Also, there's a lot wealth to be transferred from the taxpayer to the military-industrial complex, by having to replace destroyed military equipment, and infrastructure.

There doesn't necessarily have to be a resource grab for some very wealthy and powerful people to make a lot of money off of war.

When you wake up on a Chinook on your way to a New York prison

@Vermillion-Rx

Doesn't sound that conducive to doing this for oil

I wouldn't die on this hill, to be honest. Any geopolitical motivation is going to boil down to a resource in one way or another. It's proven to be oil often enough that denying it just seems like wasted effort. And also, so what? Who wants a commie stooge dictator sitting on the worlds largest oil reserves? Not me!

@Vermillion-Rx Ah yeah I take your meaning.

Perhaps it's a case of hard lessons learnt. It might be easier to install a puppet that will give you a decent trade deal on the oil reserves than trying to take it at the source. We're two decades on from all of that, probably plenty of technological/tactical advancements that make it possible now and not then.

But what do I know?

It wasn't a complete bust, though, they found the tomb of Gilgamesh and the giants of Afghanistan.