Countries in East and Southeast Asia are Westerners now? The Koreans, Taiwanese, Japanese, Pinoy, Vietnamese, Malays will be surprised to hear that. All of these countries are afraid of Chinese ambitions.

Maybe ask the Tibetans if they think the Chinese annexation of their homeland is just Western hypocrisy.

remotely comparable to what the USA does

You are aware that China invaded Vietnam after the USA left?

You are ignorant of the regional policies. Not everything is as Western centric as your limited understanding of geopolitics.

who cares?

Literally all other countries in the region.

The US playbook usually means having the support of allies. They lost the trust of all of them.

a private company innovated aerospace technology despite the US government’s reluctance to invest in aerospace technology.

Huh? The US government paying SpaceX made it possible to succeed in the first place. That’s literally the US investing in aerospace tech.

US dod officials have been very clearly saying for Over a decade that the US might already be behind China in key areas of defense

China is catching up, but still behind in defense and aerospace technology. The one area they are ahead is industrial capacity to build, especially ships. China builds a huge number of civilian and military ships.

despite spending 4 to 10 times as much on their defense budget

Wages, manufacturing, etc. are all far more expensive in the US. It’s also much easier and cheaper to copy someone else’s design than to discover and build for the first time.

they cannot even compete with a free operating system

Microsoft has good support for Linux nowadays with Windows services for Linux and Azure Linux for example. On the desktop Microsoft Windows is still leading in market share and Microsoft Office is dominating as well.

Where are the biggest Linux companies located?

Apple? they haven’t been innovative in 15 years, depend on slave labor

Apple’s AR/VR is innovative, if not particularly successful in the market. Their M-series chips are among the best chip available. Very fast with low power use.

Apple makes their products in same factories (Foxconn etc) as other companies. So the labor conditions aren’t unique to Apple at all.

it’s not leading in manufacturing, it’s not leading in most sciences, and it has one of the most awful education systems in the world, not to mention the living affordability crisis going on.

I mostly agree. The quality of the US education system is similar to the health care system. The US has some of the best education and health care in the world. However, it’s neither cheap nor affordable for the majority of the population.

you can’t do science without funding and support, and dumps has taken that funding away, and importantly does not believe in science or the benefits of research and development.

I agree mostly. Regarding funding under Trump, we will see. Elon Musk certainly know about R&D costs and benefits and is influential.

meanwhile, other countries are investing record amounts and setting technological records in innovative technologies like solar that the US has no hope of catching up to in the near future.

Yes, other countries are catching up steadily overall and are ahead in some areas, especially China.

The US is still leading in aerospace and defense. Boeing is in a slump, but military planes are top notch. SpaceX is a decade ahead of the global competition at least.

computer science

All the biggest and leading companies in that area are still based in the US. American companies dominate the market for software and internet services. The possibly most disruptive technology AI is also firmly in the hands of the USA.

You’re also missing biotechnology as another key sector, where the US is doing very well.

the US does not have the technological edge it once did;

That much is clear. It’s still doing very good though.

The amount of money spent on R&D is still huge in the USA and it attracts top minds from across the globe.

Play Solitaire

Upvoted for the optimism. Let’s hope you’re right.

technology (…) being suppressed

What technology or technology development is being suppressed?

The USA are still leading in most technological fields and have a dominant position.

Term limits have a huge downside. The politician will need a job afterwards and is thus more motivated to give political favors for job security afterwards. Your goal would also be achieved via an age limit like 70.

It also takes a while for a newly elected representative to understand how the political apparatus works, who is who and so on. Lobbyists and bureaucrats don’t have term limits though and have a much easier influencing the newcomer. Experience matters in every profession including politics.

I wouldn’t be so sure. Copy Russia’s playbook.

Let’s say, it’s just a short special military operation to clear Vancouver of fentanyl imports from China. You don’t need the whole military on board for that. A few battalions is enough. A preceding crisis could be created that then provides a reason. The city doesn’t even need to be taken in a battle. Occupying Canada’s highway 1, railway, and blockading the port could lead to a peaceful handover of the city.

The next step is then the US needs a strategic land bridge to protect Alaska against Russia, so BC and Yukon will be temporarily under US administration.

With Mexico it’s even easier. Say cartel and drugs, special military operation, and that’s that.

Occupy destroyed itself by being too unfocused and ambitious. It also failed to institutionalize and burned itself out quickly.

Sure the state also did its part to sabotage it. However some of the structures like consensus and stack speakers were easily exploited by all kinds of detractors and grand standers and also wore people out by their duration.

Don’t get me wrong, it was great that it happened and there are merits to its approach.

CHAZ had a similar problem with their demands. What Occupy and CHAZ have in common is a continuous occupation of an area with people living there and building a small society. Security concerns, internal contradictions, and external pressure then lead to them falling apart after a month. With both we got a super intense short time of action with grand rhetoric but no staying power. Participants seem to be more interested in experiencing revolutionary cosplaying an anarchist utopia than achieving effective change or building a sustainable movement.

Occupy and CHAZ also have in common, that they were not repeated the next month or the next year with any success. Previous participants were frustrated or burnt out by the experience and outcomes.

The Dakota Access Pipeline protests also seem to have attracted protest tourists, who came more for the vibes than the cause.

White people are colonizing the camps…" protestor Alicia Smith added on Facebook. "They are coming in, taking food, clothing and occupying space without any desire to participate in camp maintenance and without respect of tribal protocols. “These people are treating it like it is Burning Man or The Rainbow Gathering and I even witnessed several wandering in and out of camps comparing it to those festivals.”

In this case as well, the protest lasted for one longer time only, remained mostly local, and even ethnically specific.

I don’t know that much about American protest culture and organizations. But my impression is a lack of long term organizations and repeated protests for years for the same goal. There are punctual chaotic outbreaks, sometimes widespread anger like with BLM.

What other sustained long term groups exist besides Code Pink? The name BLM was coopted and exploited financially by a foundation afaik.

I also know that climate activist movements like Fridays for Future and eXtinction Rebellion were only able to mobilize a fraction of what was going on in Europe at the time.

In contrast to Dakota Access the German group Ende Gelände occupied a different coal mine with a couple thousand people every year for a week or so from 2015 to 2024.

Do I have a wrong impression or is there a lack of political organization around protests and causes in the USA?

The Soviet Union as a credible major adversary meant the US couldn’t drop the ball too much. China is only now becoming a serious rival. Russia is totally changed player that sneaked up on the west. In the decades in between the US could fumble, drop, and lose the ball without much immediate consequence.

Right wingers have organized militias for decades. These might be made up of stupid fat fucks, but they have trained how to organize, communicate, and do logistics.

The number and quality of weapons is one factor. Wars are won by logistics, communication, and coordination. If you have an existing social political network, you can arm it pretty quickly. A group that knows how to set up a music festival in the middle of nowhere, can learn how to run a military camp.

is seriously organize to support a more left candidate

Americans need to start organizing the network for a general strike and start writing a new constitution.

if Trump tried to make an Executive Order that only Republicans could vote

The way authoritarians have done this before is arrest enough of opposition party members. Other ways of blocking members of Congress to show up for a vote could be travel restrictions due to a state of emergency because of a terror attack for example. You can combine this with other methods.

You might have 5 arrested on made up charges, 4 can’t leave their home because of protestors blocking them, 3 are blackmailed, 2 are bribed to stay away, 1 is murdered. This could even start with one or two members of congress getting murdered. Then a state of emergency is called including. Tragically not all members can make it in time to vote in the emergency session.

if federal agents showed up trying to enforce an Executive Order from Trump it is highly likely they would be arrested by the state or city police for interfering in voting.

Trump doesn’t need to succeed in all states with this or even send in federal agents. There are enough state governments run by MAGAs, who will fall in line.

Things don’t need to be properly done. Some chaos as cover and the slightest plausible deniability is enough.

So you end up with some kind of election reform, that’s not accepted by all states. This means the president can declare a further emergency and suspend elections until further notice. Alternatively only elections run according to the new rules are accepted by the federal government. Non compliant states can hold elections, but they will be declared invalid by the supreme court.

somehow he pisses off the base enough

Trump has to placate the billionaire class. If everybody is still making money and gaining power, they’re unlikely to break with him.

Trump ordering an invasion of Canada and the military going along with it, will be his demonstration of full powers.

He wants a grand victory parade.

Trumpism isn’t Orwellian, it doesn’t need to be.

This is going to require constitutional changes

I think it’s going to require a new constitution. The American constitution was pretty good for a first try at modern democracy, but it has weaknesses. Look to European constitutions for inspiration regarding balance of power, parliamentary systems, electoral systems, basic rights. A less powerful president and a voting system that doesn’t lead to two parties might be prudent for example.

China is building military infrastructure on contested islands in the south china sea with the goal of controlling the whole area firmly including the first island chain and Taiwan.

Countries go with China’s because it is a better deal with fewer strings attached.

There’s also no historical baggage with Chinese colonialism in Africa. Fewer strings also means China doesn’t care about democracy, human rights, and such.