this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2026
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It is collapsing, though not because of any 250 year tendency.
250 years is an observed pattern, but is not implied to be the cause
Sure, but the meme appears that way.
No it doesn't, that's just how you chose to interpret it.
That's the way it came off to me 🤷
I really can't come off to you, sorry
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This "250 year thing" makes me feel the same way as when I play new Vegas and Caesar say he will destroy the NCR because of dialectics. THATS NOT HOW IT WORKS YOU FUCK
Yea lmao, Caesar tried to take Hegelian dialectics rather than Marxist, and further misunderstood Hegel himself. Though, I don't blame the writer, Hegelian dialectics is notoriously difficult to parse for those that haven't studied it deliberately, and at an in-game level it adds to Edward Sallow being full of shit.
I'm convinced they did it in purpose to highlight what a dumbass Caesar is. He verbatim says dialectics makes it inevitable that the NCR is destroyed by him, which is just so incredibly stupid. If you read enough of Hegel to write Caesar talking about Hegel as he does, then you've read enough to know that would be about the dumbest you could say.
Fair enough, intentional or not it works well narratively.
Look the only critique I can leverage at new Vegas is that there isn't a communist or anarchist ending where the courier unites the disparate communities and makes something that lasts until after the courier dies. I want to be the Stalin of the wasteland.
Edit: After getting the Lee Kuan Yew speeches on my Instagram reels I also realise Houses "give me 20 years" speech is taken from there. The people behind the game were very politically aware.
Also apparently fallout 1, 2 and new Vegas are based on a tabletop game the designers played? Arcade Gannon was Josh Sawyer's character
Yea, sadly I feel that the writers just didn't want to write a meaningfully left ending.
Having seen a documentary about the production the designers wanted the game to be about "letting go of Old World Blues". All the factions cling to the past, to systems that led them to where they are today. I take it they were a bit better than regular US radlibs, which is why there isn't any left-bashing, but they probably see communism as part of that old world blues too. It would also go against their goal if there was an obvious "good" ending.
That said it would have done wonders for the political awakening of a bunch of people if there was one. Or, at least, if it was made clear the courier was likewise constrained by their environment, so the reason a post-post-apocalyptic spartacist movement isn't possible is because the courier and like individuals can't think like that. The red scare has long tendrils.
Or at least a yes-man ending that wasn't going all "great man" theory about the courier, where everything revolves around them and their presence.
Yep, the writers are progressives, but not commies. If they had written an explicitly communist path, it likely would have been a "good in theory, bad in practice" type commonly seen in western writing.
To be fair, from what I've seen Hegel doesn't seem very good at making his writing understandable. A lot of it sounds like esoteric nonsense out of context.
Fair enough, I hated reading what little of Hegel I have, lol.
You sure about that
Yep. The US Empire is collapsing because the global south is developing, and pivoting more towards south-south trade and mutual development over naked imperialism. The string of recent hard aggression is trying to install compradors to keep this scheme going for a bit longer, but the industrial base of the empire is hollowed out.
What if all of this happened because of a 250 year curse?!? Checkmate commies
Advanced enough dialectics is indistinguishable from a curse and a blessing.
Right, the world moved on and the empire's failure to adapt is causing it to crumble around the 250 year mark. It's a rule of thumb, not a curse or a deadline.
If you don't live in the US, Russia, China, India or Israel then you live in a vassal state. The global south isn't developing independently. It's being segmented between the US and China via soft or hard power (e.g. belt and road initiative). There is no revolution of the disenfranchised. It's just major powers doing what major powers do as we enter a new geopolitical paradigm.
The global south is developing partially with the assistance of the PRC, yes, but there's also general south-south trade and alliances, like the Alliance of Sahel States. The PRC isn't imperialist, it isn't plundering the global south. BRI has been enourmous for win-win economic development, compared to western enforced austerity and plundering.
Vassals of the empire include western Europe, Israel, Austrailia, etc, imperialist powers that don't outweigh the US Empire but still benefit from imperialism. The global south aren't vassals, they are imperialized (but breaking free). The new geopolitical paradigm will be marked by a rise in the global south, having escaped underdevelopment, and the decline in single hegemonic powers like the US.
China's investments aren't for anything other than the growth of its hegemonic power through the strategic control of satellite states. The carrot is easier than the stick and has better optics. However China can and will stomp out any geopolitical threat within its area of influence even if it is diametrically opposed to whatever the citizens of said state want. It is a superpowerful police state with global ambitions. The global south isn't breaking free. It's selling itself to China.
The Belt and Road Initiative is certainly benefiting China, but it's a win-win situation. China isn't planting millitary bases anywhere, and isn't forcing the global south to sell out their autonomy. It is not a police state, nor does it have global ambitions of hegemony.
Lol okay. What world do you live in?
What world do YOU live in? Who has been putting dictatorships EVERYWHERE in the global south, who has bombed Yugoslavia, southwest Asia and North Africa, Vietnam? Who has kidnapped the president of Venezuela? Who has been carrying out genocides against indigenous people and terrorizing black and other POC, and now even white liberals?
Edit: typo, I'm drunk lol
This one. China has police internally, but is not acting like world police like the US Empire. The PRC also has no grand ambitions of hegemony, but further development for the whole world, which benefits them.
Because it is too weak right now. It's waiting for the US to make more mistakes. When the time is right it will take Taiwan and solidify control over the east and south China sea.
That you think China is different from every great power in history is the odd take. Power centralizes and seeks more power. It's a tale as old as time. China literally modeled it's rise after the Golden Era of American industrialization from the late nineteenth to early 1920s. America went from a backwater to a serious power in a generation. China did the same thing. It now plans to capitalize on it's capitalism. (e.g. geopolitical dominance in the East and satellite control on the fringes of it's empire.) China is a little America in everything but name.
Power is a metaphysical force, like a trinket in video games corrupting you, once you take hold of it, it takes hold of you. Changing your mind, forcing you to increase it, to expand power. Many fight it, but so long as you grasp it, it will act upon you. This is why term limits are not just good, they're necessary to prevent people from going fully mad.
The trinket line is really good, it always works lol. Good job!
What libs think power is, yet they are still somehow ok with it being handed to already evil people in their "democracies".
Lol
This isn't accurate at all, though. China is socialist, the large firms and key industries are publicly owned and the working classes control the state. The vague idea of "power corrupting" is just supernatural superstition, you're confusing the form, ie an industrialized society, with the essence, ie a capitalist empire vs a rising socialist country. You're looking only for similarities and ignoring the key differences that prove your narrative highly flawed.
Bahahhhahahha I'll take whatever you're smoking.
I don't smoke. I'm not sure which you believe is funny, the idea that the commanding heights of industry are publicly owned in large SOEs, or that the working class controls the state, but both are factually true and easily verified. For example, when looking at publicly owned industries, we can see the following:
Even checking Wikipedia, data from 2022 shows that the overwhelming majority of the top companies are publicly owned SOEs. This is China's strategy, they've been honest about it from the beginning. The private sector is about half cooperatives like Huawei or farming cooperarives and sole proprietorships, with the other half being small and medium firms. As these grow, they are folded into the public sector gradually. This is China's Socialist Market Economy.
As for the state being run by the working classes, this is also pretty straightforward. Public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy, and the CPC, a working class party, dominates the state. At a democratic level, local elections are direct, while higher levels are elected by lower rungs. At the top, constant opinion gathering and polling occurs, gathering public opinion, driving gradual change. This system is better elaborated on in Professor Roland Boer's Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance, and we can see the class breakdown of the top of the government itself:
Overall, this system has resulted in over 90% of the population approving the government, which is shown to be consistent and accurate. If you want to learn more, while not nearly as in-depth due to time limits as Roland Boer's work (and mostly focused on the Xi Jinping era), Red Pen's A Summary of Xi Jinping's Governance of China can be a good primer! There's also This is how China's economic model works: Explaining Socialism with Chinese Characteristics by Geopolitical Economy Report.
LOL trust me bro
They did it with pure imperialism, looting countries and wars. And they still do.
China did it purely on their own.
I've heard that american cope and scaremongering.
And it's BS propaganda