Candelestine

Here's a guy named Steve, eating and reviewing one of these humanitarian rations, in case anyone was curious:

https://youtu.be/iKfWQ3Sij68

And with really good sound quality too, since they're also ASMR vids.

How does the media in a capitalist country work...?

1000 lb bombs are expensive. Napalm is cheap though.

You can't escape the inter-connectedness of human body systems. Improve something somewhere, something else gets changed too. This is why being a doctor is so hard.

So, it's only true from a 19th century understanding of science. Which a lot of people admittedly prefer, because of how simplistic it was. It's a lot easier to feel like you understand things if you just ignore all the complex and hard parts.

Correct, I am not really approaching this in a dialectical way, I do not fervently ascribe to any specific ideology. I try to take all potential influences into account. Similarly, this does not mean human history is driven by "great men" or somesuch, only that individual decisions do have an influence on events, and should be taken into account.

I do wish things could exist in such a simple way, where states operated in such a clear-cut manner, but that's just too oversimplified. The world is just messier than that, and individual egos cannot be completely separated from people's choices.

Sure, states in the abstract do pursue their own interests, though there's a great many very small states that see their interests differently from how larger bodies tend to. This is potentially distinct from the exercise of power though, and is not necessarily imperialism. To qualify as imperialism in a way that fits empires throughout history, I think you need two things: scope and expansion. An embassy, while a means of national power, is not really focused on expansion, but diplomacy. An embassy can be a simple defensive precaution. State media can be, depending on what message it is broadcasting. If it broadcasts a warmongering message, it could easily be imperial in nature. If it's just reporting local news, not so imperial. Curbing other state media is just about stability.

Nations exist, borders exist. Whether they should or not is more up to those individual peoples that live there, and how they want to set up their societies.

No, which is why I have a default position of suspicion towards the words of my own officials. Because they're people, just like me, no better, no worse. They can make mistakes, exercise poor judgement, change their minds, etc etc.

Not just national power, but expanding national power over people who were not part of your nation. The word is in its roots, people can redefine it into whatever they want, but it still has that historical root. I think this loyalty towards its historical meaning is more valuable than any redefining it for other purposes.

it has the resources and will to outlast the West.

Yeah, they have sorely underestimated how entertaining dumb internet arguments can be.

Just got one--a good, wide-brim, adjustable bucket hat. Shade during the sun, solid protection from the rain, comfortable, and not too difficult to make look decent, if not stylish.

Don't get me wrong, education, housing, health care etc have all been pretty important too, but hat wins.

tbf, kids content on youtube has been a shitshow for awhile. Here's a short Folding Ideas piece on it, that's equal parts surreal, sad and scary:

https://youtu.be/LKp2gikIkD8

That would be the process by which you select your leaders. Not too different from a democratic republic. It does not mean every single one of them understands the inner thoughts of those leaders, though. It's a selection process. Does a selection process give you the power to understand their secret minds, or do you simply think they have no secrets?

Yes, national power is exactly what we're talking about. Exercising it over a broad area, of people who did not before fall under your control, is empire-building. Or, imperialism. Power + new lands/people = imperialism.

Hegemony simply refers to degree of competition. If an empire is contested by near-peers, it does not have hegemonic control. This is core to what the word means in the English language.

I appreciate the sources, but if you as a believer cannot adequately explain these things from them, I'm not sure the sources will be of much benefit.

Oh come now, the decisions of a country are made by its leaders, not every single member of its political party. Otherwise that would be true democracy, and unbelievably cumbersome and impractical. Also, I'll remind you a fifth time, my default in the modern day is suspicion. I simply don't believe people automatically. This is independent of the things they say and how good they sound. Like, when I'm buying a product, I do not simply believe the user reviews. Instead I try to look for someone providing a little bit of actual evidence of their objectivity. That would earn a higher degree of trust, though still not total faith.

I would describe it as an influence or informational or perhaps espionage empire. You can have a military empire, where people do as you say or you kill them, yes? You can have an economic empire, where you use economic coercion instead of military. Or, in the modern day, you can control through another form of power--control in the information space. While propaganda is certainly nothing new, it has reached a degree of power we've never seen before. Or so I'm arguing, anyway.

I disagree, I think that muddles what "a hegemon" is. An idea, not being a conscious thing, cannot be a hegemon. Only a human or group of humans can be. There's nothing wrong with ideas competing because ideas alone cannot control. What one person realizes, another can too. While the idea can be influential, it cannot truly exert force. So, you could have an information empire, but having a hegemonic information empire is probably impossible without some kind of supernatural mind control. In this new way of looking at imperialism that I'm proposing, anyway. I acknowledge this is new, and traditionally empire was mainly economic and/or military.

Do Chinese citizens have any more insight on the inner workings of their leaders than outside observers? Or are they forced to simply trust them? And yes, I do not think 100% of everything that comes out of our State Dept is automatically a lie. Some things are true, some are false. The default of suspicion applies regardless.

Imperialism is empire-building. That's the root word imperial, of-an-empire. It's authority exerted over other people, foreign lands. Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great both worked on imperial projects, back when it was more commonplace. Hegemony is somewhat similar, though implies the empire is uncontested by other powers. The Mongols had a hegemonic empire. Napoleon, while being imperial, did not have a hegemonic empire, as the British and Russian empires contested and eventually defeated him.

So, I don't understand this difference between steps/products of imperialism, and just imperialism. Either you're empire-building, seeking authority over more and more peoples, or you're not.