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(Including this counter-story.) It's hard to think of a place with more active intelligence assets (whether US or foreign), useful idiots and organized criminals than the US, too. I honestly think a big reason for the US being the way it is is the sheer volume of BS inflow.

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Most powerful political & economic entity for multiple decades. Compromised by criminals since pre-federation times. Massive spook underemployment after the spy war the cold war essentially was. Mass ideological capture after CIA ops (etc.) during the cold war. It's dead, Jim.

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I don't know if it'll burn, exactly. My hunch is US goes the way of the UK, blathers on about being the center of the world while everyone knows it's been supplanted. Just a hunch, yet Brexit is 7 decades on from WW2, and that empire was long gone by the time that war had ended.

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Retains Wall Street and whatever else survives the impending death of the West Coast, but loses ability to really project force globally. At best, does power brokering a la. UK through extensive web of connections with former subjects.

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Another, hilarious possibility is the US goes full left. The spooks lose the cold war, and the US becomes some sort of collectivist political entity. That would have me tittering well into old age, were it to happen.

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I don't think this gives sufficient credence to the fact that most of the players who were relevant in establishing the current order are a decade at most from biting it (Kissinger, the immortal ghoul, excepted).

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I'll make you a bet. Year from now, unless there's another major war (not just mission creep for the drone program, but troop deployments, sieges etc.), AOC is the most popular politician in the US. Sheer tech acceleration in action.

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The implications of that on the whole political spectrum can't be discounted, exactly, because the new spooks are not near as competent as the cold war survivors. One decade, institutional decay has hit those orgs so hard half of them are no longer considered major players.

12:26 PM · Jan 8, 2019Twitter Web Client

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Most of this is based off the sheer number of really stupid mistakes accrued to these agencies in just the past few years, and the apparent total failure to prevent Trump's election (another thing that was unthinkable, just a decade and a half ago).

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The machine has its claws deep in the organs of state, but if the machine stops running under any sort of sensible operational regimen, that will just amount to a lot of scared flailing.