Trump pulled a Stalin and purged all his competent generals. He surrounds himself with yes men. It’s the fatal flaw of all authoritarian governments. Turns out it’s a really bad idea to give one person absolute power and to never question their decisions.

And do you think “white people” in the West are a monolith as well? The concept of “Han” sounds pretty damn similar to the concept of “white” in the United States.

That’s not what we’re discussing here. Please stay on topic.

China IS an imperialist country. For fuck’s sake, it was ruled by a literal emperor for millennia. How do you think all those ethnic minorities ended up in China’s borders?

It mandates that all children should be taught Mandarin before kindergarten and up until the end of high school. Previously students could study most of the curriculum in their native language such as Tibetan, Uyghur or Mongolian.

Liar.

My local DMV has forms in all sorts of languages. What are you smoking?

Why can’t I move to China and assimilate into the Uighur or Tibetan population, if that’s something I really want to do? Why does only the dominant imperialist ethnicity get to expect immigrants to learn the language? Maybe it should be the opposite. Maybe every Han person who moves to Western China should have to learn Uighur or Tibetan. After all, they’re immigrants.

but teaching the native population the language of the colonizers

And you don’t think China is a colonial empire that expanded its borders in the exact same way the US or Russia did? Just how exactly do you think China ended up being a majority Han nation ruling over a bunch of ethnic minorities? Skin color or ethnicity is not a prerequisite for imperialism.

Please provide a source for this ridiculous claim. And don’t be lazy and just list countries that have official languages for government business. You said “force.” You can still get by in a place with an official language by doing business at government offices through interpreters. What we’re talking about here is far beyond an official language (which is just the language used in government paperwork.) We’re talking about laws that actually require people to know and speak a specific language.

Prove that even a majority of countries legally require people to know how to speak a specific language, let alone all of them.

Otherwise, I have to conclude that you’re just spreading fascist propaganda.

…The great project you were referring to was a neoliberal one…

I’m an American. I want nukes. Not for my country, me specifically. We should legalize the private ownership of nuclear bombs!

How would the Canadians possibly smuggle a nuke across the border?

“Mr. President, the Canadians have called to apologize for insulting you. They’re also sending an apology gift. It’s a large, golden, 20 foot tall statue in the shape of a moose!”

“Wow, that’s amazing. Bring it to DC at once!”

It seems that’s what Iran was doing actually. They enriched uranium up to 60%. Bomb grade is 90%. But there’s really no reason to enrich that high except to make nukes. And nuclear enrichment is not a linear thing. Half the work is just to get to 5% enrichment.

It seems they designed their program to be right on the edge of nuclear breakout. In retrospect, they probably should have gone straight for the bomb.

In science, we prefer observational to speculative evidence.

You spend your life building a beautiful home. Right when you pay the mortgage off and finish the last detail…a drunken maniac busts in the door, shoots you, and moves into your former home. And he just gets away with it because there’s no cops in your town.

Or, more concretely, you build a magnificent culture, industry, society, and economy. You invest in your people and technological innovation. You turn your nation into an economic powerhouse. Then the neighboring country, who put all of their more limited resources into the military, storms across the border and takes over your little paradise. Now you’re still paying the tax levels of a Nordic welfare state, but all of the money just goes into the pockets of the warlords and oligarchs of the mafia state that just conquered you.

As if the Ukrainians aren’t a culture and people going back thousands of years. What odd bigotries you have.

They own things. And those things are flammable.

I’ve listened to him a bit in the past, but I’m not familiar with any recent work he’s put out.

All that’s needed is military supremacy.

Violence and chaos is the point. Neither Israel or the US have the means or motivation to actually occupy Iran with ground forces and to build a new government from scratch. Hell, look how well that worked in Iraq. The goal is instead to turn Iran into a failed state that is completely incapable of providing even the most basic services to its population. A collapsed state can’t build effective missiles or support proxy wars outside its borders. At best you can knock together a few hamas-style bottle rockets in garage workshops.

Right now the goal is to wipe out the government leaders and military assets. When that fails to result in the overthrow of the Iranian government, the US and Israel will move on to civilian infrastructure. The power grid. The water systems. Fuel production and distribution, bridges, ports, rail lines, etc.

If they can’t topple the Iranian regime, they’ll leave the Iranian regime ruling over a pile of ashes, a nation with the infrastructure level of Somalia.

You can’t install a friendly government with air power alone. You can however do enough damage to a nation’s infrastructure that it can’t even keep its own people alive, let alone have the spare resources to affect things beyond its borders.

That is the real goal of this war. To turn Iran into a failed state.