You still haven't given an example of wtf you're talking about.
Who the fuck are these mysterious (assumedly) pro-Stalin, pro-USSR, etc. "tankies" who ALSO are pro-USA/pro-capitalism?
Just give a name! Find a person in history or today and type their name into your text box and hit send. Is this asking a lot?
If they use it to mean "person who doesn't get bogged down in stupid details over the USSR (or China) just for the sake of hating a communist country" then fine. I don't care. It just gets old seeing it used as "person left of me, which means they're bad" by the most historically illiterate motherfuckers on the planet. The kind of fuckers who say they want socialism and then cry every time someone protests in a street. Do you see what I mean? It's not the word, I don't care in the end. I get like a death threat per day from random Nazis who (ironically) call me antisemitic for criticizing Israel. I'll take tankie over that, given the choice. But it's worth acknowledging the people calling me or us or whoever "tankie" are absolutely just the dumbest fuckers online. That's all.
Bro, wtf is a tankie if not a communist? You're just out here making up bullshit. I want a definition!
I've been led to believe "tankie" was referring to fans of the USSR, which, I suppose if you wanna be annoying, one could argue "weren't communists." But you didn't do that. You didn't say "Stalin betrayed Marxist Leninism" or whatever. I could assume that's what you meant, but I'd rather read it from you.
It's starting to feel like, to me, that tankie just means "someone more left than me, and that makes me angry!" Because I can say who isn't calling people tankies. That would be Marxists of whatever variety. I can also say who does seem to be using that word all the time... socdems, liberals, sometimes outright fascists. It definitely seems to be the bludgeon of liberals who fancy themselves to be socialists though. I'm going to include most leftist anarchists under the umbrella of liberal because that's just how I roll. Like a big ol' tank.
Anti-communism has always been a reaction to communism (leftist movements broadly).
Anyone who unironically uses the word tankie... ever... is immediately written off in my book. They're terminally online and have never read anything, never thought about anything seriously, they're useful idiots for fascists at best and, a lot of times, just fascists.
I feel like they think I'm being hyperbolic or forcing a false dichotomy, but, no, if you self-label as anti-communist that's basically the same as modern day "all lives matter" people which was a right wing, reactionary, movement against the movement for justice for black people in the US. There is a movement which is objectively on the side of people, justice, etc. and there is a reaction to that movement. Just how it goes. If you identify on the reactionary side... well, there you go. Not sure why this is so complicated for the "bBUT TANKIES" dipshits.
It's insanely profitable to Boeing mostly, yes.
They held (still hold) most of the contracts for the operating silos to this day. All the equipment had to be designed to withstand a first strike nuclear attack from the USSR. Not necessarily like a direct attack, but a nearby attack on its equivalent sites. 15 missile alert facilities per base. 10 missiles per alert facility. Three bases. Total 450 operational ICBMs under the ground with predetermined coordinates meant to strike at the most valuable military targets of the USSR, China, etc. (used to be more but Peacekeepers and others were dismantled).
Boeing designed a ton of proprietary equipment for these sites. Since it has to be hardened to EMP, radiation, heat, vibration, etc. it's over-engineered (and probably done well since it was the 1960/70s before full enshittification struck). Proprietary equipment, most of it classified for national security reasons, has to be within very strict guidelines, etc. Boeing basically holds a pistol to the Air Force's head with this shit. They can demand anything they want. Which is, of course, the entire point to a lot of this stuff. Enrich private corporations.
Russia and the US both still have the START treaty
However, Russia stepped back due to the whole Ukraine thing.
And yes the Russian Federation inherited the aged (even at the time) missiles which were equivalent to the US' Minuteman III and others which have been decommissioned. Peacekeeper, Atlas, etc.
To be the most fully fair to the US, the Peacekeeper missiles were decommissioned and their former locations were (most of them) fully destroyed as to never be useable again.
Not that it matters much, but the US stepped down the Minuteman III to only carry one nuclear warhead (possible of 3 max). The Peacekeeper missiles could carry 10 warheads.
The reduction to one warhead and subsequent decommissioning of the Peacekeepers was due to US/USSR cooperation.
We did it before. We can do it again. There's absolutely never been and never will be a reason for a country to have so many nukes.
The word impotent gave me a hilarious mental picture of a vampiric Trump who can't "get his teeth hard" to bite people.
This should be a comedy sketch if it isn't already. A vampire that has to take like Blue Chews to get their fangs hard enough to perform.
"Vampires, listen up. Are your fangs more like overcooked spaghetti now days? Are you having trouble getting ready for your nightly encounters? Have you been in a situation where you really wanted to suck that sweet, fresh neck-blood but your gear wasn't operating?
Well, Count Trumpula has a product for all our befanged, sparkly travelers of the night."
At this point, anyone who is aware enough to post about Israel and denies that Israel is in the wrong basically in every single possible instance, I consider unreachable, unconvertable Nazis. These are the people who will cry endlessly about Ukraine but then do 400 flips to explain why Israel is allowed to murder or displace 2M people.
Morality and such concerns aside, these missiles are pointless beyond boomer dick-wagging.
If the US military desires to destroy the world, the submarine nuclear arsenal is fully capable of doing so. If the US is hit with a first strike nuclear attack, again, the subs are fully capable of retaliating and ensuring only cockroaches are left.
These bases and their missiles are an antiquated relic from the Cold War. Hey here's a crazy idea: the US agrees to an open destruction of the warheads and missile sites. China, Russia, etc. can send observers to verify the destruction. At the beginning of this process just publicly announce something like "we're willingly and freely reducing our nuclear stockpile. It is our hope that other nations match us."
Oh, damn, I must have been off in some commie daydream for a second. What I meant to say was we should pay Boeing $10T over the next decade to update the terrestrial ICBM silos.
Anyone who claims to care about Palestinians or just generally the US not doing evil shit (or directly supporting it) and is whining or complaining about movements to dump Genocide Joe
supports genocide (whether they say so or not. Supporting Biden or refusing to not reject him or supporting Trump are all genocidal stances)
is not a serious person as far as politics goes (and probably generally speaking)
All the liberals and many self-labeled leftists (I would call that a false label, but ok) first justified the genocide stance, and now they're trying to ignore it and distract from the genocide by focusing on "bad actors" on the pro-Palestinian side; it doesn't much matter, ultimately, if the "bad actors" are actually pro-Palestinian or not nor what their exact stance on Israel is or isn't, the entire goal is to be talking about them. People such as Claudine Gay who is a Zionist (as almost all libs are- so she's not special) but wasn't sufficiently bloodthirsty in her Zionism and wasn't sufficiently racist enough to condemn people for peacefully protesting an ongoing US-backed genocide. And the news has spent days worth of coverage on a person (and I don't intend any specific disrespect towards her, because she simply isn't worth caring about) who quite literally does not matter. She's a glorified fundraiser in one person's body. The face of America's "great academic institutions!" and really nothing much more.
But the news, run by liberals of course, has spent alllllll this energy and time lying about protestors and the nature of the protests, using horribly worded defense from ex-president Gay (because she's a Zionist and incapable of defending pro-Palestinian protesters. But she also didn't want to condemn a movement against obviously horrific war crimes the US is supporting/doing), twisting everything into universities defending antisemitism instead of what they're actually doing which is defending Zionism, and zero focus on Genocide Joe himself (haven't heard much from him since Christmas) or his cabinet or Iraq War-esque cronies and clowns who are totally incapable, in the same way as Gay, of saying "yes, Israel is doing genocide and ethnic cleansing, and yes the President supports it." Instead they call perfectly-crafted legal documents, using the beloved US-dominated neoliberal international laws, "baseless" and such.
So, I dunno. Who knows what will crack or when it will crack, but this split in the brains of liberals, the ones who have any conscience anyway, is widening day by day. They're all experiencing the same brain fuckery that Gay and the other presidents had in front of Congress where every fiber of their being (I have to assume for my own sake) wants to scream "you don't give a shit about Jews or anyone else!" When they keep falsely claiming and just blatantly lying over and over about simple phrases like "free Palestine." Literally just those two words. Not even the river and sea portion, nothing else, that means "kill Jews!" to deranged Zionists. So I have to wonder when the liberals will reach some crisis of contradictions where something must change. They must choose between openly celebrating genocide, like Biden and his spokesmen are basically at this point (and since the beginning), or rejecting Biden, rejecting Zionism, and ultimately rejecting the democrat (and obviously, no shit, republican) party.
I'm pretty sure that contradiction will be settled AFTER Biden is gifted the nomination and AFTER he loses to Trump, which he clearly will at this point (of course anything can happen, but if things continue as Biden wants them to, he will lose badly). Their choice will not be the choice of justice but rather the "easier" institutional choice to side with the US state, to back Israel no matter they do, and to continue to spiral the US down the drain as the world wrenches itself from 30 solid, basically uncontested, years of US domination. Every single day is a day that Biden, et al. could steer the US for a softer landing in coming decades. To stave off desire for retribution from the rest of the world.
People will forgive a LOT of wrongs done to them/their ancestors once the healing process actually begins. Very few people desire blood just for the sake of vengeance. But if you keep pushing and pushing and pushing while you lose power, I don't know what other outcome Americans who support Biden (or yes yes Trump, but does that even warrant mentioning? Of course Trump sucks dogshit) expect 10, 20, 50 years down the line if they keep supporting genocides now, stamping out domestic protests to genocide now, etc. The blowback for this shit doesn't seem far off in some imagined future. The blowback feels like it's already here or nearly here and just for the sake of self preservation any serious person who lives in the US should be demanding the US adhere to that aspirational statement of "never again" in every possible meaning. That means never again back genocide. Never again do a genocide. Never again ignore genocides, done by us or others we support or not. Never again force our nation's will upon others by use of sheer might, military, financial, or otherwise.
I don't mean this in some sort of dipshit "I don't see race!" way, but I must be totally pulled from the Hasbara propaganda machine at this point. When I hear, see, or think about Palestine at this point I just think "the asshole colonizer arm of the US" country and "the indigenous people they displaced and are genociding currently." Like I've just totally slotted them in my brain, and not to say they're exact equivalents because that's reductive obviously, into white Europeans and their genocide of the Americas.
All of that to say when I'm reminded that Israelis and their propagandists attempt to falsely frame this around religion it's always a bit jarring and takes a second for the rage to hit once I realize how moronic and frankly evil a lot of Zionists are. People like President Genocide Joe and his staff of little Himmlers. It's the same exact propaganda and lies that echo through every mass extermination and attempt at or successful theft of land in history.
Unfortunately something I've come to realize recently is many Americans today think the genocide of the natives was justified or they just don't care. Well, I didn't just realize this; I was reminded of this truth is more correct. Maybe they acknowledge individual bad acts by Americans and Europeans (trail of tears) but they always default back to "both sides" and will never concede that one side had a righteous and correct resistance and the other side was just slaughtering people to steal their land and resources and it's not more complicated than that. This "American exceptionalism" cope has pickled millions of brains the exact same way Zionism has to Israelis and Nazism to Germans, etc.
If I put the cheese out too obviously the mouse will know what I am doing
But if I eat some cheese in the corner and, "oppsie" drop a small piece in a sticky trap area... I might just awaken to an angry mouse chirping at me.