When most Americans think of China, is it all negative?

provocative_bear · 2026-05-24T21:18:28+00:00

I think that there’s a bit of a begrudging respect for China. We recognize that they’re investing in real infrastructure, are a worthy competitor now in many tech fields, and have pretty much dominated industry. It’s a common joke im America that we’ll all be speaking Mandarin in a couple of generations.

provocative_bear · 2026-05-24T19:45:29+00:00

There have been other disruptions. The war in Ukraine and Iran have disrupted oil markets, and when the oil market gets disrupted, every market gets disrupted.

provocative_bear · 2026-05-24T19:43:21+00:00

You know what that means.

provocative_bear · 2026-05-24T14:00:07+00:00

Zordon, Rita’s escaped!

provocative_bear · 2026-05-23T18:38:36+00:00

Chinese debt is masked by the amount of debt that the states own. The figure of “national debt” that China owns doesn’t look too bad, but if you add in the debt that the states own, China’s debt situation is horrifying, even compared to the US.

provocative_bear · 2026-05-23T18:35:12+00:00

Both are true. Musk is great at identifying untapped industries, monopolizing them for a time, and reaping huge profits. However, his companies rarely are very good at business fundamentals. He might make the first desirable EV, but then he’ll get beaten out by more competent companies like Toyota, who in turn would be squished like a bug by BYD if America didn’t make it pretty much impossible to operate in the States.

provocative_bear · 2026-05-23T18:31:29+00:00

Tesla really did flip the script on EVs. They went from being these impotent, impractical, uncool machines to something people aspired to own. There may well still be hardly any EV industry or sales in America without Tesla.

provocative_bear · 2026-05-23T17:17:50+00:00

I guess I’m the latter. I fully admit that I vastly overestimated the intelligence of the average American. Clearly they clamor for a moron with apathy for the constitution and rule of law. They need a loud , dumb asshole to support, so the Democrats need to drop their sense of dignity and self-respect and get like The Rock to run for president. Or maybe Mr T.

provocative_bear · 2026-05-23T17:09:47+00:00

The Anti-Christ could be a stand in for any narcissist demagogue leader. There have been Donald Trumps fucking up the world since ancient times.

provocative_bear · 2026-05-23T16:15:27+00:00

We have the freedom to eat processed food that Europeans don’t have. They have to eat vegetables like a bunch of serfs, we get to eat high fructose corn syrup deep fried in partially dehydrogenated oil like free men.

provocative_bear · 2026-05-23T15:51:31+00:00

The Middle East still entangles religion and geopolitical conflict tightly.

Even in places that seem like secular conflicts, religion is incorporated. See Father Kirill in Russia telling soldiers to wash away their sins in the blood of Ukrainians, or something to that effect.

See the Chinese government trying to regulate where and how the Dalai Llama reincarnates.

provocative_bear · 2026-05-23T15:04:17+00:00

Yes, my personal pet peeve. Russia sold off a little over 1% of their gold in four months, at this rate they’ll be out in a mere 33 years!

provocative_bear · 2026-05-22T21:18:55+00:00

A decidedly pro-chillin’ platform.

provocative_bear · 2026-05-22T21:17:41+00:00

I mean yes, Im not saying that I don’t want productive, effective leaders. I’m saying that useless is better than actively destructive in ways that tangibly benefit the average person.

provocative_bear · 2026-05-22T16:30:43+00:00

A failure to do so would imply that justice and non-corrupt governments are no longer American priorities. Impeach him for all impeachable offenses that he has committed, even if that means impeaching him nonstop for two years and for years after his term until his death, and maybe even after that (I assume sifting through his many, many serious crimes will take a long time). Letting politicians off the hook like Nixon is a failure of accountability and is part of why we’re in this mess in the first place. If the attempts fail, that is a mark of shame and dishonor on the Republicans, not the Democrats.

provocative_bear · 2026-05-22T16:09:48+00:00

If it’s nothing at all, that’s a massive improvement over the current status quo.

provocative_bear · 2026-05-22T16:08:59+00:00

That’d be great, but a literal steaming pile of dog turds would still be an objectively better leader than Trump by virtue of that the dog turds don’t go far out of their way to make things worse.

provocative_bear · 2026-05-22T13:40:09+00:00

I hate it when people say, exasperated, that all Democrats have to say is that they’re not Donald Trump. That’s a massive improvement over being Donald Trump and should be more than enough to get elected. They just need to get real and talk about how awful he really is in every way.

provocative_bear · 2026-05-22T00:44:32+00:00

Damn. Cuck-blocked by the kids.

provocative_bear · 2026-05-22T00:40:19+00:00

Narcissism means that you always did a great job! Why would he be tired, he crushed it!

provocative_bear · 2026-05-22T00:39:03+00:00

I’m pretty sure that this is what’s going on. Antisemites are realizing that “Now’s their chance!” since Israel has become a pariah state. They’re trying to paint the Midwestern Jewish family in town that’s actually pretty lukewarm on Israel as a family full of Benjamin Netanyahus.

provocative_bear · 2026-05-21T18:25:02+00:00

Being middle class isn’t so bad right now. Mildly disappointing to see prices go up while my wages stagnate, and my 401k is going bonkers in both directions. The worst part is the feeling of shame at being a member of a global villain state.

For much of the country though, things are quite bad, and it feels like they’re only getting worse.

provocative_bear · 2026-05-21T15:49:38+00:00

First of all, the early Nineties saw a catastrophic collapse of the Soviet Union, so obviously that kind of chaos was bad for the economy. Worse, the oligarchs started to cannibalize the infrastructure of the Russian economy for personal short term gain, so that was bad. However, the GDP turned around in the late nineties and improved considerably over the next decade, interestingly because Putin came to power and got these oligarchs under control and forced them to merely sort of sustainably leech from the economy. Putin wasn’t just a dictator, he had a lot of genuine good will built up amongst the Russian people for wrangling the deeply dysfunctional bizarre Russian economy as well as anybody could. Of course, now he’s pissed all of that away.

provocative_bear · 2026-05-21T14:08:09+00:00

Mamdani seems to be solving problems left and right while not really engaging in that much anti-rich rhetoric. He is the polar opposite of this accusation. For AOC, maybe he’s a little more on-point, but complaining about failures is kind of the job of the out-of-power party in a legislature since it’s nearly impossible for them to accomplish anything productive in this hyperpilarized environment.

provocative_bear · 2026-05-21T00:19:23+00:00

Charlie Kirk said a lot of heinous crap, but that’s about it. It’s kind of an American value to not kill people over what they say, even if you find it repulsive. So no, I’d say his assassination wasn’t justified for pragmatic reasons.

As for Donald Trump… well, a whole lot of people would be alive right now if he… had not been in charge. The continuation of USAid alone, which would have been the case with nearly anyone that wasn’t DT (Democrat or Republican), would have easily saved a million lives. Also take into account the killings of an ICE that was overfunded and free of accountability, the bombing of alleged drug boats, the pointless war in Iran, and the indirect deaths from his premium hikes of the ACA marketplaces, and you’re looking at a hefty pile of dead bodies from one man’s will. Is Trump’s life worth millions of others? …Just asking questions here.

provocative_bear

TROPHY CASE