The Chinese system is hyper conservative, essentially fascist, it’s not actually socialist in any way, shape or form. It’s also hyper capitalist, with minimal regulation or consumer rights. The top levels of the ‘communist’ party is now packed with billionaires. What regulation there is, is mostly aimed at maintaining party control and prestige.

Both unchecked conservatism and unchecked socialism are toxic. Unchecked anything is toxic. That’s human nature, yet (to simplify massively) we still need both conservative and socialist elements in a balanced society.

Just looking at the US, one can certainly point fingers at conservatism (rightly so) but I think that's missing the forest for the trees. Why? Because the so-called opposition party, the Democratic Party, is complicit is everything that's happened to get us to this point.

The problem isn't conservatism per se. It's neoliberalism (IMHO). Even more broadly, it's capitalism. There's a meme in this space that basically goes something like "when you learn about capitalism, you become either a communist or a liar".

I read something recently about how people fetishize the 1950s, particularly on the political right. A big part of what made that possible was exploitation. Obviously we had a permanent underclass since segregation was still alive and well. A lot of these "middle class" families had "help" or "a girl". But another form of exploitation was oil. We were basically stealing oil from the Middle East for pennies on the dollar.

And then Iran came out and said "maybe we don't want you to steal our oil", we couped their government, we installed our own puppet government, we continued stealing oil and this all ultimately lead to the 1970s oil crisis and the Iranian Revolution. And here we are.

Back to the US political landscape, just look at the "opposition" to this war. It's either nonexistent or it's process-based ("Congress should've approved it"), not substantive. No mainstream political force is saying what we should be saying, which is that our Middle East policy is a crime, the sanctions on Iran were and are a crime and that continued exploitation of this region is unsustainable.

USA is not even content with attacking one country at a time.

Now there is also the blockade of Cuba that intercepts their imports of oil and has created serious problems there with food and services. This cannot be considered as anything else as an act of war, even if a war is not declared.

Besides the blockade, USA has also threatened with an attack. With the harm done indiscriminately to most Cuban citizens by the blockade, it is even harder for USA to pretend that they are the good guys, while they use their might to attack without any justification a country too weak to present any kind of danger for USA.

You're only saying that because this is only 3 weeks old. Things are going to get a lot worse. If this ended tomorrow, the direct impact will be felt for years before we go back to "normal". And the geopolitical changes are going to be seismic.

First, it's been exposed that the US cannot defend Israel despite spending $1 trillion a year on "defense", billions if not trillions on missile defence and the presence of multiple carrier groups in the region. This alone rewrites regional geopolitics in the coming decades.

Second, the US has exerted influence on the region with a security guarantee that's like NATO on steroids. It's a protection racket (like NATO). We give despotic regimes weapons and we dictate policy, get bases in the region and get the use of terriotiral waters and airspace for whatever we want, basically. But by starting this war of choice, we've shown that there's no security guarantee at all for the Gulf states.

Now, these states will continue to align with the US for purely selfish reasons. For example, Saudi Arabia will do so to maintain the House of Saud, the royal family's control of the country. Many Saudis would prefer this not to be the case but were Saudi Arabia to break from the US, the regime would inevitably fall (IMHO). So they can't abandon the US. But this will only go so far as some of these regimes may fall anyway in a prolonged conflict (eg Bahrain).

Third, the military options here are dire. Militarily, the Strait cannot be reopened. The only military options are retreat or escalation. Trump has threatened to blow up power plants. If he does that, Iran will blow up desalination plants. Or the pipeline that supplies 30-40% of Israel's energy (from Azerbijan through Turkey). The escalation ladder inevitably leads to the use of nuclear weapons by Israel and/or the US, which is untenable.

Fourth, we haven't even begun to feel the impacts yet. Yes, gas prices are higher. That's only the beginning. Utility and food prices are going to spike. Higher diesel costs mean higher transportation. Higher bunkers costs will hit shipping costs. We're likely to see a repeat of 2021-2022 era inflation, if not worse.

If the Strait opened tomorrow, most of those things are already baked in for the next few years.

Fifth, countries are undergoing a sort of "energy nationalism". China, for eample, has stockpiled huge amounts of oil and stopped exported refined petroleum products. Other countries have done similar. This is going to have an outsized impact on countries completely dependent on energy imports, which includes most of Asia.

Sixth, the downstream effects go well beyond secondary products like fertilizer. For example, helium and other materials for chipmaking in Taiwan.

Lastly, this has massively strengthened Russia's position. You will likely see the lifting of sanctions and conceding of territory in Ukraine as an almost -inevitable consequence of an oil supply shock, particularly as LNG prices go up and we hit a heating crisis in Europe.

You are correct that the US has been destroying alliances but it's this war of choice that's going to make that really bite. Iran negotiated in good faith to end the 12 day war, which only ended because of missile interceptor shortages, a problem that's going to take years to address.

This time around Iran has had no choice but to make the consequences of a war of aggression so dire that the US and Israel never think about doing this again.

Also, North Korea demonstrated that the only way to get the US to leave you alone is to have nuclear weapons. The previous Ayatollah had a fatwa against nuclear weapons. Well, the US and Israel killed that guy in his house with his family. Iran now really has no choice but to develop nuclear weapons to guarantee their security. And I can't blame them.

You seem to have missed since then the massive transformation of China.

Empires don't die overnight, generally. Empires die slowly, violently.

We spent an estimated $8 trillion on so-called "War on Terror". The Taliban were in charge of Afghanistan before we started. They're in charge now. For $8T. 1% of that would end homelessness. 1% of that annually would be free college. I would mention universal healthcare but that would actually save money vs what we now spend so I'm not sure how you count that.

The kind of transformation China has seen in recent decades is what you're talking about with $8 trillion.

A despite the 20 year quagmire that was Iraq and Afghanistan, IMHO this war on Iran is an even bigger geopolitical clown show and will be more consequential to the end of American Empire.