It has felt inevitable to me for a few years now. The market != the economy but a major crash can still trigger a credit crunch that will materially affect regular people. Look at the insane valuations on some of these companies. They can't continue forever.

As for WW3, well, there's a diaper-wearing senile old man, with an inferiority complex to boot, in charge of a nuclear arsenal and major conventional forces.

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UncleOxidant an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I think there's a compelling case to be made that WW3 started in 2014 when Putin invaded Crimea.

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bryanlarsen an hour ago | parent | next [-]

If so, we haven't hit the equivalent of Sept 1 1939 yet. That's when WW2 is generally considered to have started, but residents of Manchuria, Austria and the Sudetenland probably consider it to have started earlier.

	▲	soperj 33 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It's only considered to have started then because that's when France and Britain declared war on Germany, and that's who wrote the history books.

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esseph an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

China supplying weapons to Iran and Russia. North Korea sending troops to Russia to fight in Ukraine, and along with Russia, conducting hybrid warfare across Europe and the United States. The US sending weapons to Ukraine and other EU allies. SOF from MANY countries operating in conflict zones and deep inside China, North Korea, Russia, and Iran.

The only thing that hasn't really happened is a full economic mobilization. And Russia... may be close to that.

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soperj 35 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Putin started before that in 2008 when he invaded Georgia and no one said anything.

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esseph an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

And a rapid increase in construction for new Chinese nuclear launch silos and actual underground nuclear testing.

Things are getting spicy.

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miroljub an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> As for WW3, well, there's a diaper-wearing senile old man, with an inferiority complex to boot, in charge of a nuclear arsenal and major conventional forces.

How naive one must be to consider this NPC as the biggest threat to human kind since the dawn of man.

It's not that single person who threatens the world, it's the complete American elite and the whole American society who push for wars and more wars, and the current NPC of the day in the office is just their tool.

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pfdietz an hour ago | parent | next [-]

It sometimes is a single person. Consider the failed beer hall demagogue who wrecked a nation, a continent, and nearly a world.

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UncleOxidant an hour ago | parent [-]

To both of your points: the beer hall demagogue wouldn't have gotten to Chancellor if the German elites hadn't decided that he really couldn't do that much damage and we may as well let him be chancellor to quiet down his followers. Even after the putsch, he got a very light sentence because the judge was sympathetic with his right-wing cause. You're both right to some extent. A huge amount of damage was done by one man, but he got to where he did because the German elites thought that he might be useful to their cause.

	▲	pfdietz an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		All events have multiple causes. But history turned on what he did, and would have been very different otherwise.
	▲	vidarh 14 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Indeed, and that is perhaps the most important lesson of Hitlers rise - dangerous people will always exist, and so it is critical to have systems that are resilient to them, and not allow them to be hollowed out just because the current crop of leaders looks like they can be trusted with more power and less oversight, because who knows what kind of madman will get power next.

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II2II 36 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> It's not that single person who threatens the world

The question is: is he enabling them, or are they enabling him? I suppose it could be working in both directions. That said: while the "elite" were problematic before his second rise to power, they were also more constrained.

I also have some question as to who the elite are? Certain individuals are more prominent these days, while others have faded in the background. While it may feel good to apply a singular label to the wealthy (or any other group we disagree with), they are not a single ideological entity. It's probably more beneficial to align ourselves with those who agree with us, rather than alienating them based upon a metric that is only tangentially related to their values.

	▲	sanguinesphinx 29 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It depends on how closely you tie the metrics and the values. Do you consider someone becoming a billionaire/trillionaire a reflection of their values or just a metric they happen to have?

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stackghost an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

>It's not that single person who threatens the world, it's the complete American elite and the whole American society who push for wars and more wars, and the current NPC of the day in the office is just their tool.

I agree that Americans themselves are the root cause. Americans as a society are deeply, pathologically unwell and Trump is entirely their fault. I have no sympathy for any of them.

But only one person is the commander in chief of the US military, and the checks and balances that are supposed to keep him in control are not functioning.