Do you think China is a mustache-twirling villain eager for the United States’ outright destruction? 1/

The CCP governs sometimes viciously internally, and seeks geopolitical primacy or at least parity with the US. The US seeks to retain geopolitical primacy. Do you think it’s fair to characterize the US as eager for China’s outright destruction? Either characterization is dumb, silly. 2/

The Musk / Thielite project also does not seek the United States’ outright destruction. 3/

But it seeks the United States’ political transformation into a less democratic, less equal society in which labor is hungry, atomized, and pliant, and great wealth is secure from taxation or confiscation and unfettered in its projects and whims. 4/

I’m a partisan of the United States over China in the geopolitical pissing match, though mostly I hope the two can find a detente or even an entente and lower the temperature. 5/

The main threat China poses is not “destruction of the United States” but creating conditions under which the US would have to go to war with it, which would be profoundly destructive to both parties and every bystander. (Specifically it might invade our protectorate Taiwan.) 6/

Musk, Thiel, Trump threaten not to physically destroy the country, but to transform its social, moral, and material basis in ways profoundly offensive to my values and material interests. They have made great progress in this project. 7/

I do want to see the US succeed in its geopolitical projects, and live up to its security commitments. But the threat Musk et al pose is far more imminent and pressing than the threat China poses. I hope we can address both. We’ve got to reindustrialize to deter. 8/

But that won’t be worth anything if the oligarchs succeed at transforming the United States according to the UAE model. Whatever virtue there might have been in US primacy would vanish if that happened. /fin