rant · moment 19 of 20
Blaming Empire and Consumerism for Foreign Policy Blowback
from Degree Of Difficulty | The Tim Dillon Show #365 · #365
5 min
Tim connects America's history of toppling foreign governments and propping up dictators (citing Iran) to blowback, and contrasts sacrificing empire-fueled consumer excess (big houses, Cheesecake Factory, credit card debt) against the cost paid abroad.
- Continually invading the world while inviting the world in creates blowback, particularly in the Middle East where U.S. support for dictators radicalized previously progressive countries like Iran.
- A broad class of Americans—not just elites—benefit from empire and feast on its corpse through the military-industrial complex.
- Maintaining a consumerist American lifestyle—6,000-square-foot houses, oversized cars, restaurant chains, credit card debt on garbage furniture—requires someone to pay the cost.
- The U.S. destabilizes countries abroad, then invites their populations in while hoping cultural collision works out, then makes movies romanticizing the chaos.
- The collision of cultures isn't fun when immigrants start chanting antisemitic slogans outside opera houses where he wants to perform.
- Unconditional support for Israel without hardline restrictions or consequences for expansion and aggression invited hostility to America.
- American immigration policy assumes everyone who cheats their way in must love America and share its values, a narcissistic stance that ignores actual hostile intent.
- Not all immigrants come for Halloween spooktaculars and fright nights; some come to chant antisemitic slogans.
- Large-scale immigration functions as a social experiment that has worked to varying degrees for different groups in the past, but might not continue to work going forward.
IsraelimmigrationIranSteve SailerMaggiano'sCheesecake FactoryDenmarkNorway