Rich Puchalsky ⩜⃝

@richpuchalsky
1,058 Followers
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freelance librarian, anarchist
bloghttps://rpuchalsky.blogspot.com/
personal pagehttps://grconnect.com/rpuchalsky/index.html
Rich Puchalsky ⩜⃝4h ago

"This is not what America should be": normative statement, bad norm because America should not exist.

"This is not what America is": descriptive statement, incorrect, probably a lie

Rich Puchalsky ⩜⃝8h ago
Ian Welsh8h ago

I've written a post with twenty-one facts about the Iran war, trying to summarize the entire mess. One important point, Iran CAN render Israel uninhabitable any time it chooses.

https://www.ianwelsh.net/twenty-one-simple-facts-about-the-iranian-war/

Show threadRich Puchalsky ⩜⃝14h ago
All of that said, it's vastly more probable that the US would do Israeli-style conventional carpet bombing than that it would switch to nukes. At least right away.
Show threadRich Puchalsky ⩜⃝14h ago
PS: Do I think that the US military would refuse to follow orders no I do not.
Show threadRich Puchalsky ⩜⃝14h ago
So we're in an evil society, populated by a majority of evil people and led by 100% evil leaders. Is such a society willing to reject a nuclear attack? Maybe. Maybe not.
Show threadRich Puchalsky ⩜⃝14h ago
Do I think that the US public would condemn Trump? Frankly, every Democrat who said that we had to vote for Biden and/or Harris once they had supported genocide has already failed this test. I'm certain that they could also rationalize nuclear devastation. They'd condemn it because Trump had done it but defend it because the empire had done it.
Show threadRich Puchalsky ⩜⃝14h ago
The other nuclear-armed states are certainly not willing to go to nuclear war with the US about an attack that wasn't on themselves.
Show threadRich Puchalsky ⩜⃝15h ago
But if the US attacked a non-nuclear state with nuclear weapons? There would be a lot of condemnations. But for most of the world, there would be no real change in their policy towards the US. Most of the leaders of the world have already internalized that the US, as a dominant empire, will commit any war crimes it deems fit and that there is nothing the rest of the world is willing to do about it.
Rich Puchalsky ⩜⃝15h ago

Reminder: the US is the only country that has ever used nuclear weapons in war. It is also the only country that has ever used nuclear weapons against civilian populations.

At the time, no one really cared.

Since then, there has been a lot of media about how nuclear war is bad that started once the US had enemies that could attack it in a nuclear war.

Rich Puchalsky ⩜⃝15h ago

Subtoot all of the "oh no it could be nuclear war today" posts -- I'm very sympathetic to heightened anxiety from Trump's warmongering, but unless you're Iranian, this isn't really a good thing to be anxious about. No one is going to get involved in a nuclear exchange with the US even if the US attacks Iran with nuclear weapons.

So, once again, I'm sympathetic, but I think that this doesn't center the Iranians who have very realistic fears of being bombed with non-nukes.