cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/43260174
this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2026
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Flippanarchy
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"If begging the question worked, we wouldn't need it smuggled in through a shitty meme."
"Over 900 military bases around the world" is doing a lot of heavy lifting considering a) the 900 figure is pulled out of their ass and more importantly b) it's more like 130 outside the US, mostly concentrated in a few countries – unless the meme is suggesting US military bases on its own soil are there primarily as a bulwark against socialism.
More importantly, though, as someone else pointed out: it's about hegemony generically. If US foreign military bases exist not to further US hegemony but in the interest of worshipping capitalism, why are there bases in Europe standing in defense of social democratic countries against – what has now been for decades – one of the world's most hypercapitalist shitholes? Genuinely what work are these bases doing to uphold specifically capitalism? Did I wake up in 1983? Is the 82nd Airborne on its way to Grenada?
Keep europe dependent on the yankee empire and they act as forward basis so the yanks don't have to airlift everything from turtle island every time they decide to bomb west asia. What sort of dumbass question is this? Ofcourse they're there to uphold capitalism, what else would they be there for????
You might have had an argument if this were the 1980s. But communism failed. The "communist" party of China is dominated by billionaires now. Even the communists are capitalists now. Your socialist youtube influencers are all monetized and are heavily promoted by big tech's algorithms. Many of them have merch stores and are millionaires. Leftism is just an aesthetic packaged and sold in a capitalist system.
Capitalist authoritarians in China maintain a communist aesthetic to have some weird semblance of legitimacy, and capitalist authoritarians in Russia have some nostalgia for the communist aesthetic. North Korea is backwards monarchy now, struggling to keep people from starving.
The military doesn't maintain capitalism because at this point the "communists" are all capitalists now. Maybe for a time it helped protect against the authoritarian capitalists but now the US authoritarian too. We're back to the era of Great Powers, and capitalism vs. socialism isn't a factor much like it wasn't a factor in the Great Powers world order of the past.
Sorry but Santa Claus isn't real and communism died a long time ago. You're just being sold the carcass by capitalists.
No heavy lifting required
So I guess we have three options:
Wonder which it is.
(Actual argument done, I can insult you without it being ad hom: fuck off, tankie. I disagree with ancoms sometimes on pragmatics, but their ethics are sound; not yours.)
Department of Defense, “FY2025 Base Structure Report,” 2024
According to DOD its now 1143 bases
The spreadsheet (source here) literally says the number of sites as of 30 September 2024. Do you understand that "site" and "military base" are different things? Here are their definitions if you want to play illiterate. A foreign site in this context can be any foreign property run by the DoD, including e.g. an office building. In your version of events, the Congressional Research Service says it's 128 as of mid-2024, WBW using an extremely lax definition of what constitutes the US operating a military base arrived at 844, and I'm supposed to believe the CRS and the DoD differ by nearly 10x and that the WBW totally missed this public report showing that they came up with less than 3/4 of the actual number...
... Is what I would say if you weren't completely misreading this spreadsheet anyway. 1143 represents the "grand total" of "land-only sites" in the US, US Territories, and overseas combined.
You're. Just. Lying. Stop being disingenuous or fuck off.
Carrying water was expected. Little pissant seems to have hurt feelings
Would you describe a person being annoyed by mosquitoes as having "hurt feelings"? I have no respect for you and therefore no concern for the minimal amount of time you deign to spend crafting a cogent argument for me.
What I do care about is a tankie propagandist coming into an ancom community and shitting it up with disinformation. Ancoms are friends; you are not.
Please don't argue with mosquitos, that's fucking crazy man
You sound more MAGA than ancom. Based on your downvotes it doesn't look like you are the friendly one around here
Anything based is a military base 🎖️🪖
US military confirmed operaring zero military bases?? 😱😱 (Except when helping Eastern Europe against Russia; they're pretty based then.)