I feel like Vietnam veterans who were objectors could fall in this category. Plenty of them were forced to go. In the end, anyone who was drafted and didn't want to be would have some level of understanding from me.

Correct. You never demanded to remove the military capabilities of one country.

I said "I wonder what would happen if we didn't have a military", and you made a comment about the little girl's backpack. I followed up with a counter argument.

This is how conversations work.

They say ignorance is bliss. It must be nice to be as delusional as you and live in a peaceful hippy dippy little fantasy world.

I'm talking about big oil and gas production, food and farmland, massive agricultural output and the ability to export it at scale, freshwater and arable land (underappreciated, but increasingly strategic as climate stress rises elsewhere), minerals (some, not all).

And don't forget non natural resources the U.S. has like:

Capital markets: Deep, liquid markets that can fund governments and companies. Money is a resource; the U.S. is one of the main wells.

technology and IP: Advanced R&D, software, aerospace, biotech, semiconductors design, and the companies that sit on them.

Security alliances and military reach: Not a resource in nature, but it functions like one. i
It shapes trade routes, deters threats, and sets terms.

The world's reserve currency system: Being able to transact, borrow, and settle trade in USD is a kind of meta-resource. Others want access to it more than they want a mine.

That bundle is why the U.S. stays permanently relevant, for better and worse.

Ah, I see. So when the U.S. bombs another country, it's genocide. But if someone does it to the U.S. it's a good thing? Got it.

Wont someone please consider the genociders??

This is also how they end.

Depends on your definition. The U.S. fits the definition of "Informal Empire" pretty well, but it's definitely not an old school empire like Rome or Britain

Imperialism as a concept predates Marxism and isn’t reducible to Lenin’s model. We can debate which framework is more useful, but pretending there’s only one definition isn’t serious.

Lenin’s framework is one influential analysis of capitalist imperialism. That doesn’t make it exhaustive. Modern geopolitics also includes state security competition, regional spheres of influence, and non-capitalist power projection.

Calling imperialism the principal contradiction is a theoretical commitment, not an empirical conclusion. Other schools like realism or institutionalism would identify state security competition or balance-of-power dynamics as primary.

In realism, the opposing tendencies are expansion of one state’s power and balancing by others to preserve sovereignty. In institutionalism, it’s integration versus fragmentation. Neither requires framing global politics as capital versus labor.

We’re working from fundamentally different priors. I don’t think global politics reduces to a single economic contradiction. I’ll leave it there.

Loose soldiers?! Where?