US presidential debate just happened… and uhhhh, apparently Biden has a cold, no one can understand what he is saying, and the felon is winning…

all I can say is that the Democrats must be freaking the fuck out.

I didn’t manage to catch the actual debate but from a cursory reading of some news articles (most very sympathetic to the democrats, just trying to be transparent about my own biases lol) it didn’t go well for Biden, kept mumbling, staring off into the distance, rasping and letting the felon walk all over him. Not exactly an ideal combination.

if you wonder why me, an Australian, am commenting on US polotics, I will direct you to the map below:

Been thinking about the Cold War recently and how we are seeing the same things that occurred between the us and the ussr happen between the us and china nowadays. I was on the fence about weather to classify the geopolitics of the us and china as a ‘Cold War’ because of the lack of apparent proxy conflicts, something that characterised the original Cold War greatly. Then I realised, Russia-Ukraine is partly a proxy conflict. The us obviously supports Ukraine and, and this was the part I forgot, china is basically Russia’s economic lifeline atm and I wouldn’t be surprised if Chinese weapons were being used by Russia right now. In this sense the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a proxy conflict (not necessarily characterised by military aid, but economic aid to continue fighting as well) between the United States and China. Another characteristic of the Cold War was economic completion, which is very much starting to crop up (us bans on certain exports to China) and technological competition, for example a nuclear buildup in the 20th century, and a military base buildup in the 21st. In many ways, current events and actions by both China and the United States point towards a new Cold War, and I would argue that it is very much underway.

P.S: sorry if this is paced kinda weirdly, im tired and cant be bothered to edit this so here is your raw geopolitical commentary

Was going to write a thing on how simplistic the left and right polotical spectrum is but I honestly don’t know enough and couldn’t do it justice. If your interested there are plenty of YouTube videos and articles going into it but at least for now I’ll stick to history and Ideology. Anyway I’d like to let you know that I’m working on a small thing on world wars but sadly I can’t.

THIS IS NOT AN ENDORSEMENT OF ANY IDEOLOGIES TALKED ABOUT IT IS MERELY A DISSCUSION ON THEM!

Was thinking about this today, during WW2 the axis powers were not just refered to as all facist, you obviously had facist Italy and the other two definitely fell under thr umbrella of ‘facist’ but instead they are refered to as ‘Nazi Germany’ and ‘Imperial Japan’. I think this is interesting because it shows the slightly differing ideology between each nation. Facist Italy was just that, facist, incredibly militaristic and nationalistic but nothing really special other than wanting to re-establish the roman empire.

Then you have Nazi Germany who were driven by, you guesed it, Nazisim. This was basically Hitlers brand of facisim that focused on not only driving Germans forward but everyone else out. Finally you have Imperial Japan which I think is the most interesting, they were undoubtedly facist (millitaristic and nationalistic) but their conquest and motivation for war was much more focused on building an empire rather than just because they were facist, sure they (at least the leadership) thought they had a divine right to win and subjugate the rest of the world but that was more justification rather than motivation, the motivation was Imperialism.

And I think thats the key point about these names, they represent each nations individual motivation, justification and overall just the driving factor behind each of their desire for war. They all had their own brand of facisim. Anyway I thought this was interesting and worth writing something about it.

middle east is back at again with another religious war

Alright so I’ve done some more research on how influential the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were to Japans surrender.

The general consensus is that the war was going badly and the bomb was, to the Japanese leadership, really no different than a regular bombing. They were already planning on surrendering due to the impending invasion by the U.S and USSR. The bomb simply provided an easy excuse that they could point to, in order to cover up the fact that they were already loosing the war.

It meant that they could preserve the ‘perfect emperor’ façade because it wouldn’t have been his fault, it was the allies that had suddenly created this magical bomb that forced the Japanese to surrender! Basically they were power hungry dictators.

So I was wrong about not believing that the Japanese leadership saw the bombings as ‘just another’ bombing. They were willing to keep being bombed if it meant preserving their power and pride.

TLDR; The war was going badly and the bombings were a good excuse for Japanese leadership to ignore their failures during the war.

While researching U.S military spending I came across an article arguing that the common narrative that Japan only surrendered because of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is not entirely accurate.

Article Link

It has some interesting points but it mainly boils down to 2 main things (I’ll explain them and then give my opinion).

The first thing they mention is how it happened at a time where every other day, a Japanese city was being bombed. This caused Japan to see the nuking on Hiroshima (and 3 days later Nagasaki) as more or less just an upgraded and slightly more powerful attack, and therefore weren’t going to surrender just because something that was already going on had slightly changed.

The second reason is the Soviet Unions plans to invade Japan from the north, combined with Britain and the U.S’s invasion from the south was looking to be increasingly devastating for Japan. The USSR has only recently declared war on Japan and had already proven that they could easily sweep into and take critical Japanese city’s. For Japan, a joint Allied invasion from the north and south was un-winnable.

One of the reasons that people see the bombings as the final stroke is because the Japanese surrender came 6 days after the bombings and it seems easy to connect to two. Something the article points out though is that the full report on the Hiroshima bombing didn’t reach the Japanese leadership until the day after they surrendered.

It then goes on to explain the reasoning for each countries pushing the idea of the nukes being the deciding factor.

OPINION PART THAT I WILL PROBABLY REGRET ONE DAY STARTS HERE:

I think the bombings did have an impact on the surrender. The article talks about the statistics of how much each bombing destroyed of each respective city but I think this is a bit misleading. If you look at how many people died in the Hiroshima bombings and compare that to the other, standard bombings, the nuclear bomb did far more actual damage.

I also think implying that the report not getting to the leadership until after they surrendered meaning that they had no idea that it happened is a bit weird. They would definitely had gotten some reports if a city was destroyed, even if it was a common occurrence.

I do agree however that it wasn’t as big a part of the decision as most people make it out to be. It was certainly a part of why the surrendered, but the impending invasion by England, the U.S, and most importantly the Soviets would have been the main reasoning.

I would like to state that I have no credentials to be making these opinions but this is my blog and I make the rules ‘round here.

I recommend you read the article and I will probably read more on the topic and might write another small opinion piece on it when I’m more informed.

Thanks for reading.

Been researching why the U.S.A has such a large military nowadays. It’s actually really interesting, it covers topics like geography and the philosophy of the U.S. I am in no way qualified to write anything definitive but I’m writing a summary that I might put on here. I’ll be like a timeline/ideological/geographical rundown of all the reasons behind the seemingly excessive U.S military spending.

Disclaimer: I am 15 years old and have no idea what I’m doing. This will more be like what I’ve learnt rather than an informative piece.