China is currently debt trapping most of Africa. They pretty much appointed the current dictator of Zimbawe for example.

The way I look at good and bad is on a scale. Whenever a country makes the life for the average human better in terms of material well being, but also political freedom, that is a good thing. Whenever they make those things worse then it is bad.

A huge reason the US is the country doing so many bad things, is that nearly nobody else can. Any large scale war between two countries in recent times had the US being the agressor or the US intervening massivly. Iraq was done after invading Kuwait and Russia despute having nukes and a resilient economy is not liking it either.

So we have to look at what countries choose to do with the power they have and the US is not the worst in that metric.

Looking at the countries currently trying to replace the US none of them are better. Russia an Iran are pretty obvious. China is already working hard on enslaving the poorest countries in the world. For most of the rest the US Empire falling apart, just means local dictators continue their rule.

Add to that the violence of the conflicts and I gurantee you very few will celebrate that collapse.

Empires breaking up tends to be extremely violent. Just look at what happened during the collapse of the European empires.

Also what replaces them is not necessarily better. Not all evil comes from the US. Other countries are perfectly able of horrible stuff as well.

Hollywood accounting is insane. Offically all movies loose money.

The highway runs alongside rhe Madeira river. Due to draught the river is no longer nacigable, hence the highway gets paved.

their property

And that is exactly the point. In a housing cooperative the owner is the homeowners association of which all tenents are members. If done right that means cheap rents and decent upkeep, as soon as the debts are paid off.

Is a housing cooperative a landlord?

You are probably looking for a small medieval town. Adding aparment blocks together makes transport cheaper. Hence you can built a walkable neighbourhood with good public transport. You then have green space outside the settlement. However that can be reached quickly in smaller settlements.

Sound proof walls are a thing, as is owning a single apartment. It works pretty well.

Also this idea of owning is just bs. Most of the money goes to a bank in form of a mortgage intrest. Once you paid that off, the children leave the house and you are stuck with a property designed for a larger family. Much better to move to a smaller space at that point, which is cheaper and easier to maintain. That is not even talking about the option of moving to a better job or something similar. Selling and buying a house can easily cost a years worth of rent.

Decomodified housing, like housing cooperatives solve a lot of the renting problems.

There are big money donors, which are not billionaires. The most common one are unions.

He is still alive.

This is what I am talking about, especially the second half of the article:

https://jacobin.com/2016/08/ernst-thalmann-east-germany-stalin-nazis

Btw Tom Lehrer put all his songs in the creative commons.

The SPD initially prefered to work with further left forces. They worked together on the Reich Congress of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils however the SPD wanted a parliamentary democracy and the USPD wanted a council republic, so when they realized the most of the councils were not in fact communist and actually supported the SPD, that caused uprisings against the interim SPD lead government, which the USPD left. The USPD was also unwilling to work with the SPD in the national assembly, which was the parliament they set up and they were sitting in. Intresstingly the Weimar constituion has a few points which could have been easily turned to accomadate workers councils. Hence the more centrist forces worked with them and the consitution was born.

I really think the word you’re looking for here is “liberal”

No it is democratic, which the KPD at this point was no longer. They were working on setting up a Stalinist dictatorship and no longer a council democracy.

You’re making significant assumptions, such as any of the liberals actually being willing to work the with the Communists,

I am looking at what we might want to learn from what happened back for the US election and other struggles against the far right. So pointing out that this was an option is imho extremely important. Obviously they did not do it, but that does not mean it is impossible to do it at least partly today, with different left wing groups considering different centrist groups not radical enough.

Hitler and Thälmann lost to the center right Hindenburg who was backed by the social democrats. Hindenburg was already president since 1925, so he was seen as no direct threat to democracy. Then Germany had parliamentary elections in July 1932. Those had a Nazi + Communist majority, so they repeated the election in November as they did not have a majority to form a government as both the Communist and the Nazis were against democracy. That however although slightly better did not solve that problem. So Hindenburg used decrees to work with the Nazis so they could form a government.

So if the Communists and social democrats would have worked together and elected a left president. That might have been somebody from the social democrats or indeed Thälmann, then a minority centrist or left wing or a majority centrist and communist government would have been possible. The Communists however never tried to work with the democratic forces. The Nazis actually did exactly that, which they were able to use to gain total power.

Point should be obvious.

Not at all. The judges appointed by the opposition party, protect the laws made by the opposition party, when they were in government. This way the government can not just ignore those laws. So most countries have very long term limits for judges to deal with that. Hence a single government can not just stack the courts. Term limits are used, so no single government just happens to be able to appoint a lot more judges then usual. However even with the term limit being death, a court like the US supreme court has judges appointed by five different presidents for example.

In the 2020 election Trump had 52.06% and Biden 46.48% in Texas. Obviously a lead for the Republicans, but it is moving getting closer and into swing state territory. This is with nobody spending a lot on Texas right now.

That was going back much further. The Communists had tried to overthrow the Weimar Republic in the Hamburg Uprising a decade earlier. So the social democrats, who were a key supporter and really the creators of the Republic, saw them as an enemy. Thälmann was especially outspoken against the social democrats. Hence they saw supporting Thälmann as supporting an enemy of the Weimar Republic.

However Jill Stein and co policies are mostly about as radical as the German social democrats back then. All of it could be done by reforming the US political system. At least near term.Also the German communists were much better organized then the US left. They were sitting in most parliaments of German states and cities. The US Green Party has no officeholders on a federal or even state level right now. Of the 8 state level officeholders they did have only 3 have run on a Green Party ticket, the rest was elected Democrat and switched to the Greens. That has to be changed first, before running for president. Seriously if you can not take state seats, then you can not win the presidency.

Exactly you can use the railing to hang on the outside. Greater speed and much more fun.

Work from home, walk, use transit, a wheelchair or the lots of other options of green transport. There are a lot of different solutions for that and just because North America can not built a somewhat working public transport system, does not mean it is impossible. Seriously if cities lack decent government run public transport they usually have share taxis for the service.

So please do not pretend it is impossible. It is just that North America is in the situation of most everybody being able to afford a car and government run public transport being horrible.

Also just because it is not on a picture does not mean it does not exist. Most people can ride a bicycle and especially e-bikes.