Political Memes

Because it's always been like that. An enemy image unites, and allows for political agendas which wouldn't be possible otherwise. China and Taiwan? Israel and Gaza? The middle east? Jugoslawia? Kosovo and Albania? The soviets, Hitler, the OG fascist Mussolini, and even they weren't the first ones.

Having an enemy helps unite people against them, and as long as the image of the enemy being present and being a danger is fed, inner conflicts matter way less, since the "danger" is the enemy.

For America it's an especially interesting case:

• America spends ~900 billion dollars on military, which is as much as the next most spending 9 countries combined. Source. Fuck knows if that's super accurate, it's a fuckton. America's main export good is war, so any enemy is a good enemy, and any war is a good war. Suddenly, the 66.5 billion spent on Ukraine since 2022 aren't that much anymore.
• The "commies" and the "reds" are an historic enemy, and have been for a significant time of America's existence. America has existed for 249 years this year. The soviet union existed for 69 years, counting in the Russian Republic right before its 74 years. Right before that was the Russian empire, which existed for 196 years. The Russians, in some form, have been an enemy since basically forever.
• A comparatively extremely dumb population on average at least in regard to the non-american world, in addition to intolerance of the "non-american way" of doing things and disinterest in other cultures.

And since the average American already is used in thinking black and white with glorious freedom of two-party pseudo democracy, it's even easier to get the enemy image going.

For some variance, China can be used sometimes too.

And before I get called a Russian bot, fuck Putin, fuck Trump, fuck Musk, and many other political figures having blood of many people on their hands.