darkcalling [comrade/them, she/her]

Insurance companies would know. They would know because they know diagnoses and track them to approve or deny medications, visits to medical professionals like psychiatrists/psychologists/etc. They can just demand those records from them scarily enough.

The US might miraculously find deposits of rare earth metals

Reminder that rare earths are not actually rare, it’s just that China has 85% of world refining capacity for them as it takes some doing. In a full on war footing, pull out all the brakes type situation the US could absolutely spin up some not as efficient, very dangerous for workers, expensive, but workable emergency capacity, it wouldn’t put them on par with China but it would be enough to continue a war with selective strikes (instead of constant, high intensity bombardments hourly for weeks on end) and after that point the US would almost certainly continue to build up that capacity and make it a point to attempt to wean the rest of the world off Chinese rare earths.

It would also result in all kinds of other unforeseen consequences. For example the US may have the capacity to hack and physically damage or destroy Chinese electrical or other infrastructure but obviously isn’t going to do that right now. But if a hot war unfolds and especially one where the US isn’t winning they might break out those offensive state malware toolboxes and start wreaking incredible havoc within China that could cost a lot of money, take a lot of lives and result in a lot of chaos, uncertainty and problems that would take quite some time to sort out. The more electronically connected and “smart” everything is as in China the easier it is to fuck up everything, ironically the US by not being as “advanced” as China in adopting network connectivity to various things is a harder target in this regard. China is well aware of this risk, the US basically compromised everything in China with their shipments of NSA hardware back-door chipped Cisco routers and devices which Snowden revealed and though it’s been more than a decade since they became aware I have to assume they’re still inside many systems lurking and waiting.

Pretty much my thinking. The Vatican isn’t going to paint a target on themselves, the chic thing of corporations (and Vatican is just one big child abusing, criminal corporation in a sense) trying to pretend to be woke and progressive has been tossed aside. Some parts of Europe are still clinging to a veneer of it but the far right is rising rapidly even in France and I think that within 5-8 years at most you have much more reactionary governments in power across Europe and the Vatican won’t want a pope that’s out of step on that.

The fact also is the idea that Francis vetted these people and made sure they were ideologically committed to his way of thinking seems a bit spurious, it is so like the rad-lib to want to have variety, to accept reactionary people to the right of your position because they’re with you on one particular thing or they seem on a personal level to be likeable and not horribly corrupt and a true believer at least. So I would not be surprised if even without the shifting global trends that happened.

Francis was notably picked in 2013, that was in Obama’s second term, world-wide there was this propaganda feeling that America had made a decidedly progressive permanent turn by electing a black man not once but twice and so they wanted to follow on with that. Now with Trump, with the rise of “trad” among the incel-o-sphere and man-o-sphere among young guys, with the alignment of the big corporations with Trump with the big tech bourgeoisie literally lining up behind him it would make sense to put in someone more appropriate for that setting.

Probably a pope that’s more outspoken on calling trans people evil because that’s a popular thing now unfortunately. And maybe even one who is willing to be openly anti-China and help lead the religious proles on a crusade against the Asiatic communist power. Because let’s be honest, with all the secret society shit, the ties between the Vatican and European aristocracy and bourgeoisie it’s hard to believe there aren’t powerful people not at all affiliated with the church weighing in on the choice and what they NEED to see in who the next pick is with the electors before they go into seclusion.

If you don’t have income the IRS knows about then I’m pretty sure no. Though I’m not sure if they can do things like try and take a car whose title is listed in your name or get a lien against that or a house or other big things you own. They might be able to garnish things like state benefits though, like money for the disabled, they can definitely garnish social security including disability. They can garnish things like unemployment I THINK and they can sue you and try and get a list of your assets and seize them to sell them off to try and pay for part of it.