You might have had an argument if this were the 1980s. But communism failed. The "communist" party of China is dominated by billionaires now. Even the communists are capitalists now. Your socialist youtube influencers are all monetized and are heavily promoted by big tech's algorithms. Many of them have merch stores and are millionaires. Leftism is just an aesthetic packaged and sold in a capitalist system.

Capitalist authoritarians in China maintain a communist aesthetic to have some weird semblance of legitimacy, and capitalist authoritarians in Russia have some nostalgia for the communist aesthetic. North Korea is backwards monarchy now, struggling to keep people from starving.

The military doesn't maintain capitalism because at this point the "communists" are all capitalists now. Maybe for a time it helped protect against the authoritarian capitalists but now the US authoritarian too. We're back to the era of Great Powers, and capitalism vs. socialism isn't a factor much like it wasn't a factor in the Great Powers world order of the past.

Sorry but Santa Claus isn't real and communism died a long time ago. You're just being sold the carcass by capitalists.

So I guess we have three options:

• The Congressional Research Service lied two years ago about the number of foreign military bases as 128.
• The US in 1.5 years sextupled its number of foreign military bases.
• World Beyond War's criteria of "any installation, facility, or site located outside the operating country that is financed, operated, leased, rented, or temporarily accessed by that country" to define a "foreign military base" is majorly misleading when taken out of context for a shitty meme.

Wonder which it is.

(Actual argument done, I can insult you without it being ad hom: fuck off, tankie. I disagree with ancoms sometimes on pragmatics, but their ethics are sound; not yours.)