CarmineCatboy2

Another thing are all the jokes about how catty Putin was towards Tucker. People broadly speaking made fun of Putin fucking with Tucker, calling him a failed CIA operative and such. They did it because it was funny. But libs online felt the need to talk about this like they were scoring victory points in the upcoming election. A mirror to that is how people like Alexander Mercouris liked to talk Tucker up as a respectable journalist conducting a respectable interview, not a huckster being used and abused by an prominent statesman.

There was a bit to mock there - of course, we did it ourselves - but some of the mockery kinda missed the point of what propaganda is. Sure, Carlson comes across as a sheltered oligarch's heir who never set foot on a supermarket before. But the part where Carlson spends a lot of money and pretends that groceries are exceptionally cheap in Russia works. It plays into the psyche of the far right in the US, the idealization of Russia as a conservative meccah, and into newly accelerated inflation fears in the country.

All in all, the context is that western media is extremely salty that Tucker went beyond the pale and platformed Putin. So, once again, these are just words thrown at the wind. You have to be an american liberal conservative and card carrying Democrat voter to be outraged in that way. Everybody else is either taking the interview seriously or making fun of the culture clash of Putin explaining 600 year old history to an american talk show host.

There's also some chance that liberals and liberal-adjacent working-class people would resist the same nominal policies under Trump

We are gonna need some psychic shielding for the inevitable whiplash, won't we?

what a risky decision for the shrimp salad to make so late in its career

I wonder if there's a way to defraud the government here. I assume the british PM made some sort of announcement about securing the Red Sea. If there's some law in the books where corporations can request indemnity due to the failure of government policy, why a choice judge might even grant it.

I remember growing up and watching a foreign movie from the US and finding it strange that families would do grocery shopping on a weekly basis. That felt like such a waste of gas. It was later that I realized that our own culture of monthly shopping arose after the periods of hyperinflation, especially due to the Volcker Shock in the 80s. There's a lot of small ways in which long term economic prospects shape our culture at large. And unlike what some romantic writers seem to think, American optimism is not inherent to people in the US. It's something that came into being out of historical circumstances.

I don't think american decline or even it's relative decline is written on stone. But if the post 80s libertarian policies aren't reversed, I can see a traumatic situation akin to that of Britain's stagnation. A total cultural shock. As a foreigner that's what I'm seeing. People surprised at shrinkflation, inflation and even older boomers shocked that the baseline welfare state they voted out of existence does not, indeed, exist any more. This isn't a criticism mind you. I think we here at the periphery are so used to rational fears, as you put it, that we normalize these things.

I think you are deluded frankly

That's alright, I don't think you're deluded I just think you're wrong.

dodge bans or whatever

That's cute and all, but no I didn't dodge a ban. I just lost my password.

Feel free to block me again, though.

Seems like your issue is mostly pedantic and having to do with the specific word “bloc” which I’m using more loosely and colloquially. Would you prefer if I used the words “military alliance” or “axis”?

No, because the policies don't pan that out either. The actual material reality of being in a military alliance is absolutely not the same as being part of a bloc. Russia and China are allied, but they don't form a bloc, and the rest of the multipolar world is absolutely not in a bloc under either of them. The simple existence of countries like Brazil, Iran and India disprove that idea. Furthermore, the blanket assertion of bloc politics is underestimating the agency of even smaller, weaker actors in Kenya, Vietnam, South Africa and so on. Countries which are not, by default, anti US or part of a bloc competition against the US.

I really don't think it's a bloc. Because that's not really how things are formulated down here or elsewhere in BRICS or the SCO. Even if you ignore most of the 'multipolar world' and focus entirely on Rus-China relations, you'll see that, if anything China goes out of it's way to treat Russia as the polar opposite of a bloc member. The Chinese will emphasize at every turn that Russia is a sovereign, self interested nation with whom they have common interests and symbiotic spheres of influence. The Chinese aren't interested in, say, running security guarantees in Central Asia while the Russians very much are. Nor are the Russians interested in being the pre-eminent industrial power, even as local investment in manufacturing increases. Nobody is trying to impose bloc politics in the way that lead to the Sino-Soviet split, or in the way that the US imposes policy on NATO+ members. If you open your analysis further and start talking about countries like Iran, India, KSA and so on, you have both moments of cooperation and competition. As well as unilateral talks with the US.

The multipolar world outside of NATO is, by definition, not a bloc. And it couldn't be a bloc even if the members of BRICS+ tried to become one. It's too early and the status of the organization is still under discussion.

What I'm saying is that the way americans talk about inflation feels dramatic and sheltered. If I didn't know any better I'd think americans simply have 0 inflation, but I know it's confined to costs of living which the government doesn't subsidize. Ie, anything but cars and gas. It's all very

'actually according to the BBC you can't quadruple my insurance rates behold:

'

Why still have a campaign?

you're talking about months of fruitful work for the consulting class. do better