Hyperreality

In theory, if everyone has become selfless, there is no need for a man with a stick to create the rules or ensure compliance. No one will want to use a stick to push through rules which are to their advantage. People will simply cooperate with each other or help each other willingly where necessary.

Think of a group of friends or adult family, where people help each other and cooperate willingly, because they love each other. Hopefully you don't need to threaten your partner to do their share of the household tasks. You do it because you want your relationship to succeed and want to support each other.

The USSR tried to create this new man with a stick, propaganda and indoctrination during the dictatorship of the proletariat phase. They never achieved fully realized communism, where everyone willing works to the best of their ability and helps their commune succeed and the commune of communes that is a truly communist society succeed.

Smaller anarchist communes and experiments will try to do this organically. Everyone chooses to try to do their best and help the rest of the commune. It sounds pie in the sky, but it's not unlike what volunteer groups do. People believe in a common cause, and freely volunteer their time, because they believe in their shared goal, and enjoy working together.

I feel this is relevant:

...proponents of communism have postulated that within the new society of pure communism and the social conditions therein, a New Man and New Woman would develop with qualities reflecting surrounding circumstances of post-scarcity and unprecedented scientific developmen ... Among the major traits of a new Soviet man was selfless collectivism. The selfless new man was willing to sacrifice his life for good causes ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Soviet_man#Selflessness

Of course, arguably the soviet project failed to this new man, so much so that 'homo Sovieticus' is now a pejorative:

Homo Sovieticus (cod Latin for 'Soviet Man') is a pejorative term coined to describe the average conformist individual in the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries. Popularized by Soviet writer Aleksandr Zinovyev, it gained negative connotations and represented the perceived outcome of Soviet policies. ... Homo Sovieticus (cod Latin for 'Soviet Man') is a pejorative term coined to describe the average conformist individual in the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries. ... Characteristics of Homo Sovieticus included indifference to work results, lack of initiative, indifference to common property, chauvinism, obedience to government, and a tendency to drink heavily. ... traits like indifference, theft, lack of initiative, and submission to authority ... Some argued that the disappointment of intellectuals in the Soviet project had negative consequences, contributing to elitism and an anti-populist stance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_Sovieticus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma

Old picture? AFAIK he looks much worse now.

1. The German language doesn't work well with pun based humour. This is the kind of humour English speakers are used to.
2. They do but you need to be able to speak German to understand the jokes they're making. Understandably, it's hard to be funny in a second language.
3. IME German humour is often incredibly dry, deadpan or even anti-humour. In the past I've experienced Germans making jokes, and British people thinking they were being deadly serious. Eg. "An Irishman, a German and a Brit walk into a bar. They order beer." Expressionless face - shit example, but you get the idea.

Right-wingers are all about helping themselves.

Populists are surging across Europe and the western world.

We are commenting on an article about a right wing populist with ties to Russia called Trump. He likes to help himself. He's on record as saying NATO is dead and that the US wouldn't help NATO allies.

You will find similar articles about Wilders(the Netherlands), Le Pen(France), Orban(Hungary), Fico(Slovakia), Kneissl(Austria), Schroeder(Germany), Wilders(Belgium), Farage(UK), Salvini(Italy), AFD(Germany) and many many others who have (suspected) ties to Russia and/or China.

IRC Kneissl, the former Austrian foreign minister, now lives in St. Petersburg. Salvini's embarassed himself. Other populists have replaced them. Former German chancellor and mainstream politician Schroeder receives a million a year from Russian energy companies and continues to criticise the West, not Russia. He is also quite good at helping himself.

It's very scary, but all it takes for a mistake to happen, is for Russia to think that Europe and NATO is less united than it is, especially after a Trump win, populist gains, and Ukraine losing the war due to Western support drying up.

The Institute for the Study of War published the first article I cited on December the 14th 2023.

I'll quote another relevant bit:

... The Kremlin has made great strides in its long-term project to gain control of the Belarusian military, and victory in Ukraine would likely get it the rest of the way. The Russians would thus likely deploy either permanently or in a nominally rotational way an airborne division (three regiments) and a mechanized infantry division (likely three regiments) in southwestern and northern Belarus as well. They would be able to threaten a short-notice mechanized offensive against one or several NATO states with at least 8 divisions (21 mechanized or tank regiments and brigades and three airborne regiments), backed by significant reserves including the 1st Guards Tank Army, which would be reconstituted around Moscow and was always intended to be the premier strike force against NATO. They could make such an attack and still threaten the Baltic States and Finland with the forces already present there and reinforcements they have announced they intend to station along the Finnish borders. Russian ground forces would be covered by a dense air defense network of S-300, S-400, and S-500 long range anti-air and anti-missile systems with overlapping coverage of the entire front. ... NATO would be unable to defend against such an attack with the forces currently in Europe. The United States would need to move large numbers of American soldiers to the entire eastern NATO border from the Baltic to the Black Sea to deter Russian adventurism and be prepared to defeat a Russian attack. The United States would also need to commit a significant proportion of its fleet of stealth aircraft permanently to Europe.

They don't have to conquer the entirety of Europe. Just a small territory like the Suwalki Gap, something NATO without the US might not want to risk a nuclear war over. Present NATO with a fait accompli at a time when it's weaker than it's ever been, due to a US withdrawal. Severely undermine NATO credibility and trust in the alliance.

Once again, I understand you don't agree and that you're getting angry, but I am simply repeating what plenty of experts say on the matter.

As you say, agree to disagree.

The experts cited largely disagree with your assessment, which is why they are so worried about Trump withdrawing from NATO, why leaders are ramping up military spending, and why countries like Japan and South Korea are having serious discussions about acquiring their own nuclear deterrent for the first time in decades. They wouldn't do this, if they weren't genuinely worried.

I get the idea that you're angry about what these experts write.

Given this is an emotional reaction, perhaps you should ask yourself if you're not suffering from a cognitive bias.

It is possible that the reason you are annoyed is because you don't want the experts to be right about how dangerous the current situation is. It is very scary stuff. Fear can cloud our judgement on stuff like this.

Russia can’t even invade Ukraine

The Institute for the Study of War:

A Russian conquest of all of Ukraine is by no means impossible if the United States cuts off all military assistance and Europe follows suit. ... The Ukrainian military with Western support has destroyed nearly 90% of the Russian army that invaded in February 2022 according to US intelligence sources, but the Russians have replaced those manpower losses and are ramping up their industrial base to make good their material losses at a rate much faster than their pre-war capacity had permitted. A victorious Russian army at the end of this war will be combat experienced and considerably larger than the pre-2022 Russian land forces. The Russian economy will gradually recover as sanctions inevitably erode and Moscow develops ways to circumvent or mitigate those that remain. Over time it will replace its equipment and rebuild its coherence, drawing on a wealth of hard-won experience fighting mechanized warfare. It will bring with it advanced air defense systems that only American stealth aircraft—badly needed to deter and confront China—can reliably penetrate. Russia can pose a major conventional military threat to NATO for the first time since the 1990s in a timeframe set to a considerable extent by how much the Kremlin invests in its military. Since Moscow has already committed to an ambitious post-war military expansion program the US cannot be confident that the timeframe will be very long.

Provocations increase, a mistake is made, skirmishes break out, Russian make surprisingly quick (short term) advances, ...

There’s no way they can take on Europe Nato in an actual war

They're likely to make significant gains in the Suwalki gap, especially if the US has defacto left NATO and the EU is divided (Wilders, Orban, etc.). Wikipedia:

There is broad consensus ... that any hypothetical attack on NATO would involve an attempt to capture the Suwałki Gap ... reasons for the hypothetical attack are seen not to be primarily the occupation of the three former Soviet republics by Russia but to sow distrust in NATO's capabilities, to discredit the military alliance and to assert Russia's position as one of the major military powers. ... In 2016, the RAND Corporation ran simulations that suggested that with the NATO forces available at the time and despite less military presence in the area than in the Soviet times, an unexpected attack would have Russian troops enter or approach Riga and Tallinn in 36–60 hours from the moment of the invasion. The think tank attributed the swift advance to the tactical advantage in the region, easier logistics for Russian troops, better maneuverability and an advantage in heavy equipment on Russia's side. In general, the Russian Armed Forces, according to NATO's expectations, will try to overwhelm the Baltic states, cut off its only land route to the rest of NATO and force a fait accompli situation before the Alliance's reinforcements are able to come by land (air reinforcements are much more expensive and are vulnerable to surface-to-air strikes), only to face a dilemma between surrendering the area to the invader and directly confronting Russian troops, potentially escalating the war to a nuclear conflict. Ben Hodges, a retired US Army general who served as a high-ranking NATO commander and who co-authored a paper published by the CEPA on the defence of the Suwałki Gap, said in 2018 that the Suwałki Gap was an area where "many (of) NATO's [...] weaknesses converge[d]". ... Both results were catastrophic: in the American simulation, Polish units would incur about 60,000 casualties in the first day of war, and NATO and Russia would fare a battle that would prove very bloody to both sides, losing about half of the participating forces within 72 hours. Zima-20's results, which are interpreted with some dose of caution, showed that by day 4 of the invasion, the Russians already advanced to the Vistula river and fighting in Warsaw was underway, while by day 5, the Polish ports were rendered unusable for reinforcements or occupied, the Navy and the Air Force were obliterated despite NATO's assistance, while the Polish units dispatched close to the border could lose as much as 60-80% of personnel and materiel.

...

And UK’s and France’s nuclear umbrella is plenty.

In a scenario where the US has left NATO, and the EU is divided (Orban, Wilders, Le Pen, ...), would the UK or France risk starting a nuclear war over a small sparsely populated area in the Baltics? Russia might gamble that NATO would not be willing to risk nuclear armageddon, after they abandoned Ukraine.

TLDR: high risk. Important to dissuade Russian stupidity by increasing defense spending. Important that the US stays in NATO.

Which as a European, is fair enough. America first, American interests first.

Of course, ensuring Europe doesn't fall into the Russia/Chinese sphere of influence, and having powerful allies, is quite obviously in America's interests.

Not that there's any point arguing with morons like that. Like playing chess with a pigeon. No matter what, you're likely to end up with shit in your hair.

Not autistic. My perspective: I'd simply skip going to this particular coffee shop, tbh.

Young people are often cunts. They think being snide or sarcastic makes them cool or appear smart. Often because they're still very self-involved and lack life experience. It's just bullying and nasty. You don't deserve that. You especially don't deserve it as a customer. Very stupid.

If you want write a short review on google. "Autistic so I sometimes mumble. Made fun of in this coffee shop. Didn't feel welcome. Won't be returning."

Just as a warning for other customers. Not just people who are autistic, but if you're having a shit day, have social anxiety, English isn't your native language, you're going through shit, have a back ache, or are simply very tired, you don't want to made to feel like shit when ordering a coffee. Especially if you've just woken up.