Number of Votes for "Third Party Candidate" = X
Number of "Third Party Candidates" with universal ballot access = 0
X / 0 = Error: Divide By Zero
Election crashes. Vote goes to the House of Representatives. Trump wins.
+1 Presidency of Donald Trump
QED
Please let me know where to pick up my check.
Stop threatening me with a good time.
I've seen a lot of schools incorporate private businesses into and around the cafeteria. And, of course, vending machines are an absolute epidemic.
But I couldn't name ones that have straight up abolished cafeterias and turned them into a legit Wendy's.
Its going to be so cool when we privatize the cafeterias and then decide the problem is kids are greedily demanding food that is too expensive.
Like imagine how pissed they would get if I said something similarly hurtful to Ukrainians...
Hardly have to imagine. Russian media says shit like this all the time and they go through the roof over it.
But this kind of thing does push Russia towards the end goal of dismantling Ukraine as a sovereign state rather than simply taking the Donbas Republics and drawing the line there.
The original Russian policy (under Putin, no less) was to do the same kind of neoliberal puppeteering that Western states accomplished in Germany and Egypt and Japan. Use tight economic relations with the threat of targeted sanctions (and the occasional FSB knee-capper) to keep Ukrainian aristocracy in line. And the western response was to keep fanning the flames of insurrection until the country balkinized like a dropped egg.
Now he's pivoted back to a more traditional boots-on-the-ground occupation, a la America's domination of Haiti and Panama or the USSR dominion over Hungary and Czechoslovakia. And the western response has been to put up a losing counter-insurgency a la South Vietnam.
But the idea of Ukraine as a sovereign state was never really on the table. Ukranians had a shot at picking their own master back in the '00s/'10s. And they might have found a Turkey/Saudi/Israeli style middle-ground, where they played Russia and America off one another for a better position at the Cheap Imports / Military subsidies negotiating table. But they were always doomed to be beholden to someone.
As long as a sovereign Ukraine exists, it will be a hotbed for this kind of pseudo terrorist attack.
Ukranians had no chill. They simply couldn't resist doing their own little Serbian genocide in the East. And as Russia proved in Chechnya, that was a red line they weren't going to let Ukrainian fascists cross. Losing influence over the executive branch for a few years was a pill Putin could swallow (so long as Ukraine didn't mind giving up Crimea). But ethnic cleansing as a tool of political consolidation? Nah, dawg. Not on United Russia's watch.
Hell, the democratic elections in our own #Blessed United States with Free Debate and Open Fair Elections (according to the Freedom Fairness Founding Fathers Index Of Liberty And Justice) will very likely result in another four years of Dondald "The Cheeto Man" Drumpf. Who the fuck knows what he'll do, now that he's even more senile, fascist, and grumpy than he was back in 2016.
The moment you include fascists, your group is fascist
Eh. I agree with this in theory. But in practice, I'm all too familiar with the Reddit discourse that tags anti-war groups and pro-Palestinian groups and "tankies" with the Fascist brush. As with any censorship policy, the reality is in the eye of the administrator.
You can cultivate an absolutely toxic brew of fascist dickery while waving a big "No Fascists Allowed" banner. Hell, that's been the Israeli model for the last 80 years. Do Fascism. Call anyone who complains a Fascist.
Was genuinely unclear whether that first post was based or cringe, before I got to the bit about Russian Propaganda.
Had a world history textbook whose opening sentences are ingrained in my brain.
"The Chinese Civilization emerged on the banks of the Yangzhi River in 3000 BC. In 1840 AD, the British arrived."
Apparently the defects on the Challenger - particularly the faulty O-ring - were well-established. They absolutely knew they were putting up a faulty shuttle and didn't care.
Running "West Side Story" through the Google AI generator and generating a perpetual motion machine of angry chuds.