Do NOT engage Rodney!
Yeah, bro. That's not how that works.
zifnab25
joined 5 years ago
they were dealing with the Ukrainian nazis shelling donbass for almost a decade already
The scale of conflict has escalated significantly since then. Casualties are in the hundreds of thousands.
You also don't seem to realize Russian popular sentiment is already very invested into the outcome of this war.
American popular sentiment was very invested in the outcome of the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars two years into those conflicts. I don't think that works in their favor. On the contrary, they're exposed to a backlash if they do any kind of withdrawal or suffer another nasty run of casualties or tie the conflict back to a new economic downturn.
Everything is contingent on US support, nobody else has an army nor an economy to wage war and while they may be racist towards Slavs this is nothing but a mere continuation of the cold war.
For the time being. But a big role of the Bush Era State Department and beyond has been prodding EU/Middle Eastern states to arm up and get into these territorial fights. Turning European and Arab allies (and more recently Pacific states) into armed outgrowths of the US-based MIC. As fascist movements throughout Central Europe build up in popularity, and as states ramp up the size and scope of their domestic police forces, its easy to see conflict accelerate into border clashes and then open war.
That's exactly what happened in Ukraine between 2006 and 2021. First, police forces ramped up. Then the conflict flared up into a decade long civil war. Finally, as the western bloc gained territory in Donetsk and the fighting spilled over the border, the conflict went international.
Why would this not happen in Poland or Hungary or Italy or Germany? Turkey is already in the thick of it and could easily be the next domino to fall. Syria almost tipped into civil war and international conflict thanks to US interventions. There's nothing magical about these Western states that would prevent pogroms against Africans, Arabs, Slavs, and other Asian cohorts (particularly the Chinese) that would in turn flare up into wholesale street fighting and eventual interstate conflicts.
The same thing will keep happening.
I absolutely agree. But I don't think the Russia-Urkaine war backstopped any of it. I only see it as the latest in a string of border classes and ethnic purges that Europeans will be conducting for the next century.
EU fascism will turn inwards first before worrying about geopolitical issues
Fascism never just stops inside the borders of a state. As soon as refugees start fleeing the state and businesses suffer and neighboring territories see attacks on their ex-pats as an attack on themselves, the conflict grows in scope.
Russia-Ukraine is the model for the future.
Only for the primary and only in Colorado, and the SCOTUS will definitely overturn it.
That's crazy, how was this more pointless than Libya, Donbas, Afghanistan, Armenia, or Palestine?
Strictly by volume. I don't believe any of those reached the scale of the Russia Ukraine war in the comparatively brief time period.
I think we're seeing movement on the political front.
The DSA has been sprouting up all over the Northeast and Midwest
But after Bernie flared out twice, I don't know who else seriously wants to raise that mast again.
Not to get all George Orwell, but jesus christ does "country that exists to make drones to bomb another country" sound like some 
tier shit.
Back in 2008, I honestly had no idea why Biden's nomination was significant. He looked like a sop to the centrists rather than a broker for the plutocrats. In retrospect, I probably should have known better. But I was high on that "Anybody But Bush" drug, and Obama seemed like a far more attractive option than Clinton (nevermind McCain). So Biden didn't bother me until much later on.
he just never closed guantanamo, and started bombing weddings and hospitals and pine nut farmers
Yeah. The Gitmo thing in particular was just so nauseating. After all that Unitary Executive bullshit Bush had employed with abandon, it seemed downright trivial for a decent human being with Presidential authority to finally lance and drain that shameful sore on the American conscience. But year after year, long after the whole Congressional do nothing charade had turned into a sick joke, he just kinda organized another commission to question the logistics of thinking about the legality blah blah blah.
Literally all that asshole was good for was another package of excuses. Absolutely worthless piece of shit.
I don't see how this applies at all
Asset inflation and excess waste production resulting from our Big Number Go Up strategy is undermining our ability to operate self-sufficiently without sacrificing quality of life. Any kind of economic restructuring is going to result in a huge nominal drop in the economic numbers that undergird the economy, and we need to be psychologically prepared for that if we're going to execute on necessary economic changes before they're forced on us by material limitations.
I also don't see how decommodification would result in either a Juche system or degrowth
De-commodification would, first and foremost, decouple the material resources upon which our economic forecasts are based. If you go into the economy and you decommodify energy, you're going to cause the speculative price of for-profit energy companies to crater. That's going to result in a large contraction in credit markets following a wave of defaults on debt. Big Number Would Go Down.
De-commodification and distribution of energy on an as-needed basis rather than a speculative basis would move us towards a system of self-sufficiency rather than one of artificial revaluation. Microsoft no longer having an infinite well of paper currency to buy from a finite well of fossil fuels for the purpose of generating electricity to run their entertainment machines would free up enormous amounts of energy for necessary living conditions.
I'm old enough to remember a guy running around the country promising "Hope" and "Change", claiming that we need a popular people-powered revolution to bring about sweeping economic reforms, and advocating for a large grass-roots organization to overturn a stagnant and deteriorating national regime.
That guy was absolutely full of shit and walked away from all the cool rhetoric as soon as he was sworn in (twice, because god forbid some bow-tie nerd question whether you followed the rules). But fuck, it was fun to believe better things were actually possible.
“There were a lot of folks in Cuba at that point who were illiterate. He formed the literacy brigade,” Sanders said. “(Castro) went out and they helped people learn to read and write. You know what, I think teaching people to read and write is a good thing.”
He added: “I have been extremely consistent and critical of all authoritarian regimes all over the world including Cuba, including Nicaragua, including Saudi Arabia, including China, including Russia. I happen to believe in democracy, not authoritarianism.”
...
“You may recall way back in, when was it,1961 they invaded Cuba and the, everybody was totally convinced the Castro was the worst guy in the world. All the Cuban people were going to rise up in rebellion against Fidel Castro,” Sanders said, discussing the logic behind the Kennedy administration’s failed Bay of Pigs coup. “They had forgotten that he educated the kids, gave them health care, totally transformed the society.”
“You know, not to say that Fidel Castro or Cuba are perfect, they are certainly not,” he said. “But just because Ronald Reagan dislikes these people does not mean to say that the people in their own nations feel the same way.”
...
“The revolution (in Cuba) is far deeper and more profound than I had understood it to be” and encompassed more than economic policy. “It is a revolution of values in which people, instead of working for their own personal wealth, work for the common good.”
...
“President Kennedy was elected while I was at the University of Chicago, that was 1960. I remember being physically nauseated by his speech and that doesn’t happen often. He debated Nixon on Cuba. And their hatred for the Cuban Revolution, both of them, was so strong,” Sanders said. “Kennedy was young and appealing and ostensibly liberal, but I think at that point, seeing through Kennedy, and what liberalism was, was probably a significant step for me to understand that conventional politics or liberalism was not what was relevant.”
...
Sanders in the 1980s said Ortega had the right, as the leader of his country, to meet with the Soviets and offered a review of the Nicaraguan government under Ortega that echoed his comments on Castro’s Cuba.
“Is it a totalitarian country? No, it is not a totalitarian country. Are there civil liberties. Yeah, there are civil liberties. Is it a perfectly free country? No, it most certainly is not. Is it freer than of the most of the countries in Central America? Yeah, it is,” Sanders said. “Within the context of the misery and the lack of democracy in Central America, it holds up reasonably well. Is the Nicaraguan government always right? The answer is absolutely not. Have they made mistakes? Sure they have.”
...
“What surprised me about the trip to the Soviet Union was the strong degree of friendship and openness that both Soviet officials and ordinary officials have to us both is Yaroslavl and the other cities,” Sanders said. “Both the officials and the people were extremely generous and warm and I was very surprised by the degree in fact they like Americans and admire Americans.”
He attributed the ostensibly open conversation to his own willingness to speak directly about issues facing his own country, with specific mentions of the expensive housing and the outsized cost of medical care in the US.
“The other observation that I would make is that I was surprised to the degree of self-criticism, which Soviet officials were prepared to make about their own society,” Sanders said of the notoriously closed and violent Soviet government. “Frankly, I thought they would be there to tell us that everything is wonderful and that certainly was not the case. For example, they are absolutely open in acknowledging that they are not a democratic society.”
Literally every four years we do this. Democrats sweep the elections promising huge economic reforms to benefit the poorest and most vulnerable people. The show up in Congress, fart around, complain that nobody gave them a 99 vote supermajority, and then write enormous concessions to the opposition party so they can claim they didn't turn the lights off at the Social Security office.
Under Carter, under Clinton, under Obama, and now under Biden. Same fucking story every time. Amazing that its worked this long and I can't say I'll be surprised to see it work again in 2028. But people just don't have any more fucks to give on this electoralism grift.
Georgia's still got enough die-hard Trumpies who haven't burned out on Republicanism as fast as Bidencrats have burned out on the Democrats, so it'll probably go to the GOP this time around. But we're burning the candle at both ends, here. Popularity is an increasingly scarce resource on either side of the aisle.
I'm genuinely surprised more candidates didn't try to just suck up to Trump and echo his positions from the debate stage.
You had your televangelicals, who simply couldn't bring the juice in the wake of Roe's reversal. You've got the Bush-Era "Please let me do one more genocide!" ghouls who raise a ton of money from the PNAC crowd. And you've got the Libertarian-ish "Laws are for little people" business elite suck-ups.
But Ramaswamy seems like the only candidate going all in on the Trump Cult. This should have been DeSantis's lane for sure, but he pooched it. Nobody else on stage seems to be all-in on the Trump train.