American Politics

[shionoro]

So, the big thing that was happening in russia was apparently putin getting ready to announce sending more troops to ukraine. I am not sure if this is something the head of the central bank would know but it would explain why she wanted to resign. Looks like Putin is sticking to russia's tried and true tactic of sending wave after wave of troops to their deaths until the enemy is defeated. The concerning part to me right now is... russia's threats are not likely to disuade the EU and US from supporting Ukraine at this point. Nothing but an actual nuclear attack has an honest shot at that (as far as I can tell anyways)...

If you want my take: this is an act of desperation and smart people in Russia know that. Putin is not going to use Nukes. There are very convincing reasons against that besides possible Nato involvement.
The use of tactical nukes would mean India and China withdraw any support for Russia and that means Russia is done. If Putin wanted to do that, he would have done it aleady..

I think his aim is to hold donbass+Kherson+Mariupol, annex it formall and then say every attack on it is attack on russian soil and will directly lead to either a nuclear strike or a severe attack on infrastruccture (destroying heating possibilities in winter, destroying dams, so on) to try to make the west stop ukraine from going farther. I think the theat of nuke will be a bluff, but he will use it nonetheless.

But Putin has big trouble at home now. There is a reason you see videos of fleeing russians at the Finish or Georgian border. At the end of the day, Russia cannot survive the sanctions, leave alone if a good chunk of their young workers are fighting and dying.

 

[kkck]

If you want my take: this is an act of desperation and smart people in Russia know that. Putin is not going to use Nukes. There are very convincing reasons against that besides possible Nato involvement.
The use of tactical nukes would mean India and China withdraw any support for Russia and that means Russia is done. If Putin wanted to do that, he would have done it aleady..

I think his aim is to hold donbass+Kherson+Mariupol, annex it formall and then say every attack on it is attack on russian soil and will directly lead to either a nuclear strike or a severe attack on infrastruccture (destroying heating possibilities in winter, destroying dams, so on) to try to make the west stop ukraine from going farther. I think the theat of nuke will be a bluff, but he will use it nonetheless.

But Putin has big trouble at home now. There is a reason you see videos of fleeing russians at the Finish or Georgian border. At the end of the day, Russia cannot survive the sanctions, leave alone if a good chunk of their young workers are fighting and dying.

It's clearly a desperate measure. Even if he sends 300000 troops to fight.... With the central bank head stuff I would argue it remains clear that russian monetary policy is on the brink of nonexistence... So they are sending 300k troops to fight with... soviet era garbage? What would they even eat considering the reports that the russian army had food problems form some time ago iirc? I assume more soviet era garbage? And that while ukraine continues getting support and substantial resources from NATO, EU countries and US. it'd be a good development is putin is looking to cut his loses, grab some territorial gains and end this though to me it doesn't look like ukraine is in a negotiating mood right now. It's also A LOT to ask for a country to simply give up territory.

 

[shionoro]

It's clearly a desperate measure. Even if he sends 300000 troops to fight.... With the central bank head stuff I would argue it remains clear that russian monetary policy is on the brink of nonexistence... So they are sending 300k troops to fight with... soviet era garbage? What would they even eat considering the reports that the russian army had food problems form some time ago iirc? I assume more soviet era garbage? And that while ukraine continues getting support and substantial resources from NATO, EU countries and US. it'd be a good development is putin is looking to cut his loses, grab some territorial gains and end this though to me it doesn't look like ukraine is in a negotiating mood right now. It's also A LOT to ask for a country to simply give up territory.

I think Ukraine would have accepted losing crimea in the beginning of this. But now: why would they? They are going to take everything back on the long run unless Putin can force the west to withdraw support. And while i dont exclude that possibility, it is not probable.

The mobilizationw ill take time, too. These troops will take weeks if not months until they arrive, without any proper training or care.

--- Double Post Merged, Sep 22, 2022, Original Post Date: Sep 21, 2022 ---

_________

There are so many conflicts in the world right now and some I probably even never heard of.

There is Ukraine, but there is also Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, there is Iran, there is Turkey bombing the Kurdish and there is Ethiopia, just to name a few active conflicts in which people are killed and that might escalate further. And we didnt even start with yemen or south america's deadly drug war yet.

I really wish the West would take a stronger stance in all of them, which does not have to mean sanctions or even interventions, but to give spotlight and time to conflicts that are not as geopolitically interesting as Ukraine is.
I wish the world would be more invested into ethopia and yemen than it is and try to deescalate and point out the countries that fuel the conflict.

Right now, Iran is probably an upcoming conflict that we will hear a lot about and it won't be nice things, that I am sadly sure of.

 

[kkck]

I think Ukraine would have accepted losing crimea in the beginning of this. But now: why would they? They are going to take everything back on the long run unless Putin can force the west to withdraw support. And while i dont exclude that possibility, it is not probable.

The mobilizationw ill take time, too. These troops will take weeks if not months until they arrive, without any proper training or care.

--- Double Post Merged, Sep 22, 2022, Original Post Date: Sep 21, 2022 ---

_________

There are so many conflicts in the world right now and some I probably even never heard of.

There is Ukraine, but there is also Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, there is Iran, there is Turkey bombing the Kurdish and there is Ethiopia, just to name a few active conflicts in which people are killed and that might escalate further. And we didnt even start with yemen or south america's deadly drug war yet.

I really wish the West would take a stronger stance in all of them, which does not have to mean sanctions or even interventions, but to give spotlight and time to conflicts that are not as geopolitically interesting as Ukraine is.
I wish the world would be more invested into ethopia and yemen than it is and try to deescalate and point out the countries that fuel the conflict.

Right now, Iran is probably an upcoming conflict that we will hear a lot about and it won't be nice things, that I am sadly sure of.

Welp, the reason for it would be to finally end all of this absurd nonsense but from an ukranian perspective all of this plus losing territory is probably unacceptable. TBH if these areas have majority populations that want to be russian I think it's not that bad a deal. Good riddance and enjoy the novichok cocktails in that case. Though I don't know where they actually stand on this.

Russia apparently bombing the pipeline seems like a substantial scalation against EU in general. And we apparently gotta wait for more putin speeches as late as friday... the only reason I can think of for this attack is putin trying to make it as believable as possible that he would fire a nuke, specially if we see a proportional responde from the EU and the involved european countries...

 

[shionoro]

Welp, the reason for it would be to finally end all of this absurd nonsense but from an ukranian perspective all of this plus losing territory is probably unacceptable. TBH if these areas have majority populations that want to be russian I think it's not that bad a deal. Good riddance and enjoy the novichok cocktails in that case. Though I don't know where they actually stand on this.

Russia apparently bombing the pipeline seems like a substantial scalation against EU in general. And we apparently gotta wait for more putin speeches as late as friday... the only reason I can think of for this attack is putin trying to make it as believable as possible that he would fire a nuke, specially if we see a proportional responde from the EU and the involved european countries...

Yes, the message he wants to send is clear: I might be losing, but I can inflict A LOT of damage on you.
About the territories: There simply are no territores left that want to be Russian.
Even before, it was mostly a "oh well maybe we should be independent" kind of deal. Even in Crimea, there was never a strong movement to join Russia.
There was once a poll that 63% of crimeans want to join russia, that would not even be 66% back then and if you think about how opinions in kherson and other russian dominated city in ukraine changed (they absolutely hate russia now),it cannot be expected that Crimeans want to be part of Russia (or people in Donbass, for that matter).
There were people in Ukraine who had a high opinion of russia even after 2014, but these people are pretty much gone now. At this point, this can only end with Ukraine's territory completely reinstated.

Russia must not be allowed to go out of this with even the slightest gain of land, everything else would really be a mockery. What russia did in crimea set a very dangerous precedent already, showing other countries (like azerbaidschan) that it can work out just fine to annex parts of other countries.

 

[ninjabot]

Feel good tv.

 

[Sanity Check]

The media should clarify on whether it is true.

That russia's forces invaded ukraine.

Despite lacking radio encryption.

That seems like a strategic failure of epic memeworthy proportions.

 

[xi0]

Feel good tv.

This entire exchange is extraordinary

--- Double Post Merged, Sep 28, 2022, Original Post Date: Sep 28, 2022 ---

He's for as secular government but a "christian nation".

Well okay... so then what is the issue with secularism then?

 

[Core D. Roy]

Patriot as we currently understand it is a far-right nationalist dogwhistle. Which is kind hilarious considering its roots... The same people crying over broken windows at a Target will invoke the language/imagery of the kind of people that would throw the first brick.

I recently moved to Minneapolis and to my shock, it wasn't a game of Fallout. Imagine my disappointment.

--- Double Post Merged, Sep 28, 2022, Original Post Date: Sep 28, 2022 ---

The US has always been a fractured country, mainly because the US has always been a multiethnic country.

It's a fractured country because it was put together with about as much grace as a toddler drunkenly playing with legos. I'd say ethnicity is pretty far down the list of things that are the cause of the country being fractured.

--- Double Post Merged, Sep 28, 2022 ---

Nativism/racism/whatever certainly drives a good chunk of the immigration debate, but bear in mind that social research repeatedly shows that greater diversity of ethnicity and nation origin induce weaker cultural ties, social outgoingness, and greater social conflict. In plain English, people dislike diversity, which is a hard thing for political elites, especially liberals, to digest. Typically they insist greater immigration will benefit society in the long run, but this is at odds with the human (and animal) enterprise. The truth is that Democratic elites generally have one-dimensional understandings of science and Enlightenment rationalism.

All that makes sense. If you got your PhD in sociology from Tucker Carlson, sure.

--- Double Post Merged, Sep 28, 2022 ---

Yeah... something one of the streamers I watch regularly (Destiny, I'm sure you've heard of him) mentioned something I've been thinking since 2016. That there are crazies on the left and right. The difference between the parties being that the crazies on the left don't control the party, while the crazies on the right are the vast majority of their party. And because of that there are certain phrases that each side avoids using as to not signal that they're on the "wrong team". Even if it's possible to have these descriptors on both sides of the political spectrum.

And Destiny as always was full of shit in that assessment like he is with most things. The only actual crazies on 'the left' are tankies, and their only presence in the political world is being rightfully dunked on in social media by anybody with more than a few neurons to fire off. The actual crazies on the right are literally fascists and various flavors of white supremacists that have entrenched themselves into the dominating conservative party, as well as a shit ton of vital institutions like law enforcement.

I will never not bristle at somebody even coming close to both-sidesing fascism with everything else that's not-fascism.

 

[ninjabot]

And Destiny as always was full of shit in that assessment like he is with most things. The only actual crazies on 'the left' are tankies, and their only presence in the political world is being rightfully dunked on in social media by anybody with more than a few neurons to fire off. The actual crazies on the right are literally fascists and various flavors of white supremacists that have entrenched themselves into the dominating conservative party, as well as a shit ton of vital institutions like law enforcement.

I will never not bristle at somebody even coming close to both-sidesing fascism with everything else that's not-fascism.

He's not wrong though. The left isn't controlled by it's crazies. That was my point. You even proved it just now by pointing out that crazies do exist on the left (tankies), and none of them have any power. We can look past Destiny being a piece of shit when he's right about something. We're better than that.

Right?

 

[shionoro]

I daresay that "the left" in itself is just a relatively small faction that usually sides with centrists.

Joe Biden is not a leftist, neither is Nancy Pelosi, Bill Clinton, Obama and so on. These are people that to believe in social change and incremental betterment of the nation, but they are all quite elitist and would not want to touch the established social order.
As in, they would want the small workers to make enough money to pay rent and have their children study (and that is good), but they would not want to really tax the rich to reach a higher level of equality between the classes.

Leftist do want to challenge the current social order and some of them go off the deep end or propose policies that are too severe in tone or scope to be feasible. But among the political left left in america, i do not know anyone who I think is an absolute loonie (which does not mean i agree with everything). Some might go too far or have views i do not share, but you just do not see "jewish space laser" energy among the political american left.

Tankies are its own breed, but their talking points are not talking points that are anywhere close to what bernie bros would talk about.

The american left wants to convince the centrist democrats to actually do good things.
The american right already convinced republicans to abandon democracy. The moderate republicans just want to be nicer about it and more presentable.

 

[M3J]

No one but the right claim people like Biden and Pelosi are left, and only because the right want to stoke fear and motivate their voter base to vote against "socialism and communism." They don't care much about the betterment of nation as they care about padding their pockets and making sure companies and the wealthy benefit, otherwise Biden would not be working hard to end remote jobs and bring people back to the office.

EVen yesterday, he defended capitalism and claimed it's not exploitation unless there's no competition, even though capitalism NEEDS exploitation to succeed.

 

[xi0]

They don't care much about the betterment of nation as they care about padding their pockets and making sure companies and the wealthy benefit

I mean, they do care, they're just misguided or completely wrong about how to accomplish that. Or their idea of betterment is flawed in the first place.

 

[M3J]

Hard to believe that when Biden went from promising to cancel student loans to saying it's a bad idea to cancel it to saying he'll cancel some of it .And apparently, they had decades to codify Roe v Wade but never did.

 

[shionoro]

I would not write off the accomplishments of centrist and middle left politicians just because they do not go far enough in many aspects. A lot of the good things in the world were build on incremental change by people who had a largely conservative (in the true sense of the word) mindset and embrace ordo capitalist worldviews.

Biden's presidency accomplished a lot of good things because Biden has certain skillsets (in tandem with Schumer) that enabled him to navigate in his very narrow space between a 50/50 senate, a thin house majority and several unreliable senators on their side.

 

[kkck]

So apparently russia send most of its troops at their western border to ukraine... So much for their "security concerns".

 

[shionoro]

So apparently russia send most of its troops at their western border to ukraine... So much for their "security concerns".

Its hard for me to understand how "security concerns" was ever a valid reason for russia to be afraid of in the eyes of many people.

There were certainly disagreements between western states and russia, but there never was "the west" against Russia. France and Germany were very much interested in maintaining friendly relationships to Russia and even the more hawkish US politicians relented when Russia really pushed it (missiles in poland and czech).
The biggest antagonists of Russia were always located in eastern europe, and these people (polish, baltics, so on) had very good reasons for it. Because russia was repeatedly aggressive in the region.

When russia attacked georgia and annexed parts of it, that would have been the perfect time for a nato response if they actually wanted to encircle russia. But that did not happen. They let Russia annex parts of Georgia and just relaxed. Putin was invited to Germany just some few days later to be heard at an economics forum. It is hard to frame this as "the west was hostile". That has never been the case.

Russia is like some "mean girl" trope that insults everybody, steals and is drunk all the time and will react by making themselves the victim whenever it is criticized.

 

[kkck]

Its hard for me to understand how "security concerns" was ever a valid reason for russia to be afraid of in the eyes of many people.

There were certainly disagreements between western states and russia, but there never was "the west" against Russia. France and Germany were very much interested in maintaining friendly relationships to Russia and even the more hawkish US politicians relented when Russia really pushed it (missiles in poland and czech).
The biggest antagonists of Russia were always located in eastern europe, and these people (polish, baltics, so on) had very good reasons for it. Because russia was repeatedly aggressive in the region.

When russia attacked georgia and annexed parts of it, that would have been the perfect time for a nato response if they actually wanted to encircle russia. But that did not happen. They let Russia annex parts of Georgia and just relaxed. Putin was invited to Germany just some few days later to be heard at an economics forum. It is hard to frame this as "the west was hostile". That has never been the case.

Russia is like some "mean girl" trope that insults everybody, steals and is drunk all the time and will react by making themselves the victim whenever it is criticized.

Yeah, it's all pointless clownery and them pretending its still the 80s or earlier basically. At the most you could argue this was projection.... Since it's very clear that putin's soviet union delusions/wet dreams come with fantasies of lording the russian empire's military might over the world's actual superpowers.

 

[xi0]

The security concerns were valid in the sense that they felt compelled to act against NATO expansionism, but now it feels difficult to accept that in a sincere way. Given the invasion and their policy since then has only pushed other border states in NATO's direction. Nobody at the Kremlin need be clairvoyant to predict that one.

 

[shionoro]

The security concerns were valid in the sense that they felt compelled to act against NATO expansionism, but now it feels difficult to accept that in a sincere way. Given the invasion and their policy since then has only pushed other border states in NATO's direction. Nobody at the Kremlin need be clairvoyant to predict that one.

They really were not. If States around Russia actively want to be in Nato (and they do), then that is none of Russia's concerns. There are missiles in Kaliningrad and Europe has no say about that. Belarus is in CSTO and Europe has no say about it.
Nato even did NOT accept Ukraine back then. America wanted it, Europe didn't. That can hardly be seen as threatening if Nato accepts Russias view and does not take a memberstate that actively wants to be part of it.

For the security argument to be valid in any shape or form, Russia would have to reason how Nato threatens it. Just being close to Russia is not a threat, its not like we would accept Serbia blocking Albania's Nato membership for "security reasons".

The only threat to russia, in russia's mind, was that they cannot attack a nato memberstate. Russia kept meddling in swedish or finish waters, russia uses their trollbots to raise tensions in the west. Nato does not do these things to russia and never has actually threatened russia's borders by troop movements or anything like that. The security argument is and always was a giant hoax.