> The revolution will not be televised. It will be snapchatted live.
It pleases me to see frivolous American social media technology put to some kind of actually-meaningful use. It makes me feel like maybe we’re not just burning big piles of cash for no reason.
Good luck with this venture.
I live in Russia. I can casually buy a belt buckle with the confederate flag at the flea market. how
Use of the Confederate flag on clothing and stuff was pretty much unquestioned until very recently, that’s not a value judgment that’s just a statement of fact. Also says there should bad, you should be able to buy the Buckle with anything on it.
no, i mean
obv it’s not illegal
but how is this a thing that has market value here of all things
Putin’s long-term plan to divide the United States by having the South rise again. He sponsored this recent rally as part of a long-term goal of reviving the Confederate States of America and pitting it, once again, against the virtuous northern Union.
(Of course I say this jokingly. He’s actually funding California separatists.)
Me, every day under this presidency:
me, in Russia, near a nuclear reactor and ballistic missiles:
Nah, it’s gonna be North Korea nuking something on the US West Coast. You guys are safe unless Zoobus lives in LA or San Francisco.
if everyone thinks that, why didn’t they stop sooner? thank you russia for helping the americans reaching average intelligence
With China and Russia distracted in the South China Sea and Europe respectively, we can swoop in and accept Mongolia as the 51st state.
mitigatedchaos reblogged your post: @poipoipoi-2016: So what just happened with Trump?…
Conservatives and others on the right have down-prioritized it because they thought the whole Trump-Russia thing was bullsht.
Which is why the reporting should change their minds, but won’t. It’s difficult to get someone to understand something when their politics depends on them not understanding it.
Probably doesn’t help that Hillary seemed hyped for war in Syria, which could have lead to war with Russia, both of which are pretty terrible.
I have nothing but contempt for this canard. It imagines a fantastical risk of conflict over a small, irrelevant Middle Eastern country, while ignoring the grave risks of nuclear war over treaty allies in Europe, which Trump’s election has substantially heightened.
But even if you did believe that, Clinton’s foreign policy is irrelevant now. Trump’s foreign policy is not.
Well, that is the difficulty with oppositional politics.
I wonder if in multi-party systems, the standard for “better than the other guys” is higher. Probably not.
First question: What does one even do about Russia secretly interfering with our politics? If people are actually involved (and apparently Flynn was) you can impeach or disqualify them. Trump has been president for a few weeks and has managed to screw up royally, so we could kick him out, but earlier on… you’re kinda out of luck unless you want to totally screw up the politics.
Second question: What is actually going on? Is Trump genuinely trying to be friends with Russia and enemies with China (stupid plan in a world that successfully avoids war!) or just Putin wants to weaken the USA with idiot leaders or what?
My gut feeling is that either that Putin blackmailing/threatening/bribing Trump, or that authoritarian leaders with a socially conservative support base flock together. Or both.
Russia + China is not an unreasonable combination. So yes, I think preventing that is part of it. China is about to enter a period of decline, but it’s still more likely to become a global hegemon than Russia.
I think there are several things going on here.
Re: Not making refugees
I’m told Bush campaigned on not getting into as many wars. Obama, of course, campaigned on not getting into as many wars, though his not-wars still created more refugees. Trump campaigned on the Iraq War being a costly disaster, on not getting into a fight with Russia, on going up against ISIS militarily (which could just mean a return to Iraq, which would not really be a new war), and on not needlessly attempting to knock over strong men and replace them with democracy - thus implicitly against getting into as many wars.
So there is demand there among the American public for reducing the number of wars, but somehow the wars happen anyway. If the second part could be rectified, the number of wars could be successfully reduced.
what does America spend on defence, $600 billion a year?
I’ve seen costs for the Iraq war being bandied about in the trillions.
difficult to turn off the tap, I think.
I’ve been infuriated by the shear cost of the Iraq War simply in economic terms since around 2008. Either they’re looters or they’re freakishly incompetent, and I don’t like either. I’m really hoping this whole Trump thing works out. He’s at least smart enough to realize that you can’t just export democracy to other countries like it was done to Japan - or that you have to actually stay there and make it stick, like Japan.
Of course if you actually notice that not all cultures can support democracy and that hey, you’re going to have to do some real proper imperialism to make it stick and overwrite non-trivial chunks of the local culture, that marks you as right-wing these days…
Maybe I am right wing now. I did, after all, say that if a Communist Revolution emerged, I’d have to back the Anti-Communists. (Struggle sessions and famines aren’t really my thing.)
diogenesvonneumann said: Alawites are about 10% of the Syrian population, fighting a war to maintain their dominance over the majority Sunnis is pretty close to imperialism. And Russia supporting Assad in that war to maintain access to their naval base definitely is. On the other hand the other aspiring rulers of Syria are probably even worse.
If a sufficiently nasty war broke out in the Middle East that resulted in forced ethnic relocation similar to what happened in Europe at the end of WWII and the Yugoslav Wars resulting in relatively monolithic ethnostates, would that make the situation more fucked up or less fucked up or just a different variety of fucked up.
(Because as people keep pointing out, Europe has been suspiciously peaceful since right-wing nationalists achieved their dream of neatly reshuffling all the people and borders to line up, barring some over enthusiasm where they mistakenly thought the German border might extend a thousand miles into Russia).
While I genuinely like the idea of allowing different ethnic groups to have their own laws (providing Exit is still an option, etc, etc) to a degree and nation-states are a way to do that, I suspect that the sectarian religious divisions might cause them to constantly bristle at each other.
It might not be enough. But then again, maybe that war would bring about an Islamic Reformation.
Re: Not making refugees
I’m told Bush campaigned on not getting into as many wars. Obama, of course, campaigned on not getting into as many wars, though his not-wars still created more refugees. Trump campaigned on the Iraq War being a costly disaster, on not getting into a fight with Russia, on going up against ISIS militarily (which could just mean a return to Iraq, which would not really be a new war), and on not needlessly attempting to knock over strong men and replace them with democracy - thus implicitly against getting into as many wars.
So there is demand there among the American public for reducing the number of wars, but somehow the wars happen anyway. If the second part could be rectified, the number of wars could be successfully reduced.
