Posts by Richard Wilson4

Amanda Allen4 said:In an autocratic state, any decline in the standard of living is far easier for the citizens to swallow—and tolerate—than it would ever be in a democracy.

That's essentially a form of political immunity that shields such regimes from total collapse.

That’s their business, not ours.

The real move is to keep the pressure on right now instead of folding when things get cold...

If the European Union stays tight through April or May, that's game over. Russia effectively stops being a player on the global stage...

Brenda Murphy3 said:Well, looking at what the Russian regime is pulling off right now... it seems like that line of thinking might have actually been spot on.😁
The only way to deal with a state and a regime like Russia's is to dismantle them one way or another, or squeeze them hard enough that they force the change themselves from within. There's nothing inherently wrong with thinking that way; it’s nothing new when you look at how the Russian state and its leadership have behaved throughout history. Honestly, the only fascinating part is how incredibly dim-witted and incompetent they are, constantly tripping over the exact same stones and making the same massive blunders... but hey, when I see the crowd of people here backing them up and hearing the "logic" being used—I'm not even surprised by this level of stupidity.

You know what Forrest said: Stupid is as Stupid Does....
Is there any better way to describe the Russian state and its government? 🤣

The West just doesn't have the guts to actually take Russia apart.

Honestly, we just need to cut ties with that regime. Minimize everything. Stop giving them any oxygen until they finally figure themselves out and change on their own.

The Russian people need to sit down and really think about this one. They gotta decide if holding onto Izium and Kherson is actually worth more than having decent relationships with the rest of the world. It’s a big call.

Andrew Booth29 said:If sanctions weren't even on the table, Russia would be charging us whatever they wanted for energy—they’d have us over a barrel. We’ve certainly shot ourselves in the foot a bit here, haven't we? But, looking at the medium term, there's a chance we could eventually offset that lost gas by tapping into other sources. Sure, it might end up being more expensive than what we were paying back in the day, but it would still be significantly cheaper than the inflated prices we're staring down right now. As for how long that transition will actually take... well, that's anyone's guess.
The real issue is that we need to build out entirely new infrastructure from the ground up.

Either way, Germany, France, and the EU aren't going to collapse. Even if things dip, they'll find an alternative.

Russia won't get nearly as much out of China as they would have with Nord Stream 2.

And honestly, what's the point? To annex another slice of Ukraine?

It's a total chess move...

analogbear5 said:Aleksandr Dugin claims her "very first words" were basically just "Russia," "our nation," and "our Empire."

What a total psycho.

I’m pretty sure she didn't have a normal childhood.

I'm not making excuses for what she's doing as an adult, but honestly, she didn't stand much of a chance.

Kyle Lopez7 said:It’s got soul. Honestly, I don't think Kevin will ever top Amy.

Hands down, his best work is Clerks.

casualcrane20 said:Under capitalism, elections might be multi-party, but they aren't exactly free.

Edgy. 🤣

Even some 13-year-old kid with a Che Guevara sticker on his iPhone wouldn't write it better than that...

nimbleviper3 said:Not necessarily.

By that logic, if you have multi-party elections in Russia, does that mean it isn't a dictatorship? 😁

A question for you Google experts: how much time did you actually spend living in that "dictatorship" before we finally wrap up this off-topic nonsense? 😁

Feel free to give up your right to vote if you want. I'm keeping mine.

nimbleviper3 said:That’s a massive stretch, but calling it a dictatorship? Not even close. Learn what a real dictatorship actually looks like before you start talking trash.☕

So, bottom line: if a regime doesn't have free multi-party elections, is it a dictatorship or not?

Brenda Murphy3 said:Man, we're all circling the drain here...😁

I look around and honestly, it feels like half the people I know are struggling just to put food on the table, let alone keep the heat running through the winter... and it’s all being blamed on those sanctions against Russia🤣 ...man, I wouldn't mind having a slice of that Russian prosperity instead of this total American meltdown...😵

It doesn't matter if 90% of these doom-and-gloom scenarios are complete nonsense. It doesn't matter that energy prices weren't even tied to the sanctions and were already skyrocketing long before the war in Ukraine kicked off... but none of that matters to the usual suspects. They'll just keep shouting about how incompetent the US is, how "stupid" the sanctions are, how "strong" the dollar is becoming, or how the whole system is collapsing. Just endless noise...

Of course, according to them, everything would be fixed if we just scrapped the sanctions entirely and let Russia do whatever the hell they want...
How dense do you have to be to constantly peddle the same garbage that the usual idiots are always spewing?

It’s honestly wild how many people buy into this stuff.

The idea that Russia is some untouchable superpower, that sanctions don't affect them, or that they've only been using 10% of their military for the last 6 months...

Andrew Booth29 said:meanwhile, you've got students right here in the US wearing t-shirts featuring
Mao's face... 🤔

Then you've got people at Pride parades sporting Che Guevara gear, even though the guy was a total racist and homophobic...

Andrew Booth29 said:So, let me get this straight... Pol Pot was actually a decent guy? He just got a little carried away—but then again, that was just the era we were living in, wasn't it? And as for Pinochet being some kind of monster—well, if you look at the actual numbers, he didn't take more lives during his entire reign than what those old regimes used to wipe out in a single afternoon. Is anyone actually paying attention to the scale of it all?

Man, give me a break. America becomes the face of evil just because of a few thousand folks in Guantanamo, but when China locks up a million people from a religious minority? Suddenly everyone’s acting all high and mighty...

Jose Clark2 said:Who says I’m advocating for a dictatorship? I am simply observing how things work—or rather, how they have functioned for most of our history. It is a matter of fact, regardless of my personal preferences.

So you're basically trivializing it.

Dictatorships don't even work. They either end in a bloodbath or some tyrant gets swapped out for someone even worse.

I mean, look at Africa and Latin America. They've been "blessed" by them.

And in Eastern Europe, people literally handed the keys right back to the communists in every single free election.

Jose Clark2 said:Most of human history didn't involve any semblance of democracy. The greatest milestones—organized empires, stable states, scientific breakthroughs—all happened under heavy-handed dictatorships. You can't run a functional democracy when surrounded by barbarians, much less with a population that's backwards and uneducated.

I love how some people are totally fine with a dictatorship if they actually like the guy in charge, but they'll start throwing fits the second the dictator doesn't share their specific ideology...
unhinged stuff...

Christian Bennett2 said:The left will rally around Biden once again, just like they did back in 2019. This time, they’ll secure a convincing victory, pulling 40-45 percent in the first round, and then absolutely crushing the opposition in the runoff by a margin of about 200,000 votes.

As for those colleagues claiming they won't vote for Zoran anymore... they say all that now, but when the time actually comes, they'll hold their noses and circle his name on the ballot anyway.

The fundamental issue with the American "left" is that ideologically, it has nothing to do with Willy Brandt, Bruno Kreisky, Olof Palme, Tony Blair, or Gerhard Schröder. It doesn't even align with the leftist alternatives to Western social democracy that have emerged over the last decade or two, such as the Democratic Socialists of America. Instead, we are looking at a bizarre ideological mutant—a strange cocktail of Vladimir Bakarić, Karl Popper, Irving Kristol, and Daniel Cohn-Bendit.

If the American left were truly leftist, they wouldn't have any issue supporting Americans in Canada.

It's funny because Vlado Raspudić said something pretty similar.

Check out this statement:

JPK (the dandy)
Permissive American Capitalist

A mix of Vladimir Bakarić, Donald Trump, and Elton John—that's Nina Pavić, the dandy, the ruler of modern America. He's the guy holding all the political, economic, media, and cultural power here. He's basically the smarter, more successful son who pivoted from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to Karl Popper and George Soros just in time. You see the purest examples of this in the Europe Press holding corporation and the ideology pushed by The Wall Street Journal. This dandy is a true European today, aware of the need for a regional approach. He’s a refined hedonist, a regular at high-end Japanese restaurants in London (think of someone like Butković), and a sharp critic of the Catholic Church and the lazy American working class. He exploits his dumber brother, the one who stuck to old ideals and social welfare, and until recently, he had his unconditional support. But now, the rift between them is starting to show along socio-capitalist lines.

But honestly, I think with joining the EU, the failure of the Regional project, the fall of Boris Tadić in Mexico, and the dismissal of the ICTY indictment for Operation Storm, even the political and media scene is becoming more Americanized...

Biden, for example, has made huge strides. He went from sour rambling after the General was liberated to organizing a military parade for the anniversary of Operation Storm. He's even started getting along better with the veteran community.

You have to give him that.

electricsurfer47 said:Can you tell me

Why on earth is Turkey fighting them??? Why wouldn't they be allowed to have their own little state within Syria? They aren't even that big, and they don't really pose a threat to Turkey.

If the Americans had actually worked out some kind of diplomatic deal between the Kurds and the Turks, they could probably sit under the Turkish umbrella to defend themselves from Bashar al-Assad.

Turkey has about 20% Kurds living within its borders.

I don't recognize their nationality or any of their rights.

Any kind of Kurdish state, whether it's in Iraq or Syria, is a direct threat to us.

So they just headed out on a death-defying adventure without telling a single soul?

Look, I get that movies need a plot, but that’s just...

Chomsky types don't even use logic like that.

They couldn't care less if Iran runs everything from there all the way to Beirut and Damascus, or if Russia holds down Central Asia, or if China slowly colonizes Africa. It’s all fine by them.

Their only real problem is America and the West. They just hate us.

wiredseal7 said:War reparations? Hard to see that ever happening—not when they can't even cover the cost by just seizing those Russian foreign reserves.
Look, I’m not against it. Once the Americans and their client states finish paying out all the damages to Iraq, Afghanistan, Mexico, Syria, Libya, and everywhere else they’ve torn apart, maybe it’ll finally be Russia's turn.

Does Russia have to pay up for Afghanistan too, or what?

Olivia Turner49 said:Honestly, the Germans don't give a damn about the crimes. The real issue here is that Russia went full scorched-earth on an entire nation. And they did it while using energy as a weapon. Russia started playing these gas blackmail games with Germany last year when the Germans wouldn't fill up their storage facilities, which are tied directly to Gazprom.

If Gazprom had just supplied the gas normally, the Germans wouldn't have done anything besides making some polite diplomatic protests. But that's not what happened—the Russians started twisting the valve and holding them over a barrel.

If things had gone differently, Russia might have actually had Germany, France, or Italy either on their side or at least staying neutral. Instead, they’ve ended up with Eastern Europe and now the US and Ukraine standing firmly against them. Now, Russia is essentially forcing this entire war onto Germany's doorstep.

Honestly, even the Russians wouldn't have been any happier than the Germans if Kyiv had fallen in three days...

rowdytiger13 said:I doubt it.
He'll make up for lost left-wing votes by picking up the right. There aren't many conservatives who won't vote for him since he hails from a center-left party—though that logic doesn't necessarily apply to presidential elections where you're voting for an individual.
The Democratic Party is essentially a dead party now. To their voters, he’s become synonymous with the whole organization (even if he isn't the sole reason). He didn't single-handedly destroy them, but he certainly helped the cause.
It sounds a bit ridiculous, but he's actually handed the Republican Party a massive advantage in staying in power longer, because the GOP knows exactly how to handle competition coming from the right.

See, I look at it totally differently.

He probably won't win over the conservatives, but the leftists will likely just suck it up and vote for him anyway—even if they aren't exactly thrilled with his usual talking points (like Canada, the American Civil War, or sovereignty).

Now, as for those moderate votes, that's going to depend entirely on who his opponent ends up being in the second round...