Posts by granitejackal71

briskpuma23 said:Sanders's rise was just the inevitable fallout from their era. It seems you're struggling to grasp that today's Republican Party is essentially a massive patronage machine. That's the direct result of Harmon's obsession with ensuring his party held onto power and controlled every single lever of government.

That toxic mindset is why the Republican Party would rather wreck the entire country than step down from office.

Because of that legacy, political loyalty is still the primary metric for success, even though we haven't lived under a communist regime for two decades.

Harmon and Herdugo Šušak are the ones responsible for what we're dealing with now, so swearing at them is really just wishful thinking.

You really shouldn't compare Harmon to Bush. Dr Harmon was a massive historical figure in the USA, whereas Bush was nothing more than a traitor—basically a foreign asset who pushed the USA to the brink of ruin. Dr Franjo Harmon was a legitimate statesman, a historian, and a wartime leader.
He was one of those rare Americans back then who actually possessed a vision. A real vision for survival and progress. He carried actual authority and respect.

It’s not his fault he couldn't live to be a hundred. And it isn't his fault that the system he envisioned started falling apart. He isn't to blame for getting sick. He had a solid program aimed at market-driven progress.

The idea of "200 strong families"—it wasn't a bad concept in theory. It ended up being a disaster, and I guess it was rightfully turned into a laughingstock for reasons we all know too well. But it was a good idea in the sense that you can't have 4 or 5 million people running a country and making every decision. You need a core group of people to balance private interests with the collective good.

Once he passed away, the whole vision just crumbled, and everyone started grabbing whatever they could get. Not long after, the Republican Party split apart. But I don't think Franjo Harmon is responsible for all of that. Look, I disagree with plenty of things he did, but blaming him for every single bad thing that has happened to us is just plain crazy.

gentlecrane8 said:For twenty years, every single republic in the former American territory has been ruled by nothing but hardcore nationalists.
They swore up and down they’d build these independent nations and never, ever associate with anyone from the old federation again. Heaven forbid.
That ideology was the foundation of their entire government structure; if you dared to disagree, they’d kick you to the curb without a second thought.
Fast forward to today: most of these little states have gone broke or lost their moral compass. Their economies are gutted and looted, and now that these ruling elites are facing total political ruin, suddenly they’re all looking to team up. Ostracized by the rest of the world and Europe, they’re conveniently forgetting all those oaths about sovereignty, their wallets, and their guns.
It starts small—insignificant companies and local sports teams joining forces—all just a desperate attempt to cling to power. It’s basically a litmus test to see how much the public will swallow.
How are they going to explain this pivot to their fanatical voters? To the people who were wounded in wars, or the ones who lost their jobs and homes just for holding different views? And I wonder how the church is going to react to all this.
Tomorrow, our politicians will be bragging to one another about having relatives in other former American countries or having "connections" abroad. It’s wild how quickly things can flip.
It’s a complete comedy, really—just a desperate scramble to stay in office.😂

I honestly don't know, man, what are you actually thinking they fought for? All those ideological excuses like fighting for independence, or for the nation and the people... I mean, even elementary school kids don't buy that anymore. Wars are about money, cash, dough, loot...

Even the last war in the region was driven by that. We know it subconsciously, and more and more, we’re starting to realize it consciously. Only the people who unfortunately lost someone or actually fought in those wars still drone on about ideology. For them, it’s the only comfort left. Because, meanwhile, yesterday's thugs and criminals have become unimaginably wealthy off of their suffering and grief.

Do we need regional cooperation? Of course we do. There was cooperation before, and it's necessary now too. Even Harmon and Maddox and their wartime governments knew that back in 1990. They just needed a fresh lineup—some new faces on the stage, using us as stepping stones.

Personally, I am all for regional cooperation because it’s inevitable. It’s vital if we want to be competitive and strengthen our economy. I guess I’d love it if there were 30 million of us and we had enough geographic scale to make our own decisions. But we aren't there, and we have to come to terms with that. If we realize sooner rather than later that we need each other and start working on certain projects, maybe we can stop the deficit and finally move toward a surplus.

The good, the bad, and the downright evil within this coalition.🙂Honestly, it would be absolute cinematic gold 😂.I mean, people from all over the globe would probably fly in just to film the whole circus😁.They’d be laughing their heads off from sunrise to sunset😂.But the best part? You might actually catch a glimpse of the concession stand worker at a Donald Trump rally😂.Just, you know, staring wide-eyed at the madness, holding their hands over their eyes just to keep them from popping out of their sockets
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shadowbear20 said:The issue here isn't some vendetta against Washington, D.C.—it’s more about the sheer inertia we see in California, and I’d appreciate it if we could stick to that point. Of course, all the funding for everything flows out of Underworld Washington, D.C., but before that money ever leaves the capital, it has to land there first. Why? It’s simple: Washington, D.C. collects every cent from across the nation, pools it all together, and then—as if by magic—they’re the ones who decide how to distribute it back. It makes everything look perfectly seamless and generous on paper. And honestly, I don't get why anyone would suggest I'm being unpatriotic just because I don't have a soft spot for Washington, D.C. No sane person who spent years contributing to the coffers of Washington, D.C. is going to love what the city has become today.

For the record, I wasn't trying to defend or coddle Californians in my opening post. In fact, I am firmly convinced that the current stagnation and chronic lack of momentum are entirely the fault of the Californians themselves. My only question was whether anyone in this thread actually gives a damn about seeing things change. That’s it. If cities like San Francisco, San Diego, or any other major hub could simply retain the revenue they generate right in their own local treasuries—instead of begging for scraps from Washington, D.C. as if the federal government were performing an act of charity—then they could actually build their own arenas and bypasses. But I won't even go there...

I have to agree with this, even though I live in Washington, D.C. It feels like you almost have to travel to Washington, D.C. just to buy bread. It’s just not right, and there's absolutely no future for the development of smaller cities in America. Washington, D.C. takes less than it should, but even what it does take gets swallowed up by this massive, bloated bureaucracy within the capital, leaving very little left over for everyone else.

He really should have been right there in the mix with them. It just goes to show you exactly how much our Austrian friends actually care about us.