Botond173
1d ago
As in 1914, they do what their friends do, they do what seems fun and adventurous, they do what society steers them toward lest they be a pussy.
Those boys weren't conscripted though, they were convinced to volunteer. Isn't that a crucial difference?
Botond173
1d ago
I had a vague notion that Norway was traditionally on rather cordial relations with the Soviets back then, so I assumed the same was the case in Sweden as well. It seems that it wasn't.
Botond173
1d ago
That's rather unexpected information, thanks.
Just no nitpick: was all that military aid delivered within the span of the Winter War, or during the Continuation War as well?
Botond173
1d ago
I think the glaringly obvious problem with this parallel is that Finland was already a neutral nation before the war started so the "forced neutrality" part wasn't that much of a thorn in their side; the government didn't display any inclination to join any military alliance and was not in any way hostile to the USSR, and was not helped during the war by any foreign country in any way. And it's not like any Ukrainian government is prone to accept Finnish-style neutrality either.
Botond173
2d ago
It seems that sometime, somewhere society arrived at the unstated consensus that high schoolers and college students who perform low-wage jobs part-time or on a seasonal basis are the sort of people who grow up to do the same sort of jobs full-time.
Botond173
2d ago
I suppose the car issue is a bit more complicated. I’m not so sure that cars are that much more expensive on average since back in the days, but either way the much more important aspect is that a combination of important social factors are disincentivizing teenage car use: car insurance rates becoming rather high for young men, the erosion of third places in social life, a general decline in community activity and the decline of malls in particular etc.
Botond173
2d ago
Hasn't Angela Nagle already had her 15 minutes of fame due to her book after which she was ostracized by her tribe for appearing on Tucker's TV show? This was many years ago.
Botond173
2d ago
As far as I know, the first press reports appeared days after the town was retaken. I think it's entirely possible that the Ukrainian units shot dozens of suspected or real collaborators as soon as they entered, killings which they very obviously blamed all on the Russians, and the Western press was happy to believe them. I also think it's rather likely that most of the local civilians that died did so as collateral damage during combat, mostly shelling. None of that means that the Russians didn't commit local atrocities.
Botond173
2d ago
I guess they weren't peeved about it because the very idea that the GOP should run a respectable, sensitive, decent etc. candidate was already such a laughingstock by that point as a consequence of the Romney campaign that it didn't even occur on anyone's radar.
Botond173
2d ago
I meant the "uncalled for" quip to describe that that there was a candidate who very obviously wasn't a racist, sexist, toxic scoundrel but was still denounced as such.
Botond173
3d ago
I wonder if Zelensky actually believes that is casual attire is basically his version of the simple yet recognizable Mao suit.
Botond173
3d ago
Since the complaints about Trump are growing ever more shrill in Western Europe as well and there’s an increasing level of liberal doomposting about him online, I think it bears asking the question how exactly average Blue Tribe normies believe Trump’s political ascendancy could have been averted, assuming it wasn’t some inevitable turn of events. I guess most of them agree that Hillary should’ve won in 2016 but was undermined by manufactured scandals and whatnot, but I’d put forth the argument that the US culture war was already getting so heated by that point that liberals weren’t going to secure long-term political gains through such a victory. After all, Congress was still going to be majority(?) Republican, and it was always going to be possible for Trump to win the candidacy in 2020.
If we observe what dissident right-wingers describe as the Gramscian long march through the institutions, it’s fair to conclude that the way for liberalism to win is through incremental but irreversible gains, completed while real and potential enemies remain complacent and clueless, distracted all the time by issues that are ultimately irrelevant. Thus the interest of liberals normally isn’t to escalate the culture war, no matter how good it makes them feel about themselves, but to deescalate it, and win small victories without generating too much public hostility and alienation. There’s a time for humiliating your enemies if that’s what you want, but only when they’re fatally weakened and on the ground.
Concluding from this I’d argue that the time to avert the current mess which horrifies the average liberal was in 2012, either through a) not running an uncalled for and unbecoming smear campaign against Romney, which I guess would have entirely been possible had Obama’s reelection chances not seemed slim, and which wouldn’t have ended up paving the way for someone like Trump b) Romney or someone similar winning the election through not actually being a timid cuck but not being as polarizing as Trump, and ending up governing for one term.
What do you think?
Botond173
3d ago
Do you still stand by this comment of yours from a year ago?
Given how hard the US right is now pulling for "1. feed Ukraine to Putin 2. ???? 3. PROFIT!" - it's hard to blame Zelensky for betting on the other side. He has people's lives at stake. If sucking up to whatever Western weirdo is what helps to get weapons to save a thousand of Ukrainian lives - worth it thousand times over. I mean, the US red tribe can't be both "fuck all those guys over the border" and then be wondering "why those guys over the border suck up to Democrats?!" Because that's their only option, if the right says upfront they want nothing to do with it.
How was this all ever going to be anything else than an utter disaster? How is him "sucking up to whatever Western weirdo" even different in any way from this big public political fuckup, considering that both obviously stem from the exact same attitude? Even if this fuckup somehow never happened, wasn’t it a bit unwise in his position to bank on the Democrats winning both the presidency and the senate in 2024?
Botond173
3d ago
Also, all of this affected every grain producing region of the USSR, not just Soviet Ukraine, with not the Ukrainians but the Kazakhs suffering the highest per capita losses (technically within the borders of Soviet Russia at that time, as Kazakhstan wasn't a Soviet republic yet).
Botond173
3d ago
Someone, somewhere convinced the Ukrainians with outside help that the Holodomor was an intentional Russian genocidal policy. It's 100% relevant to your argument.
Botond173
3d ago
You do know that the Holodomor wasn't something the Russians did to the Ukrainians in particular, don't you?
Botond173
3d ago
It's more likely than the notion that all local civilian death were caused by the Russians. Also, many of the dead provably had white armbands, which at the time was already pretty much established to be the marker of local collaborators.
Botond173
4d ago
The Hungarian leftist opposition, for one thing, agrees with you completely. On the other hand, they also parrot with absolute certainty the talking points that
-
Hungary should never have entered WW2 in the first place as she had no good reason to get involved in a war between great powers who never cared about her, and should have surrendered for her own good at the first chance
-
following a foreign policy after WW1 aimed at regaining the two thirds of her territory which she was forced by the Entente Powers to surrender was a grave mistake
For this reason, this argument rings utterly hollow to me.
?
More options
Context Copy link