muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
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User ID: 1018
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
9hr ago
Fundamentally, neither side should trust the other because neither side is actually trustworthy. Stalemates, ceasefires, and uneasy peaces backed up by threats of force is all that is on offer until one or both sides collapse internally.
Not an universal principle. Denmark and Sweden fought a war approximately once per generation circa 900 until 1815. A classic example fundamental lack of trust and historical ethnic enmity driving a permanent conflict. Then, after Napoleonic wars they stopped. Denmark decided of pick a couple of fights against Prussia afterwards, but List of wars between Denmark and Sweden ends in 1814. Both sides had suffered setbacks but neither country collapsed in the sense Austria-Hungary or USSR collapsed. Sweden had lost its meager empire to Russia, and stopped trying to reclaim it. Denmark stopped trying to reclaim Scania.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
2d ago
There is a difference, but I see I did not argue why I felt there is a similarity.
Anarchists / left-wing radicals came up with shared narrative justifying their attacks and selection of targets. However, most of time the attacks did not achieve the goals the narrative purported to they should have achieved. I think they were often motivated by the hate of bourgeois symbols, and embraced a narrative which claimed that killing bourgeois symbols would achieve something and provided validation for what they wanted to do. ETA: But the narrative failed to materialize. Their "systematic" thinking was not reality-based, so was it systematic at all?
I believe car attackers (or school shooters, or other lone wolfs) also have an internal narrative what they are doing makes sense to them, hating the people they kill if for nothing else when planning it and then doing it. The difference is that the "shared" aspect of the "shared narrative" is becoming increasingly lacking, that I acknowledge as the new development.
I was particularly thinking of Edward Oxford, who had no clearly defined political ideology at all. He decided to buy guns, practice shooting and take a shot at Queen Victoria because ... uh, he had become unemployed and felt like inventing a romantic revolutionary terrorist organization consisting solely of himself? How far personality-wise he was from Gavrilo Princip, a school dropout rejected from army whose assassination plot almost failed but set in motion of events that resulted in creation of Yugoslavia ... which he nominally wanted, but I doubt WW1 was the path he was envisioning.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
2d ago
It is not entirely new development. Many acts of 19th and 20th century "propaganda of the deed" were perpetrated by not the most stable individuals and attention-seekers who sought validation by notoriety or hate, rarely motivated by calculated political strategy or a plot. Random anarchists and other terrorists generally did not achieve their goals. After and including Edward Oxford, several people tried to shoot Queen Victoria, and I believe none of them had any coherent plan they wanted to achieve. When someone achieved something according to a nominal plan, it is dubious the consequences were to their expectation.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
4d ago
Neutral? Uncertain. Observing the European reaction, I am uncertain is it the discount copy of Freedom Fries or a foundational stab-in-the-back myth in the making.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
1mo ago
Here is a curious aspect I started thinking about while trying to find out what is Musk's exact non-position in Trump administration and how can DOGE be not a 'true' department.
When the US constitution was written, it was a given that to rule and execute in any significant capacity, the executive branch would need Departments, with Secretaries to head them, in a physical office, with clerks and other assorted personnel to implement the day-to-day act of ruling. This is the context for legal standard that senate should confirm cabinet nominations.
Inventions like typewriter and telex merely made it possible increase the scale of the federal bureaucracy, but a large-scale bureaucracy was still needed.
With today's technology, Trump apparently can hire Elon and five(?) software engineers as "special government employees" in the Executive office who grep and curl the government computerized logs, payments and whatnot to find out what anyone in the federal bureaucracy have been doing, report back to Elon, who then tweets it or whispers directly to Trump what offices to order shut down in the next round of executive orders. Elon needs only limited formal authority to see the some existing government files. Previously establishing a federal snooping service required establishing a large bureau of investigators with legal authority to physically go and investigate. Panopticon indeed.
Compare and contrast ambassadors, who have been reduced from nearly autonomous representatives in distant foreign countries to people who organize social events and are nominally in charge of local staff who keeps regional chapters of CIA handbook up to date.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
1mo ago
More tolerant than before, but still quite puritanical relative to Europe. As I understand it, nudity in Europe is much more divorced from sexuality than in America.
There is some truth to this, but it also sounds like a teenager's excuse how he came to possess a VHS tape of Emmanuelle. It is a variation of "the grass is less prude on the other side of border" effect, and not very good one. I don't think a pretty lady in skimpy outfit is divorced from sexuality anywhere in Europe. There is only a local difference in where the lines in previous battles for standards of public mores have been fought and lost. In general, Paris, London, Berlin and other big city urban cultures have had a different mores than more conservative small town - rural cultures. In some countries the urban mores have gained more ground than in others.
Concerning Dillermand show, I think Danish religious conservatism decidedly lost during springtime of people's and definitely by around WW1, something to do with industrial pork agriculture urbanizing the rural areas and parliament's iron grip of church providing no ground for a Christian revivalist movement. (Church of Denmark has no archibishop, they are ruled in name only by king and directly by parliament, resulting in a church ruled by concerns of secular non-believers.)
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
1mo ago
I went on a walk and saw a child drowning in the river. I was going to jump in and save him, when someone reminded me that I should care about family members more than strangers. So I continued on my way and let him drown.
Great, I will keep this in mind next time I see a child drowning. I anticipate it is a rare occurrence, because skill of swimming is widespread, taught early to children, and most parents in my society don't let children who yet can't swim wander near bodies of water, and most popular swimming places have a lifeguard presence.
I wish someone would come up with an article that would encourage modern academic philosophy and its offshoots to throw "intuition pumps" to rubbish bin. "Saving child drowning in the river" is nearly nothing like what the author actually exhorts the reader to do; all the important pieces of context are abstracted away, so that reader is lead to a particular conclusion, then the author brings up he context again, presuming the conclusion should still apply.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
1mo ago
I have two thoughts.
Thought the first. If the AI content is supposed to be main contribution, the introduction up to and including "Here’s what it had to say" is unnecessary. Or if the first part was the main message you wanted to discuss (dislike of credit score) why bother including the LLM-written part?
Thought the second. Next time anyone tries to Turing test any forum, please please prompt it write succinctly and better. The cited argument is sloppy and rambling. Let's see one paragraph.
Finally, the U.S. credit score system embodies an element of collective responsibility that is reminiscent of communist ideologies. [Comment. 'reminiscent of' is a weak way to phrase a thesis.]
In many cases, an individual’s creditworthiness is affected not just by their actions but by external factors such as the financial stability of co-signers, the decisions of creditors, and even errors made by the credit bureaus themselves. [C: None of the listed factors have anything to do with collectivism. If your choice of co-signer for a loan and suffering the consequences is not use of your individual liberty, then what is not?]
Disputing inaccuracies in credit reports is often a bureaucratic and difficult process, reflecting the inefficiencies of centralized government planning. [C: Role of "government" here not argued for. Private American corporate and profit motive is capable coming up with bureaucratic and difficult processes to address end-user complaints if they find it profitable not handle them. Not handling "inaccuracies" is probably what makes the use of credit scores efficient.]
Additionally, the system’s reliance on predetermined metrics, rather than an individual’s full financial picture, enforces a uniform standard that does not account for personal circumstances. This mirrors the way communist states often treat workers as indistinct units within a planned economy, rather than as unique individuals with different needs and capabilities. [C: (1) You realize "lack of individuality" is kinda the Marxist critique of alienation? There is nothing communist about it. Time and motion studies for assembly line work were invented by the capitalists, in capitalism, for the capitalism. (2) Perhaps the predetermined metrics are mostly sufficient picture of individual's creditworthiness. For some reason banks run by managers interested in your individual needs and capabilities have been competed out by institutions that are not.]
In essence, while the U.S. credit system exists within a capitalist society, its structure and consequences exhibit traits that align with communist principles of control, social engineering, and collective financial assessment.
I don't think the argument was very good. Weakly supported claims and associations disjointedly related to each other. Would not like to subscribe to this newsletter.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
1mo ago
A similar mechanism is already at work in our law: if you violate rights in obtaining evidence, that evidence will be thrown out, as otherwise it incentivizes the police to continue violating rights
This aspect of American legal environment is a prime example of failed incentive structure. It disincentivizes bringing to court evidence gathered obtained by violating citizens' rights, and nothing more. Thus the police may choose to use methods that violate rights and building the court case with parallel construction. Likewise, court cases that hinge on whether some procedural forms were followed in collecting evidence or testimony rather than whether the evidence is true and correct. Incentivizes rules-lawyering rather than finding justice.
I'd rather recommend sticking to system where defined violations are crimes that carry penalties as codified in the law -- or if some violations are deemed necessary for the functioning of the government, the cases for those violations are defined by the law.
Back to presidential pardons: sounds likely that instead of drawing the conclusion you propose, the courts and the government may learn a different lesson. There is zero direct incentives for increased respect for the law, more thorough investigations, or fairer punishments. Whether or not Biden's family-members were guilty of anything, or Jan 6 people received fitting punishment or not, everyone will note that the perhaps-crimes committed in service of the POTUS or favorably influence his re-election chances may be pardoned. In immediate future, the noblesse de robe will adapt to in anticipation how Trump will wield the pardon. Long-term, it incentivizes fights for the presidential throne to be more vicious.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
2mo ago
Isn't it a fallacy of some sorts? Perhaps NVIDIA or Musk's companies would not exist exactly as they are if the immigration laws had been different and enforced differently. However, it is not like we can observe the counterfactual outcomes. Would not there be GPU companies in the US without the single individual Huang? According to Wikipedia article concerning NVIDIA founding, there were 70 graphics computing start-ups in the US in the 1990's. The market environment would have been similar without NVIDIA.
Musk's enterprises appear more singular and his interests idiosyncratic, so imagining alternative paths is more difficult. Some of the alternative paths could have seen less technological development and slightly more enshittified world today. However, it is not certain the alternatives would have been worse. Perhaps, with overall more stringent US immigration there would have been another innovative tech scene (or several) somewhere else and he would have migrated there. Stronger competition between the SV and other hypothetical scenes would perhaps have produced even greater technological innovation and varied, better outcomes for everyone. Or if there was no alternative to SV, they could have collected the points under the alternative immigration system at another life stage. (Or perhaps the people who would have prospered under a different legislation would have been more stellar and exceptional.)
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
2mo ago
Are you saying it's not justified to criticize Orthodox beliefs unless everyone who criticizes those beliefs is correct? Because that's impossible. There is no shared community between Anders Tegnell (who led the Swedish Covid response) and Alex Jones (a nut).
The content (the rigor) of the criticism does matter. Unjustified claims (such linked claims by Rogan) remain unjustified if the orthodoxy (as if such existed) was incorrect.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
2mo ago
(Most specialty coffee is absurd to me for this reason: because a lot of it is made to express the coffee flavor, and that flavor is bad- otherwise you wouldn't have to add sugar and cream and chocolate to it- so why would I want to spend 5 dollars on that when I can just get the cheap drip coffee and season it to the coffee-flavored-warm-milkshake taste that I actually wanted in the first place?)
... interesting point of view. Yet taste matters if you drink your coffee black. It is an acquired taste, but like most things in one's culture, it can be acquired.
(Coffee is easy taste to acquire -- it comes with caffeine which is nice. Same for beer, mutatis mutandis for alcohol. Capsaicin very concretely triggers a burning, painful sensation, yet there are several food cultures built on that.)
The reason I bring is up because one could tie this back to risk-taking, or lack of it. It is not unexpected that some people may look down on adult who doesn't take the culinary risk to acquire taste for common foodstuffs in his culture. Similar principle applies to failing to learn other habits expected of adults in his (to some extent, also hers) culture. The reason for pushback is simple: if enough adults avoid acquiring the expected culture, soon they define the default culture, which is changed and different (poorer, simpler, less complicated from the pushback point of view).
Returning to topic of coffee: It is lamentable that increasing amount of people seem to prefer "milkshakes". I presume coffee-flavored coffeine milkshakes can be produced without any genuine coffee beans. If everyone turns to drinking milkshakes, will there be any interest or capability for producing good coffee?
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
2mo ago
Grown adults who don't know how to cook proper meals and eat fast/convenience food for every meal should feel ashamed
I doubt that, say, King Louis XIV knew how to cook for himself. He had people to do it for him. Should he have been ashamed of himself?
("Hard work", "grit", certain senses of "self-reliance" - these are all specifically middle class virtues. They are not universal across all times and places and all cultural strata. The nobility have their virtues and obligations as well, but they are distinct in important ways.)
Cooking is too time and culture specific, I think. The quintessential Victorian parody of middle class office worker life, The Diary of a Nobody, describes everyday life and troubles of one Mr Charles Pooter, a London city clerk, who does not know how to cook, either. He has a wife and they employ a maid and a charwoman.
Agreed that hard work and grit are virtues for commoners. Self-reliance of a family unit is more specifically a rural virtue. Urbanites are reliant on each other and of the city: they make a virtue out of sophisticated understanding of city life. Personal self-reliance is an individualist virtue.
domestic courts
And herein lies the problem. Courts in Western EU countries are more loyal to Brussels-aligned worldview than anything else (ETA; anything else includes, the intent and letter of laws and treaties). During nearly all of the post-Lisbon treaty years, until 2020, everyone understood that the EU treaties did not permit the EU bonds. In one night, powers that be noticed the treaties are only worth the paper they written on, as nobody really understands what is written on them [1]. Consequently, they could re-interpret them as they pleased, and the EU "recovery" package (NextGenerationEU) was born. Some legal crickets remain, and are loudly ignored ("it does not appear completely implausible that the measure could be based on Art. 311(2) TFEU", the great legal standard of constitutional thought in Germany as it relates to the EU law.)
Similar re-interpretations of treaties have not proven possible (and I predict, will not prove possible) against mass migration. By iron law of bureaucracy, the EU bureaucracy exists only to make the EU bureaucracy more powerful, and by extension, serve interest of the social class of people who fill its ranks. For this class, mass migration is not a concern. Their vision of EU is a multicultural, multiethnicity realm. Import of new peoples is not at odds with the vision, and along the way found a way to make Bertold Brecht poem true -- with mass migration, the government may have found a way to dissolve the people and elect another.
[1] Unlike the US constitution, which generally defines the institutions and their powers, the EU treaties are written in vague legalese fluff. Compare:
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow Money on the credit of the United States; [...]
Art 311 of TFEU
The Union shall provide itself with the means necessary to attain its objectives and carry through its policies. Without prejudice to other revenue, the budget shall be financed wholly from own resources. The Council, acting in accordance with a special legislative procedure, shall unanimously and after consulting the European Parliament adopt a decision laying down the provisions relating to the system of own resources of the Union. In this context it may establish new categories of own resources or abolish an existing category. That decision shall not enter into force until it is approved by the Member States in accordance with their respective constitutional requirements.
The US constitution grants the Congress power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to borrow money on the credit, and so forth. TFEU grants a "system of own resources of the Union" "without prejudice to other revenue" and way to establish a new categories of them, which apparently also included ability to borrow money on the credit of the European Union.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
3mo ago
I presume vast majority of the "cyber attacks" are the kind where the attacker doesn't care is the target the election official's laptop or their dishwasher (both can join the botnet for reasons not related to election at all).
Theoretically, hacking an digitized election system enables interference in the election outcome despite the paper ballots. If precincts use computerized system to track who is in the rolls, you can DDoS the precincts with unfavorable demographics; as queues mount, some of the voters will be turned off. If you want to stuff ballot boxes without too many accomplices among election officials, hack the system to see who did not vote, plant a false vote and flip the variable next to non-voter name claiming they voted. After the election, if done successfully, the numbers will match and the fraud will be difficult to reveal.
The problem is, there has not been news about computer problems during Romanian elections. The version that circulated around reddit was about governing socialist party making a miscalculation: they instructed the mid-level party bosses to campaign for Georgescu in order to split the votes of the opposition, hoping to face an easy opponent in the run-off. They didn't realize Georgescu was popular for unrelated reasons, and overshot. All of this is naturally internet rumors.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
3mo ago
Yeah, it sounds historically imprecise, both ways. There was artistic programs with manifestos before the left-ward turn of the cultural elites. The Renaissance was one broad program; one could argue that every western "art movement" ever since (including the post-WW1 self-declared auteurs defying the bourgeois society in trendy cafes) has tried to be the next Renaissance.
One more individual scale - architects were artists, before, too. Palladio had an individual vision and program in the 16th century. He was famous, he wrote treatises. St Peter's Basilica was a group effort that took a century to complete. Some its chief architects are known for their other artsy contributions, like Raphael and Michelangelo.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
3mo ago
I know little about Confucianism, but isn't there an idea that duties go both ways and generation to generation? Joe should cover for Hunter, but also should have acted as proper father in other respects by uprising an upright son; Hunter should cover for Joe and handle many other filial duties virtuously (acting like a proper father to his kids, too). The Biden family and Hunter specifically shows very little Confucian virtue. I have not much respect for Confucius, if he praises a single act that coincidentally aligns with Confucian virtue that otherwise continues a cycle of unvirtuous behavior.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
3mo ago
The hypothetical was an extreme to illustrate the point. Yes, in practice, enforcement isn't perfect, so a week is too short and you want escalating sentences. The point that effective policing is higher leverage than increasing sentences remains.
I am not convinced it is relevant to the point or real life. The police that appears within a minute to 100% of crime scenes is practically impossible yet causes major consequences of the stated hypothetical. You can make many points with similarly strong but unrealistic assumptions.
If I assume an existence of a 100% effective at 1-month drug and crime rehabilitation program (criminal turned into citizen who will never commit a crime and is no longer drug addict), it is obvious that we should use such program to rehabilitate all criminals. I believe lot of progressive politics are result of median democrat who believes in such program, that with "enough" social services, one could disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline, problem solved. To some extent modern prisons are outgrowth of similar Victorian era ideas. The problem is that such programs don't exist.
Coincidentally, I agree that the legal processing time from arrest to punishment should be reduced. It is more effective to discuss it more realistic assumptions .
Isn't most crime committed by young people? There's a steady supply of fresh young people, and arresting them 5 years after they're young isn't even going to stop them from having kids to form the next (on average) generation of criminals. Like the US, today, does up arresting most violent criminals for long periods of time eventually, and it hasn't fixed the crime problem.
Your hypothetical did not stipulate age limits, by the way. Most criminals start young, too, as teenagers, so a shoplifting 14-year old would be in prison before they turn 20. And even in the US, most prisoners go free eventually. Most crime can't committed by re-offenders unless they have an opportunity to re-offend. If you get to "tag" every criminal today and put them all permanently away with 5 year lag, all habitual criminals are gone after the first wait period, and there will be left only those criminals who started committing crime during those 5 years. Further 5 years down, they are also permanently removed from society. Within the rules of thought experiment, I think this should work to reliably but slowly reduce the number of criminals around.
I agree that realistically it wouldn't be like this, but again, the experiment as specified is not realistic.
This is, IMO, just true. Consider a hypothetical: Prison sentences are capped at a week, max. But, within a minute of attempting to shoplift or steal a car, the police arrest you, take back the stuff you stole, and send you to jail. What do you think would happen to crime? Conversely, consider another hypothetical: Life sentences for stealing at all, but you'll be arrested and put to jail sometime around five years after you steal. What do you think happens to crime, given how bad at planning for the future low IQ criminals are? I think crime in the first scenario would be much lower than today, and crime in the second scenario much higher.
First hypothetical: Many, many police officer hours will be needed to achieve it. Perhaps, within a generation, people will learn not to steal.
Let me present a small variation to your first hypothetical. The police will appear within a minute of attempted theft in 90% of all attempts, and everything happens as you write, the thief gets a week in jail. In 10% of cases, nothing happens to the thief. It is still super unrealistic clearance rate in any country not governed by totalitarian surveillance dystopia of magical fairies, but more realistic, as there will no be human society where the police are 100% effective.
In this altered hypothetical, I expect that thievery will be extremely common. What is one week in prison for almost unlimited amount of free stuff, and you get to network with other prisoners? I expect the police would be so demoralized that they soon stop enforcing the rules. They may join the thieves, even, and the whole 90% rate will collapse.
In your converse hypothetical, assuming it happens as stated, with 100% effective police but 5 year lag period for enforcing a life sentence to thieves -- my conclusion is totally opposite. I presume that stealing will dramatically drop in after the 5 years lag, and possibly wither to nothingness in following decades. If you read statistics in the ACX post, it is quite clear that most crime is done by repeat offenders, who are incapacitated in prison. Some or many first-time offenders become repeat offenders as they enter the criminal way of life in prison, but in your hypothetical they have life sentences without parole and that is not a problem.
Again, realistically, it would be terribly expensive and assumes magically competent cops. Thieves would also become more violent if there is only a little difference between the punishment for a theft and murdering witnesses to the theft.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
3mo ago
The entire reason job tracks(with a few exceptions like teaching and law) go through university is so that they can have gen ed requirements attached
"Gen ed requirement" is distinctly a US feature, found mostly in US universities and universities influenced by the US model. In the UK and continental Europe, you get to pick a specialization and perhaps may pick an elective or minor, but no always.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
3mo ago
A peace activist might say that nobody wins in any war, as the price measured in material cost and human lives is often enormous compared to any gains.
While Russia is not winning by its original stated victory conditions, Ukraine is not winning either by its own stated conditions (no territorial concessions), which look more unlikely for Ukraine to achieve by each day. Slow Russian progress implies that currently Russia is *losing less'.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
3mo ago
And both of you can be honest with your feelings rather than bottling them up.
Never believed this nugget of folk psychology. If emotions were truly something that are better dealt with outbursts of profanity rather than "bottled up", it would imply people most eager to use profanity and insults would be the most emotionally balanced. After all, if the folk theory is right, they should have nothing bottled up because they regularly let it all out? In my experience, it is rather the other way around. It is the constantly decently mannered, outwardly respectful people who are most likely to show good quality of character, are more likely to do genuinely nice things and avoid gossip, rude comments and dominance plays. More constant the decent behavior, more honest the character. More profanity-prone person, less likely you want to stay around them.
It is an observation that plays nicely with CBT that I've been exposed to: emotions are more like habits or a muscle than pressure cylinders you can't control: the purpose of the therapy is to build habit of not entering the destructive or unproductive mental states. Not far-fetched that embracing a behavior playfully makes it easier to habitually access associated mental space in other context.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
4mo ago
Do you prefer to deal with the man who is upfront about what he wants, or with the one who obliquely implies it, forcing you to guess what the price may be or if you are ever going to get what you ask for in the first place?
I don't think this a useful way to think about the situation. It won't come down to choosing between dealing with two different men, but one man in either of hypotheticals. Keep track of the rest of the society where these hypothetical men can operate, too. If you get a corrupt official who keeps up the pretense that s/he won't take bribes, s/he wants to avoid getting caught. This means they may still process your paperwork, only slower. The official who is openly corrupt will expect a bribe for anything favorable to happen. More open the expectations, more sure there is nothing you can do about it. It would suck when dealing with a low-level clerk. You won't deal directly with POTUS, but openly corrupt POTUS won't likely cause less corruption in the government.
The only good thing about a publicly known corrupt guy is not the public knowledge, it is that public knowledge can be acted on. There is nothing good about a known corrupt authority when everyone knows them to be corrupt and everyone also knows that everyone knows they won't be successfully prosecuted and stopped.
If your argument for voting for Trump comes down to arguing he is publicly corrupt, where does this leave you?
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
4mo ago
Perhaps if you think that brand of corruption is a good thing?
What good will come from public servant being blatantly corrupt? When everyone knows that corruption is against the public mores and generally not done --- some people will choose to do evil anyway, covertly, but the effort not to get caught in public is a tangible cost. Some people on the margin will be uncertain of the cost and choose the public mores. When everyone knows it is permissible and can be done out in the open, within a generation it is becomes the definition of public mores. The rare few who don't do it are those who are weird enough to have their own moral code for no visible benefit. Others will call it prudishness, or soon call them opponents to public mores.
Happens to be one of conservative arguments against licentiousness that I find persuasive.
Am I misremembering: I distinctly recall the issue that caused Ukraine to slip away from Russian sphere was not Ukraine's hypothetical NATO membership but concerned a trade deal with EU, in 2013. Politicians started discussing Ukraine joining NATO only after the shooting in Donbas had started. As a result, decade after the Euromaidan, Russia has lost its gas trade with Germany, more of its European neighbors have joined NATO, and Ukraine will likely not return to its sphere willingly.
Losing Ukraine was an obvious own goal for Putin. Had he accepted the Ukrainian trade deal with EU that Yanukovich had negotiated could plausibly have supported Russian policy of wielding political power in German politics by economic connections and gas.
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