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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 26, 2022

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The alternative to expensive heating is maintaining a substantial military that occasionally kills an appreciable portion of your workforce. Europeans of the future will count this as an unmitigated win.

Expensive heating and expensive power. The kind of stuff you need to run factories that would help you equip an army when you inevitably come to need one.

In what universe does successfully defeating your rivals and preserving the sovereignty of not even allies harm one's credibility?

Successfully defeating your rivals? First they could start by successfully defeating the Taliban.

Guess what, they celebrate the coincidence of getting out of Afghanistan in time to have the resources to tackle Ukraine.

Are you actually able to look at the Russia Ukraine conflict and conclude that nations should strive to be on the Russian side of the equation?

At least the Russians have the balls to resist American commands. I imagine a number of Eastern-Europeans would understand that.

If you're an Eastern European country watching this go down you'd trade just about anything to be in the good graces of uncle Sam.

Yes just like the Poles strove to be on the good side of Britain and France, how'd that work out for them at the time?

Maybe they should remember that the Soviet conquest of Poland was possible thanks to the American lend-lease?

I bet you can find that "America, world police" song on juke boxes in Poland.

Yep and that should be incredibly shameful.

Here's Germany 40 years under America vs 40 years under Soviet Union.

Here's Germany 40 years under America vs 40 years under Soviet Union.

Great job, russia! Fucked up East Germany so badly that not even muslim immigrants want to live there.

How many muslims live in Russia, again?

Plenty of muslims living in Russians but they are not purposefully importing them afaik.

Russia is arguably better at managing multiculturalism than NATO.

Fucked up East Germany so badly that not even muslim immigrants want to live there.

That's one way of looking at it. Another way to look at it is that an atheistic or muslim Germany would not be very much German at all.

Fair points, but still not a sales pitch. East Germany is economically so rundown that young Germans still flee it 30 years after unification. Economic ruin is not a superior alternative to cultural ruin, and exchanging one for the other is not worth letting Russia have its way.