Tired of Putin’s failure to lift himself up by dragging the rest of the world down, for sure. Why do you love him so much? I bet your favorite character in Lord of the Rings was Wormtongue.
I don’t love Putin, but reality has nothing to do with what you love or hate. I understand how the world financial system works, I understand how Russian economy works, and that’s what’s going to decide how the events unfold. Meanwhile, you built your whole identity around hating Russia and you’ve invented a reality for yourself where Russia is some incompetent petrostate that’s going to collapse.
I don’t hate Russia at all. I admire the Russian people. It’s Putin that’s created a mafia state, rewarding corruption that favors him, poisoning his rivals, and perverted the truth. Imagine what Russia could be with Kasparov at the helm. It’s like what could the CCCP have been able to accomplish without Stalin purging anyone with a mind of their own?
Imagine thinking Kasparov, who is literally an insane person, should be at the helm of anything. Putin is terrible, but he is a direct result of the western “help” Russia received after USSR collapsed. When US advisors came in and gave us Yeltsin under whom the country was robbed and people were literally starving. The reason Putin is in power is because he managed to reign that in and create some stability. As shitty as Putin is, he’s no worse than the kleptocrats running the west. Of course, lacking any capacity of self reflection you can’t see that.
Likewise, Stalin was a product of USSR being under constant aggression from the west from the day it was formed. In times of hardship you inevitably get people like Putin and Stalin at the helm.
Westerners had a great opportunity to integrate Russia into the west back in the 90s, instead they chose to try and fuck Russia over. Now Europe has a hostile nuclear power on its border that’s becoming increasingly more belligerent.
Finally, a crack of truth! This might be the first thing we’ve ever agreed on. Of course, it was cynical realpolitik from the west that let the Russia wallow into mafia state it is now. America has it’s own oligarchy to deal with. And the world has much larger problems to grapple with beyond that. It annoys me that Putin is acting up now, distracting us from addressing the issues that will define this century.
Putin wouldn’t be acting up now or even be in power if the west didn’t continue to create pressures that selected for somebody like Putin to take charge. And there were plenty of opportunities to deescalate the situation in Ukraine. NATO chose not to engage with Russia in good faith, and this is the result.
Continuing to treat Russia with belligerence will only continue making the situation worse. People in the west are convinced that Russian economy is going to collapse any day now, but just for the sake of the argument consider if that doesn’t happen. Unless one side decides to act like adults and try to resolve this situation without adding more fuel to the fire then we’re going to have a third world war, and humanity will possibly go extinct. These are the stakes.
You misunderstand. It’s not belligerence. It’s contempt. Putin imagines a much stronger hand than he actually has. Visions of the glorious CCCP still dance in his head. But that’s long gone. If WW3 spills out of this, it’s because the real superpowers of the world, not Russia, get dragged into this.
Call it what you like, the west chose to have an adversarial relationship with USSR and later with Russia. The contempt stems from the west thinking that it has some sort of superiority, and Russians don’t feel that they’re inferior. Meanwhile, Russia is literally one of the biggest military superpowers in the world. The only country with a bigger military is the US and it’s not able to deploy its whole military in European theatre the way Russia can. Of course, WW3 could easily lead to a nuclear exchange between Russia and the US at which point it’s the end of humanity. People such as yourself continue to drive the world towards this scenario.
No, no, no! Adversarial implies a match among equals. Look at France. They actually stood up to the US. And got shut out of middle east oil every time. So they took their lumps and went nuclear. Rather than cry about American hegemony, they formed their own economic block, for reals. Do they go around trying to destabilize the world with deceit in order to make themselves look bigger? No! They did the hard work and paid their dues to remain free and proud. Russia could do that, if they abandon their strategy of trying to win by cheating. You cannot deepfake success.
Tired of Putin’s failure to lift himself up by dragging the rest of the world down, for sure. Why do you love him so much? I bet your favorite character in Lord of the Rings was Wormtongue.
I don’t love Putin, but reality has nothing to do with what you love or hate. I understand how the world financial system works, I understand how Russian economy works, and that’s what’s going to decide how the events unfold. Meanwhile, you built your whole identity around hating Russia and you’ve invented a reality for yourself where Russia is some incompetent petrostate that’s going to collapse.
I don’t hate Russia at all. I admire the Russian people. It’s Putin that’s created a mafia state, rewarding corruption that favors him, poisoning his rivals, and perverted the truth. Imagine what Russia could be with Kasparov at the helm. It’s like what could the CCCP have been able to accomplish without Stalin purging anyone with a mind of their own?
Imagine thinking Kasparov, who is literally an insane person, should be at the helm of anything. Putin is terrible, but he is a direct result of the western “help” Russia received after USSR collapsed. When US advisors came in and gave us Yeltsin under whom the country was robbed and people were literally starving. The reason Putin is in power is because he managed to reign that in and create some stability. As shitty as Putin is, he’s no worse than the kleptocrats running the west. Of course, lacking any capacity of self reflection you can’t see that.
Likewise, Stalin was a product of USSR being under constant aggression from the west from the day it was formed. In times of hardship you inevitably get people like Putin and Stalin at the helm.
Westerners had a great opportunity to integrate Russia into the west back in the 90s, instead they chose to try and fuck Russia over. Now Europe has a hostile nuclear power on its border that’s becoming increasingly more belligerent.
Finally, a crack of truth! This might be the first thing we’ve ever agreed on. Of course, it was cynical realpolitik from the west that let the Russia wallow into mafia state it is now. America has it’s own oligarchy to deal with. And the world has much larger problems to grapple with beyond that. It annoys me that Putin is acting up now, distracting us from addressing the issues that will define this century.
Putin wouldn’t be acting up now or even be in power if the west didn’t continue to create pressures that selected for somebody like Putin to take charge. And there were plenty of opportunities to deescalate the situation in Ukraine. NATO chose not to engage with Russia in good faith, and this is the result.
Continuing to treat Russia with belligerence will only continue making the situation worse. People in the west are convinced that Russian economy is going to collapse any day now, but just for the sake of the argument consider if that doesn’t happen. Unless one side decides to act like adults and try to resolve this situation without adding more fuel to the fire then we’re going to have a third world war, and humanity will possibly go extinct. These are the stakes.
You misunderstand. It’s not belligerence. It’s contempt. Putin imagines a much stronger hand than he actually has. Visions of the glorious CCCP still dance in his head. But that’s long gone. If WW3 spills out of this, it’s because the real superpowers of the world, not Russia, get dragged into this.
Call it what you like, the west chose to have an adversarial relationship with USSR and later with Russia. The contempt stems from the west thinking that it has some sort of superiority, and Russians don’t feel that they’re inferior. Meanwhile, Russia is literally one of the biggest military superpowers in the world. The only country with a bigger military is the US and it’s not able to deploy its whole military in European theatre the way Russia can. Of course, WW3 could easily lead to a nuclear exchange between Russia and the US at which point it’s the end of humanity. People such as yourself continue to drive the world towards this scenario.
No, no, no! Adversarial implies a match among equals. Look at France. They actually stood up to the US. And got shut out of middle east oil every time. So they took their lumps and went nuclear. Rather than cry about American hegemony, they formed their own economic block, for reals. Do they go around trying to destabilize the world with deceit in order to make themselves look bigger? No! They did the hard work and paid their dues to remain free and proud. Russia could do that, if they abandon their strategy of trying to win by cheating. You cannot deepfake success.