When I read these enjoyable posts, I agree, but then the thought creeps in that the human experience is not all that bliss. Thoughts about the Russian soldiers raping Ukrainians and putting the grenade booby traps into the children toys (replace with other war experiences of your choice), or about parts of our society idolizing insecure men being cruel and inevitable murder of innocent bystanders that happens then.
Of course the author had a great experience, he's a weird white American somewhere unexpected, the embodiment of a "traveler" archetype. Would that Swedish person give their car keys to a random Roma on their doorstep? Yeah no.
I don't know where I'm going with this rant. "Check your privilege" screeds are overused. Being kind, on the other hand, isn't.
Yeah, it's a good article, but the dissonance between this today and the death of Renee Good is so hard to reconcile. Certainly no miracle happened for her that day.
"surprised Pikachu face" lmao, just absurdly arrogantly wrong. Molotov-Ribbentrop was Stalin's last resort and (successful) bid for time and breathing room after trying and failing numerous diplomatic efforts to unite the Allies against Hitler. Many of those Allies were explicit, at the time, about their desire to use Nazi Germany to inflict a mortal blow on the godless communists in Moscow.
Em. After Molotov-Ribbentrop, the Soviet Union tried to formally join the Axis as the fourth Axis power.
It's hard to argue that was to buy time, especially given they had spent more effort conquering their neighbors and helping the Nazis than building defenses against the them. They just wanted a larger chunk of Europe and Western Asia.
Their attempt failed because Stalin got greedy with what chunk of Europe he wanted and their poor performance against Finland convinced the Nazis to double cross them and invade.
Hitler offered the Soviets to join the Axis in 1940, predicated on a bunch of conditions that they refused to accept. Where in the world did you come up with this completely false reinterpretation of that as "the Soviets tried to join the Axis"?
To describe the Soviet-Nazi discussions to join the Axis as the Soviets refusing because of Nazi demands is certainly an odd view of history especially given how Stalin's proposal, one he personally drafted, was received.
Perhaps this was one of the self-serving Soviet narratives, like the nonsense of having to side with the Nazis and invalid Poland because the Allies refused them - as opposed to actively double dealing and choosing the Axis because they offered the best deal.
Regarding the counterproposal, Hitler remarked to his top military chiefs that Stalin "demands more and more", "he's a cold-blooded blackmailer" and "a German victory has become unbearable for Russia" so that "she must be brought to her knees as soon as possible."[12] Hitler had already decided to invade the Soviet Union in July 1940,[13] but this apparently accelerated the process.
It all goes back to what Zhukov said, "we rescued Europe from fascism, and they will never forgive us for it."
And of course the Allies' own self-serving behavior and cutting deals with Hitler, or leaving the internal dissident generals within the Wehrmacht to twist in the wind, is always to be completely ignored, the fruits of four decades of history textbooks published by Ghislaine Maxwell's capitalist spook father.
> we rescued Europe from fascism, and they will never forgive us for it
Yeah, they "rescued" it alright. Like they rescued, err stolen, Moldova from Romania and they kept it for more than 40 years. Heck, they're still messing with it. Then at the end of the war they robbed and raped civilians from the countries they "liberated".
They have flown the flag of USSR in several occasions during their offensive war in Ukraine. It’s not the troops trying to be funny, either: their MoD has been sharing such videos.
Germany would have quite literally run out of oil (and other materials and even grain) a few months after conquering Poland. Most was imported was imported from the Americas before the war.
The French and British could have pretty much waited Germany out had Stalin decided not to bankroll the Nazis invasions of Norway and France. The allies were quite seriously considering bombing Soviet oil fields in Azerbaijan before France fell.
Presumably Stalin was hoping to prop-up Germany just long enough for them to get stuck in a protracted war in France so that he could swop in and "liberate" Europe. Unfortunately for millions it turned out to be a slight miscalculation...
Nah, Stalin didn’t anticipate the attack. And also deposing capitalist regimes, in what would become Allies, was famously the long-standing goal of the USSR
Those capitalist regimes were messing with the USSR continually from the moment of its inception, of course both sides were trying to undermine the other. Only one resorted to the sorts of terror tactics exemplified by the Phoenix Project, Operation Gladio, and the like.
When I think about this, I often come back to thinking that the societies that underwent some conflict or difficult times, absolutely cannot have a member of an older generation in charge, because the only thing they do is to continue that conflict, completely manufacturing it again if needed, just to get their "revenge". Current Russian attempt at genociding Ukrainians is all the more tragic in that the generations, that remember the previous hostilities, were almost all gone by now. Alas, that corner of the world is again poisoned for several generations ahead.
No one is surprised about that guy, those comments usually point out how "the 2010 tea party", and everyone else from the decades, if not centuries, of the conservative milieu, are suddenly all in on this.
I agree, the main reason is he has been very effective with his cult of personality to get most of the republican congressmen in line. They lose elections if they don't and politicians aren't known for sticking to their values once in power.
The actual small government republican congressmen like https://x.com/justinamash have been very critical of Trump's power grabs but he lost political favor doing so
> How would they keep everyone under control? You won't find that many people eager to participate in satellite regimes or new social experiments, like you had in post-WWII.
Through cynicism and propaganda, just like they've been doing at home, and the same way it works in the US now. Everyone can see the corruption and depravity of the current regime, it might as well be a Russian satellite (many people would claim it already is), and yet we all collectively do nothing about it.
Why wouldn't it happen? America's new direction is that Europe is the enemy, and massive resources will be poured into propelling the already popular right wing parties, which are Russian puppets, into power. They don't need boots on the ground to conquer the continent, they just need a cynical population that doesn't see the difference between good and bad, just like in the US.
I believe if Americans want to abandon their allies because of the culture war propaganda, they should be also shown how much of the labor force in their new, alleged white savior friend, Russia, is made up of non-white people.
I think if America were whiter there would be a more unified desire to intervene in Europe. As it is America is not simply European ancestry . You underestimate how much sway the Latinos and blacks have. I can tell you that they literally do not care about Ukraine or Russia... Why should they? There's no historical link, and the ones that do exist are negative.
There is a difference between white and non white Americans and their views on Russia and Ukraine. To the point where a minority of black and Latino voters believe the cost of defending Ukraine is worth it, while a majority of white voters agree
How is it different from the majority of electoral votes supporting killing everyone in, I don't know, let's pick a random state, Minnesota.
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