Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
User ID: 137
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1d ago
In the end, Franco’s Spain ended because Spain became a liberal Western European country in front of him and he didn’t care to stop it, and it became clear to everyone even before he died that the ideology upon which it was built had evaporated among the masses, the working class and the lower middle and the bourgeois alike.
Couldn't you describe the end of the Soviet Union roughly the same way, with some adjustments ("it became a market economy through black market in front of Gorbachev and he didn't care to stop it" etc., though also ideological liberalization in the form of glasnost of course), though?
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1d ago
That being said, it occurs to me that there is a threshold question. Perhaps all governments and institutions have a tendency to suppress dissent and there are a few exceptions, e,g, the United States, which combine (relatively) free markets with (relatively) free speech.
It's this. More to the point, it is a human tendency to think that if someone's wrong and insists on being wrong, it's OK to solve this problem by violence. Individuals are just as prone as collective institutions to think that 'error has no rights'. The normal way to handle heresy used to be violence, the normal way to handle differences between ruling class (ie. factions fighting for kingship etc.) was violence, it was normal for the masses to use violence when they wanted to overthrow the elites and for the elites to repress the masses with violence to keep their power. In practice, premodern societies had to allow a certain leeway simply because they lacked state capacity to handle everything; modern societies have that state capacity.
It actually takes a lot of societal and governmental indoctrination to get societies to the point where people are able to live with their political and religious differences, United States certainly having the capacity to enact such indoctrination. Even then I suspect a lot of it is simple apathy, a tendency to believe that politics has been solved and society stabilized to the degree that there's no real reason to care about anything and we can allow all sorts of weird freaks to have their say. This seems to explain the congruence of the late-90s end-of-history thinking with the post-political-correctness relative cultural tolerance.
Communists, fascists, religious extremists etc., then, are more willing to continue to shut their opponents down, either through state or through individual violence, because they're the ones who actually believe that their cause is just, important, and worth it to restore the use of violence as a general principle of handling differences.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
8d ago
While my primary source here is Case Closed, my understanding is that Oswald never abandoned communism. He was disappointed with the Soviet system in practice, but it just made him flirt with Trotskyism (though without full commitment) after moving back to US.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
9d ago
Vladimir Arutyunian? The motive seems comprehensible, even if GWB appears to have been a secondary target and there's nothing to indicate that he was insane, as such.
I would also consider Lee Oswald to go to this category, if we go by the formal story. He was not completely sane, but there was enough there to allow for Oswald to attempt to assassinate an US president as an expression of his communist ideology.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
9d ago
Adding A Disturbance of Fate. Warning: heavy doses of Kennedy idolatry and boomer leftist althist wank to be expected.
edit: Also A Short History of the Future and the classic After Man and the somewhat lackluster follow-up Man After Man.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
10d ago
I read this as a Reddit-tier "subtle" slam against Patel, ie. "he's so incompetent that killing him would actually make the admin's competence go up".
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
21d ago
Greece has a far, far lower happiness ranking than many poorer countries - roughly the same as Libya, which has been in a civil war for 15 years. And if you visit the top countries like Finland and Iceland, they don’t seem that happy. Not only are these cultures quite unfriendly, lonely, cold, deal with depressing and harsh winters etc, they also have much greater problems with alcoholism and suicidal than the “less happy” Mediterraneans.
While Finnish suicide and alcohol use rates have actually gone down considerably in recent years (suicide rates most likely due to active anti-suicide campaigning, alcohol use due to same trends in youth drinking as elsewhere), they're still indeed higher than in Greece, though there might be a cultural factor here (ie. autistic/secular Nordic cultures are more likely to honestly report suicides as suicides as cultures where your cousin didn't commit a suicide, he just, uhh, went on a walk and must have slipped and fell down a cliff, perhaps there was an accident or something, you can give him a church burial etc.) However, at least according to this, Finns feel less lonely than Greeks.
Happiness studies are still probably bunk, but so are a lot of other studies that you can compare here.
Since this is basically a cue for me, I'm currently basically out of work. I had a big project in Feb-March that fortunately earned enough money to keep me going for this and the next month, but the current amount of other work is so sparse that I will probably be forced on the dole (unless me and my sisters get my mother's house sold in the meantime) until August, when I'll be hopefully starting an internship that might springboard on to another career. This was preceeded by a major client that has basically kept me afloat for 3.5 years announcing they're moving to AI-oriented workflows with less human translators on the loop. So yeah, there are almost certainly still translators going, but it's looking like the end of the career for me.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
24d ago
No, not really. If you ignore what has always been the actual issue - foreign policy rgule-of-law stuff, corruption, stuff like running push-poll "national consultations" without any purpose other than tweaking Brussels, I'm not aware of any particular domestic/cultural policy stuff that has been done Hungary and hasn't been done by at least one other EU member country without a particular reaction from Brussels. Just an endless machine of anti-EU (and now anti-Ukraine) populism to maintain power and do corruption, as listed in the OP.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
24d ago
It's been perfectly possible to restrict immigration through various means (such as in Denmark) while being a loyal member of the EU.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
24d ago
Most of EU decisionmakers will be perfectly happy if Hungary elects a guy who does most of the same stuff as Orban does expect for being pro-russia and picking continuous fights with the EU.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
26d ago
It's a classic video game that is still very playable today vis-a-vis graphics and can be obtained for free from Steam as Ur-Quan Masters, I don't find it particularly surprising.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
29d ago
"Iran agreed to open the straits that were already open before this debacle" is a laughable spin attempt.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
29d ago
Sure, but that's ephemeral if the question is whether Trump is making Europe spend more on defense through bully-boy tactics or whether Europe would be spending more on defense anyway - and, indeed, an important point is that it's after Europe has done what Trump ostensibly wants it to do that Trump has decided to start provoking and undercutting Europe in various and sundry ways.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
29d ago
Europe started ramping up defense spending in 2022 already (for obvious reason) and hiked it more from 2023 to 2024 than from 2024 to 2025.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
If one looks at social media on this topic, it is exactly Europeans offering these criticisms of American foreign policy and getting, in return, incoherent rage from the same Americans who just previously were boasting about how the American foreign policy is completely different now and the mistakes of Iraq (the previous time there was an American administration that was shitting on Europe, or large parts of it, for failing to support a dumb war) were surely not going to be repeated.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
2 out of 3 Euros are unable to contain their seething contempt and will eventually have to get in a "witty" (passive-aggressive) dig about guns/racism/big cars/food/etc apropos of nothing in an otherwise friendly conversation.
You don't think that Euros make similar witty remarks about each other's countries when talking about each other? It's just normal nationality-related bants. They may be unfunny, of course, as bants frequently are unfunny, being that people frequently are unfunny.
None of this matters. Pro-MAGA Americans seems to clutch to anecdotes about smug Europeans being smug to sidestep the fact that Europe currently has very obvious reasons to be angry at America - ie. doing things that America supposedly has wanted from Europe (hiking up defense spending, cutting immigration, taking more responsibility for Ukraine, European leaders going into a frankly embarassing effort to kiss Trump's ass personally in 2025 etc.) and have received, as a reward, scolding from Vance, tariffs, the Greenland affair and now a looming huge energy crisis caused by Trump's impulsive war in Iran.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
The response from Europe's political leadership for the general current situation, ever since 2022, has been steadily hiking up defense expenditure. Despite this being presumably exactly what Trump wants, this hasn't led to a positive change in American attitudes, to say the least.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
Trump had intermittently banged the "annex Greenland" drum from the start of inauguration on, as listed here. It wasn't just about January 2026. January 2026 was just the culmination. Whatever the case, if you're ostensibly allied to a country, you should probably not leave a door open to seizing their territory in any particular circumstance, it's like International Politics 101.
I'm not exactly sure what would have been a real "show of force" at Greenland. Denmark had and has actual forces in Greenland to deter a sudden seizure scenario, the others sent troops as a show of solidarity/tripwire.
The American action in Iran fully demonstrated that it was sensible from Europe to "over"react to the Greenland crisis, as it demonstrated that Trump has the full intent and capability to pull idiotic stunts without a regard for consequences with very little warning time.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
America, under its president, just recently just pointed at Greenland, a territory held by an European government, and basically went "Me want! Me take!", up to hinting to using military force for taking it. There was zero provocation by Denmark - one of the most consistent and reliable American allies in Europe - or the rest of Europe that caused this to happen. It wasn't just Trump's idea, as soon as it was thrown out not only did the Republicans enthusiastically line up to support it but even some lib commentators went "well... it's not completely stupid..." and the Dem response can be described as lukewarm at best. It was justified as a continuation of Manifest Destiny and what have you. The whole of European establishment understandably went absolutely hogshit and then Trump's mind wandered off to the next thing and the Americans just dropped it for now and are now expecting Europe to line up for the next adventure like nothing had happened.
You don't need highfaluting theories about history and Cold War and 18th century or endless anecdotes about snooty snippy Europeans (with the main part of the anecdote often seeming to be some personal psychodrama by the American telling it with moderate to minimal actual European participation). You can just look at this one thing! It's not the only recent thing America has done to basically teabag Europe out of nowhere but it's pretty damn big! It's a very justified reason for Europe to distance itself from America!
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
Besides being a nice FU to Europe it also exposes their geopolitical weaknesses as real. Which hopefully gets them to do things like build big guns, drill for oil, restart nuclear programs, forget Greta ever existed, etc.
Europe has been doing all of that (expect for drilling for oil, which Europe would do if we had oil) ever since 2022 without this being prompted by US belligerence. (Yes, including plans or initialization of new nuclear projects, like this and this - Germany isn't all of Europe, which frequently seems to be forgotten in discussions like this). All that stuff like this, or the tariff debacle, or the senseless Greenland affair, does is make EU distance itself from the US. Of course building big guns and restarting nuclear programs becomes quite a bit harder if we are suffering from an economic crisis, such as one caused by an extended shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz.
Of course none of that matters, does it? It's all just Trump suppporters trying to figure out some way, any way, in which the Iran affair makes sense or how it would make sense for EU to participate in enabling idiotic American policy in this particular matter.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
Okay but isn't the categorization used here... pretty odd? It differentiates Ashkenazim from "Soviet Jews", who presumably are either Ashkenazi or even more European, and it doesn't appear to differentiate Sephardim from Mizrahim, even though Sephardim (afaik?) are also quite European in ancestry. Also, some of those in the "Mixed" category would presumably be, like, Ashkenazim/"Soviet" mixed, if these are really the categories used.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
This is one of those claims that not only conflicts with the facts on the ground but doesn't even really make sense on its face. Why would they need to leave for the "Arabs" (are Palestinians and Arabs different population now?) to kill the Jews? Wouldn't they stick around, participate in the genocide and partake of the loot?
Yes, and the Francoist regime also repressed the liberal forces, until eventually it didn't. (Also, my understanding is that the black market was already quite considerable a force in the Soviet economy in the early 80s.)
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