Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
User ID: 137
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1hr ago
Scott has never been a standard left-liberal, though. "Liberaltarian" would probably be closer.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
7hr ago
At what point of his ideological history would you have expected him to go "actually, tariffs are great and Trump is great for trying to do tariffs"?
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1d ago
Not to forget that the Confederacy claimed several states that never formally seceded from the Union, seated their representatives in the Confederate Congress etc.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
7d ago
Russian Empire was basically unable to utilize state power to anywhere close to the degree that a modernized state could, though it was starting to make up the difference already in the years before the Bolshevik Revolution.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
7d ago
Casual encounters and visits to England and Ireland might also leave one convinced that they are basically the same nationality on the basis of not only language but also surface aspects (left side of the road, two faucets, crap insulation etc.), and yet... (or England and US/Australia/Canada/whatever.)
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
7d ago
Crimea only became demographically majority Russian after WW2. Sure, it wasn't ethnically Ukrainian either, but the Crimean Tatars of the current day identify strongly with Ukraine, for understandable reasons.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
7d ago
Apart from Ukraine being conquered by Russia and forcibly assimilated, what would "Ukraine as a people to survive" mean here? Even if their population levels are drastically reduced, well, there are nations half the size of Ukrainians surviving as a people, even triple or quarter the size of Ukrainians. The Paraguayans were able to survive the War of the Triple Alliance. It would mean huge amounts of death, to be sure, but that's still different from national extinction.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
11d ago
Most Islamic terror attacks in the West in the recent decade have been done under the rubric of ISIS, which opposes Palestinian nationalism and Hamas for being a distraction in their quest for the Caliphate.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
14d ago
Isn't the more specific explanation that memes come from smaller discords/other chats/forums and get forced and amplified on 4chan?
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
18d ago
The purpose of the phrase "The purpose of a system is what it does" is what it does, which is insinuating your ideological opponents and their institutions do not actually want to do what they claim they want to do and are instead in a dark conspiracy to do evil.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
21d ago
Even going from the complete insanity of, like, a hour ago to something that is merely extremely risky would be beneficial from Musk's point of view.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
21d ago
Luckily MAGA influencers put out so many mutually conflicting explainers for what Trump's strategy actually is that they can always pick one narrative and say that this was the plan all along.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
22d ago
But the US also engages in obvious neomercantilism, and engaged before Trump, too. I mean, what the heck else was the whole TikTok ban affair? This would be a better argument if there was a lack of parity in such measures, but I don't see such a lack of parity existing.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
22d ago
Was just thinking yesterday that the one partial saving grace for Trump admin vis-a-vis the market reaction is precisely that all of this is so retarded; if it was just a smidgen less retarded then there would be a greater chance that the markets would price the possibility that he's for real, but this is retarded enough that it becomes easier for this to think that this level of retardation can't possibly continue for long.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
22d ago
Master and Margarita is arguably magical realism, which is at least speculative-fiction-adjacent.
One thing about the lockdowns was that they were always supposed to be temporary. Yes, the temporariness was stretched for a far longer period than originally intended, as mocked with endless "two more weeks to stop the spread" memery, but still, the official line at every point was that this was a temporary period of exception and at some point things would return to, if not the previous normal then at least something resembling normalcy. OTOH with these tariffs Trump's communications indicate that they're meant to last in some form for as long as Trumpism stays in power with even no-deficit countries getting a basic 10% rate.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
26d ago
The desired cycle does seem to be of the "Hard times create strong Slavs, strong Slavs create hard times" version.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
27d ago
I suspect this is very much a country-to-country issue. When you live in a small country with a high income that is basically forced to be dependent on trade (not having all that much in the way of natural resource apart from lots of timber and some minerals), anything but basic-level protectionism is a dead issue, perhaps unless it's the whole of EU doing it. France is bigger and has former colonies it can still tap into and a general do-it-yourself culture insofar as political economy goes, it can afford to be protectionist in a way that Finland can't.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
29d ago
I don't think that Rowling was ever an "old school leftie ultrafeminist" (if she was, one would have expected her books to have some other plotline than a traditional male-hero-saves-the-day-and-gets-the-girl one that they actually had). Even before the TERF thing she was basically a lib-centrist Blairite and occasionally criticized by actual lefties for the same.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
29d ago
"Ex-Muslim who dunks on Islam" is basically a stock character among the European right at this point, at least.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
29d ago
Sure, but that's still different from wartime, and is usually done around 19-20 when you have yet to be used having had decades of personal freedom and independent income.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
30d ago
she is obsessed with "based Black MAGA conservatives" spouting GOP talking points or praising Trump (sidenote: it is truly bizarre how civil rites fetishism is so prominent in the generation regardless of political leanings).
"This guy would presumably be on the other side due to their demographics or status but is on our side instead" has always had great appeal, what's weird about it? Put the other way around, it's how Jackson Hinkle can have mass appeal in the Third World.
The US House of Reps just in 2023 passed the resolution Denouncing the Horrors of Socialism with 109 Dems voting for it (86 against). Last year, the same House passed Crucial Communism Teaching Act which "makes optional educational materials available through the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation to help educate high school students about the dangers of communism and totalitarianism and how those systems are contrary to the founding principles of freedom and democracy in the United States" with even more Dem support.
More options
Context Copy link