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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 8, 2025

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Total Ukraine Victory or Total Russian Victory?

Your choice, whatever is more interesting.

My interest in writing this post is that we spend so long arguing over which is more likely (which is a very important question) that we don't get into the reasons why one person or the other on this forum hopes for an opposite outcome. Like you say, it ties a lot into your views on the American Empire, but that itself opens up a load of questions and interesting points on what outcomes people actually prefer. For example, Vance, does he want to pivot to China, genuinely dislikes Europe, hates Zelensky, thinks this is hopeless, or something else? I struggle to accurately model and therefore predict his preferences on Ukraine and therefore a lot of other things.