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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 2024

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Churchill was not prime minister when England and France declared war on Germany.

It doesn't take a Churchillian titanic view of history to understand the trends and forces of the war were beyond the scope of who happened to hold office at the time. Churchill and his ultra-conservative faction had feared the rise of German naval power for half a century - unabated after the Great War - before their promise to Poland gave them the necessary excuse to smack Germany back down. And what happened to Poland after the war?

Maybe the Bolsheviks would've won in Spain and then later pushed through all of Europe to the Atlantic.

You think if the Republicans had won in Spain this would somehow have led to the Red Army conquering all of Europe Command and Conquer style?

No, but I love the throwback, you or anyone else want to fire that back up sometime for nostalgias sake?

I think the Bolsheviks very openly and actively wanted to unite the workers of the world which would have certainly included going to the Atlantic if someone hadn't stopped them

In real life, the Soviets only reached even as far as Berlin because of copious American and British assistance. Without that, they might have at best fought the Germans back to Barbarossa start-lines. On their own, they barely beat Finland. The Red Army marching all the way to the Atlantic is ridiculous. "If it wasn't for us, the communists would have taken over!" was a useful bugbear for everybody from Hitler to Mussolini to Franco but Bolshevik conquest of Europe was always a fantasy.

Okay I'm open to it - let's say you're right - doesn't that make US the bad guys?

doesn't that make US the bad guys?

Wrong question. Ask: Were US good or bad players of the great game?

Look at the game board. At the beginning of session, there were seven players. At the end, only two were left.

The Red player who held one sixth of the board at the start, succesfully defended himself and was able to snatch few more squares.

While the Blue player beat and outmaneuevered all others and owned or controlled everything else.

Some people who are never satisfied might bitch that Blue victory should be even more lopsided, that if Blue optimized his play to perfection he might prevent the Red from taking the few squares he gained.

Or team color one could've teamed up with other color and the communists could have not won and their cities could've been firebombed into ashes instead.

On Earth 2 we're not surrounded by soul-sucking Brutalist architecture that seemingly popped out of nowhere and DEi tribunals that no one can remember voting for

I see what you were going for, but no, at the end of the war everyone like me had their both-metaphorical-and-often-much-more-literal dicks smashed into the dirt by the communists and their allies

On Earth 2 we're not surrounded by soul-sucking Brutalist architecture that seemingly popped out of nowhere

...you think that Nazi architecture was any less brutalist?

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