American Politics Discussion Thread

[BING_XI_LAO]

>you're Russian
>you're a troll
>you're being paid to post this
>you're not a real civ player
>you're a Brazilian pretending to be Russian
>you're spreading misinformation

Glad to see I am not the only one getting butthurt over these Ukraine tensions lmao. 

I have been trolling my best friend (we're both British) by posting pro-Russian stuff, I met this Russian playing a videogame and chatted with him for like 5 hours first time we me about history and politics, meanwhile my friend met a bunch of Ukrainians when holidaying there and keeps in contact with them since. Finally I understand sports fans getting really butthurt at each other from supporting rival teams!

But on the more serious side of the British point of view, the UK is suffering from high power prices, meanwhile 40% of our power station capacity is gas, there's a COMPLETED GAS PIPELINE UNUSED leading from Russia towards Europe.... and we're mad at the Russians? We're siding with the US while it BLOCKS OUR SUPPLY OF FUEL!??!?!?!?!

Anyhow, why is it a bad thing if Russia were to annex an area that's inhabited by Russians? The Western position implicitly assumes that an ethno-linguistically Russian area that's already rebelled against its non-Russian government, has historically been part of Russia before, and is right next to Russia, shouldn't be annexed by Russia. But what's the abstract or practical case against that obvious solution?
Supporting Ukraine having its artillery and other troops mobilised against those rebels - isn't it as absurd as supporting the invasion of Artsakh by the Azeris just because of where the de jure borders are? Surely those Russians will never want to be ruled by Kiev again, so what is your endgame with them?

Also haven't Russian military interventions been WAY more constructive than the West's for like 20 years?
Syria - literally prevented Sunni Islamists from ethnically cleansing the Alwaite/Christian rump state
Artsakh - shut it down before the Azeris rolled in and purged relatively more densely populated areas
Libya - helped Egypt secure an anti-Muslim brotherhood vassal state in the eastern half of the country

In every one of these cases the West was actively supporting Islamic terrorism (If you count Muslim brotherhood as terrorist and Turkey, supporting Azerbaijan, as Western). And the Russians stopped it.

It's like Westerners have absolutely no contrition, self-awareness or guilt over their hyper-violent and extremely destructive military invasions of the 2001-2011+ era.
I am supposed to be the edgelord racist here, why am I the only one who is still bothered by that funny little time we devastated multiple brown people countries leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths?

Now that the situation has finally stabilised in Iraq and Afghanistan it's Iran, China and Russia which play the role of constructive partners to the emerging governments while the West slinks off, whines and sanctions the basketcases they created.

All those liars who created the WMD hoax and thought it was a good idea to occupy Afghanistan and Iraq with laughable "democratic" vassal states are still in power in the West. Tony Blair recently got a knighthood with the connivance of both major British parties and the Queen. There has been absolutely zero accountability. But common Westerners mostly consume the same abject drivel media which supported those wars in the first place. They aren't being told to draw any conclusions so they don't draw any conclusions except that Putler wants to recreate the USSR. And the elite have the same slew of corrupt and delusional motives as before.

After our disastruous foreign interventions that we are going to lecture Vladimir Putin, who is quite obviously an extremely cautious and logical person, about foreign interventions?
Less than a year after the last thing to happen to the American occupation of Afghanistan was an ISIS suicide bomber at a crowded, disorganised and panicky airport? You think the US deserves to be listened to after creating such a contemptible spectacle like that?

We are going to lecture China, a millenia-old civilisation with a highly formalised system of government, over its domestic policies? Even as it goes towards 30% of global manufacturing? Do we really think that country, which was the most advanced in the world before 1600-ish, can only reclaim that title by copying moral standards which we arrived at 15 years ago, long after we reached our current level of material achievement?
It's insufferable. The arrogance is insane.

Liberals I speak to in real life say negative things about "Russians" and "Chinese" without bothering to qualify, and the Daily Mail runs a multi-page spread with MI5 insisting on the need for new powers to block misinformation and arrest spies. Have you ever considered calling someone a "black troll" or a "muslim troll"? But it's fine with Russians and Chinese because they don't have Western style elections (ideally 50% mail-in with a week long counting process and any competently filed court challenges dismissed for "lack of standing").
I love when the newspapers run intelligence agency interviews calling for legal crackdowns on foreign agents, I am really smelling the tolerance and love right now.

Can we address the fact that Trudeau, Boris, Biden, Macron etc are FAR LESS POPULAR than Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin. And FAR LESS TALENTED too? Doesn't that indicate that the Russian and Chinese systems are actually more meritocratic than the Western systems, which at this point produce whoever agrees the most with lobby groups?

I'm not up to speed with how mean the Ukranian nationalists are to the Russians in Ukraine with things like language rights etc, but unless you have complete contempt for the Russians of eastern Ukraine, you have to assume they have good reasons to take up arms. To whatever extent, Ukraine does have neo-nazis, de facto ethnic cleansing (in a slow-burning war, but it is still there), mass civilian evacuations, etc.

I have a lot of respect for the two most advanced non-Western countries, Russia and China. I even have a lot of sympathy for the Taliban because they endured for 20 years a superpower occupation and restored their national and religious way of life (however much I look down on it), which is an impressive feat of dedication. I even have respect and consideration for the North Korean government because at least they have a 1.9 birthrate instead of disappearing from world history like the South Koreans are. Meanwhile liberals constantly shit over the main non-western powers and they shit all over the people they militarily occupied and tried to force their ideology on (feminism for example in the Afghan case, it's even possible that a George Floyd mural got literally painted over by Koran verses in Kabul).

With all this respect for foreigners and their weird foreign shit, do I need to hand in my bigot card and become a libtard now??? Because youtube banned almost all the interesting rightoids I have even started watching videos made by Assange supporters who complain about white racist America's colonial agenda to subvert China and blockade the Malacca straits.... (Brian Berletic if you're interested)..... Am I going to become gay next??? Maybe trans?

[Amicalola]

Can we address the fact that Trudeau, Boris, Biden, Macron etc are FAR LESS POPULAR than Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin. And FAR LESS TALENTED too? Doesn't that indicate that the Russian and Chinese systems are actually more meritocratic than the Western systems, which at this point produce whoever agrees the most with lobby groups?

When you make such obviously ludicrous statements like this, it really discredits anything else you might have to say. There is no reliable way to know how popular Xi Jingping and Putin are, because there is no way to know how much coercion is involved in polling, and there is no viable alternative presented to people in those countries. The media is also a lot more tightly controlled in dictatorships, and so people naturally have less-informed opinions (through no fault of their own). This is pretty much common sense, and I assume you are trolling, rather than being genuine. In which case, please stop? I'm not sure what else there is to say.

[superdeath]

Anyhow, why is it a bad thing if Russia were to annex an area that's inhabited by Russians? The Western position implicitly assumes that an ethno-linguistically Russian area that's already rebelled against its non-Russian government, has historically been part of Russia before, and is right next to Russia, shouldn't be annexed by Russia. But what's the abstract or practical case against that obvious solution?
Supporting Ukraine having its artillery and other troops mobilised against those rebels - isn't it as absurd as supporting the invasion of Artsakh by the Azeris just because of where the de jure borders are? Surely those Russians will never want to be ruled by Kiev again, so what is your endgame with them?

I think the thought process is more along the lines of "no one can/should occupy or take over more territory and the country borders that we have now should stay the same... especially if it threatens the dominance of the United States"

I personally couldn't care less. So long as it doesn't = mass killing of Ukrainian people, go for it. But, i also live somewhere where its unlikely that even in the worst case scenario, i wont have to worry about any bombs/nukes ect on my land.

[Pindrich]

Russia is not exactly a dictatorship. It's close, but not exactly. You can't say the same for China, but I do believe Chinese people have a peculiar reverence for their leader, which is not precisely the same as popularity but it's close enough. I think Russian polls aren't entirely wrong either. Everything points to the fact that Putin enjoys a certain level of popularity among the Russian people.

IMO Bing Xi Lao has a point.

[Pindrich]

But, i also live somewhere where its unlikely that even in the worst case scenario, i wont have to worry about any bombs/nukes ect on my land.

That's how it feels living in Brazil. Because I definitely live in Brazil. Not in Russia. In Brazil. 

[Amicalola]

I think Russian polls aren't entirely wrong either. Everything points to the fact that Putin enjoys a certain level of popularity among the Russian people.

This completely ignores two of my three points. Russian people have no viable alternative to Putin, and the press is not allowed to freely criticize him. Are you suggesting that neither of these would impact on Putin's popularity?

Edit: In fact it ignores all three, and just reiterates 'polls good.' There is still no way to know how much coercion is involved in these polls.

[BING_XI_LAO]

Can we address the fact that Trudeau, Boris, Biden, Macron etc are FAR LESS POPULAR than Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin. And FAR LESS TALENTED too? Doesn't that indicate that the Russian and Chinese systems are actually more meritocratic than the Western systems, which at this point produce whoever agrees the most with lobby groups?

When you make such obviously ludicrous statements like this, it really discredits anything else you might have to say. There is no reliable way to know how popular Xi Jingping and Putin are, because there is no way to know how much coercion is involved in polling, and there is no viable alternative presented to people in those countries. The media is also a lot more tightly controlled in dictatorships, and so people naturally have less-informed opinions (through no fault of their own). This is pretty much common sense, and I assume you are trolling, rather than being genuine. In which case, please stop? I'm not sure what else there is to say.

It's not ludicrous, those four Western leaders are all polling in the 20% to 40% range as far as I'm aware. 
-Trudeau has the trucker thing going on
-Boris had a constant drip-fed scandal and only stayed in No.10 because internal Conservative factions that might have replaced him were divided
-Macron might have lost this year's elections - until his recent diplomatic initiatives with Putin
-Biden getting outpolled by Trump

Of course a direct comparison doesn't have proper polls to work off in China's case, and they have a controlled media environment, but I think it's very safe to assume that people would organically rate Xi Jinping highly because of the immense improvement in material conditions under the CPC ever since Deng Xiaoping. And I'm a small-state kind of guy, but China's progress is just something you have to acknowledge is real and consequential.
In Russia's case the media is actually mostly liberal and while the democracy is "managed", popular opinion is still polled and relevant. 

Both countries are on a pretty steep upward trajectory right now - even Russia is seriously strengthening, compared to the 1990s dumpsterfire and in terms of creating an economy that can withstand ever more Western sanctions (and those seem to have reached their practical limit).

There is no such sense of constant improvement or claiming more ground in the world stage in the West, even if that's simply because we've reached a natural apex of wealth which is hard to ascend further from.

[Pindrich]

I think Russian polls aren't entirely wrong either. Everything points to the fact that Putin enjoys a certain level of popularity among the Russian people.

This completely ignores two of my three points. Russian people have no viable alternative to Putin, and the press is not allowed to freely criticize him. Are you suggesting that neither of these would impact on Putin's popularity?

Edit: In fact it ignores all three. There is still no way to know how much coercion is involved in these polls.

Of course they would, should such a press choose to promote an alternative or attack Putin, but those things don't change the fact of his popularity. That's all I was saying, his popularity is there, it is real, and there's no point in denying it. Everything else is conjecture.

[BING_XI_LAO]

Just asked my internet Russian friend for some examples of anti-Putin Russian-language media

https://www.mk.ru/politics/2013/06/07/86...menov.html
This one seems to portray Putin as some kind of deranged incel lmao, when is Kremlin going to kill these journalists with novichok blowdart??

...Immediately after meeting his future wife, Putin began to check on her. When making appointments, he was regularly late for an hour and a half. “I remember standing on the subway. The first fifteen minutes of being late I can stand normally, half an hour - also seems to be nothing. But when an hour passes, and it's still gone, you just cry from resentment. And after an hour and a half, you don’t feel any emotions at all.”

This was repeated many times, but Lyudmila Alexandrovna waited meekly. The first test has been passed.

But the second - no. They went to a party together, and young Luda allowed herself unacceptable things: “She acted too relaxed: she danced, had fun, laughed.” This, of course, alerted Vladimir Vladimirovich (GDP by that time was already a state security officer). He announced the end of the relationship. And yet there are few women who can wait for an hour and a half in the subway! After thinking, Putin decided to give the girl another chance.

Meetings continued, and in the summer the couple traveled south. Here Lyudmila Alexandrovna was waiting for the third test - very severe and even life-threatening. Volodya decided to explore a small peninsula near Sudak. He took a speargun with him and swam. Luda did not know how to swim, so she crossed the strait on a mattress.

On the way back, Vladimir Vladimirovich decided to walk along the shore. And Lyudmila Alexandrovna was afraid that she would get stuck in a very narrow rocky passage. Then a kind companion gave her a gun so as not to carry it herself, and blessed her for a new swim. Where did the mattress go - history is silent.

“When I clumsily swam, raising the gun above my head, I realized with horror that it was very heavy, and I probably couldn’t swim. Later, I could not understand at all how I got to the shore. ”

The "exams" never ended. Once in St. Petersburg, an unfamiliar young man stuck up to Lyudmila Alexandrovna on the street and, saying that she was “his fate”, began to ask for a phone number and stick his number. Now the first lady suspects that it was a check arranged by Vladimir Vladimirovich. But then, in that terrible, egregious situation, I still didn’t suspect - I didn’t even know that Putin was working in the KGB! And she oriented herself correctly - “turned and went.”

https://meduza.io/feature/2021/08/09/nam...oy-storony
Or there is this story from Meduza sympathetically interviewing the Anti-Lukashenko protesters. What the Kremlin has done, apparently recently, is slap a "foreign agent" label on such media... but isn't that completely reasonable given that it apparently literally is funded from abroad, presumably by US and EU government-aligned NGOs like the National Endowment for Democracy? This is a major Russian outlet siding with a protest movement which Putin dispatched security forces to suppress.

[BING_XI_LAO]

https://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/a8...svvp9.webm
Apparently that's a Nazi flag and the chant includes "Moskaly na nzohi" - "put Russians to the knife".
It really shows that neo-nazis are retarded when they side with the 21st century NATO/EU/US over their national cousins, it's like attached image