American Politics Discussion Thread

[mackoti]

Has Hungary invaded anyone?
Have Poland and Germany fought a war?
Have Turkey and Greece fought a war? (this is a bigger deal than Poland and Germany not fighting)

Again, tensions within NATO exist. But unlike the rest of European history nothing has come of it. I'm not going to defend anything they have haven't, or have been accused of doing. I am merely pointing out there is still more peace than normal in history. We should keep trying to move in the direction.

I agree that the US going isolationist and mercantilist is stupid btw.

Russia has been invading people for a long time, they hardly need western help on a "blueprint". How many wars with the Ottomans were in the name of protecting Orthodox Christians? Again, there is always a reason.

Yes we fighted along them against otomans and after they practicaly conquered Romania and imposed the protectorate, is asaying among romanian historisc Romania chanched the wooden yoke of otoman empire with the Iron one from Rusia.

Well i realy hope Usa is not planning that, but righ now I cant see how they go isolationist and mercantilist.

[Boro]

Yup, complete political illiteracy.

[Boro]

Well i supose everyone would enjoy such an imperial hegemon: majority of the people from EU live better then USA counterparts, Europe was totaly destroyed after the WW2 and now is better then ever was, we even cant say MEGA.

We can, we did, and we will.

https://kormany.hu/beszedek-interjuk/min...e-20240217

[BING_XI_LAO]

I do think its wise to analyze bias and no where more important than in ourselves. I'm an accountant and no you should not hate us (unless its a small company). The ones you should hate are the financial analysts. Those are the people asking you why you spent money on x or telling you not to spend money on that thing you 100% need to spend money on. They also come up with the forecasts. And even for a business forecast in the short term I don't think I've EVER seen it be right in 10 years....

Wait what, you have direct personal experience of an intellectual class failing to forecast a chaotic system, in one where they have MUCH more incentive to get it right, and a MUCh faster pace of incoming empirical feedback to adjust to (ie they are mostly NOT forecasting to 2050).... but you trust the climate scientists to do better? Why? I suppose there's no psychology or game theory involved in climate science, but it's still got plenty of feedback positive and negative feedback loops.
Are climate scientists in a higher category of intellectual than economists?

This is a fair question. I think I said it somewhere in the book of the argument, but I don't believe in the specific predictions, but only in the direction. Part of it is historical. We can look back at pretty solid science even in the last million years where we can track C02 in air bubbles and things like ice advances and sea level. Let alone just looking at data from last 150 years. Part of it is things like warm = more energy make sense to me.

I do think its important to once in a while go "what if the other side is true". Again, in the book of an argument in that case we end up wasting some money but still get some useful tech. Ya its not a great outcome, but its not that bad of an outcome. But considering the energy companies have reports from their scientists predicting negative consequences from climate change I don't consider this to be likely. Again, not even accounting for fairly firm geologic history or simple weather knowledge.

All I have to believe is the general direction and again the cost comparison math is such I don't have to believe that far in the general direction before doing more makes sense.

It's certainly a good habit to entertain the opposing point of view. For me, the opposing view is the climate change doomsday concept. 
The problem is that they keep poisoning the well. In school they made me watch that film by Al Gore, multiple times, which got a lot of things wrong. I already hated school for being full of low IQ shit, so this REALLY poisons the well for me. Also they keep lying, for example one lie I've been looking into recently is the warmerist allegation that nuclear power is expensive. They 'prove' this by examining recent nuclear power plant developments in the US (Westinghouse, Vogtle), which are expensive because the US nuclear industry built almost nothing for three decades and was starting from scratch. Of course it costs more if you have a novel design which gets changed halfway through. This is basically dishonest and they should've gone with South Korean efforts as the example. You can bet your bottom dollar that Russia, the home of cheap natural gas, isn't building expensive nuclear to go alongside cheap gas  - that would be insane. Obviously Rosatom is building cheap nuclear with cheap gas.

The real reason greenies dislike nuclear is because it takes like 12 years to get a nuclear industry off the ground. So coal/gas lobby advocates that as a way to make sure there's no space to decommission their fossil fuel assets for 12 years. Meanwhile wind and solar adoption can get started in like 1 year. The greenies have a perfectly sincere, REAL reason to dislike nuclear, but they insist on backing it up with lies.

So yes, I should entertain the other point of view, but this is the "regime" point of view which indulges in propagandistic lying. Propagandistic lying doesn't necessarily mean the ultimate position is false... but it runs my patience out. Also the regime point of view is never short of adherents, it can do without me.

[BING_XI_LAO]

The goal isn't preserving Ukrainian lives, the goal is preserving the Ukrainian way of life.  Obviously.

Darrell

Independent Ukraine has been absolutely dogshit stagnant shithole. It's not defending a way of life, it's the goal of upgrading Ukrainian way of life into Western way of life. 
Which is dreadfully ironic because we in the West are well past our peak and have entered into absolutely rudderless decline, with destiny clouded by the thick miasma of domesticated mediocrity, oligarchic corruption, individualist betrayal of society, and hedonist moral cowardice. It's actually the alternative north-Eurasian civilisation of Russia and China which still grasps destiny and is going to be superior for the next two centuries to the morally repugnant, backward westerners. But if Ukrainian nationalists had any real concept of history, they would understand they are Russians.

[BING_XI_LAO]

Couple of problems
1) Both sides have to agree
  - I can't stress this enough. How much US land would you want to give up if someone invaded? Very few people thought Ukraine had a chance at the start of this war, but they fought anyways. The polls I've seen don't seem to indicate the Ukrainians want to give up much if anything.
2) Lasting peace is only possible if Ukraine gets to join NATO. And see point 1 above; would Russia accept this? Russian security guarantees aren't worth much, so that is the only way forward to a lasting peace.

Current war aims don't seem to be anywhere close to each other, so peace isn't a likely short term outcome.

This war has turned into an attritional war. The West can EASILY win that, IF they have the political will.

The west would require not just will, but competence, to win a military-industrial contest with Russia. But yes, the West is so much bigger than Russia (even in real economic terms like energy, electricity, steel output etc. not just useless nominal GDP) that the West would win. But the West also occupies China's Taiwan Province, so the more the West committed to this contest, the more China would counterbalance on the other side. China's economy is 150% the size of the US, and still growing at around 6% per year, which is why glorious Sino-Russian global domination is inevitable.

[BING_XI_LAO]

The goal isn't preserving Ukrainian lives, the goal is preserving the Ukrainian way of life.  Obviously.

Darrell

I struggle to understand what about the Ukranian state prior to the invasion was uniquely worth fighting for. It was one of several post-Soviet countries with high corruption, declining birth rates, a stagnant economy, and on and off ethnic cleansings going on in the background. Most of those problems will only be aggravated even if Ukraine survives the war intact. What is being preserved?

Lets set aside any validity of this 100% Russian propaganda and just note that EACH of those issues is worse in Russia.

Ukraine definitely cares about who they are and how they are governed, see 2014. And one thing uniting all former eastern bloc countries who have a choice is they REALLY don't want to be part of Russia again.

All of those issues are definitely worse in the Ukraine. Russia is 2.5x wealthier than the Ukraine. Your argument here should be to blame it on pro-Russian ukrainian politicians pre-2014, and on Russia's 2014 intervention, not to make an empirically false statement.

[BING_XI_LAO]

I was / am in the military and therefore know the state of Russian nuclear arsenal

[BING_XI_LAO]

It's the answer to the real reason behind the Vietnam war and the domino theory for Southeast Asia. The spread of Communism in Vietnam and Laos would be entirely irrelevant, save for the US government being heavily involved in drug trafficking in that region.

The relevance today is seeing how incidental corruption inevitably draws large state involvement in protecting such investments. That Joe Biden has a son who is lavished in money, hookers, and cocaine is not really that scandalous on its own. But Hunter Biden was getting a lot of that money from personal investments in Ukraine, and now we see that  regular Americans must see the budget inflated to the tune of billions of dollars to protect Hunter Biden's crack money.

You cant honestly believe that. If Biden was worried about his sons crack habit, he can do so alot easier and with alot less chance of being caught.

Fund Ukraine, Fund Taiwan. (and any other country that is at risk of being taken over) No civilized country should have their sovereignty taken away from them by a foreign power. That includes the US.

Taiwan is the Republic of China. It still claims mainland China as its territory. The island itself is only a province of China. It's making moves now to redefine itself as a separate nation, but this comes very late and is transparently dishonest. Clearly, what everyone REALLY cares about is not the PAST - (what is and isn't a legitimate border, a "separate" nation, etc.). What they actually care about is the belief that their civilisation, present and FUTURE, is superior, and should be expanded at the expense of inferior civilisations. For example, I support all wars against the West because I regard 21st century Western civilisation as a cancerous, suppurating parody of my actual civilisation, which sadly doesn't exist any more. As a Westerner, I take the 21st century Western civilisation's despicable existence as an insult to my dignity. There's no powerful political party I can vote for which represents that point of view. Fortunately, the Russian Army is doing a good job of representing how I feel about the West and its allies. Maybe the PLA too in the not so distant future if I'm lucky.

[BING_XI_LAO]

Hungary demanding literally half it's neighbors countries, generally stiring shit whenver they can?
Poland demanding "WW2 compensation" and calling Germany as Nazis?
Cyprus? (Outright war between NATO members, with occupation till today)
NATO members successfully destabilizing Libya (and thus Europe through literally opening doors for mass-migration from Africa)
Same in Syria, creating what, 20 million refugees?
And when NATO actually SHOULD have acted, they didn't (Yugoslavia in the 1990s)
Ah yes, the only time they intervented, they bombed by "accident" the Chinese embassy. And then let the UCK do the same to the Serbs than what they claimed the Serbs did to the Albanians... (I've been there, it's a total shitshow from both sides, yet in the media here you'll only read how bad the Serbs are..)

NATO tries to claim it's a "defensive alliance". That's as defensive as if you're putting nukes in Turkey and then complaining when the other side places them on Cuba..

NATO should have been abolished after the Cold War, and instead Europe should have worked on economical integration - not on pushing NATO borders right next to St. Petersburg..

(It's not like they didn't actually promised that to Russia, but then backtracked on their words as "we never gave them anything in writing")

If you're doing well economically, you're not going to war against each other. The US going full mercantilist is about as stupid as they can be, and this will hurt them BRUTALLY in the long way to come. (We're talking decades here, not years)

It's never a black and white thing. Russia are certainly not the good guys that had a legitimate reason to attack Ukraine, but the West isn't blameless either about the whole conflict heating up, giving Russia a "blueprint" on how attacking other countries with zero casus beli went perfectly fine for them.

Man, from what you said I can bet you are not living in east Europe or you are one of those prorusian dudes(yes we have like 14% here in Romania as well). And with Russia its lets say 99% black, they keep theyr peple in poverty althouht they have all those riches and want that poverty for others as well. 

Ucraine is a bit of an opresive state(i know that at first hand, thay closed minorities schools, they forced people to became uKrainans), but at least they are weak, and they got help and stoped the russians which are way worse in all measures and always in theyr history spread just desease with the politics.

Usa has loads of shortcomings, but on theyr acompleshiments you have Europe , Japan, South Korea(I dont say was totaly american due, but at least they didnt abandoned Europe to Rusia). They abandoned us once(Romania, BG,hungary) after ww2 and I am realy happy they defended us now, becasue after ukraine for sure Putn would had felt other contries are fascist and ned liberation.

Romania produced Ceaucescu, one of history's greatest political geniuses. He managed to solve the birthrate problem. Even Lee Kuan Yew couldn't solve that, explicitly admitting as much. Given that Romania produced a more talented politician than even the man who made Singapore so successful, your pro-American stance is like diving from a palace into the latrine.

In similar vein, North Korea is clearly a far happier and more successful civilisation than the pro-American South Korean democratic vassal state. Just look at the birthrates - 1.8 in NK, 0.7 or something in SK and still dropping. South Korean "civilisation" is a genocide. 

Of course I understand that Romanians, who had huge fertility and a severe shortage of wealth, want less fertility and more wealth. But take a broader look at the world-historical context. One of the most fundamental challenges of modern civilisation - how to reconcile modern social norms and prosperity with procreation and family formation - was already solved - in "backward" Romania, and you want to throw it away! Would you rather have impoverished siblings, or for them to have never been born?

Consider also that Ceaucescu's execution was on 25th December, a clear sign that the forces which defeated him were the servants of Satan, engaging in a ritualistic repudiation of the Birth of Christ.