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What is the most powerful flying bug? This poll is closed. |
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| 🦋 |
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15 | 3.71% |
| 🦇 |
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115 | 28.47% |
| 🪰 |
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12 | 2.97% |
| 🐦 |
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67 | 16.58% |
| dragonfly |
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94 | 23.27% |
| 🦟 |
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14 | 3.47% |
| 🐝 |
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87 | 21.53% |
| Total: | 404 votes | ||
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So Putin won in a landslide, but was also "humiliated". https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/03/17/putin-walks-to-victory-but-opposition-builds-against-him/ I can't now unsee how common this trope is in Western reporting, "Putin humiliated as Russia wins string of victories".
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Mar 17, 2024 22:44
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its always projection
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Mar 17, 2024 22:45
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Pistol_Pete posted:So Putin won in a landslide, but was also "humiliated". Holy poo poo, silent flash mobs. That's EPIC. Putin will not recover from that.
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Mar 17, 2024 22:56
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lol Zelenskyy can't even hold a sham election because he would lose for sure to whatever controlled opposition ran against him. what a loving bum
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Mar 17, 2024 23:00
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It was more or less my point before, the West really can't comprehend that its antics have harden the population harder than promoting opposition. The West also can't really accept than Putin may have actually gotten that high of a vote (or anywhere close to it) with 73% turnout because they have more or less united the entire country together. It isn't that they necessarily even like him, but they made the Russian people their target and they know it. All they can claim is a couple flash mobs of a handful of people, while votes for Putin dramatically rose in the border regions. As far as "who knows" what is going on in Russia and stuff ballot boxes etc, supposedly fireworks are being lit in the suburbs of Moscow after the results and the weekend has had a quasi-holiday vibe to it. The West is on autopilot, but Putin hasn't been stronger than he is right now. Ardennes has issued a correction as of 23:08 on Mar 17, 2024 |
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Mar 17, 2024 23:04
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Hitler had broad popular support too. Checkmate.
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Mar 17, 2024 23:07
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Enjoy posted:Putin is a murderous right-wing dictator Well he's not a dictator. Sure in a general sense he is right wing but compared to either American party his policies are at least economically far to the left. ContinuityNewTimes posted:Weird that her face paint is in English Why? It is an official language of Ukraine. tristeham posted:they developped most of the conventional logic we still use now. I think what they are getting at is their ideas about what that logic is were different. I wouldn't say wrong per se but perhaps less developed. Like for instance comparing their and our ideas about making bronze, we have different ways to look at the process.
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Mar 17, 2024 23:08
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Ardennes posted:It was more or less my point before, the West really can't comprehend that its antics have harden the population harder than promoting opposition. This and the results of bombing campaigns targeting civilians STILL not sinking in just blow my mind. It's extremely basic human psychology that's been tested innumerable times, and yet
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Mar 17, 2024 23:11
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Weka posted:Oh, and who do you think invented logic? God, obviously. "Of all things to be sought, the first is that Wisdom in which the Form of the Perfect Good stands fixed. Wisdom illuminates man so that he may recognize himself; for man was like all the other animals when he did not understand that he had been created of a higher order than they. But his immortal mind, illuminated by Wisdom, beholds its own principle and recognizes how unfitting it is for it to seek anything outside itself when what it is in itself can be enough for it. It is written on the tripod of Apollo: Γνῶθι σαυτόν, that is, “Know thyself,’’ for surely, if man had not forgotten his origin, he would recognize that everything subject to change is nothing."
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Mar 17, 2024 23:12
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Weka posted:This and the results of bombing campaigns targeting civilians STILL not sinking in just blow my mind. It's extremely basic human psychology that's been tested innumerable times, and yet If you have no consequences for your actions, there is no feedback loop, "Putler had his sham election with bogus numbers; it doesn't matter, who cares." Caring or thinking is a sign of weakness, better just ignore everything and say you are in control.
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Mar 17, 2024 23:13
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Nethalin posted:Hitler had broad popular support too. Checkmate. The funniest thing about this argument is that no, he didn't. The Nazis never won an outright majority, even after using incredible amounts of violence and voter intimidation. They still had to collude with Hindenburg to be allowed to form government, arresting most of the Communist party and some of the Social Democrats to stop them forming a counter-coalition.
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Mar 17, 2024 23:14
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Endman posted:The funniest thing about this argument is that no, he didn't. Broad popular support can be a plurality. 
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Mar 17, 2024 23:16
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Also, even if you moved to 1939-1940 when Hitler had high support....so what? Germany only surrendered after a long and dragged out fight, and while support waned in the end....it is pretty much after Germany itself was completely devastated after 6 years of war. So if Putler is at 85-87% support....how is the West proposing to defeat him and the Russian population? Have they got a plan to smash the largest country on Earth? It doesn't seem like the sanctions worked, the Ukrainians are getting wrecked, and the west is disorganized and not prepared for war. So you handed victory to Putler, and to all of Russia's extremely evil population on a plate, congratulations. Ardennes has issued a correction as of 23:27 on Mar 17, 2024 |
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Mar 17, 2024 23:25
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Endman posted:The funniest thing about this argument is that no, he didn't. TBH if there had been independent polling he probably would have done well between '36 and before Barbarossa went to poo poo. But that's not a defense of a society having broad popular support of something.. after all look at what most Israelis approve of. I think it says more about how there's no inherent good in "most people agree with something". Especially when captured by a fascist ideology. Putin having plausible democratic approval isn't some endorsement of Putin being great, because he uses his power to prevent a real opposition (including an opposition with teeth like a better Communist party). But this is why analysis should really be based on values and not majority thumbs up or thumbs down.
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Mar 17, 2024 23:28
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Horseshoe theory posted:Broad popular support can be a plurality. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9O94UTDAJQ
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Mar 17, 2024 23:29
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my bony fealty posted:Holy poo poo, silent flash mobs. That's EPIC. Putin will not recover from that. quote:The sight of his enemies celebrating and ordinary Russians smiling as they joined flash mob protests will infuriate the Russian president. His post-election “victory” shampanskoye no doubt tasted less sweet on Sunday. lol "thats not victory wine"
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Mar 17, 2024 23:35
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I wish I had popular broad support
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Mar 17, 2024 23:36
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flash mobs are highly effective against rightist dictators
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Mar 17, 2024 23:37
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putin is very shaken hes currently crying in the bathroom
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Mar 17, 2024 23:39
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Isentropy posted:It's so cool we're probably going to grab as many of these Nazi concentration camps dipshits to Canada where they'll live really loving close to me and bitch about how Black British people are n-? Freelands last move before she fucks off to Virginia thats going to be the entirety of frosted flake's neighborhood. People with heroic anticommunist resistance tattoos asking him when he is moving back to the mother continent.
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Mar 17, 2024 23:43
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Endman posted:The funniest thing about this argument is that no, he didn't. That Sanders meme about giving your money to the establishment, but it's Hindenburg
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Mar 17, 2024 23:43
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genericnick posted:That Sanders meme about giving your money to the establishment, but it's Hindenburg Who's Kurt von Schleicher in this analogy? 
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Mar 17, 2024 23:45
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FirstnameLastname posted:lol "thats not victory wine" Putinology is the funniest thing to come out of the Western anti-Russia derangement
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Mar 17, 2024 23:46
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Weka posted:This and the results of bombing campaigns targeting civilians STILL not sinking in just blow my mind. It's extremely basic human psychology that's been tested innumerable times, and yet We've talked about this before, but Ukraine is probably aware behind closed doors that the civilian strikes aren't decreasing support for the war within Russia but are instead hardening it. The real calculus is to try and goad Russia into a retaliation large enough that it'll convince NATO to go in directly.
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Mar 17, 2024 23:47
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Nethalin posted:TBH if there had been independent polling he probably would have done well between '36 and before Barbarossa went to poo poo. But that's not a defense of a society having broad popular support of something.. after all look at what most Israelis approve of. Perhaps it isn't that he is great but he is the only choice really the country has, and that the Russian opposition didn't die because of Putin, but wiped themselves out by having a message that didn't appeal to anyone. If their message had resonance in the Russian population, there would be some sign of it beyond a couple dozen people in some flash mobs. It is obvious that Russians were going out and voting and that there was a divide in society. As far as how evil they are and fascist etc... 1. the US is openly promoting fascism so it is just sort of a draw at best, and 2. okay even if they are, so? The Russians don't look like they are cracking, and there are 144 million of them with a geared up war machine, what is the plan here? If you want to just say, most of the world is just fascists in a slugfest, fine, but it isn't going to change the situation on the ground. VoicesCanBe posted:We've talked about this before, but Ukraine is probably aware behind closed doors that the civilian strikes aren't decreasing support for the war within Russia but are instead hardening it. The real calculus is to try and goad Russia into a retaliation large enough that it'll convince NATO to go in directly. NATO not even close to being ready to fight a war: so the plan is to unite the Russian population, then have some NATO tripwire forces get bonked in the head, and I guess move the capital to Vilnius? Ardennes has issued a correction as of 23:56 on Mar 17, 2024 |
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Mar 17, 2024 23:51
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Bombing civilians has to have useful strategic goals, otherwise Cutris LeMay was incorrect and burning 100,000 Japanese civilians to death in Tokyo was a largely pointless act of spite and not materially useful to the war effort and that can't possibly be the case.
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Mar 17, 2024 23:52
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Ardennes posted:NATO not even close to being ready to fight a war: so the plan is to unite the Russian population, then have some NATO tripwire forces get bonked in the head, and I guess move the capital to Vilnius? Yeah I never said it was a good plan lol. Ukraine is hoping, really just wishcasting, that NATO is this magic force of omnipotence that will instant win any war by virtue of their awesomeness. Every sign from the past two years is the exact opposite - NATO is desperately ill-prepared for peer warfare.
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Mar 17, 2024 23:56
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Ardennes posted:Perhaps it isn't that he is great but he is the only choice really the country has, and that the Russian opposition didn't die because of Putin, wiped themselves out. If their message had resonance in the Russian population, there would be some sign of it beyond a couple dozen people in some flash mobs. It is obvious Russians were going out and voting and that there was little divide in society. I think you have to literally believe that Putin's plan is "first Ukraine, then Europe" - and because WW2 is the most recent biggest event in European historical memory, then every leader is Hitler and every situation is WW2. Whereas this should be judged more like a Great Power proxy conflict from the 18th and 19th century.
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Mar 17, 2024 23:58
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The stakes are just as high as defeating Hitler! Only not high enough to actually mobilise a state-led defence industry. No, that would interfere too much with the free market and that's worse than Hitler!
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Mar 18, 2024 00:01
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But hey over half of NATO countries are finally doing the 2% GDP towards military thing though. And when Ukraine loses, maybe that percentage will go up. Could they get their war? Or NATO will fall apart when AFD wins in Germany and the entire continent veers into right nationalism that has no interest in sacrificing their economies for Anglo world dominance.
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Mar 18, 2024 00:01
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A lot of NATO planning seems like video game logic. Do X. Result Y. Reason Y will occur as a result of action X? Who the gently caress knows but do X anyway. Somewhere along the line the key variables changed so X no longer results in Y. But in a video game it's just a magic if/then box, so it'll keep spitting out result Y regardless. Real life works the same right?
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Mar 18, 2024 00:03
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Nethalin posted:I think you have to literally believe that Putin's plan is "first Ukraine, then Europe" - and because WW2 is the most recent biggest event in European historical memory, then every leader is Hitler and every situation is WW2. Whereas this should be judged more like a Great Power proxy conflict from the 18th and 19th century. A WW2 style war would be the only way to take him and the Russians out beyond nukes, otherwise, just hoping for old age and he wouldn't hand pick a successor. In reality, Putin is more just a right-wing economically liberal politician from the 90s that has a bit of a politically ride as he eventually had to accept a certain degree of economic centralization to have political independence. At this point though, the population is locked in, such as any other nation during war time, and to beat Putin, you got to beat them as well.
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Mar 18, 2024 00:04
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Reading Good Luck, Yukikaze and this prompted some thoughts on Ukraine. I guess replace JAM with orcs… 
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Mar 18, 2024 00:05
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DancingShade posted:A lot of NATO planning seems like video game logic. I keep pressing the liberalisation button, but the economy keeps getting worse??? Paradox pls fix
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Mar 18, 2024 00:05
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Everyone's already talking about the new generation of frontoviks going into politics anyway.
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Mar 18, 2024 00:06
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Ardennes posted:A WW2 style war would be the only way to take him and the Russians out beyond nukes, otherwise, just hoping for old age and he wouldn't hand pick a successor. In reality, Putin is more just a right-wing economically liberal politician from the 90s that has a bit of a politically ride as he eventually had to accept a certain degree of economic centralization to have political independence. It's a stupid thing to even contemplate, a WW2 style war results in a WW3 style war.
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Mar 18, 2024 00:07
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Nethalin posted:It's a stupid thing to even contemplate, a WW2 style war results in a WW3 style war. Exactly. If you present a nuclear armed power with an existential threat, they're not going to just throw up their hands and say "well, we lost I guess!"
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Mar 18, 2024 00:09
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I doubt it would even take an existential threat for the US to start pushing the whopper button
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Mar 18, 2024 00:09
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Endman posted:The funniest thing about this argument is that no, he didn't. Yes, -ish. We've discussed this before, but Hitler and the Nazis had active to passive support within Germany, however you want to frame that, pretty much until the fall-winter of 1944. There was a book recently about the myth of the Gestapo, because of course postwar every German and their mother said they couldn't save the Jews, they were afraid of the Gestapo. They had to use Polish slave labour at their factory, they were afraid of the Gestapo. They couldn't help but work at a ministry where they oversaw the deportation of people to the camps, they were afraid of the Gestapo etc etc etc. It turns out that, like all Nazi bureaucracy, the Gestapo was a loving mess and had hardly any employees, most of whom were not very good investigators. They were helped by Germans gleefully informing on each other, but mostly by Germans supporting the war until it seemed lost and the Combined Bomber Offensive hit its stride after Normandy. On top of that, it turns out for most Germans, the Gestapo was more than happy to look the other way or issue slaps on the wrist. This is reflexively hard to believe, but remember that no evidence has ever been produced that any German soldier was ever punished for refusing to participate in the Holocaust, including soldiers in the Special Police Battalions. We have to rethink what we believe about the Third Reich, and that of course was informed by the "Good Germans" testifying at denazification hearings postwar. The Gestapo tortured and executed people without hesitation in the occupied territories but not in Germany. By way of example, during the only public protest against the Holocaust to ever take place, in Berlin during February and March 1943, the German wives of Jewish men being deported not only weren't punished, they won. The Nazis released their husbands. A lot of people don't know about this, and the reason is pretty troubling. Since protest against the policies of the Nazis worked, this creates a lot of problems for the Germans collectively.We have the Gestapo reports from Berlin in those months, and cabinet notes, and it turns out that the Nazis were extremely sensitive to public opinion. If the Nazis were sensitive to public opinion, released Jews that were being deported, and didn't punish, or really even consider punishing, the protesters in this instance, you have to reconsider what you know about the Third Reich. The story that Hitler, the SS, and the Gestapo were either doing things the German public didn't know about, or the German public being so terrified of them they couldn't do anything is very important to postwar West Germany. If this protest worked, it seems that others would have as well, and that makes their absence very noticeable. How much of the Holocaust might have been averted if it was opposed by the German people? If the lack of opposition wasn't due to repression.. might it have been from support? We have other examples. For example, the Nazi euthanasia program was curtailed at several points by public opposition, regarding some categories of people. Mostly Great War veterans, to my recollection. Furthermore, Jewish veterans of the Great War were protected, and again we have notes from cabinet pointing out that this policy change was driven by the public response. Again, this should seem strange, because if the public was opposed to some categories of people being exterminated, and the Nazis responded to that... if the public also opposed the other categories that were... and that's the rub. You can call this active or passive support, but we know when the Germans protested, it worked. That leaves a chasm, all of the people who were exterminated that there was no public protest over. Finally, Nazi propaganda, it turns out, was not lying to the public about what was happening. Or overtly threatening them, "Big Brother is watching you", as it happens, continues to belong in the realm of fiction. A lot of people get that idea because they haven't actually looked at Nazi visual and written material. Nazi propaganda is not alien, off-putting or threatening, it's in fact very recognizable. It's advertising. After the war, the Germans claimed they had no idea etc etc, but Nazi propaganda around their major crimes against humanity, even though it was cloaked in euphemism, which all government PR remains still, was promotional material. Like for any government campaign, it was to elicit support. You see the problem? Not only were the Nazis sensitive to public opposition, they were trying to cultivate public support for what they were doing. That's a far cry from terrorizing a well-meaning German public into passivity. Germans knew about the disappearance of Jews from German society as a large government program in the same way that Americans knew about the New Deal, because it was directly advertised to them. Including huge amounts of propaganda celebrating progress! The government anxiously fretting over the reception of their ad campaign trumpeting that 90% of Jews had been removed from German society, and hoping to get enough public awareness of their success to move the needle on support (positively, it goes without saying) is very hard to square with the average German being totally unaware that anything was happening at all! Only, of course, post war, they had to pretend they didn't, or were against it. Which brings us back to the postwar accounts of not knowing anything and not being able to do anything about it, both of which were false. However, in the interests of West Germany resisting communism or whatever the gently caress, several comforting lies about the Third Reich were worked out in West German society, which we've talked about before. That led to the protests in Berlin, instead of being remembered and celebrated as a heroic act of protest , being downplayed. The rescue of the Jews was, frankly, embarrassing. This is part of a pattern. West German historiography, and English language historiography of German resistance to Nazism, with the exception of the conservative aristocrats and army officers of the July Plot, severely downplays its success. There are two reasons. First, of course, is because socialists and communists were the main opponents of Nazism from the start of Nazism, to the open revolts in April-May 45, and of course the DDR after. This is inconvenient for the reasons you'd expect, and we've talked about before, both in Germany and France, Belgium, Greece etc. Germans did oppose Nazism, and did meet success, but many of those that did were communists and socialists which there was a particular reason to denigrate or ignore after 1991. Horseshoe theory, double genocide theory, and the hilarious demonization of the DDR, "the Stasi is worse than the Gestapo" was a plot point in a John le Carré novel, have only continued since the end of the Cold War, The Lives of Others would be an example of that. There seems to be some sort of tacit agreement to only publish negative things about the DDR in English, at least outside of very niche academic monographs. Second, liberal psychopathology aside, there is a motivation to focus on the tragic student heroes of the White Rose, rather than any successes. As above, yes, because all of the other opposition was socialist or communist, generally speaking, but also because drawing attention to successes through simple peaceful street protests puts liberals in an impossible position. Chiefly, if protests could stop the Nazis from something as extreme as deporting Jews for extermination without negative consequences for those involved, it draws attention to the fact that basically no one opposed them on other occasions. You see? What were German liberals doing when they could have protested? So, they highlight the example where the opposition achieved nothing, the students were executed, it was all very sad, and mostly non-ideological. I'm not saying the White Rose was wrong, just that they've been made heroes for a reason and it's because liberals can lay claim to sharing their beliefs, unlike the socialists and communists, and that liberals can point to them as a reason for the general inaction of the liberals in German society. Incidentally, evidence is that public sympathy for Hitler personally, and the government generally, increased after the July Plot. Which is the opposite of what you'd expect from how the story is told in English historiography. I won't get into it here, but making heroes out of the July Plotters and their sympathizers has more problems than I can count, and again, has a lot more to do with the ruling coalition of West Germany than anything else. Junkers, particularly displaced East Prussian ones, and army officers, were important to the structure of West German society, so just like the liberals got the White Rose, they got #Resistance heroes too. Their opposition to the Nazis is overstated, their reasons for opposing the Nazis are not as popularly depicted, and of course their opposition to specific Nazi policies like the Final Solution, or even the war, certainly the war against the Soviet Union, was pretty much non existent, beyond the criticism that those things were not being done well enough. All of this to say, "Totalitarianism" as constructed by Arendt, and the whole traditional narrative of the Third Reich where "Good Germans" were just as oppressed as anyone else, living in a total surveillance state where they could be killed at any moment, which has passed into pop culture, 1984, whatever, it was all a lie. The Nazis did not have the resources to repress their population, and we know from their own internal communications that they were not willing to carry out policies against public opposition. Truthfully, they didn't face public opposition, they had public support. It just so happened that we needed that same public to fight the communists, so we lied on their behalf. E: You can actually see how big a problem this was in the 1960's - 80's where the DDR was constantly humiliating West Germany by revealing the sordid details of Nazis in the West German government, revealing some company or another's participation in the Holocaust and current holdings seized from Jewish families, and otherwise criticizing the whole foundation West Germany was built on. Which was considered an insidious threat almost identically to Russian Disinformation now. East German publications were censored, students were surveilled to make sure they weren't in possession of this dangerous Red propaganda etc etc. the US and West Germany made diplomatic protests and everything else, but essentially it was a real problem that West Germany was constantly getting dunked on by the truth being revealed whenever they had a spat with the DDR. The response I want to zero in on was the hysteria in response to it, which should be familiar by now. DJJIB-DJDCT has issued a correction as of 00:30 on Mar 18, 2024 |
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Mar 18, 2024 00:13
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The Pope was 100% right that Ukraine will never be at a better position to negotiate than they are at now. That old rear end dude has way better brains than Demented Joe.
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Mar 18, 2024 00:17
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