Thanks for the response. Do you and your fellow citizens think the US is actually a moral country? I’m asking seriously.
I’m in America and I believe many or most people in the West believe the only things that makes a country healthy is GDP. They also believe that nearly every country on earth is “s—- hole.”
2 Likes
It depends on how it is distributed. This is a misleading mathematical calculation, because in reality a country may have a much larger gross domestic product, but the profits go to a small circle of people, but most of the population lives in poverty. In other countries, however, the gross domestic product as a final value may be lower, but distributed so that most people have a good and high standard of living.
There are different people of course. As i mentioned earlier, we have lots of “USSR leftovers” here also, who hate US because US was demonized in that time. I remember stories from when i was a kid, that it was believed that bodybuilding is American gay thing. And it was believed that if you train with barbells you are ok, but if you use dumbbells you will turn into american gay bodybuilder.
All the American music was banned, and plagiarized. There is a Russian band called Aria, which is a complete Iron Maiden rip-off - just stolen songs.
Most our bands in 70s and 80s were a ripoff of something American - the look and the sound. Those people had contact to get the illegal American stuff and just plagiarize it. 99% of people never saw an american magazine or hear an american song. It was all demonized, banned - you could get killed having that stuff.
So there are these people who still live in these lies and yes, they think that US started all wars in the world. Blew up the towers, invented Ebola and now are poisoning us all with Covid.
Normal people, however, are different. Also the age is different. When i was a kid USSR was starting to crumble and when i was like 10, i already got to see some of American stuff… i remember watching wrestling, and some movies.
We idolize US because at least in the movies - they all had houses. HUGE houses. And cars… We have 4-6 siblings stuffed into 1 room.
In movies they eat cereal every morning. When i was a kid, i begged for 1 bag of cereal. I got it for my birthday. I ate like 2-3 pieces a day. Definetly not a bowl.
In movies those kids played outside. We couldnt because we would get stabbed by russian kids or just hit by car because no one gives a shit if some random city kid dies.
Since our childhood we see all these perfect people - with their houses, cereal and toast for breakfast, pickup trucks and working in huge tower buildings, and being able to afford burgers and hotdogs daily.
You cant even imagine how much a Eastern European kid was ready to do for a single Cheeseburger, when they finally arrived in the mid-90s.
So yes, we have somewhat screwed up thinking that Americans are in some way perfect people with perfect lives, especially when you see people like Obama and compare him to our president, whos most famous quotes of 2021 were : “People who will die of Covid wont get to celebrate Christmas” and after getting the vaccine : “I feel very good. I cant feel anything”. Not sure if translated it sounds just as lame as in latvian but basically he is fucking retarded.
Most people in here at some point were dreaming about going to US. For people here, America is the ultimate dream which most will never even see, let alone live there. We actually even have this saying or urban slang we use, when something is really good we say : “Yea, this is like in America”.
For example if a construction worker needs to do the job good, his partner will say : “We need to do this like in America”. Or when you buy a new comfy chair and first sit on it, you say : “Like in America”.
So yea, we are like some trolls under the bridge who look for morality and help towards America.
In fact, when USSR colapsed, we didnt have capitalism. Lots of American social scientists came here to fix the economy and start-up the capitalism somehow. I guess some of that worshiping also comes from the fact that some people remember that it was Americans who kickstarted what was left of our economy after USSR.
EDIT : i guess what also says alot about this topic is how much we know about America… We know your history, your presidents. Lots of people know your states and capitals of the states. So we have this weird intellectual connection - i know a lot about i place i have never been in, and it makes that feeling stronger that that place is something special.
In our news we also get news about daily American stuff. I never had an idea - why, but its always there. Obama this, Obama that, Trump invades White House, etc. America is world-wide. Everyone kind of lives it, even tho has never seen it 
5 Likes
In our country, perhaps, it was only formally observed not to preach American culture during the communist era. However, there were only American movies in the cinemas and Western music in the discos, understand English music. American films also predominated on television. Yes, there were Russian ones, but guess what people were having fun with. It was not just films about the Russians that were distributed. I remember the Empire retaliating and the Return of the Jedi tickets were over for a week ahead.
1 Like
Just an FYI, Iron Maiden is from the UK. They have some pretty intense fans, and you didn’t directly say they were from the US, but just mentioning them with US music might be a trigger lol.
Is this what it was called in Ukraine? If so, I like it. In the US, it was called “The Empire Strikes Back”.
Back to the topic.
I believe we should not interfere. We have already meddled in other countries for far too long, and considering the US is rapidly going downhill, this is not a time to do so anyway.
Despite being a sensitive person, at this point in time, I no longer want to be emotionally blackmailed into having to care about one calamity after another involving people thousands of miles away, who I don’t know, and am not related to. And these sorts of things are coming up over and over, instances in which American people browbeat other Americans into caring about things they cannot even correct. I’m not God, and we’re not even designed to truly care for more than a certain number of people! I care about my family first, then my friends, then my community, then my country. After that, my care is diluted further and further. So I don’t want my country and its people and its resources used for others at this point in time.
I don’t want any innocent people to die or be hurt, or even have their quality of life reduced. But no, I don’t think we should be involved.
3 Likes
Yes, I may have mispronounced the name of the film. I have nothing to do with Ukraine or Russia. And this term “Slavs”, which is constantly used in space, is a complete nonsense. Regarding the language - yes, there is a Slavic language group and the similarity in the language is the common link. But many of the people in the respective countries, as an ethno genesis from many so-called Slavic states, have nothing in common with each other in many cases. For example, the Russians and Ukrainians are very far from the “Slavic” Balkans, who, for example, are much closer to the Greeks and Italians in studying the Y chromosome. I don’t know how familiar you are, but research shows that Russians are largely ethnic. To put it bluntly, heirs of the Vikings. But who has what historical background is irrelevant in this case. We live in reality.
So no sanctions, military hardware/software support, intelligence support, etc? Or is your redline sending American personnel into the line of fire?
What are the implications (short and long term) of Russia facing no resistance from the international community for invading Ukraine?
Yes and no. You guys are Slavicized Turkic (not Turkish) tribesmen but the vast majority of Slavs outside of the Balkans are actual Slavs.
Invading the next country on the list. And China taking notes and slowly pushing and prodding around Taiwan and the South China Sea.
It must be noted that this most recent crisis around Ukraine - where the war with Russia has been going on for eight years now - was purely Putin’s decision. He saw the chaos with the Afghanistan withdrawal, concluded that the US has a indecisive president, that the country is obsessed with navel gazing via a (virtual) culture war and that it’s the best time to strike.
He’s playing a weak hand, but he’s got an army and he’s bored. I mean the last part literally. He’s thoroughly disinterested with the daily running of Russia for years now and at seventy wants to ensure his legacy as Vlad the Restorer.
2 Likes
There’s a simple reason for that…
I say this over and over -the Chinese are terrible fighters. China is lucky they have too many people and too much territory to conquer, because otherwise China would’ve been subjugated by the Japanese a loong time ago. (plus Japan having the misfortune to be an island nation lol)
Personally, I lay very, very long odds against China ever physically invading Taiwan; “invading” via subterfuge, maybe.
Maybe we’ll have another famous prediction to attribute to The Simpsons.
1 Like
Nothing.
I’m not sure, but I’m open to learning people’s speculations and what they’re based on.
How do you know this?
Should this concern me, seriously? Does this have something to do with us?
Where are you getting this from? Again, I’m asking seriously. How do you know? Have you resided in Russia?
American so-called “elites” do not care one bit about the running of America and I know this because I live here and resided in a NYC borough for 37 of my 42 years.
1 Like
Here are my 2C (as a Chinese person)
- As nuclear powers, neither China, the US nor Russia will go to war with each other. I suspect that all these governments are beating the war drum to improve ratings and distracting their respective populations from internal issues
- The caveat to 1 is that there will likely be proxy wars (ie iran is the new afghanistan)
- In the case of China, idk if US companies are dumb enough to want to risk losing the Chinese market. US companies seem to have a lot of influence over the government. I have much less faith in the Chinese government to put economics over politics. So long as there’s trade, there’s not going to be war
2 Likes
Right. I highly, highly doubt we are going to war. Again, this situation is yet one more thing for some Americans to emotionally browbeat and emotionally blackmail other Americans.
“You don’t care bro?! I can’t believe you don’t care! We’re headed for World War III, nuclear war this time!”
“Vladimir Putin is a bad guy. Trust me, he is. Don’t believe anything he says.”
“They’re genociding the Ughyr Muslims!” This one’s interesting considering how many Americans speak of Muslims as subhumans, wish the worst upon them, and call several ME countries “s—holes.”
When I hear of all this misery, and other similar miseries, I wonder, “OK… umm… like… what am I supposed to do or think of all this? And where are people getting their information and assessments?”
1 Like
One of these things is not like the others…
There’s a lot of people who can explain the extent of what the CCP is doing to the Uighurs better than I, but I don’t believe genocide is the wrong word for what’s taking place.
China’s ally N. Korea is even more horrifying. It’s real.
Muslims in the USA also have subgroups who speak of people like you or I as sub-humans, but I don’t really care about them, or any of my other neighbors, so long as we all curse each other silently.
Put it into action, either directly or through public policy, and that’s another issue.
You can add it to your list of considerations when making a decision who to vote for. You can also become directly involved in politics, either by running for office or helping someone else’s campaign.
1 Like
I’m not nearly as read-up on foreign policy as I am domestic, but I think you have a solid prediction. The problem with solid predictions about Great Power conflicts is that, historically-speaking, they always don’t play out. There were people who predicted war with Japan, but nobody predicted the actual Pearl Harbor attack as it was executed. And then everyone is naturally shocked when something completely bonkers takes place.
In hindsight we know so much more about just how wacky Imperial Japan’s actual practice of governance and strategic decision-making was, all paired with the many admirable virtues of the Japanese people. We can look back at the many converging historical and geopolitical currents that somehow planted an idea that Japan could win a war with the USA into the minds of enough Japanese with enough influence to set their completely bonkers plan into action.
All it takes are a few people making the call to fight, and then it’s on.
I just see it as saber rattling - I really hope Putin isn’t stupid enough to actually invade. Russia constantly does this on a smaller scale (military exercises near the border, probing air defences, cyber attacks, etc), so this just seems to be a bigger version of that. The Crimean annexation had a very different MO, where they tried to avoid all responsibility and basically pinned it all on pro-Russian locals (“how can you prove all these special forces dudes who appeared out of nowhere are ours? they aren’t wearing any insignia!”). A very obvious build up of troops followed by a full scale invasion with no obvious provocation would be really damn stupid.
I predict they’ll sit on the border shifting troops around for a few weeks and try squeeze out some kind of demands while projecting the “Russia strong” image on local media. Then everyone will forget about it and move on.
1 Like
Because Aleksandr Dugin spelled out all of this in his works. He’s the official ideologue of Putin’s siloviki.
I don’t know. Does it? You’ve got a distinct possibility of more and more assertive China controlling the virtual domain i.e. the digital world simply by leveraging their size/power and pushing Big Tech down the path of least resistance, while the soon-to-be minions Russia regularly threaten war in the physical realm. The one-two combos of physical/digital hegemony threats could be the defining motif of the next 10-15 years.
From my life, I guess. I always chuckle when the Americans claim that Russia is an “enigma” or a “mystery” (h/t Winston Churchill). Not it fucking isn’t. From the times of Ivan Grozny (and especially Peter the Great) it was very transparent about what it is, it’s just no one bothered to look for themselves.
1 Like
At a crude level, I would say Putin, like most unfairly elected tyrants, is a melomaniac who wants to leave an indelible stain on history. Sadly there are others like him such as Xi in China and Kim in North Korea. History repeats itself.
At a pragmatic level, we live in a world of checks and balances with political posturing and military displays of power designed to deter others from interfering with another’s plans. Putin has now played his hand here and those troops are only going to be pulled back if he can convince the Russian people he has somehow pulled off a great political victory. Is there a way for that to happen? Perhaps, e.g. an off the record guarantee Ukraine won’t be allowed to join NATO for the next 10 years.
The worst case scenario is that he decides to go further and finds some scurrilous reason to attack a NATO country. That is the moment when NATO has to show its hand and decide if an attack on one is really an attack on all.
1 Like