This is what’s going on. I really don’t understand how it’s not very obvious to everyone that the entire Republican party has been infiltrated by the Russians.
But that’s all that matters, since the party has become such a cult of blind obedience and “if you’re not with us you’re against us” hive mind that even if there are any of them with a shred of decency, they don’t dare step out of line and speak up, lest they immediately get ousted.
And that is just silly. If the decent ones all stepped out of line the MAGAts would have zero power left. The only thing to assume is that the entire party is psychotic. If a Nazi sits at the table and the others dont reject him or leave themselves, the whole table is Nazis
What If they haven’t really been “infiltrated”, though, in the conventional sense? What if they are deliberately inviting the Russian Influence in, because they like the Russian model of Capitalism better than ours?
I believe they are trying to build an Oligarchy here, on purpose, because they are planning to become the oligarchs.
I’m kinda more in this camp. I think Russia and the GOP are working together (kinda hard to live through 2016 without believing that on some level) but does that mean that Russian intelligence has “flipped” the GOP? I don’t think so.
I think it’s more of a convergent goals kinda situation. I think one of the things that the GOP wants to do to American politics is turn it into a open moneymaking venture. Not saying that it isn’t defacto already there, but it is still looked down upon and technically criminal behavior to accept bribes and the like. Matters of enforcement aside.
Not only is that kind of blatent corruption already prevalent in Russian politics, Russia for there part would love a united states that they could just bribe to get off their back. The GOP is trying to comodify American politics and by consequence American power abroad and Russia is looking to be their number one customer.
Does that mean that Trump gets marching orders daily from Putin? No, probably not. There’s probably some level of communication between them, but I doubt any of that takes the form of any kind of directives or anything.
Nah, I don’t think so, they’re compromised. Lindsay Graham is the perfect example of that. He was almost a decent human until he went all in on Trump, he didn’t go there willingly.
Lindsay Graham was never a decent person. I hate Trump but he’s done some amusing stuff over the last few years. Completely making Cruz and Graham debase themselves comes to mind
Lindsey Graham was never a decent human being. He just had bouts of openly verbalized rationality previously. Now he simply keeps it all to himself only openly toeing what the party line changes to.
It is obvious to everyone, which is why several key democracies around the world are funnelling billions into the only country actively fighting Russia. The US is using it’s own intelligence and command functions to help guide Ukraine in what to fight and where. Russia is being overthrown and their arrogant invasion is how Putin will lose a tremendous amount of credibility worldwide.
Russian military tech has been proven to be substandard when compared to literally any other arms manufacturing nation except China and India. German, Swedish, UK, French, and US weapons are being used against Russia to incredible effect and showing other national leaders how ineffective Russian weapons are. This means far fewer nations will field Russian tech and gear.
Russian without the illusion of power will have some serious internal upsets, like the recent Wagner and rebel uprisings. Whoever replaces Putin will not renew those conservative back channels because those relationship are contingent on being an international asshole, which a new leader can’t afford to be.
So don’t worry about the long term effects since Russia may not be here for long. Everyone does see Russia being an international asshole and it’s the reason they are losing their war.
Don't forget that Russia still has some very powerful assets, like nuclear material, nuclear technology, and a veto at the UN. And Russia's native amounts of oil, fertilizer, and grain means it's really hard for a lot of smaller countries to side against Russia.
The current sanctions allow many of these countries to turn a nice profit by reselling russian products and energy ressources. The western countries are aware, but hesistant to enforce the sanctions there too, as otherwise it’d cause more conflict.
The US has a lost a lot of soft power over the course of the Trump presidency and the key benefactors are Russia and China. If the US had more credibility it could convince more countries to stand on Ukraines side.
Some argued that the Biden administration was putting the interests of Ukraine ahead of domestic concerns.
Not really, but that would still be better than putting Russia’s interests ahead of domestic concerns as the GOP has been doing for quite some time now.
GOP has literally betrayed the entire nation for Russian money. Then they LARP and pretend they care about the cost of Ukraine. Like the Republicans would ever put that money into something like universal healthcare anyway.
It isn’t about where it is being spent, but that it is being spent. They are told to see it as unnecessary spending that’s taking tax payer’s dollars away. They, of course, conveniently forget how much they blew in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mainly because the amount spent on Ukraine is a drop in the sea compared to what they spent.
I’m legitimately so confused why so many Republicans seem to hate Ukraine (other than the politicians being in the pocket of Putin).
The cost of U.S involvement in Ukraine is only 60 billion so far, only 2/3 of the MONTHLY budget of the U.S military and I swear to god I hear more people bitching it about than Afghanistan, which cost 2.1 trillion dollars and is literaly 35 times greater than what we spent in Ukraine.
Even if you were extremely selfish and didn’t care for saving a country and it’s citizens from genocide it’s in our best interest to defeat Russia. For the last 2 decades the Russian federation has been intentionally sabotaging Europe and the west in general. From hybrid warfare, online propaganda, poisonings and assassinations, destroying deep sea infrastructure, of course cutting energy to Europe and even more.
I’m so tired of this dumb shit idea spreading like wildfire amongst conservative circles and how selfish people are for believing it.
It’s also really confusing because even if you don’t have any particular affinity for Ukraine, even a Republican must acknowledge that functionally Russia and China are only things that are even remotely close to peer adversaries, and any military hardware we send Ukraine is going to get dumped directly into damaging that adversary. It’s basically one of the most efficient military investments you could get right now. If you’re even a bit pro military, you should be pro Ukraine.
I think there are two factors. First, during the 2016 election, Russia hacked the DNC servers and released the data (heavily salted with disinformation, I’m sure) to damage Clinton’s campaign. Less well known is that they also hacked the RNC servers. That data was never released. I am quite comfortable in assuming that there was some real dirt in there on some Republican officeholders. It would certainly explain the complete about face on Trump that many of them had. One day they were publicly ripping into Trump and the next they were sucking up to him. Putin having dirt on people like Gaetz, etc., could also explain some of their current attitudes on Ukraine.
The second factor is more about the Republican voters but applies to some of the more insane Republican office holders too. Trump was publicly calling on Russia to go after his political enemies during the 2016 election which one would assume would alienate anti-Russian Republican voters. It didn’t though. Those that drank the Trump Flavor-Aid chose to support Trump no matter what. They went all in on the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and since Russia was going after Hillary, Russia was now their friend. There were literally people walking around Trump rallies wearing shirts that said, “Better Russian than Democrat.”
This attitude still holds today. These profoundly deluded people really think that supporting Russia and opposing the Democratic administration’s agenda is somehow patriotic. It is frankly terrifying.
Don’t forget the culture war stuff. The Russian Orthodox Church is more socially conservative. (You can see this in Poland too.) Homosexuality is punished, women are more “traditional”, etc. And Putin projects a cult-of-personality that people like, even if they have arobber-baron oligarchy.
Repubs look at that stuff fondly, they’re titillated.
Because uncle Donny and Putin are friends and he was going to let them roll through. Russia helped build/fund the MAGA movement to sow division in America. Of course they don’t support Ukraine.
Aid for Ukraine is almost entirely flowing through DoD’s budget (DoD sends weapons from storage, then buys new ones - this also helps end-run Dept of State export rules). DoD acquisitions don’t shut down with the rest of the government, they never have. Ergo, military aid to Ukraine will continue unabated through any shutdown.
Anyone in DC who’s surprised by this has no idea how a government shutdown works.
I’d go further and say they don’t know how countries work. A government shutdown is really insane to me, but shutting down the military would be just straight up destroying the country.
A lot of the billions of dollars in aid is our old equipment from the 90s that was taking up room in storage and costing us money to maintain. Not having to maintain old vehicles is a net savings minus the cost of transporting them.
Well that equipment will be replaced though. Just as Russia is digging out out their T-55s from storage the US military likes to have the capability to do something similar if things get desperate. Just with stuff that’s 30 years not 60 years old like Russia is doing.
But they’d need to replace their current equipment with new stuff, they’re current equipment will be put into storage.
And yeah they’d want to do this anyway as they don’t want to get into a situation like Russia where their stored equipment is 60 years old. So you’re kinda right, but if they’re replacing equipment a little sooner than planned then there’s a calculation for the cost that involves depreciation formulas and the like. Note this was the cause of that accounting error they had recently which was an insane amount of money. They didn’t misplace money or misplace equipment, they simply miscalculated the depreciation of the old equipment.
So there is a cost despite it being old equipment. It’s not strictly correct to say it’s free, though it would be even more incorrect to say it’s the same cost as new equipment. The cost is somewhere in between, and it’s complicated enough to place a value on it that the DoD screwed it up.
People think everything stops during a shutdown. Not true essential employees are still required to report to work while non essentials sit at home because Republicans live shutting the government down.
My mom was bitching about this last night…after supporting efforts by the US & NATO when Putin first went in.
Now we need to stop sending money over there, it’s not our responsibility, let Europe deal with it, get rid of NATO, etc etc etc. Apparently if the US stops sending aid, we could feed every hungry child & house every homeless veteran in “our country” and take care of “our people”.
I told her those problems existed before 2022 and we didn’t fix them then, so this doesn’t really affect that now.
“But we could! If we wanted to!”
Well, yeah, that’s the root of the problem - we don’t want to. Ukraine is irrelevant to that argument.
I just figured these were the new MAGA/Fox talking points & changed the subject.
I remember reading about it when everything started, but I didn’t think to bring it up at the time. We fight a lot & disagreeing with her gives me a ton of anxiety.
Even with the most cynical and selfish geopolitical view, this is a great example of “penny wise pound foolish”. How many Active Duty US military personnel have died in that conflict? Zero.
If Russia were allowed to conquer Ukraine, the western border of NATO would be Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, then Russia’s next incursion into these nations would mean US military bodies in harms way. Today, the only thing we have to do is provide the weapons the USA spent over the last 70 years designed to defeat Russians to Ukrainians that will use them. This is the cheapest and most effective war is US history.
There are massive economic benefits to USA in the years ahead:
The USA is emptying is mothballed 1970 otherwise out-of-date era military gear so that we don’t have to pay to maintain it
The US government will be buying new modern replacements for our stockpiles which means massive economics boost to raw materials producers, designers, and manufacturers. All of that spending generates taxable income, creates jobs, and increases our industrial capacity for export markets (which are also replacing old Russian gear or buying new gear to defend against an aggressive Russia)
Russia has had a geopolitical grip on Europe and Asian for decades because of energy needs. Ukraine has very large oil and gas reserves and right on Europe and Asia’s front doorstep, with already existing pipeline infrastructure. Ukraine is a functioning democracy that is a ready made replacement to the totalitarian Russian.
Economic stability in Europe and Asia is paramount to the USA’s continued economic growth. Russia destabilizing both by holding energy hostage hurts everyone.
Call me old fashioned,
I will call you old fashioned, circa 1914. That isolation and non-interventionist idea in the USA made Europe spend at least 3 more years the decimation of WWI before the US got involved. WWII, where 291,557 American soldiers, sailors, and marines died, was a direct consequence of the long devastation of WWI. So when you’re complaining about a war in Ukraine that we only have to pay a bill without spilling our blood, I call you short sighted.
But that’s just me.
Your money ideas are perfect for personal finance, however that same logic doesn’t work at geopolitical scales.
The Republicans really want to leave Ukraine to Russia, they're just waiting on the messaging to convert enough of their base to make it politically feasible to do so.
You’re suggesting cutting funding to Ukraine. That conflict isn’t a Netflix subscription you can put on pause for a month so that you can make your car payment. Planning and logistics on that level takes months. Cutting off funding would have drastic consequences.
That’s a risk I’m willing to take. All the positive things you listed have already been accomplished anyway. Europe can clean up the crumbs without us.
Glad you are willing to risk other peoples lives, family and freedom because of 5 shitbird Republicans who were going to vote no on any budget because their dear leader wants them to obstruct normal functions of government.
Oh, well duh. Of course you have to pay into it, even if you don’t use it. I pay for roads I don’t drive on, police that don’t protect me, military jets I’ll never even be allowed to touch. I pay for the salaries of those dipshit Republicans who are holding this country hostage in order to undercut an investigation into the single most criminal presidency in our history. Don’t like it? Tough, grow the fuck up and quit whining out bullshit talking points from billionaires who are trying to shortchange the 99%.
Social security doesn’t work that way. You are supposed to get out of it what you put in to it. But in reality it has a negative rate of return. It is worse than putting the cash under your mattress.
That’s because it can also pay out in case you are disabled, so there is additional risk factors in there. Social security also needs to provide meaningful assistance at the time that you start taking from it, and needs to account for the inflation and changes in population demographics.
We pay more into it than the amount we get out as well, because the net benefit goes beyond the money you “get back” when you retire. I guess if you really don’t want to pay for social security, you can take the loudest and most annoying of republican advice and “if you don’t love it, leave it”. Good luck, you’re gonna need it. Otherwise, act like a functional adult and quit complaining about one of the few things we spend money on that actually helps people.
That’s not a feature, that’s a bug. I don’t love it, and I’m not leaving. I just kiss that money goodbye as if I was setting it on fire every month. In the mean time I’ll continue to employ Americans at my company, pay taxes, and plan for the eventual demise of all financial institutions, because if they don’t fail I’ll at-least still be in a better financial position than 99% of everyone else.
Clearly. You’ll join a long line of people before you making similar mistakes being “penny wise pound foolish”.
Europe can clean up the crumbs without us.
I’m concerned you aren’t even able to exhibit capacity for your own personal self interest. If you think that Europe could take that hit without drastic hits to the USA, you’re even more short sighted than I thought before. Those hits would drastically affect your daily life in the USA.
The government shutting down isn't for a reason. It's not a budgeting mechanism. It's literally just Republicans, yet again, refusing to authorize payment for the programs they already authorized.
They do this repeatedly and regularly to force additional concessions on programs they don't like. It's got nothing to do with money and everything to do with social control.
They created a budget. They allocated money to shit. They all voted and it got approved.
Now they have to authorize payment of the thing they already said they'd pay for. It's fucking asinine.
Is that less of a talking point for you? They lie, cheat, and steal to get crap cut in the original budget negotiations, and then they refuse to pay the bill until democrats agree to ridiculous hostage demands.
Very true. Russia doesn’t care what the US house thinks. They started the war after all. Russia continues to mobilize the war machine while the US fails to act decisively
The US fails to act decisively because they don’t want the war to ever end. Give Ukraine just enough support to keep the war going forever, until Russia is bankrupt.
Do you not see the contradiction in your statement or are ya just stupid. Russia going bankrupt could be considered a victory condition. Especially if concessions such as Crimea can be forced in a peace deal.
What might happen is they just run out of bodies and the country collapses into civil war, 1917 style. Petrostates don’t go bankrupt, they collapse violently.
The citizens? Irrelevent, unless it can gain notable strategic advantages IE Dresden. The Conscripts? Yes. They could turn their rifles at any time they couldve draft dodged but they didnt, they deserve same as the Japanese, Germans, and Italians during WW2.
Dude im a socialist, aint a liberal. I just happen to be bloodthirsty and of the opinion that a collapsed Russia is also a declawed Russia. They cant exactly conquer other nations if theyre balkanized.
Balkanization was a tragedy that resulted in immense suffering and immiseration of working people across the former USSR. It enabled total capitalist hegemony and ushered in our current new guilded age of inequality and imperialist superexploitation.
If you support making that even worse by destroying Russia and her people you aren’t a fucking socialist. You’re a Western chauvinist, supporting the US/NATO agenda of total domination over everything everywhere forever.
It aint chauvinism if I want to balkanize every country, just happens that Russia is at the top of that list . Also im ideologically descended from my ancestors philosophies, it just happens to align most closely with socialism.
Maybe im insane for wanting to devolve the world into a veritable Holy Roman Empire of political and national insanity. I just wish to see a second springtime of nations.
Yeah, my wants align with the US to a degree. But the thing is thats cause the US is a solid counter weight to empires like China, Russia, and India.
Also the collapse of the Russian state can be lessened in the same way the collapse of Yugoslavia was, just dont let the UN give orders. As for the nukes, so fucking what? The Ruskies have been using it as a scare tactic for so long I kinda want to see them do it. But lets be honest their probably in some way shape or form broken, worst case scenario we find out what it looks like when a nuke flies backwards and blows up its operators.
Aint a fucking psychopath just thoughly apathetic. As I stated I doubt their nukes even work let alone anything the nukes need to work. Also arent most of Russias nukes scattered about in semi-remote locations? Oh no a couple goats a bridge got vaporized.
Anyways the economic size is irrelevent. The fact of the matter is without an oppressive authoritarian oligarchy suppressing everything its possible that the newly created countries could have economic booms. For example damn near every country released after ww1.
Both your proposal of inaction and my proposal of action will do that. At a certain point it becomes a matter of statistics, which has the best outcome. And as loathed to admit he had a point Stalin put it best “A single death is a tragedy a million is a statistic”
The Ruskies could pull out and enter them any day now. Theyve had what 2 years and they havent. Well with the exception of those jokes they made where they kept all of the Donbas.
The fact of the matter is the ball for peace is on the Ruskie side of the court. They could go home any day they damned well wanted to, put it down as the Russian federation version of the Vietnam war.
They can’t, because Ukraine is promised NATO membership when the war is over. That’s kinda their own fault for escalating this into a war, but now that it’s on the table they can’t pull out. They kinda fucked themselves into never retreating from this stupid disaster and without some kind of peace deal that guarantees Ukraine doesn’t join NATO the war can never end. They’re fucked.
“Oh well they can just let NATO sit right on their border!”
America almost started WW3 over the Cuban missile crisis, having a hostile neighbor like that is an existential threat that can not be allowed.
The matter of NATO expanding into Ukraine is Russias fault, now its their problem. As I said the ball is in their court. Play stupid games win stupid prizes, actually this is kinda like a Greek Tragedy they feared what would happen and sowed the seeds to cause it to happen.
Regardless retreat is always an option, also theres fuck all stopping Ukraine from entering an alliance with the US seperate from NATO. Actually I say we do that, maybe Putin will have a stroke.
Always has been. We saw how Obama ran on an anti-war platform in the middle of the middle east wars. Then he continued and expanded the wars after being elected.
It's only homophobic if you think sucking dick is bad. Sucking the dick of someone literally genociding a country isn't homophobic, it's a statement of your values.
Nope, no matter how you try to paint it, it’s a demeaning homophobic slur. You should be more concerned with the genocide that’s happening here in the US with your presidents social murder
Nope, you don't get to decide that. I have a lot of gay friends (you are on this site so much I can instantly recognize you so I doubt you have very many friends at all) and I'm an ally. Sorry you're not gonna get that.
You should be more concerned with the genocide that’s happening here in the US with your presidents social murder
Omg you can only care about one thing at a time? Life must be really difficult for you.
You own the community? Youre a terminally online tankie. Meanwhile actually allies are out garnering support, attending marches and rallies, and actually advocating. If I do those things and that phrase is common language out in the real world community why the fuck should I take you seriously lmao?
The entire reason you brought this is up is to distract from your love of Putin and authoritarian regimes genociding smaller countries. I wouldn't be surprised if you were just a LARPer
You are no ally, saying you have gay friends therefore you can’t be homophobic is like Republicans claiming they can’t be racist because they know a black guy.
Dronies want endless war, that’s why they love giving weapons to radical right-wingers. Once Russia is done, then America can spend another 20 years dealing with the new terrorist organizations that they spawned. Y’all did the same shit in Afghanistan - arm radical islamists to stop Russia and then start a war against the radical Islamists you armed. Win/Win!
The war could end at any time if Putin stops invading his neighbor. But you know this and just want to keep sucking authoritarian dick under the guise "but I want peeeeece" You're aware that everyone not radicalized like you can see right through that, right? Gotta love how you compare a country being genocided to "arming radical islamists" Pathetic.
Arming neonazis in Ukraine is essentially the same as arming Islamists in Afghanistan. The parallels are extremely obvious. It’s even the same proxy war against Russia!
We can’t control Russia’s actions. We can control ours, and we should be pushing for peace talks. We won’t, because dronies a frothing at the chance to defeat Russia and are willing to fight to the last Ukrainian to make it happen.
And dronies pretend to be tolerant, but when frustrated they love to accuse people of “sucking dick”. As if there something shameful or submissive about the act, as if it even makes sense as an insult.
Arming neonazis in Ukraine is essentially the same as arming Islamists in Afghanistan.
Ok, Kremlin. Gtfo Ukraine and there is peace. And there's far more Nazis in Russia or did we forget about the beloved Dmitry Utkin? Nobody bought people slurping up the Russian line ever took the neo nazi line seriously it's absolutely amazing that you people are still trotting it out lmaooooo.
We can’t control Russia’s actions. We can control ours, and we should be pushing for peace talks. We won’t, because dronies a frothing at the chance to defeat Russia and are willing to fight to the last Ukrainian to make it happen.
I love how you guys got a new insult of "dronies" on top of "liberals" for anyone not a tankie too!
Why the fuck should we let an ally asking for help from being genocided just die and empower Russia even more? How is this "peace" of wiping someone off the map a good idea to you?
I love how you guys got a new insult of “dronies” on top of “liberals” for anyone not a tankie too!
What’s the matter dronie, can’t stand your own bullshit?
So you get to smear us as tankies, but when we reciprocate it’s not fair! 😭
Why the fuck should we let an ally asking for help from being genocided just die and empower Russia even more? How is this “peace” of wiping someone off the map a good idea to you?
What the fuck do you think peace talks are? Peace talks don’t mean we just let Russia steamroll the country, they mean we negotiate an end to the war.
You just want unconditional surrender from Russia, no negotiations and no concessions and no conditions, and they’re pretty obviously not going to do that. At best you’re just going to create a new DMZ like the one between the Koreas. At worst this shit escalates into another World War.
You just want unconditional surrender from Russia, no negotiations and no concessions and no conditions
Your phrasing here is extremely telling. Russia surrendering???? They are the aggressor and they had no right to invade and genocide. You want an unconditional SURRENDER from Ukraine. I want Russia to stop INVADING and GO HOME.
Okay so you’re just lying now. I don’t want Ukraine to surrender, I want a peace deal. That means both sides negotiate to find a compromise. Russia’s invasion was unjustified and strategically pretty stupid, but that doesn’t mean we just wage an eternal forever war until Russia collapses into civil war or everyone in Ukraine is dead.
The goal isn’t to make Russia leave Ukraine, it’s to keep them embroiled in conflict as long as possible to weaken Russia. That’s why the amount of aid will never actually be enough for Ukraine to win; just enough to never lose.
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