No, they’re in big trouble. Putin is gambling that he can hang on long enough for Trump to save him, but Russia is already facing demographic collapse as well as a massive brain drain from the younger generations. Things are pretty dire and there are a lot of powerful people in Russia who know it.
Wrong again. Russia is already facing demographic collapse together with a massive brain drain from the younger generations. Putin has convinced people like yourself that he is strong, but as was true of the USSR immediately before its fall, he is in fact very weak and increasingly desperate. His regime is brittle and only becoming more so as he continues to suck the life out of the country. When he does finally lose power, it’s going to happen very fast, almost overnight, and the Ukrainians will rout the Russian military in a bloodbath of unfortunate though understandable vengeance.
The US may lose interest but Europe won’t. This is their backyard and WW2 is still in living memory and physical evidence across the continent. It’s not some abstract idea like it is for us North Americans. It’s still very present and it’s recognized that Putin cannot and will not be allowed to win, regardless of what the Americans decide to do. Germany, France or the UK alone could easily fund the war if they had to. Together they will ensure that there can be no win for Putin. I am constantly surprised that this is not more widely known.
Or, you know, we go back to the time when the news media had real gatekeepers and not just any random jackass could churn out some bullshit copy and broadcast it to the world, let alone have it get published by their local paper.
It’s nice that the Internet has democratized access to a national or even global audience, but let’s not pretend for a moment that it hasn’t caused a ton of problems in the process such that now many people have no idea of what to believe while others believe whatever they want.
It’s still pretty easy to tell the difference. You have to have a pretty low level of media literacy to not be able to easily spot it. Unfortunately we already know that most people don’t have a clue when it comes to mass media, and even if they did, we also know that people tend to believe whatever reinforces their priors.
It also raises the very thorny issue of who adjudicates what is and is not “memetic effluent.”
Again, while I don’t necessarily otherwise disagree with you, you are a little confused on whataboutism.
That’s not whataboutism. Whataboutism is changing the subject to derail the conversation. This is simply addressing a different point of view in the same discussion.
No. The best information is that they’ve been putting a ton of pressure on Netanyahu to back the fuck off, but it hasn’t done any good because he’s a legitimate asshole and always has been. (Remember, this is the same guy who deliberately embarrassed Obama by accepting a GOP invitation to address Congress without consulting the White House or making an official state visit to the president. He’s the scum of the earth and always has been. There’s zero question that he’s hoping for a Trump win.)
They don’t want to go public with demanding restraint or a cease fire because they are afraid it will widen the war by encouraging Iran and its other proxies such as the Houthis and Hezbollah which could further hinder freight traffic through the Red Sea, thus bumping global inflation back up and giving Trump a campaign gift. I think at this point it’s a lost cause and they need to cut their losses and tell Israel to knock it the fuck off, but I expect they will continue to drag their feet and work on back channels.
We also know that every time Iran has been met with real force rather than empty threats, they have backed off. Ultimately it would still be a big gamble to openly threaten them, but it’s something to think about, especially if you don’t fancy another Trump presidency/dictatorship.
Most of what we see on Lemmy is pure amateur hour speculation that has only a very tangential relationship with what’s actually happening.
The presidency was never meant to be as powerful as it has become.
Bullshit. Leaving aside any potential humanitarian concerns, this whole thing is a massive headache for the Biden Administration.
Out of curiosity, how do you think she’ll rationalize it?
Horseshit. I’ve spent literally decades reporting on land-use issues in the rural west. That, together with the reintroduction of wolves in the intermountain west, is kind of my life’s work as a journalist thus far.
I actually don’t even know where to start with how wrong you are.
That’s what they want us to believe, but there are so many giant caveats in the narrative that it’s rendered pretty meaningless. The only things the Red Army of WW2 has in common with Russia’s current army are the language and a willingness to throw lives into the meat grinder as a tactic in and of itself.
I named my truck, but “Old Clunky” doesn’t exactly jump out as the kind of name you’d want to advertise.
Why not both? A well-designed poll can be a very useful gauge of public opinion.
Compare it to the rest of Europe in the 20th century and it doesn’t look so bad. Pretty much all of continental Europe was under some kind of barbaric dictatorship at one point or another during the 20th century. Only the UK remained a democracy.
Now, before you say anything, I have friends and family in Northern Ireland so don’t for a moment imagine that I am somehow unaware of the UK’s perfidy. The point is just to say that it’s the only major European power to have been a democracy throughout the 20th century.
I mean, thanks for the good faith effort I guess, but you’re still objectively incorrect as a matter of the historical record.
You would have done better to single out the Interstate freeway system as “conservative,” since it was created under Eisenhower. But even that is a weak example since it wasn’t opposed by liberals at all.
Teddy Roosevelt was a progressive, part of the “progressive era” in US political history. There isn’t a way to spin it such that he can accurately be called a conservative. The conservative position on national parks, at least in the west, would be that they should remain open for resource extraction. We see this at play with the recent bullshit surrounding the Bears Ears National Monument de-designation under Trump and the ongoing effort to allow drilling in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge.
You are simply objectively incorrect.
The mistake here is in assuming that it’s either all or nothing; that self checkouts are either great, or some kind of disaster.
The reality is that they’re great for some applications, but suck ass for others.
Here’s the deal; if it’s just me with a few items, yeah, the self-checkout is awesome, but if it’s me and my wife and we have a shitload of groceries for the entire family, guess what? Self-checkout sucks ass and it’s way easier to go through a regular checkout stand where there won’t be a hundred little different ways for the system to get jammed up and require an employee intervention.
What part about this do people not understand?
I have to think that a lot of the hostility to regular checkout stands comes from relatively young Lemmy users who don’t actually have to shop for families of their own.