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Home » xyzzy » Dungeon » Empire
| Re: Empire [message #98725 is a reply to message #98724] |
Tue, 24 June 2025 11:41   |
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Wayne Parham
Messages: 18937
Registered: January 2001
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Illuminati (33rd Degree) |
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I've watched the middle-east conflicts through my lifetime and thought of it as a sad war between fanatic Moslems and Israel. I don't think it's the common people that are to blame - I think it's the politicians and fanatics driving that perpetual conflict. Jews, Christians and Moslems should consider themselves like-minded, but the mentally sick ones don't and they cause strife. Other than that, I don't have an opinion on events in the middle east.
But I do have my finger on the pulse of the conflict in Ukraine and it is caused solely by Putin. It isn't the west. You may say America and Europe had fingers in stuff in other parts of the world, but not there. We should have, in my opinion, but we didn't. At least not 'til now, and we're a little late.
That's just how it is, my friend.
Let me give you just one of a million examples. Back in the late 1990s, I considered buying a Volga and having it shipped here. I wanted to put a blown big block in it and wrinkle-wall back tires. Paint it black and put the words, "Механическая Перегрузка" on the back. That means "mechanical overload" and I just thought it would be really cool.
Well, days passed and I didn't get around to doing that. I spent my hot-rod dollars on my Cutlass and eventually bought an Impala. But I never stopped thinkin' about the Volga...
Then later I learned that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton tried to smooth-over relations with the Russians with a "Russian Reset" campaign. I don't suppose it's ever a bad thing to improve relations with anyone, but my point is that American political attention to Russia and Ukraine is so abysmally slight that we didn't even take the time to pay a translator a hundred bucks to make sure we got the word right.
We gave the Russian Foreign Minister a cute little Staples-like-that-was-easy button with what we thought was the word for "reset" - "перезагрузка" - but instead, we labeled the button "перегрузка," which as I said above means "overload."
Caught my eye 'cause of my fun Volga phrase. Still think that would have been cool on a funny car based on a Volga.
Point is, we ain't into it here. We don't have a clue what's going on there. Not at the everyman level and not even at the highest political levels. It's not a sinister plot. It's a comedy of errors.
Odessa, Ukraine, at the top of the Potemkin stairs, right by the statue of Duke de Richelieu (in a jacket, just for fun):
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| Re: Empire [message #98727 is a reply to message #98726] |
Tue, 24 June 2025 17:05 |
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Wayne Parham
Messages: 18937
Registered: January 2001
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Illuminati (33rd Degree) |
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When I was over there, I bought pistons and other car parts for a Lada. Kinda just wanted to show my American hotrod buddies what the Russkis were dealing with.
The Volga would have just looked cool being tubbed.
Here's the deal: I was over there way back, not long after the wall fell. I wondered back then why we weren't more involved, and kinda thought probably there were higher-level diplomats and negotiations between politicians and other things I didn't understand. I thought that the evolution of time would prove that.
Decades have passed since then. I've watched the Russians and other former-Soviet states since long before most other Americans cared. And what I saw proved to me that I was wrong about any sort of higher-level anything. Our highest levels literally couldn't even spell. Can you believe the lack of engagement, attentiveness and well any sort of concern showed when they made that "reset" button?
And even less intelligent or informed than that are all these pro-Putin, Zelensky-bashing bloggers and journalists. These nut-cases just want to hear themselves talk, and worse than being flat-out wrong, they are irresponsible. Quite frankly, it is downright evil for them to spew their nonsense.
Let me make this plain: Those bloggers don't know shit. I mean, they are completely clueless, and just make up stuff based on the propaganda they read from Putin. They can't even do that - they have to run it through a translator, 'cause they don't know Russian.
So you and I agree on one thing - incompetence and misjudgment. What we don't agree with are the responsible parties. You somehow have given Putin a pass on this and I do not. I personally know people that have died there, and I know who is responsible for their deaths: Владимир Владимирович Путин
But the brave men and women of Ukraine seem to be doing pretty well keeping Putin's war dogs at bay.
Losh and others like him in Ukraine are ready for Putin's murdering slaves:
Алёшинка готова |
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| Re: Empire [message #98731 is a reply to message #98730] |
Thu, 26 June 2025 10:56 |
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Wayne Parham
Messages: 18937
Registered: January 2001
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Illuminati (33rd Degree) |
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It's not denial. Far from it. My view isn't challenged - it's spot on.
Denial is when people think "Putin is OK. He's just doing what he has to do." Or when they think "Ukraine was once Russian, so why not let 'em just go back." That's denial. It's bullshit, and it's stupid.
I hate to sound arrogant, but I know what I'm talking about. I used to think that my understanding of the culture was just one man's view. But as the years passed, especially when I saw that "reset" button thing or now when I see shit like this getting thrown around, I know now that most people here don't understand. Some bloggers and politicians only make matters worse, 'cause they are so far off the mark.
The internet has become a cesspool of misinformation, and a platform for a ton of folks that don't really have anything meaningful to say. Look at how many "influencers" out there have absolutely nothing substantive to bring to the table but that spew incessantly about nothing. Worse are the ones that make stuff up.
But let me also remind you that it isn't all politicians, journalists and bloggers that have this wrong. In fact, I'd say most around the world get it right. Most around the world agree with the view that I am proposing, which is that Putin has gone off the rails.
Most people see Putin as the aggressor. That includes most of the worlds politicians, journalists and well, OK, most of the bloggers too.
The ones that side with Putin are the minority view here. They are the ones in denial. Some, probably, are a little more like tin-foil-hat-wearing "flat earthers." But I think most are just misinformed and because of that, they're in denial. They're the ones that think, "It's OK. No big deal."
Russia's war on Ukraine is an egomaniac's attempt to steal the state. Putin is a horrible leader for Russia, having turned the whole world against him. He is an irresponsible aggressor, and I think the only reason nations are slow to act against him is a genuine and reasonable concern about Russian nuclear stockpiles. Otherwise, I think Moscow would be bombed into dust, and rightly so.
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| Re: Empire [message #98733 is a reply to message #98732] |
Thu, 26 June 2025 17:26 |
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Wayne Parham
Messages: 18937
Registered: January 2001
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Illuminati (33rd Degree) |
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I absolutely agree that "time will tell." That's always the best source of truth. It always shows itself in time.
One thing I wanted to say here - mostly because I'm so passionate about this - is to make sure that you know I consider you to be a friend. With the talk getting so strong, I wanted to make sure you know that. We've known each other so long, and we're practically neighbors too.
So please don't take this discussion to mean otherwise.
Furthering that, I must say that I've never paid much attention to international politics or to economic sciences. Not that I don't find them to be potentially interesting, it's just that I have plenty of things on my plate, and with them, plenty of things to ponder.
I only wish that the countries that reside in Mesopotamia and its surrounding areas would get along. It's totally naive on my part, since they never have been cool with one another. Even before the modern religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and similarly, even before the Persians and Zoroastrianism, the people of that area have always fought among themselves. Even back in Sumerian times, they were fighting one another. So my wish for peace there is super naive, and I know it. I try to keep that in mind any time I get riled up about anything going on in that region.
Honestly, I don't really think America even involves itself there as ally to Israel. I think our biggest motivation there is oil. But I don't find myself wrapped around the axle about that. Maybe it should bother me more, but I admit that it doesn't. I do think we should be more energy independent - turn up the nuclear reactors, optimize solar technologies and "drill baby drill" - do it all. But that's a different discussion.
So when we discuss matters there, I tend to bow out pretty quickly. I feel like a hippie that just wants everyone to get along. Get out the 1960s chill records, the beads and the mood lamp.
Similarly, when we talk about monetary matters, I'll say what I think but I won't say it with much zeal. I've tended to lean generally towards Adam Smith laissez-faire thinking in general, sort of libertarian, I suppose. But I do recognize that John Maynard Keynes advocated giving things a little push, and his ideas made a lot of sense to me. And further, in the last twenty years or so, I've shifted towards being somewhat protectionist because I can see how a whole industry can be taken over by subsidizing production and taking a loss for a while to gain market share. We have anti-trust laws to protect our population from our own industries doing that, but we do not have the same legal tools to control other countries. Those are the basic things that enter my mind when macro-economics comes into view. My whole basis of opinions can be summed up in one paragraph.
So again, when discuss things about macro-economics, I'll visit for a little while, but I do not get too worked up.
But now this deal about Russia and Ukraine, well that's just something I happen to know a lot about. In my school days, I wouldn't have ever guessed I would know something about that. But as fate has it, I do. Turns out I know more than most of my countrymen. And that's why I'll exercise my voice on that subject.
I still just can't understand how so little effort has been exerted towards the former Soviet states. I mean, I do understand how tough it is to do business with them. That's a novi-russki thing. It's the first thing I learned, way back when my career was young and I worked a lot with engineering firms that made stuff for oil exploration, well completions and production. When the wall fell, many companies wanted to approach the Russians and do some business. But it was basically impossible because you had to be working with the mob. Early on it had quickly shifted that way.
But while companies may have had difficulty there, I just would have expected our government would have been able to help Russia and the independent states that spun off. We really just didn't. And much to my surprise, we never even started. All the way up to 2014 when Russia actually began its invasion of Ukraine, we were totally unplugged. And we still are. Our highest-level politicians knew absolutely nothing about what was going on. We apparently weren't hiring knowledgeable advisors, or we weren't listening to the ones we hired that were knowledgeable. And I can see that is still a problem today.
It's not a particular political party that has messed this up. Both sides are equally ignorant. It's like we just really don't care. I actually think it isn't "like that" - it is that. We just don't care. We cared about the Soviet Union when we saw them as a threat. But once the wall fell, we stopped seeing them as a threat and they just became invisible to us.
I wish we had seen them as an opportunity, when the new threat - novi-russki - was still fairly small and weak. It would have been much easier to work through the corruption problems when they were just small time thugs. We had an opportunity back then to have helped shaped their economy in a way that helped us do trade with them, and that simultaneously could have helped their people have nations that were less corrupt. But we didn't do that, and now they've grown a huge cancer as a result. The controller of that cancer is Putin.
So in a way, we are in sideways agreement here. When you talk about nefarious empire-building, I sort of agree with you but in reverse. I think it's crazy-tree-hugging talk to say America pushed Ukraine into siding with NATO as a sinister plot to destabilize Russia. Hell, we haven't pushed anything in Russia or any of its surrounding independent nations. We've done nothing. And that's nefarious, in my opinion. We have spent our time focusing on things that are much less beneficial to world trade and to American security. We've allowed Putin to become what he has, and we've done almost nothing about it.
But having said all that, I will reiterate my statement that the folks saying pro-Putin stuff are absolute nut-cases. They are weird-science flat-earthers selling propaganda. That's most certainly the case for the eastern pro-Putin bloggers. They are just political hacks, people that Putin has control over, either financially or through intimidation. Others - particularly in the west - probably do it for a weird ego-boost, wanting to have something to talk about, to pretend to be experts. Our journalists and bloggers here that are pro-Putin are most likely of that type. Those are the real flat-earthers. They just make stuff up, mixing together Putin propaganda with re-written history or complete fabrication.
It's all just too easy to see. Nothing difficult about it. No need to read between the lines. Putin invaded Ukraine because he wanted to steal the nation and call it his own. No motive other than that. None needed. Putin's motive is pure and simple. He wants Ukraine. Nobody "pushed" him into it. He is the one that has always been the pusher.
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