What a degenerate.

I personally think it doesn’t really matter if the Democrats win (I am not American, but I lived there for multiple years and have travelled extensively).

I can’t imagine the Democrats doing anything substantive to address criminality and corruption (which is arguably the root cause of Trump’s rise).

This is true of both party leadership (that always avoid prosecution of criminal elements) and much of the party’s electorate who are too well off to risk rocking the boat and generally do not see real anti-corruption reform as a priority.

Consider the fact that Meta was found to have gained $16 B (10% of their 2024 revenue) via a premeditated policy of gaining commissions from fraud on their platform. They even developed a “playbook” to manage this process; so they knew what they were doing.

It is comical to suggest that the Democrats will do anything beyond a nominal fine and asking Zuckerburg to promise to not get caught the next time he runs a scheme (if even that)

When a genuine desire to fight criminality would require Zuckerbeg and all senior employees being locked up for multiple decades while having all their asset seized (Zuckerburg directly profited from this mass scale fraud scheme via his ownership stake in Meta).

One can look at Obama’s inaction against financial oligarchy in the late 2000s to predict the behaviour of the US centre-right should they win elections. Funnily enough Obama is once again pushing his shallow and meaningless “What’s needed now is courage” rhetoric.

For everyone in the world that believes in liberal democracy, human rights and opposes corruption, it is reasonable to assume that corruption and criminality in the US will not be addressed any time soon. I hope I am wrong though, but I wouldn’t count on it.

There is no verbal acrobatics, senior figures in his movement openly admitted that Navaliy and his movement supported the annexation of Crimea because the overwhelming the russian population are committed supporters of what is as a matter of fact genocidal imperialism. I will also add that his broader support of chauvinism is well documented.

The “smart voting” approach was comically stupid. The non-United Russia candidates are all (almost without exception) shills for the regime as part of their Potemkin village “election” process.

I stand by my statements that a “putin lite” option like Navaliy (or really most of the mainstream russian “opposition”) will always lose to the real deal.

I don’t expect any super human efforts from the russians. Something as simple as recognizing that all the bad things in Russia are not the fault of someone else would be a start.

Can you find one mainstream opposition figure that goes beyond “it’s all putin’s and EU’s fault, we are innocent angels!” I am genuinely curious. I know some public figures who admit this, but they universally hated both by the alleged opposition and the genocidal imperialist that make the overwhelming majority of russian society.

Many countries have a lot of historical/systematic challenges, yet many often to do find a way (or at least keep trying). One can look at Iran (not just the current protests); arguably they are in an even more difficult position than the russians.

Did the thugs at the Blackstone criminal gang decide to play hardball with the recent demand to increase the size of bribes?

There is quite a lot to unpack, so let me ask a few more holistic questions.

Is there a point at which historical / systematic / external factors can no longer serve as a justification (however nuanced) for the pro-authoritarian, pro-imperialist direction of russian society (let’s say that if one disagrees with this characterization, we replace the word society with polity or “russia as a country”)?

If such a point does not exist outside of the most extreme cases, is there a semi-realistic scenario where such factors do not come into play and russian society is able to move beyond authoritarianism, imperialism and being “easy to manipulate”?

I personally disagree with what I see as a victim-hood narrative, a very measured and nuanced one as described in your post, but still fundamentally a victim-hood narrative (in my eyes).

Even Navalniy, the darling of the west, was openly supportive of imperialism and and a fundamentally chauvinistic outlook on international relations.

And this lack of desire to address such deep rooted and near universal chauvinism; (85% of russians supported the annexation of Crimea even with adjustments for preference falsification) is why russia cannot progress beyond thuggish monsters as leaders for life. Why choose Navalniy when you choose the real deal (i.e. putin)?

P.S. I lived in russia in the 90s and 2000s, our family speaks fluent russian even though we are not russian.

His speech is an experiment at testing limits / inciting to action.

That ship has sailed a long time ago. I lived in russia in the 90s and 2000s (I speak fluent russian, still have a mild moscow accent that people bring up if I am not speaking English/Ukrainian). It’s very clear that putin is a symptom and the cause is russian society (not every single person of course, but the overwhelming majority).

Forget about Ukraine for a second. If one truly want change in russian society, one has to look at the “results” shown by the russian opposition in the last ~25 years. Even with implicit support of imperialism (не бутерброд с колбасой), it has been a comical failure in every way imaginable.

Yeremeyev is just doing the same fucking thing. Yeremeyev (or whoever) wants change? Then raise at least 50 battalions of russian troops to join RVC/РДК. Anything less than that is either childishly naive or russian “liberal” bullshit that in reality is a lite form of imperialism (why choose a putin lite regime when you can have the real thing?).

Continuing the war would lead to the “moral degradation of both parties to the conflict” as propaganda and the daily murder of hundreds of citizens “become commonplace”

This “good russian” can fuck right off. There is no torture of POWs (such as castrations done by the russians) or mass scale summary executions of civilians by Ukraine.

What a typical russian “liberal”.

This is exactly how russia works.

Ivashov is just another imperialist russian.

Those “86%” Russian numbers were always plucked out of polling manipulation, trick questions, and carefully curated focus groups

This is actually not true. An overwhelming majority of russians are supportive of chauvinism and imperialism (and a strong majority are genocidal imperialists). This is a fact.

Believe it or not there are ways to evaluate preference falsification, you can read the papers (methodology, results and analysis) yourself.

Baseline research on support for the fullscale invasion:

https://www.levada.ru/en/2024/05/17/conflict-with-ukraine-assesments-for-march-2024/

The level of support for the Russian armed forces has not changed significantly since the beginning of the conflict – the majority of respondents (76%) support the actions of Russian troops in Ukraine, including 48% “definitely support” and another 28% “rather support” the action of Russian army. 16% are against.

Research with preference falsification adjustments with respect to support for the full scale invasion:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20531680221108328

when asked directly, 71% of respondents support [full scale invasion of Ukraine], while this share drops to 61% when using the list experiment

Baseline support for annexation of Crimea:

https://www.levada.ru/en/2021/05/19/crimea-3/

The vast majority of Russians (86%) consistently support the accession of Crimea to Russia – this indicator has fluctuated slightly since 2014. 9% do not support the accession.

Research with preference falsification adjustments with respect to support for annexation of Crimea:

https://www.jiia.or.jp/en/column/2022/09/russia-fy2022-01.html

Using the list-experiment technique, Timothy Frye and others showed that Putin’s approval rating after the annexation of Crimea was actually high, at around 80%. In their study, they made a list of famous Russian politicians and had respondents answer how many of these politicians they supported. They then estimated Putin’s approval rating by adding the name “Putin” to the list for only one group[*]3 and thus concluded that the high approval ratings after the annexation of Crimea were not very different from the findings of opinion pollsters.

A high level overview of russian support for the invasion of Ukraine (a summary, but with links to relevant research, albeit some sources will be in russian):

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/content-series/russia-tomorrow/reluctant-consensus-war-and-russias-public-opinion/

Younger people still support the war in high numbers, though their support is lower than that of the older generation: 75–80 percent of people fifty-five and older support the Russian army’s actions in Ukraine, while 61 percent of young respondents in Levada polls share this sentiment.

And this is just Ukraine, even the allegedly liberal russian “opposition” openly supports the occupation of Ichkeria and sees nothing wrong with mass scale killing of civilians committed by the russians in the 90s and 2000s.

I was referring to results accounting for preference falsification:

https://sh.itjust.works/post/52675124/22959080 (post a bit higher in this thread).

These are not russian statistics.

Preference falsification refers to people lying due to the sensitivity of the topic.

The funny thing is that the level of preference falsification (with respect to Crimea specifically) was found to be so low that it was within the margin of error (i.e. 85% was seen as a valid result because preference falsification was too insignificant too evaluate). That’s damning for russian society.

FWIW, support for the full scale invasion saw a preference falsification level of 10%; therefore we go from 75% to 65% support for the full scale invasion of Ukraine. That being said the authors stated that they believe the 65% figure is likely an underestimate.

The overwhelming majority of russians still support invading Ukraine and annexing our territories.

I can share multiple papers (and even counter arguments) on this topic if you want.

Crimea is Ukraine.

A bit too optimistic, the average russian isn’t willing to do anything and buys into putin’s chauvinist worldview (85% of russian support the annexation of Crimea even with adjustments for preference falsification).

I hate the term “cope”, but there honestly is no better way to describe this article.

From my experience living in the US, a significant portion of the local population (be it far right or centre right) are generally supportive of crime and corruption. The centre right opposition is incapable of any meaningful action on crime and they are too involved in local corruption schemes to change. And a significant portion of the centre-right electorate also support crime. Not saying it was always like that or it can’t change; this is a mere (extremely subjective) evaluation of the current situation.

From the perspective of people in other countries (that support democracy, efficient governance, innovation), it is reasonable to assume that Americans cannot be relied upon in any substantive manner irrespective of whether the far right or centre right is in power; at least for the next 30-50 years. Much of their civil society and civil service (that was world class at one point) is completely debased and have been replaced by local criminals and regressives.

It is reasonable to assume this is not going to change any time soon. Instead we’ll have usual pompous bullshit.

To quote Barack Obama:

“You know, don’t tell me you’re a Democrat, but you’re kind of disappointed right now, so you’re not doing anything. No, now is exactly the time that you get in there and do something,” he said. “Don’t say that you care deeply about free speech and then you’re quiet. No, you stand up for free speech when it’s hard. When somebody says something that you don’t like, but you still say, ‘You know what, that person has the right to speak.’ … What’s needed now is courage.”

What’s needed now is courage?

What the fuck does this even mean?

Not to mention the tedious polemics about free speech.

Not an American (although I have lived there for several years and travelled extensively), it doesn’t matter if the Democrats win.

I say this as someone who always votes and has done tactical voting many times.

The US centre right is incapable of addressing corruption and criminality, not only because the party apparatus is itself corrupt, but because most American centre right voters are simply too well off to risk rocking the boat. They’ll keep trying to avoid addressing corruption until it’s too late.

The corruption of the centre right is a symptom, with the cause being American society (specifically a large portion of centre right voters).

This is not doomerism in the least. In any country/context, the first step to overcoming immense odds is recognizing what the problem is. If you don’t take the first step, you’ll definitely never get to your goal.

It is not my intention to be petty and have a laugh. Until centre right public totally rejects comical American-style polemics about alleged commitment to “free speech” and “free markets”, they will never address corruption and debasement of their institutions.

And yet Obama and other senior centre right figures are still parroting the same shallow, tedious copytext that they’ve been pitching for the last years.

I think you’re correct at a high level, but there is also the medium-term and long-term impact of not honouring treaties which is less predictable and makes the calculation around not honouring a treaty less straightforward (even if in the immediate sense the drawbacks are minimal).

WW1/WW2 also had their fair of treaty violations. Sudetenland annexation is an early example. Nazi Germany breaking the Molotov–Ribbentrop to split up Europe with the russians is perhaps a better known example. Italy was also supposed to join the central power in WW1 as per their treaty examples.

While long term impacts are always difficult to quantify by definition, they do have impact on how people think (especially people in power).

This is to be expected, Venezuela is not a strategic priority for either russia or China.

Not to mention that a US invasion of Venezuela would provide a good propaganda win for Russia and China particularly in the “global south” where at least the leadership of countries like Brazil and South Africa are openly supportive of russian genocidal imperialism.

If a commoner got caught money laundering, they would get fucked.

I actually had my bank accounts frozen because I miscalculated a quarterly tax payment by 2 dollars equivalent in local currency. Had to ask my family members to pay because all my money was frozen.

I will add that corruption isn’t unique to the US of course. I am from Ukraine and it’s actually what I hate most about my country, how people don’t pay taxes and come up with dumb excuses like “well the oligarchs are stealing, we should start at the top first”. That being said, at least people here recognize that corruption is wrong and that there is no real way forward without addressing it.

Considering that this fellow was reinstated by the Democrats, it means they don’t really feel any pressure from the public.

This is not a recent thing either. I was living in the US in the late 2000s and I thought it was interesting how Obama decided to simply not prosecute the financial services oligarchs gangs after the great recession. One would think this is a historical opportunity to make them take responsibility for their actions.

Cuellar was charged in 2024 for allegedly accepting $600,000 in bribes from two foreign entities, according to an indictment released by the Justice Department. The indictment accused Cuellar of accepting payments from Azerbaijan’s state-run oil-and-gas company after they had been laundered through shell companies owned by his wife.

America is so corrupt. And so many people there have the gall talk about other countries.

Not an expert, but this seems relatively reasonable. If anything one would think Roblox will eventually fall under this process, that being said, I am just thinking out loud, I could be wrong.