came_apart_at_Kmart [he/him, comrade/them]

great pic by the AP, open mouthed, aggressive angry, pointing and the lighting makes his eyes look like empty sockets of vantablack space, where all love and humanity go to die.

lol, “looks like” just playin’

no, this is what happens monetary policy is the only tool in the neoliberal toolbox, corporate profiteering is unchecked, and 2 million workers die off to keep the rent checks coming.

weird how “gay panic” is a defense allowed by the courts, but an appeal to jury nullification is not.

that post was maybe 1500 words to summarize 100+ years of regional conflict with special attention on the last 10 years written in plain language. no special jargon or references to theoretical concepts. if that’s a “novel” for you, it definitely explains your grasp of this situation and affirms the critique that you are willfully ignorant and incapable of analysis beyond “russia bad.” and this is why people make fun of libs like you. many libs smugly dismiss conservatives as having “simple/childlike” worldviews and value systems. then they promptly adopt their own perfectly mirrored positions and petulantly stick their fingers in their ears like you’re doing here.

i think one of the aspects of fascism that really freaks out liberals is that fascism is the return of the policies they (casually or explicitly) support overseas to their homes and applied to them and their neighbors. i was reading that post-colonial analysis excerpt about how hitler did to the core what “heroic” churchill and his predecessors had been doing to india and other peoples/nations for decades. libs avoid any material analysis of the core/periphery or fascism because the connections make it obvious libs have no trouble enjoying the fruits of evil done elsewhere to secure markets, but bringing those same methods of repression and control home is the unspeakably evil act of a madman.

the idea that their poorly-interrogated political project creates and necessitates the very monster they fear is too much to grapple with for some.

maybe the only pays for the initial derailing post attempt, not the followup quarter-assed defense of “international rules-based order” that exposes the ignorance and unfamiliarity with material reality.

the word you are striving not to say is capitalism. capitalists did this to russians, using the playbook developed and advocated for by western institutions.

imagine ignoring the absolutely ruthless, western led cannibalization of the former soviet union and pretending history’s baseline started AFTER the largest decline of living standards in global history.

human trafficking, prostitution, alcoholism, food/energy insecurity, diseases of despair all exploded when the west forced capitalism and privatization onto the former soviet union in the immediate aftermath. Gorbachev thought he was going to get some easy-going nordic social democracy, but instead the west carved up their public sector like a christmas ham. maybe you were too young, but in the 1980s the propaganda portrait the west had of russian women were all heavy-set, ugly babushkas. suddenly, after 1989, the mail order beautiful russian bride phenomenon exploded. they were fleeing the gutting of the public sector and the shattering of the social safety net, which made it near impossible to raise a family in the eastern bloc without becoming a sex worker.

the west sponsored every retrograde nationalist reactionary psycho to undermine any hint of democratic resistance to economic liberalization schemes and bombed the shit out of infrastructure (Yugoslavia) whenever they could get away with it. the west has the most blood on its hands for the aftermath of the USSR, but people like you want to ignore those early days and then claim credit for the “winners” the west propped up in the aftermath of all that chaos. like a killer who torched a town but kidnapped a few kids and now touts his heroic rescue of them. the most ignorant and disgusting take.

the average manager/boss is so inculcated with “job creator” brain worms in the US, they believe they, as benevolent nobles, are the ones generating value in the organization while their underlings extract value as salary/wages. it leads to shit like this where bosses are baffled they can’t actually get everything they want by snapping their fingers, even though they control the immediate material access to housing, healthcare, etc.

as it turns out, workers are the critical resource because they make it all go. the execs are the ones extracting massive value as salary/benefits or stock manipulation, while realistically only going to meetings to strategize ways to get more value out of workers without sharing any increases. workers are paying managers to boss them around all day and act important.