Off-Topic / Random Chat Thread [765]

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News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 27 [243]


Your important contribution to the debate has been noted and recorded.

History / History of Europe and the Next Russian Grand Idea [48]


This is his role.

But he favors the "hard men". Because he has affinity to them, being a KGB colonel himself.

To him we are civilians - naive, idealistic, childish.

Earlier he had the wisdom to allow us oxygen, now he thinks we "get in the way".

Maybe we are not famous fighters, and not good Christians - but we have the interests of Russia at heart as any other man.

To paint us as traitors and "bourgeois" is to reject a huge part of your strength.

We are willing and obedient and we don't need much. Just don't treat us like the relatives visiting from another region.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 27 [243]

@amiga600

You still get excited about this nonsense? You are a smart guy, why do you post this?

History / History of Europe and the Next Russian Grand Idea [48]


It would be my great honor to be an Oprichnik for the "Sun-Like One". But he must trust us for this....

We are better executors of his heavenly will, than his current posse.

No one is questioning he has the mandate, and the power. But... he has to widen the tent and allow others in, to help him achieve his plans.

He cannot afford to be isolated, and cut off from such people.

We accept him, but he has to accept us.

History / History of Europe and the Next Russian Grand Idea [48]


Putinists are improvisers and men with low horizons.

They don't help the man, with their advice.

I feel I know what Putin wants - and that my plan would get him there sooner - if he just trusted us again.

By "us" - I mean the liberalizers. People who grew up in the shadow of Kudrin, Gref, Nabiullina. I might add Belousov as a potential ally.

In opposition to the "hard men", like Patrushev, Ivanov, Chemezov, etc.

The people that delivered Putin (in record time, and at record low cost) the machine that can fight Europe and America simultaneously - are us.

If he listened only to people he is ideologically close to, he wouldn't be able to do half the things he has done.

If he wants a strong and unstoppable Russia - he should listen to people like me.

History / History of Europe and the Next Russian Grand Idea [48]

I am so positively surprised at the amount of ideas for how to make Russia a better country.

You are all Russian patriots, and good sons of Russia - wherever the world has placed you currently.

History / History of Europe and the Next Russian Grand Idea [48]


This takes time.

Before the war we borrowed hundreds of billions from the West (while still keeping our debt load manageable at under 30% ratio to GDP).

This built electrical plants, high speed rail, and national highway network.

We need trillions more of Western money if we are to become truly strong.

Once we become fully strong - I'm "down" for all kinds of adventure. You want to declare war on the whole world - be my guest - so long as you first ensured we are standing firmly on our feet.

But this business of challenging the whole world, while we are rebuilding, seems insane to me.

History / History of Europe and the Next Russian Grand Idea [48]

@Bratwurst Boy

This is a compliment to you Germans, and an indictment against us slavish Russians :)

We worship the Throne.

History / History of Europe and the Next Russian Grand Idea [48]


I don't know enough about Germany... but the Kremlin is unlike any other place. I don't think it's like the Reichstag...

The Kremlin.... is a powerful thing. It warps time and space around it. It causes chemical changes in your neurochemistry. It bends your heart. It's - for all intents and purposes - like some supermassive black hole or a magnetar - to put it in astronomic terms.

It's the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

It sends hundreds of thousands to their death, and promises millions of others all earthly riches.

No Champs Elysee or White House or Downing Street has the Earthly power of the Kremlin.

History / History of Europe and the Next Russian Grand Idea [48]


I hope it is as you say.

A strong, conservative, traditional German East is welcome in Russia - even if we do not measure up to our own standards for others.

What irritates me about modern Russia, is all this energy that goes into playing this Kabuki theater for foreign audiences.

Self defeating hypocrisy. Pretending all is well, and reading lectures to others - even as we are completely lost ourselves.

The Kremlin - the beating heart of Russia - has to be open to admitting mistakes.

History / History of Europe and the Next Russian Grand Idea [48]

@Bratwurst Boy

What I want to say to you, is that Europe is not impervious to those American exports.

Otherwise, why do you have so many Jehovah's Witnesses, Pentecostalists, Seventh Day Adventists, and all the flavors of Baptists present in big numbers in Europe?

All these are American imports.

Seems your experience of religious wars has not insulated you from these dangerous American innovations...

If these insidious cult ideologies can penetrate your continent, how is Orthodoxy different? Orthodoxy is spreading roots in America, and is one of the fastest growing denominations.

The path of these lost souls to Orthodoxy is often guided by messaging coming from Moscow.

History / History of Europe and the Next Russian Grand Idea [48]

@Torq

I don't know who to respond to! BB also asked an important question... I will get back to it soon - I promise BB.

-//-

I shouldn't have pretended to having a fully fleshed out Russian Great Idea sitting in my backpack, but what I could do is enumerate certain conditions I believe are necessary... before we can attempt to bamboozle the world again with some new Russian philosophy.

1) We should fix relations with the West and our own neighborhood, and abstain from wars for at least 20-30 years more. We are in desperate need of technology transfers, and access to capital - if we hope to be competitive in the second half of this century.

2) We need to invest more in our people, and less in metal. Russia's greatest wealth is our wonderful people, who I firmly believe are some of the smartest and most talented people in the world. No "Poseidon" or "Satan" can replace a world-changing idea that some boy in Siberia might be carrying, but cannot realize in Russia.

3) We need to move the country's administrative center away from Moscow, and towards the center of the country. Siberia and the East are dying - and Moscow is like a black hole that sucks all matter towards it. A new capital, perhaps in Novosibirsk, could recenter the country.

4) Children must become the center of all attention. We moan and complain about abortions and low birth rates, and at the same time we have 500K orphans living in the country that nobody seems to care about except for warm-hearted foreigners (for whom Putin made it illegal to adopt our children). This is a f*cking crime. A country that doesn't care about its weakest and most vulnerable is no country at all.

5) We need to liberalize politically. An active opposition and a free press - were important components of the 1990s, and set the stage for the surge in growth in the early 2000s. Without these two, the folks in power start believing too much of their own "hopium". It must be in the interests of the Kremlin to have some smart people that are able to criticize them. Sniffing your own ass all day is a path to nowhere.

History / History of Europe and the Next Russian Grand Idea [48]


It's absolutely true.

Western conservatives want a "strong, traditional" Russia to admire.

They consume it as a fantasy of order and community.

They do not care if it's true - they want a symbol, not a reality.

-//-

Russia responds in kind, through:

1) RT's messaging to Western audiences

2) Alignment with far-right European parties (often helping them with a little bit of money, to get things off the ground)

3) Embracing the "defender of Christianity" narrative

4) Producing metric tons of brain rotting slop about "traditional family values" for Twitter and Instagram.

So you see... Russia doesn't actually have to live these values, but merely has to project them. The "ideology" is the packaging, and the product is geopolitical leverage. At least that's how I understand it, and how Mr. Surkov explained his approach several times.

-//-

Regarding my own idea... it would take me to long to flesh it out here.

History / History of Europe and the Next Russian Grand Idea [48]


After critiquing your suggestion, I would like to respond to your criticism of the current product Russia is marketing to the world.

First things first - of course all of it is total bullsh*t - but it doesn't matter.

We need to first agree - "what is the goal?". It seems to me, that the goal of all Russian "Great Ideas" is - "how do we maximally grow Russian power, while also offering something in return".

Some smart Americans, like George Kennan, understood this at the beginning of the Cold War - when they were trying to understand "what does Russia want?". Kennan saw through the charade of Communism, and saw the Great Russian chauvinism beneath. So...

Pan-Slavism promised us leadership of a large part of humanity. To the Slavs it was marketed it to - protection from various Turks, autonomy from the Decadent West, and a healthy dosing of fascistic niceties.

Communism also spread our influence widely, with power dividends accruing back to Moscow with every government that fell into the fold. So this idea was very nice too, because it made us much more powerful (the main criteria - as I see it).

-//-

The current idea of exporting "machismo" and "conservative values" is therefore also not so retarded.

It is of course a total lie, but a good and useful lie.

Why?

Because there are buyers in the market for this sh*t, and so long as there are buyers - we should be peddling it to whomever is willing to buy it.

The West and the Far East have a crisis in gender relations. Men hate women, women hate men. No one's getting married, and no one's having babies. We're not doing it either, but we can use the moment to play on their insecurities and turn their gaze (fraudulently) towards the Kremlin.

The electoral leverage it provides us within those democracies, is worth all the shame and self-disgust evoked by pumping out nonsense.

Maybe 3 out of 10 people see through the charade of "Russian Conservatism", but 7 out of 10 do not - and to them we are heroes. These Russia lovers have votes, and they have money, and hopefully they have children. So... then they are ASSETS.

In the absence of a genuine RGI, this Frankenstein creation will have to do for the time being, because:

1) There is demand for it.

2) It works.

3) It pays dividends.

History / History of Europe and the Next Russian Grand Idea [48]


Yet, I will thank you anyway. This was very interesting to read.

However, I have many issues with your attempt to turn Russia into a Scandinavian Christian Social Democracy...

Without further ado - my feedback:


My concern with this, is that it seems like a "growth destroying" idea. We'll have to stop tracking GDP, and use instead some Happiness Index like Bhutan.

Historically - non-Darwinian societies decay.

The wild jungle conditions in America, where the strong eat the weak, explains a lot of the difference in the dynamism of the two economies (vis a vis Europe).

Xi Jingping is trying to do it in China (rejecting the various ugly aspects of capitalism). Billionaires are regularly jailed, or admonished for living "too lavishly" or with concern only for themselves. The people cheer... but it doesn't do any wonders for the place's investment attractiveness.

So... this is my first reaction to this point. There's much nuance, of course, which I'm glazing over. AI and robotics could change much of this model which at the moment seems flawed.


Here you are channeling straight Dugin.

Question for Duginists - where did this place ever exist historically?

Among Russian "muzhiks" working for the "gospoda", while they gambled away the fruits of their labor in St. Petersburg salons?

Among Chinese rice paddy farmers hiding from the tax collector?

In an Israeli kibbutz?

On a Mennonite farm?

Show a good, working example from the past, and then we can discuss it. Because Dugin's imagined ideal - I fear - never actually existed in the way he seems to think about it.

Communalism has more often been a survival technique than a "value". Once enough capital is accumulated, and life becomes a little more interesting, these communes always tear themselves apart.

I may be wrong, and am prepared to debate this further:)


We are a multi-ethnic, multi-confessional country. We have many Muslims, and Buddhists, and Jews, and other folks.

Have to be careful in embracing Christianity too closely, lest it blow up in our face.

Putin and various Dugins are trying this, and playing it very carefully, but still not carefully enough for my tastes.

-//-

All in all, 2 out of your 3 points are straight Dugin eschatology concerning salvation and civilizational redemption. The difference is that Dugin thinks all these things will come about only after some apocalyptic battle, and you are instead trying to avoid a fight (a noble goal).

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 26 [1183]


About what?

Personally I like the Irish.

God bless that island. Especially their former president Higgins. That little guy was "alright" with us - his heart in the right place. This new Connelly lady, we have to see...

Eamon de Valera is someone any educated Russian knows about. These Irishmen, they've been clever in their relationship to us from the beginning - and we appreciate this.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 26 [1183]


Things may appear messy at first.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 26 [1183]


You lived with us, under one roof, for more than a century. No need to "educate" us about who Poles are.

We understand Poles, as no one else can understand them. Certainly not Germans or faceless bureaucrats in Brussels.

If it seems as though we do not understand Poles... then give it time. People in Ukraine now, are waking up to the fact that we understand them very well, and that we are not as alien to each other as they would like to argue.

A quiet whisper from the East, carried by the wind, that lands on your brain - and then creeps into your heart.


Not the worst thing that can happen.

But sprinkle in some Greek Byzantine tradition (Third Rome), Germanic obedience (300 years of Germans in power), and a Viking genesis (Rurik) - and you have the potent recipe for a globe-encompassing mentality.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 26 [1183]


"Sanity" - again in quotation marks - has been DEADLY for Russia.

Just as it had been deadly for Poland.

We are not sane nations, and asking us to behave sanely is to break our fragile psyches.


We've heard this for one thousand years - doesn't stop us from ordering your life.

Keep living your little bourgeois dream of house, wife, picket fence - and pray to God Almighty that it lasts long enough that you will die before you see a change.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 26 [1183]


Sanity - which you yourself chose to put in quotation marks - has been altogether disappointing.

Now there are many votes for "insanity".

We are ready to supply it.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 26 [1183]

@Bratwurst Boy

Keep hoping for Martians to save you.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 26 [1183]


Ahahaha.

As a German - that is probably what you hope for.

Don't worry, not long to wait.

-//-

We will make contraceptives illegal - and fix your demographics and moral rot.

We will bring life back to a level that a normal human can understand with his brain.

We will give it meaning.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 26 [1183]


We need a new idea. Communism is dead. Even China and Vietnam only pay it token respect. The North Koreans continue - but they are too small.

Russkiy Mir is not working either.

We are in search of the next great idea.

I think the next idea should be the cleansing of the Earth of heresy and other impurities. This idea worked many times in history.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 26 [1183]


We were a Great Power, before America was even discovered.

While they fought Indians and small British detachments - we carved up ancient countries.

When they became truly strong, the only country of the Old World that rose up to challenge them was again us.

Russia has the civilizational, political, and philosophical power to coalesce countries around it - and the ability to turn these resources into a "fist".

We had only 30 years to recover. We need time to build our strength, and fix our weaknesses. Ukraine is a good laboratory to redevelop our muscles.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 26 [1183]

@Korvinus

I don't speak for Novichok, he speaks for himself.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 26 [1183]


If we had the power of America - you would not be able to take a full breath, let alone get up from your knees.

We would pick you up from your knees, and put you on all fours!

We would now be colonizing Mars and Titan, because Project Earth would be complete.

News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 26 [1183]

Kinda surprising and sad how everything is ending.

Didn't think Zelensky's team would collapse midway through the negotiations.

Yermak was literally supposed to travel to Miami next week as "HEAD OF THE UKRAINIAN DELEGATION". Now, it seems more likely that he will be in jail at the end of next week.

Don't know how Zelensky is going to be able to resist a collapse of his government at this point. Tymoshenko and Poroshenko already demanding the government fully resign, and a new government of national unity be implemented.

In my limited knowledge of national unity governments - they never work. They are just naked grabs for key portfolios and a recipe for total dysfunction.

But Zelensky made his own bed, and now he has to sleep in it.

Good luck!