Skiluros

Cringe.

The good thing from all of this is that non-Americans will start to take a more mature and sober view of American society. No offense to sane Americans, it’s not only Trump, he is merely a symptom of broader social problems and an inability to tackle corruption and the cultural influence of oligarchs on the American psyche.

P.S. I am not American, but I have lived there and have close friends who live there.

As someone who has lived in the US earlier in my life, it was a bit of a cultural shock to hear how much Americans engage in repetition of what I call “freedom polemics” and references to the constitution and so on.

My initial reaction almost mildly combative, I did not find the locals’ commitment to freedom or alleged understanding of constitutional governance to be convincing. There was an element of farce around the whole thing and it got on my nerves.

It was clear that Americans weren’t actually committed to freedom or had any understanding of the complexities, nuances and painful, scary choices that are inherent to acting on your belief in human freedoms.

I very quickly learned to tune out the everpresent “freedom polemics” mini-rants and just go with the flow. When you are living in (or even visiting) a new country, you need leave your expectations behind to appreciate the good things about a given region/country.

Mind you, I don’t think it’s fair to expect some sort of super-human commitment from Americans to fight for freedom, we are all human with both strengths and flaws. That being said, people in other countries do not regularly go on mini rants about how they believe in freedom (even those that actually make massive sacrifices and put themselves at risk because of their beliefs in fundamental human freedoms).

This is some super fucked up shit.

Americans, you’ll need make sacrifices and deal with very difficult and scary choices if you want to deal with this and everything else that is happening in your country. Freedom isn’t a mere polemic.

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I wouldn’t call it buyer’s remorse.

Let me share a hot take based on my experience of living in the US, Ukraine and Russia (and closely following politics).

There are two factors that are likely driving Roberts’ behaviour:

1. They need an alibi. They need something that can differentiate them from the current oligarch regime in the US. While the US is a pretty conformist country (not saying the most conformist there is, but far more conformist than the popularity of recital of freedom polemics would suggest), you always have the possibility of black swan type events. One example would be Trump and his close associates being taken down in a forceful and public manner. The judicial wing of the oligarchic regime wants a failsafe, something that would allow them to say “we are not oligarch shills, we were just following a conservative judicial philosophy, it is not our fault that it was exploited by bad actors!” They are smart enough to know that if black swan type events do happen, they often take a life of their own and all bets are off. They want an exit strategy.
2. Judicial independence. I don’t mean this in the American sense of the term. I am talking about different power centres within an oligarchic regime. Let’s take russia for example. Even though it’s a highly centralized regime, it still has different power centres. The russian central bank has a modicum of independence. Different cliques in the power structures (and there are many cliques) have their own agenda and capabilities. Regional warlords (Kadyrov being the most well know, but he is not the only one) do have some manner of leverage in the system. The oligarchs, while being banned from politics, do have freedom in how they run their businesses. The one notable example without any leverage is the russian judicial system. They are little more than rubber stamp goons with no independent power. Roberts does not want to turn into Judge Ivan of Govnogorsk. He needs to show the other power centres in America’s oligarch regime that cooperation has a price and that other thugs need to show him respect.

They key issue is to treat oligarchs, their lackeys, their polemicists as individuals that lack empathy and thus lack humanity. Never forget what they are. Only certain types of incentives will work with such individuals.

If you are not American, this is the sort of thing that shows that American society more broadly is unreliable and hypocritical.

All the polemics about “free speech!!!” are complete bullshit.

I am not getting involved in the discussion around “boycotting capitalism”, but you can definitely find pretty solid options for smartphones and computers (desktops, desktop components, laptops) if you go second hand. This is true of almost any country in the world (in some places with lower salaries, 2nd hand will still be somewhat expensive, but I digress).

Until Americans start subjecting these “lawmakers” to the type of incentives that reflect their lack of humanity, you’re going to keep seeing this sort of degeneracy.

And not buy American products or pay for American services. This applies not only to Canada.

I’ve been cancelling my US tech services subscriptions and picking up alternatives.

Middleeasteye has always been like this. Some of their writers almost come off as being tankie-adjacent in their worldview.

To be honest, I don’t think there is a way to make them happen. At least from global examples, they happen almost in spontaneous manner, more often than not from a spark of some sort (killing of students, a particularly disliked decision etc.). Albeit the spark is of course tied to deeper mass social concerns.

I joined in the protests in my country (even night ones with police raids) and regularly brought supplies for protestors who barricaded in the centre of the capital (not just food, but helpful things like eye protection, masks, fire proof gloves). The government literally lost control of the main square and avenue of the country. This was also happening for months and months, including camping out during winters months. But people weren’t backing down.

The initial spark was beating of unarmed protesting students, that’s what led to the creation a protester controlled zone. There were massive protests all around the country after the initial assault on the students.

The next spark was the killing of protesters by the police. That’s when society’s attitudes hardened and there was a desire to get rid of the shill president and his admin and not back down (not to mention people become accepting of the need to use force by the protesters).

Look at global protest movements and tactics used. Taking over gov. admin buildings, blocking off parts of major cities, taking control of infrastructure nodes. Clear and focused demands (e.g. immediate resignation of Trump and his admin). Continued protests day in and day out. A whole network of protest sites all around the country, not only in the capital.

Mass participation with large parts of the country joining in on weekend peaks and key days (at least 10 million for country with the population of the US, realistically you would need more, as much as 20 million on peaks).

Btw, I am not saying this is easy or they are guaranteed to work, but these things to happen when a broad swath of society gets pissed off and have had enough.

Perhaps that’s just not the case in the US with respect to society more broadly. It doesn’t help that your opposition is trash, but often protests are not spearheaded by established political parties.

Fascinating stuff. You can’t really fight back against a criminal, oligarch regime if you’re not interested in upholding the rule of law and are open to working with oligarchs.

Even in such a dire situation (forget Ukraine for a second, I say this as a Ukrainian), they are going to be extremely slow and reactive.

If they had any brains (or balls), the EU leaders would have gone on full war footing (both in terms of industrial production and military preparedness) three years ago. But as we can see they just wanted to kick the can down the road and avoid difficult decisions.

It’s going to require daily nationwide protests going on for months and months with national participation approaching 1-2% of the population (4-8 million) on weekends and clear and actionable demands (resignation of Trump and his goons and corrupt members of the judiciary).

From my experience living in the US, I don’t think this is likely (I do hope I am wrong). Geographic size can actually be managed by having many thousands of protest sites by key admin buildings all throughout the country. The bigger issue is perhaps a lack of experience “operationalizing” beliefs and standing up to a thugs and oligarchs.

Economic liberalism did away with the divine right of kings and rule by bloodlines. Replacing it with something ultimately, arguably worse.

Come on, man! The serfs/peasants/slaves had it way worse than anyone living under “economic liberalism”. There is no comparison! Not even close.

I will agree that zero tolerance policies oligarchs (all well as senior associates, propagandists and enablers) does benefit everyone.

Her foreign policy and her statesmanship on the other hand was widely respected.

FWIW, in Ukraine (and many other parts of Europe), her foreign policy w.r.t russia is seen as de-facto enabling russian genocidal imperialism (as a conscious and pre-mediated decision). She nurtured and enabled putin every step of the way.

I am of course not speaking for German public, since I’ve never lived in Germany.

What a fucking idiot. Some degenerate from what seems like provincial Washington state is making calls about the leadership of Ukraine?

We should send his family to Pokrovsk (a key frontline town in Donetsk oblast) to do logistics volunteer work.

Hell, they can even come to my apartment in Kyiv. While it’s safe here, I have a feeling they are not going to enjoy daily shahed OWA strike warnings that happen in and around midnight or regular getting ballistic strike warnings at 4 am (and hearing takedowns of said shaheds and ballistic missiles during the night). Or seeing that the building down the street recently got hit my debris from a shahed takedown.