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I really wish the west wasn't so eager to crib from it's enemy's playbooks.

Ukraine's largest nuclear power plant has been attacked by Russian armed forces, causing a fire.
Firefighters arrived on the scene, only to be turned away by the Russian military.

Cain and Abel were brothers too.

I've read an argument from Russians who were against the war that if the Russians continue to fight the Ukrainians, they will destroy the very links they wish to preserve. It is a tragic occurrence.

Russians still believe they have a link to the Ukrainians not realizing that link has been deeply severed in the 1930s. They still believe, deeply, that the two nations are of people who are on in the same, and that the Ukrainian resistance to Russia is a misguided manipulation by sinister anti-Russian forces. The fact of the matter is though that the Holodomor has had a deep deep historical lesson for the Ukrainian people regarding to their position in the relationship with Russia. Russia views itself as a liberator of Ukraine, always has; from liberating it from the vestiges of the Mongol Horde, to liberating it from the Poles, the Ottomans, and now "the West". They cannot grasp – will not grasp. While many Russians are against the war, if you ask them about whether Ukraine should be part of Russia, I would venture to say most say it ought to be.

Indeed, though, there is a lot of intermixing. This is something not discussed, but the fact is…many oligarchs wives' are Ukrainian. Some, specifically, are Ukrainian Jews, as well.

I was gonna say "I really hope Putin gets shot" but they will just replace him with another psychopathic asshole aren't they

That and depending on who gets implicated you'll end up giving the Russians a more concrete reason to fight Ukraine and/or revenge themselves on the West.

Our credibility in denying accusations of assassination isnt at its strongest ebb at the moment.

I feel like at this point the problem is systemic

Washington Post: U.S. and allies quietly prepare for a Ukrainian government-in-exile and a long insurgency

…in Washington and European capitals, officials anticipate that the Russian military will reverse its early losses, setting the stage for a long, bloody insurgency.

…as a first step, Ukraine’s allies are planning for how to help establish and support a government-in-exile, which could direct guerrilla operations against Russian occupiers, according to several U.S. and European officials.

Do any of you guys see a double standard in how Ukrainian refugees were treated VS how Syrian ones were?

Care to elaborate? How were/are they treated, and by who?

The ukranian refugee waves are the actual refugees of Ukraine, nearly all women and children who claimed refugree status in the first bordering country they arrived in and mostly want to go home as soon as it's safe.

The Syrian "refugee" waves turned out to be overwhelmingly economic migrants from nearly every 3rd world country east of the atlantic. They were majority young men who travelled through dozens of countries only to claim refugee status once in the first world country whose wellfare state was to thier liking, and have no intention of going home.

Naturally 2 different situations would engender 2 different standards.

I am fine with both honestly though idk much about this I dont live in any place with political importance (which is quite good for me if in a morbid way btw but still)

Having the institution of refugees used as a trojan horse by illegal immigrants who want to jump the queue is a distinctly unwelcome experience when your country is already filled far past capacity.

Almost as unwelcome an experience as being browbeaten by Belgian bureaucrats and cosmopolitan nimbys for not taking "your fair share".

A 'pushed to vote to leave an economic union' level of unwelcome, in fact.

No.
There are over a million Syrian refugees in Europe today, and many hundreds of thousands in the ME. This is a result of a civil war. A civil war. The Syrians were not invaded. They are refugees because of an internal war, not one started by outside forces. Incidentally the refugee plight only exacerbated itself in both countries by Russia. The vast bulk, overwhelming bulk in fact, of refugees are able-bodied young males, perfectly suited to supplement the rapidly dropping German population.

Meanwhile the vast bulk of Ukrainian refugees are a result of an invasion by an outside party, i.e. Russia. The vast bulk of Ukrainian refugees are women and children, many of whom know fully well they are there temporary and most likely eager to get home.

Now I will feed you what you want to eat.
Yes. There is probably an inner preference for Ukrainian refugees over Syrian ones. And why not? Culturally speaking, spiritually speaking, politically speaking, historically speaking, the Ukrainians are closer to the European political, historic, and cultural tenets than Syrians are. While this may not fit an all pan-global universalism, the fact of the matter is, we are far more keen to prefer people closer to us than those that are not. ONE DAY I hope this will change. But to expect that day to be today is absurd.

A Ukrainian refugee fleeing to the EU has to cross the border. A Syrian refugee fleeing to Germany has to go through Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Austria… at some point it's no longer about fear of war. I'd prefer Germany to Turkey myself given Erdogan's current fiscal misadventures, but I wouldn't expect as much sympathy as someone fresh out of a warzone.

this is what we get for getting so dependant on cars and gasolines, we really should have gone with trains and nuclear generators or something idk.

Biden has been making terrible decisions though

Problem is oil pretty much blows every other energy source out of the water.

>it is far easier to move, handle and store than coal or natural gas
>the engines it fuels are easily minaturizable, and simple enough that anyone can operate and repair without a decade plus of training, unlike nuclear.
>Its not restrained to high end infrastructure and it doesnt have an exponential cost to moving it over long distance, unlike electric.

It props up the modern world; To do without right now would be to try to do without mass transportation and mechanized agriculture.There is no alternative fuel source we can turn to in anything close to a reasonable timeframe, and none of them can do all that oil can do.

For much of the world the dependance on oil isnt some simple matter of convienience it is litterally the only thing keeping them fed, making it all the more insane that so many world leaders treat it like a luxury that we just need to grit our teeth and quit like it was a nicotine habit.

The us for one could’ve easilly switched to nuclear decades ago, we didnmt because of lobbying and anti nuclear propoganda
gas powered vehicles are an unfortunate requirement in large parts of the world for know though I agree

There was already environmental and economic reasons to shift infrastructure away from a dependence on oil, now we just have a political one (air pollution, climate change, externalities and now authoritarian regimes).

Most developed nations have started some kind of measures, whether it's an energy transition and/or an investment in public transportation and even parts of the US have tried with orgs like NYSERDA. Then there's those administrations who not only did nothing, but actively sabotaged efforts, and in the long-run made everything harder for themselves.

To counter some above claims, cost per cent energy generation of renewables and nuclear are cheaper than oil & coal. De-centralization of energy production to reduce transmission losses exist, using public transportation and designing cities to be walk-able and bike-able instead of a sprawl also exists. There's been developments since the early 2000's, where the "oil is indispensable" argument was first trotted out.

To use the analogy of the nicotine habit, in the past few decades there's those who've done what they can to wean themselves off, and those who started chain-smoking as a sort of "take that". In the end, everyone will still have to quit.

For those countries for whom it's currently impossible in the time-frames given to move away from oil, who don't have the resources, or who made it impossible for themselves, because they preferred leaders that told them what they wanted to hear? … Good luck to them, sincerely.

We'll see how everything goes.

well at least its unlikely things can get any worse, things might be looking up soon

hopefully I am not jinxing it

We're at a point where we could readily (albeit, not quite quickly or cheaply) switch the power grid entirely off of fossil fuels. Nuclear is safe and efficient enough to take its place just fine, and while less reliable and space-efficient, solar and wind can pull some weight too. The issue is that, ironically, this clean energy source is despised by many environmental activists with the burning passion of a dozen oil rigs.

The situation for transportation is much more complicated. We have many ways to reduce the total carbon emissions from transportation; walking, biking, carpooling, public transport, electric vehicles, et cetera. Out of all of these, only electric vehicles are liable to truly have a comparable impact to what nuclear might have. Even then, for them to become a truly practical replacement for gasoline-engine vehicles, there need to be far more electric vehicle recharge stations, even in the middle of nowhere, as well as a substantial reduction in average price. And not to mention making the power grid more green so it actually has a meaningful impact.

Walking and biking are good, but if your plan for them to become viable is to either A) redesign existing cities from the ground up, somehow or B) completely replace existing cities with new, planned ones, you should invest your time in more interesting pipe dreams.

Mass public transit is certainly helpful, but not a panacea. It can't feasibly connect everywhere to everywhere else without being absurdly complicated and expensive. That, and not everyone is comfortable with sitting in a cramped metal tube with a bunch of strangers.

So your "solution" is to leave them to the wolves for the sin of… being industrially behind the developed world, and/or living under the oppression of an autocratic petrostate.

Genuine question here, what exactly is your thought process here?

It depends, and I'd like to point out that if there truly was will for nuclear power, there would have been a push to switch to it anyway. I've seen opposition, from far-left, left, right and far-right (which includes environmentalists). It's a technology that has a lot of public fear to it, not helped by heavily mediatized nuclear accidents such as Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima. An energy transition is necessary, and switching to Gen III (or Gen IV when it comes out) and the more reasons is given the more political opposition will need to swallow the bitter pill, like all unpopular policies.

The issue with transportation is infrastructure investments. To become viable, there needs to be a lot of time and money, to address suburban sprawl and create new trams, trains, buses and recharging stations. Personally, I think it's one of the better things a government could invest in. A guaranteed rate of return.

It's not the perfect solution, but I've heard of countries where people need to take the car to go anywhere. To continue to rely on gas is to be more and more vulnerable to gas hikes and price fluctuations, and efforts do need to be made to at least reduce dependence.

It's not a solution, it's what's going to happen.

Tell me, are you in favor of creating renewable and nuclear plants, and reducing oil usage? Are you willing to have your country do the same for other countries? Do you have any empathy for refugees, particularly what is soon to be climate refugees in countries which cross Wet bulb temperatures? Do you donate to UNDP or the rest of the Environmental Developmental Aid orgs? Is that even enough? I know Trump (and copycats from other countries) completely defunded ones like GCF and the rest, so can citizens even offset governments? Are you like Greyblades, in saying that Russia, one of those petrostates should be allowed to do what it wants? Or any other question I'm missing about global solidarity? In essence, do you have policies which will prevent those states from being left to the wolves?

My thought process? I've mostly given up on any global solution or cooperation, the past few years and COVID have shown how crises like that will be handled. It's not even developing countries, because I think developed countries will also suffer from prior policies. If you don't have the resources when problems start to mount, you can't expect a foreign savior, because everyone else will also be trying to keep their head above water.

Genuinely, I'm also increasingly burned out of any type of 'moral' arguments, especially on this forum. 'Got mine, fuck everyone else' is the shit I've been hearing around here for years now.

Russia is supposedly distributing NBC gear, after a week of screeching without evidence about bio weapons that don't exist and having just cut power to Chernobyl.

Apologies to Poland, nuclear sabotage and a false flag bio attack are what's going to cause this to spiral to a continental war.

Doesnt need to be a false flag even.

The US undersecretary of state admitted ukrainian biolabs exist 4 days ago which incidentally the world health organization confirmed yesterday contained pathogens worth preemptively destroying.

Why they havent already been destoryed considering they're being invaded is unclear; all this time one stray artillery shell, of which the russian army seems chrinically afflicted, and we'd have been pointing fingers at eachother over "an obvious biological attack".

Silver lining is the US government seems to have learned not to spend over a year lying about the importance of a biolab.

If only we could have skipped the lying about its very existance stage altoegther but, y'know, progress..

I also wish they hadnt potentially been funding them again

"Everything the Communists told us about communism was a complete and utter lie. Unfortunately, everything the Communists told us about capitalism turned out to be true."
-- Russian joke from the 1990s

I can kind of see the point of this joke, found it on tv tropes

Not to imply the world isn't much better off with the Soviet union gone or that Russia isn't better off now because it is but… yeah

I put as much stock on the "weapons of mass destruction" claim of Russia as that of the US. It's bullshit, especially when it seems to shift from nuclear to bioweapons mid-invasion.

Yet somehow, it's still reported and repeated. I think it's funny that the same crowd who parroted "Iraq' WMD" are now trying to repeat the "Ukraine Biolabs". History repeats, first as a tragedy then as a comedy.

History does repeat, just not how you mean.

There were indeed WMDs in Iraq, problem was it was the leftovers of the things NATO and the USSR had supplied them with during the cold war.

Mustard, Sarin and Tabun gasses from the USSR. Anthrax, Botulism and West Nile virus strains from the Americans. All kept in shocking state of neglect by 2003 that it was likely only a fraction of them were still useable.

Hell, they even had a nuclear program albeit it was about as close to completion as the Japanese one at the end of WW2, aka sod all. Didn’t stop us finding a bunch of American made nuclear grade HMX detonators during the gulf war, but useable uranium thankfully was absent.

Our leaders put nasty shit in the hands of nations with a track record for neglecting vital upkeep and now its an issue they're hoping the excitement of the surrounding crisis will keep people from asking where they came from.

Again.

It's a frankinstien's moster-esque merger of covid and the iraq war only we dont have the cold war excuse, the russians are doing the invading and barely any of the media are willing to do their jobs and fact check the ruling party line.

Oh wait, that last one was true of covid and Iraq too, it's just the partys swapped their roles of dissenter and confomist since 2003.

…Ok, I just realized I had a premature senility moment and didnt parse your first paragrah properly. That "there were indeed WMDs" line looks really fucking stupid now and as usual I didnt notice until after the 30 minute edit mark.

I hold by what I said but I regret the attitude by which I said it.

And no, its not the same crowd (mostly, the neo cons are reduced still have holdouts but the neolibs are still going strong), a good number of the iraq WMD people are the ones going "what biolabs? Oh, those biolabs, nah they're nothing to do with us. Ok they do have something to do with us but they're defensive biolabs"

As if being defensive makes it not massively incompetent to give yet another nation rife with corruption (of the 2nd world's underfunding variety of corrupt as opposed to the first world's overfundiing) a biolab full of infectious diseases.

Yeah, the US did the same thing as Russia, which is switching out nuclear weapons for chemical weapons or who knows what else (that were barely usable at that point, hence their absence during an invasion). The UN had the IAEA investigate, we all know what the US were claiming, and scrambling for substitutes doesn't make it any less of a lie, same with Russia except their claim is somehow even flimsier.

As for the parties involved? … With all I can say about the neo-libs, I'm increasingly exasperated by how current American Republicans and their supporters use the shift from neo-cons as a way to wriggle out of any responsibility. It was the American Right and international supporters who mostly talked shit during that period, they were the majority antagonists and supporters of the war and it's crimes until the very end.

I'd like to point out once again, Trump pardoned Blackwater mercenaries who committed a massacre.

That that group has gotten even worse and more antagonistic doesn't mean that they're absolved now. Especially when here? It's the American Right and sycophants who repeat the biolabs rhetoric, like in the Iraq War. Except now it's for an even more openly authoritarian regime.

It's a farce.

>Biolab

Does any country with a bio-lab get an automatic cassus belli? No, then why does it matter, in this context? Why even give oxygen to Russia's flailing justifications?

Get your shit together, at least for the international scene.

Especially when I've already said that I consider the Alt-right/American Right on very thin ice, with what has been said. I don't trust this as just an innocent concern.

Imagine how awful the 2030s gonna be….

In the interest of balance, I'm also going to mention the far-left who support Russia, although is there a point to that? Unlike when I castigate the far-right, making fun of the far-left is just preaching to the choir.

Anyway, I had the misfortune of actually meeting one, someone who said that dictators toppling democracies aligned with the current power will reduce American & EU power, and ultimately make everyone free. It's a real head-trip to have someone who talks of the same values, but who has completely different conclusions based off on them.

The Soviets called them useful idiots for a good reason.

If I didn't see actual people on both ends of the political spectrum support some version of Russia's rhetoric, I wouldn't have believed it. It's the horseshoe theory in action.

I dont even want to know what awful shit the 2030s hold at this rate

Thin ice has to have something consequential under it to matter, your disapproval isn’t such; after all, they've seen what makes you cheer.

I place Russia's Ukraine justification in the same category as America's Iraq justification: bullshit excuse for war. Peacekeeping? Aiding and abetting extremists? Enemy has forbidden weapons? Bullshit excuses that we used first, to our shame

At this point I wouldn’t be surprised if the Russians are just repurposing Iraq war justifications as some sort of piss take, but ultimately, I don’t care.

What I do care about is that once again the so called adults in the room have been laying yet more pandemic landmines!

I find it exasperating how many people seem consider not giving Putin good PR more important.

.

Bush hired those blackwater mercs and killed a million innocents besides in the two wars he started over bullshit. Obama failed to start two other wars of his own over bullshit and had to settle for setting off a series of regime changing civil wars setting the chaos from which ISIS rose.

You attempt to equate Trump to the criminality of the neos and the best you come up with is "he pardoned murderers". It's pathetic.

It's also no better than what the neos tried to overthrow him over. Their legacies of failure and piles of corpses made mockery of Trump's and the attempts to portray otherwise found correspondingly few listeners the right.

Yet they found an eager audience on the left.

Romney, Graham, McConnel, Bush, McCain and Cheyne all turned into saints by Democrat-aligned media and punditry over mere gestures of dissent. The man who had tried to do what they themselves had repeatedly promised and abandoned through their entire careers had goaded them to shatter the illusion of difference with their Neolib counterparts.

The Neo-Cons disregarded their voters wishes for decades and acted of thier own volition often, same as the Neo libs but unlike the Democrats the Republicans actually did something about it.

The fact of that break from their own particular breed of globalistic siphoners puts them higher than damn near all of us in the so called enlightend West.

>they've seen what makes you cheer

I'm the guy whom you said some version of "making their foreigners angry" is what makes them cheer. I should be the one saying that.

I don't want their approval and it's not approval at stake, it's reputation on whether it's traitors or just useful idiots. The notion of 'sides & treason' still seems to be something some care about, considering how it riles people up.

>Bullshit excuse-pandemic

You know, if that was a real concern of Russia, they could also not shoot at nuclear power plants, population centers and critical infrastructure.

Nor start a war. Those create/worsen pandemics more than anything else, as seen with the Spanish Flu.

>Bush-Obama

See, you're falling into the trap of thinking that I like them, when actually:

>he pardoned murderers

Trump is just another one that list of criminal presidents, the same way that those who wanted Obama for change had status quo. The sooner you and others realize that, the better.

I've repeated the pardoned criminals bit, because I wanted a response. Now that I have it, I don't want hear anything about crooked anything when those mercenaries and criminal mayors got pardoned. That's the very definition of being rotten. I think it's pathetic that your response is "so". That's it?

It hasn't been a break from the neo-cons, it's a degeneration.

>globalistic siphoners-west

You have to be kidding, the time in the sun was used to act like petty mafiosos and extortionists. Cost plus 50, and trade wars. Attempting to throw the strength around, with little success.

It's deciding to 'stick it' to the globalist siphoners, by being crude siphoners (not isolationists mind you). Tell me, did Mexico ever build that wall, or did money just disappear into a black-hole of shell companies and tangled affiliations? There was no real infrastructure investment either. That's why I would say they admire Russia, the foreign and domestic policy is how Russia acted, until it blew up in their face.

How you idolize a crook, is almost as baffling to me as the person who talked about using dictators to promote freedom. It's almost like saying "you're either with the globalist siphoners, or the mafioso wannabe siphoner". "You're either with the torturers or the terrorists".

It doesn't look like there's been any change in thinking since the Iraq War.

I ain't a fan of globalization either but Trump acted like a total bully yeah, he was also racist towards latinos to boot

…Are you mistaking me for someone else? I have no recollection of "making their foreigners angry" being applied to you if anything it is more applicable to me.

The American right have already been called traitors by the left repeatedly for years and all indication is that they'll be called traitors long after whatever they do; it is nothing more than punctuation in the endless demand for compliance that has faded into background noise.

Biden's already tried to jam a year of increasing fuel prices and inflation behind a 2-week war. Now we have yet another fuck up on the horizon; even as they admit that "yes we saw nothing wrong with leaving viruses in the hands of a nation known for cutting corners on damn well everything, in fact we gave them your tax money to keep it up"; they pull out the "traitor" card on whoever doesn’t immediately dismiss it as Russian propaganda.

Icing on the cake is that the most visible example was a draft dodging Neocon calling an Iraq war veteran Democrat treasonous, puts that grandstanding over Trump daring to disrespect McCain in stark contrast.
.

I made no mistake; we were talking the applicability of responsibility from the bad old days not your preferences.

The republicans kicked the necons into the side-lines and backed an outsider, the democrats picked up those side-lined neo-cons and put another neo lib in the Whitehouse. This demonstrates that the republicans have diverged from their past whereas the democrats have proven willing to go for round two.

You attempt to counter that by drawing an equivalence between trump, "he is no better" and I demonstrate how that doesn’t work by comparing the puddle you brought up with the lakes of blood left by the neos. Yet you still call him a degeneration from what came before?

I remember how the EU treated its debtors and dissenters, I remember the migrant crisis and the Brexit years, endless predictions of our economic ruin as Europe would stand strong.

They even brought out Obama to tell us we'd better not leave else we're back of the line for American trade!

All leaders are mafioso, their nation is supposed to be their gang but in the west our leaders have drifted to their own gang of the likeminded, leaving their countrymen to rot.

Trump wasn’t different from the rest of the west in his tendency to bully; he was different by who his bullying was designed to benefit.

His methods were much preferable, better a trade war than a real one. You may decry the results but I remember the boom years, low unemployment, wages rising faster than inflation, growth in the 4-5% range after 8 years of Obama's "more than 3% is impossible" bullshit.

He had more Blacks in employment than the first Black president and the media still called him racist!

I also remember how they ended: not from Trump but by the individual state leaders succumbing to the grand insanity of lockdownerism.

Guess which ones.

They're all bastards. Trump was a better breed of bastard and best of all a loyal bastard. I'm envious for a bastard who considers me on his side than a bastard who sees me as merely a piggy bank for the pipe dreams of his international friends.

Thin ice has to have something consequential under it to matter, your disapproval isn’t such; after all, they've seen what makes you cheer.

I assume he's not speaking of his own disapproval. Rather, it reads like he's saying that the powers that be are approaching a point at which they'll be more willing to openly and brazenly violate the constitution to suppress dissent. It's certainly possible IMO (the feds have done some fucked shit when it comes to movements that challenge the status quo), though being too blatant about it would be very risky, to say the least.

I'd like to point out once again, Trump pardoned Blackwater mercenaries who committed a massacre.

Bill Clinton pardoned someone convicted for involvement in a terrorist group and the possession of over 750 pounds of explosives. And also his own half-brother.
Presidents engaging in pardons that are disagreeable, controversial, or outright unethical isn't anything new. It's actually way, way older than even Ford pardoning Nixon; Andrew Johnson pardoned Jefferson Davis.

I assume he's not speaking of his own disapproval. Rather, it reads like he's saying that the powers that be are approaching a point at which they'll be more willing to openly and brazenly violate the constitution to suppress dissent. It's certainly possible IMO (the feds have done some fucked shit when it comes to movements that challenge the status quo), though being too blatant about it would be very risky, to say the least.

Were this Canada and there wasnt a viable opposition I would be worried for the long term.

As it is the Biden admin's capacity to self destruct has exceeded my wildest dreams, I find my mind straying to the old american saying "I'd like to see you fucking try it, fed".

Albiet as less a threat more out of morbid curiosity of how they will fuck it up.

“Where this canda and there wasn’t a viable opposition”
lolwut
the us has no opposition
there is neoliberal red and neoliberal blue

>Thin Ice

Wouldn't surprise me of the US, but I was actually referring to reputation, not just "like and dislike". Reputation means everything, it changes whether people believe you, are willing to give the time of day, and are willing to work with you.

The person who honors nothing and who always betrays in the Prisoner's game doesn't get far. The old adage of "I don't care" doesn't work here. Look at the Russians, they certainly didn't care, and after years of efforts to break promises, threaten others, lose trust and piss everyone else off they've finally hit pariah status.

Hell, there's a smaller example here of having no trust:
https://knowyourmeme.com/comments/5947569#comment_5947569

>Blackwater Mercenaries

And Trump pardoned the former embezzling mayor of Detroit, and some criminals who fired on civilians, which also makes sure that no one will trust American courts to bring their soldiers to justice (not that a lot did at this point).

I did say it means Trump is another on a long list of criminal presidents. He's no different, he's certainly not worthy of a cult of personality. Why don't you bring a critical eye on this, or you can't, can you?

It also means that I'm pretty tired of you and others talking of government overreach when you ignore this shit. That bit of trust and patience is out. Or at least if it's done without acknowledgement of some kind of hypocrisy, or the issues with the system itself.

I'd also like to point out that the subject was originally about biolabs, and now the Russians have moved on/moved back to accusing the US of helping Ukraine develop nuclear weapons.

As I said four days ago, before all these walls of texts: " It's bullshit".

Personally, if the US Right/Alt-Right/Trump Supporter/Neo-con/Former Neo-con/another one of the bastards did not repeat Russian propaganda, they wouldn't be brought up as much. Honestly, if they actually kept to themselves, I wouldn't care and wouldn't have cared.

Want to restart the Covid subject? Want to talk about how the US now has close to 1 million deaths from Covid, and a alarming amount of them not in Urban areas, but in the rural ones?

As for the economic legacy of Trump, his economy increased debt, lost billions in his trade wars, and spread tax-cuts (to the middle class which has expired and to the rich which hasn't), and we saw a crash in food and air due to deregulation, allowing the transmissions due to OSHA no longer tracking the spread of workplace illnesses, the EPA allowing polluters to regulate themselves, all of the short-term gain for long-term issues.Same as Bush.

All failures of policy, he just inherited a good economy, which he successfully helped drive to the ground in record time, with the rest being Covid. As for the trade wars, he failed the one in China, possibly because he was also busy attacking the EU and other countries at the same time.

>I remember how the EU treated its debtors and dissenters, I remember the migrant crisis and the Brexit years, endless predictions of our economic ruin as Europe would stand strong.

I remember how the UK was one of those big pushers of Austerity, helped create the migrant crisis with their wars with the US, and predicted the EU is "a giant corpse/the Fourth Reich/the New Soviet Union (courtesy of their foreign affairs minister, and how other Brits called us), and how a domino effect would happen where it would fall apart.

And some wonder why most in the Union don't trust the UK. How the "breaking of international law in a limited way" didn't do much for the UK's attempted usage of that same law with other states.

How did that all work out anyway? I recall Theresa May the "Tin Lady", and even Boris Johnson and successors trying to downplay the hostile rhetoric, that it was just a "mutually beneficial decision", because it turns out the UK couldn't tell us to completely fuck off. Not counting the long years long negotiations, because of internal issues in the UK, and a tendency to lie, such as with Gove saying that they could just not honor some commitments (right in public)

EU sentiment grew, PESCO and other institutions finally got created, most 'Exit' movements have shifted to reform. I could say the same, despite predictions of ruin, we're still standing.

>They even brought out Obama to tell us we'd better not leave else we're back of the line for American trade!

He did it himself, was there a trade deal with Trump, or with Biden? Last I recall, even some elements of the American Right said there would be no deal if there was a hard border in Ireland. If anything the EU stayed far too quiet about the tabloids and their lies, and the UK even elected a former yellow journalist.

Tell me, did the UK enlist the groups of American Right and other populist groups which assailed us for years? I wouldn't hate that group so much, if they had kept to themselves. Instead we had the early years of the Trump administration where you lot used us as their number one enemy. Not China, not Russia. Us, other democracies. After years of wishing we'll be invaded by Russia, looks like your boy Putin isn't as strong as everyone thought,is he?

Years wasted fighting you lot off, that's the degeneration from neo-cons. I think it would be enough to already put the aggressors in the camp of Russia and China, if only by being useful idiots. Feel aggrieved, or angry? Well, I have just as much reasons to be distrustful and pissed off by what was done in the past few years

It's almost a miracle that most Western nations somehow managed to work together to sanction Russia.

Reflections:
I had a conversation with my grandparents over the weekend as we were sitting down watching the stream of what has been happening in Ukraine.
Sometimes my grandparents, who, by the way, grew up under Stalinism, WW2, Nazi Occupation of Ukraine, and escaping by foot to Uzbekistan, give profound viewpoints that I cannot fathom anyone in the modern age would understand.
This weekend:
Grandpa: I lived through the Nazis taking over Ukraine, but they never bombed or destroyed it like the Russians have.
Grandma: Sending boys, little boys who don't know where they are to die like this is barbaric. These aren't soldiers, they are just boys.

Just a reflection.

Even more destructive than the Nazis? It's genuinely horrifying to hear that from your Grandparents.

So, more than half a century later, and we haven't truly changed. I sometimes wonder what we actually learned from WWII. You hear stories of Ukrainians evacuating art and cultural pieces, and with the way the Russians are bombing Ukraine, even the Eastern areas, makes it seem they want to not just conquer, but be king of the ashes. Beyond just tyranny, it seems to be cruelty for cruelty's sake.

Feeding your next generation to a war-machine is cannibalizing the future. It will be a lot of work to pick up the pieces and rebuild from the aftermath of this war.

My parody for the Russian president is called Josef Putin.