Yeah, I think people need to recognize that this arms Kuwait, Tunisia, Lithuania, Oman, Netherlands, Chad, Yemen, Bulgaria, Tajikistan, Rwanda and Cameroon all with nuclear weapons. (Ranks 91-100 if we just go by number of military personnel, active and reserve, an imperfect but very convenient way to measure.)
If I’m not mistaken, two of those countries are currently involved in conflict. (Yemeni Civil War and Rwanda involved in Congo)
There is one pretty clear data point that demonstrates their existence, that being people that voted for both Biden and Trump. And yes, I have met some swing voters, they’re folks that are usually not very into politics, but do vote. I find it silly to not believe in something that we have data on, at any rate. Nor do I think it’s very productive to focus in on any singular factor when multiple factors go into an equation.
You don’t need to make guesses based on your own experiences, a quick googling of “swing voters” will pull up a bunch of data-driven approaches at analyzing them.
One aspect that doesn’t get discussed enough is how effective their grassroots in predominantly young, male hobby spaces has become.
20 years ago, if you weren’t that interested in politics, you wouldn’t get much of it. Currently though, it has thoroughly infiltrated spaces like athletics and gaming. This was not an accident. They have a strong ground game, it just operates in spaces we’re unaccustomed to thinking about in reference to politics.
Yeah, I’m not entirely sure what’s so surprising about a bunch of professional diplomats being diplomatic with their statements. It’s not a group I expect a lot of outright, direct statements of their positions from.
Yeah, the whole cast really crushes it.
I don’t know where you get your info, but China and Russia have a frenemy relationship, a friendly rivalry, basically. This goes back to Stalin’s limited support for the CCP in their early days, or even before when the Russian Tsar conquered huge swaths of land from the Qing Dynasty during their Century of Humiliation, about the time when we Americans were busy having our Civil War. We see it to this day, where China could have a huge and decisive effect on the Russo-Ukrainian War if they wished and fully threw in with Russia, but instead are happy to sit back and war profiteer while Russia takes heavy loses and the West spends money instead of making it.
Then Iran and Saudi Arabia are archenemies. Iran is a Shia-majority theocracy, SA is a Sunni-majority secular monarchy with a history of persecuting Shias, and even warming up to Israel before Oct 7th. They have a long history of conflict.
Not sure how Turkey gets on the list either, Turkey has consistently played both sides, always being in it for Turkey. I don’t see the benefit for them to actually pick a side, thus losing their benefits from the other. We see this clearly, again, in how they’ve approached the Russo-Ukrainian War. Like cozying up to Putin, but hey, have some free Bayraktars, Ukraine!
I know a lot of people put a lot of effort into trying to make it seem like a real WW3 with fairly even sides is plausible in the near future, but it always requires a lot of cherry picking and ignoring realities for them to spin their stories together.
Moon landing is even more recent. Didn’t like Buzz Aldrin or one of them deck a guy one time for insulting him and getting up in his face about faking it all?
Digital feudalism… I suppose that does make it easier to call up large armies of peasant levies when you need to wage an information war.
Also just fear of going out of business by alienating any potential customers. When your revenues have been steadily dropping for decades now and it’s starting to look like you’re going the way of Kodak, it becomes more tempting to pander to the middle and try to avoid pissing as many people off as possible. This in turn means you can’t speak the truth anymore.
No, they cannot. They can still make a significant difference though.
Meh. If our government won’t send any of our tax dollars, we can at least still donate directly to military-focused fundraisers. Won’t be air defense or anything, but helping buy drones still contributes.
My fav is just that the sun is, all by itself, 99% of the total mass of our solar system. Most of the rest of that 1% is Jupiter.
It’s the “I know you are, but what am I?” defense. A real elementary school classic.
I think he’s going to go down in history as one of the most successful civilian wartime leaders, ever. I truly cannot even begin to imagine how much he has had to learn on the job, and it has certainly taken years off his lifespan. Pictures of him now vs pictures of him pre-war could almost be a father and his son. But his sheer effectiveness at rallying his people and the world has been nothing short of legendary.
“I need ammo, not a ride” is fully equivalent to “We will fight on the beaches”. So far I consider him in that same tier as the titans of history. This, I think, is what historical figures look like when you’re living alongside them, certainly mired in propaganda and debate, but with a certain shine that is hard to deny.
The full poem is rather nice.
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
-Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus
Just call it the Russo-Ukrainian War. It’s the formal English language name we seem to have settled on, and is unbiased and objective, just listing the two main participants.
That’s a region. It’s also not what you said, you said rust bowl. You know bowls and belts are different things, right? Belts hold your pants up, bowls are dishes you eat food out of.
You read too much bullshit. The US is the second-largest manufacturer on the planet, after China. We have quite a lot of industry still. Nor was “rust bowl” ever a term, which you’d know if you were an American.
If Russian production is so plentiful, where are all the T-90s? Seems to me a major producer of materiel wouldn’t be needing to field its T-64’s in a modern conflict.
Swing voters. And yeah, people that consume news probably aren’t going to be swing. It’s more often going to be people that don’t watch news, read articles, etc.