The purpose of a system is what it does. The US has about 4% of the world population, and about 20% of the world prison population. The last country to have that statistic was Soviet Union.

I find that an artifact of a gay party is a great embodiment of equality, liberation, and pursuit of happiness. And also, of material success for that matter, being able to afford a party is not something one should take for granted. So we have the very core ideas of the Dream represented here.

And the unicorn as described is a great embodiment of the growing disconnect between the promises and the reality of the American life.

Your post is a demnostration of that disconnect. If you think enjoying a gay party makes someone closeted, well there's still a way to go on the road of liberation, because you appear to be a bigot. And I can imagine a scenario where cleaning up beach trash would be stealing, but I don't think the US is quite that dystopian yet. But if you think that Buc-ees, that is, the fact you can find a clean toilet here and there is the final form of the American Dream, maybe you have some reckoning to do.

I had a friend work in the US for a few years. Marine biologist, Miami iirc.

At some point in time he went for a road trip to search for the American Dream. Drove all across the US, from the east to the west, from the north to the south. Didn't find it, though. When he had almost made it back home, he stumbled upon a gay beach party in Florida. Had a blast. When he awoke on the deserted beach next morning, there he found a giant inflatable rainbow colored unicorn, and he recognized it for what it was. Took it home, put it in the pool between the mid-rises.

And when people asked about it, he'd happily tell them of the story of his search, and of the American Dream as it was found to be - an imaginary creature, full of air, construced of cheap plastic, made in China. Never made anyone laugh, never made anyone cry, but did make everyone quiet for a while.

There's some other kind out there?

I also linked that someone an investigation into allegations the US mined the pipes at Baltops '22, and also a video of Biden threatening to make the pipe go away. Here's another one, placing the US Navy directly on the crime scene at the right time: https://weltwoche.ch/daily/us-...

For shits and giggles, also this: https://x.com/TheInsiderPaper/...

But my point is not about that. My point is that what is "well known" has been changing in time. First it was x, then it was y, and now it is z. There is no reason to believe it will not be something completely different in the future, and therefore, no reason to get invested into what the current official truth is. We will know for sure only if and when the archives are opened up to historians, somewhere in the second half of the century.

Until then, whatever the truth is that is on offer at any time, caveat emptor.

US will have won the war when the Strait gets reopened on their terms. As it currently stands, the world is running into an oil shock, with a side of helium, aluminium, sulphuric acid, and to top it off with a famine coming next winter, urea.

But thank you for the name calling.

I don't really pay much attention to people with Russian names, they are usually simps for either Russia or US. I mean it does help to know how the other side sees the issues, but that does not take much effort. And some simps can still be invaluable sources of information, if you can stomach the biases, not that I mean the particular one.

In any case, I take it you cannot fault my argument, so you go for me instead.

China probably is going to end up with all of Russia east of the Urals, and probably without a shot being fired. Siberia already has countless millions of Chinese farmers who have crossed the border in search of a better life. Russia on the other hand lacks the population to fill the space, so there's really nothing they can do about it.

If you haven't paid attention, pretty much all of the US foreign policy debate in the last decades has been about which one of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea should US get over with first. While the US is on the war path and has it in for them, those four are going to stick together and have each others backs. Divided, they will fall, united, they will stand.

They can and did hit whatever they wanted, but they still lost the war.

Not entirely certain, many see him as too soft on Ukraine, and hardliners are gaining ground.

Would Zelensky win in Ukraine today? Not entirely certain, many are fed up with the war he represents.

Would Trump win in US today? Not entirely certain, many are tired of his bullshit. But even though most people know he never says a single word of truth, most still believe everything he says about Iran and his Epstein war there.

This is how it works. When people get to choose between the enemy, and their however imperfect leader, they are going to choose the latter, and rally behind them. Much like this conversation here. Whatever disagreements people might have with their government or it's prosecution of the war in Ukraine, when I criticize it, everyone still mans the barricades.

I thought they would fall quickly, too, and I got a lot of shit for it back in the day. Here's an example of the mainstream thinking back then https://www.nytimes.com/2022/1...

Turned out Ukraine was more prepared than we thought. Well the US had been preparing them for it since Maidan, arming and training, and building up the army. But the basic war math is that Russia has three times the recruitment pool and had six times the materiel before the war, and has had made bigger advances in production than the West. This basic math says that Ukraine can not hold out indefinitely, and so does them running thin on manpower for about two years already.

To propose that Ukraine can not only win, but to also reclaim Crimea, as was the popular idea back in the day, is to propose something that can neutralize and flip around Russian advantage. Despite regular news articles about the next big thing coming in to turn the tides, nothing of the such has materialized so far. It is my understanding that at least some in DC sincerely thought that Russia was going to crumble and go into a regime change based on the sanctions alone. Considering sanctions have never achieved that, instead always unifying and strengthening the resolve of the sanctioned country, this is... wild.

As to the half-swastikas, I suppose you mean the Z. I don't particlarily care about the nazi allegations on this or that side. Every population has Nazis and what you want to do with them is to put them in the army so you can extract some value out of them instead of wasting resources on them by converting them into a prison population. They kill enemies, good, they get killed, also good. But if you want to talk about nazis, you need to talk about the Azov brigade, too, with them having the wolfsangel as their insignia, and with their members having left behind an ample trail of swastikas and SS symbols worn in media.

Now if you cannot understand why Russians would rally behind Putin in war time, well I'm sure you understand Ukrainians rallying behind Zelensky, Americans rallying behind whoever their president is at the time, and so on. There's nothing to understand there, really, and I take statements of such to mean that primarily one does not want to understand. But there's more to that in the particular case of Russia, which was commonly understood in the US back in the time giants like Kennan roamed the earth. A big part of the Russian psyche, identity, and validation for their existence, is their regular collective suffering in the name of the fatherland. Most importantly in this context they suffered under Napoleon and under Hitler, and now under Nato, and they do view this current war as a repeat of the previous two by Nato in general, and the US in particular.

If you cannot understand what movitates the enemy, well Sun Tzu put it like so:

The West has collectively decided that he who tries to undertand the enemy is with the enemy, and there we have it, a stalemate at best.

The US Navy was placed at the crime scene long time ago. Now there's also this https://www.europarl.europa.eu...

But the particular data point is not the most important part of my point, which is about the walk back from the absurd original statement no one in their right mind should believe, to a more reality-based one that has to concede it was some sort of "us" who did the bad thing. Admitting to this all at once would cause outrage, so you have to do it in small enough steps, a common pattern in all of our war reporting.

Now as to the Nato lake, do you want to say that Nato's ability to know what is going on on the Baltic Sea is a development that took place during the last four years? On the very sea that is one of the three strategic axes of the entire alliance? Come on.

Here's one for your amusement https://www.youtube.com/watch?... Not from election time, but whatever, he's making it very clear what is going to happen.

What the US gained from the pipes blowing up was to keep Germany on their side. By that time the German public was weary and discontent with the high energy prices caused by the war, and the political situation in the country was that either the government was going to go anti-war, or there would have been a new anti-war government in a few months. These would have had seeked out if not an end to the war, then at least restarting the gas flow and an end to the destruction of the German economy with Anti-Russian sanctions. Had Germany folded, most probably most of EU would have followed. After the pipes went kaboom, there was no way forward for Germany but to go all in on the war. Thus, US kept the war going, and EU in it for good.

While I thank you for one of the most respectful disagreements I've received over the war years...

When Biden denied the Polish planes to Ukraine, I called the US lacked good will in the war, and that it would turn to shit as per Kissinger - being a US enemy is dangerous, but being a US friend is fatal. Back then I was ridiculed, now TFA says the war was considered lost already 4 years ago.

When the Nord Stream got blown up, I said I'm not big enough of an idiot to believe it's the Ruskies whodunnit blow up their own pipe. Again, ridicule, but over the time, first it was the Ruskies, then it was we have no idea (the Baltic Sea is a Nato lake, there's zero chance anything goes on there without the US' knowledge) then it was rogue Ukie guys, then it was officially Ukies whom the US had told to not do it, now it's starting to look like US Navy divers... And nobody seems to recall blowing up the pipes was an actual Biden election promise.

And when I called the great counteroffensive of Bradley square fame dead after a week, of course I got ridiculed, but over the following months the press went from "we were surprised there were mines" to "it will take time" to "here's the top7 reasons why the counteroffensive failed, you won't believe nr.3". And for half a year Ukraine slammed brigade after brigade head first into the same wall in the same place until nothing was left.

So I'll rely on my track record, and the argumentation that has produced it, and say no thanks to the feelgood stories we hear from the eastern front.

The thing is, the US can afford to delude itself about the war, and it does, because as the book says, the first casualty of war is truth. And the EU thinks it can afford to delude itself about the war, but the cost of life has risen dramatically in the EU, some sectors even doubling and tripling is some places, all the while due to a lack of an affordable energy input more and more of the industry is either shutting down or getting cannibalized to the US. But I cannot afford to delude myself about the war, as my in no way Ruskie-loving Eastern European country with has had the misfortune of existing next door to Russia for a thousand years is going to be one of the first to be destroyed if the war should go big. And I'm not planning to die there for some dickhead in DC or Brussels.

Agreed with most of it.

For a nitpick, but also tied to the narrative issues I talked about. The problem I find with the usual take on e.g. shells production, also found in the article you linked, is that while the EU producing shells for Ukraine is obviously good news for Ukraine, somehow North Korea producing shells for Russia is supposed to be bad news for Russia.

The reality is that Ukraine has their allies, and Russia has theirs, and both are good news for their respective war efforts.

And this kind of a thing is everywhere in war reporting. Everything about our side is good for us, everything about their side is bad for them, and nothing is looked into too deeply. My personal favourite - brave and cunning Ukrainians are using the railroads for great success; the reliance on railroad by the dumb and backwards Russians is holding back their war effort. We somehow need to blind ourselves, and hype ourselves up about what's going on, to keep high morale or whatnot, and in the process, we give up our ability to make honest and accurate assessments about the situation. That Ukraine was severely lacking in shells was known a long time ago to anybody who cared to know, but it took years for Rheinmetall get going. US never increased production, but they did increase prices to eat up all available funding. Had the people known about this on a widespread level, would we have demanded results? Would our governments and industry have delivered? The more cynical among us might find that reality is withheld from the us exactly because our governments don't want to do anything about it. But reality will come back to bite those who deny it, and will demand back what you owe it with harsh interest.

And we need to talk about the elephant in the room, China. The article claims European shell production might rival China, yet does not quote what Chinese production is. And that's because there's basically no known numbers to quote. But China did install 500k/year production capacity in Belarus last year, and they didn't break a sweat. The idea that Europe might match Chinese production on /anything/ is veering on the edge of absurd to me. Especially so because the CCP can just say that we now do this, and it will have happened, while in the EU there will be years of going through the motions before there's even any hope of something happening. In our war math we need to consider that China probably cannot afford to have Russia lose, so they will probably not allow Russia to lose, and it will probably not be too much of an effort for them. This also goes for the Ukrainian jets, and drones, and whatnot. If the Russians can not meet the challenge in some field, the Chinese will step up and match the game. Last, but not least, China recently came to market with dirt cheap, $99k hypersonic missiles, while the West basically lacks the rare earths for any missile production at all. Yeah, not good.

It is obvious to me that good information is necessary for good decisions. It's already bad that the public is widely mis- and underinformed, and fed prepackaged raw emotion and hate minutes instead. But more and more does our leadership also seem to drink their own Kool-Aid. This is not the path to success, but our leadership does not care either. The shit they throw in the fan will not be theirs to clean up.