this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
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Mitch McConell says the quiet part out loud.

Exact full quote from CNN:

“People think, increasingly it appears, that we shouldn’t be doing this. Well, let me start by saying we haven’t lost a single American in this war,” McConnell said. “Most of the money that we spend related to Ukraine is actually spent in the US, replenishing weapons, more modern weapons. So it’s actually employing people here and improving our own military for what may lie ahead.”

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/4085063

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It's amazing how much they support imperialism when it's "their people" doing it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That's because you don't understand what imperialism means. US/EU capital is looting and exploiting the former socialist block and controlling it through western capitalist media, NGOs, and military bases. That's imperialism. The Russians preventing Nazis from doing ethnic cleansing along their border and demanding not to be threatened with a gun to the head is not imperialism.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Are these nazis in the room with us right now?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I mean, you're not gonna like it, but;

CW: Like over a hundred fotos that all have some kind of Nazi imagery in them, except one where I think they mistook a patch for the 14th Waffen SS Grenadiers 1st Galacian patch because it has similar elements

https://imgur.com/a/8Oo74F9

They've been open and pretty frank about their goals. I can explain all the symbols and their history and significance for you if you'd like.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

no they're not here. they're over in ukraine putting up statues of Bandera and wearing nazi symbols all over their military uniforms. were you not listening, or...?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Don't forget putting the OUN... er... ukrainian trident on that old monument.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

And the Blood and Soil flags that are very common.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Funny how living standards in the ex-soviet countries have improved considerably since joining the EU, but that has not been the case for the ones that chose to be kept under Russia's sphere of influence. 🤔

Looks like the EU is really bad at looting, they should learn from Russia.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There was a massive dip in all those places in the 90s with shock therapy. A lot of people are still worse off in a lot of ways and angry. Hence AfD, Orban, PiS and all those other angry nationalists.

Also, if you want to be fair, you should compare for example Poland to west Germany. Polish workers toil for German capitalists, and yet, somehow, they're getting exploited way more than the German workers. Less pay, worse services, worse infrastructure, less worker's rights. That whole arrangement is super-exploitative. Meanwhile foreigners bought most of that country. Treated like a colony basically.

The Russians got fucked even worse than Poland in the 90s, which resulted in a backlash which Putin made himself the head of. What Russia is doing is self-preservation. Any state with the means to preserve it's sovereignty from a hostile takeover would try to do so, it's not just something an imperialist state would do. Hence Russia is not doing an imperialism here.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hell, compare East Germany to the ~~reich~~ West Germany. West Germany's economic conquest of East Germany was incredibly ruthless and brutal, and East Germany never recovered from having it's entire economy pillaged and burned.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

And east german lgbt rights and women's rights lost half a century of progress during reunification.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah. It's still technically illegal to get an abortion in the reich afaik. It was really something finding out that the gdr had gender parity in most fields before the west crushed it, and that western germany had to give women a bunch of rights to try to manage to political turmoil.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

since joining the EU

I hope you understand how this is an incredibly cherry-picked range. It's like saying "look how steadily the American economy grew from the period of 1930 to 1940".

Many Eastern European countries in the EU are still being hollowed out and suffering massive brain drain. The model of "tributary state" accurately applies here.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

living standards in the ex-soviet countries have improved considerably since joining the EU

Yeah the living standards sure did improve after one of the worst demographic disasters in that era. Easy for things to get better when you start from the bottom I mean come on do better.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Have some compassion, some people just want to crank their knob to exploitative porn without questioning why so much of it comes from Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Ukraine, and Russia.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thank you for calling this out. It's fucking gross how that happens. If I speak about what should happen to "sexpats", I'll be in trouble. Big big trouble.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

So, why didn't Belarus improve at the same rate as the Baltic countries?

They both started from the bottom, right?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So, why didn't Belarus improve at the same rate as the Baltic countries?

If you think that the answer to this is simply "because Russia bad" you have the mind of a child.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Eastern European countries that opened to western trade and diplomatic relationships improved significantly.

Eastern European countries that became Russian puppets didn't.

Explain that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

imagine ignoring the absolutely ruthless, western led cannibalization of the former soviet union and pretending history's baseline started AFTER the largest decline of living standards in global history.

human trafficking, prostitution, alcoholism, food/energy insecurity, diseases of despair all exploded when the west forced capitalism and privatization onto the former soviet union in the immediate aftermath. Gorbachev thought he was going to get some easy-going nordic social democracy, but instead the west carved up their public sector like a christmas ham. maybe you were too young, but in the 1980s the propaganda portrait the west had of russian women were all heavy-set, ugly babushkas. suddenly, after 1989, the mail order beautiful russian bride phenomenon exploded. they were fleeing the gutting of the public sector and the shattering of the social safety net, which made it near impossible to raise a family in the eastern bloc without becoming a sex worker.

the west sponsored every retrograde nationalist reactionary psycho to undermine any hint of democratic resistance to economic liberalization schemes and bombed the shit out of infrastructure (Yugoslavia) whenever they could get away with it. the west has the most blood on its hands for the aftermath of the USSR, but people like you want to ignore those early days and then claim credit for the "winners" the west propped up in the aftermath of all that chaos. like a killer who torched a town but kidnapped a few kids and now touts his heroic rescue of them. the most ignorant and disgusting take.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You seem to be ignoring the fact that after the fall of the USSR, Russia didn't want their assets to be sold or leased to western companies (understandably), so they let corrupt officials take them for pennies of what they were actually worth. Those officials became the oligarchs.

Russians cannibalised Russia.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

the word you are striving not to say is capitalism. capitalists did this to russians, using the playbook developed and advocated for by western institutions.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

God you're just... so fucking close to getting it.

What would have happened if instead of the Russian capitalists privatizing all the people's assets the western capitalists did?

Do you think it wouldn't just be western oligarchs cannibalizing Russia?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

And yet, tankies still defend this corrupt capitalist state just because it's not the US.

Nevermind political persecution, assassinations, repression of LGBT people, invasion of neighbouring countries, etc. As long as it's not the US, it's all good.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

No, it isnt. We at hexbear say "the illegal and undemocratic dissolution of the Soviet Union was the largest humanitarian disaster of the latter half of the twentieth century" and bemoan the loss for human rights(more notably for women, lgbt people, and ethnic minorities) caused by the destruction of the Eastern block.

What we say is that you have to look at the outcomes of weapon distribution by NATO to Ukraine.

Ukraine just wasted a lot of material on one last big push and they didn't do squat. The Ukrainian state has exhausted its ability to conduct offensive operations, and attrition in both absolute quantity and in percentage has been on the Russian's side since the second stage of the war, so what's going to happen now is that Russia will slowly encroach on the rest of Ukraine until they meet their military and political objectives.

So, do we give them more weapons, make their losing war even bloodier for them and the Russians, or do we accept that they've lost, and stop giving the government more time to keep killing conscripts?

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The Balts were immediately used as forward positions for NATO and were allowed to keep their state programs and industry. Belarus got the same treatment as Russia.

You should probably know the answer to your own snarky questions before you ask them.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

So, what you're saying is that the countries that sided with the West got a better deal than the ones that became Russian puppets?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

When a country joins the western bloc, they join them.

When a country joins any other multinational pact, they're puppets.

I'm not influenced by western propaganda

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Two capitalist nations fucking over their subjects is not the own you think it is

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

They didn't improve at all. The rich are better off, thanks to mass privatization of public property. For the middle/working class, quality of life stagnated at best.

Source: I live in an ex-soviet country.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yes, you really should ask her what imperialism is if you don't think what Russia and China are doing is imperialism.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Imperialism is when china and russia and the more china and russia the imperialister it is

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 year ago

Siri please help the red fash tankies keep telling me to read Lenin.