baeuchlein on 4/3/2025 at 13:14
It's not only a part of the (US) Americans who do believe they should view Russia as a friend. We have enough people here in Germany thinking just that, or thinking that Ukraine should be given up because "we can't do anything after all". So far, these ideas are not present in the majority of the population, but abundant enough so that two or three political parties can build on these people for getting votes in elections. Strangely, the ones having the idea that we should not oppose Russia cannot explain why the Russian Federation should stop conquering other ex-USSR countries in Europe (that's what Putin talked and AFAIK also wrote about prior to the 2022 invasion of Ukraine) if Europe let Ukraine fall. If you ask these people about that, they usually start to talk about something else immediately.
Well, at least some european countries do think about seriously allocating more money to defensive measures. Took them a lot of time to hear the wakeup calls.
demagogue on 4/3/2025 at 14:46
If y'all haven't been paying attention to the news, and there's a firehose of sh*t coming out from the Krasnov regime so it's understandable if you haven't: (
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/04/us-military-aid-ukraine-pause-trump-zelenskyy-updates) US suspends all military aid to Ukraine in wake of Trump-Zelenskyy row
The die has been cast; the Rubicon crossed; the sh*t hit the fan. =(
We're not even talking about "Russia attacking again after they regroup from the ceasefire or peace agreement" anymore. Krasnov is gunning for them to roll right through Ukraine and keep going if he gets his way.
Starker on 4/3/2025 at 14:51
Quote Posted by baeuchlein
Strangely, the ones having the idea that we should not oppose Russia cannot explain why the Russian Federation should stop conquering other ex-USSR countries in Europe (that's what Putin talked and AFAIK also wrote about prior to the 2022 invasion of Ukraine) if Europe let Ukraine fall. If you ask these people about that, they usually start to talk about something else immediately.
Maybe ask them if East Germany should be given back to the Russians to protect the Russian speakers being persecuted there? Although, from the sounds of it, some of them might not be opposed to that.
Quote Posted by demagogue
If y'all haven't been paying attention to the news, and there's a firehose of sh*t coming out from the Krasnov regime so it's understandable if you haven't: (
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/04/us-military-aid-ukraine-pause-trump-zelenskyy-updates) US suspends all military aid to Ukraine in wake of Trump-Zelenskyy row
The die has been cast; the Rubicon crossed; the sh*t hit the fan. =(
We're not even talking about "Russia attacking again after they regroup from the ceasefire or peace agreement" anymore. Krasnov is gunning for them to roll right through Ukraine and keep going if he gets his way.
Yeah, it has been clear for some while. When there was a UN resolution to condemn Russia's invasion into Ukraine recently, the US was among a handful of countries that voted against it, among other bottom of the barrel autocratic regimes such as Belarus, North Korea, Russia, Israel, and Hungary.
heywood on 4/3/2025 at 14:51
Quote Posted by baeuchlein
It's not only a part of the (US) Americans who do believe they should view Russia as a friend. We have enough people here in Germany thinking just that, or thinking that Ukraine should be given up because "we can't do anything after all". So far, these ideas are not present in the majority of the population, but abundant enough so that two or three political parties can build on these people for getting votes in elections. Strangely, the ones having the idea that we should not oppose Russia cannot explain why the Russian Federation should stop conquering other ex-USSR countries in Europe (that's what Putin talked and AFAIK also wrote about prior to the 2022 invasion of Ukraine) if Europe let Ukraine fall. If you ask these people about that, they usually start to talk about something else immediately.
Well, at least some european countries do think about seriously allocating more money to defensive measures. Took them a lot of time to hear the wakeup calls.
Around 40% of the US follows Trump like a cult leader. If he says Russia is good and Europe is bad, they fall in line and amplify it. At least you don't have that problem.
heywood on 4/3/2025 at 14:57
Quote Posted by demagogue
If y'all haven't been paying attention to the news, and there's a firehose of sh*t coming out from the Krasnov regime so it's understandable if you haven't: (
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/04/us-military-aid-ukraine-pause-trump-zelenskyy-updates) US suspends all military aid to Ukraine in wake of Trump-Zelenskyy row
The die has been cast; the Rubicon crossed; the sh*t hit the fan. =(
We're not even talking about "Russia attacking again after they regroup from the ceasefire or peace agreement" anymore. Krasnov is gunning for them to roll right through Ukraine and keep going if he gets his way.
Last week, Russia offered the US a deal for mineral rights in Russian-controlled Ukraine. Let's see if that comes to fruition.
demagogue on 4/3/2025 at 15:21
Quote Posted by heywood
Last week, Russia offered the US a deal for mineral rights in Russian-controlled Ukraine. Let's see if that comes to fruition.
Sure that was the talk immediately following that meeting disaster (that struck me as an ambush to begin with), that it'd just take a little time to rehabilitate it, since it was basically a done deal going in, and Krasnov's whole shtick is that he's "Always Be Closing" the deals. Zelenskyy wouldn't have even come if it hadn't been agreed on, so why wouldn't they come back to what was already basically a done deal? (...excepting the intentional ambush theory, which I actually don't think it was watching it again, only that they were primed to it.)
But Krasnov has already pulled the trigger on the suspension, so already we're talking about a process to restart aid, or anyway end the suspension, not continue it. And the longer the suspension goes, the less it looks like a suspension and the more it looks like it's just cut. And it's not for pressure because Zelenskyy already agreed to the minerals deal; so what is it even pressuring? It's performative, so there's no end condition. Zelenskyy gave thanks multiple times before and after the meeting; so even what he could even be asking for doesn't really exist. (Edit: Zelenskyy was digging his heels on the security guarantee part, which never really entered Krasnov's thinking since weakening or ending NATO is one of his goals to begin with. But you could say it was to pressure a deal without the security guarantee, which is weird but consistent.)
The other thing is that Krasnov triggered the Canada & Mexico tariffs now. He's evidently triggering these things going in to the State of the Union address so he can tout them.
I'm of two minds. On the one hand, in a lot of cases he backs down the instant there's pushback on anything he triggers. He backed down on the tariffs earlier the moment there was pushback.
But I think in this case he might not back down, because he's getting pushed into a corner and thinks he has to produce on his mandate, and the pushback is only going to make him double-down.
I don't know what to predict. It's not rational calculations going through his head right now. He's full steam into mad king territory now.
baeuchlein on 4/3/2025 at 16:40
Quote Posted by heywood
Around 40% of the US follows Trump like a cult leader. If he says Russia is good and Europe is bad, they fall in line and amplify it. At least you don't have that problem.
Correct. It's only 20.8% who voted for the extreme right-wing AfD party last weekend, not 40%. Only one other political party had a larger share of votes in the elections. And the head of the AfD is Alice Weidel, not Trump (and not Elon Musk yet, either:cheeky:). About the believability of Weidel's statements, well... the AfD values the "traditional family" (husband and wife plus their children) and most of the time wants "national" solutions. Alice Weidel lives with her
female partner and adopted children in
Switzerland, and only in recent years got two other home adresses in Germany.:wot:
While the AfD is only partially echoing what Moscow says, there's another party to keep in sight. The BSW acts like a loudspeaker attached to the Kremlin Propaganda Center, reurgitating nearly everything coming from there, and ignoring blatant lies from there from the moment these lies are exposed. Thankfully, this party got just below 5% of the votes last weekend, meaning that they won't appear in the Bundestag, and won't be able to change the course of politics too much. Uneasy times ahead, I guess.
We're not where the U.S. are... yet. But if politicians continue to screw up too many things here, we're still coming there, I'm afraid. Only last year, when two other elections showed how much support was there already for the AfD, the other political actors started wetting their trousers and thinking about measures to prevent extremist political parties from changing laws in their fashion. Still, most of them didn't see the change in the U.S. government coming.:erg:
heywood on 4/3/2025 at 23:26
The big difference is the cult of personality. Polling suggests that only about half of Trump's 40% are hard right paleo-conservatives or fascists, so maybe we have a similar percentage of those as you do. The other half of Trump supporters are for the man and will go with him wherever he goes.
baeuchlein on 5/3/2025 at 00:42
A cult of personality, albeit a rather weak/moderate one, may be present or desired in the BSW party here. "SW" are the initials of the head woman of that party. Looks like not so many people fall for that party's programme, though.
However, there is another difference that matters here, the difference in the election system. The U.S. system seems to favor a final battle between only two president candidates (democratic and republican), while the German system tends to outcomes where two or three parties have to form a government together. In the U.S. system, things may go wrong if extreme right-wing (or even left-wing) members "capture" one of the two parties, while the German system seems to be more endangered once enough voters cast their vote for extreme parties who may then form some sort of coalition. The means of defence against such cases differ.
Tocky on 5/3/2025 at 01:45
I wonder if Trump can concentrate long enough to read the speech Putin wrote for him to say tonight.
