They’re interrelated. Europeans destroyed their culture, which makes them worried about revenge if minorities have enough political to do it.

Have had one for over a decade and I’m further to the left than ever.

Smeagol lied.

It’s an odd one, because it only applies to new developments. As far as anyone knows, Ukraine doesn’t have any rare earths worth mining, and doesn’t have a lot else new to mine, either. However, that’s based on old geological surveys. They might well have something, but it’s all speculation.

No self-awareness in how he helped setup being one generation away from the extinction of freedom.

Ehhh, not really. Conservatives have an odd relationship to the space program.

They like the science things that give them flatscreen TVs, smartphones, and red dot sights on guns. They don’t like science things that tell them Noah’s flood never happened and global warming is real. The science they really, really like is the stuff they can use to beat other nations over the head and say America! Fuck Yeah!

NASA does something that clearly shows America! Fuck Yeah! to the whole world. They need to stamp out the parts of NASA that say inconvenient things about global warming, but you can get humans to the ISS and robots to Mars without any of that.

Ditching SpaceX contracts would leave the US without a manned space program. We’d have to go back to relying on Russia, and that’s not going to happen. SLS is an embarrassing budget buster. ULA is a joke. Bezos doesn’t have a rocket that can get people to the ISS (he might get around to it, someday). There’s a few up and comers out there in the rocket industry, but nobody is ready yet. Falcon 9 is it.

Elon knows he’s safe on this one.

Putin supported Trump with that view. I think it’s wrong to view Trump as Putin’s puppet. Rather, Trump is an agent chaos, and Putin hoped to use that chaos to put Russia on a better footing.

Problem is that Russia can’t do it. They’ve been running on the fumes of a dead superpower for over 30 years. They can’t build their own fighter jets, bombers, tanks, or boats bigger than a destroyer. Not at the scale they need for such a large mass of land. They’ve got oil and natural gas, but everyone is finding the exits on that.

China will step right into the void left by the collapse of Pax Americana. Putin is just handing it to them and doesn’t realize it.

Doesn’t work. Even a police state needs a base of support in the populace or it doesn’t last long. The constant pressure of enforced conformity is too much for the system to endure.

Also, under fascism, the second string guys are chosen for loyalty first and competence second. If the central guy dies, they fight amongst themselves and nobody wins.

It works like Mr. Burns’ immune system. Everyone is trying to listen in on Trump, but they step on each others toes and cancel out.

Star Fleet Intelligence also operates on this principle.

Try this sometime: handcuff yourself to a tree in the park. Complain to anyone walking by that they put you in these cuffs and they need to let you out. If they don’t listen, yell louder that you’re being ganged up on.

Greetings, my sibling in apostasy!

Yeah, and it’s fascinating to me. I grew up in a high control Christian group (Jehovah’s Witnesses), and their narrative is that the first century Christians were completely united in belief and purpose, and that they are the direct inheritors of that. A more careful reading of the gospels will show there were stark differences in belief among those writers. A quote from Jesus shows up in one that doesn’t in the other because each writer was trying to advance a certain viewpoint that wasn’t universally shared by Christians at the time.

I find this way more interesting than one set of unified beliefs.

All good, it’s a pet peeve of mine. I’ve seen Ratheists try to say Nicea set biblical canon, and when I point out otherwise, they cite the WikiPedia article on Nicea at me. Which explicitly says the council did not set biblical canon. It’s not even like the atheist argument against Christianity hinges on when and where biblical canon was established; it’s fairly easy to make without it.

Or Putin dies of natural causes. Which isn’t too farfetched. Then the oligarchs find themselves a Deng Xiaoping-like figure who says “ok, all that was bad, let’s do something else”.

Probably, Russia will have to face the facts that they can’t build their own fighter jets, bombers, tanks, or fighting ships larger than a destroyer anymore. Not on the scale they need. Even if you assume some of the designs they’re putting out are good (a big assumption), they can’t possibly build them at scale. China is sitting right over there with the factories for those things. Xi Jinping will be happy to take their check, but will make sure it clears first.

If we look at the common exhibitionist subtype of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) that most people think of when they hear the term narcissist, it is fairly easy to see that they use a simple three-part defense to create a façade of extreme self-confidence. I call this the “GOD defense.”

G – Grandiosity: They act as if they are special and entitled to do or say whatever they want. Grandiose motto: “I am special.”

O – Omnipotent: They make all sorts of unrealistic claims about how powerful and knowledgeable they are. Omnipotent motto: “I can do anything, and I know everything worth knowing,”

D – Devaluing: They feel free to attack and devalue anyone who is not clearly above them in their status hierarchy. Devaluing motto: “You are worthless, defective garbage, and are here to serve me.”

Yeah, you could just put “Example: Donald Trump” on all three.

That’s not quite right. Council of Nicaea didn’t choose biblical canon. They chose the teachings of certain Christian sects over others, which later had an affect on canon.

It didn’t need to be far.

Artillery range is around 70km. You need to get that close to the southern most road along the coast into Crimea, and a little more for padding some defense. Now you can turn that road and anything on it into rubble whenever you want.

Ukraine got within a few km of doing that at some areas.

The Kerch Strait Bridge could be hit whenever by a missile. Ukraine had already hit it by then.

There’s a port at Sevestapol. It’s also been hit by Ukranian missiles before, and even if not, it’s not enough on its own.

Airplanes expend lots of fuel for not much cargo. You’re not going to supply Crimea that way.

There would be no logistical options left for Russia. Holding those couple of km more would starve it out. Only question is if Putin tries to hang on out of stubbornness.

The 2022 offensive failed because there wasn’t enough support. Ukraine was saying they needed X tanks, shells, guns, whatever from the West, and they actually got around X/3. Even with that, they very nearly made it far enough that Crimea would have been logistically cut off. Russia would have either needed to come to terms or else Crimea literally and metaphorically starves.

There isn’t really a way to hide what you’re doing. You have to build up forces at your bases, move a lot of material, etc. The timing wasn’t going to be a surprise, either, because local seasonal weather changes put a demand on when you do things.

Because you’re completely missing how fascists use elements of truth to drive you straight into right wing authoritarianism.

If not for nukes, nobody would give a shit about Russia. Their army has fluctuated between being excellent and being worse than useless for its entire history, and they’re currently on a low end of that cycle. As for the Russian navy, the Cold War might have been the only time period where it was worth a damn.

So no, they’re not a superpower. They’ve been running on nukes and momentum since the dissolution of the USSR.