patrick.net

I don't feel like we took over Europe. I feel like I constantly pay taxes to support all those countries, pay taxes so that some politicians can have their useless privileged offsprings collect bribes in pretend jobs in Ukrainian energy companies. But as far as benefit to me, I don't really see one. Tired of being used to enrich the assholes.

Just sharing my opinion as everyday American, don't care for politics or geopolitical issues. Clearly it's important, otherwise half of our faggots in congress wouldn't be trying to shove weapons into Ukraine.

Eric Holder says

This is not about Ukraine at all. Or rather, not so much about Ukraine, but about the world legal order. The United States took over the whole of Europe. This is an epochal moment in modern history. It reflects the battle for what the world order will look like,” Lavrov said.

Some just don't understand the depth of it. They support Orcs because Orcs don't wear colors. They just don't get it: wearing or not wearing colors is secondary when those on the other side are Orcs.

mostly reader says

Eric Holder says

This is not about Ukraine at all. Or rather, not so much about Ukraine, but about the world legal order. The United States took over the whole of Europe. This is an epochal moment in modern history. It reflects the battle for what the world order will look like,” Lavrov said.

Some just don't understand the depth of it. They support Orcs because Orcs don't wear colors. They just don't get it: wearing or not wearing colors is secondary when those on the other side are Orcs.

I'm against the current world order of Team America: World Police (except with Chinese human rights violations, which are ignored). The fastest path back to a Republic is for Atlas to Shrug, or be checked. The Deep State needs a total purge, 30 years of massive spending and failure with nothing to show for it. $31T in Debt, $25T of which was the past two decades, and little to show for it except Drag Queens Story Time.

Eliminating the clearly incompetent and spendthrift, if not outright wontonly destructive and decadent, Deep State, is Job #1.

AmericanKulak says

The Deep State needs a total purge

This is why the president needs the power to fire anyone in the executive branch, as Trump recently pointed out.

If the Russian senior citizen leaders want to counter Western influence, they need to churn out their own movies, music, social media dreck, conservatively woke celebrities, useless smart phone apps, etc., and ban their citizens from accessing Hollywood, Disney, Facebook, etc. crap. As it stands now, they may not be able to stem the tide.

May Russia be experiencing a generation gap, where the stodgy worldviews of their senior citizen leaders are at odds with a Western corrupted younger population?

Eastern European countries Poland, Hungary, Slovakia retain values that are conservative by the standards of their Western European neighbors, but they still oppose Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Of course, they are primarily Roman Catholic, and not Orthodox.

[562b] [Socrates] The proposed good, said I, through which oligarchy was established, was indeed excess of wealth, wasn't it ?

[Adeimantus]Yes.

And now, didn't this same insatiate desire for wealth and the indifference toward everything else resulting from money-making ruined it ?

True, said he.

Well then ! What democracy defines as good, isn't it an insatiate desire for it that dissolves it ?

But tell me what it so defines.

Freedom, I replied. Don't you indeed hear it said that, in a democratic city, [562c] it has the fairest share and that, for this reason, only in such a place is it fit that dwell who is by nature free.

You hear indeed, said he, that saying all over the place.

Well then, said I, as I was just now about to say, the insatiable desire of it and the indifference toward everything else is precisely what makes this constitution change and prepares it to stand in need of tyranny.

How ? said he.

When, methinks, a democratic city thirsty for freedom [562d] happens to fall under the leadership of bad cupbearers and becomes intoxicated for having drunk far more of it unmixed than is reasonable, if its rulers are not wholly mild and don't grant it a lot of freedom, it chastises those deemed responsible, as stained and oligarchic.

They indeed behave, said he, this way.

And those, I replied, obedient to the leaders it bespatters with mud as willing slaves and nil beings, while it praises and honors leaders who are led and led who lead all the same in private as well as public matters. Isn't it necessary in such [562e] a city that to all come the thirst for freeedom ?

How not ?

And that it pervades, said I, my dear, the privacy of homes and that in the end anarchy get implanted even into beasts ?

How, said he, do you mean that ?

In that, I said, the father accustoms himself to become like his child and fears his sons, while the son likens himself to his father, and feels neither shame nor fear in front of his parents, so he may be free ; the metic [563a] becomes the equal of a citizen and the citizen of a metic, and similarly with the foreigner.

It indeed so happens, he said.

To these, said I, such trifles do add up: the teacher, in such a case, fears his pupils and fawns upon them, while pupils have in low esteem their teachers as well as their overseers; and, overall, the young copy the elders and contend hotly with them in words and in deeds, while the elders, lowering themselves to the level of the young, sate themselves with pleasantries [563b] and wit, mimicking the young in order not to look unpleasant and despotic.

Most certainly, he said.

But indeed, said I, the ultimate, my dear, in the excess of freedom as it develops in such a city is reached when the men and women who have been purchased are no less free than those who have bought them... And regarding the relations of women with men and of men with women, how far equal rights and freedom have gone, we came close to almost saying nothing about that !

[563c] Why not, to quote Æschylus, he said, "say what just came to our lips" ?

For sure ! I replied, and that's how I speak. How indeed the beasts subject to men are much freer here than elsewhere, that is unbelievable to whom hasn't experienced it. For really bitches, in keeping with the proverb, do become like their mistresses and horses and asses, having become accustomed to going at all times freely and proudly, keep bumping in the streets into passers-by when they don't step aside ; and everything thus [563d] becomes stuffed with freedom.

It's, he said, my own dream that you are telling me ! For I often suffer such mishaps when I go to the country.

And indeed, the sum total, said I, of all these added up, as you may conceive, is that they make the soul of the citizens so soft that, in the presence of the slightest suggestion of serviture, they feel irritated and can't stand it. And in the end, you know that they no longer care for laws, written or unwritten, so as no longer to have [563e] anywhere any master.

How well, he said, I know that !

Well, then, this, said I, my dear, is the principle so beautiful and vigorous from which tyranny grows, in my opinion.

https://www.plato-dialogues.org/faq/faq003.htm?source=patrick.net