Gary Kasparov: The Putinization of America

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https://www.theatlantic.com/internation ... aign=share

Major differences
1. Putin is incredibly smart
2. He is self-made
3. He worked his way up in the ruthless world of intelligence
4. Putin has directly ordered the deaths of innocent civilians
5. He will still be around when trump ends his last term in 2029
6. Putin installed himself in power with the backing of the military, trump gets asked by 75 million Americans to run their country (not once but twice).

Conclusion: I would focus more on the 75 million Americans who want to propel the US into what seems more like fascism than Putin's good o'l soviet style authoritarianism.

Stop saying bad things about Putin!! !! ! You're making cyberdora sad!!

I'm curious to find out who cyberdora thinks is turning America fascist? Hard to tell, given how Putin apologists' definition of fascism is incoherent, and is mainly used as a buzzword to attack people who aren't capitalist nation-state-worshippers. After all, to this sort of person, deportations are okay (because they target the less fortunate), but creating a social safety net is one of the most horriblest things to ever ever happen (because a social safety net benefits the less fortunate).

Really, if you want to figure out the Putin apologist's opinion on something, just ask yourself what opinion would most strongly advocate throwing the less fortunate under the bus.

Spoilers: if Trump is still alive and in power in 2029, he will not be ending any terms.

The answers you seek are more complicated than simple "Putin bad" and anyone friendly with Russia is "bad".

No putinization here, no thank you.

Apples and oranges, Kasparov is using trump as a stick to bash Putin. Rather shallow comparisons.

This is another excellent example of the Apologist's tactics. All opposing arguments are framed as strawman arguments. Hatred of Putin is framed as the irrational, kneejerk conclusion of someone uninformed, or someone who repeats politician soundbytes like a parrot. They frame those who disagree with them as having simplistic, un-nuanced beliefs. This is projection. It is also victim blaming: outrage over bullying is dismissed as irrational--you know, the tactic beloved by every NT who ever bullied an autistic kid. (You resemble the former more than the latter).

Since you must know, I study history compulsively for pleasure since I was a kid. Eastern European history has always fascinated me. History is ugly and messy and convoluted and everyone wants you to believe something else. That doesn't mean you should never reach conclusions and form strong beliefs. Hell, if you study history and don't have any strong feelings on it, you're either unhealthily detached from people or you're more of a literate calculator than a person. I'm guessing you don't study history enough to understand that except when it is convenient to your politics. For people like me, research comes first, belief comes second. For the apologist and their ilk, belief comes first, "research" comes second. "Research" is in quotes there, because they are not doing research in good faith. They are not challenging what they believe so much as they are seeking new rationalizations. They do not seek new knowledge which might cause them to reëxamine their views, because they are not doing research to inform themselves, they are doing it to find factoids to make tactical use of in their reactionary quest to undermine discussion and consensus.
Did you voluntarily study a single thing about the history of Russia and Ukraine before you needed to justify your foreign policy stance of the week? Know anything about Kievan Rus? Sarmatians? The Mongols? The Principality of Moscow? The Golden Horde? Cossacks? The Hetmanate? Ukrainian Jews? Alans? Pechenegs? Avars? Khazars? Crimean Goths? Crimean Tatars? The Deluge? The Crimean War? Russo-Turkish Wars? The breakup of the Russian Empire? Ukraine during the Civil War? The Makhnovists? The war with Poland? The Holodomor?
Did anything of that or anything before or since ring a bell? Or does your knowledge of the conflict only go back to 1991 because you think this conflict has no historical roots and is just a cynical game for the Great Powers?

Ive gone on long enough, but in the interest of demonstrating your kind's inane need to accuse others of believing things for simplistic reasons: I love Russia. I LOVE Russia. Not the country, and sure as hell not the state, but I love Russia: Russian language, Russian literature, Russian history, Russian music, etc etc. I read guys like Chekhov and Dostoevsky FOR FUN. I listen to Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich FOR FUN. If anything, I like Russia more than you ever will. Maybe if you actually learned about these places you too could start to comprehend how people form more nuanced opinions about them?

Do you assume everyone is an idiot any time they criticize any country? If I'm critical of how Australian aborigines are treated in your country, will you insinuate I just hate white Australians because I'm an irrational, ignorant, hateful person? Or I'm trying to deflect from how Native Americans are treated in my country (lmfao no). I'm not sure how much entry-level strawman arguments to expect from you people.

^^^ I don't dispute your knowledge of eastern European history or geopolitics. But I also am no more a supporter of Putin than I am trump, Xi or Kim.

However, the nature of the western response to Ukraine is framed in a way that we are on some medieval holy war against Russia and Putin. Also painting Ukrainian forces as some type of white knights is naive.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/1 ... v-regiment

It doesn't take a genius to work out why vulnerable (and totally innocent) refugees of Indian and African background trying to flee Ukraine were being targeted by the Ukrainian military. You and Bestiola may not care about these people but I cannot erase their treatment from my memory as it is a stain on Ukraine's reputation.

Understanding a conflict requires nuance, I am interested because my tax dollars are also being channelled to Zelensky to help with this war. So I want to know if ploughing billions of dollars into defending Ukraine is actually working?. Or is it just creating fuel for an endless conflict like in northern Ireland or Israel. I have a right to ask.

Being curious about both sides is not a crime, there are articles in the media from level headed academics who understand the reality of what's happening and are also not Putin apologists.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/02/15/pu ... raine-war/

Its obvious Putin is an opportunist, but how to manage his ambitions? and is the west's response appropriate? According to Harvard professor of international relations Stephen Walt
Ukrainians—and their loudest supporters in the West—have gone to enormous lengths to link their country’s fate to lots of unrelated issues. If you listen to them, Russian control over Crimea or any portion of the Donbas would be a fatal blow to the “rules-based international order,” an invitation to China to seize Taiwan, a boon to autocrats everywhere, a catastrophic failure of democracy, and a sign that nuclear blackmail is easy and that Putin could use it to march his army all the way to the English Channel. Hard-liners in the West make arguments like this to make Ukraine’s fate appear as important to us as it is to Russia, but such scare tactics don’t stand up to even casual scrutiny. The future course of the 21st century is not going to be determined by whether Kyiv or Moscow ends up controlling the territories they are currently fighting over, but rather by which countries control key technologies, by climate change, and by political developments in many other places.

So Ukraine is not the only country involving human rights violations, but why the asymmetric response when other people who are subject to genocide are ignored? What I think isn't going to stop Western policy, but that doesn't mean we drink the koolaide give Zelensky everything he asks for (including nuclear bombs).