this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2024
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[–] Assman 93 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (7 children)

As an older man, today's GOP supporting Russia is so crazy to me. I remember a decade after the cold war, people were still eager to go slap around the ruskies. The fact they're so eager to kiss Putin's ring today is fucking wild.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 6 months ago

My step brother still thought they were communist when the Ukrainian invasion happened.

I don't really have the heart to find out where he's at with Putin now, but he tends to eat whatever fox and oan or newswhatever it is now are serving.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Especially weird given we are walking towards a sort of Cold War 2.0

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago (1 children)

We've been in it for years. Right now there is talk about the financial ties of the German right wing party with Russia, all the while you can find articles about that from 7 years ago.

Putin had his hands in Brexit, has pawns in the EU to veto for him, is connected to the right wing parties all over Europe and to Trump and the Republicans in the US.

All the while he spams social media with his propaganda.

I don't know when it started but Putin started to wage internal war against western countries a long time ago. What we see now are the results of a long term effort.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Not in Putin's mind. During Glasnost, Gorbachev was very much interested in creating a new alliance with the West in order to stave off complete economic and social collapse.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Yeltsin and Putin felt the same way, early on. Putin petitioned to join NATO in the early '00s. In fact, they'd already been in a functional partnership with NATO since 1992, under the "Partnership for Peace" initiative. This became the backbone of US/Russia collaboration in space as well as their cooperative efforts during the early War on Terror.

It wasn't until the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, back in '06, that relations began to break down

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Oh I'm going to disagree. When USSR crumbled and we had some years of a rebuilding Russia, there was no real threat. There really isn't still. Russia's economy is small. Like less than California's. They are a nothing country in terms of power. They are just big in media presence.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Riiiiiight...🙄

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

This doesn't seem particularly Cold to me. Maybe with China, but its hard to be at any kind of war with your largest trading partner.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

today’s GOP supporting Russia is so crazy to me

Its not that crazy, when you consider how the Putin-Era of United Russia has been all about cultivating the image of the Russian people as Bad Chad Trads doing White Guy Patriotism all over Eastern Europe and Central Asia. This is a perfect mirror of the modern Republican self-image and has been since at least the Bush 43 Administration post-911. One reason why Bush 43 and Putin got along so well during those early War on Terror years.

I remember a decade after the cold war, people were still eager to go slap around the ruskies.

Sure, but then 9/11 changed everything. Russia wasn't the bad guys. They were the Tough Guys who would do the Hard Man Things in order to tame the raging monster that was Radical Islamic Jihadism.

Same with China in Xinjiang (which just so happened to have all the same Taliban-style militant problems as neighboring Afghanistan for some reason please don't Google Operation Cyclone). Xi Jinping was our Based Top Cop Ally in Beijing, helping us fight the encroaching hordes of savage brown people.

Its easy to forget that Americans hated the Japanese back in the 80s/90s for stealing all our manufacturing jobs. And we hated the Indians in the '00s/'10s for stealing all our telemarketer, sales, and remote IT jobs.

All that's gone down the window with the shifting geopolitical landscape as well.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I feel like it's not the GOP that supports Putin, it's Trump that supports Putin and the GOP has no choice but to follow. If the Dems want something... even a thing that the GOP also wants, Trump will be against it and the GOP follows closely behind.

[–] jaemo 1 points 6 months ago

Oh, it's 100% Trump. 10000%. These rubes don't have the capacity for original thought, as others have astutely noted in this thread.

They as much as admitted so when they decided their party platform was whatever their orange god said it was.

Why anyone with any modicum of self respect would follow someone who speaks like a plate of beans negotiating their way out of cows digestive tract is beyond me.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

It's easily explained, although no less surreal. In the McCarthy era, it was easy to whip people up into a frenzy over the Soviet Union, an avowed enemy of America, due to nuclear paranoia and a desire to continue the post-WW2 economic boom America was experiencing that was attributed to Republican policies. In 2024, all the Republicans stand for is political obstructionism and contrarianism to whatever the Democrats are talking about. Democrats want to protect NATO and Ukraine? Republicans are against that.

More than likely, between Putin and Trump and the rest of the modern GOP, there is some cheese pizza and child sex trafficking rings that keep all of them in a Mexican stand off with each other and it definitely has a non-zero relation to Epstein.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Their main motivation is and always was to protect shareholder values in a capitalist world. Communism was a huge threat to that so obviously the soviet union was the main enemy.

Now that Russia is capitalist, too, it's not that much of a threat to the ultra wealthy anymore. In fact getting other countries scared into buying weapons from the US war machine is actually completely in line with their ideology.

Even having a war going on is good for business if the weapons used are American.

Taxpayer money going to private companies that supply material to other countries - just more possibilities to enrich their donors...

[–] [email protected] -4 points 6 months ago

Gee, I wonder if this is why Russia turned out the way it did.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Two MAGA’s. Zero redeeming qualities.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Reagan has been absolutely catastrophic for the United States. The amount of debt that we have would never have happened had he not basically ended taxes for the top bracket. Should taxes have been lowered? Sure. But by like, 40%? God no. The budget cuts fundamentally changed the nation.

And yet, compared to Trump, he’s like this ideal Republican candidate who at least wouldn’t abandon geopolitical allies while fucking over the working class and the lower class. It’s just insane how far the GOP has fallen and it’s even crazier how so many still think they’re not doing enough.

Fuck Christian fundamentalists and fuck anti-government zealots who want to defund the government and everything it provides for those that need its assistance.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago

Fuck Christian fundamentalists and fuck anti-government zealots

Literally the backbone of why they left to settle America lol.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Who are the anti-government zealots you speak of?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Those that live on the fringes of both sides of the political spectrum. Mostly far-right conservatives, but also some non-pragmatic libertarians and anarchists

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Anti government people seem to COMPLETELY forget that Corporations exist outside government, and we DONT get a vote on how they run things, and thats if the power vacuum doesnt attract a warlord or tyrant

[–] [email protected] 22 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Hey look, 2 former Presidents that both have dementia.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

But one had it after he left politics and not the while running for office.

(I actually don’t know if Reagan had it showing up while in office)

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago

Republicans:

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Trump thinks Reagan was a pussy. So do his fans. I'm not apologizing for Reagan. He's one of the USA's greatest monsters.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

Feels like a stretch to say Trump's fans are capable of thinking anything. Which is probably why they follow him in the first place.

Then again, here in Europe we're dealing with a different breed of morons.

Anyone else feel surrounded by idiots?

[–] [email protected] -2 points 6 months ago

Trump's more of an Eisenhower guy, in so far as he's willing to work with Russia to defeat Germany and conquer Europe.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago