A billion in EU buys many times less than the same billion does in russia.

Think about why it does

Because no one in their right mind wants rubles, so money comparisons that involve rubles have to be corrected back to reality before the values actually match. If you go by the exchange rate alone, you might as well be comparing dollars to lollipops or something.

1. I was talking about how much they’re spending on the Ukraine war, not how much they’re spending in general. Obviously the EU’s economy dwarfs Russia’s so of course they’re going to spend more on their military in general, it’s only even competitive because of PPP and because Russia has mobilized its entire country more or less into a war economy for the Ukraine war
2. PPP is the correct way to compare dollar values between countries, most of the time, doing otherwise gives wildly misleading values for a lot of comparisons
3. “It sound foolish to believe Russia has plans to attack” my guy they are literally “attacking,” they are literally moving their units into enemy territory (and then back out) right now
4. “they would be heading for a war they have no guarantee of winning” I have bad news for you about what it means historically when the massive nation is invading a small country that didn’t do anything to it, and the war is still going on with no progress several years in. That’s not just “no guarantee of winning” territory at that point…

I actually do see another possibility beyond what I said: I think it’s also possible that Russia has decided on war with NATO, and is doing provocations so the other party will have to be the one to “officially start” the war and then they can “retaliate.” That’s part of why I was saying it would be smart for NATO to establish very clear ahead-of-time guidelines and then stick to them, so there’s no escalation by mistake once missiles do start flying around. Anyway that type of behavior is a time-honored tradition especially for democratic countries that have to worry about the public perception (US with Japan before WW2, US with Vietnam at Tonkin Gulf, Israel at all times…). I don’t think that’s what they are doing for a couple of reasons, but it’s the only other explanation besides what I said that makes any sense to me.

Yeah. I’m not exactly a geopolitics-man, but my best guess for what’s going on with Putin and Russia’s strategy here is:

1. He’d been doing fine with taking over small countries up until 2022, and it generally gave him opportunities for new goodies to give away to his friends and also it’s exciting and makes him look like a winner
2. He’s been surrounded by yes men for so long that he’s lost his ability to really tell what are good strategies, what is happening, or what’s likely to happen in the future

I think the combination means that he’s just kind of telling his military to do whatever, including invading Ukraine thinking it would go about the same way as Georgia, Crimea, Chechnya, and the US elections. I do think he benefits from a certain amount of native cunning in this particular brinksmanship with NATO, and of course it doesn’t take too much detailed understanding of facts on the ground to just fly some planes around in their airspace and flip people off, but also I think in general this latest chapter of Russia is just a pretty good demonstration of why authoritarianism doesn’t make for effective countries.

EU countries combined are matching already russia military expenses

Check the data

The US plus all partners has sent about $150 billion in total, it looks like, up until the middle of last year: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1303432/total-bilateral-aid-to-ukraine/ About half of that is EU, so say $75 billion from the EU.

Russia spends about $500 billion per year: https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2025/02/12/russias-2024-military-spending-surpassed-eu-uk-combined-in-ppp-terms-study-a87974 They have mobilized basically their entire economy to try to win this thing.

What is your source for saying the EU alone is matching Russia? The EU is barely paying attention to the war, because of complacency and a subtle racism. But the idea that the EU is pulling out all the stops like Russia is, or prioritizing making their “defense” contractors rich in this as the US is wont to do, is absurd.

and watch out for propaganda.

Can do! I think I might have found some, I’m not sure.

Oh wait lol

Russia is already shooting down anything that enters their airspace (or trying to, mostly succeeding). As well as lots and lots of things which are outside their airspace including civilian airliners sometimes. It’s only in NATO-land that it’s this big crisis like “oh no oh no whatever shall we do.”

See, now you’ve got a problem. If you’d shot down the first one, Russia would have made a big noise and then it would have been fine. Now that you didn’t, now it’s weird if you start shooting them down.

My advice is to just be straight about it: Publicly announce what the line is where you’ll shoot them down, and then stick to it. Even if you just announced a date when the shooting-down will start any time they enter NATO airspace, that might be fine. But you have to stick to it. Right now you’re trying to figure out how to make them stop without shooting them down, and that approach just doesn’t work. Like you’re all surprised they don’t establish radio contact. Bro… that is not the game you are engaged in.

(You might also want to confiscate $10 billion in frozen Russian assets to give to Ukraine for each incursion, just to respond to what’s already happened… but again without shooting them down it’s not going to accomplish anything. The money’s already gone honestly, and they know that, they’re just waiting for you to figure it out and go through your whole “process” and make it official, and they think you’re stupid and weak for every year that goes by that you’re not doing that.)

Sure, have a good one

You said, “I personally am of the opinion that voting isn’t very important. I think it distracts from real action.” Right?

If that’s not what you said or not what you think, tell me. What’s your position on voting? Is it worth upsetting yourself by voting, if you can then take part in keeping thousands of people out of ICE detention or reduce the US government’s destruction of the planet compared to the alternative? My position is that it is, but tell me.

No idea why you’ve moved to cursing and insulting me.

But what if voting in this system doesn’t prevent harm?

Or voting for major party candidates doesn’t prevent harm?

Then you need to do more, on top of voting, to try to further reduce the harm. And, also, don’t throw away a crucial tool to move the needle towards “less death and suffering” because it would be way too upsetting.

Not complicated really. Lots of ways of fighting for a better world are upsetting. That’s not really the metric of whether they are worth doing.

May have confused it with the original more considered version that got munched.

What?

What was the thing you repeated that you had heard, but that isn’t actually your position? I’m just confused by this.

Not really trying to give you a hard time, I get what you’re saying about me coming on super-strong about it and I apologize about any kind of harshness. Like I say, it’s just an important issue for me that is connected with real world harm, so I feel like if we can have a slightly upsetting conversation and then be set up for action that can help prevent some massive material harm in the world, that’s okay.󠀁󠁓󠁯󠀠󠁉󠀧󠁭󠀠󠁡󠀠󠁬󠁩󠁴󠁴󠁬󠁥󠀠󠁳󠁵󠁳󠁰󠁩󠁣󠁩󠁯󠁵󠁳󠀠󠁯󠁦󠀠󠀢󠁤󠁥󠁬󠁶󠁥󠀬󠀢󠀠󠁡󠁬󠁳󠁯󠀮󠀠󠁔󠁨󠁡󠁴󠀧󠁳󠀠󠁣󠁯󠁭󠁭󠁯󠁮󠁬󠁹󠀠󠁡󠀠󠁨󠁡󠁬󠁬󠁭󠁡󠁲󠁫󠀠󠁯󠁦󠀠󠁴󠁥󠁸󠁴󠀠󠁴󠁨󠁡󠁴󠀠󠁷󠁡󠁳󠀠󠁧󠁥󠁮󠁥󠁲󠁡󠁴󠁥󠁤󠀠󠁢󠁹󠀠󠁡󠁮󠀠󠁌󠁌󠁍󠀮󠁿

Those are the things that allowed it to become this size

100% true

This is all backwards.

Not sure where you got this part, since what you just said is precisely what I said

; there’s nothing that says they have to stay because of its size, and the size could shrink to accommodate the new functioning (or lack thereof) of the courts.

Also true

The US, for better or worse, really is a very distributed system. It’s the only possible way that a single endeavor can grow to this size, you just can’t have it all centrally managed and have anything at ground level still make any sense or get done well. It also has a pretty valuable property that a lot of the people operating it really believe in the mission of what they are doing. Prosecutors believe they’re putting bad people away, grand juries believe they’re making decisions about justice, National Guard people believe they’re protecting the country. It’s not always true (which carries its own variety of problem), but quite a lot of the time, it actually is (partly because it’s kind of a self fulfilling prophecy as people are motivated to fix it at the local level if things go off the rails).

Trump doesn’t understand any of that, which is why even medium-sized enterprises he’s ever been involved with have always been a clusterfuck. And now he’s driving the world’s biggest robot, and surprise surprise, the controls aren’t simple and it’s not doing what he wants. We’re just lucky that this decades-in-the-making fascist coup came to its climax with Angry Facebook Grandpa at the wheel instead of someone who knew what the fuck they were doing. Even Trump is having quite a bit of success with it. If it had been someone qualified, we’d have no chance at all I think.

Rule 1 of the kakistocracy: It’s never the boss’s fault. He has to be in charge of everything, he can’t be questioned on anything, but it’s never his fault when things go wrong.

I think it is virtually certain that he types that way in direct messages

relative to everything else

Not even remotely what I said. I’m pretty sure I actually said specifically that the “everything else” was going to be vital. I think you should read to understand, not to confirm.

then they ratfuck our guys literally every single time

I didn’t do that. Someone else did, and fuck those guys. It’s a massive problem. Activism to fix that is absolutely vital, showing up and voting and nothing else is kind of pointless (again, definitely at this point).

The point is that giving up on elections completely means that it’s all ratfucking and no citizen input into formal politics. That’s why I compared it with getting vaccines: Whatever you’re worried about as the theoretical health impacts, it is astronomically better than not doing it.

I get what you’re trying to say that I’m coming off harsh, but if an apartment building burned down and some families died and a lot more were homeless, and after that I heard someone talking about how they took the batteries out of their smoke detector (in the same building) because they think it’s better not to have them in, I would have the same reaction.

You seemed to be going off on it pretty viciously

I mean I’m not purely trying to. It does upset me though. See the smoke detector analogy.

I was repeating something i had heard, that I specifically stated was not my position.

You said, “I personally am of the opinion that voting isn’t very important. I think it distracts from real action.” Right?

Edit: Moderated the language, I don’t need to be all mean about it. You may be right about that part.

If you think me telling you my point of view and what’s an important tactic to employ, in blunt terms, is “sowing division,” I don’t know what sort of diverse communities you have worked in before. I have worked together to build something with people very unlike me. I can do okay at it, I had to learn a lot. Presumably, if you work with activists, you’re accustomed to it too: Having strong disagreements about things, talking with people who you don’t see eye to eye with. Right? Maybe not.

There is a crisis going on right now. I am trying to wake you up to one vital tool to use to try to set a better course in the future, minimize the crisis and bring it to a less dangerous place and recover a better future. Sorry if I hurt your feelings but people are dying right now. All you can see is me in terms of “enemy” because I don’t see things like you do, it sounds like, or be upset because I am talking bluntly about this upsetting situation. I would say, take your own advice: You need to learn to read to understand rather than confirm.

You shouldn’t be so quick to write them off! They could teach you a lot, and you could do a lot to support each other.

They’re not mutually exclusive. Real world non-electoral politics is going to be necessary to get us out of this mess (especially now), and it also leads to a good and fulfilling life. There’s something magic and human that happens with the people around you when you are fighting for something that’s actually worth fighting for, I’ve seen it.

There’s absolutely no reason in the world why it needs to be one or the other. Absolutely none. Unless you just like having a much harder challenge to overcome in your day to day activism, wondering if those people who you come into contact with are going to get “deported” or just never seen again.

I can understand why someone who relies on high morale to keep functioning and puts a high value on truth wouldn’t consider it worth the chronological and emotional costs.

Meanwhile, a bunch of people stuffed into an ICE facility in Louisiana without lawyers, medical care, edible food, all kinds of stuff, don’t give even the tiniest flying fuck whether it was worth the “emotional costs” for you to keep them out of that situation.

It’s interesting you bring up the 2000 election, too. That’s one of the inflection points where the whole fuckin’ world could have been different based on the results of the election.

I also think it’s very bizarre their constant complaining that the suspect isn’t “cooperating.”

What is it that they expect him to do? I have a guess, of course. The way it usually works (after the suspect initially agrees to talk with them without a lawyer, creating all kinds of problems for themselves), is that they build the case, and the lawyer who’s now in touch with the client finally has a chance to tell them to shut the fuck up going forward. My guess is that they really want him to “cooperate” with building their case for them, and he’s not, and that upsets them because it’s giving them real problems.

If we assume this random YouTube man is credible, and I see no reason to doubt him, the DOJ can’t even tie suspected Kirk killer to the actual killing of Charlie Kirk.

Some kinds of progressive don’t see electoralism as worth their time.

…

You gotta do that last year, or a little while later, after people have forgotten. Trying to say it doesn’t matter who wins elections right now is… not going to be convincing.

It’s actually exactly like what happened with vaccines. We had so many years living in a society which didn’t have active urgent throw-you-in-the-camps-for-no-reason tyranny that people stopped believing it was really real, and they’re still out confidently saying it’s not worth taking basic easy steps to prevent.