Posted on 08/11/2023 10:09:13 PM PDT by Cronos
To understand Russia’s current obsession with Ukraine, it is important to recognize that Russia was never a state in the common usage of the term. Unlike the modern Turkish state that emerged from the Ottoman Empire, or Great Britain, which acquired and lost an empire, Russia never had an identity separate from empire. As British historian Geoffrey Hosking observed, “Britain had an empire, but Russia was an empire.”
The Kremlin’s preferred narrative of Russia rising from present-day Ukraine (“Kyivan Rus”) is a Moscow-concocted fairy tale. The officially endorsed 1000-year history of Russia is a self-created and self-perpetuated myth that generations of Russian dictators have promoted to justify their external expansion and internal repression.
Instead, what we think of today as Russia started out as a loose collection of independent city states that included Novgorod, Pskov, Smolensk, Tver, and Moscow, the last of which attained particular significance toward the end of Mongol rule a little over 500 years ago. Kyiv was no more a part of Russia then than it is now. There was no common language, no common administration, and no joint identity. Indeed, it would be centuries before the rulers of Muscovy attempted to assert their dominance over Kyiv and the lands of today’s Ukraine.
...Under Ivan III (“The Great”), Muscovy established itself as the strongest of the city states to emerge from the Mongol period. Ivan called himself “Tsar of all Rus,” but he was actually more like the mayor of Greater Moscow. It was Ivan who started the expansion of Muscovy, initiating the so-called “gathering of Russian lands.”
...Expansion demands inward Russification and repression, and further outward expansion. As Catherine the Great famously said, “I have no way to defend my borders but to extend them.”
This empire crash is going to get more frightening, esp in a few weeks when Brics shows the world their size.
Stay safe my FRiend.
The closer we come to collapse, the more dangerous it will be for us as the frustrated empire leaders realize the end is near.
It is my prayer as well.
Pretty sure you are living in outdated times and unable to move forward into the present.
I think that is, in fact, a Euro trait.
To get stuck in the past.
Lets talk about the Czechs in the past. Looks like your leader was an absolute despot.
Nor was Cuba getting missiles and nukes in 1960 when we pressed the Bay of Pigs invasion simply because we did not want an ally of the USSR next door to us that could eventually access USSR military hardware and troops. They had NO USSR military or weaponry on the island. That came in 1962 when USSR delivered missiles on the island along with a small contingency of troops, because we were making noises about doing it again. We were right and rational to respond to the existential threat to keep our largest global enemy off our doorstep. With Biden making noises about Ukraine being invited into Nato after the US having broken our 1991 agreement with Russia not to extend NATO into its former satellites, they were now faced with the prospect of US military hardware and troops on its doorstep and they did exactly what we insisted our leaders did in the Cuban situation in 1960 and 1962.
First of all, a Regime of unfit elites and evil rulers does not equal the Nation.
An evil king and his “favourites” can be done away with and the rest of the nation continues more or less intact.
But, even In the case of a more drastic Downfall like the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile, in the case of the Babylonian conquest, the elite that had gathered in Jerusalem was carted off to Babylon, but some of the poor people were left behind to tend the land.
Also in that case, the inhabitants of Jerusalem were instructed to surrender to the Babylonians by the Lord, but they disobeyed and were treated worse as a result.
I leave it to the Lord’s mercy to deal with us as he will.
As for is the Downfall of the DC Imperial Regime, is it inevitable or is Divine intervention required?
It is like watching a reckless and dangerous driver who is behaving so foolishly that a crash is inevitable. Or, the police could set up a road block and force him off the road.
To be blunt, I see an evolution on our exchange from cheering and praying for an American downfall to now claiming that one wishes only the removal of an unfit elite without harm to the rest of the country. Such an antiseptic and benign outcome is implausible.
I’ve got a comfortable life. I don’t want it to be disrupted.
Nevertheless, I will continue to pray for the downfall of the evil rulers, elites and leaders of the West.
We can only hope that Lord is merciful on ordinary people.
I guess too that you want "the GAE" to continue so that the "ordinary people" you now care about continue to get the Medicare and Social Security that the world finances.
No; no; no; yes.
No; yes; the $US will fall, so those who massively enriched themselves from the GAE can make up the difference.
It is fantasy to think that the US can collapse without ordinary people getting hurt.
“It is fantasy to think that the US can collapse without ordinary people getting hurt.”
From a human reasoning secular perspective that might seem reasonable, but the Lord has done much greater miracles than collapse an unfit Regime and remove and unworthy Elite, while leaving the common people unharmed.
Elites and Elite Empire institutions does not equal the American Nation, or their interests.
Then Godly conservatives are elected and take over. Suddenly, by Divine intervention, a hundred trillion dollars of high grade gold ore is discovered on federal land in South Dakota, a mild temblor turns exhausted Texas oil wells into fabulous gushers, and American scientists develop cold fusion, antigravity, cures for all diseases, and a new strain of corn that is happy and productive in any climate from deserts to swamps?
In the case of a USA dollar crash - it’s hard to believe that the United States would remain as a unitary entity. The history of other Empires that get into that sort of crisis is breakup.
Once the dollar crashes, the US won’t even be able to finance imports because they won’t be able to borrow in foreign currencies. From that, the areas of the country which can sustain themselves at least in non-durables production are going to do a lot better than the urban coastal areas that depend on imports for everything.
The other group going to take a huge hit is the DC Swamp. The National Security budget is going to face drastic cuts as the pretentions of Empire can no longer be afforded.
I expect the Regime to try to push the spending cuts and tax increases onto white people in the Red States, but that will just accelerate the breakup.
A massive devaluation changes the economic balance of power. If imports are unaffordable, anything that can be produced within the USA has real value.
At the same time, the bullish!t email and laptop jobs of the coastal and urban elites are going to zero. Elon’s layoffs has shown that 80% of that stuff was fake, and a lot of that corporate ESG and DEI stuff has negative value.
There is obviously going to be a huge amount of inflation, but if the indexation of Social security and medicare is somewhat maintained, then retirees should be ok.
Most low income people don’t have a lot to lose with a big devaluation/inflation. Import substitution opens up production jobs, and their personal debt gets inflated away, and they didn’t have a lot of dollar assets to lose.
The groups that do lose from inflation/devaluation GAE collapse is the investor class, the hedge fund class, the DC Swamp Nation Security class, the laptop class, the university/college class, the professional politician class, the gov’t bureaucracy class - and all the businesses that provided goods and services to those groups. These were the largest beneficiaries of the rigged system underlying the GAE, and it is justice that they lose big when it falls.
Another group, unfortunately, that will also lose is smaller, more risk averse savers who mostly invest in dollar fixed asset type investments.
The Regime that presides over all this is going to be thrown out of power.
When the urbans and the coastals realize that they will not be able to rule in the future, my guess is they will want to secede themselves, rather than have the values of the interior of the country imposed on them, the way they did it to us.
I really like the idea of America (and every country in the West) returning to producing what they consume, and consuming what they produce.
It is a much more honourable way to operate your economy than exploiting a reserve currency status where you just print to buy, and print to fund a huge parasite class of globally destructive Imperial degenerates.
A dollar crash is likely to be a relatively slow dollar deflation, with foreign central banks propping up the dollar for a long time. Much in the way of industrial production will return to the US. The economists call it "import substitution" and regard it as a normal and salutary process for troubled economies.
At the same time, budget and tax reforms will be embraced out of necessity. The immense size and productive capacity of the US economy will make the effort easier and more effective than many anticipate, with similar reforms in the private sector making for a leaner, no nonsense approach to business.
Greece, of all places, long Europe's basket case of corruption, waste, and dysfunction, has moved strongly along the path of reform. America will do the same, with people pulling together to correct old errors and malpractices.
Generationally, there is also cause for optimism. Surveys show that American teens these days, especially the males, are conservative, clear-minded, and pragmatic in approach. Ten and twenty years from now, they will be a decisive voting bloc and will rapidly assert themselves as leaders.
Before 2014 Russia could have benefited, but it didn’t.
The Russian ruling class ie Putin and his coterie benefited, not the Russian people
Then don’t focus on race, focus on opportunities for all.
A poor kid who is great at physics should get scholarships etc to help him or her succeed irrespective of race
That’s tye facts.
Finland and Sweden both had their populations against joining NATO until February 2022 and Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
After that the ordinary Finns and Swedes want to join NATO
Zelensky is a clown but he can’t end the war.
If he is taken out tomorrow, the Ukrainians will keep struggling to push Putin’s army out as they see that the Russians want a complete destruction of Ukraine.
Why do you think Poland and Lithuania etc requested to join NATO?
Because they saw that Russia invades non NATO countries
It would have dissolved if Russia was seen as amenable.
But the central European countries saw that Russia was still keeping an imperialist mindset so they requested to join NATO.
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