Conservatives genuinely support Russia invading innocent European countries and committing genocide. This is just who conservatives are.
Conservatism is a plague of oppression that is long overdue for a cure. There is no place in a modern civilization for conservatives.
Conservatism has been infiltrated and suborned by Russian intelligence.
This is what’s going on. I really don’t understand how it’s not very obvious to everyone that the entire Republican party has been infiltrated by the Russians.
What If they haven’t really been “infiltrated”, though, in the conventional sense? What if they are deliberately inviting the Russian Influence in, because they like the Russian model of Capitalism better than ours?
I believe they are trying to build an Oligarchy here, on purpose, because they are planning to become the oligarchs.
I’m kinda more in this camp. I think Russia and the GOP are working together (kinda hard to live through 2016 without believing that on some level) but does that mean that Russian intelligence has “flipped” the GOP? I don’t think so.
I think it’s more of a convergent goals kinda situation. I think one of the things that the GOP wants to do to American politics is turn it into a open moneymaking venture. Not saying that it isn’t defacto already there, but it is still looked down upon and technically criminal behavior to accept bribes and the like. Matters of enforcement aside.
Not only is that kind of blatent corruption already prevalent in Russian politics, Russia for there part would love a united states that they could just bribe to get off their back. The GOP is trying to comodify American politics and by consequence American power abroad and Russia is looking to be their number one customer.
Does that mean that Trump gets marching orders daily from Putin? No, probably not. There’s probably some level of communication between them, but I doubt any of that takes the form of any kind of directives or anything.
Nah, I don’t think so, they’re compromised. Lindsay Graham is the perfect example of that. He was almost a decent human until he went all in on Trump, he didn’t go there willingly.
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🤢🤮
Lindsay Graham was never a decent person. I hate Trump but he’s done some amusing stuff over the last few years. Completely making Cruz and Graham debase themselves comes to mind
Lindsey Graham was never a decent human being. He just had bouts of openly verbalized rationality previously. Now he simply keeps it all to himself only openly toeing what the party line changes to.
Yes. It could certainly be collusion. They do love that word.
I do think this is more on point. They want a dictator and oligarchs so they see Putin’s Russia as a kindred spirit.
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And their news outlets. Fox, Carlson, OAN, Newsmax, all of them spouting what their masters tell them.
It is obvious to everyone, which is why several key democracies around the world are funnelling billions into the only country actively fighting Russia. The US is using it’s own intelligence and command functions to help guide Ukraine in what to fight and where. Russia is being overthrown and their arrogant invasion is how Putin will lose a tremendous amount of credibility worldwide.
Russian military tech has been proven to be substandard when compared to literally any other arms manufacturing nation except China and India. German, Swedish, UK, French, and US weapons are being used against Russia to incredible effect and showing other national leaders how ineffective Russian weapons are. This means far fewer nations will field Russian tech and gear.
Russian without the illusion of power will have some serious internal upsets, like the recent Wagner and rebel uprisings. Whoever replaces Putin will not renew those conservative back channels because those relationship are contingent on being an international asshole, which a new leader can’t afford to be.
So don’t worry about the long term effects since Russia may not be here for long. Everyone does see Russia being an international asshole and it’s the reason they are losing their war.
Don’t forget that Russia still has some very powerful assets, like nuclear material, nuclear technology, and a veto at the UN. And Russia’s native amounts of oil, fertilizer, and grain means it’s really hard for a lot of smaller countries to side against Russia.
The current sanctions allow many of these countries to turn a nice profit by reselling russian products and energy ressources. The western countries are aware, but hesistant to enforce the sanctions there too, as otherwise it’d cause more conflict.
The US has a lost a lot of soft power over the course of the Trump presidency and the key benefactors are Russia and China. If the US had more credibility it could convince more countries to stand on Ukraines side.
Oh no, it’s fine; they are just asking questions.
“Let me play devil’s advocate”
“Are what we pretend to be”
My mom was bitching about this last night…after supporting efforts by the US & NATO when Putin first went in.
Now we need to stop sending money over there, it’s not our responsibility, let Europe deal with it, get rid of NATO, etc etc etc. Apparently if the US stops sending aid, we could feed every hungry child & house every homeless veteran in “our country” and take care of “our people”.
I told her those problems existed before 2022 and we didn’t fix them then, so this doesn’t really affect that now.
“But we could! If we wanted to!”
Well, yeah, that’s the root of the problem - we don’t want to. Ukraine is irrelevant to that argument.
I just figured these were the new MAGA/Fox talking points & changed the subject.
You can remind her of our obligations to Ukraine according to the Budapest Memorandum of 1994
It’s so strange how easily Trump convinced Americans to abandon almost all of their values.
I wish I had remembered that at the time.
It seems everyone has forgotten that it absolutely our obligation to defend Ukraine.
I remember reading about it when everything started, but I didn’t think to bring it up at the time. We fight a lot & disagreeing with her gives me a ton of anxiety.
How unfortunate sorry to hear that.
They never had them.
Speak for yourself.
🤓
America could also do all that stuff if we stopped putting for-profit middlemen in between government services and the public, too.
But thats socialism
Yup, I didn’t see the Donald end homelessness. He had 4 years, most of our problems still exist.
Some argued that the Biden administration was putting the interests of Ukraine ahead of domestic concerns.
Not really, but that would still be better than putting Russia’s interests ahead of domestic concerns as the GOP has been doing for quite some time now.
I’m legitimately so confused why so many Republicans seem to hate Ukraine (other than the politicians being in the pocket of Putin).
The cost of U.S involvement in Ukraine is only 60 billion so far, only 2/3 of the MONTHLY budget of the U.S military and I swear to god I hear more people bitching it about than Afghanistan, which cost 2.1 trillion dollars and is literaly 35 times greater than what we spent in Ukraine.
Even if you were extremely selfish and didn’t care for saving a country and it’s citizens from genocide it’s in our best interest to defeat Russia. For the last 2 decades the Russian federation has been intentionally sabotaging Europe and the west in general. From hybrid warfare, online propaganda, poisonings and assassinations, destroying deep sea infrastructure, of course cutting energy to Europe and even more.
I’m so tired of this dumb shit idea spreading like wildfire amongst conservative circles and how selfish people are for believing it.
Rant over.
I think there are two factors. First, during the 2016 election, Russia hacked the DNC servers and released the data (heavily salted with disinformation, I’m sure) to damage Clinton’s campaign. Less well known is that they also hacked the RNC servers. That data was never released. I am quite comfortable in assuming that there was some real dirt in there on some Republican officeholders. It would certainly explain the complete about face on Trump that many of them had. One day they were publicly ripping into Trump and the next they were sucking up to him. Putin having dirt on people like Gaetz, etc., could also explain some of their current attitudes on Ukraine.
The second factor is more about the Republican voters but applies to some of the more insane Republican office holders too. Trump was publicly calling on Russia to go after his political enemies during the 2016 election which one would assume would alienate anti-Russian Republican voters. It didn’t though. Those that drank the Trump Flavor-Aid chose to support Trump no matter what. They went all in on the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and since Russia was going after Hillary, Russia was now their friend. There were literally people walking around Trump rallies wearing shirts that said, “Better Russian than Democrat.”
This attitude still holds today. These profoundly deluded people really think that supporting Russia and opposing the Democratic administration’s agenda is somehow patriotic. It is frankly terrifying.
Don’t forget the culture war stuff. The Russian Orthodox Church is more socially conservative. (You can see this in Poland too.) Homosexuality is punished, women are more “traditional”, etc. And Putin projects a cult-of-personality that people like, even if they have arobber-baron oligarchy.
Repubs look at that stuff fondly, they’re titillated.
At this point I don’t think there’s anything that could come out about Republicans that would make their base reconsider them
Flavor-Aid
Off topic, but let me applaud you for getting the right beverage mix for the reference.
aside from them being literally subject to Russian propaganda and being too stupid to realise, the other factor I think is quite simple.
they think its “woke” to not want Ukraine to fall. that’s pretty much it
It is the Ayn Rand influence imo.
Helping Ukraine is alturism, which is bad without self interest.
And MAGA equates to an isolationist nationalist facism. Orwellian.
Because uncle Donny and Putin are friends and he was going to let them roll through. Russia helped build/fund the MAGA movement to sow division in America. Of course they don’t support Ukraine.
It’s also really confusing because even if you don’t have any particular affinity for Ukraine, even a Republican must acknowledge that functionally Russia and China are only things that are even remotely close to peer adversaries, and any military hardware we send Ukraine is going to get dumped directly into damaging that adversary. It’s basically one of the most efficient military investments you could get right now. If you’re even a bit pro military, you should be pro Ukraine.
only 60 billion
Heh. “Only.”
Damn, I could use just one measly billion.
Well to paraphrase several preacher, “Putin at least has state church” and the gold gem “Putin at least isn’t protrans or gay”.
Then you have some people that are against because Dem are for it. It is literally just for them about not agreeing with the other on ANYTHING.
GOP has literally betrayed the entire nation for Russian money. Then they LARP and pretend they care about the cost of Ukraine. Like the Republicans would ever put that money into something like universal healthcare anyway.
It isn’t about where it is being spent, but that it is being spent. They are told to see it as unnecessary spending that’s taking tax payer’s dollars away. They, of course, conveniently forget how much they blew in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mainly because the amount spent on Ukraine is a drop in the sea compared to what they spent.
10 years ago if you had pitched this as the story line for a movie: Republicans aiding Russia in invading Europe you would have been, at best, laughed out of the room.
And yet 10 years ago is when Romney warned us. I remember having a conversation with my mother in which I sounded off incredulously about it, “I don’t buy this red scare 2.0 thing” to which my mother said, “there’s probably something to it if someone says you shouldn’t trust their friends.”
The next moment there was a tremendous commotion. The banners and posters with which the square was decorated were all wrong! Quite half of them had the wrong faces on them. It was sabotage! The agents of Goldstein had been at work! There was a riotous interlude while posters were ripped from the walls, banners torn to shreds and trampled underfoot. The Spies performed prodigies of activity in clambering over the rooftops and cutting the streamers that fluttered from the chimneys. But within two or three minutes it was all over.
I recognised this at once.
Perfect use of this passage.
Kudos.
I wonder why they care so much. It’s as if someone is telling/paying them all to put the Ukraine support on hold. I wonder who 🤔
Aid for Ukraine is almost entirely flowing through DoD’s budget (DoD sends weapons from storage, then buys new ones - this also helps end-run Dept of State export rules). DoD acquisitions don’t shut down with the rest of the government, they never have. Ergo, military aid to Ukraine will continue unabated through any shutdown.
Anyone in DC who’s surprised by this has no idea how a government shutdown works.
everyone in DC knows how it works.
They are just feigning outrage for the base.
Just like how they screamed about evil vaccines, while having every single vaccine available during covid.
To be fair, they’re all ancient enough to be in the “high risk” category. 😂
A lot of the billions of dollars in aid is our old equipment from the 90s that was taking up room in storage and costing us money to maintain. Not having to maintain old vehicles is a net savings minus the cost of transporting them.
Well that equipment will be replaced though. Just as Russia is digging out out their T-55s from storage the US military likes to have the capability to do something similar if things get desperate. Just with stuff that’s 30 years not 60 years old like Russia is doing.
But they’d need to replace their current equipment with new stuff, they’re current equipment will be put into storage.
And yeah they’d want to do this anyway as they don’t want to get into a situation like Russia where their stored equipment is 60 years old. So you’re kinda right, but if they’re replacing equipment a little sooner than planned then there’s a calculation for the cost that involves depreciation formulas and the like. Note this was the cause of that accounting error they had recently which was an insane amount of money. They didn’t misplace money or misplace equipment, they simply miscalculated the depreciation of the old equipment.
So there is a cost despite it being old equipment. It’s not strictly correct to say it’s free, though it would be even more incorrect to say it’s the same cost as new equipment. The cost is somewhere in between, and it’s complicated enough to place a value on it that the DoD screwed it up.
Damn, man. That’s a refreshingly simple way to describe it, thank you.
I’d go further and say they don’t know how countries work. A government shutdown is really insane to me, but shutting down the military would be just straight up destroying the country.
Maybe a country actually in danger from its neighbors, but America?
America only needs a strong military to play world police.
People think everything stops during a shutdown. Not true essential employees are still required to report to work while non essentials sit at home because Republicans live shutting the government down.
Traitors gonna trait.
Sure, but usually you hang traitors
all they know is there are vulnerable people, and they need to be able to threaten them in some way, and use them as a hostage
I bet they’re ok with getting their own paychecks during shutdown though.
This is because Putty-boo either has compromat, or is bribing the shit out of them. (which is, itself, compromat.)
I laugh every time a MAGA snowflake gets upset. Imagine living your life with two brain cells fighting for third place.
Shite education system rearing its ugly head.
MAGA is a pro-putler cult? I’m SHOCKED!
Who do you think is really running the show? An incompetent grifter or a former member of the KGB?
Agreed
Seems to me that they should be worried about keeping the lights on.
I’m just here to document the lemmy tankies once again allying themselves with the far right.
