The Russian dictator has bent the world, including the United States, to his vision.

Edit: Anti-paywall link: https://archive.is/vnzoT

    • nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      10 hours ago

      they can’t, because all branches of government are staffed with loyalists

      and leftists won’t vote

      so there is nothing

  • FaceDeer@fedia.io
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    1 day ago

    No he hasn’t.

    One of the biggest gripes I’ve had with Americans over the years has been their perspective that America was the whole world. The rest of the world was just “out there somewhere”, some vague hinterland that news stories came from sometimes but that didn’t really matter and was totally at the whim of whatever was going on in the real place in the world, America. Even now, even among the Americans who are horrified at Trump and what he’s doing and want to say sympathetic things to the allies he’s screwing over, we’re still seeing this.

    Putin’s useful idiot has smashed America and America’s global dominance. This is bad for America, sure. But it’s not necessarily bad for the whole world, and it’s not necessarily even good for Putin in the grand scheme of things. Putin is still three years into his three-day “special military operation”, with his troops travelling to the front lines on crutches and donkeys to die in meat waves. Finland and Sweden joined NATO. The EU is allocating hundreds of billions of Euros to defense. Germany just elected a government that seems willing to stand up and join them in combating Russia. Russia is still completely hosed. It is not bending the world to Putin’s vision.

    Sure, it would have been nice to have America fully on board with defeating him too. But America’s only a part of the whole world, and an increasingly smaller part these days. Let them go wallow in the isolation they seemingly crave.

    • dudinax@programming.dev
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      3 hours ago

      What nonsense. This is great for Putin. There’s no American Isolation, USA has begun switching to the authoritarian side and is now directly moving against the democracies. Finland and Sweden were hardly worth it in trade.

    • Derpenheim@lemmy.zip
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      22 hours ago

      I’m glad to see this perspective. I live in America, and I thought surely the rest of the world doesn’t see it like this. We are out, and of our own god damn volition. But that doesn’t mean Putin won. If anything, weakening America so much just means our government couldn’t possibly come to his aid in any meaningful way when the European countries inevitably have to put him in his place.

      • angrystego@lemmy.world
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        11 hours ago

        Well, if the US is now Putin’s country, I don’t think Europe is strong enough to take on both Russia and the US (with it’s huge army that’s actually functional and has bases inside Europe). Europe is fucked.

  • GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
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    22 hours ago

    sure he’s winning, but he hasn’t won yet.

    the fact that I and others like me still draw breath means the fight is not yet over.

    • ShadowRam@fedia.io
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      1 day ago

      I think Putin’s push is a direct result of US and UK just straight up ignoring the cooperation of the UN Security Council in 2001.

      Against the entire world wishes, votes and resolutions passed in the UN…

      The US and UK straight up ignored it all and invaded a sovereign nation.

      Once that precedent was established, and it was obvious the decorum of the UN Security Council wasn’t going to be respected, Russia and China changed gears…

      When they realized that any buffoon (Bush) could one day just be put in charge of the US and decide to invade another country and nothing would stop them, they started preparing long term.

      • Viri4thus@feddit.org
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        13 hours ago

        This is exactly it. Once it became clear it was “rules for thee and not for me” the gears were set in motion.

        • angrystego@lemmy.world
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          10 hours ago

          The gears were set in motion much sooner. The plan to destabilize the US from within using hybrid means seemes to have been there since Khrushchev and it got a lot of traction by the end of the 90s with publication of The Foundations of Geopolitics.

    • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 day ago

      I’m not even sure if brainwashed is the right term since it’s clearly a deep anti-intellectualism coupled with deep resentment of established society. They have been voting for this kind of thing in the USA long before Putin got his disinformation machine involved.

      You kind of need a brain to have washed and “you’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know… morons.”

        • angrystego@lemmy.world
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          10 hours ago

          I wish it was. But Europe is confused and not united enough. They still can’t believe the US is on Russian side now, hoping for the best. And they’re paralyzed, because every real action is bocked by the pro-Russian countries among them.

          • Valmond@lemmy.world
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            9 hours ago

            Not fast enough for sure, but I’m definitely confident we’ll get there. Three years ago would have been better, to save Ukraine, today it’s the whole free world at stake.

            • angrystego@lemmy.world
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              8 hours ago

              Three years sound way too many. By that time, how many countries are going to fall victim to the same forces that got the US? Hungary and Slovakia are already lost. This year, it’s going to be Czechia. And who knows which other elections in which countries are going tu turn out badly.

              I wish Europe was able to act now and purge all the infowar actors, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.

              • angrystego@lemmy.world
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                7 hours ago

                Oh, I’ve just read this article. It’s depressing but important for understanding the European capability to defend itself - which is almost nonexistent without the US. I didn’t know it was that bad. https://archive.is/GCWGk

    • Dutczar@sopuli.xyz
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      7 hours ago

      How is “unwilingness to engage” a good trait?

      Both of these sound like qualities of a coward. You could at least say he’s somewhat cunning, and yet you phrased it like that. He doesn’t even smile when hit, he didn’t seem particularly enthusiastic when Ukraine ruined his idea of the invasions, unless I misunderstood.