Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-25

[crazy canuck]

Top is an odd adjective to use

[The Minsky Moment]

Languish must respond with the most powerful weapon it has:

May have to Czech their privilege
No more blank Czechs.
This is really something to Spring on Prague
I'm not feeling so Rhapsodic about Bohemia

[HVC]

Languish must respond with the most powerful weapon it has:

May have to Czech their privilege
No more blank Czechs.
This is really something to Spring on Prague
I'm not feeling so Rhapsodic about Bohemia

I really want to cross Czech you

[crazy canuck]

Languish must respond with the most powerful weapon it has:

May have to Czech their privilege
No more blank Czechs.
This is really something to Spring on Prague
I'm not feeling so Rhapsodic about Bohemia

I really want to cross Czech you

Czech mate

[Tonitrus]

Ya'll better Czech yourselves before you wreck yourselves.

[Valmy]

May include in his coalition this nifty anti-Mongers/Josq party...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorists_for_Themselves

The party opposes green politics, liberalism and progressivism and wants to abolish all bicycle lanes. It has stated its support for "cars, coal and the crown".

Coal? Margaret Thatcher is spinning in her grave.

[DGuller]

I can't shake the feeling that there is something about the Western cultural vision that just isn't clicking with too many people.  Sure, Russians are spreading propaganda, but propaganda doesn't make something out of nothing, it needs to tap into an existing discontent.  It seems like many people are at least semi-knowingly voting to pare back democracy, and are indifferent about it.  Democracy weathered world wars, it should be able to weather the high price of eggs.

[crazy canuck]

I can't shake the feeling that there is something about the Western cultural vision that just isn't clicking with too many people.  Sure, Russians are spreading propaganda, but propaganda doesn't make something out of nothing, it needs to tap into an existing discontent.  It seems like many people are at least semi-knowingly voting to pare back democracy, and are indifferent about it.  Democracy weathered world wars, it should be able to weather the high price of eggs.

Liberal Democracy takes a lot of work to maintain. For example, it requires a commitment to public education. One of the reasons for that is so citizens don't think the reason why Liberal Democracy is fading in their country is because of the price of eggs.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

I can't shake the feeling that there is something about the Western cultural vision that just isn't clicking with too many people.  Sure, Russians are spreading propaganda, but propaganda doesn't make something out of nothing, it needs to tap into an existing discontent.  It seems like many people are at least semi-knowingly voting to pare back democracy, and are indifferent about it.  Democracy weathered world wars, it should be able to weather the high price of eggs.

Liberal Democracy takes a lot of work to maintain. For example, it requires a commitment to public education. One of the reasons for that is so citizens don't think the reason why Liberal Democracy is fading in their country is because of the price of eggs.

it also required the elites, or at least a significant part of them, not to adopt an ideology that can be best described as 'the west is the fount of all that is evil and needs to disappear'. (extremely put but there's a definite streak of oikofobia about)

[crazy canuck]

I can't shake the feeling that there is something about the Western cultural vision that just isn't clicking with too many people.  Sure, Russians are spreading propaganda, but propaganda doesn't make something out of nothing, it needs to tap into an existing discontent.  It seems like many people are at least semi-knowingly voting to pare back democracy, and are indifferent about it.  Democracy weathered world wars, it should be able to weather the high price of eggs.

Liberal Democracy takes a lot of work to maintain. For example, it requires a commitment to public education. One of the reasons for that is so citizens don't think the reason why Liberal Democracy is fading in their country is because of the price of eggs.

it also required the elites, or at least a significant part of them, not to adopt an ideology that can be best described as 'the west is the fount of all that is evil and needs to disappear'. (extremely put but there's a definite streak of oikofobia about)

Agreed, that would be problematic if it were to occur, but the billionaires are funding the fascists and so that bridge has been crossed.  Another good reason for people not to blame the price of eggs.

[The Brain]

I can't shake the feeling that there is something about the Western cultural vision that just isn't clicking with too many people.  Sure, Russians are spreading propaganda, but propaganda doesn't make something out of nothing, it needs to tap into an existing discontent.  It seems like many people are at least semi-knowingly voting to pare back democracy, and are indifferent about it.  Democracy weathered world wars, it should be able to weather the high price of eggs.

Many people are simply not that into democracy. And many people who claim to be into democracy only want democracy when it results in policies that are a reasonable approximation of what they desire.

[HVC]

I can't shake the feeling that there is something about the Western cultural vision that just isn't clicking with too many people.  Sure, Russians are spreading propaganda, but propaganda doesn't make something out of nothing, it needs to tap into an existing discontent.  It seems like many people are at least semi-knowingly voting to pare back democracy, and are indifferent about it.  Democracy weathered world wars, it should be able to weather the high price of eggs.

Very few forms of governments historically  survived once staple foods are a luxury.

[Tamas]

I'll end up paraphrasing that Gary's Economics guy again but to be fair he was quoting Friedman: when people start feeling like things are not going well because of economics, they will start looking for a reason and a narrative as of to why, and eventually they'll pick a story.

Right now the only "new" story available is the far-right one: your wealth is syphoned away from you because of immigrants and transgender people.

[Sheilbh]

I can't shake the feeling that there is something about the Western cultural vision that just isn't clicking with too many people.  Sure, Russians are spreading propaganda, but propaganda doesn't make something out of nothing, it needs to tap into an existing discontent.  It seems like many people are at least semi-knowingly voting to pare back democracy, and are indifferent about it.  Democracy weathered world wars, it should be able to weather the high price of eggs.

Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes wrote a book called The Light That Failed. They look at the West's crisis through Eastern Europe - and there's a really interesting set of ideas around imitation and anxiety and authenticity (also picked up in post-colonial thinking).

But one point they made which I think about a fair bit is that the Western Europe, Eastern European anti-communists were aspiring to join was one with leaders like Margaret Thatcher, Helmut Kohl and John Paul II - part of their argument is that actually some of the Eastern European "anti-liberalism" isn't new or radical, it is simply that they've changed less since 1989. And I think about that with the horseshoe theory and how the Overton window has shifted - and I think it's shifted right and left. I think in Europe, we don't so much have a horseshoe as a hairpin with a very narrow band of "acceptable" politics. Most of the leading politicians of Western Europe just 30-40 years ago would now be in the radical left or right - whether that's Thatcher, or Mitterrand, JPII or Bergoglio and the Eurocommunists. I think we need a more expansive and inclusive politics and away from the politics of a permanent grand coalition.

I'll end up paraphrasing that Gary's Economics guy again but to be fair he was quoting Friedman: when people start feeling like things are not going well because of economics, they will start looking for a reason and a narrative as of to why, and eventually they'll pick a story.

Right now the only "new" story available is the far-right one: your wealth is syphoned away from you because of immigrants and transgender people.

I don't think it's a story or a narrative - I think it's a question of analysis or diagnosis (I think Aaron Bastani usefully summarised this from a UK perspective).

The far/radical right have one: immigration, judges/NGOs/"civil society"/mediating institutions and basically the post-Cold War settlement (which was arguably the "cultural" wing of the neo-liberal order).

The far/radical left have one: privatisation/deregulations/outsourcing, elite wealth capturing democracy and state institutions and basically the post-70s settlement (the "economic" wing of the neo-liberal order).

Those aren't narratives - the narratives come from the analysis. They've got a real, clear explanation of where we are, how we got here and how to fix it. From that they can have a narrative and they can have policies that line up with it.

I think the mainstream parties don't have that. I think most of them are still at the denial stage of just wanting to go back to the way things were and restorationist politics. They don't have an analysis of where we are, how we got here and how to fix it - fundamentally, I think, because they don't think it's broken. And without a diagnosis you can't have a narrative/story or policy coherence because you've not got that diagnosis. You don't know what your argument is. This is where I think this forums absolute disdain for political "comms" sort of misses the point: clear, good comms is not the icing on a cake, it is the consequence of having a theory/analysis (I went into a deep rabbit hole of baking analogy around yeast and air bubbles to make something rise but couldn't quite get there ). I think in the absence of that analysis you spin off into non-political theories - that actually it's all misinformation, or you content moderate your way back to an eternal 1990s, or one more chart showing that inflation isn't that bad or crime is falling will overcome the lived experience of voters.

Edit: And FWIW, they're American and I think it's inadequate in the US for so many reasons - but I think the Abundance ideas are at least a gesture in the right direction of doing that analysis.

[Tamas]

But people who do not follow politics will not put even 10% of effort into analysing things like that. It IS a matter of story.