I wonder what was going on from ~1989-1991?
Edit: Don't worry about it. I'm sure it wasn't anything important.
Edit 2: I just finished a pretty good Christmas argument with my dad about how Russian collapse and the death of Putin is almost certainly not imminent. Additionally, despite being a heavy news consumer, until tonight he never heard anything about the civil war in eastern Ukraine, and still doesn't believe it's a real thing because I'm not a reliable source. I've been rage ranting about destroying capitalism since I was a teenager. Anyway, I'm wondering if most libs are observing this event with literally no context that can allow you to do any analysis other than think the bad guys must just be crazy.
Anecdotally, the libs I know that are all aboard the Ukraine train have been conditioned by background anti-Russia propaganda in US media along with Russiagate and have never heard of Crimea of the Donbass except vague memories of something happening there years ago.
Russian collapse and the death of Putin is almost certainly not imminent
I mean, Putin's not getting any younger. He's already butting up against the Russian average life expectancy rate. And while I don't think the Russian economy is threatened by a market that only seems to reward big O&G exporters, I do think that this protracted war is going to force the kind of domestic cuts that hurt long term domestic growth. Look what Vietnam and Iraq did to the US, as a point of comparison.
Anyway, I’m wondering if most libs are observing this event with literally no context that can allow you to do any analysis other than think the bad guys must just be crazy.
Its not the worst analysis. A lot of these political maneuvers are short-termist, ill-conceived, ill-executed, and ultimately catastrophic for the regions they're implemented. Nothing about the Russia/Ukraine war is good for Europe, for the Middle East, or for North Africa. It is what might classically be described as "crazy". Just plainly and nakedly self-destructive for everyone involved.
Libs simply can't see past the "Foreigners Are Bad!" blinders. They recognize that Putin's role in this is insane and the Russians are paying an enormous price to - at the absolute very best - reinforce their status quo position. But they fail to see how every other player in the region is getting significantly more fucked as a consequence.
Yeah, the Russians are crazy. But no less crazy than the Germans, the Estonians, the Scandinavians, the Turks, or the Americans.
The only sane people in this mess are the Chinese, screaming "Please stop!" from the sidelines.
Oh, it's definitely crazy. I'm just arguing that Putin's playing the same shitty game as everyone else, with at least as much skill.
I’m not a reliable source. I’ve been rage ranting about destroying capitalism since I was a teenager.
Brainworm dads and ignoring literally every correct word out of their adult child's mouth for having the audacity to fundamentally disagree with them even once when they were a little kid.
My dad just dismisses everything I say as "some crap from Reddit" or "sounds made up" as though I don't have a PhD, no matter how many times I've been able to remind him like a day later when he actually sees it on the news, or how many times I've actually been the expert interviewee on the news. Dude literally has books I've published and he will not acknowledge that I might be right about anything ever.
Having a degree, personal life experience with the stuff were arguing about, a track record of always being right (over the course of decades), and being completely sincere with no incentive to lie or be manipulative definitely doesn't make me more trustworthy than some rich shithead saying something completely implausible on the evening news.
Literally exactly, it should make us trustworthy, and yet boomer dads refuse to acknowledge that their child might know more about something than they do.
Well, thanks for the virtual commiseration. I know people who get frustrated with their boomer parents, but most don't have my specific communist brainworms, so we're a little shallow in how we relate.
I once mentioned the collapse of the USSR as one of the worst national catastrophes of the 20th century, this was in college. Classmate then told me I shouldn't say that, because the communists taking power in 1917 was even worse than the collapse.
This is antisemitism that's so normalized that even people who are horrified by antisemitism can say it without second thought. Recently realizing how much anti-commmunist thought requires you to ignore Jewish history or just accept that Jews dying is the price you must pay to protect the rich has made me really distrustful of a lot of people.
The United Nations would be more concerned if they weren't allowing it to happen on purpose.
Well on the bright side I assumed from the graph 8 million died but they're almost all refugees
For thousands of years that region had maybe 3 million people. 15-30 million is just fine for a population total there. A slow decreasing curve that flattens out worldwide around half to a third of the present-day population is exactly what we need.
The whole "more people = more gooder" assumption has a reactionary Anglo-Darwinian origin and we really need to get past the idea that increasing the numbers of the human species is a good thing. People aren't resources or tools, they're ends in and of themselves, and maximizing numbers of humans just creates a conflict between them and each other and their environment.
ok I agree with you, though in case of Ukraine and former Soviet states the population decline isn't just due to lower fertility rate but also due to a sharp rise in death rate thanks to alcoholism/drug abuse and collapsed healthcare.
