"Soviet scientists, under intense government pressure, had essentially made their rocket out of spit and band aids, and hurried to hide their work as soon as their worldwide demonstration was complete"

HOLY SHIT! Based Soviet Union defeated the evil empire with spit and band aids.

Might be an unpopular opinion, but I honestly suspect that a Trump presidency might be even worse for Ukraine. Especially in the long run.

Why? Their whole strategy is to basically do a "ceasefire", which would basically be a Minsk 3 and freeze the conflict for a while and allow Ukraine to rearm before a more bloody continuation of the war occurs again. At best Trump might kick the can down the road and cast blame on president Gruesome Newsom in 2029 when both sides go to war again.

You might ask, why would Russia go along with this since they are winning? Because the Russian government is full of neoliberals and has been dragging their feet for 10 years now. It wouldn't surprise me if Russia agrees in exchange for getting the 100 billion back.

I know this is petty, but if Trump ends up winning I'm going to troll reddit libs for like a solid week about how Putin is now in command of the country.

Might be a hot take, but Mass Effect 2.

I love Mass effect, despite its flaws, but Mass Effect 2 was the game that derailed the series and basically forced Mass Effect 3 to have an unsatisfactory ending. So many concepts from Mass Effect 1 like the cipher, visions, Virgil, the Thorian were completely abandoned in favor of one giant video game length side mission. Sure the suicide mission was kind of cool, but at the end of Mass Effect 2 we learned almost nothing about the reapers from the last game.

But Cerberus is by far the worst mistake. From Shepard's POV, they literally witnessed Cerberus do grotesque, inhumane experiments throughout ME1 only a month before game start but the writers forced us to join these space Nazis. Cerberus is comically evil and is constantly doing cartoon villain experiments. Also, the space Nazis somehow have it in their hearts to spend billions of credits so that Shepard can save humanity.

Imagine being a Ukraine supporter right now and watching America completely forget about Ukraine and focus on Israel.

Looks like the "tankies" were once again proven to be correct when we said that this conflict wasn't about freedumb.

As a pharmacist, this makes my blood boil. Fuck that turd.

The greatest irony about 1984 is the the bulk of the concepts in it like "memory holes", "doublethink", "room 101", perpetual war ect. ect. were directly inspired from Orwell working in a British propaganda ministry during WW2. NOT THE SOVIET UNION. Orwell never even visited the Soviet Union and had an admiration for Hitler. Everything else in the book is literally just a rehash of tired old anti-communist memes from the 1930s.

It's also kind of funny to see these Nazi bootlickers portray the Winter War as some kind of Russian invasion even though Ukrainians made up a substantial part of the Soviet forces and one of the Red Army field marshals was Tymoshenko, a Ukrainian.

Also Side note: Natopedia is trash and depicts the Finish sniper Simo as the greatest sniper ever even though Finnish historians have acknowledged that most of his "kills" are unconfirmed. Soviet WW2 snipers are orders of magnitude more impressive.

In my opinion, the best thing about this election is the permanent destruction of Joe Biden's reputation and legacy. All he had to do was not run and he could have still retired with an army of libs fawning over him.

But because of his and his family's hubris, he will be forever known as the "dementia president". Just like Taft is the "fat president who got stuck in a bathtub" and Nixon is the "corrupt crook president" Biden will forever be known for being the only nominee to be forced out by his own party due to dementia. Even ultra blueMAGA types have acknowledged this. I honestly think that in like 30 years my future children will be learning about that time we had a senile president. (Assuming the USA still even exists)

And that miserable piece of excrement deserves it 100%. I've seen a lot of leftists over the years (even some hexbear and Chapo) say things like "he should be retired and golfing". HELL NO! Joe Biden is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people at a minimum (probably millions if you include the Iraq War and Libya). He is directly responsible for genocide and has defended the most nakedly genocidal fascist state for decades. Even domestically, he was an abysmal turd who shilled for corporations his entire life and supported segregation, greatly accelerated the drug war, supported the Patriot Act, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. At a minimum he should be rotting in a dark dungeon with Hillary, Cheney, Obama, Bush, Trump, and the rest of the demons.

I genuinely hope that before he croaks, he has the final realization that all he will ever be known for is being the "dementia president".

Words cannot describe how much I now loathe the spineless POS, Bernie Sanders. Which is astounding considering how I basically worshiped him back in 2015/2016.

All this fucker had to do was announce his presidency after Biden's corpse announced it was not running and he would hold the entire Democratic party by the balls. Seriously, what would the Democrats do? Rig the primaries again? Then threaten to run as an independent and kick them a kick in the balls permanently.

It boggles my mind how the entire "Left" in the Democratic party have been caving nonstop for several years now while the party dived to the right and fully endorses genocide and Trump's border wall. Bernie and the rest of the Squad weaklings couldn't even have the basic decency to call out the most televised genocide in Human history. I wonder what libs in 2015/2016 would think if you told them that in just a few short years the Democratic party would be entirely behind Trump's border wall.

I'm now 100% convinced that AOC and the others would be demanding the left to vote for Hindenburg instead of the Communists if they were around in 1930s Germany.

So this might end up being cope, but I'm starting to think we are seeing a modern version of the Battle of the Bulge happen in Kursk.

At first, it seems like a major L for Putin as the thinly guarded Russian border is overwhelmed by what looks like another PR stunt by Ukraine. But after a couple of days it becomes obvious that this is actually a major offensive by Ukraine. As Ukraine pours in thousands of troops from the Donbass front into Kursk. We are now getting reports that Ukraine planned to go much further into Kursk than they did and possibly wanted to capture the nuclear plant in Kurchatov to do some kind of nuclear blackmail to force Russia to make major concessions.

This obviously isn't working as their incursion been halted/severely slowed down. Sure it's another propaganda W, but they are taking massive casualties, while simultaneously weakening the Donbass front and failing to force the withdrawal of substantial Russian forces from Donbass. Even Ukraine NAFO cheerleaders aren't happy about this one.

So Ukraine now has to choices: Option A is to double down and pray they can hold out and make some gains and remove some Russian troops from the Donbass. Or option B which is to cut their losses and take the L (Ironically what Hitler did several decades ago during the Battle of Kursk).

Either way is would be some kind of poetic irony if the modern Kursk battle ended up being the nail in the coffin for the Kiev regime just like the 1943 battle of Kursk was described as the "last gasp of Nazi aggression" for Germany.

I found out that Ukraine renamed streets from Tymoshenko (famous Ukrainian-Soviet field Marshall during WW2) to this turd. Not beating the Nazi allegations.

NGL, watching insufferable radlibs and BlueMAGA types eat their own shit is pretty enjoyable.

This is what you get you you rally behind the decrepit husk in charge of a decaying genocidal empire.

BLUEMAGA is in shambles right now.

Can someone explain the whole Dasha/Red Scare pod thing? Last I recall was her doing the Sailor Socialism thing back in 2018 (feels like a lifetime ago now). Then hearing something about her becoming a tradcath a couple years later.

Serious question, but why aren't we doing the for Ebrahim Raisi? Sure he was against the west and the Iranian revolution was preferable to the western puppet king. But he was deeply right wing and murdered communists during the Revolution.

You are obviously funded by Count Dooku, tankie.

Sorry tankies, but I'm voting for Papa Palpatine. I may not support all of his policies, but it's either him or General Grievous. The genocide will be a lot bigger if the separatists win. Anyone who opposes Palpatine is obviously funded by Count Dooku.

Also, I find it funny how he completely absolves America's role in all of this. This piece is written as if us Russians are all Asiatic hordes that want to destroy the West because they have shiny new technology that our Slavic brainpans are to primitive to create.

Kotkin is one of the very few liberal historians who doesn't completely regurgitate batshit insane takes about the Soviet Union from the Cold War era (For instance he acknowledges that Lenin's testament was a hoax).

However, his takes on politics are so utterly naïve that one might think he's some kind of Harvard MBA failson rather than an actual historian. I remember during a conversation a couple of years ago where he basically states that America will win the new Cold War because they have the capability of "self correction" that China does not. Because choosing between two demented racists in an election is apparently "self correction". This article is more of the same. The Russia-Chinese vassal theory is literally believed by no one and is ludicrous when you consider that America literally controls Europe's foreign policy. Everything else sounds like it came from redditors in early 2022.