TheLastHero

not that people are becoming gay, I don't think that's something you can actually do if you aren't already. More like people are more willing to consider alternative sexualities and genders because of a broader sense of discomfort with traditional norms (plus people aren't oppressed as much for doing so). it's a type of dysphoria I suppose.

laugh all you want but America will soon have the world's first thermoplastic bridge DECADES before the Chinese do. This is why we are are the most innovative country in the world and always will be.

good lord yes, it's ugly out here. And I love when the go to excuse you usually receive from the internet is "well you must just have a shitty personality," nah, my personality is great, I make friends easily as hell when I actually get the opportunity to make them. (And let's be honest, we all know a good personality has never been a necessary prerequisite for intimacy)

But the opportunities simply do not exist, they are drying up just like our freshwater sources. Alienation is intensifying across western society, and social relationships become increasingly transactional and nakedly self-interested. And my god, I swear interpersonal communication skills are at a historic low. I don't think people even really know what they want anymore, after being fed so much manufactured, individually targeted corporate culture and living under "democratic" political regimes whose entire purpose is to gaslight you into being proud of your own exploitation. No wonder everyone seems fucked in the head psychosexually in the west these days.

Imo it's because liberalism in all its glorious "brilliance" has created a patriarchal society in which no one can become patriarchs anymore (though that was always sort of a myth for most people to begin with, but it's like there's less smoke to obscure that fact now). Tons of people don't even want this dynamic anymore. but society seems completely stagnant, like there's nothing to do about it but suffer trying to either attract or become one of these ridiculous caricatures of "dominance" while 99% of the population are forced to live as pathetic losers in comparison (aka "the proletariat"). The dissonance is fucking people up (men AND women) just like it fucked up the chuds into becoming qanon freaks. And personally I feel this phenomenon is partially why younger people are becoming more open to queer and nb ideas because the "standard" gender norms don't make any god-damned sense anymore in contemporary society.

nothing new in American politics, grifters and snake oil salesmen literally formed a major religion around themselves here (Mormonism)

obvious next step is to enforce a mandatory arms embargo like they did for apartheid south africa, but the US will never give up their biggest export market (besides Ukraine for now) like that.

The UN only has the power it's member states give it, it has no independence really. It's trash because the countries on the security council are (mostly) trash, and with veto it only takes one. But that's the only way it can exist at all.

totally no fragile masculinity to be found here

lol maybe it's time to consider reopening negotiations then?

CIA saw he was getting too close to grilling enlightenment and hit him with the stroke gun

wow a chaotic, violent event creates unsubstantiated rumors and passionate but baseless accusations? no shit, I thought people only did that when the train is running late

imo it was all invented by a bunch of powerless monks or whoever coping that their oppressive king would surely face justice somehow because they could do nothing about him killing and robbing their compatriots. It's understandable, but it's the same simple fantasy that we post here about Biden getting a brain aneurysm or trump dying of covid or whatever. There is no heavenly salvation for the blessed nor eternal punishment for the greedy parasites, unless we make it happen ourselves.

The political landscape in Russia is much different than America, you can't analyze it the same way. The best way to understand this phenomenon in Russia is through the lens of anti-liberalism/anti-westernization. For centuries this has been a major divide in Russian politics. Their nation is on the periphery of Europe and there has always been a fight between Russians over whether to try to move closer to the rest of Europe culturally or if Russia should try to embrace it's own Slavic identity (aka Slavophilia). You can call it the Russian culture war if you really want to use American vocabulary.

This divide doesn't fit neatly over political ideology. Lenin's application of Marxist theory arguably made him a westernizer while Stalin very much turned the party towards Slavophilia by relaxing persecution of the Orthodox Church and enacting a number of natalist policies, among others. One isn't necessarily better than the other, it's just a different vision of Russian national identity. Though if you live in the west you are obviously going to find the westernizer view more familiar.

The 1990s quite obviously made western and liberal values very unpopular in Russia, and now the war in Ukraine is often seen as a war against the the West itself and a defense of Russian sovereignty. Medvedev is one of the biggest propagandists of this, he posted "I hate the West. They are bastards and scum. They want death to us, Russia, and as long as I’m alive, I will do everything to make them disappear.”

So when Russians talk about anti-"modernity", you can basically just replace that with anti-liberalism, anti-western. They aren't "red fash." They view LGBTQ as a "Western import" and thus reflexively reject it, same with tolerance of Islam. On the other hand they love the USSR and workers right's because that's loving Russia and their Slavic identity. It may seem like nationalistic conservatism to us now, but that's mostly because Putin is a nationalistic conservative and has dominated Russian politics, so he's been able to exploit this divide very well. As a macho conservative he has no love loss for LGBTQ rights and he's happy to scapegoat them as Western agents trying to destabilize the country.

But we know that's not true, queer people in Russia are as homegrown as anywhere else. So it's a real damn shame that in recent decades LGBTQ rights have become so wedded to liberalism, that anaemic fucking ideology, because liberalism is dead and beaten in Russia now. Theoretically there could be an anti-western, pro-LGBTQ movement in Russia that could maybe overcome this (as we know despite western talk LGBTQ rights aren't great there either), but with the level of targeted state repression in Russia it's hard to see that happening anytime soon, it would also probably look really damn weird from the outside.