Why did Russia offshore my job, cause the 2008 global financial crisis, attack Iraq and Afghanistan under Bush, and tattoo me under my foreskin? Damn Russians
this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2025
141 points (91.7% liked)
Political Discussion and Commentary
1085 readers
9 users here now
A place to discuss politics and offer political commentary. Self posts are preferred, but links to current events and news are allowed. Opinion pieces are welcome on a case by case basis, and discussion of and disagreement about issues is encouraged!
The intent is for this community to be an area for open & respectful discussion on current political issues, news & events, and that means we all have a responsibility to be open, honest, and sincere. We place as much emphasis on good content as good behavior, but the latter is more important if we want to ensure this community remains healthy and vibrant.
Content Rules:
- Self posts preferred.
- Opinion pieces and editorials are allowed on a case by case basis.
- No spam or self promotion.
- Do not post grievances about other communities or their moderators.
Commentary Rules
- Don’t be a jerk or do anything to prevent honest discussion.
- Stay on topic.
- Don’t criticize the person, criticize the argument.
- Provide credible sources whenever possible.
- Report bad behavior, please don’t retaliate. Reciprocal bad behavior will reflect poorly on both parties.
- Seek rule enforcement clarification via private message, not in comment threads.
- Abide by Lemmy's terms of service (attacks on other users, privacy, discrimination, etc).
Please try to up/downvote based on contribution to discussion, not on whether you agree or disagree with the commenter.
Partnered Communities:
• Politics
• Science
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Which western libs does this idiot think are pro-Russia?
Bad theory. Russia isn't to blame for everything going wrong in the west. We've done much of it to ourselves. A lot of current day problems can be directly traced back to the economic era ushered in by Reagan and Thatcher. Nothing works anymore.
They're faning the flames of the fire we built.
I'd give them 15% of the credit.
They got trump elected, I give them 80% credit.
If Russia magically stopped existing before 2016, we'd still have Trump. He's a homegrown phenomenon. There was and still is lot of resentment of establishment politics since the '08 collapse. Almost all the "recovery" from that was concentrated in the top 20% of income earners.
Trump is a crook helping himself and his rich friends, but he presents himself on television as anti-establishment. Gameshow Host President plus the American Public. You really need 80% foreign intervention to do the math on that one?
If Russia magically stopped existing before 2016, we’d still have Trump
That's because the campaign to get him, or someone like him, electable started in the 80s.
That's one of the things the West still can't wrap its collective head around - russia doesn't operate like western countries. Its long-term goals are not "how can we bring plumbing and indoor toilets to our citizens in the next 40 years", but rather "how can we sow misinformation and discontent in the West to divide nations and cause them to tumble into chaos".
I'm sure the estate of Tom Clancy is still looking for new ghost writers.
It's always funny how literally ALL ex-Soviet and USSR-satellite states are saying the exact same thing since the 90s, and the entire West goes "lol, don't be dramatic". And then russia does exactly what the West was warned about, and the West goes "huh, who could've seen that coming?"
It's tiring.
I mean they can both be true. The collapse of American education and media laid the groundwork for Trump. For him to even come anywhere close to power reveals a stark and horrifying collapse of everything that's supposed to keep us understanding reality and keep the whole train on the rails. But, also, Russia's formidable power at narrative-shaping in Western countries is a factor is the proximate cause of how bad it is. We haven't even really got our heads around the nature of how bad it really is, having the whole top levels of government hollowed out and destroyed like they currently are being. We'll find out the next time there is an actual crisis.
Do you really think Russia has done more to "shape the narrative" than Rupert Murdoch has? I'm sure they've got battalions of soldiers on Facebook or Tweeting tweets or whatever, but that's got to amount to chump change when compared against 24 hour Fox News.
I do think Fox News has more power, but Russia's goal is unapologetically simply to do as much damage as possible. Fox is trying to hand America over to their friends and destroy their opposition and if they do some damage, oh well, but they're trying to still have a working country to hand over to the friends. Russia is simply trying to steer the bus off the cliff.
Intentions have little barring on the effects of actions. The Murdoch media empire may not intend to destabilize english speaking nations, but that's very much what it's doing.
Yeah, pretty much.
"The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.” ―Milton Sanford Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45
load more comments
(5 replies)
I completely agree with this statement and is my theory as well. Everything has been going down the shitter since then. Reagan/Bush Sr. + Thatcher + Mulroney set the foundation upon which everything is collapsing right now.
Russia has had their hand in the pot since the 80s. Are they the sole cause? No, but they're absolutely involved.
Not to mention that Russia didn't stop in the 90s. They had the Chechnya wars, they kept Transnistria, they sold off all of their assets to a handful of oligarchs, and they never embraced democracy. It's the same ol', same ol' with them.
Plus a lot of the good social policies beforehand seem mostly to have been urged by a fear that Socialism/Communism might spread if the US was seen as having bad systemic problems by their citizens. Notice how Reaganism and Thatcher basically instituted their policies around the fall of the USSR.
Russia may not be to blame but the lack of the USSR certainly made citizens of NATO nations so relieved after the petsistent fear of a nuclear exchange of either side screwed up relations.
I'd say the good times were over after 9/11 made people aware that just because there was no enemy "superpower", didn't mean there's no risk.
I'm gonna interpret this libs as libertarians cuz theres no fucking liberals who support Russia.
It was the librarians all along
Librariatarians
Shhh
ook
Even Biden, perhaps the most turbo of libs, hated russia. Hell, one of the big things .ml criticized him for during his term was being "disgustingly biased" against russia. Where the hell are they finding these pro-russian libs?
Cross post this to an .ml community.
Banned: rule 2
After all, it was rule 1
🔥
How do you tag yogthos?
There is a kernel of truth to this. After the cold war ended, it really did feel like the world was finally at peace, for a little while. There were still conflicts and wars going on, but they seemed manageable by comparison.
I believe one of the spy museums in DC even wrote that after the fall of Russia, the US was considering ending it's intelligence groups. That was scaled back, especially after Bush's monumental failure in 2001. But it was interesting to see the optimism at the time.
True, and I would say it wasn't so much the resurgence of Putin that kicked off a downward feeling, but 9/11 and the aftermath. Geopolitical violence at "home" no longer seemed an obvious worry until then, in the western world.
I sometimes wonder what would have happened if that had never occurred and the western powers did more to help the struggling Russia in their post Soviet transition....
western libs
Whatchu talkin' bout, Boris?
Everyone's focusing on the whole Russia thing. What the fuck, though, the 90s were not good. Reagan had just got done declaring war on the entire American working class and fucking up their lives quite a lot, and Clinton pretty much continued the program, just at about 50% strength.
Listen to any of the media of the time, that's when Rage Against the Machine got their start, it was the backdrop for Fight Club. It's all hopelessness and anger. The money started coming back once the circa-2000 tech boom started, and things were still riding high a little bit off the 20th century before times, but the 90s weren't fucking good. It was latchkey kids because both parents had to work for the first time, Rodney King, Fox News starting to take over people's brains, layoffs, the battle of Seattle, shipping jobs overseas, corporate mergers, the steady death of a lot of the institutions everyone had been depending on up until then.
I automatically subtrack 50 IQ points for anyone who uses the word "libs" as a pejorative because it's ALWAYS either some brain dead Marxist or conservative.
No liberal is pro Russia, they're the one most vocal about their actions. The only ones who support them are Marxists and conservatives.
90s were good because the economy grew a lot and that growth impacted most everyone positively.
If you think Russia has to do with the direct quality of American living, positive or negative you are a fully hypnotize good ol American.
If anything, making a singular country the world's global factory has had a hell of a lot more impact than the USSR dissolving in the 90s, IMO.
view more: next ›