zazen

Yeah, lawful doesn't always mean legitimate ie slavery was once legal. The abstraction of laws don't negate the reality of survival. Both sides have a argument around survival - the right frame it as national, the left frame it as personal/familial. The right is saying we need to protect the body politic at the level of the collective / nation. The left is saying we need to protect the bodies of people - at the level of the individual / neighborhood. The liberal left can be too compassionate of the individual that they overlook the collective, while the conservative right can be too dis-compassionate of individuals for the sake of the collective. The issue among the right is that they have split definitions of who they consider as the collective - civic nationalists (value based) vs etho-nationalists (race based) Leo is correct in that had the law been enforced appropriately before, it wouldn't have to be disproportionately enforced today so ruthlessly with much more collateral damage.

Posted above comment before seeing yours. It's one thing I'm conflicted on. What primarily drives action: ideology or incentive? I think its incentive with an overlay of ideology. If actors can instrumentalize ideology for their own ends, they will. If capital can capitalize compassion, it will. Liberalism’s failures are real, but its failures are also useful to capital. I'm not sure if liberal morality is causative or instrumental. Compassion can be rented when useful and discarded when redundant. If US is ruled by a corporate-oligarchy then cost-benefit analysis is primary, and morality is secondarily justified after the fact. If compassion prevented enforcement, why hasn't it prevented other predatory actions like mass incarceration, wars, corporate bailouts, denial of universal healthcare, under funding of critical investment..doesn't look like compassion dictates or prevents much in the US. Why has it been tolerated across parties for decades? One is political cost, another is because undocumented immigration has been profitable by providing corporations third world labor costs within first world borders. I'll have to think over it. But yeah, leftists don't get nationalism or its importance. That's the irony: they rail against corporations with no national loyalty, then dismiss nationalists and conflate every one of their concerns with racism. They reject the only counter-force who have a vested interest in their nation, against those who have interests beyond nations - trans-national elites. The issue is that a whole bunch of racists are part of that group too.

Border has the word order in it - but the order of the past differs to the order of today which there are new incentives for. Incentives primarily drive actions while ideology justify it - if the actions being taken based on those incentives don't look good, it's ideologies purpose to make them look good. This is why we're told that these raids and deportations are being done for ''nationalism'' and ''security'' = national security. Whilst that has elements of truth and validness, its not the key driver. In the US where profit is King, everything else becomes its servant. Racist ethno-nationalists ideologues jumping on this bandwagon is secondary to the primary driver being the profit motive. Illegality isn't objective but conditional on profitability. When undocumented immigrants served a profitable function, their "illegality" was tolerated - now that they cease to serve a profitable function to the same extent - suddenly their illegality is a liability looking for a way to be monetized. In the past, legality didn't matter because profit sanitized illegality. Today, illegality is weaponized for revenue. Legality is simply a selective tool serving profit and power, not a principle applied universally. In 2025 - automation, AI, reshoring without labor, and rising political instability make that labor force less economically useful and more socially expendable. At the same time, the rise of the carceral-surveillance economy created new ways to monetize enforcement through deportation quotas, detention centers, tech surveillance, and federal contracts. The same system that once profited from their presence now profits from their removal. The cost-benefit equation has shifted: See:

It's best to view the state not as a actor but a broker for elite interests. Politics is noise, profit and power are the signal. Chat GPT summary: Organized Summary & Analysis: State Capture and the Illusion of American Democracy 1. Democracy as Illusion: The speaker opens with a brutal paradox: Americans vote in a democracy on election day but spend most of their lives inside authoritarian structures, particularly in the private sector. Offices, companies, and corporations are not democratic spaces. In fact, they are "democracy-free zones" where the principles of representation and accountability are absent. The workplace, where people spend two-thirds of their waking lives, is effectively a dictatorship. Best Quote: "You punch in at work, you punch out of your democracy." 2. Private Sector Supremacy and State Capture: Over time, the American state has ceded more and more control to the private sector, which has now effectively captured it. The result is a government that acts less like a public servant and more like a broker for private interests. This is described as a "stack of authoritarianisms" nested inside each other—corporations within monopolies within financial behemoths. Best Quote: "Congress is nothing but the customer service desk for the Fortune 500." 3. Thorium Example: Missed Opportunities for Humanity: The abandonment of thorium-based nuclear energy in favor of more weaponizable uranium highlights how military-industrial interests override human advancement. China's progress in this space is contrasted with the U.S.'s retreat, not because of technical limitations but because thorium could not be easily weaponized. Best Quote: "If it couldn't facilitate war and killing, it was deprioritized." 4. Privatization of Immigration Enforcement: The speaker argues that ICE has become a corporate arm of private prison contractors, functioning not as law enforcement but as a profit-generating logistics operation. Immigration enforcement is not about law but commerce, and each arrest or deportation is a financial transaction. Best Quote: "ICE is not a law enforcement agency. It's a mercenary force under contract to private corporations." 5. Expansion Beyond Immigrants: The speaker warns that the apparatus being normalized against immigrants will inevitably be expanded to target other vulnerable populations: the poor, minorities, protesters, and political dissidents. Surveillance infrastructure, AI raids, and detention centers are described as pre-fascist architecture. Best Quote: "This isn't just a pilot project. It's a supply chain." 6. Corporate Logic Driving Policy: Investor briefings celebrate deportation orders. Stocks rise with every new detention center. The entire immigration system has become a monetized business model, incentivizing human suffering and undermining the moral foundation of law. Best Quote: "Respecting rights is financially inefficient. Violating dignity is now incentivized." 7. State Has Abdicated: This is not just corruption. It is capture. The state has fully abdicated its monopoly on legitimate violence and handed it over to private interests. It is no longer governing—it is facilitating corporate domination. Best Quote: "Deregulation is just the state regulating its own abdication." 8. America as a Captured State: What remains of the state is described as a "brand," not a real body politic. Like Rome before its fall, the U.S. is using privatized mercenaries to manage domestic unrest. The result is the hollowing out of legitimacy and the normalization of emergency repression as governance. Best Quote: "You're being policed by marauders and mercenaries." 9. International Legitimacy Lost: The United States is no longer seen as a moral leader. Its violations of international law, inhumane detention practices, and erosion of legal norms have destroyed its soft power globally. Best Quote: "Your whole brand is tarnished. America can never again call itself the beacon of liberty." 10. Call to Action and Moral Clarity: Finally, the speaker calls for resistance, warning that silence or inaction is complicity. The system currently targeting immigrants will eventually target everyone. The moral high ground belongs to those who resist, expose, and protect. Best Quote: "If you're not resisting, you're colluding. If you're not protecting them, you're rehearsing for when no one protects you." Conclusion: This is not a hyperbolic rant, but a structural critique of a system in late-stage neoliberal collapse. It presents a chilling but grounded diagnosis: the American state has been fully captured by private capital, and its institutions now function to maximize profit through domination. The capture is complete, the moral framework of governance is dead, and the only thing that remains is resistance—or submission.

Statesmen are ruthless, tyrants are evil - yet both have power. Power is leverage - the ability to shape others without being shaped. Some forms of leverage are cleaner or dirtier than others. Power dynamics require compromises - but there’s a difference between strategic compromise and moral surrender to the dark side. If power is the engine, principle is the steering. Easier said than done.

You’ll love these two vids, best listened to at 1.25x speed. From the past: To the present: The second video is especially comprehensive and prophetic of what’s occurring today. For the most part, a pretty on point and devastating analysis, not without its flaws. The right isn't wholly wrong about pointing out certain issues and even facts around those issues. They often claim they're all about “facts over feelings”. The issues come with their narrative around those facts, that their feelings inform. They’re feelings rationalise around those facts, to affirm their own prejudices. They take real patterns that may be observable (such as over-representation of x group in crime, poverty etc) and then pathologize those groups as innately inferior. When their own group show up in statistics or do wrong, they exceptionalize them as individual anomalies to maintain their own sense of superiority - otherwise known as American exceptionalism. They turn circumstance into a condition. Systemic circumstances can cause certain conditions - that force people to live within the limits of those conditions. They de-contextualise in order to essentialise - attributing wrongdoing in behavior to the inherent nature or essence of that out-group. On the other hand: the tendency of the left is to sanitise and individualise instead of pathologise and generalise. At their best they fear acknowledging harsh truths because they fear those truths energising the far right who will mis-use them to justify injustices. At their worst, they fear facing the reality of survival and power dynamics that counters their own idea of human goodness. Realities of survival and power dynamics threatens the lefts moral framework because they haven’t synthesized the ideals of principles - with the realities of power and survival. They either deny those realities or have an incorrect relationship to it - the most extreme political manifestation being communism. The right understand and mis-use realpolitik, the left don’t accommodate reality into their own politik - because the cold reality of nature puts into question their view of nature being good. The physical nature of power isn’t good by default - the concept of good doesn’t even exist in that plane. It’s just raw and neutral - only becoming good when nurtured by principles from the non-physical plane of the soul. Civilization is about buffering the reality of power with the conscience of principles.

It needs a re-structuring where the state controls capital rather than capital controlling the state. Capital and private individuals naturally have shorter time horizons than states who have longer time horizions ie can invest in their own country and reap benefits in decades. A deeper structural issue at play is financialization from which outgrew a financial elite who are then incentivised to speculate rather than produce, extract rather than create. No political solution will fix a non-political issue that is mostly a monetary one. As long as the value and buying power of money keeps eroding, we're chasing a phantom with politics. Left vs right, culture wars, redistribution vs austerity are mainly symptoms. The core disease is money no longer being tethered to real value. That's why your below point about productivity gains not being seen. When companies can buy back their own stocks to inflate their assets, they don't need to invest in the ground workers of the company itself, or compensate them for the value that's been funneled to the top. Moneys made by moving money around in the financial domain, not earned or invested in reality where real value lies. It doesn't have enough resources for its own people otherwise it would have a welfare system like Europe - which is also under pressure now. If it can't provide for its own people how can it provide for people coming in. On the other hand it does have resources, but yet pretends it's broke every time it’s asked to share them - because those resources are held hostage by the financial elite - frankenstein vampires born from financialization. In this sense, the US isn't actually sovereign. It's a host state and platform that elite interests work THROUGH, rather than under and in the service of. The solution isn't communism though, but elements of it. A hybrid system that is good at growing the pie via capitalist principles, but also sharing it via socialist principles. Getting state control back from capital is a whole other discussion.

Sounds like Switzerland - there's a new train to be built direct from London To Geneva - pretty sick. I'll never forget the 1st time I took the Eurostar and came out in Paris in 2hrs, just so cool. https://www.forbes.com/sites/everettpotter/2025/05/16/london-to-switzerland-via--a-direct-train-by-2030/ Europe needs the Ukraine war to end, get cheap energy back online with Nord stream to bring down energy costs, then re-focus on building and economic growth via tech so it's not left behind by the US/China and so it can maintain its welfare system which is coming under massive pressure from a aging population + low growth + more dependents from excess migration which needs clamping down. Yeah bro, they aren't squeaky clean but then again few places are. Its a newly developed city and they've evolved with more regulation and rights for workers now so things are in the right direction. A lot of them from Pakistan/India/Philippines would be struggling to feed their families in their weaker economies which is why they have the highest remittance rates from the gulf - in the billions being sent back home. Same for the US migrants sending to South American countries. That's the hardship of survival. Difference is that the US has had a hand in de-stabilizing and weakening latin economies which drive migrants north in the first place. UAE's moral failings and flaws are local and more visible, whilst the West's are global and invisible. Our tax money has gone to feed the meat grinder of middle eastern wars like Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and now the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. It's a different scale all together. Gotta pick our posions. Lot of money is concentrated in Dubai just like London, New York or Switzerland. But it's actually not too bad in comparison and there is a variety of lifestyles. For example - 1 bed London apartment in a centralish but not prime location is about £1.8k excluding bills. In Dubai for the same price you'd get amenities like concierge/reception, gym, parking - and with more space in a slightly more central location (10 min walk to the beach). A equivalent new build with all that in London would be £2.5k minimum. Then you add in that your income is tax free and you save all this money you would have otherwise paid in tax back home - you can just use a portion of that saving to be in Europe for the summer and avoid the Dubai heat at its worst. That's the ideal I think - enjoy old world charm of Europe, futuristic luxury of Dubai, spiritually grounded and raw nature in Thailand/Bali which is an easy flight form Dubai in the off season. Best of everything. Dubai isn't just flash though, it has really sick mountains and hikes, deserts camping/bbq's and activities.

Mainly Europeans have been trying to wipe Jews* off the map for centuries. Can’t wipe Israel when it didn’t exist. If referring to Jews in Middle East - yes , they faced discrimination (not mass elimination) but were largely a protected group rather than a persecuted one with pogroms like in Europe. Extremist stances today largely stem from occupation and dispossession, not racism and discrimination.

Leo prob gonna get Greta as a mod once she’s out. Western media made her persona non-Greta once she went for the jugular.

@Joshe True, perhaps those who aren't spiritually fulfilled and whole are all looking for adoration or to be seen - and seeking it through different means. Maybe there's a distinction between social dominance (energy) and mental dominance (entrepreneurship). Trump dominates people by instinct, Elon dominates problems by intellect. Elon has a vision, and will dominate his way to it as a builder, he's obsessive. Trump lacks one, except that he should be glorious, he is the vision - he sells himself whilst building nothing of real value. But Trump has a dominating energy that Elon doesn't, except that he has a dominating mindset. Trump walking into a room shifts the energy and pulls people in, Elon walks into a room and attracts people to his mind and ideas. Trump makes people feel (polarized for sure, good or bad), Elon makes people think. The combination of both is rare - true philosopher king types. Barack Obama came close, Putin also but much colder and suited to the Russian temperament. This isn't about us agreeing to their politics or philosophies (visions), only that they have substantive visions they've sold their people on, unlike Trumps more shallow one. Elon doesn't embody confidence - dominance like Trump. He's in his head with his mind racing about everything and the future, he's in the future and trying to build it. Compared to Trump who is present, just speaking his mind shamelessly with no tip of the tongue moments or awkwardness. Perhaps Elon didn't see that slap coming from Donny who's present while the he's star gazing: Both are dads but Trumps daddy coolio. See his two fingers on Elons elbow establishing dominance. To showcase dominant energy in even a short king, see Putin strut: Shawty smoother and more embodied than Elon jumping on stage.

Its's home as born and raised, relations and work here. Though moving Dubai soon - as are plenty from here. Nothing like London though - the city is electric, but quality of life has gone down and prospects aren't looking good. Dubai's not perfect but works for short-medium term: sun (productivity boost), taxes to stack cash, cosmopolitan (international), safe, proximity to Asia which I love. Got friends in HK/China I'll be travelling to more often from there - will send you propaganda postcards from China x European life still beats anywhere else on average. Your in Europe?

This is a great macro overview of BRICS place in the world, the shift in power taking place and where things are headed: Summarized notes from Chat GPT: - Traditional geopolitics fixates on nation-states and alliances. That’s the stage. We want the script. We analyze who has real power - states, corporations, asset managers, or networks. Real analysis demands we look beyond surface theatrics. - The Relative power index (RPI) was built to measure real, functional leverage. Not military parades or fake GDP, but authority, resilience, immunity, and dependence. Real power is the ability to shape outcomes without being shaped in return. - The US still has power, but it’s not for itself. It’s the enforcement arm of financialized capital. It’s not sovereign, it’s a host. Its true rulers are transnational owners of global capital. The US is being decommissioned by the very elites it once served. - BlackRock has more power over America than Congress does. BlackRock is a private sovereign. It controls capital, influences policy, and cannot be meaningfully retaliated against. - BRICS is rising, not just symbolically but functionally. Not just rhetorically but through structural dominance. BRICS will control inputs, withstand retaliation, and offer narrative legitimacy through partnership, not imperialism. - BRICS can't retaliate decisively against Blackrock, but controls what it needs - resources, labor, markets. BlackRock can’t function without BRICS, while BRICS can increasingly walk away. The system is shifting. Irrelevance is the defeat BlackRock will suffer. - By 2050, BRICS won’t be asking for validation - they will be the ones offering it. The Wests authority will be symbolic. The real world will be built elsewhere - among sovereign civilizations rooted in truth, partnership, and resilience. You don’t need to defeat empire. You just need to make it irrelevant.

It can be good to get a frame of reference to what it feels like to be socially loose - which then makes it easier to access that state. But the key is to not let it become a crutch to access that same state of looseness and confidence. Also can help bond with people as they feel your both becoming “vulnerable” together by having a drink. If it’s just the other person drinking and you’ve only just met them they may feel weird about it - unless you have the confidence and frame to make it a nothingburger. But alcohol sucks for health and if you have an addictive personality then it’s not worth even touching. There are work arounds if you don’t want to feel awkward at a bar without a drink - just get sparkling water/club soda with lime and it looks like a gin and tonic. You can also tell your date your already feeling good / buzzed from something else and don’t wanna ruin it with a drink - zynns, weed, or say you took a saffron supplement which is known to help with mood and vibes. Just has to be done confidently.

Political charisma is more emotional, in business it’s more logical where your respected for your mind rather than your aura. Musk is admired differently than Trump. Most people aren’t nerds or critical thinkers. Tech culture overestimates how much the average person values logic. You can have functional charisma to the point needed to lead teams or being likeable enough to work with, but that’s different to crowd commanding charisma that taps into more primal emotion of the masses. Musks kind of charisma doesn’t scale to the emotional needs of the crowd. Just think of Bill Gates - successful in business but hardly could be called charismatic in the same sense as Trump.

Musk engages the crowd more to belong rather than to command, which Trump excels at. Elon has no gravitas, composure or ''frame'' (PUA made that a cheesy word lol). He's reactive and sperges out when challenged and not validated - he seeks love whilst Trump seeks obedience. When Trumps asked tough questions by the crowd they just roll off his back, he mocks it, laughs it off or shuts it down and says next like its nothing. Elon would start fidgeting and cry about it on Twitter at night. He's not really a leader in that sense. He can lead teams (companies etc) but not crowds. Trump has a primal sense of the crowd, and command over it. He's probably honed that from his time in a place like New York where he learnt that projection of strength matters more than actual facts - which translates to his politics, where he has no care for policy nuance or whether his policies are good or not to begin with - just that he sells them well. In America especially - charisma trumps competence in politics, no pun intended. Elon is trying to be the politician when he's a technician - and should remain so. There can't be a Elonism, the way their is a Trumpism. The best he could do is get behind JD Vance who is more refined than Trump who is ageing out. Vance, Trump and Thiel in the background as usual could be a lethal force - with Vance as the face of that trio* They all have a history together. Elon can only ever provide political leverage in the form of platforms and owning the information space via X - the public square of populism. They can position for a technocratic populism rather than the mythic populism of Trump.

Thanks man, I have a mixed background European / Asian from UK. One side of my family are also Muslim, and am from London which is cosmopolitan so exposed to all walks of life. Also just have interest in making sense of it all. One thing I've notice is migrant communities in the UK/Europe often are closer to their heritage than the host nation they're born in - they maintain a lot more cultural and psychological connection to it. Compared to the US where they are much more Americanized and assimilated - they see themselves as American first. Even asking Americans where their 'actually' from comes across offensive to them sometimes. I think that's partly due to America's wave of immigration happening earlier so they're 3rd- 4th generation and assimilated by then, compared to Europe's wave after 1950's making them 1st-2nd gen today. For that reason when interacting with ethnic backgrounds in Europe you are exposed to a mindset a lot closer to their heritage nation, much more than in America. Beyond my own background which is between two worlds, I think that's helped. I agree with what Kbon mentions above ie complexity exists. I could include every nuance but I'd write too much and already feel I write too much but yeah, I simplified things and generalized to keep it brief. Community definitely isn't exclusive to the East - as all values in general aren't exclusive to any one group or region. It's just that the general center of gravity can be more oriented towards one or the other. There are other other factors that lead to shifts in orientation happening. Before the West was more centered around community, but then things started shifting due to the enlightenment, industrialization, capitalism, secularization, urbanization. Moving from agrarian rural society to big cities shifts the psyche, the introduction of the internet and social media are like gasoline on isolating us even more. Like Kbone mentions even in countries you have individuals who lean more conservative or liberal too. There are even parralel societies now within major cities - for example many migrants in Europe have tight knight communities despite living in a wider society who have become more estranged from each other. That might be out of a survivalist pressure to band together - but even having something like a Friday prayer at the Mosque that many muslims go to - maintains a sense of community. I saw Owen Cook actually mentioning this in a recent video where he said the Church almost used to function like a weekly get together to foster a sense of belonging and to ''increase your vibe''. There are certain elements from religion and tradition that had functional value, that is hard to find in the modern world.

@BlessedLion Terrible. That link worked for me earlier but now isn’t - maybe the tracker is being jammed. Apparently they are supposed to be approaching tonight. The fact there are some nationals from multiple Western countries makes it tricky for Israel as to what they do. It could have been a chance to revive their PR but looks like the opposite - imagine turning down aid thinking it’s aiding Hamas. They’re acting as if the flotilla is carrying a nuke to give to Hamas or something.

Ukraine's drone operation seems more of a stunt than a strategy. It a high risk gamble because it wasn't simply that military aircraft were taken out but strategic aircraft which make up Russia's nuclear triad - to establish nuclear deterrence with great rival powers such as the US. That puts Russia at existential risk - because if your deterrence breaks down it leaves you open for a pre-emptive strike. The US would rather not have another rival power with nuclear than have one to contend with - especially as they team up with China to tilt the balance of power. These bombers aren't meant to be used or operational, they simply exist as visible deterrence - with some flights taken here and there. Similar to how US naval ships and aircraft patrol the skies and seas - not to be used but to maintain deterrence. Ukraine may view this as a tactical win or morale boost, but its playing chicken with a nuclear power. Maybe their strategy is to invite a disproportionate response which would drag the West in - which is no strategy at all if it results in WW3. Russia hasn't even gone into full war mode as yet, they haven't used their most lethal missiles or established air dominance with round the clock air strikes.

Maybe I have understood each side and don't need to be eternally analytical of peripheral details. It may look like bias but its focus - honing in on the core issue of each conflict. For Russia-Ukraine its security logic, for Israel-Palestine its occupation and dispossession - as I've outlined above whilst being fair to include a positive version of Zionism exists, which most Palestinian supporters would be angry at me for. Israel claims to be acting out of security logic also - but that's as a symptom of occupation, which is the disease causing it. Its secondary, not primary or core to the conflict. What may look like double standards on the surface are the same standards applied to different contexts. It's about who created the insecurity and initiated the conditions. Once we've seen the root cause we're not obligated to stay in a loop of understanding both sides forever or all the details. I don't have to delve into Russian corruption, Ukrainian bio labs or Zelensky's wifes shopping spree in Paris. True, which is why I said cultural alignment can be a stepping stone to military alignment. That alignment is weaponized to be used as a bulwark as you said. Being different is not a problem, but being used as a tool against your neighbor is. Maybe North and South Korea are a good parallel to this. They’re like cousins - culturally linked, historically one people, now divided with their own distinctness. North Korea is nuclear armed and not aligned to the West, South Korea is democratic and Western aligned. Yet they’ve largely avoided full scale war for decades - because while South Korea is West aligned, it’s not being used as a springboard to directly challenge North Korea's survival in the same way Ukraine could be. Being different to your neighbor doesn't mean becoming a stepping stone for a larger game of geopolitics, where you become a pawn and a proxy to go against that other nation. That's what Ukraine is unfortunately.

Can't tell if your sarcastic with that Voldemort good vs evil example lol - as you were understanding Russia's position on the previous pages. Ukraine can be whoever they want to be and decide to be in terms of solidifying their identity - as long as they don't cause injustice to those they see as outside of the identity. That's no real threat to Russia in a security sense, only in pride - and if Russia were to be going to war for that reason its just pathetic. It's more of a cultural wound than a security crisis - more emotional than survival logic. The primary reason prompting Russia is Western alignment in the sense of a Western military force being on its border and within reach of Moscow. Ukraine aligning culturally with the West or to be their own thing can however be a stepping stone to something worse which is that if Ukraine aligns with the West and gains a Western level military force right on Russia’s border - that’s not a small issue for Russia. We’re talking about a military bloc that openly speaks about containing Russia, that Russia has had historic hostilities with to put it mildly, and with whom the world almost ended in nuclear annihilation once during the Cold War. And people don't understand the gravity or re-igniting that level of tension. @Kid A Understanding is not defending.

@Daniel Balan You think making fun of someone instead of critically thinking makes you look cool? I responded to you and purple together when I said read comment above. It’s not about size. Strategic proximity can be threatening regardless of size. Small countries like UAE or Oman could choke 1/5 of the worlds oil supply at the Sraight of Hormuz - that would threaten stability for nations much larger than them. Being big doesn’t make a nation immune to feeling cornered or threatened if they are done so strategically. If anything, Russia’s size makes it paranoid because it has that much more land and long borders to protect. Ukraine by itself isn’t threatening to Russia. It’s that greater powers have invaded Russia through it, through mainland Europe (Napoleon, Hitler etc). It wasn’t some tiny border country alone but a much larger force using that country as a corridor. Today that force would be US/NATO. US think tank talking of overextending Russia: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB10014.html Hmm Nordstream .. enjoy your high energy prices courtesy of the US. Enjoy beloved Europe being a vassal to the US - being a pawn in a larger geopolitical game. You could actually use some AI to help round out your understanding. And going by your twitter bio it seems your the one with a dark soul 😂 “Night Sky Lover - Black Metal - Dark Ambient Music” Also, stop smoking it’s bad for you.

Emotional memory of past hostilities can't be a main driver of policy, especially in a nuclear world with higher stakes. We can see how Palestinians feel - many want a one-state solution with all their land back. But that feeling can't and won't translate into state policy - because states operate with constraints, risks, and survival calculations. That brings me to the next point which is that survival trumps legality. I would love it if we lived in a world that stuck to laws and principles - but the reality of survival trumps the abstraction of laws inked on paper, like every time. That’s the real issue with Ukraine and NATO. It’s not about whether it’s “legal” for Ukraine to want to join - it’s how Russia perceives that move as a threat, especially with a history of invasions through that very terrain. If Romania can feel threatened due to past invasion, why can't Russia feel vulnerable about its weak spot? That's why Poland, Romania etc aren't really an issue to join NATO and why Ukraine in particular is the red line for Russia. It's best to not have two nuclear armed nations side to side, and to keep a buffer zone between them. Look at how tense things just got with India-Pakistan. And this isn't just two nations, its Russia bordering a Ukraine which would be part of a Western bloc via NATO - its a clash of civilizationz (Russo-Western) who've unfortunately had a hostile past with the whole cold war era. That cold war hangover still persists today affecting accurate assessment of the current reality. Maybe lets hold off on that until we become Bhuddas able to co-exist that close to each other - maybe then they can go Russian banyan together butt naked. Imagine if Britain started militarizing the border with Ireland - stacking up missile systems, positioning rockets in striking distance of Irish cities, and there was talk of making Britain great again like the old empire days. Even if they hadn’t violated a single treaty, what do you expect Ireland to do? Lets say there were also British think tank papers documenting how they want to 'encircle, contain and overextend' Ireland to bring it to its knees - making their intention clear as day. The US literally has think thank papers like this. So if this happened in the context of UK-Ireland, what should Ireland do? To remain legally pure they should just do nothing until a law on paper has been violated? In the UK, it's technically illegal in some cases to use excessive force against a burglar in your home. But if someone breaks into your house and you genuinely feel threatened, are you going to stop and think about the legals of breaking whats written with ink on paper or try not to have your blood on the floor instead? Survival trumps legality. Yeah - serious conversations about war and peace require one. How does your face look when you rage type comments in anger? Jokes aside brother - see comment above. And you guys should check out Jeffrey Sachs / Mearsheimer for an alternate view - not to excuse Russia but just to understand their actions.

Nothing fixed, but you did reveal the shadow side which is a helpful nuance. The Easts order turns to oppression (shadow), the Wests freedom turns to fragmentation. West: Individual → Freedom → Visibility → Expression → Spectacle. The political ideal is liberal democracy. West shadow: Atomized→ Impulsive→ Exhibitionism→ Shallow/Emptiness. The political extreme is anarchic libertarian. East: Community → Harmony → Discipline → Self-mastery → Sacred. The political ideal is a discern-ocracy (those of discernment lead) or wisely guided order. East shadow: Collectivism → Conformity → Centralized Authority → Norm rigidity. The political extreme is authoritarian traditionalism. Taliban is one extreme, Las Vegas is the other lol.