it's a pity zinoviev didn't live to see putin's triumph. he comes across as a very heartbroken man and it's so depressing that he died just a decade or so before he would have gotten to see his country rise from the ashes
this is so sad. he was even right the first time!! but i completely understand why he became pessimistic. putin and UR really tried to play nice with europe for far too long, assuming genuine good faith which was a terrible mistake, and it wasn't until iirc the year after zinoviev died that putin finally said No More Comrade Nice Guy. hell, fucking medvedev was still in power until a what, few years ago?

this is a really weird pattern that has played out in many different countries, even including iran. everyone is desperate to suck up to the west despite the fact it's been abusing them horribly for decades and giving them nothing but scars, even abandoning their actual friends for a promised chance at western approval (and it's always a lie, and yet they never learn). it's incomprehensible to me; these countries act like women obsessed with a boyfriend who keeps putting them in the hospital with broken bones

i'm just glad russia finally figured it out
it reminds me of the weird way germans still tend to fetishize american culture and the english language, when their own are so much better in every way. absolutely incomprehensible to me

this is again a rambling rant about everything 

@velartrill

we are still cucked because of the nazis. desperatly doing anything _not_ german out of fear of being called a nazi. hell, i don't like football, but there were discussions if it is ok that there are so many german flags during the world championships. i think patriotism on a national level is bullshit, but those discussions are just cringe.
question unguided mass migration and you are certainly a nazi. the "melting pot" of cultures the states are, are viewed as universally positive, disregarding the massive problems which they have, and the fucking timespan it had.
meanwhile, if you are interested in the culture which was created here for centuries, better prove that the interest is purely scientific and that you usually consoom only woke artists. generally anything that isn't focused on consumption is viewed with suspicion, even the majority of ecological people just want to consume the same amount, only "green". parents doing attachment parenting are breeding cells for fashism and bad for the society because the kids aren't put into daycare ASAP to have the parents back in the wokeforce while the kids get taught how to consume properly. they better should work to take up a credit and buy a new tesla!

god am i pissed.

@bonifartius > i think patriotism on a national level is bullshit

why is it always the people with the most to be patriotic about who hate being patriotic lol :p it kind of amazes me, coming from a shithole country where, until recently, not being obnoxiously patriotic at every opportunity was practically a mortal sin.

modesty is of course very admirable, but germans have a lot to be proud of, and i think a certain baseline level of patriotism is important to remind people to take a good hard look at what they've accomplished as a nation. after spending three months in the US with me, my partner said that as traumatic as the visit was, she was glad to have seen what life there was like because it put life in germany into perspective and made her much more grateful for everything we have here. even just little things like strangers smiling and saying „hallo“ to you on the street.

so, it's not my culture and it's none of my business, but i will say that it does make me smile every time i see someone unapologetically flying a german flag. (someone's flag here in our tiny rural village was literally attacked a few weeks ago, which was jaw-dropping to me; that would have been unthinkable in the country i grew up in -- they made us heil our damn flag and all the evil it stood for every morning in school for years.)

> desperatly doing anything _not_ german out of fear of being called a nazi

i've noticed :( it is really sad. even my partner, ordinarily a very sane and reasonable person, seems to have this disturbing mental block in place where anything that feels too ~nationalistic~ triggers immediate discomfort and alarm. i come from the most brainwashed country on earth and that still is enough to creep me out.

> question unguided mass migration and you are certainly a nazi. the "melting pot" of cultures the states are, are viewed as universally positive, disregarding the massive problems which they have, and the fucking timespan it had

god that's fucking insane. the melting pot may have been okay (in the sense of only destroying us culturally, not materially -- my russian friend calls rootless fucks like me "amerimutts," which is a very apt description) when we were just importing europeans and east asians, even hispanics were fine really despite the astroturfed "muh wetbacks" nonsense, but it's gone absolutely off the rails now. the fact that in american culture, even the right wing is terrified to consider the possibility of real behavioral differences between ethnicities that can't be papered over with environmental changes, so we keep pursuing insane, self-destructive policies that burn massive amounts of money, put incompetents in power, and now we're just removing all penalties from criminal behavior for blacks, kind of like what europe has been doing with muslims but 10x crazier, which will result in even worse carnage than black misbehavior was already causing.

america should be a historical lesson for everyone that mass multiculturalism is at best insanely dangerous, at worst genocidally destructive. since apparently yugoslavia wasn't enough to clue ppl in.

right now orbán seems to be the only sane man in the EU when it comes to migration. i can't even respect AfD because among other retarded shit they just love the US and want even closer relations, instead of wanting to kick Uncle Sam in the balls and drive him off the continent with a bullwhip.

> generally anything that isn't focused on consumption is viewed with suspicion

fuuuuuuck that's horrible. mindless consumption is just pure poison for society. the US is a purely consumption-oriented society and it is hell on earth because of it. there's no meaning, no real purpose, no depth to anything -- "just consoom product and get excited for next product." everyone worships at the Church of Burger.

> parents doing attachment parenting are breeding cells for fashism and bad for the society because the kids aren't put into daycare ASAP to have the parents back in the wokeforce while the kids get taught how to consume properly

oh wow that's fucked up :(

seriously the family has been so horribly damaged in the west, i'm really afraid for what's going to happen. at least (it appears?) germans can still provide for a family on a single salary, so living like normal human beings is an option; in the US you have to be pretty much rich if you want mom to be able to stay at home and raise the kids. there are couples where both partners have to work multiple jobs just to be able to afford a family. it kind of blew my mind when we got here bc i realized i'd never actually seen anywhere near so many intact, normal families in the US, and certainly not ones who seemed so happy and comfortable. i realized the other week that i had finally achieved The American Dream — by moving to germany lmao. we've got everything but the white picket fence and the car (and fuck cars anyway).

> god am i pissed.

and rightfully so. :/
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@velartrill i probably exaggerated a bit with my description and am not known as an optimist. judging from your desciption of the US, it's paradise here, so maybe i'm just spoiled.

i can't be really proud of a country which is filthy rich but where the money is used for so much bullshit. in my lifetime, germany hasn't really achieved much save crawling up americas ass and cutting down the welfare for profits. maybe in the current times, not being a shithole is already an achievement :)

i view flying the flag as something squares do, i don't get why people have problems with it though. it's a bit like free speech, you don't have to look at it ;)

i don't know why sending back criminal migrants isn't viewed as a no-brainer here. i don't fucking care if it's a warzone if someone doesn't bother about the rules, which aren't even specific to our culture. stealing, injuring people, raping people is frowned upon virtually everywhere. keeping those people here just makes the life for the _good_ people who just want to be left alone , native and immigrant, harder . i like to think that every country has it's assholes, and we don't need to import those, we already have enough of our own :)

AfD is just 99% crazy people, but the other parties aren't much better. Just different crazy. Orban also seems to be crazy for most parts, i don't really know much about him though.

Regarding consumption i only can judge from my inside POV, but it has gotten worse in my lifetime. Everthing is easily replaceable instead of repeirable. We are the masters of seperating waste, but it seems like if it's also a reason to justify creating more waste: recycling fixes it, so nobody has to care. I remember a time where most drinks where in glass bottles, it's almost exotic to have them now. It's all just too damn convenient.

regarding families, i think it depends where you look in germany. in the countryside it's easier to live on one salary as a family, living is cheaper. I can't imagine how that should be possible in cities for people who don't have a job which pays really well. That's why kids get send to daycare at one year old. That women (and men) were brainwashed into thinking that they have to work fulltime to consume bullshit instead of spending time raising their children is the other part of the problem and it's only getting crazier the more i think about it. It really isn't about that women shouldn't work (after all, they rebuild germany after the war!), but that people shouldn't have to feel guilty if they'd rather raise their kids. there was an idea from the CDU (i think) some years ago about paying parents who care for their children at home instead of sending them to daycare. There was an outrage, because that supposedly would keep women from working and was regarded as anti-feminist.

to close, i don't think it's necessarily as bad here as i paint it (probably it isn't ;), but i'd rather be pissed and angry than ignorant :)

@bonifartius > not being a shithole is already an achievement :)

absolutely. basically for the next 48 hours after i stepped off the plane i was absolutely floored by everything around us, i kept telling @mia "i think our plane missed germany and landed in the 24th century by mistake," just from how absurdly futuristic and fancy and clean everything was, and mia kept being like, "hon they built that in the '90s." it's hard to recognize what you have until you've seen what it's like without it. e.g. as bad as deutsche bahn can be, it blew me the fuck away compared to amtrak. (did you know US intercity rail has as fourth as many train stations as germany does, despite being approximately uh fifty times the size? and that almost none of it is electrified? also we have so few train lines we give them names instead of numbers)

also, building an intelligent, high-trust society is an enormous accomplishment. easy to overlook, but you have no idea just how *nice* and *caring* germans are compared to americans. even in the city, pretty much any time either of us looks upset in public some stranger stops and asks if we're all right or need help, whether it's grandmotherly old ladies or rando homeless guys or rowdy turkish boys. the first time that happened i was so overwhelmed emotionally i started crying.

there have been times in the US when i've been quietly crying in corner of the train or literally throwing up in broad daylight, and whenever shit like that happened *everyone* just ignored and avoided me, without exception, ever. random immigrants straight off the plane from africa care more about obviously distressed american women than my own "people" do. (oh, did you know there's no duty to rescue in the US? multiple court decisions have forcefully affirmed that you have a fundamental right to let anyone die in any situation unless you have an explicit duty of care to them (e.g. you're married or they're your kids))

(okay back to reading your post lol)
@bonifartius @mia (also holy fuck look into how bad welfare is in the US if you think it's bad here -- basically all most people can hope for is six months of, at most, a $150 per person monthly supplement they can only use on food (i had to bus all the way over to the other side of town and back just to get to the one grocery store that was cheap enough i could survive on $150/m, and even then it wasn't enough, and that was in a very cheap little city by american standards), and if you're borderline-destitute you can get free medical care in blue states… and that's it. disability is near-impossible to get (you have to sue the federal government because they deny all applications by default), and once you do you get a fixed $800 a month supplement (it's intended purely as a subsidy to help your family take care of you, not to allow you to live independently), and if you ever go above a $2000 asset limit or make more than a certain amount of income you are barred from disability iirc for life. unemployment exists but it's paid by your previous employer (so if you can't find a job in the first place you're fucked) and you only get it for a couple months, so if you run out, you're just fucked. there's also section 8 housing, but there are wait lists for the wait lists, and nobody is actually required to accept section 8 vouchers; basically people who can get section 8 AND find a landlord who acceptrs it are the luckiest of luckiest of the homeless, and they'll do all kinds of sketchy and illegal shit to kick you off if they find an opportunity)
@bonifartius > Orban also seems to be crazy for most parts, i don't really know much about him though

he's pretty corrupt and a bit more anti-gay than i would like (but i get it, backlash was unavoidable after the unforgivable shit the queer movement has done), but he does genuinely seem to care about fighting to keep hungary hungarian. the fact that the eurocrats just haaaaaate his guts and have been trying to meddle to keep hungary from enforcing both Hungary's and the EU's own laws tells me he's onto something. regardless, his people love him and that in and of itself is enough for me to respect a leader, even if i wouldn't want all of his policies in my home country. every culture has the right to their own laws and way of life, and if hungarians want to be old-fashioned conservative christians, well, more power to 'em; there are vastly worse ways of living.

> It really isn't about that women shouldn't work (after all, they rebuild germany after the war!), but that people shouldn't have to feel guilty if they'd rather raise their kids

i really do think the vast majority of women are not suited to and should not be working outside the home. i used to be a feminist but i've come to realize that has a million corrosive effects on society. frankly, as long as we're going to be capitalist, i would be 100% in favor of banning women from the workforce without exception just to stop wage deflation (tho there are of course other ways to accomplish that as well), and that's not even getting into the disaster of women marrying late and waiting to have children until their 30s or, god forbid, 40s. if you don't want children, that's fine, parenting is not for everyone, but if you do, putting them off for decades is an amazingly selfish decision that the child may have to suffer with their whole life; my mother's poor choices may very well be a part of the reason for my own debilitating medical problems. women are not men, and we can't just be swapped in and out interchangeably.

and yet i've found that some modern american women literally do not know what menopause is, that they biologically cannot have children in their 40s or 50s just because they want to. marginally smarter ones go for that lunatic egg freezing scam (there were always huge ads for it in the Seattle university subway station, i recall) — it's just so insane. we are not built to live like this!

so all in all i do feel like, at the absolute bare minimum, there need to be inflexible legal prohibitions on women with young children working outside the home, on single motherhood (or fatherhood, for that matter, tho i don't think that's *quite* as bad), harsh minimum wage controls that automatically adjust with inflation, and any woman who has children after age 30 should be legally liable (along with the man who enabled her) for any health issues that result, the same way you're liable for someone losing their teeth when you punch them in the face. it shouldn't be seen any differently from drinking while pregnant.

incidentally, a problem we have in the US is that this obsession with "gender equality" has led to insane campaigns to try and force women into fields we're not suited to and can't compete in. and the impact has been disastrous.

so like. i'm a programmer, the person who taught me qbasic when i was like 7 was a woman who used to code for boeing, one of the most brilliant programmers i knew was a dutch girl i was friends with at uni, and i still do not think that computer science is a suitable field for women. only a tiny minority of us can really handle this field, much less compete with men in it, for the same reason women make better caregivers or teachers on average. even those of us with the right cognitive architecture for the job tend to hate it because it's not people-centric.

but because anything less than a 50/50 male-female ratio in tech companies is seen (idiotically) as de jure proof of Sexism®, the corporations are desperately trying anything they possibly can to lure women in, and the result has been a bunch of disinterested, mostly incompetent women crowding out the men who get most of the work done, creating an even worse work environment for them, and basically forcing the men (and handful of skilled women) to cover for women who are nothing but liabilities. (curiously, no effort to hire more men has been undertaken in any of the female-dominated professions like, oh, most of the medical field -- i should be grateful for small mercies, i guess)

so all in all, it's just really important that we not try to fight against human nature, and make sure everyone ends up in a role they are suited to, no matter how stereotypical. absent pressure to be otherwise, most women will be housewives and mothers and will have no desire to be otherwise, and they will need men to provide for them. personally i'm fine with that, even if i'm a slight outlier. needs of the many, etc.
@bonifartius > there was an idea from the CDU (i think) some years ago about paying parents who care for their children at home instead of sending them to daycare. There was an outrage, because that supposedly would keep women from working and was regarded as anti-feminist.

one of the things orbán is doing is creating all these policies to reward couples who marry and women who have children (the more the better), and it's made the globalibs absolutely *seethe* (for some reason they feel like they have the right to tell hungarians how to live their lives and who to vote for) but it's been effective! their population has been rising again, more people are getting married, it's great. commonsense shit like that would be much better than importing zillions of incompatible foreigners who will supposedly fill a labor shortage but instead just mooch off welfare, but i guess only a nazi would do that
@bonifartius oh also

> i don't know why sending back criminal migrants isn't viewed as a no-brainer here. i don't fucking care if it's a warzone if someone doesn't bother about the rules, which aren't even specific to our culture.

yes fuck holy shit, this whole thing is just crazy-making. germany and the rest of europe is being taken advantage of so hard rn. being a refugee, even a real legitimate refugee who has nowhere safe to go in their own country, doesn't give you some kind of right to be pampered and bailed out by the rest of the world and do whatever the fuck you want. if you go voluntarily to another country, no matter the fucking reason, you fucking BEHAVE, you respect that culture and its way of life, you obey its laws, and if you can't do that you DON'T FUCKING GO. (there's a reason i will never visit an islamic country, lol.) my presence is purely a financial benefit to germany bc i bring in money from outside the country and don't rely on any welfare services, i am married to a native-born citizen, and even still i feel extremely grateful to the german people for welcoming my ami ass the way everyone has, for letting me crash in your country after we burned our own down and asking basically nothing in turn. i cannot imagine turning around and making a nuisance of myself, being able to live with the guilt, and it's incomprehensible to me that people who are being given vastly more than me are so fucking ingrateful as steal and break shit and rape your women. it's like they just see kindness and tolerance as weakness, american-style cultural psychopathy. iirc most northern european cultures made a fairly big deal about proper treatment of guests, but also of respect for hosts. the former implies the latter.

> stealing, injuring people, raping people is frowned upon virtually everywhere

apart from certain american cities and neighborhoods, anyway…

@velartrill @bonifartius

> iirc most northern european cultures made a fairly big deal about proper treatment of guests, but also of respect for hosts. the former implies the latter.

Yes, old traditions were that travelers were always welcomed to food and overnight lodging. They brought news, stories and a bit of escapism from chores, a value in of itself.

Norther Europeans are the nicest people on Earth.... Until they aren't, and everyone else are shocked.

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