My cousin married an Indian man 20 years ago. To this day, her aunt addresses Christmas cards to the family with the surname “Patel,” even though that is not their name. Patel is a fairly common name, but it’s not the only one. To this aunt, all Indians are Patels.

You are a few if you imply the concept of Russian imperialism as laughable. It is a thing that exists, and it’s best that we recognize that. The US has not militarily involved themselves in Ukraine, because we have no treaties with Ukraine so talking about that is pointless at this stage. The bigger concern regarding…

There was never any agreement written or otherwise not to expand NATO. The only source for that is the current Russian government, which has proven itself to be duplicitous time and time again. The former Warsaw Pact dtates wouldn’t have been rushing to join NATO if they didn’t feel threatened by Russia in the firt…

I think it is mostly just brinksmanship and he is pretty good at that. Sanctions won’t do much because they don’t hurt Vlad himself and he holds too much power to be at risk from revolution so hurting his people doesn't faze him. The only way to stop him is to threaten a shooting war with NATO and that’s the sort of…

And Poland had it’s existence threatened 3 times (twice successfully conquered) in that same timeframe by Russia but let’s ignore that and focus on how Russia being attacked by a country they were arguably responsible for keeping afloat means we should be sensitive to their feelings about the West.  Let’s also ignore…

While theoretically possible, Russians having serious kompromat on any these Putin fanboying GOPers you see is likely slim. What’s far more likely is a combination of two things; 1) Their moral/political fiber has devolved into just “whatever the libs are for, we’re against” and 2) Some admire the authoritarian…

You mean act like most super powers tend to?

They’re not valid security concerns because it’s not like countries joining NATO don’t want to join NATO and get closer to the West instead of expressing fealty to Putin.

Appealing to abstract, lizard-brain, victim-playing fear works, apparently. Unfortunately.

.

Maybe they meant war in the West but even that isn’t correct. There was the Balkans war in the 90s. There are so many baffling hot takes in this piece. It’s truly amazing that they even published it. 

Countries join NATO because they’re worried about Russian domination/invasion (given that they were victims of Russian imperialism for much of the 20th century) the last decade has basically validated their concerns

Not a great look to imply that people care about this war more because it involves white people, while referring to a war “in” Boko Haram.

but but the taxes are low!! that’s all that matters!!!

They did in their platform in 2020. It says “we support Donald Trump in his fight against the lying media and evil Democrats.”

Living in interesting times fucking sucks.

Yeah, and I think that’s a better explanation rather than looking for evidence of “blackmail” — Trump and friends aren’t acting that way because of mythical “pee tapes” that they fear becoming public but simply because if the Democrats hate Putin, then he must be their friend.

This is where you find yourself when you only define yourself as "the opposite of those other guys."