Just click on image posts to expand the image. Most are broken for me.

I believe Bakhmut saw Russian deaths of over 50,000.

I just want to know if those excess deaths are part of the Marxist ideology or not. You say the USSR was a country following Marxist theory. At least 7 million people died either because they were killed by the state or died through negligence. Are all those deaths explained away by “The war caused their deaths” and “They deserved it anyways”? Were a significant number of them killed despite the USSR being marxist or because of it?

The very next paragraph read as follows:

Before the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the archival revelations, some historians estimated that the numbers killed by Stalin’s regime were 20 million or higher.[5][6][7] After the Soviet Union dissolved, evidence from the Soviet archives was declassified and researchers were allowed to study it. This contained official records of 799,455 executions (1921–1953),[8][9][10][11][12] around 1.5 to 1.7 million deaths in the Gulag,[13][14][15] some 390,000[16] deaths during the dekulakization forced resettlement, and up to 400,000 deaths of persons deported during the 1940s,[17] with a total of about 3.3 million officially recorded victims in these categories.[18] According to historian Stephen Wheatcroft, approximately 1 million of these deaths were “purposive” while the rest happened through neglect and irresponsibility.

You can’t blame all the deaths on Nazis.

I just opened Wikipedia. There is a whole article about the excess mortality under Stalin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet_Union_under_Joseph_Stalin

In reality, states like the USSR absolutely followed Marxist analysis when deciding what to do and when.

How do millions of deaths under Stalin factor into that?

The former decides on an outcome and looks at what needs to happen to achieve that outcome. If you define the latter as realism, then it looks at what is reality now and what that will lead to if nothing changes or what is realistically possible with the hurdles that you will likely encounter.

In my mind, this is ironically why every time communism “has been tried”, those countries have slipped into authotarianism that had little to no similarity with the ideal of communism. Because the reality is, that if you focus too much power on one position that decides how resources are distributed fairly, those positions attract those that care for achieving and holding power above all.

Brainworm-infested zombie aimlessly flailing around also hits the right targets.

Then they’ll have to share their definition of power. It can’t include soft power, as they keep squandering the soft power the US had.

he still supports the Trump administration’s national security policies

One of these guys needs to walk me through what they hope Trump will achieve. Because I don’t see it.

Ah yes, you’re right. The Ukrainian situation sucks for everyone. Ukraine has the right to defend itself, including conscripting people. And Russia’s treatment of occupied land and its people gives even more reason why Ukraine should defend itself. At the same time, those who really don’t want to fight should have the opportunity to leave the country to escape conscription.

There is only one way for both the Ukrainian state and people dodging conscription to not have conflicting goals and that is Russia stopping its war of aggression. Unless that happens, we’ll have to live with the fact that both Ukraine conscripting and the people dodging conscription have valid reasons to do so.

Russian conscription? I can’t imagine staying in a country that threatens to conscript people for a war I want nothing to do with. In fact, I know of a few Russians that left early.

Unfortunately, I think the best we can hope for is Trump just walking away. But knowing him, he’ll want to drop sanctions on Russia.

“… because they are unusually susceptible to CP violation” is how that sentence continues. ^{not *that* CP, but still.}

I share the sentiment that Ukraine has inflicted grave wounds upon Russia. But Trump is the latest in a long line of (wanna-be-)dictators that have shown how far you can push things, if you just don’t care about the wounds your country is receiving. And Putin seems particularly uncaring.

This is exactly the reason why I won’t play gacha games. First everyone complains about loot boxes and microtransactions and then a game-genre where that’s the core of the game takes off.

Just goes to show that the people that (rightly) complain about microtransactions cheapening gaming experiences were always in the minority and most will just keep spending like headless chickens.

Most people I know aren’t or don’t see themselves as gambling addicts. They’re “proud” about how much they spent.

The get-business-owners-rich schemeisin full swing I see. Better check who owns those contractors.

The bill also places a new environmental impact review by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and established an annual environmental impact fee for permit holders.

I bet they felt really petty writing that into the bill.

Conservative critics have long accused the department of helping to censor the American right.

How very very odd.