La Dame d'Azur

yooo why’d they make the USA a baddie 😭

Invoking Machiavelli is terribly funny here for multiple reasons.

First being Machiavelli’s actual view was it was best to be both feared and loved but if you couldn’t have both then you should at least be feared.

Second is that this advice was meant for despotic leaders, not the heads of republics, as all his advice in “The Prince” is aimed toward monarchs and those ruling similar government structures; he personally preferred republics as a model of governance but wrote The Prince to advise princes on how best to rule within the limitations of what he considered an inferior government model (he was also being paid by the Medici to write it and they’d just dissolved the Florentine Republic and also had him tortured for a while so). Trump is the head of a republic (yes, a bourgeois republic, but a republic nonetheless) and not a monarchy so this advice doesn’t work for him.

Third is that Trump is neither loved nor feared, hence why he is a total failure regardless.

So all around this advice doesn’t work for Trump at all and not because it’s from the 15th century but because it’s from a context that Trump doesn’t operate within.

Of course it failed. The precedent it would set would be too dangerous for the ruling class; if they could do it to Russia and it’d be okay, others could do it to them and it would be okay.

The people could do it to their leaders and it would be okay.

And that, of course, would not be okay (for them).

this reminds me of that one polcomp meme with various quotes of macron all over the place

Zuganov is one man. A powerful man, sure, but still only one. He isn’t the party as a whole.

I don’t know enough about Zuganov to comment on his commitment to Marxism but I sincerely doubt he’s the only one with power in the party and that none of the 160,000 or so members can do anything to remove him if they think he’s doing a bad job so I can only assume they agree with the direction he’s taken the party.

And when it comes to working against United Russia and working with United Russia while the more based option is to oppose it the smarter move is to work with them and not create instability for the U.S. to exploit.

Any intelligent regime is going to repress factions that pose a threat to its stability.

Belarus is on the border of NATO. It can’t afford instability for the West to exploit. This is why Lukashenko is involved in Ukraine, why he’s so close to Russia, and why he didn’t join the invasion when his generals threatened to rebel.

I sympathize with my comrades in Belarus but agitating against their government while NATO still exists right on their front door is a misguided decision. KPRF understands this.

Yeah, in Parenti’s defense it’s fair to be skeptical in the 90s. Shit was bleak and there was a lack of clarity going on amidst all the neolib disinfo and triumphalism.

What metric determines how “excessive” authority is? Who determines how much authority is too much? What does it look like to exceed one’s authority? Is “excessive” authority inherently bad or is that conditional on how it’s used?

Based Ireland demonstrating once again that it’s the only decent country west of the Oder.

Other Countries: exist

The West: “My mortal nemesis!”

The real question is will Qatar respond appropriately to this naked violation of their sovereignty or will they be a good little puppet and look the other way?

rip bozo

Smugly remembering all the Euro-chauvinists I’ve encountered over the years who unironically asserted that Europe was its own thing and not a subordinate of the American Empire.

Dawg, even when I was a liberal I still knew the EU was not an equal partner to the USA. Some people just don’t want to live in the real world smh.

JDPON Don strikes again. 🫡