Lenin betrayed the revolution. You mention the banning of the political parties. While it’s true that they “took up arms against Sovnarkom”, you’re leaving out the part where Lenin used Sovnarkom to coup the newly elected government because his party didn’t win.

Again, Lenin was flat out wrong. But I don’t think he ever actually cared about Russia ever reaching the true Marxist communist utopia. Lenin cared about power first and foremost.

He built up that dictatorship, and then handed it over to a monster.

Tried a bunch, but tried wrong.

The Lenin model of communism is inherently flawed for one simple reason. An Authoritarian Communism is an Impossibility. It cannot exist by pure definition.

The true ideal communism is a stateless utopia.

So yeah, the Lenin model is flawed to the point of uselessness. Or worse because any authoritarian government is going to kill its own citizens, while also being a low grade threat to neighboring countries.

No. The only path to true communism is via democracy. And there are countries that are moving in that direction.

That’s some blatant Russian propaganda there. Blame NATO twice for Russian imperialism.

The “Russia had to invade a sovereign nation because they were talking about joining NATO to prevent Russia from invading them” logic has some holes to it.

The fact that Russia has invaded their neighbors 14 times since the end of the cold war tells you why one of their neighbors would want to join NATO.

Also, remember that time that Russia shot down a commercial airliner? The Ukrainians sure as hell do. That was the true beginning of the invasion, which is why Ukraine was in talks to join NATO.

And yes, people have the right to defend themselves. But the Israeli government has locked down the anti-terror propaganda, because Hamas is pretty vile as far as organizations go. It’s why Israel let Hamas grow and become powerful, and why the Israelis paid to keep Hamas in power for the last decade or so.

As long as Israel can point at Hamas, they have just enough of an excuse to claim their ethnic cleansing is actually just an anti-terror campaign.

Hamas is a full on terrorist organization, not that all terrorist organizations are bad. Or rather, there are some causes where a terrorist organization is the appropriate response. John Brown tried it. So did Nelson Mandela. But Hamas is a religious extremist terrorist organization. One that has distasteful views, and was sort of put in place by Israel for those views.

You see what I’m getting at here? Hamas is fucking evil, and Israel has mostly succeeded in making Hamas the face of Palestinian resistance against Israel.

I doubt many of the original leaders of Hamas are still alive, but that doesn’t matter either when Israel can just lie and say that whoever they kill is Hamas. It’s a bit maddening, and I doubt there’s an answer to it all except for the other Palestinian resistance groups to step up their social media game.

There was no economic or rational factors. The only thing that makes a lick of sense is the irrational.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/03/putin-dictator-trap-russia-ukraine/627064/

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/3/24/22982864/vladimir-putin-russia-ukraine-war-brian-klaas

Those are a warm-up, but then you have the purges since the invasion began.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-purges-in-putins-shrinking-inner-circle

Putin has sort of been the butt of jokes for years for killing anyone who looks at him funny. He’s a KGB stooge, who made his career out of backstabbing and paranoia. His entire inner circle were afraid to tell him the truth, because he would kill them if they did.

He’s never been “savvy”, he’s just been willing to kill as many people as necessary to secure his own power.

The classic authoritarian dictator who throws people out of windows for saying no. And whose vaulted military had body armor made of cardboard, because the corruption was so ingrained that every single level was accepting bribes and stealing shit.

I’m surprised that they’re still going, but Russia has shown the world that they’re a third rate military, at best.

As to Palestine. It doesn’t matter what the resistance movements call themselves now. Israel will just say they’re Hamas, and no one likes Hamas. There are good reasons not to like Hamas, they’re religious extremists who want to kill all Jews.

And for decades, Israel has funded Hamas behind the scenes, while coming down extra heavy on any other resistance movement. And now it’s all paid off for them because they can just claim that anyone they kill was actually Hamas.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/07/30/how-israel-helped-create-hamas/

This tactic of creating the perfectly detestable opposition has been used in quite a few places. For example, Greenpeace gets a lot of money from oil company heirs. Specifically the Rockefeller family.

I doubt anyone from Hamas, or Greenpeace, ever took orders from the people giving them money. They were given the money with no strings attached, because they were already jackasses. The money just extended their reach.

Everyone knows Putin invaded Ukraine because he’s a dumbass dictator who started to believe his own propaganda. It’s the dictator trap. Putin surrounded himself with backstabbing yes men by literally killing anyone who wasn’t.

As to Palestinian resistance. I don’t think Hamas is a good resistance movement. For a whole host of reasons. Which is why the Israeli government has been propping them up since the 80s.

An unsympathetic resistance movement can do more to damage a cause than not having a movement at all.

From now until the ethnic cleansing is complete, Israel will call any resistance movement Hamas, regardless of their actual name or beliefs. I’m not sure how to fight that… I don’t think anyone really knows beyond screaming the truth everywhere we can.

It didn’t work in the 1920s in Europe. But maybe with the Internet… Likely not though.

X-Men has always been the anti-status quo option…

But now that they’re part of Disney, you can expect the next appearance to be more pro-status quo.

As anyone who has lived in a Rocky Mountain town can say, Distant bullies are pretty bad too.

But that’s a sort of unique situation. Or it was until Reagan. See, the entire Rocky Mountain range is treated as a sort of internal colony.

Resources are extracted, but the people who own the companies doing the extraction all pretty much live on one of the coasts.

And then every store is also owned by someone who lives on one of the coasts.

This means that any real wealth produced in those states, quickly leaves those states.

A lot of towns in the area never really had a “down town” in the first place, and with the creation of Walmart and such, no one else gets a downtown either.

The answer of course is a bigger government. But it has to be free of corporate influence.

Which might just take a very big government. Like expanding the House and Supreme Court big.

Both are desperately needed.

The Factorio dev. I’ve heard he’s a shit person but not dove deeper into it.

Edit; did some looking and yeah, he’s a shitbag. He claimed that Statutory Rape was a SJW term, and that teachers should be able to seduce their students as long as they weren’t violent.

Then he used a dev blog to link to a racist misogynistic jackass, and when called out on it (The guy just wanted a disclaimer on the link) Korvex went on a rant about cancel culture and then tried to defend the misogynistic views, claiming that “maybe there’s a reason why there are so few women coders”

Trump is arguing that his twitter was “official communications”, and thus can’t be used in court. This means that the 34 felony convictions might go away now.

But the truth is that the Supreme Court didn’t say that every “official act” was immune from consequences. The more nuanced reading is that any act that the Court declares official is immune from consequences.

The Conservatives on the Court declared the president King, but only when they feel like it.