Political Gang Cultures

[Saudade]

I'm not sure why you think Stalin was initially more rational. He joined with Hitler. Hitler was the big dog in the Axis powers. Stalin would have collapsed except for Lend-Lease.

I get the impression that Stalin was as interested in conquering Germany as Hitler was in conquering the Soviet Union. Stalin seemed to be going with "Keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer."

[Doc Dutch]

I get the impression that Stalin was as interested in conquering Germany as Hitler was in conquering the Soviet Union. Stalin seemed to be going with "Keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer."

What else would he claim when Hitler turned on him? Hitler helped Stalin industrialize, something Stalin strongly desired (and killed millions of his own people) because Hitler was initially tied to the Treaty of Versailles. When Hitler was powerful enough, he cranked up his own factories to rebuild his military. Stalin stayed friendly enough to kill off his rivals and invade neighboring nations like the Baltic states and Finland.

https://www.history.com/topics/russia/great-purge


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet...39-1941-en.svg

[Saudade]

What else would he claim when Hitler turned on him? Hitler helped Stalin industrialize, something Stalin strongly desired (and killed millions of his own people) because Hitler was initially tied to the Treaty of Versailles. When Hitler was powerful enough, he cranked up his own factories to rebuild his military. Stalin stayed friendly enough to kill off his rivals and invade neighboring nations like the Baltic states and Finland.

https://www.history.com/topics/russia/great-purge


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet...39-1941-en.svg

In the beginning, you could say Hitler played Stalin. Granted, when Hitler turned on the Soviets, that pretty much spelled the end of the Nazis in the long run. They were stuck with yet another 2 front war. That's what did them in during WWI.

[Doc Dutch]

In the beginning, you could say Hitler played Stalin. Granted, when Hitler turned on the Soviets, that pretty much spelled the end of the Nazis in the long run. They were stuck with yet another 2 front war. That's what did them in during WWI.

Hitler did fuck himself a little too early in the game. Attacking is always harder than defending. American industrial power supplying both Britain and the Soviets wasn't a surefire winner but certainly put a huge damper on Hitler's plans of conquest. The fact the US was also fighting a two-front war is indicative of how much industrial output contributed to winning the war.

[Saudade]

Hitler did fuck himself a little too early in the game. Attacking is always harder than defending. American industrial power supplying both Britain and the Soviets wasn't a surefire winner but certainly put a huge damper on Hitler's plans of conquest. The fact the US was also fighting a two-front war is indicative of how much industrial output contributed to winning the war.

This is true. Granted, America had a major geographical advantage. With a few exceptions, the war wasn't fought on our home soil. Our late entry definitely helped as well.

[Doc Dutch]

This is true. Granted, America had a major geographical advantage. With a few exceptions, the war wasn't fought on our home soil. Our late entry definitely helped as well.

Yeah, it always helps when a country's factories aren't being bombed into rubble. Still, the US was supplying both England and the Soviets 9 months before Pearl Harbor and all through the war.

[Nordberg]

Disagreed almost 100%. Democrats are just as happy to gerrymander as Republicans. The EC protects the entire nation from tyranny of the majority on relatively small areas of the entire nation; in short, you can't get 38 states to agree to it without asserting an authoritarian Constitution-shredding government. There will always be a Left and Right, conservative and liberal, father and mother types of divides. That's human nature. It's a achieving a balance that's important, not trying to kill off the opposite side. People who can't agree to disagree in a civilized manner aren't civilized.

What a crazy post. yeah gerrymandering has been around a century or so. The Dems did some. It took the Republicans to weaponize it, Their gerrymandering has little in common with historicaL. They have used and abused what was once a provincial and quaint political trick.
The EC is foul. The flip side is that it permits the tyranny of the minority. Justify that.

[Doc Dutch]

What a crazy post. yeah gerrymandering has been around a century or so. The Dems did some. It took the Republicans to weaponize it, Their gerrymandering has little in common with historicaL. They have used and abused what was once a provincial and quaint political trick.
The EC is foul. The flip side is that it permits the tyranny of the minority. Justify that.

Why is the EC "foul"? How is that tyranny of the majority when Democrats control the House? Maybe even the Senate this fall? Are you one of those who say tyranny is whenever the Republicans are in charge, but it's all rainbows and unicorns when Democrats win under the same rules?

[Saudade]

Why is the EC "foul"? How is that tyranny of the majority when Democrats control the House? Maybe even the Senate this fall? Are you one of those who say tyranny is whenever the Republicans are in charge, but it's all rainbows and unicorns when Democrats win under the same rules?

His next argument will probably be "the Electoral College was created because of slavery." That's the common assumption by the left now, even though it's an obvious conflation of the Electoral College with the 3/5 Compromise.

[Iolo/Penderyn]

I'm not sure why you think Stalin was initially more rational. He joined with Hitler. Hitler was the big dog in the Axis powers. Stalin would have collapsed except for Lend-Lease.

He had been sold out by the West at Munich, and had to buy time. The Soviet Union defeated Hitler at unbelievable cost, and the USA would have been totally insane not to send such minimal help as it did.

[Doc Dutch]

He had been sold out by the West at Munich, and had to buy time. The Soviet Union defeated Hitler at unbelievable cost, and the USA would have been totally insane not to send such minimal help as it did.

Poor, poor little Stalin. Always getting fucked by the West. He should have stuck to murdering his own people, not anyone else. There's a reason why the Russians don't revere him like other Russian leaders. No doubt some would want to turn his grave into a public toilet.

As for Lend-Lease to the Soviets; yes it was a good move by FDR.

https://news.stanford.edu/2010/09/23...nocide-092310/
Stalin had nearly a million of his own citizens executed, beginning in the 1930s. Millions more fell victim to forced labor, deportation, famine, massacres, and detention and interrogation by Stalin’s henchmen.

“In some cases, a quota was established for the number to be executed, the number to be arrested,” said Naimark. “Some officials overfulfilled as a way of showing their exuberance.”


https://www.history.com/news/ukrainian-famine-stalin
Ultimately, although Stalin’s policies resulted in the deaths of millions, it failed to crush Ukrainian aspirations for autonomy, and in the long run, they may actually have backfired. “Famine often achieves a socio-economic or military purpose, such as transferring land possession or clearing an area of population, since most flee rather than die,” famine historian de Waal says. “But politically and ideologically it is more often counterproductive for its perpetrators. As in the case of Ukraine it generated so much hatred and resentment that it solidified Ukrainian nationalism.”

Eventually, when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Ukraine finally became an independent nation—and the Holodomor remains a painful part of Ukrainians’ common identity.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph...ns_of_genocide
Official records reveal 799,455 documented executions in the Soviet Union between 1921 and 1953; 681,692 of these were carried out between 1937 and 1938, the years of the Great Purge.[892] However, according to Michael Ellman, the best modern estimate for the number of repression deaths during the Great Purge is 950,000–1.2 million, which includes executions, deaths in detention, or soon after their release.[893] In addition, while archival data shows that 1,053,829 perished in the Gulag from 1934 to 1953,[894] the current historical consensus is that of the 18 million people who passed through the Gulag system from 1930 to 1953, between 1.5 and 1.7 million died as a result of their incarceration.[895] The historian and archival researcher Stephen G. Wheatcroft and Michael Ellman attribute roughly 3 million deaths to the Stalinist regime, including executions and deaths from criminal negligence.[896][897] Wheatcoft and historian R. W. Davies estimate famine deaths at 5.5–6.5 million[898] while scholar Steven Rosefielde gives a number of 8.7 million.[899] The American historian Timothy D. Snyder in 2011 summarised modern data, made after the opening of the Soviet archives in the 1990s, and concludes that Stalin's regime was responsible for 9 million deaths, with 6 million of these being deliberate killings. He notes that the estimate is far lower than the estimates of 20 million or above which were made before access to the archives.[900]

Historians continue to debate whether or not the 1932–33 Ukrainian famine—known in Ukraine as the Holodomor—should be called a genocide.[901] Twenty six countries officially recognise it under the legal definition of genocide.

[Iolo/Penderyn]

Poor, poor little Stalin. Always getting fucked by the West.

They fucked themselves, and us, silly footling buggers. Imagine what a mess they had to make before anyone would bring Churchill back! Your own country was too busy trying to provoke war with Japan to notice, of course, and you got more than you bargained for, including war with Germany. Why exactly are you spending so much time on this history? Do you think the Trumpites were behind it? The question is whether we can have a sensible political discussion about modern conditions, and here we are, back in the 1940's. It doesn't seem to me to lead the discussion forward much.

[Matt Dillon]

For a good few years now, starting very much in the 'States but evident in most countries, because of new media and a few other things, groups of people have been able, more and more, to live in closed worlds in which they hear only one version of events, so that politics becomes increasingly the mere exchange of abuse. It makes me wonder whether democracy can possibly survive without serious debate. I think the problem is greatest in the USA, however, because the people who have become the followers of Trump seem, like earlier anti-democratic movements, simply uninterested in even appearing rational (which is why I keep calling them 'fascist' or 'nazi'), and they seem to have pushed aside the serious believers in capitalism and conservative values, who used to be able to make some sort of case for what they thought. It is all very well just shouting back - my Wife says I am unbelievably calm and placid when I can work off my negative feelings on barely-literate and pointlessly-aggressive trumpers - but I seriously begin to wonder if the human race can survive not only pandemics and world-overheating but this turn to savagery. It's not quite as bad over here, but America is the current centre of world capitalism, and where it goes others tend to follow. Does anyone see any way, other than Civil War, that we can get back to the compromise we used to manage, or is it going to be a matter or revolution or death? I'm thinking more of my own family than about an abstract Humanity, obviously, but aren't we all?

No bitch, you call them that because that's what your handlers have programmed you to do.


Is Trump using the US Navy to terrorize and sink commercial shipping boats and cruise liners?
No.
Therefore Trump is not a Nazi, because that's exactly what Hitler did. Trump does not do that.

[Doc Dutch]

No bitch, you call them that because that's what your handlers have programmed you to do.


Is Trump using the US Navy to terrorize and sink commercial shipping boats and cruise liners?
No.
Therefore Trump is not a Nazi, because that's exactly what Hitler did. Trump does not do that.

I strongly doubt any members of this forum have "handlers". Some, like the TD twins, Text Driver and the like probably have "orderlies".

[Nordberg]

His next argument will probably be "the Electoral College was created because of slavery." That's the common assumption by the left now, even though it's an obvious conflation of the Electoral College with the 3/5 Compromise.

No, it is not. The Electoral College was a device to get the slave states to join the union. If a state or 2 declined, America would not have proceeded as it did. It was about slave states as opposed to slavery. It was practical and political not moral.