Well, for that there are other ways as well. Elections are for making decisions. Popularity can be polled in easier ways as well.
But what I asked was why is it relevant that Zelensky won’t stay president very long of he somehow loses his support among the people? It’s a self-clarity, so I was interested in knowing why you chose to mention that.
Of cpurse Zelensky won’t be able to hold his position if his popularity nosedives. That’s a simple answer to a simple question.
But how is that relevant? His popularity isn’t going to nosedive in that manner anytime soon.
It makes a big difference whether the war is in your own country and touches everyone, or if it’s waged elsewhere or touches only a small part of your country.
US Civil War didn’t have 500 drones flying to various cities across US each day and night. If Ukraine had elections now, there would be queues on the street and those queues would get bombed by the Russia. I don’t think this would have been a risk around the time of Pearl Harbour.
What is your suggestion for how the elections in Ukraine could be organized safely and so that the result would be reasonably representative?
Uh? What does this have to do with left and right? There’s no left in the US. (Okay, there is, but for what I know, there isn’t even one leftist party either in Senate or in Congress. But maybe I’m wrong and not everything is just republicans+democrats?)
Still, at least the president has been either from Republicans or Democrats for the last century at least, so talking about “left vs. right” is kind of moot in this context of talking about US presidents. (Though, I don’t know, maybe one of the parties has been somewhat leftist before WWII? I have no idea if that’s been the case, because I was only born in the 1980’s and might be too young to know something I’m maybe assumed to know?)
Huh? “I want to overthrow a tyrannical president” would have been an important thing to say when there was no tyrannical president?
Why?
Yes. Because I have first-hand experience on what it feels like when it’s clear that neither Republicans’ or Democrats’ program would be something I’d wish for.
If you want to get the likes of me to vote against fascism, then you need to sell it as a vote against fascism.
And if you mean that you saw the phrase “harm reduction” in newspapers you read – did also the anti-democratic people see it?
Then probably you live in the USA. Why would I see a term that is only relevant for elections of another country? What do you know of porvarihallitus? It’s a relevant political phrase that I saw a lot during the previous parliamentary elections, but probably you have still never encountered it.
I don’t think I’ve fallen for their trick, because this is the first time I’m even observing a conversation on this topic. It hasn’t traditionally been a very relevant subject on this side of the pond.
If a person is anti-dem, there’s no way you’ll convert them with logical arguments. Or with any arguments at all. But you can get them to vote anti-Trump.
Different strategies for different situations. And, from a European viewpoint, it sounds ridiculous that Dems somehow “deliver”. From my perspective they are a massively lesser evil. But, in USA I would definitely vote for them just to vote against fascism. They might be stupid, but they are not malevolent. Trump is. (And stupid as well.)
You wouldn’t be able to convince me to like a party as far right to as the Democratic party. I wouldn’t like even the European right-wing parties, and they are – even in places such as Poland – to the left of anything USA has to offer. And if you tried spending your effort into making me actually think I might want more of what Democrats can offer, you’d be wasting your effort. I could vote such a party for what they offer less, but definitely not for what they offer more!
I think the main target audience here are people who already think that both sides do harm. I think what is being told here is that “even if we were to accept that both sides do harm, then the other side does it magnitudes more than the other one.”
Germans, you have been where we are. You know, all too well, where this road leads.
Nope. Germans will not help. They have seen where this road leads, and they’ve decided that they must never do anything military again. They prefer allowing all of the rest of the world to turn 100 % fascist over doing one single small thing that somehow hints towards militarism. Germans allow the road to lead where it leads, as long as that does not happen in Germany.
Also, for the same reason, in Germany it is extremely impolite calling someone a nazi. As long as they aren’t openly showing a swastika or publicly calling for a genocide with that specific word, or lifting their arm in the specific way done by Germans in 1930’s and 1940’s, they are allowed to do what they do. If you call someone a nazi, you are comparing their acts to what Germany did in 1940’s, and it’s considered a grave insult towards the victims of those times. It is not acceptable in Germany to say to someone is behaving just like a nazi, and therefore, it is de facto not acceptable calling out a nazi.
Germany is the last country you can expect to stand up against nazis, precisely because they’re so traumatized by their own past. It’s also why I expect Germany to eventually fall under a nazi rule again some day. When you cannot talk about a danger, you cannot stop it.
The reports were made by reporters that were named and whose names weren’t what you refer to.
Unless Palestine is in China, what happens or does not happen gives no privileges for China. What you’re doing is indeed whataboutism.
My sources are newspaper articles whose sources are not the guy you’re talking about.
Because the Palestinian and Bosnian genocides are not in China, they don’t prove anything about China. At best they are whataboutism.
The Palestinian genocide takes place in Palestine, not in China. You are mistaken regarding that.
Who the hell is Zenz? First time I hear the name, and does not seem like a person I should bother to learn something from.
A camp where people are sent because of their ethnic background and where a large part of inmates die is a concentration camp, absolutely. Especially if human experiments are done on the inmates and torture is common.
I would not want my conditions to improve through slavery and torture of others. There is a big difference between you and me regarding that.
used that to show that the good the USSR did was outweighed by the bad.
Nope. I used it to show that it is possible that the good the USSR did was outweighed by the bad. That the concept exists. The Nazis are a warning example of what we must never become. It is super scary that it is not allowed to talk about them. In this case nothing like Nazis actions was under conversation, but sometimes things do look almost 1:1 the same as Germany looked in 1920’s when the foundations for Nazism were laid and early 1930’s. It is not good that it is considered Nazi apologia, because if we can’t say aloud when things are going that way again, we will eventually end up Nazis ourselves.
I used to live in Germany, and it scared me that people there don’t see that their way will eventually lead to rise of fascism again, no matter how understandable the principles behind the “do not compare anything to Nazis” rule is! When it comes again, Germans are not going to anything to stop it, and will stop anyone who does try to. Except, of course, if it uses the swastika. Then it will be stopped.
But, now back to the actual subject!
The Workers in the Soviet Union were not sent to camps to die en mass.
Correct, it was largely based on the ethnic background, not so much on social strata. For example Latvians were sent there in such amounts that now almost 50 % of Latvians speak Russian as their main language. It also does not really matter if they were sent there en mass or not, when several millions from around Soviet Union were sent there and 70 % of them died. Camps where millions are sent and less than a third come back alive is not something that can ever be considered acceptable. Camps where you put six people to sleep in a space built for one or two are not okay. It is not okay, it was not okay, and it never will be okay. And it is not okay to defend them.
Then there are some claims that you just let hanging in the air:
No, Finland did not achieve better metrics at a larger scale
I already explained that Finland [was between 1917 and 1991] Imperialist
Finland extract[ed] superprofits off of exploitation of the Global South [between 1917 and 1991].
You need to elaborate on those. I did alter the quotes, because in the context of comparing countries’ growth 1917–1991 whatever happened after 1991 is not really relevant. The altered parts are marked clearly.
“ruling class” – would have sucked at their job given that they dramatically lowered wealth inequality.
The job of the ruling class is not to maximize wealth inequality. They very often do that, yes, but it is not their job. Lowering wealth inequality is a sign of the ruling class is doing their job correctly, not incorrectly. I do not understand why you would think otherwise.
I’m not comparing them. I’m saying that doing something good does not mean that the instance that does the good is also good. The Nazis are simply the most extreme example that can be found, and therefore the most efficient way to show that the concept of “doing some good things does not automatically mean you’re a good guy” exists in general.
They doubled life expectancy, over tripled literacy rates to 99.9% from the low 30s, dramatically reduced wealth inequality, provided free and high quality healthcare and education
And the only part of the Russia that did not become Soviet did the same things in an even bigger scale. Why?
Finland funds its safety nets through Imperialism.
The eastern block got money from Moscow through Warsaw pact. The western block got money from Marshall Aid. There was only one country in Europe that received neither: Finland. We were considered to be in the eastern block, so we were not allowed to get Marshall Aid. And USSR’s aid required accepting that “if the country’s independence is endangered, Moscow can choose to send its forces to help”. We demanded a change to that rule so that Helsinki decides if the help is needed, not Moscow. And then Soviet Union said, “okay, no money for you people, then”. Soviet Union got reparations from Germany and Finland. Finland paid all of its reparations, fully. The last payment was made in the 1990’s. While being the only country not getting any money from foreign countries for rebuilding after the war, we also paid huge war reparations to the country that had begun the war in coöperation with Germany by attacking us in 1939. And yes, that does mean that the advances Soviet Union did after the second world war were partially financed by Finland. Which still managed to do better than Soviet Union it was helping. Could you please tell, how precisely does all this mean that Finland was funding its safety nets through imperialism? Was the Finnish imperialism visible in the huge decrease of Finno-Ugric population, from whose colonized territories Soviet Union got almost all of its oil and minerals? Or where did the Finnish imperialism physically take place?
Finland saw no such comparable devastation
During just three nights in 1940, Soviet Union dropped 16489 bombs in Helsinki alone. How is that not devastation? And of course those were only the most intense nights of bombing, there were of course maaany more of them between 1939 and 1944.
The Soviet Union existed for the workers.
The Soviet Union said that it exists for the workers. But the workers were who got sent to the camps to die, not the ruling class.
Finland decreased its poverty between 1917 and 1991 more than Soviet Union did. In the beginning of year 1917 Finland was a part of the Russian Empire, so we were extremely poor here as well. Soviet Union could be on the second place, perhaps. But, since there is at least one country that fared better, the claim you made it evidently false. There can very well be other countries than just Finland that decreased poverty more than USSR did. I do not know for sure, though, as I’m not terribly well aware of how faraway places like Chile or Burma were faring in 1917.
Probably he does, but at the moment his support is strong enough by enough of margin that it’s clear he’d win an election anyway if it was held now, so this is kind of moot.
(And then he’d be the president for the next half a decade, which might be already right after the end of the war no longer what the people in Ukraine want)
I think it’s a bit of a stupid rule to have in your constitution, and I think it was probably written before 2014 when Ukraine stepped into democracy (or even before 2008, when it started seriously heading towards proper democracy). But as bad as I find the rule, it’s currently in the constitution and wasn’t added by Zelensky.
It does make sense that at a time like this you do live according to the constitution. Organizing elections would be against the Ukrainian constitution, and it would be a bigger problem with democracy to break the constitution than it is to postpone an election.
Especially since in the current situation an election would be massively unrepresentative. (What do you do with a mail-in election when the Russia destroys the whole warehouse where the ballots, or at least the ballots from a whole province, are stored?)