• 11 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 5th, 2023

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  • I have a complicated relationship with Rococo. I feel it’s undeniably successful in achieving its airy aesthetic. And, honestly, I just like combinations of pink and blue.

    But I also feel it’s a bit of a dead end, artistically. It has something that many artistic movements don’t have: it is immediately identifiable. But its artistic definition seems to be so tight that it can never surprise you despite its obvious accomplishments of craft.

    Though that might just be my own ignorance of the movement.


  • “The interests of the ZSU to keep Ukraine a US vassal state” seems to imply that Russia offers an alternative that involves no degree of subjugation. This is patently false.

    Also, why are we talking about Donbass and not Ukraine as a whole? Could it be because your argument falls apart the second we look at the modern hitherto internationally recognised nation state of Ukraine? Ukraine’s parliament made a majority vote to approve the European Union–Ukraine Association Agreement. When Ukraine’s president ignored this, choosing instead to be a puppet to Russian interests, his people revolted in the Euromaiden movent.

    Now you’ll claim that the Euromaiden movement was the product of US/European interference and I’ll claim that the pro-Russian counter-protest in the Donbass region was the product of Russian interference. Foreign interference in political change is hardly a new phenomenon. It was true in Vietnam, though I doubt that most people who support Russia in this conflict would be all that interested in the plight of the Hmong people under the North Vietnamese government. I imagine the argument would go something like this: Yes we should fight for the rights of ethnic minorities within this nation but the majority of Vietnamese people wanted to be free from the American interfluence on the South Vietnamese government. Well the majority of Ukranians want to be free from the influence of the Russian government.

    The notion that the Russian speakers in the Donbass region are treated as second class citizens is a gross over-simplification. The majority of people in the Donbass speak Russian, Ukrainian nationalists included. They’re heavily influenced by Russian culture. They watch Russian TV and listen to Russian music. But to argue that this is a good predicte for secession overlooks the complexity of the situation there. You can be from a place, identify with another and still not appreciate it when that other place decides to massively disrupt and endanger your life with military occupation. There are plenty of people in Northern Ireland that want to be part of the Republic of Ireland, but there are very few who would support the idea of armed conflict to attain that goal.