“People think, increasingly it appears, that we shouldn’t be doing this. Well, let me start by saying we haven’t lost a single American in this war,” McConnell said. “Most of the money that we spend related to Ukraine is actually spent in the US, replenishing weapons, more modern weapons. So it’s actually employing people here and improving our own military for what may lie ahead.”

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/4085063

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[–] gnuhaut@lemmy.ml 29 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There was a massive dip in all those places in the 90s with shock therapy. A lot of people are still worse off in a lot of ways and angry. Hence AfD, Orban, PiS and all those other angry nationalists.

Also, if you want to be fair, you should compare for example Poland to west Germany. Polish workers toil for German capitalists, and yet, somehow, they're getting exploited way more than the German workers. Less pay, worse services, worse infrastructure, less worker's rights. That whole arrangement is super-exploitative. Meanwhile foreigners bought most of that country. Treated like a colony basically.

The Russians got fucked even worse than Poland in the 90s, which resulted in a backlash which Putin made himself the head of. What Russia is doing is self-preservation. Any state with the means to preserve it's sovereignty from a hostile takeover would try to do so, it's not just something an imperialist state would do. Hence Russia is not doing an imperialism here.

[–] Frank@hexbear.net 38 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hell, compare East Germany to the ~~reich~~ West Germany. West Germany's economic conquest of East Germany was incredibly ruthless and brutal, and East Germany never recovered from having it's entire economy pillaged and burned.

[–] ThereRisesARedStar@hexbear.net 27 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

And east german lgbt rights and women's rights lost half a century of progress during reunification.

[–] Frank@hexbear.net 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah. It's still technically illegal to get an abortion in the reich afaik. It was really something finding out that the gdr had gender parity in most fields before the west crushed it, and that western germany had to give women a bunch of rights to try to manage to political turmoil.

[–] ThereRisesARedStar@hexbear.net 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Reading those east German men be like "yeah I prefer it now that women have to stay with me for economic reasons, before you had to be like, interesting and care about them or something" really drives it home in a different way too.

[–] Frank@hexbear.net 16 points 1 year ago

That was physically painful when I first saw some of those quotes. We've just lost so much potential.