Bay 12 Games Forum

The point being, it's extraordinary only when viewed through your personal preconceptions. I, for one, don't see it as a particularly contentious claim. So if you want to convince people like me it's bunkum, saying that you don't feel like it's plausible is not particularly convincing.

This is literally the opposite of how a democracy is supposed to work. You are describing an aristocracy, where the people in charge pursue their own interests because they think they know better. In a democracy, officials must answer to their constituents. Constituents are often short-sighted or easily swayed, a flaw of democracy that has been commented on since ancient Athens; nevertheless.

The representatives answer to their constituents come next election. During the term they're expected to make decisions on their own, to the best of their ability and understanding of how to further the interests of the people they represent. They can explain their choices later, as they campaign for reelection.
You can't govern a modern country with direct democracy.

That said - what's the rest of Europe doing? I don't get the impression (which could be wrong, of course) that the EU is actually trying to stop Russia either, or give Ukraine what it needs to actually stop Russia.

At the beginning of this month the financial aid for the next four years was approved by the EU. So at least in this respect we're ahead.
On the other hand, the 50 billion euro of aid barely covers 1.5 years of what Ukraine needs to stay afloat. With US stalling and possibly withdrawing, it won't be nearly enough. And the military aid is still being negotiated, where I can't imagine it ending up anything close to what's needed. Likely more contracts for deliveries in 2027+ and such, while there's no ammo on the front right now.

We've tried large maps a number of times in our Dom3-5 games. Can't imagine this one's gonna be any different.
They're not generally conductive to terribly interesting matches, imo. Tends to feel like you're playing single-player for a while, and then turns out somebody blobbed out of proportion and the game ends (or doesn't, because it takes too long to do everything and people lose interest).

I don't know what else to tell you.

This discussion:
- Navalny dead
- Ackshually Navalny bad
- Navalny shades of grey
- No, Navalny bad. I don't know what else to tell you.

You made a strong claim: that he was never against the war. There's a clear counterexample to this in his discussion with Girkin, where he explicitly says otherwise. So, like, at least from this angle he'd be an improvement, eh?
Then there was some hedging of bets, arguing that never mind the guy, his party is shit. Which is moving the goal posts. And besides, we all know in Russian centralised presidential system the political platform controls the president, right?*
Your other argument is that as president he'd fix Russia before doing pretty much exactly the same thing Putin does, only with more oomph and less self-exploding. Which 1. is a hypothetical 2. seems somewhat unlikely given what he actually said about the war 3. in worst case could take years to accomplish, given how broken Russia is, upending the ruling system in the process, so that twenty years down the line the whole imperial expansion ideology could just not be on the cards anymore. But hey, maybe he'd just build more ammo factories, who's to say.

I know he wasn't a saintly edifice of sparkling sugary western values. No shit, man. Anyone who ever spends more than a moment skimming the headlines gets that, despite your tiny bit arrogant protestations to having a unique insight into his character. And yet, he was the closest Russia had to taking a step in a different direction than where it's been headed.

So I'm going to take my imaginary hat off over the killing of this deeply flawed man, thank you very much.

*the joke is it's actually the FSB, and any discussion of what would a particular person's qualities and professed ideas result in should they be elected is moot.

Navalny certainly was never "against the war" in and of itself

That's almost literally what he said in that debate when they started talking about Donbas.

"from which direction?"

Have you seen his debate with Girkin from 2017? To me it encapsulates the difference between the current Russia and his idea of the same. He was no saint, but his Russia would be a massive improvement over what we have.

Huh. Stewart is back with the Daily Show?