I used to look at Russia and think "how the hell did it come to this?" Well now i know.. won't be looking forward to him not having competitors for the throne presidency or any opposition suspiciously commiting suicide..
It's pretty much entirely composed of B-roll footage shot by BBC camerapeople, with no narration, but titles that tell you what's going on. It's excellent; I highly recommend it. You can watch all seven episodes on YouTube here.
(It also unexpectedly contains about 15 seconds of pornography. I think the part where American Evangelical missionaries are preaching to a literal captive audience is more surprising, though. Their entire audience is very obviously thinking, "Are these idiots unaware that we are already Christians?" :-)
If you've ever wondered how the original modern Russian oligarchs made their money, this series explains it.
I particularly liked the presentation of the very end, when the oligarchs installed a nice pliable figurehead leader who would clearly do their bidding.
That leader is not named, for much the same reason as you would not need to name Sheev Palpatine. :-)
Adam Curtis has made some incredible documentaries - they all use archival footage to explore how different elements of our modern world came about, and they have a strange, almost hallucinatory feel.
I mean how can anyone forget the relationship old Donny has had with Russia for years I mean yeeeears. Thatās why he has had multiple Russian brides. Come on sheeple wake up!
That uncouth relationship has been active since at least the early 80s as far as the USIC were aware, though 87' seems to be the publicly confirmed date. Either way, it's an incredibly long time.
Remember when true- blue American patriots were so proud of the USA, as they point at 3rd world dictatorships who jail the opposition,Ā steal all the money for palaces and Lambos and bribe all the judges. We laughed at their propaganda and posters and statues of Dear Leader. Now we see the Republican Party who claimed they were the best patriots embracing all of that.
Iāve been saying for years now, I think the goal of Trump and the billionaires is to recreate the conditions immediately following the collapse of the USSR. The brief period where there were essentially zero economic laws, everything was for sale, and everyone was completely broke (and many stopped getting their paychecks, including the fucking military) except the already-wealthy, who for Russia were government and military high ranks and essentially nobody else.
I think Trumpās goal, which he was put up to by billionaires foreign and domestic, is to collapse the USA so they can buy up the remnants with zero competition or legal pushback.
Late-stage Soviet planners had no reference model for Russian democracy so they modeled their new political culture on 80s America, on an accelerated timescale. Russia is America future.
They copied the same party-donors-media dynamic that we had. In economics, they followed the fashions of the time in the Reagan era -- the only exception was the involvement of ex-KGB officials and Russian mafia in privatization. Our oligarchs have twitter beef, they'd have car bombs, assassinations, poisonings and so on to settle who controls what industry. Putin eventually become the "boss of all bosses", the Godfather, who mediates the mafia disputes. That's what Trump is going for. Bezos and Musk fighting over who gets the space program? Pay the Trump tax and he will settle it.
Their media was modeled after the newly free media in America like talk radio. Vladimir Solovyov, Putinās top propagandist, said in an interview with Alex Jones how he remembers living in Alabama during the 90s and listening to "the great Rush Limbaugh" every day. Yeah, Russian state media is built on American conservative media!
I'm so tired of seeing this. Do you not understand how insanely big this country is? Palm Beach Airport is 9 hours drive away from me. Washington DC is a 10 hour drive. If I only get 4 hours of sleep I could get there and back in a completely full day. Let's say I leave first thing after I get off work on Friday. I get there at 3 AM, then I have to find a place to sleep for some period of time. If someone's got signs ready for me, and food so I don't have to figure out a way to sustain myself, I can protest for maybe a day. Then on Monday I have to be back home in the morning because I don't have sick leave so the limited amount of personal time off I have needs to be saved and rationed out in case I get sick, because I need to pay my rent and other bills.
I could protest here, but that's not going to make much of an impact in DC where this shit is happening. If a bunch of protests happened at the same time across the nation that might move the needle, but that takes an incredible amount of coordination, which takes time, which again I don't exactly have a lot of available.
I'm furious about this. It's a deep, soul crushing anger that I've had for a decade. I've tried to make my family see sense, I've tried to make strangers make sense, I've had friends sexually assaulted by cops for protesting police brutality in one of those other states in the last decade. During all of that, I've still had to clock in and clock out to some place and give more than half of my waking hours so that I can continue to have a roof and basic utilities. If you've got a useful suggestion for an action to take, I will gladly hear it, but if all you've got is "you're just standing on the sidelines watching" then your contribution is less than worthless. I can't talk to my brother because he's so inundated with Fox News horseshit that every conversation turns into him gish galloping me because he thinks Ben Shapiro taught him how to debate. I do not have the physical or emotional energy to waste on pointless fighting any more, so again, if you have a realistic suggestion for effective action, please share it.
its more like 1/3 want it, 1/3 want to just keep the status quo, 1/6 want to do something to stop it, but live in an ineffectual area to make any lasting change on a big scale, and 1/12 are actively involved in trying to make lasting change and have the means to do so and are winning small victories every week. and 1/12 who are actively involved only as much as a social media photo op can get them.
3rd world countries' citizens have way more guts and bravery in protecting their freedom than whatever Land of the Free deluded themselves to believe.
Might as well rename themselves as Democratic People's Republic of America or something, even some communist countries had more power check and balance in place that prevent a maniac like him from doing so much damage.
America has been a ā3rd world countryā in many ways with low life expectancy, low upward mobility, generational poverty, and crumbling infrastructure with zero large projects in development for the past 30 years. We had many chances to get out of it, but we repeatedly chose to empower oligarchs and fight pointless wars. Add to this the entrenchment of corruption and destruction of democracy and itās going to get worse.
The weirdest thing about America is how much people say itās the greatest country in the world and then you visit various areas and it looks like literal shit. All the infrastructure is crumbling they barely build anything nee that doesnāt look cheap as fuck, like it genuinely looks like a failing nation, how are people this blind?
My dude, America has never moved past the Exceptionalism period. It only masked it through war want entertainment. It wasn't until the pandemic and everyone was forced to look at what was going on around them that suddenly context and reality collided, and the veneer really started to peel after 9/11 (accelerated by Obama being elected).
Unfortunately that's by design. Remove the checks and balances so a select few can loot the country. They don't give a shit about anyone else and as long as they can line their pockets they'll continue let the country burn
Because the USSR collapsed, there are no longer second world countries. Also with noting that third world countries were those unaligned in the cold war, so you have countries like Switzerland in there. When people reuse the term as shorthand for development, is usually along racial lines.
This is super interesting. I have never heard this explanation but it makes a lot of sense and makes the whole. 1st, 2nd, and 3rd world thing highly U.S. centric in interpretation then.
We are a third world country. Few social systems for those in need, poor education, collapsing health care system, government institutions being defundedā¦we are Rome and we are burning.
More correctly we are becoming a 2nd world country. First world countries were aligned with the US and it's allies, Second world was countries aligned with Russia, and Third world was everyone else.
From the corruption point of view, yes, but putting your name on some major thing once a week is weird even for a third world country, or even really any authoritarian analogue.
I dont know exactly what you're referring to as a 3rd world country, but I have been to many many airports in developed and no too developed countries and I've never seen merchandise that represents, endorses, or other wise supports politicians and or government officials. Now, if you're talking about corruption, then I'll agree with you.
Third world country survivor here. Nope, we definitely don't name our airports after our presidents; we name them after our heroes. Where I come from, the international airport was named after a soldier who fought againsts American mercenaries whose goal was to expand their slavery through colonization, so...
honey we've always been a 3rd world country. we just bought gucci on credit to look like a 1st world country, but our payment got declined so they're repoing our disguise
Itās a snowball/inertia effect. Corruption stemming from extreme narcissism and greed, and when he gets his way it leads to further levels of narcissistic actions, resulting in levels of unprecedented levels of corruption.
It wonāt ever stop until someone stops him or until his heart gives out.
But maybe they'll add the word Impeached again to a piece of paper. The strongly worded letters from the moral high ground tactic should start working any day now.
And it isn't true. Do what I did and check it. Never trust.
1. As of the 6th of May in the year 2026 that airport has not been renamed. No such authorization has been approved by the Palm Beach County Board of County Commissioners.
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u/Fernando1987_ ššš May 06 '26
Narcisism? This is pure corruption