Comments by "LancesArmorStriking" (@LancesArmorStriking) on "VisualPolitik EN" channel.

@frankthetank5708 Unless you think that Russians in Sakha are comfortable being a smaller, weaker, landlocked state... Everyone in Russia understands on a deep psychological level that the territory must remain intact. Everyone inside it benefits from a larger potential reach. We remember the 1990s very well Strength in numbers as they say. The only way Russia stays divided is if the West imposes it onto Russia, against their own Western values.
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@badluck5647 It's not the intensity of the work but the expectation surrounding it. Japan has become so thoroughly Americanized that working at a business is not only a part of life but a social value there. For example you may not need to actually do huge amounts of work, but you do need to stay at work to show 'committment' to the company. So you might have nothing productive to do but still need to look busy because you're expected to remain in the office. You cannot under any conditions levae before the boss leaves. And if the boss goes our drinks and asks you come with, you simply must. Not doing so is a social taboo, not just a business decision. If the boss asks you to keep drinking, you keep going. If you do not, your entire social circle is in jeopardy, possibly your job. So the result is miserable feeling of no control while at work and no time after work for personal enjoyment, and crazy hours doing either insane work or mindless pencil pushing. Bureaucracy is insane, they still require you to have a fucking stamp custom made with your name because of how many documents you need to fill out throughout your life for even simple things. It seems like they have taken things that were developed to be a means to an end (doing business, paperwork) and turned them into a ritual valued for it's own sake. And the funniest part of all is that they worship these social norms that were imposed on them by the Americans after the war. It isn't even a traditionally Japanese societal organization, but a perversion of the Western one, with a lack of the history that shapes the understanding of these different aspects in society.
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@cypher5910 Just bear in mind- both China and Russia were agrarian backwaters before their communist revolutions. In the span of a single lifetime, Russia went communist- and went from peasants, to sending a man into space. Not to mention public healthcare in increased literacy by 10fold. It's not all black and white.
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Tragedy of the commons. This is what happens when everyone has an American (I only care about me and my own!) mentality.
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@frankthetank5708 Yes, they are. In the same way Americans are the inhabitants of Oklahoma. Also again, whatever improvements would be made to governance would quickly hit a cap that could not be overcome without re-unifying Russia (giving each territory access to all the other ones). It is to everyone's benefit to keep Russia together, besides maybe Western companies who want our resources.
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That has no zero bearing on the economic situation. Hell, China and Saudi Arabia are far, far more dictatorial than Russia, and their economies are faring much better. What is needed is a leader who will guide the country to better economic conditions, by encouraging the growth of domestic businesses. How, for instance, do you think the US was able to grow so quickly and quickly establish businesses even as it was in an isolationist period (from its founding all the way until 1914)? The reforms of the 1990s failed because the governance was not strong, and the transition was rapid and violent. Whether democratic or not has no effect. You can have an authoritarian government that respects private enterprise.
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@kelvinekline5950 Still, most American products are designed in America, same with Japan and South Korea. Russia does not have any companies that are wealthy enough to expand into other markets
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@JimmuTennothefirst "For a country the population of France and Germany combined" Well, you seem to be holding Russia to a strange standard. Nigeria and Brazil each have even more people than Russia- India has 10x more- can you name any world-famous firms from these countries? You act as though Russia is just a deviant from the norm, when it is not. You fully ignored what I said- France and (west)Germany have had 70 extra years without Soviet policies, and arguably even longer since the Tsar never encouraged domestic goods production. Russia has only 30 years to develop, and this is with decade of Eltsin years, and the competition of established firms with large, advanced factories to out-compete Russian. And I am aware of what you are saying, do you think I am naive? Putin is kgb, economy is not something he cares about. I do not like his plans for the oil revenue from 2000-08. Even though quality of life increased, Russia is still dependent on natural gas. But, I am also not stupid enough to to think that violently removing a leader will magically bring prosperity and 'democracy', like the usa likes to say. The man from Iraq who put Iraq flag on statue of Sadam now regrets his action. Stability comes before democracy. Not after. And Americans cannot seem to understand, so they invade with the logic of children. Give Russia time. It has only been 30 years. It took China 50 before any real brands (Huawei, Alibaba, DJI, Lenovo) enter Americans awareness
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@frankthetank5708 You went off on a tangent about language. Stick to the original point please The point is that the new smaller countries' political stance would not magically be anti-unification. They might not love Moscow, but most people remember the 1990s, what political weakness brings for the ordinary person. They would quickly re-unify unless a capricious Western coalition knowingly sought to keep them divided and weak.
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He forgot to say that the US government played a large part in the rise of the oligarchs. The "shock therapy" approach in the 1990s was advocated by Harvard economists working with the Treasury, and both George Bush and Bill Clinton supported their work.
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 @vladimirbazhaev7851 Like the other person said--- it seems the commenters here are allergic to even entertaining the idea that Russia could win.
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 @recoil53 Yes, benefiting from colonialist instructions will do that for you. That doesn't make it morally right.
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@zhcultivator Russia tried. Look up "Russia shock therapy", you will be surprised to learn that it is the us' fault Russia is this way
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Germany has already refused (and would need to somehow de-arm it), Japan will also need to de-arm Kurils and has already legally renounced all claims after it lost WWII, Karelia has been evacuated of Finns (who shouldn't be there anyways, Finns are not Karelians) and Finland would bankrupt itself trying to integrate it and pacify it, and South Ossetia and Abkhazia will die before they let themselves be part of Georgia. Georgia has no right not claim to those areas.
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 @Mark-uh3un And what happens if the Kaliningradians show a popular will to rejoin a Russian state? "no not that kind of democracy, we're intervening for your own good"?
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This comment section sucks
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@jhwheuer toast on toast
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@GibbonInAmerica To be fair, the U.S. healthcare system is uniquely inefficient, even compared to other advanced countries. They have so much room to improve that just catching up to Europe would be a big step forward
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 @triadwarfare Rules for thee, not for me? I swear this videos attracted the most feverish Russophobes I've ever seen
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@EMillerphotography Telegram, Kaspersky Labs, Cut The Rope (remember that game?), Stolichnaya vodka (Amreicans call it Stoli), Faberge eggs, and recently, Gazprom. For less than 30 years to build a functioning market system and brand recognition, that is not bad. Certainly better than just 1.
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 @TheRezro Famous last words. All it takes is one good nuke
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@recoil53 The point flew right over your head. There is no difference between exploiting some African country to make your country richer, or Russia exploring Ukraine to make itself richer. They are morally the same thing. Arguing that it would be better for human rights as a whole if Ukraine becomes Western is simply wrong. All it would do is make Europe more capable of exploiting other countries for its own benefit (but with Ukraine as an added beneficiary). When I say Russia isn't discriminatory, I mean that they don't draw a distinction between Europeans and Africans, or Southeast Asians etc. They won't reinforce the colonial policies of targeting third world countries specifically.
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@jason4275 They were, de facto, under its control. But they were still in an entirely separate category (this is why Poles and Germans mostly don't speak Russian anymore- the states of the USSR all had ethnic Russian populations in them and still do)
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@iivarilappalainen9836 Tougher nut to break. Russia as it currently is is 70% ethnically Russian. You could only do it along political lines, and frankly Zyuganov would probably unite it quicky. And disintegrating would make Russians' lives worse so the West would have to work overtime to trick them into thinking that their new, smaller country will somehow be more prosperous and safe from foreign influences.
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The McDonlad's ad
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Successor to beans on toast incoming
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@unit5543 Probably not Mongolia, China and Russia both agree it is a god buffer between them And as long as America still exists, Russia won't just annex the countries. It will need to have a genuine economy to keep them close, but that is not happening anytime soon :(
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@flopunkt3665 The exception, not the rule. Most Republican states are smaller in size (economy) than blue states. And Texas has its own issues of housing shortage in cities, along with shale production starting to collapse as a viable long term revenue.
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@zasmirko100 This just seems unprincipled. You spent so long under occupation and ethnic assimilation into the Russian Empire, and the second you have freedom, what do you do? You do it right back to ethnic Russians. Much like Jews in Israel, you've stooped to the level of those whom you hated. It's very sad--- like barring people from voting to save democracy. How far are you going to take it? Halting democracy for democracy, enforce assimilation for security, these sound very familiar to me, and should to you, too..
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@notusneo They bring it up because you people single out Russia specifically, and advocate for real action to be taken against it, claiming that you do it because you care about human rights or democracy. Yet I never see these types calling for the US to be sanctioned and cut from SWIFT because of Iraq. They violated human rights in an even bigger capacity, yet pro-West people don't call for punishing the US. So the only conclusion I can draw is that you DON'T actually care about those things that you said justify action against Russia. And if you don't really care then this begs the question... why are you singling out Russia? I think you know the answer. I just wish you'd be honest about your true feelings and motivations.
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@JimmuTennothefirst ...Skype? The company that lost almost all of its marketshare to Zoom? If that's the best thing that came out the Baltics, you really are finished.
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@WUSTASS Just because Russia didn't divide the borders (it didn't-- Stalin, in the USSR, did that), doesn't mean they are the "real victim". You're unable to look at this issue without extremes. Russia, if we are talking about people, also had its borders drawn by Stalin poorly. Millions of Russians were living beyond the established 1956 borders. Those were based on Russia's 1700s borders (drawn along the fortifications made by the Empire) and did not reflect ethnic boundaries, either. There are currently Russians in north Kazakhstan, east Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, and small parts of Belarus. If the borders were redrawn along ethnic lines, Russia would still gain the most.
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@WUSTASS Sorry, I meant to say "aren't the real victim". I knew it was sarcastic, I was addressing your point behind the sarcasm. Um... Yes. That's how countries have operated for thousands of years. Only the Mongols and Persians were more culturally tolerant, and look how much they've kept. Polish people often exclaim with pride that Poland was able to occupy Moscow and was very close to assimilating it as a part of the Commonwealth. Then they get mad that Russia did that successfully, but to them? Fuck off, that's hypocritical. Have you ever wondered why, for example, so much of Belarusian and Ukrainian is composed of Polish loanwords? Because of 300+ years of Polonization, especially in Ruthenia (now Ukraine). How do you think the Chinese gained so much land over 1,000s of years? Diplomacy? This is the way of the world, and no matter how recent it was, any country willing to play that game must also accept the consequences when the results happen to be unlucky. Hell, Ukraine and the Baltic countries have progressively banned Russian in schools! The game is still being played right now. As for your point that all of the lands outside the current boundaries were settled that way: Wrong. Odessa was completely barren before the Katherine the Great founded it in 1794. The northern Kazakh steppes were settled by farmers, not Cossacks. And the little part of Belarus that is ethnically Russian? That's been there for hundreds of years, and preceded the Tsardom's expansion in the 1500s.
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@bigmedge Ah yes, the 100 bazillion argument. Brilliant. I agree, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao's famines were horrible. But that's not what Marx laid out in any of his texts. Famine wasn't part of the revolution, either Stalin did that on purpose (not a Marxist idea) or it just happened, still not a part of Marxism Mao on the other hand was a complete idiot, forcing urban workers back onto farms was a horrible idea. We can agree there. Now, what are you talking about with stolen tech? Can you give sources? Space travel had a long history in Russia, even dating back to Tsarist stories. It had a strong place in the culture. Sergei Korolev was given free reign under the Soviet space program, and the Russians made it there first. What exactly was stolen, and are you forgetting that the space race started because the Soviets launched Sputnik? The Americans had no plans at the time, there was nothing to steal. And how would the Soviets have made it there first if the Americans already had the tech to do it? It sounds to me like you're either making excuses, or you're confusing the space program with the nuclear program.
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@davidford3115 Has the 1996 war taught you nothing? Or the history of the Caucasus in general? That entire region is best out under one banner, Russia collapsing would just lead to in fighting and a scramble by the West for even more money and resources. Just more neo-imperialism, really. That's the whole point of this video
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@herlescraft Georgia is a throughway for Russian trade into the Middle East, Iran, and Turkey. Currently Azerbaijan is friendly, but has been getting closer to Turkey, so Russia invaded to prevent American power projection in its most economically important area. And to quell ethnic infighting, which was a genuine problem- Abkhazians have had fears of being Georgianized (Kartvelified) since the Russian Empire. Russia already has access to the Baltic, and the military strength to enforce their free passage. Russia would only be gaining a slightly better geographic position by taking the Baltics.
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Wow. So you genuinely, truthfully just want only Western countries to stay together and geopolitical challengers to the West to collapse? Thanks for re-affirming that the imperialist mindset is alive and well. You've done a rather good job hiding it behind rhetoric, but it's nice to see someone be completely honest about what Westerners really want
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@nsevv If it means continuing to subjugate third world countries by forcibly liberalizing their markets and then employing slave labor to enrich the EU? Yes, it's just as bad. I would even say worse. Russia, if you believe its cruelty, is at least non-discriminatory.
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@recoil53 It has to do with them joining the EU because they are just continuing the cycle of colonial exploitation. The success of the EU as a trade bloc rests on the institutional power built up by the UK, France, Spain, etc. My "rant" is that it's just about getting yours and telling everyone else to piss off, rather than valuing self-determination or freedom. I just wish the post-Soviet Eu members would be honest about that instead of moralizing
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