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Cake day: June 20th, 2023

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  • Serious question: what’s the card Russia would play to “escalate the retaliatory response” here?

    • they already invaded a peaceful neighboring country - once unofficially in 2014, and then converted it to an official invasion in 2022
    • they are clearly not able to exert any more conventional force on Ukraine, because they’ve been hollowing out their own military to do what they’ve accomplished so far
    • they’re already (and, history note, have been for literal centuries) working to ethically cleanse and culturally genocide Ukraine
    • they’ve already used chemical weapons in more than a few places
    • they’re not going to use bioweapons, because that’s just gonna boomerang back into their face
    • they’re not going to start using tactical nukes, because that would sure as fuck get the Bundeswehr and Wojsko Polskie and Forces armées françaises and friends to directly commit a bunch of tank divisions and air support to the conflict
    • theyre not going to start using strategic nukes because that would end with (yes, a lot of other catastrophic damage, but) Russia effectively ceasing to exist

    Russia’s response here is, in the realm of geopolitical calculus, essentially meaningless, and not a credible retaliatory response.

    Or put another way: Russia isn’t playing any geopolitical cards as a response because it can’t.







  • Why are people still convinced that the courts have any meaningful power anymore? The orangeboi regime has already flagrantly ignored a ton of court rulings; they’ll continue to ignore more court rulings. They don’t care. It’s not “who’s gonna let me”; it’s “who’s gonna stop me”. Orangeboi et al have inserted their own loyalist flunkies into the leadership of all the organizations that can effectively function as the enforcement of court decisions. There are no guardrails anymore. “Checks and balances” is and always was a gentlemen’s agreement, and it’s no longer being honored.