Yeah, the _smaller_ the country, the bigger the wank has to be to look, well, wanky. Doubling China is world-shaking: doubling Germany is very impressive: double Luxembourg and, well, yes, that's very nice I'm sure, can I have some more pie?
Bruce
AHC: Russian Uberwank
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Yeah, the _smaller_ the country, the bigger the wank has to be to look, well, wanky. Doubling China is world-shaking: doubling Germany is very impressive: double Luxembourg and, well, yes, that's very nice I'm sure, can I have some more pie?
Bruce
It depends on your definition of "being screwed up".
If by "being screwed up" you mean "losing Empire" then the most screwed up guys are the British.
And a bunch of other guys like the Dutch and the like.
My personal opinion is that multinational Empires falling down is a trend of the 20-th century. It's quite unavoidable.
You look like a rich kid boasting of your father's yacht.
It is not your merit that you were born to a prosperous part of the world.
How do the Americans put it? A kid of the happy sperm?
It's quite pathetic you know...
It depends on your definition of "being screwed up".
If by "being screwed up" you mean "losing Empire" then the most screwed up guys are the British.
And a bunch of other guys like the Dutch and the like.
Aside from loss of Empire (and whether the Ukraine and Belorus can be considered "colonies" is a whole other kettle of nationalist fish) there is negative birth-rate, Mexico-or-worse poverty, short life expectancy, authoritartian government, etc...Russia is rich in varieties of screwed up. If you say that the Nazi invasion didn't change things for the worse, you also imply the converse, that with no Nazis things would not have been any better.
Bruce
Hm, this is 'screwed up' from your 'rich kid' point of view.
But this is how half of the world lives and always lived (except for negative birth-rate maybe
). Actually much more than the half, majority of human kind. It's a nature of things. You may call that a norm. And your life is an exception from this rule. You are just lucky to be born to the prosperous part of the world. And you are lucky to know about this 'screwd up life' from Internet or see it through a window of a tourist's bus.
Ye, I do imply. You got it right.
I mean for Russia.
I Blame Communism
Banned
I appear to have touched a nerve and I don't know why. The line was a variation on the very funny "Ireland can't be such a bad place if Germans/Frenchmen/coloured fellas/cripple boys/sharks want to live in Ireland" running gag from The Cripple of Inishmaan and not to be taken at any kind of face value (Irish literature hasn't got face value). I would have thought it was obvious that it wasn't me speaking, since it's written in 'Synge-song' - the (slightly) exaggerated literary version of Irish English and its charmingly odd Gaelicised syntax - rather than my usual style, because I followed it with a smiley, and because I've made perfectly clear that I'm not Irish. I know not everybody's going to get the reference, but McDonagh's hardly obscure, and you mentioned a fondness for Irish culture so naturally I thought it wouldn't be inappropriate or obscure to refer to some.
But I don't actually see what's so bad about it even if you take it seriously. The only reason I can think of for this to offend would be that I was somehow doing down the Belarussians for poverty, but why would I do that? Belarus is pretty well-off from a development point of view, as I, being the local crazed Stalinist, would be the first person to tell you. And the joke was from a play set at a time when Ireland was itself a poor country.
My father is a civil servant and has not ever owned a yacht, though I make no bones about being thoroughly middle-class (my signature is something of a joke, as Morningside has a terrible reputation throughout Scotland for being douce and bourgeoise). But I have in fact seen poverty much worse than what exists in Russia first-hand and not as a tourist, and I must ask why you're so offended if those of us from privilileged bits of the Earth feel that the distribution of wealth brought about by our past acts of brigandage is unjust and want more people to be able to live more comfortable lives.
Surely to go around saying that people 'ought' to live in poverty would be a much more offensive thing to do, especially when it's my country that cheerily created a lot of that poverty?
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Russian: My friend, I'm sure he meant no offense (as he points out above). Please, don't get angry and start flinging insults. There's really no point.
As to the topic of this thread, I unfortunately did not include something; along economic lines, Russia must be as strong as Canada in 2000. And this wealth must not be concentrated in a small elite.
As to the topic of this thread, I unfortunately did not include something; along economic lines, Russia must be as strong as Canada in 2000. And this wealth must not be concentrated in a small elite.
I Blame Communism
Banned
If so, so must Scotland, and Britain lasted the century at any rate. There may be life in the old girl yet!
MarshalBraginsky
Banned
In my opinion, it's not a proper national wank unless you at least double your size and/or population from OTL maximum....
Bruce
[1] Which is to say, the challenge hardly even makes it to basic wank, let alone Uberwank. Now, Russian Korea, Japan, north America, and India: NOW we're getting into serious wanking.
[2] Of course, economic wanking works too: give Russia all its 1914 territories and Switzerland's GNP/Capita, that's a fair wank...
Yep. Other territories that may be a bit too challenging for Russia to acquire can be viewed as a wank.
You guys must understand something when you call someone's life or country "screwed up":
most of population in Africa lives in 'screwed up' conditions
majority of Latin America does the same
as for Asia - you know themselves
So this is billions and billions of people.
Please, choose your words very carefully when speaking about them as you would definitely do if you were in a room with the guys from these "screwed up" miserable unfortunate parts of the world
And one more thing:
my grandfather from Belorussia lived like a Pakistani peasant, I mean he was so poor. But you would never see these days more satisfied, confident and in peace with himself man. He lived a happy life, he grew up six children.
I sincerely envy him with all these stresses of today. (By the way he spent a few years in Syberia in GULAG.)
As for me lately I bought an apartment in the centre of Sain-Petersburg, I earned it myself. It costs as a similar apartment in major European cities, I checked. So this 'nerve' is not about me personally. I earn much more than a dollar a day.
I Blame Communism
Banned
You guys must understand something when you call someone's life or country "screwed up":
most of population in Africa lives in 'screwed up' conditions
majority of Latin America does the same
as for Asia - you know themselves
So this is billions and billions of people.
Please, choose your words very carefully when speaking about them as you would definitely do if you were in a room with the guys from these "screwed up" miserable unfortunate parts of the world
But whatever the interesting variant cultural attitudes on display here (I wouldn't consider calling something 'screwed up' an insult: 'tis the Presbyterian fatalism, perhaps), I never said anywhere was screwed up. The phrase 'screwed up' is not even part of my idiom. I made a humourous variation on an already humourous quote from a Martin McDonagh play is what I did.
Who is 'you guys'?
And one more thing:
my grandfather from Belorussia lived like a Pakistani peasant, I mean he was so poor. But you would never see these days more satisfied, confident and in peace with himself man. He lived a happy life, he grew up six children.
I sincerely envy him with all these stresses of today. (By the way he spent a few years in Syberia in GULAG.)
As for me lately I bought an apartment in the centre of Sain-Petersburg, I earned it myself. It costs as a similar apartment in major European cities, I checked. So this 'nerve' is not about me personally. I earn much more than a dollar a day.
My one grandas was from Orkney and the other was a physicist and they were both wonderful men who never let terminal disease break their spirits. Much as I like people's family stories (it's the Norse in me, I suppose), I really don't get what this has to do with the fact that I, and I repeat, quoted a Martin McDonagh play. By Martin McDonagh. The playwright.
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Hm, this is 'screwed up' from your 'rich kid' point of view.
But this is how half of the world lives and always lived (except for negative birth-rate maybe
Ye, I do imply. You got it right.
I mean for Russia.
So, you suffer from learned hopelessness? After Russia is overrun by the Mongols, it's doomed to be one of the also-rans? Poverty is the lot of the human race?
The "natural state" of humans is running around the savannah and stabbing antelope with pointy sticks. All after that is improvisation.
Being poor is no sin. Using poverty to claim some sort of moral superiority is, however, trolling.
I am an American and I think _my_ country is screwed up, with a deeply disfunctional political system and a tremendously ill-informed populace, and I have no trouble with people from other nations pointing such things out. If thin-skinned nationalists can't take criticism of their countries, too damn bad.
Bruce
I Blame Communism
Banned
Ah, yes. Seems a bit rum that he tells us off for dismissively lumping people together and then isn't bothered to quote the right chap out of two.
Anyway, well points well put about 'screwed up' and so on. It must be the well-known Presbyterian fatalism of American culture.
MSZ
Banned
So, Hitler was the Russian's fault?
Bruce
Seeing that they had no problems allying with him, terminating the buffer states protecting them from him and seeking to bring war to Europe, they did kind of get to reap what they sow.
I Blame Communism
Banned
And that leaves Chamberlain and Daladier where? Quite apart from the issues raised by that treacherous 'they'.
MSZ
Banned
When did Chamberlain and Daladier ally with Hitler? Munich doesn't really compare with the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact.
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The competence of Russia's leaders has never really been a particularly important detail: they usually win their conflicts by throwing ten times as many people at them as their opponents do, which requires very little competence on the part of their leaders. <- sarcasm
I Blame Communism said:
I can think of about five instances in Europe. Of these, four were perpetrated, in part, by the fifth. For that reason, while I sympathize with the four, I have no sympathy for the fifth.
Ok, ok, rich kid, you made your point.
You comforted me. Thank you. I feel better now.
Anyway.....I'd consider a Russian-wank to be one where they keep the Baltics, the Ukraine, Belarus, and at least Kazakhstan with a GDP per capita comparable to Britain and a population equal to or higher than the US's. Really, the World Wars were the Executioner's Axe on what could have been viewed as Russia's inevitable rise to be the kingpin of Europe.