Do you people even fucking read anymore?Jaekus wrote:
When you're resorting to Yahoo answers to back up your arguments, well...Macbeth wrote:
lol Yahoo answers
I don't really need to continue, do I?
Stupid fucks.EM wrote:
Also, a google search for "longest continuous current government" doesn't bring up a lot of answers, but apparently yahoo answers is sick of answering it....
It's funny though, I hardly ever receive criticism for a point, belief or actual argument and more often than not it's criticism over a source, quote out of context, ad hominem attacks or the fact I'm American.Jaekus wrote:
I spoke to several teenagers on the topic, this now corroborates my argument and I will whinge if I receive criticism from my peers.
I think you're missing the point. We're in a "Debate" forum (laughable I know), not /b/.Jaekus wrote:
Some people had a go at you on the internet, aren't you a special snowflake?
not really. capitalism never actually took hold here, because of our usual lag behind the western civilization - one doesn't simply turn the kind of peasantry we had here at the time of 1905 revolution into consumers required for real capitalism to take off. that was what stalin managed to identify and play to his advantage when he created kolkhoz'es - collective farms which, unlike individual farmers, could participate as consumers in the industrial chain.Uzique The Lesser wrote:
russia transitioned from crony feudalism to crony capitalism.
nobody has ever had anything like that. democracy is a myth - an ideological hocus-pocus invented to create an illusion of participation to lowings and extra medium's. in reality democracy does and always will be serving interests of the ruling class.russia has never had democracy or an enfranchised majority.
which works just like that everywhere in the world, only under different names. at least in soviet union they had provided those, who were being "robbed blind", with decent living conditions. social care, medical care, education, security - what does "enlightened west" has over that? possibility for a very small minority to shit diamonds and die of coke od's?just a peasant common-mass, kept under some safe illusions with the myths of orthodox religion / mysticism (or its political correlative, marxism, which has just as juicy a 'reckoning' as any judo-christian faith), and an small elite who rob everyone else blind.
you don't know the half of it. but our current state has nothing to do with what i'm trying to get across.Macbeth wrote:
Russia is a hell hole.
I can agree that full blown democracy doesn't exist, mainly because the logistics of it are/were implausible, however, the great thing about the western world is that we have attempted to get as close to it as we possibly can. While we are technically a representative republic, those representatives are elected based on what those particular candidates stand for in relation to what the majority of people in the area they represent want.....thus a very rough form of democracy. Now what those representatives actually DO once they are in Washington is another story and is in my opinion one of the shortcomings of our system. It actually draws a very strong parallel to your country and how the members of the Communist party didn't always govern/live/abide by communist ideals, morals or ethics. Simply put, those in power rarely use power correctly.Shahter wrote:
nobody has ever had anything like that. democracy is a myth - an ideological hocus-pocus invented to create an illusion of participation to lowings and extra medium's. in reality democracy does and always will be serving interests of the ruling class.
Define "decent". I really don't think living conditions, medical care, education and security differences between the West and the Soviet bloc can even really be debated. One is dictated by the strength and prosperity of a country versus the the strength and prosperity of a world economy. What do you do when the state has provided you with a house, a job, a wage, a car, an education and food for generations and suddenly that state no longer exists?Shahter wrote:
which works just like that everywhere in the world, only under different names. at least in soviet union they had provided those, who were being "robbed blind", with decent living conditions. social care, medical care, education, security - what does "enlightened west" has over that? possibility for a very small minority to shit diamonds and die of coke od's?
speaking for "literally everyone"... well, when you grow older, it'll pass.Macbeth wrote:
Everyone understands the "point" you keep trying to make. You know Russia sucks but are sure it isn't much better outside of Russia. Literally everyone else thinks that is either bitterness or Stockholm syndrome.
i still have to hear any coherent argument for why literally everyone think what they think. unlike you and literally everyone i was born and lived for some time in soviet union and been around the world. and i'm still waiting for at least some explanation why does literally everyone keep telling me, what my home country was/is like, when literally no one have been here.We have been through this like 20 times.
well for a start your 'critique' only applies to america, really, not the "enlightened" west. france and germany where the pro- and anti- post-enlightenment traditions took off all have relatively comfortable socialised democracies that work well. uk too, though slightly american in its cultural proclivities. scandinavia and northern europe are all echt-democratic. so your critique about 'lacking basic comforts' only really applies to america - which fair enough. but that's not a criticism of 'capitalism' per se. capitalism just exists in an uneasy equilibrium with liberalism in the west... in america, capitalism is winning. in (old) europe, the liberal-democratic ethos is kind of prevailing. just. we'll see about that.Shahter wrote:
not really. capitalism never actually took hold here, because of our usual lag behind the western civilization - one doesn't simply turn the kind of peasantry we had here at the time of 1905 revolution into consumers required for real capitalism to take off. that was what stalin managed to identify and play to his advantage when he created kolkhoz'es - collective farms which, unlike individual farmers, could participate as consumers in the industrial chain.Uzique The Lesser wrote:
russia transitioned from crony feudalism to crony capitalism.nobody has ever had anything like that. democracy is a myth - an ideological hocus-pocus invented to create an illusion of participation to lowings and extra medium's. in reality democracy does and always will be serving interests of the ruling class.russia has never had democracy or an enfranchised majority.which works just like that everywhere in the world, only under different names. at least in soviet union they had provided those, who were being "robbed blind", with decent living conditions. social care, medical care, education, security - what does "enlightened west" has over that? possibility for a very small minority to shit diamonds and die of coke od's?just a peasant common-mass, kept under some safe illusions with the myths of orthodox religion / mysticism (or its political correlative, marxism, which has just as juicy a 'reckoning' as any judo-christian faith), and an small elite who rob everyone else blind.
Last edited by Uzique The Lesser (2013-06-15 12:21:19)
fair enough. still, the democracy is but a tool, what matters it the ends to which it is employed. and the world is about to have to re-assess the ends, because there's almost no space left for the growth required by capitalism.Uzique The Lesser wrote:
well for a start your 'critique' only applies to america, really, not the "enlightened" west. france and germany where the pro- and anti- post-enlightenment traditions took off all have relatively comfortable socialised democracies that work well. uk too, though slightly american in its cultural proclivities. scandinavia and northern europe are all echt-democratic. so your critique about 'lacking basic comforts' only really applies to america - which fair enough. but that's not a criticism of 'capitalism' per se. capitalism just exists in an uneasy equilibrium with liberalism in the west... in america, capitalism is winning. in (old) europe, the liberal-democratic ethos is kind of prevailing. just. we'll see about that.
you misunderstand. or maybe i've not been clear. after soviet union collapsed russia's been turned into a kind of caricature of western world. as such, we are even worse in many aspects than you atm. drug use and alcoholism are definitely among those. but i was speaking about soviet union were majority of the people didn't even know what the word "narcotics" means.also coke use in russia is huge too. as is all drug use.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're not even old enough to have lived under the communist government. You seem to have a very rosy view of how things were, and it goes against everything we in the west have been taught. Yes, some of that is a bit of propaganda that has been turned into 'fact', but you can't deny that the brutality with which the system was implemented was unconscionable. We in the West have images burnished in our minds of Soviet citizens waiting in lines wrapping around the block waiting for their daily bread ration, with many people going home disappointed. We have heard tales of how almost every piece of machinery produced by the USSR was a piece of shit produced by shoddy workmanship right off the assembly line. We have heard stories about the extreme dichotomy between those who were members of the Party, and everyone else. Dachas in the suburbs, special driving lanes in Moscow, imported and forbidden food etc.Shahter wrote:
speaking for "literally everyone"... well, when you grow older, it'll pass.Macbeth wrote:
Everyone understands the "point" you keep trying to make. You know Russia sucks but are sure it isn't much better outside of Russia. Literally everyone else thinks that is either bitterness or Stockholm syndrome.i still have to hear any coherent argument for why literally everyone think what they think. unlike you and literally everyone i was born and lived for some time in soviet union and been around the world. and i'm still waiting for at least some explanation why does literally everyone keep telling me, what my home country was/is like, when literally no one have been here.We have been through this like 20 times.
well... i knew i was touching on a sour place, but this is just stupid.Uzique The Lesser wrote:
oh yeah the soviet union was so great when it came to drug use. the allmighty state managed to curb people's innate and natural want to find oblivion or intoxication please. there hasn't been a single society in the history of modern man / anthropology that have not had some form of narcotic or drug-use within the wider culture. the only way a totalitarian state changes this is either a) through sheer state-exercised brutality or legal force, literally exterminating all signs of drug use/drug user; or b) it has a clever control of the national statistics/history books/public policy, so it can airbrush this activity out of the 'official' history and 'official' culture. just because it's underground, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
it seems the 'great' soviet union used a little bit of both. state brutality and incredibly harsh sentences to punish drug users or people with addiction/emotional problems (e.g. 5-10 years in a soviet prison for even 'tempting' a friend onto drugs, that's a good law...) plenty of academic studies point to your public cover-ups and statistic massaging of this 'issue', too. this would suggest otherwise as to your 'teetotal heaven' crap.
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1 … 2323465281
also your "control and damage prevention" in the old soviet days was disastrous. the ex-soviet union treated drug use in two ways: imprisonment and forced labour. that doesn't cure addicts, or help them. almost all medical and pathological (and accordingly more legal) advice will say that drug addicts or people with underlying addiction/emotional issues need rehabilitation and pastoral care, not 5 years digging roads. but okay. old soviet motherland was the best. the situation may be worse now, but that doesn't logically infer that the soviet system had a 'better' method of treating drug problems. it merely replaced one form of misery with another. that doesn't 'solve' anything, nor bring the quality of life up.My career as a Russian historian began during the Cold War. My first trip to Russia was in 1963, with subsequent trips in 1977 and 1985. Between 1989 and 2005, when Russian archives opened to historians, I traveled to Russia once and sometimes twice a year for research and lectures at conferences, universities and on Volga River cruise ships. After 2005, research on an American entrepreneur who lived in Paris and Nice necessitated trips to France. However, I still correspond with Russian colleagues (and now French ones) through e-mail and Skype.
My two foci in Russian history have been politics in Late Imperial Russia and health care in Imperial and Soviet Russia. I continue to publish on these subjects. I am currently translating a Russian book about a family in Imperial and Soviet times.
Last edited by Uzique The Lesser (2013-06-15 13:27:40)
you are wrong.Jay wrote:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're not even old enough to have lived under the communist government.Shahter wrote:
speaking for "literally everyone"... well, when you grow older, it'll pass.Macbeth wrote:
Everyone understands the "point" you keep trying to make. You know Russia sucks but are sure it isn't much better outside of Russia. Literally everyone else thinks that is either bitterness or Stockholm syndrome.i still have to hear any coherent argument for why literally everyone think what they think. unlike you and literally everyone i was born and lived for some time in soviet union and been around the world. and i'm still waiting for at least some explanation why does literally everyone keep telling me, what my home country was/is like, when literally no one have been here.We have been through this like 20 times.
<here be the worst kinds of cliches and stereotypes about soviet union, mixed with outright falsehoods>
my life in russia began in 1976, when i was born the way pretty much every other human being gets into this world. i've been living here ever since and have seen with my own eyes what a "russian historian" had to gather during short visits and via e-mail and skype. i've actually spoken to actual people who actually treat actual addicts for actual drug dependencies. i'm also friends with some former russian police officers who have seen even more on the subject from the perspective that leaves no doubt whatsoever. what do your "academics" have on that?Uzique The Lesser wrote:
My career as a Russian historian began during the Cold War. My first trip to Russia was in 1963, with subsequent trips in 1977 and 1985. Between 1989 and 2005, when Russian archives opened to historians, I traveled to Russia once and sometimes twice a year for research and lectures at conferences, universities and on Volga River cruise ships. After 2005, research on an American entrepreneur who lived in Paris and Nice necessitated trips to France. However, I still correspond with Russian colleagues (and now French ones) through e-mail and Skype.
My two foci in Russian history have been politics in Late Imperial Russia and health care in Imperial and Soviet Russia. I continue to publish on these subjects. I am currently translating a Russian book about a family in Imperial and Soviet times.
you don't get it, do you? yes, soviets weren't really concerned with those who abused drugs, nor were they any good at treating the addictions. what they were really good at is huntung down and destroying those who made and sold the fucking drugs. that was their way of addressing the problem and they were very successful with it.also your "control and damage prevention" in the old soviet days was disastrous. the ex-soviet union treated drug use in two ways: imprisonment and forced labour. that doesn't cure addicts, or help them. almost all medical and pathological (and accordingly more legal) advice will say that drug addicts or people with underlying addiction/emotional issues need rehabilitation and pastoral care, not 5 years digging roads. but okay. old soviet motherland was the best. the situation may be worse now, but that doesn't logically infer that the soviet system had a 'better' method of treating drug problems. it merely replaced one form of misery with another. that doesn't 'solve' anything, nor bring the quality of life up.