Right-wing NPCs
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I don't agree. The splitting isn't what made Russia weak. You think if Russia still occupied Kazakhstan, it would be mighty again? Of course not. All the economic resources that make Russia relevant today are in Russia, not the outlying former Soviet states.
The true reason that Russia failed to become strong with the fall of communism is the culture of corruption that communism promoted. Communism, being an unworkable system, forced Russians and other communists to "cheat" in a corrupt fashion to bring the rigid inflexible unrealistic communist system into line with something that could function. This corruption, in turn, was suppressed in some but not all of its forms by the state. Once communism fell, the top down state pressure against corruption was removed. So "capitalism" never thrived. Instead, a subverted, captured, manipulated unfree market emerged wherein corruption dominated. A corrupted "capitalism" lacks the core features that make capitalism work: free and open trade. The game is instead rigged so people with corrupt advantages have the deck stacked in their favor, so they aren't kept honest by open competition. That's why Russia is poor. Corruption. Hell, Putin himself is corruption personified. He is the kingpin of a state built on corruption.
The Red America would not be corrupt, it would be a superior state in terms of values and laws and systems than the America we have now, since it wouldn't have the blue half dragging it down.
Nah. We wouldn't fight. Over decades, the Red states would pull ahead of the Blue economically, and then when the disparity became great enough, we would re-absorb the Blues through force and purge the Leftists in order to rebuild their failed states.
Why do politicians spend billions on ads if they don't think votes matter because the system is rigged? Seems like a foolish waste of money. Why do they aggressively make campaign stops in battleground states? Why is literally everything they do perfectly aligned with what a person who actually believes that America is a democracy governed by the voters would do? Seems like an enormous waste of time and money when they could just have a meeting in a dark room with the "elites" like Putin would, and save themselves the trouble.
I think losing half your population definitely hurts you in terms of power. Of course, the Russian heartland was subsidizing the poorer areas in Central Asia and for some reason the richer Baltic states, but the state as a whole was better off with 300+ million people rather than 150 million.
Particularly the Ukrainian SSR was a prize: with a Slavic population of nearly 50 million.
Russia was corrupt before communism, during communism and after communism.
But the blue half, if it is half, has more than half of its GDP and about half of its population.
That is very optimistic. But there is no reason to believe that such countries would not be at each other's throats. The Confederacy and Union were immediately, after all.
Because the ads are about which puppet will execute the will of the elites. Obviously, everyone wants to be president, even if you hold very little power when you hold that position.
Literally nothing is. Everything that happens, is in accordance with the preferences of the elites. This is not just my own observation. See the Princeton studies. Similar studies have shown that other Western so called democracies are really oligarchies.
Even Putin goes through the charade of an election, and for the same reason. People are more obedient when they think that what those idiot politicians do is 'the will of the people', when it's really the will of the lobbyists, MNOs and elites.
I would think watching the war in Ukraine, you can see population does not equal power. That hasn't been true to some degree dating back to WW2, with Japan being able to generally defeat the Chinese despite having a much smaller population, but it's only become far more exaggerated since then. A small rich nation like Singapore is a lot more powerful than a big poor nation like Madagascar even though Madagascar has a 5x higher population. GDP, technological sophistication, and doctrine matter by far the most. Manpower plays a very minor role now.
Technically you can go back to the 1800s and the British Zulu war, or the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs, to see examples of how a much smaller, but better organized and technologically sophisticated force can crush a much larger one.
Half of America's GDP is still the strongest country in the world. The Red US would have a large majority of America's land area, probably over 90%, and all the natural resources. Blue America would just have the west coast and northeast, basically. The Blues would be highly dependent on the Reds for things like power, food, and most everything else. Thing about liberals is that they concentrate so completely in urban cores.
That's different, because the Confederacy was clearly weaker on paper and everyone knew it. So when they got mad about not getting their way politically and said "ok then, we'll leave", the much more confident North thought that beating the South down would be a walk over. Nobody really thought it would be a long, bloody war, or they might not have started it.
Obviously there would be some conflict in some form, but not a whole "Civil War". The reason being that the Red states would be more powerful. They'd have the majority of the land, military, and resources. So the Blues wouldn't have the same confidence the Union did. Most Blues would be happy to have a national divorce.
I think the main issue that would arise if that most large Blue states have most of their land areas as Red. These Red areas would want to join the Red country, and the Blues might try to stop them. I think they'd fail militarily, and then we'd end up with a solution where you'd have county-level votes for which country to join to settle it.
That doesn't follow. People wouldn't want to be president if it's just a puppet position. Trump certainly wasn't anyone's puppet. Biden is, but that's highly unusual and a special case. Obama, GWB, Clinton, Bush, Reagan weren't.
Uhh, except the Trump Presidency actually happened. American elites are overwhelmingly left wing, and yet GWB won, and Republicans win all the time.
It's obviously a charade when he does it, though, same with other authoritarian states.
It is if you use it. Sure, all the rest helps. But GDP of Russia is something like 5 times higher per capita than your vassal. Technology and doctrine will likely be much better as well. Ukraine had more of one thing: endless hordes to send to their deaths.
I'm surprised you don't know the real reason the Spanish prevailed over the Aztecs. It had nothing to do with technology, except perhaps their armor.
Sounds good, but both would be very much weakened by this. Look, I think it's great for the US to be weakened, but that is also why I think this would never happen. You simply are not going to have two states that are at near parity bordering on each other, while they're at peace.
Story of basically every war. Why did you think I was very much in favor of ending the Russia-Ukraine war ASAP, even with conditions you claimed amounted to a Russian defeat?
Won't this lead to CRAZY amounts of fragmentation? Oh, we're a county here in the middle of blue, but we're red. How do we cross to red?
Trump could get nothing done, because he stood against those who actually wield power. I hope DeSantis would be able to evade them, but I am not optimistic. Neither am I sure that he is not just another establishment type pretending to be a Trumpist. He just seems too good to be true.
As for the rest. They carried out the wishes of the elites, so yeah, they are puppets. But president is still very prestigious, so people want to be president.
The "Trump presidency" got nothing done. Republicans are useless. Bush was a Democrat who accomplished one thing, which is enrichting the military-industrial complex. Oh, and Roberts and Alito. I'll give him credit for the one good thing he did. But that was after he tried putting his cleaning lady on the Supreme Court.
Also when the Americans do it. Remember how it was supposed to be Jeb vs. Hillary? Neocon 1 vs. Neocon 2. Wow, so much choice. And when Neocon 1 lost, they did everything to make Neocon 2 win, which would have happened except for a series of freak incidents and Trump's ability to withstand attack.
Without Western help, Russia would have exhausted Ukraine's ammunition eventually just like Stalin exhausted the Finns ammunition and eventually won the Winter War. Russia started the war with a bad military doctrine left over from the USSR, and has been slow to learn. While Ukraine's doctrine is also Soviet, the Soviets were in general a lot more competent at defending (it's easier) than attacking. Thus, the overall net advantage has been in Ukraine's favor.
Ukraine's combat deaths have been consistently lower than Russia's by all accounts except for Russia's official government claims.
I do actually know all about that conflict. If you're referring to Aztec's tributary vassals who revolted and joined the Spanish, yes, they played a role, but they were by and large cowards. It was the Spanish men themselves who formed the tip of the spear and did the brunt of the fighting. Could the Spanish have done it completely alone? Probably not, but they were the decisive element that brought down the Aztecs, and they engaged in many battles where they were grossly outnumbered and yet they'd win. This was thanks to a combination of training and doctrine, steel armor and weapons (not just guns, but swords, the Aztecs didn't even have steel), and having superior leadership and strategy.
Engulfed areas could not defect, only border areas. Austin Texas can't say "I want to join blue" even though they're 90%+ libtards, because they're thousands of miles from the other blues. But Upstate New York all being red? Sure they could switch sides en masse. The Blues only really control the big cities. The liberal Northeast is basically a giant mega-city from roughly DC up to roughly Boston. That would all be Blue. But it's surrounded by red country. If two Blue cities were close enough to dominate a red area in between them, they would, but if they're too far apart and the red area in between is too large and populated to dominate and control, then the reds assert themselves.
Of course there would be a substantial blue minority within the red country, but they'd have no power outside of their cities, and those cities would have less autonomy to do dumb blue shit since the states would exert more control.
You win by being popular, like Reagan. If anyone can pull that off, it's DeSantis. He has clearly communicated that he will fight for the Right as opposed to be a squishy weakling. He has also been smart enough to not overstep and get wrecked, like many republicans did by foolishly trying to ban abortion outright. Florida smartly only reduced it to 15 weeks, a popular compromise solution that took the issue away from Democrats. Politics is all about how to maneuver to maximize what you can get without provoking a backlash. Trump couldn't do that. DeSantis so far has been able to.
He tried and his base, including me, slapped him down right away, and he immediately backed down. That woman was an idiot. I heard her give the graduation speech at my ex girlfriend's law school and I was shocked by how much she sounded like a retarded politician and not a judge. I remembered thinking she was an affirmative action hire.
Republicans are overeager to promote anyone who isn't a straight white male, thinking it's "tactical" to undermine the Democrat IDPOL argument, when in reality it is playing right into IDPOL and capitulating to it. Sometimes we get VERY LUCKY, like with Clarence Thomas. Most of the time, the Republican AA hires are clowns. Many are worse than clowns: they're grifters.