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If you're American, try to imagine America partially breaking up and Washington, Oregon, and Idaho have joined an alliance helmed by China. You're not loving i

If you're American, try to imagine America partially breaking up and Washington, Oregon, and Idaho have joined an alliance helmed by China. You're not loving it, you want to make some sharp moves to prevent more states from considering it, and you'd like to get those states back somehow in the long run. This is a wildly imperfect analogy, but...

tremon 5y ago
You mean an alliance helmed by Canada? Ukraine is not allying themselves with a superpower on the other side of the globe, but their western neighbours.
- saalweachter 5y ago
  I feel like "... and thirty years later ..." needs to be in there somewhere, also. If the Pacific Northwest broke off tomorrow and tried to join Canada, I may still be opposed to war simply out of pacifism, but I wouldn't be terribly shocked if we had a Civil War II over the issue. If the Pacific Northwest broke off tomorrow, the largest remaining Federal-ish government in the formerly United States recognized it as an independent country, and then thirty years from now it was contemplating an alliance with Canada...
- JohnBooty 5y ago
  I said it was a flawed analogy. =) However, in this admittedly flawed analogy, I thought it was pretty clear that Washington, Oregon, and Idaho were meant to be analogous to the multiple NATO countries already sharing borders with Russia. Putin's invasion of Ukraine is a dastardly war crime, but it didn't happen in a vacuum either. Was attempting to explain the (shitty) reasoning behind Putin's actions.
mopsi 5y ago
If you're American, try to imagine what other states must've done in order to get Washington, Orgon and Idaho to seek protection from China: wars, massacres, genocide. Can you imagine resettling the whole Mormon population of Idaho to the furthest corners of Alaska? A knock on the door awakens you. You're given half an hour to pack a single suitcase, and then your whole family is pushed into a cattle wagon going to Alaska. No food beyond a slice of bread per day, no other supplies while traveling there over three weeks. If babies die, their bodies are just thrown overboard by soldiers. When you arrive, you're assigned a mine to work in for free as slave labor and a dirt mound to sleep in. That's what took in Eastern Europe to seek isolation from Russia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Sov...

tremon 5y ago

You mean an alliance helmed by Canada? Ukraine is not allying themselves with a superpower on the other side of the globe, but their western neighbours.

saalweachter 5y ago
I feel like "... and thirty years later ..." needs to be in there somewhere, also. If the Pacific Northwest broke off tomorrow and tried to join Canada, I may still be opposed to war simply out of pacifism, but I wouldn't be terribly shocked if we had a Civil War II over the issue. If the Pacific Northwest broke off tomorrow, the largest remaining Federal-ish government in the formerly United States recognized it as an independent country, and then thirty years from now it was contemplating an alliance with Canada...
JohnBooty 5y ago
I said it was a flawed analogy. =) However, in this admittedly flawed analogy, I thought it was pretty clear that Washington, Oregon, and Idaho were meant to be analogous to the multiple NATO countries already sharing borders with Russia. Putin's invasion of Ukraine is a dastardly war crime, but it didn't happen in a vacuum either. Was attempting to explain the (shitty) reasoning behind Putin's actions.

mopsi 5y ago

If you're American, try to imagine what other states must've done in order to get Washington, Orgon and Idaho to seek protection from China: wars, massacres, genocide. Can you imagine resettling the whole Mormon population of Idaho to the furthest corners of Alaska? A knock on the door awakens you. You're given half an hour to pack a single suitcase, and then your whole family is pushed into a cattle wagon going to Alaska. No food beyond a slice of bread per day, no other supplies while traveling there over three weeks. If babies die, their bodies are just thrown overboard by soldiers. When you arrive, you're assigned a mine to work in for free as slave labor and a dirt mound to sleep in. That's what took in Eastern Europe to seek isolation from Russia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Sov...