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How could you tell that Russia was "hard authoritarian" when Putin came to power? I don't think there is a meaningful distinction. I also think it's immoral to

• KptMarchewa 4y ago
  >How could you tell that Russia was "hard authoritarian" when Putin came to power? He bombed his own people to come to power. If not then, then in 2008, when he invaded Georgia. Even if not then, then surely 2014 would be the final whistle, right? No. Nord stream 2 was started to be build 4 years later. >I don't know where you live, but I would certainly not want Czechoslovakia to be intentionally kept poor during communist dictatorship just so that some Western politician could stroke his ego about how is he fighting against communism. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/Pomnik_Ronalda_Reagana_w_Warszawie_2015.JPG https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/Pomnik_R... This is Ronald Reagan monument in Warsaw. I, and many Polish people are thankful for his hardline stance he took against our occupiers, meaningfully contributing to crashing their economy, which ultimately made us free.
  • js8 4y ago
    > I, and many Polish people are thankful for his hardline stance he took against our occupiers, meaningfully contributing to crashing their economy I think this is bordering on masochism. To me, hurting people (even economically) in order to make them "free" (which Reagan didn't, in fact) is just morally reprehensible, patronizing and authoritarian. I also think that you don't know much about Reagan. He supported policies that were explicitly against education of the middle class (trying to made universities into a pay model) and pro-segregation (like hard stance on drug war). He almost started a 3rd world war. This is all on record. That's the thing with authoritarians - they have many faces. They can be perceived very differently by different groups. That's why you cannot just to simplify it as you did. I am very skeptical when somebody says, we need to sacrifice lives of X people today in order for Y people (Y>X) have better lives in the future. I don't know of an example where there isn't a solution (although possibly slower) without the sacrifice, and often you can have both. Human live is precious and therefore we should value human lives now more than some kind of vague improvement in the future. We can always change society, but we cannot resurrect a dead person.
    • KptMarchewa 4y ago
      >hurting people >sacrifice There is no sacrifice. People in Poland still had food and shelter. Even North Korea gets humanitarian help, if their tyrant allows it to. I'm not against that. I'm against making them more powerful. Food does not change that, but transfer of technologies or means of production - which happened with Russia and China, and even Poland [1] in the 70s strengthened the regime, making the fall longer and more painful. US, and any other country, has no obligation to prop up failing dictatorships technologically or economically - which they and also famously Germany - did. >I also think that you don't know much about Reagan. He supported policies that were explicitly against education of the middle class (trying to made universities into a pay model) and pro-segregation (like hard stance on drug war). He almost started a 3rd world war. This is all on record. Internal policies of Reagan, and a lot of external ones were bad. Still, he was right on that one, compared to failed policies of Nixon and Brandt. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polski_Fiat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polski_Fiat