Lmao literally while supporting Russia for doing the exact same thing but like a billion times worse.

This never happened in US history and I don’t think americans have the spine to do anything even remotely close to this.

Thailand is incredibly welcoming and my favorite place on earth. You’ll have no issues with your transition here though you need to make real money abroad or have good set of skills (like certified teaching) to get local employment.

Thailand visa is very easy. You can get elite visa which is like 12k usd for 5 years.

Tbh I think Japan is mostly doing fine and China has much more time given in entered the issue with tech that is much more mature.

Which is really weird give how decentralized and hard to control the world is right now. This empire strategy is a failing one for everyone involved.

Except that those with nukes will never allow any country to develop one.

Taiwan tried to in the 80s and got immediately shut down when a scientist defected to the US and revealed the nuke facilities and that’s shut down by allies. And look at them now on the brink of being invaded - bet the scientists feels real fucking stupid.

Eventually it seems like developing nukes will be easy enough i secret that everyone will have them. Apparently it would take many countries like Japan only a year or so to develop nukes in an emergecy so I imagine in 20 years that number will be few months for most countries.

Ngl this is a crazy move. Now the opposition will be utterly confused. Maduro is an evil man but also wtf.

It"s not an engineer-coded action tho. It’s more of a authoritarian-signal coded one.

Tbh I think if any country is positioned to overcome demographics problems it’s China. They have all of the manufacturing infrastructure and investing heavily into robotics and low maintenance systems. So I really dont understand such a stupid political move. As if 0.1$ more expensive condoms will start creating babies. It almost feels like a big show of control to people rather than anything tangible.

Only after you change lemmy.ml to lemmy.megalosers

Hong Kong is a small tax haven - Taiwan is a full independent country. I really think we’ve past the point where physical annexation can work with guerilla warfare and sabotage being so easily accessible in this day and age. I think CCP agrees that’s why it’ll take a decade to wear Taiwan down still

China has some really big domestic issues right now with record unemployment rates so naturally their drumming up nationalism to distract people. Though AI boom is carrying China through and I really hope they back down.

From what I see on Tiktok right now the propaganda machine is in full swing. Every video on Taiwan is spammed by bots saying “Taiwan is China”. With Taiwan’s opposition blocking defense budget it 100% seems like China will go through political offense first before invading.

Sometimes I day dream how cool free China would actually be

It’s a flaw of empires in general. They become this pervasive machine where ends always justify the means and there’s just too much power and slow rare of change. Just a bad system no matter how you look at it.

Yay CCP is slightly less cruel than a medieval monarch

But that’s not conservatism per se, it’s just fascism

I feel like “conservatism” has lost all rationality. I do get that it’s totally possible that “not rocking the boat” could be a good solution to society’s progress for some niches but 99% of the time it’s absolutely irational.

In fact, most conservative issues like “traditional family unit”, “gun freedom” are better approached through progressive frame like incentives to celebrate local culture and protecting human rights like rights to self defence - these are fundamentally progressive thoughts that actually solve the issue in a real meaningful way rather than just hiding behind in-action.

I really try to understand conservatism as a thought movement but there seems to be no actual thought behind it. I genuinely don’t get it.

Conservatives need brand new online communities that do not push them farther into the brain rot.

That’s an oxymoron as conservatism is already a brain rot

Nice.