@Stigma The thing that always interests me about this sort of death toll is that it gives the lie to the idea that protests work. Protests work if you have an "oppressor" who plays fair -like Gandhi under the British. If the oppressor does not play fair you remove him by force or you die.

Peasant's rebellion worked fine till Tyler said to the king "be of good cheer brother" (or words to that effect, I can be lazy in looking up quotes). He thought the king would play him fair. He did not understand what the medieval aristocracy understood about power -if you have the military power to kill your enemy, you have all the moral authority you need. Fairness is a luxury of the modern anglosphere, gradually worked out from Tyler's attempt through to the Victorian reformers.

Democracy is granted by consent. You can't win it by begging or ranting. If you have an oppressor who will not play fair you must remove him or he will remove you.

Lefties don't teach that on campuses. Pussy riot was a big hit over here. Went to the gulag none the less. Every little lefty protest is a luxury of freedom, not the scaffold on which freedom stands. Freedom is earned. Democracy is only arrived at by consent between the orders of society.

@adam-l I mean maybe, right? It’s a new paradigm so who knows what it will actually look like.

There’s more to, I assume, Russia’s isolation than their expansionism. For a start, the EU and member states almost committed suicide virtue signalling against Russia with the sanctions on Russian oil. The liberal hegemony of the EU has been so complacent over these decades that it hasn’t thought to buttress its position against aberrant behaviour from more powerful entities like the USA.

In short, Trump is calling it out. What the hell are you going to do about it? The EU can’t survive enforcing sanctions on the US, they didn’t prepare for it, like they didn’t prepare for Russian expansion.

Despite this reality, the EU still aren’t signalling a kind of unity or preparation. They’re absent, high on their own supply. In a pragmatic universe, that’s the definition of an unreliable partner. So “we” either shake of the malaise and face the reality of the situation, or we get consigned to the history books.

I know which I’d rather.