Objectively, the US has in every respect backslid on its objectives compared to a month ago.

Iran, on the other hand, went from not controlling the strait to controlling the strait.

With friends like Uncle Sam, who needs enemies?

It's like Russia declaring that Russian control of Moscow is an objective of the war with Ukraine.

> renouncing nuclear program,

If that was the objective, the US should be declaring war on the guy who scrapped the Iran nuclear deal, because it was accomplishing just that.

I don't need to trust what the media tells me about them, I can just listen to what those people and the politicians elect actually say, and what they say is flippin' 'Climate change is a chinese hoax' lunacy.

There's no need to sanewash them, or make excuses for them. It's not a matter of 'disagreement of what to do', it's that they are either really fucking stupid, or are disingenuously courting people who are really fucking stupid.

It was.

But that doesn't matter - the result was incredible misery and ruin for the country, and it drove reactionary, anti-western sentiment, kind of like how reactionary sentiment over $3 eggs drove Americans to flip the table and rally behind Trump II.

It pretty much was. Afghanistan was a UN-sanctioned war, and Russia did not object to it from its position on the UNSC - and provided support for the invasion.

Iraq (Three permanent UNSC members voted against it), on the other hand, was a clear indication that the rules-based world is a sham and a scam... And that the only rule that matters is 'Fuck you, make me.'

You know how Trump is criticized for pursuing idiotic short-term gains that torpedo long-term trust and legitimacy? That was also the real, lasting legacy of Bush II's first term. Anyone playing by the rules is a fool.

It would be great if what you said is true, and people were just arguing about what to do about it.

It's not, though. "It's a hoax" is both the start, and the end point for a large portion of the population, the media, and the politicians that represent it.

It's just that some countries coalesce around ones that are somewhat less... Blatantly offensive to thinking people.

Russia opened up to the West in a big way in the first half of the decade, and worked with NATO and the UN in the first half of the Bosnian war.

The result was... A complete collapse of the domestic economy, and a second half of the Bosnian war where NATO no longer felt like it needed to get Russia on board to do whatever it wanted in the region.

The degradation of this relationship was not the fault of a single party. Clinton and Yeltsin (an utter turd of a man) worked hard to have a productive relationship, but then Bush gets elected and takes a more... Unipolar view of the world. As does Putin.

The land that people live on, whether it's in a city, a suburb, or in a rural manner is a rounding error compared to those demands.

Once they are locked up in the same cage, we all get to move on. Sounds good?

Whatever replaced them could hardly be worse than the shit we currently have. I refuse to believe we live in a global maximum.

But yes, it's possible you are sufficiently outside the grain that you don't have any obvious tells about your social class. And, of course, a dedicated confidence man could fake enough of them to fool enough people enough of the time.

But that would be the exception that would prove the rule. And even if they were publicly available, you have to be deeply pathological to be looking up the tax records of your acquaintances, I can't expect that to be a regular problem in Sweden.