This is Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, the most senior and respected diplomat on earth. I look at the people we have in the US government, and they look and act like clowns in comparison, like foolish children. See State Department Spokesman Matt Miller, for example, or Admiral John Kirby, complete morons in comparison. It's embarrassing. We seem to be wholly incapable of producing anyone like this anymore, on any level, someone who commands respect.
Why does the west seem entirely incapable of producing competent, intelligent statesmen anymore?
I've thought a lot about this and I've come up with a few reasons:
Republican Democracy fundamentally shifted away from protecting the interests of the people and shifted to protecting institutions. Meaning that politicians are elected on the basis of their ability to serve the bureaucracy, rather than the voter base.
We have an economy that fundamentally relies on war (the failure of diplomacy) and therefore, aggressive, incompetent foreign policy is preferred by the institutions.
Several generations of people since WW2 have been raised on the idea that globalism and liberalism is the natural and correct way to approach the world. This relies on an assumption that people will naturally get along and act in harmony and respect to each other, if left to their own devices. This is an extremely naive assumption.
I think you've nailed it. There may be some other factors we're not including like the way US politicians have to resort to begging for money every few years. Otherwise you totally nailed it.
THAT is a FANTASTIC observation as concerns the USA (not as much the West)!! You're right! This USA "pay to play" campaign donation oligarchical "system" to be an ambassador just to host lavish parties is corrupt and incompetent to the CORE!
All other nations have PROS at the top! We have midlings and career civil servants WAY down the power hierarchy.
Hell, 25% of them don't even speak the host country languages!! This is a great question!! 👊🏻
I was listening to a public affairs radio program (you know;the kind which abounded on radio before Ronnie Ray-Guns' Toronto, Ont.-born FCC Chairman Mark Fowler gutted the Fairness Doctrine which mandated all viewpoints be equitably aired on radio and TV, leading the way to dull-normal white boy rage radio to foul the airwaves) circa 1982 and the host said Americans claimed they wanted political giants but voted for folk their size (Trump and Vance are moral dwarves). Politicians realized they just had to pander to Americans' childish selfishness (about half of Yankees operate at a sixth-grade level) and thus few decent, honourable folk run for political office, as they'd be called "elitists" or worse by the adult/adolescent voters they need to be elected.
If that's true though, then why are virtually all of the NATO countries in the same boat. All seem to have abysmally low approval ratings. If we are all being pandered to constantly we should be thrilled with our leaders and that certainly doesn't seem to be the case. Most recognize a downward spiral and neither left or right can produce meaningful improvement.
In my opinion, I don't feel like we're pandered to at all, I wish we were. I would argue we aren't represented at all, we are completely irrelevant. They pursue their own agendas and don't give a damn what the people need or think. The Canadian government behaves just the same.
More than that though you've got me perplexed on a whole variety of things you said. What's with the weird terminology? When I turn on the radio currently there's almost nothing on it. So why would would empty airwaves be a white boy thing? Secondly I remember radio from that era, it was dull as hell and dangerously sleep inducing. More to the point though, you single out two but they're all horrible, Biden, Harris, Bush, and Cheney are all war criminals. I mean that's a pretty low bar yet that's what we get. We can't seem to produce anything better.
Lmao, the bloke is a clown, he’s not respected, he uses bullying tactics to get his way. He has totally unhinged rants swearing Armageddon on everyone. He’s that good, when he arrives at a diplomatic meeting the usual thing everyone does is leave. He’s a complete snake, trying to get countries to back Russia. Not even Russians like him.
I can't agree with you on anything you said. I've watched him carefully for years, he doesn't go on unhinged rants, he speaks very carefully and deliberately. He's the longest serving and most senior diplomat on earth along with the Chinese Foreign Minister. We have nobody like him in the US, I wish we did.
I don’t actually need to, the point is the clown is pathetic and has huge rants, if you are not aware of his rants then you don’t follow him at all. When he enters a room the majority leave. I’m really surprised he has not fallen out of a window yet, amazing how accidents prone Russians are.
No I did not avoid it, I just said I don’t need to, the fact is ‘lavarov’ will as soon as it’s going bad and for the 3 day war that has been a while, jump into the ‘Russia did not start it’ and ‘Russia will nuke everyone’ rants. He’s a clown. He’s not respected in the West, so do not even consider him to be, the various diplomats that attend the UN avoid him. He’s banned from most countries, he’s a snake.
I think you're only making my case. You may not like the example I chose, but the fact is he's light years better than anyone in the west. We simply don't have anyone who doesn't come off as a fool.
He's absolutely right though on what he says about the nonstop provocations of the west, and Russia would be justified in using nukes if it comes to that.
It’s a convention war, exactly how would the escalation of nuclear weapons be justified? Are you okay the UK nuking Israel for what it’s doing to Gaza? India nuking Pakistan for Kashmir? The Russians have a very simple way to end this, withdraw to pre 2012 borders, The 2nd most powerful country is not winning a war against a country it said would only take 3 days to defeat and they have now been invaded.
So if a country is not winning a war, that’s justification to start WW3 and pretty much the end of civilisation? Wow, no wonder you like lavrov.
Russia has an even better way to "end" it by killing every last Ukrainian soldier and dictating the terms of surrender. If the West wants to continue to fire long-range weapons into Russian as they are contemplating, then Lavrov has said they are revising their nuclear doctrine. What does that mean? For decades, Russia has had a "no first strike" policy. Essentially, they would only launch if fired upon first. Well so as we watched over the last few months, there were two incidents where the Russian nuclear early warning system was deliberately knocked out, first one, then several weeks later another, effectively blinding them. This went unremarked in the western propaganda press, or just blown off as coincidence. The Russians know it was done deliberately and have been signaling their doctrine now is a "first strike" policy. Meaning if it even looks like the West is going to strike, as we've already given them two enormous reasons, then they launch first. Problem solved.
Imagine if this were reversed. Imagine if: *Russia in 2014 overthrew the government of Mexico *Installed a new pro Russian government *Loaded up the country with billions in weapons *Installed 12 FSB bases to wage covert warfare as we did with 12 CIA bases *Installed nukes on our border. (The US would absolutely apeshit on that alone) *Blew up a major oil pipeline *Then lied about all of this relentlessly
All so the US can steal the 10-12 trillion worth of mineral resources under eastern Ukraine.
This is what I mean about they would be justified, the Russians realized quite some time ago the US is out for blood.
You do realise that Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania all share a really long border with Russia and NATO has been operating there for years. Anyhow, it’s pointless having a rational discussion with someone views nuclear weapons as a justifiable response for conflicts.
What does that have to do with the US attempt to use Ukraine in a proxy war? I'm simply saying we've given them ample reason. I think it's insane they've gone this far, that the US & UK governments are willing to risk all of our lives for this. They've had us on the brink now for two plus years, 500k lives lost, it's horrific. All so they can get their hands on that 10-12 trillion.
They have had us on the Brink for 2 years? History is not your strong point. The Russians Annexed Crimea when? If you believe the Russian side of things then lol. Also it’s not just US and UK, Poland, Baltics, France and half a dozen other democratic nations assist. Face it the Russians got in to something they should not have, the Russians do not really have room to comment. A 3 day war, that caused Finland and Sweden to shred their neutrality and join NATO and all B52, F35, Typhoons etc to help defend them, Poland spending far more on Defence, in fact nato as a whole is spending far more since that 3day illegal invasion, not exactly a well thought out plan, oh and nearly a Russian coup.
Crimea isn't relevant to any of the points I made, I don't know why you're pretending it is. I would say the US got into something it shouldn't have. Ukraine acted as a neutral buffer zone between east and west, now because of our stupidity that is gone. Putin has said he will "correct the mistake of Vladimir Lenin". Essentially the creation of Ukraine in the first place" was a mistake and it will "corrected" aka cease to exist. Finland as well had a border that didn't need to be defended, and now because of their stupidity they are going to have to spend an enormous amount militarizing an 830 mile border. Talk about stupidity and creating an enormous vulnerability. All of these countries though had enough problems without needing to spend wasted millions and millions down the drain, so I don't quite see the advantage here, just the destruction of a country and an entire generation. I hate to say it but we're the bad guys in this situation, we absolutely are. They tried to pounce on the 10-12 trillion in resources and instead we've got 500k dead and a lot of blood on our hands. It's evil.
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America has had many good statesmen. What we have now is a collection of Affirmative Action rejects and other assorted incompetent political operatives.
Plenty of competent statesmen in the west. The problem is the people, in today's society people that have accomplished little to nothing have platforms to express their opinions. Before modern times you had to have some sort of status to have an audience. So what's happened is more younger or less educated people have an audience allowing them to pretend their knowledge about a subject when in reality they are usually spewing emotionally
Who are these you're referring to though? Certainly nobody at the federal level. Maybe a few state governors? Even in the Senate, the last one I can think of who wasn't a complete idiot was maybe Orrin Hatch.
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