Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by prox 1571 days ago
I found this article very enlightening : https://www.csis.org/features/kremlin-playbook-3

From the center of strategic and international studies. It describes how the same ideology (white male christian) worldview is connected to Putin and Trump, and how the West is viewed as decadent through the moral lens of the fundamentalist churches in both the US and the Russian orthodox church.
2 comments
LegitShady 1571 days ago
white male christian is not an ideology. The first is a skin color, the second is a gender, the third is a religion. Pretending that you throw those three things together creates some coherent and common ideology is not logical thought
link
prox 1571 days ago
No, and maybe I could have worded that better. But that’s part of their identity and what they rally around. If you read the article you would see what I mean.

From the article “Here traditionalism and identity are fused together such that disrupting one threatens the other. Any demographic change (particularly immigration from Muslim-majority and non-White countries, exacerbated in the public perception by low birth rates) is viewed as a direct challenge to identity and tradition.”

So maybe the better word is “strategic conversatism” as per the article.

link
t0suj4 1571 days ago
Conservatism is relative term. It basically means "keep what we have and carefully evaluate new things".

Conservatism in the US is not what conservatism in France is. Conservatism in Mexico is not what conservatism in Brazil is.

Putin's version of conservatism, as mentioned in the article, is only applicable to Russia and countries with similar culture.

Comparing Trump to Putin is like comparing Nixon to Brezhnev.

link
prox 1571 days ago
So when Trump is praising Putin, where does that come from? What does he admire?
link
t0suj4 1571 days ago
I think Trump's praises may increase his chances for Putin to accept Trump's proposals. IIRC Trump wrote a book about making deals that's why I believe it.

Besides that I think that Putin made genuinely smart strategical steps to ensure that nobody will get between him and Ukraine... How it will turn out we yet have to see.

Cornering a leader with nuclear capabilities benefits nobody and can get dangerous, leaving him with nothing to lose. I think Trump wanted to use Russia to counter China.

link