Brazen acts of terrorism abroad, banana republic governance at home, and a self-inflicted economic death spiral spell the end of western dominance
The "slippery slope" theory is often called a logical fallacy because it typically takes a seemingly minor event and attributes everything that happens following that event to the initial action, even if there is plenty more involved in triggering subsequent events.
Unfortunately, while not being a perfect theory, the slippery slope analogy can apply incredibly well to politics and human behaviour in general if you look at trends and behaviours as a whole as the "minor events" that lead one down a path rather than a single, clearly defined moment in time triggering all future events.
A perfect example is the modern descension of western culture into a perverse transgender/LGBTQBS+ rabbit hole.
What began decades ago as a movement to have the wider public accept gay and bisexual individuals has slowly spiralled out of control and unravelled into a disgusting cult-like cesspit.
Rather than the original calls for "acceptance and equality", the movement slowly but surely became a call for special treatment; that individuals in this subset of people should be celebrated and are to be held above their peers, so much so that they cannot be made fun of or criticized, a treatment that even the so-called oppressive people the group initially wanted equality with have never received.
As the years have gone on the plunge down the slope of indecency has devolved into utter madness.
Schools are forcing illogical "gender-theory" on children that flies in the face of science and basic fact and heap praise on individuals who identify as trans or any of the new make-believe labels that seem to be added weekly.
Children are being (sometimes inadvertantly, most often quite purposely) incentivized to become a part of this group and to believe in the pseudo-religious teachings, spreading harmful gender dysphoria like wildfire amongst the upcoming generations.
It isn't just kids being manipulated however, as the push towards the trans ideology has led to a wave of munchausen syndrome by proxy with a system quite literally encouraging parents to mutilate perfectly healthy children and irreparably harm them both physically and mentally.
Doctors performing the barbaric procedures turn young and physically healthy children and teens into long-term patients that "require" a steady influx of hormones and other pharma products, earning easy money in exchange for their lack of morals while the parents and families of these victims receive hollow praise and attention for their "special" child or family member.
What was once illegal across virtually all western nations, such as discriminating against job candidates based on race, gender, or sexual orientation, is now becoming the norm at institutions across the west, from Harvard discriminating against Asian students to the University of Waterloo having various positions only available to people who "identify as" women, trans, "non-binary" or "two-spirit", once again reinforcing the notion that these individuals deserve special treatment and as such incentivize the behaviour.
This movement has even increasingly led to attempts to normalize pedophilia, something that you may recall many groups warned of years ago alongside mentions of the "slippery slope" the movement was heading down.
Prominent and outspoken members of the trans and "LGBTQBS+" community are regularly caught molesting children or in possession of child porn, many schools and other institutions let "drag queens" that are insulting caricatures of women strip and dance in front of young children, pride parades have devolved into disgusting sexual displays that frequently include exposure in front of children, and many professors in colleges and universities have been pushing for terms like "pedophile" to be eliminated and instead for people to use terms like "minor-attracted person" so as not to insult or "dehumanize" some of the most digusting and vile "people" you could ever find.
Those that speak out about it are attacked by the "woke" mob and censored by social media organizations who hold a virtual monopoly over modern public discourse.
And once again, heading further down that oh-so-slippery slope, instead of just being locked out of the virtual town square, now those who commit the cardinal sin of "wrongthink" are being locked out of their bank accounts, being kicked off of financial platforms like Paypal, or being kicked out of their bank entirely (ironically, JPMorgan Chase kicked Kanye West and his companies out of their bank for statements they didn't like, yet continued doing business with Jeffrey Epstein even after his conviction and subsequent warnings they received about recurring criminal activity).
This aspect of modern society is just one major example of what has historically been referred to as "culture rot" or "societal decay" - trends that dismantle a society's longstanding norms and morals, which typically contribute to a decline in a society's cohesiveness and ultimately have almost always come before a collapse of said society.
Ancient Rome espoused the same sort of culture rot that the modern west is exhibiting, with sexual perversions becoming socially accepted and eventually encouraged, the very idea of gender and basic facts of life being questioned and misunderstood, longstanding cultural norms and values were attacked with any semblance of a shared culture eroded, and its peoples' became obsessed over societal status above all else.
This same style of cultural degradation and decay can be seen across western institutions and ideologies, from the irreparably corrupt governments that lead us face-first into chaos to the scientific community being taken over by major pharmaceutical and environmental companies.
The economy is likewise being run straight into the ground, and has been for quite some time - major problems with the current financial system can be traced all the way back to the advent of central banks (particularly the formation of the Federal Reserve in the US back in 1913), but mismanagement, corruption, reckless spending, money printing and market manipulation has increasingly propelled us into an inevitable collapse that draws nearer every day, in what is again eerily reminescent of the final years of the Roman empire.
As our society has allowed itself to rot, our "leadership" continued to plummet to new depths of corruption and greed, fuelling a perpetual cycle that has trapped more than one mighty empire on a path to ruin.
As the public let those in power continue to get away with more and more, their actions became more and more egregious, more and more destructive - from a war in Iraq over non-existent WMDs to daily drone strikes of civilians in various countries around the globe, we have sat and watched as the once-coveted west has become a terrorist organization of the highest order - and that tyrannical rule has increasingly set its sights within.
Election "interference" from corporations turned into full on rigging of federal elections, and even openly bribing citizens for their votes in various western countries (like in Quebec's latest election, or Biden's ridiculous student loan "forgiveness").
Big pharma's increasing control over people's health morphed into government mandated injections which pumped now-proven harmful drugs into people across the globe, with money still being funnelled to the very people that very likely caused the COVID "pandemic" in the first place to boot.
Those that call out the insanity or dare to speak the truth are labelled as "conspiracy theorists", "far-right extremists" or my favourite, "Russian bots", attacked by mainstream media which are the very people that are supposed to be uncovering these things. Government now works with tech companies to censor dissidents and it's gotten to the point that western leaders openly call freedom of speech a "weapon of war" that must be quashed.
We have high profile, supposed members of the "free press" running cover for our failing governments at every turn, from claiming inflation can be a "good thing" for the middle class to parroting government claims about suicide bombers being killed when in fact the Biden administration killed an innocent family including seven children with a drone strike.
Even eugenics, which has been a staple of morally decrepit societies, is making a huge push in the west, from promoting abortions of special needs children with flawed prenatal tests to the Canadian government providing assisted suicide options to patients that are physically healthy or are not suffering from life-threatening conditions.
Accelerating to Free Fall Speed
The worst thing about recognizing the path of a "slippery slope" is how quickly things escalate once the ball really gets rolling.
Western society as a whole has been the world's superpower for hundreds of years now, with the United States seizing the reigns from the British empire and becoming the dominant political force post-WWII.
Like most western countries, America was founded on Christian ideals and morals, but above all else, the USA was founded on the noble premise of freedom for all individuals, enshrining the rights of its inhabitants to protect them from tyranny - both from their own government and from "the majority", which has historically been the downfall of democracies that have run their course.
To those that study and understand history, the American constitution is easily the greatest document ever produced by any government because it was written not by idealists that believed those that would follow in their footsteps would hold their same morals and dedication to their country, but by realists that knew they wouldn't.
Rather than a document that told the people what they could do, it told the government what it couldn't. It was a document by the people, for the people, outlining what future governments had to provide and what they had to abide by.
Seemingly every rogue government scenario was accounted for by providing the people with remedies, such as the mighty second amendment that, unlike the claims of some disingenous people nowadays that pretend it was for hunting or mere personal defense, was written to empower the American people to stand up and demolish a tyrannical government that didn't adhere to the constitution.
Unfortunately, just like every other sector in the west, the education system has progressively devolved and failed to teach modern generations the importance of freedom and of a functioning republic, to the point that the very government that America's founding fathers feared and put every effort into preventing is not only in power but becoming more totalitarian by the day.
No matter how great the "law of the land" may be, no matter how well a constitution is written, ultimately it is up to the people to enforce those ideals and determine their own fate - and that is why every civilization has inevitably torn itself apart.
Some form of governance is necessary for humanity to adequately function and for society to progress past a certain point, yet at the same time, governments have always grown into the enemies of the people they govern - anyone that thinks they're living in an exception has clearly not spent much time learning about world history.
In the west, particularly in the US, society became the free-est and most equal in recorded history due to their established rights and constitutional protections, but as time has gone on, those freedoms and the power of individuals have been diminished by increasingly corrupt and authoritarian governments, the spread of crony capitalism, and the crumbling of societal cohesion.
Through most of its history, the west has largely been viewed as being on the "right side of history" - and though there are certainly many exceptions, in the grand scheme of things, this has mostly rung true.
From the abolishment of slavery across western countries to increased international cooperation and technological advancements that led to a significant decline in worldwide poverty and vast improvements in living conditions, the west was (largely) a force for good.
That facade would remain for quite some, but in reality the moral superiority claimed by the west quickly crumbled following the second world war.
Following the demise of Hitler and the end of the greatest war in human history, western governments shifted their focus to the threat of the Soviet Union, which was admittedly large at the time. In doing so however, they also showed just how weak their morals and integrity really are.
Punishing the vile war criminals that were responsible for the most inhumane and disturbing crimes in modern history took a back seat to the communist threat - high-profile perpetrators were punished in trials in Germany, but many others were simply ignored in order to prevent putting German society (Japanese war criminals were almost entirely ignored as well, including the disgusting "soldiers" that participated and orchestrated the infamous Rape of Nanjing, as the west focused almost entirely on the Nazis) in another situation where they felt harshly punished, which is of course what led to the rise of the Nazis in the first place following the first world war.
What was especially appalling was the west's willingness to work with unabashed Nazis.
Not only did they turn Germany and Japan into powerful allies with strong economies in order to gain their allegiance against the USSR, but they took all of the Nazi scientists, engineers, and other "great minds" that they could get their hands on, secretly setting them up with brand new lives in the USA complete with cushy jobs at NASA and other organizations courtesy of Operation Paperclip.
Crimes committed by these despicable individuals were completely forgiven and dare I say, rewarded, by the US government, all in the name of gaining an upper hand on the Soviet Union.
The USSR of course also recruited Nazi scientists for the same reason, however they didn't give their "recruits" high-paying jobs or idealic lives of luxury - no, the Soviets put the Nazis to work essentially as slaves until they stopped being useful.
While some may cry foul of what amounted to prison labour, considering we're talking about Nazis that committed unbearable atrocities against millions of people, the Soviets were pretty clearly the more moral of the two groups at least when it came to their handling of post-war Nazis.
A moral society is a just society, and rewarding war criminals is the antithesis of justice and makes a mockery of the pillars of which the United States was founded on.
The Soviets were certainly not the "good guys" in any other sense of the phrase, but it is to be noted that they actually attempted to persecute criminals from WWII far more than the US did.
In fact, the US has widely been reported to have covered up Japanese war crimes just as they did with "important" Nazis, specifically their biological experiments (typically conducted on POWs) and attempts at germ warfare, which in many cases were just as despicable and brutal as anything the Nazis did.
These horrendous crimes against humanity were completely ignored in exchange for the military and scientific data that those ghastly experiments produced, which declassified documents show the US claimed was "invaluable" due to the fact it "could never have been obtained in the United States because of scruples attached to experiments on humans".
Though Operation Paperclip and its importation of Nazis into the US is now quite well known, their pardoning of the likes of Surgeon General Shiro Ishii and his Unit 731, which conducted gruesome and deadly human experiments to research biological and germ warfare, is far from common knowledge.
Like we've seen so often in the scientific and military communities throughout history, ethics were nothing but a guise and the west's thirst for power trumped any facade of morality even back when morals were held in such high regard.
The US would itself continue the Nazis tradition of human experiments and war crimes as the military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about took hold and war became the hot new trend amongst western elites.
To this day, biological and chemical weapons continue to be developed by the US - and in some cases, are tested on American citizens, such as the countless "trials" performed by the CIA as part of their Project MK Ultra, the full extent of which we will never know, but just what has been admitted to is downright barbaric.
What they don't do on their own soil, they pay other countries to do on theirs - from paying China to conduct insanely risky "gain of function" research on viruses that very likely caused the COVID-19 outbreak, to funding bio labs in countries like Ukraine that they admitted contained biological weapons, the United States has lost all authority to claim what is and isn't moral at every level of the world stage.
NATO Expansionism Leading to the Russia-Ukraine War
Proxy wars between the Soviets and the US became all the rage after WWII, with a state of perpetual warfare becoming the desired outcome for the leaders of the global superpowers. Suddenly the United States, which used to stay out of conflicts that didn't directly involve them, had their hand in every conflict imaginable around the globe, even instigating many of them through covert ops and underhanded political powerplays.
NATO, originally formed as a military alliance to defend against Soviet aggression, engaged in mostly indirect warfare throughout the "cold war" era, and ultimately, the alliance led by the US won the day as the USSR collapsed in the early 90s.
Given American leaderships' actions following WWII, one would think that the US and the west would have welcomed a newly formed Russia into the fold, expanding trade and opening its citizens' eyes to the wonders of capitalism and the western way of life as it sought to gain a major ally.
While Russia was looking to make new friends in its rebuilding phase, the US opted to instead further isolate the failed state, cozying up to as many former Soviet countries it could to try and force Russia out of the global picture and relegate them into obscurity.
One would think that, with the Soviets gone and Russia looking to rebuild its own nation, that the proxy wars would stop - instead, the US continued to engage in countless engagements by funding and arming political and militant groups with a policy of "regime change" any time a country's leadership didn't conform with their vision or had resources that they wanted, a game which Russia would ultimately get back into as they tried to rebuild their once far-reaching empire with any allies it could muster.
The west was willing to protect and work with Nazis after the Holocaust; it was willing to work with Japanese war criminals after the Rape of Nanjing; yet when faced with an opportunity to turn a desperate Russia into a grateful ally, they opted to pour salt into the wound and continued to play war games.
The exact thing that NATO was supposedly put in place to protect against, is ultimately what NATO became the biggest sponsor of as it continued expanding and instigating conflicts.
In many cases, the western public didn't even realise they were "at war" as actual western troop deployments were kept extremely low and warfare transitioned to primarily proxy forces (and later drone strikes) - the average American has no idea that the US and its allies have turned countries like Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria, and dozens more into failed states with millions of casualties in their wake.
Alienated from much of the world, Russia slowly and painfully rebuilt in the years that followed, keeping relationships with China (which would later prove a major self-inflicted blow to the west) and select few other countries intact using their plethora of natural resources as bargaining chips to keep them from total isolation.
As the Putin regime took over, Russia continued to rebuild itself back into a world power while realizing just how important independence and self-sustainability was in order for them to survive long-term - something that the rest of the world is now being turned on to as the ideals of "globalism" are being shattered in Europe.
As NATO continued expanding and taking political potshots at Russia to assert its dominance, western leaders saw an opportunity to not only cash in big time overseas, but bring the second "cold war" right to Russia's doorstep.
Enter the 2014 Maidan Uprising.
Given that I've already previously covered the main causes of the invasion of Ukraine and the west's role in the 2014 coup in Ukraine, I won't go into much detail here - if you aren't familiar with the Ukrainian situation over the past eight years, I would implore you to catch up on the article and do your own research on what has happened politically in Ukraine over the past few years.
Short version - the United States, during the Obama admin, saw a huge opportunity to become a major influence in the most corrupt country in Europe, and with local tensions increasing against the Russian-backed leader of Ukraine, the US funded and aided a coup that replaced what was seen by many Ukrainians as a "puppet government" with a puppet government of its own.
With the coup ending up successful, much of western Ukraine was happy to have their new government - most of the east, which has always shared much more culturally with Russia and is primarily of Russian descent, was enraged, especially after finding out just how much of the coup and the incidents that preceeded it were set in motion by foreign actors.
The area of Crimea, which had also always had close Russian ties and was primarily made up of ethnic Russians, was quickly seized by Russian forces and annexed into Russian territory after they voted to join Russia instead of staying a part of Ukraine; while many in the west cried foul and stated the vote was rigged, the percentages were very close to how the Crimeans voted in the Ukrainian election and of course no discussions of having a foreign body like the UN redo the referendum were held as the west knew the result would be the same.
The new Ukrainian government didn't exactly win anyone over when they promptly cut off the North Crimean Canal, which supplied almost all of the fresh water for citizens of Crimea. If Crimea was truly Ukrainian and Russia had forcibly annexed their "Ukrainian brothers and sisters", then cutting off their water supply would be an attack on their own people, no?
Following the coup and Crimea's annexation, other Russian-friendly people, primarily in the western regions of the country like Donetsk and Luhansk (collectively referred to as the "Donbas" region), vowed not to recognize the new government. As such, they were attacked by Ukrainian forces, many of whom are composed of extremist militants like the Nazi-idolizing Azov Battalion (which committed many war crimes in 2014 and the years that followed), fueling a conflict that would result in tens of thousands of civilian casualties as Ukrainian forces regularly shelled civilian areas in the Donbas region.
The west meanwhile had installed their new Ukrainian government and turned it into an American laundromat.
While the US sold Ukraine weapons to use on Russian "separatists" and politicians got their usual kickbacks, they also enriched themselves by using Ukrainian companies (particularly oil companies) to give their family members what the mob used to call "no show" jobs (see the likes of Joe Biden's son Hunter) or gave Ukrainian government contracts to companies that "donated" to their slush funds.
The US utilized the incredibly corrupt nation not only to enrich their elites, but to continue antagonizing Russia, getting their newest puppet president Zelenskyy to repeatedly request to join NATO (which would allow NATO arms to be positioned along one of Russia's largest borders, combined with Zelenskyy's requests for nuclear weapons which would be in range of Moscow) and continuing to attack his own citizens that sided with Russia.
When Russia finally had enough and war broke out, rather than any attempts at peace (many of which were quite reasonable), the west has instead opted to wage war at any cost to Ukraine.
Why, you ask? Because their money laundering operation is at stake, and with war, they're making even more money - not only from the incredible amount of weapons that are being sent to the country and raking in billions for arms companies, but the US alone has sent over $80 billion (and counting) to Ukraine in aid.
What happens to all that money when it enters a laughably corrupt nation in the middle of a war? That's the wonderful thing - it all but disappears into the void as no one, as admitted by the US government, can account for it, and instead all that cash flows into Ukrainian and western politician's bank accounts alike, with very little of it (if any) ever going towards the innocent people caught in the chaos.
Proxy wars are a dangerous game to play and always devastate the nations directly involved, but in this case, the US and NATO's games are flirting with global disaster as they've opted to quite literally walk up to Russia's doorstep and spit on a major superpower with the only nuclear arsenal in the world to rival (or possibly surpass) their own.
Playing with (Nuclear) Fire
One thing readers in the west (likely everyone reading this) need to understand is that Russia is nowhere near our biggest enemy right now.
Russia has not been a legitimate threat to the west or our way of life since the collapse of the Soviet Union, which may come as a shock to some that continue to be trapped in their old ways.
Ukraine, despite their disturbingly widespread fondness of Nazism and terrorist groups like the Azov Battalion and the grotesque support these groups receive in the west, and despite their transition into becoming a laundromat for our politicians, is not a legitimate threat to the west or our way of life.
Even China, which is indeed a threat to western society and has purchased influence and political power across the western world at an increasing rate over the last few decades, is not the biggest threat to the west and our way of life.
No, that threat is another beast entirely - it is the enemy within that will be our undoing.
It is our ruling class - the so-called "elites", the paid-for politicians, the corporate sponsors that conspire with our governments in a never-ending quest for expansion, and the media lackeys who happily do their bidding - that are the biggest threat to western society and our way of life.
Not only have they led or accelerated the societal rot we are afflicted with, but now they are brazenly marching us toward a war which would be unlike anything the world has ever seen.
As tensions have escalated in Ukraine, the Ukrainian leadership and their western backers have continued to be at the forefront of these escalations, to the point now that the US quite openly committed an act of international terrorism against not only Russia, but western Europe as well by demolishing the Nordstream pipelines.
For those that don't know, Russia has two major natural gas pipelines that run from their territory through international waters and into Germany, which allows them to sell gas to western Europe directly rather than through pipelines owned by Ukraine, Poland, or other European nations which bite into profits and raise the cost for the rest of Europe.
These pipelines (Nordstream 2 was only recently finished and cost many billions of dollars for Russia to complete) are a massive bargaining chip for Russia as Germany and other western European nations don't have the natural resources they require for energy, and Russia (along with Ukraine, which is obviously unable to export much gas right now given the war) is their main provider.
With Nordstream, Russia was able to provide the much-needed resource to western Europe without having to pay Poland or Ukraine for transport, and as such not only make more money, but can provide Europe with cheaper energy and more of it.
It was a no-brainer for the countries involved, yet the pipelines met massive opposition from their inception via the United States (as well as Ukraine, Poland, and other nations who were making money transporting the gas between Russian and other European countries). Ultimately the EU and Russia completed the project to their mutual benefit, but once the war in Ukraine officially began, Europe issued sanctions on Russia.
Ironically, what was meant to cripple Russia has brought the west to its knees, and that is all due to the lessons Russia learned over the past few decades about the importance of self-sufficiency.
When western companies pulled out of Russia, Russia simply took over their assets in the country and continued running those companies under different names, replacing western supply lines with their own.
When the US and Europe stopped exports to Russia, the Russians simply turned to China to provide them with the few things they weren't capable of making on their own, strengthening an alliance that the US should have formed years ago in place of China.
When Europe and the US banned Russia from using international financial systems and their currencies, Russia turned to China's financial system and then demanded other countries pay for their much-needed natural resources in rubles instead. Those that didn't meet their demands simply didn't get gas and Russia instead sold it to other countries who were more than willing to buy as shortages took hold over much of the world.
To keep their heads above water, many European countries purchased gas at a premium from the US or, ironically, China, who actually just bought it from Russia and transported it to Europe, meaning both Russia and China profitted while Europe was bent over the barrel paying exorbitant prices when they could have been paying their usual rates.
While western nations are crippled by a collapsing economy and soaring inflation, Russia is seeing its economy strengthened and its decision to invest in commodities rather than fiat pay dividends.
These ill-advised moves by the west have led to a massive new power forming in BRICS (which stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) - an economic alliance that is dropping the American dollar as the global standard and is instead reverting back to a gold standard, using their abundant natural resources to create an economic system to rival the west's (and given the west's crumbling fiat system, is well positioned to overtake it).
As the cold grasp of winter approaches western Europe and their electricity and gas bills soar to unbelievable heights that the vast majority can't afford, as Europe braces for rolling blackouts due to their inability to provide their own power (helped along by a dreadful transition to "green" energy), Russia's gas was a lifeline that ultimately Germany, France, and other countries would have had to take to save themselves from self-inflicted doom.
Perfectly willing to let its allies suffer (as it has been for many decades now), the United States opted to take that lifeline off the table and eliminate the likelihood of Germany, France, Italy, and other European nations turning to Russia for help, especially since US energy exporters were making a killing fleecing the energy-deprived nations.
In a clear instance of sabotage, both Nordstream pipelines were destroyed by explosives in the middle of NATO waters.
Of course the Biden administration denies involvement, but they didn't even bother to cover their tracks in what is likely another potshot at Russia, a "see what I can do and you can't do anything" boast since they know that Putin, being the crazy "megalomaniac" that he is, doesn't want to be involved in a nuclear war.
NATO's own naval website back in June claimed that they'd be carrying out an extensive "training exercise" near the island of Bornholm, which is a Danish island that finds itself right near the path of both Nordstream pipelines, and as a result of those training exercises, collected extensive undersea data that would have allowed them to precisely map out the pipelines running through the region.
Around that same time, Danish news reported three US navy ships travelling to the waters around Bornholm, which proceeded to turn off their identification systems (hmm, wonder why?).
According to reports from Sweden and other NATO governments, both Nordstreams were blown up from explosives outside of the pipelines, which eliminates the retarded "Russia sent explosives down their pipelines" theory that some in the media have put out.
Meanwhile, before Russian forces ever entered Ukraine, Joe Biden, as well as his Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, who coincidentally was one of the key Americans involved in the 2014 Maidan coup, both brazenly threatened the Nordstream pipelines should Russia invade Ukraine.
After the pipelines went down, Biden's Secretary of State Antony Blinken was quick to celebrate the sabotage as a "tremendous strategic opportunity for years to come".
In addition, Sweden, which is leading NATO's "investigation" into the pipeline explosions, has already declared that Russia won't be allowed to be involved in the investigation and that it won't even be privy to its findings - it doesn't exactly take a genius to add these things together, but then again our society has been dumbed down beyond relief.
To the credit of the propaganda machine of the United States and the west in general, our society has been conditioned to try to make life as easy as possible for oneself and to outsource all difficult tasks to somebody (or something) else - to the point that people have now outsourced the act of critical thinking.
Rather than taking the time to do some research and draw their own conclusions, far too many people in modern society instead rely on media "fact checkers" and talking heads on social media or news stations to do their thinking for them, and it's resulted in some truly astonishing feats of stupidity.
This is perhaps most exemplified with the current belief that many in the west hold: that Russia itself blew up the Nordstream pipelines.
This accusation has been touted by media outlets and "experts" across the west, including by the likes of John Brennan, the former head of the CIA who brought you such hits as "we did not spy on Americans" and "Hunter Biden's laptop is Russian disinformation".
The first thing that makes this claim so spectacularly stupid is that Russian spent billions to complete these pipelines and benefitted greatly from them - their destruction quite literally offers zero benefit to them.
If they didn't want to use the pipelines anymore, they could (and have when Germany has refused to pay, with Nordstream 2 not even transferring any oil when it was blown and the original Nordstream pumping only a fraction of its capacity) simply turn off the taps at their end.
And if for some reason they wanted to blow it up...why would they do so on the other end of the pipelines, deep in NATO territory where the chances of getting caught are practically 100%? Simply look at the map above to see just how far a Russian sub would need to go into Nato territory, undetected both ways, in order to have sabotaged the pipelines.
In order for that to be true, then Russia is capable of far more than anyone imagined, as they managed to take one (or more) submarines, travel thousands of kilometers through one of the most heavily monitored regions of water in the world that's deep in NATO territory, plant the explosives, and get all the way back to their waters without being detected at any point.
It seems impossible that people would buy this braindead claim, yet look at what some have already bought; according to Ukraine and western media outlets, Russia is "committing genocide" despite simultaneously being "destroyed" by Ukrainian forces, all while civilian casualties in Ukraine are at lower rates than in almost any NATO-led wars, including the US invasion of Iraq which is a country with a similar population.
People also bought that a Ukrainian pilot single-handedly downed dozens of Russian jets despite the Ukrainian air force being utterly decimated in a matter of weeks.
Or how about the mindless drones believing a grandma downed a Russian military drone with a well-aimed pickle jar?
My personal favourite though has to be the story about the Ukrainian grandpa who claims to have shot down a Russian SU-34 fighter jet with a rifle; as if the claim wasn't ridiculous enough, all of the pictures published showing the proud grandpa posing for the camera show him holding a shotgun rather than a rifle.
Just like Russia apparently went through great lengths to capture Ukrainian troops, only to bomb the prisons they held them in to kill them while Russian troops were still inside those buildings.
According to these brilliant minds, Russia also captured a nuclear power plant and then turned around and decided to shell the power plant they were currently occupying.
The scores of Nazi-loving extremists that are a core part of the Ukrainian military, and are now being cheered on across the globe, well those are just "Kremlin talking points" and their sins can be forgiven since they're fighting against the evil Russian empire, even if they're baby-raping members of the Tornado Battalion that were released from prison by Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
They also believe that Ukraine has Russia on the backfoot, since their "counter offensive" successfully reclaimed large areas from Russian troops, which, I'll give them, on paper does seem truthful. Unfortunately, none of these people understand much about war and military tactics, as that's about the furthest thing from reality.
After months of treating Ukraine with kid gloves (remember, Russia had not ever targeted critical infrastructure outside of military targets and arms shipments; power, water, food, even cell towers have been left alone), Russia has finally had enough; taking a more humane approach than NATO invasions left fewer civilian casualties and less collateral damage than any comparable NATO wars, but considering the west has categorized them as genocidal monsters anyway even as Ukraine has been turned into the fascist nightmare that Russia has been portrayed to be, it's come to the point where there's no point in keeping hope alive for diplomacy.
The west may claim that Russia always intended to occupy the entire country of Ukraine, but on planet reality, Russia's invasion force was far too small to hold such a massive land mass, showing their intentions were never to take over the entire country - most likely, as we've seen, it was to secure and hold the Russia-friendly regions in the east, but even that is a tall task to hold for long against a peer military force. Remember, Ukraine is armed and supplied by the US and its allies; this isn't a local militia in mud huts armed with a few AK's and IEDs; fighting a modern military is far different than a lopsided invasion like those of Iraq and Afghanistan, as many volunteers found out the hard way.
With political pressure mounting in Moscow seeking a swift solution to the conflict, the relatively small invading force is soon to be bolstered by a massive influx of troops called up from the reserves.
It's important to note that the claims of "drafts" from the west that have become a common myth are simply that - the only civilians that have been conscripted to fight are on the Ukrainian side, which makes up the majority of their forces - Russia has called on approximately 1 million of their 2+ million army reserves, which are typically former military or those that sign up as reserve forces, similar to how the army reserves work in the US.
Even if a decent portion of those fresh fighters are deemed medically unfit or otherwise are unable to fight and thus aren't sent, that still adds hundreds of thousands of troops to an original force that began with less than 200,000 troops according to the highest estimates. An additional 70,000 troops have also been promised from Chechnya, further strengthening the absolutely massive force forming at the Ukrainian border.
In preparation for the second wave, Russia consolidated their current occupying forces to defend their priorities (being the newly annexed regions in the west) and pulled out of less important areas.
Ukraine then came in almost entirely unopposed to "win" back parcels of land and claim they had the Russians on the run even as nearly no fighting occurred, and in the few cases it did, it was Ukrainian forces being shelled from afar as they moved into the formerly Russian occupied areas.
This "victory" led the incredibly "smart" leaders of the Ukrainian military to pick a fight with neighbouring Belarus by striking their border in several locations.
Although Belarus isn't exactly known as a military power and is a relatively small nation, with approximately 50,000 troops it's just further bolstering Russia's second wave and created another vector for Russian troops to pour in from as Belarus officially announced they would be joining the fray.
Just like their ill-advised attack on Belarus, the Ukrainians misplaced hubris after a moral victory led to them deciding it would be wise to piss off Russia even further by bombing a vital bridge in Crimea, reportedly using a bomb placed in a truck with a driver that may or may not have known he would be performing suicide bomber duties that day.
In response, Russia launched missile strikes against the Ukrainian power grid across 12 cities all across the country, knocking out power in major cities like Kyiv and Lvov and showing Ukraine that they can quite easily send the entire country back to the stone ages if it comes to it.
The strike marked the first time Russia purposefully struck civilian infrastructure (not including Ukrainian attempts at false flag attacks, such as "Russia" bombing a train station using an old Soviet bomb with serial numbers visible that match a batch of missiles previously used by Ukraine, and launched from Ukrainian-held territory no less) and indicates that Russia is shifting to a much less friendly approach.
With the recent escalations, there's no doubt Russia's second wave that's forming at the Ukrainian border is not going to be the slow, casualty-limiting invasion that began this stage of the war; Russia has given Ukrainian leadership every opportunity for peace and de-escalation, but their choice has been made clear, and they are soon going to find out the difference between a so-called "military intervention" and a full-scale invasion.
The Reality of World War III
As much as people may not want to admit it, the only thing preventing World War III right now is Russian leadership.
If the shoe were on the other foot and say, Mexico, was threatening to set up Russian weapons along the American border, NATO would have turned Mexico and leagues of its citizens into dust without hesitation, no years of calls for negotiation necessary.
While western goverments and their media cronies portray Putin as a ferocious warmonger, he has kept a cool head throughout the current ordeal (something that cannot be said for western leaders like Joe Biden, or for Ukrainian "hero" Zelenskyy, who calls for NATO to "pre-emptively" strike Russia in order to deter them from using nukes...which would only give them a reason to use said nukes to defend themselves) and has continuously offered off-ramps and reasonable compromises with western leaders.
Despite the US, the UK, and other NATO nations quite literally calling the shots for the Ukrainian military and giving them a blank checkbook and several armies' worth of advanced weaponry, Putin has not retaliated against any western nations for their hostilities.
Even as the west sanctions Russia, alienates them from the western market, and has the lack of self-awareness to accuse them of war crimes (but denies Russia any hearings at the UN in order to provide evidence one way or another), Putin still offers to resume trade and provide vital resources to European nations that are getting demolished by their deficient energy sector, something that is far from necessary on their end as they're still making a killing selling said resources to other countries.
As western leadership continues to antagonize and attempt to isolate Russia, Putin has continued to try diplomacy with the citizens of the west, aiming speeches to the people that are inarguably more truthful than anything you'll hear out of the likes of Joe Biden, Emmanuel Macron, Liz Truss, Olaf Scholz, or Justin Trudeau.
It's no surprise then that you won't find any transcripts of Putin's speeches on mainstream news sites or translations played on the evening news, even in a time where nuclear war is at its most likely since the Cuban Missile Crisis - there's a reason why the media only presents one side of the issue, and it's not for your benefit.
Take Putin's speech on the signing of treaties between the various regions of Ukraine that were just annexed into Russia and now fall under their protection - here, he outlines the west's expansionism and the USA's terrible treatment of so-called allies, the crumbling western economies that are propped up on fake value instead of actual resources, and the suffering that western leaders have inflicted on their own people while blaming Russia to cover up their own misdeeds.
That of course isn't to say that Putin is a great guy or always tells the truth, or even close to it, but he clearly has a better understanding of reality than 99% of western warmongering politicians or the "experts" that grace our mainstream news networks.
Of course, if you side with Russia or Putin with any issue, or even bother to listen to their side of things, you'll be labelled a "Putin apologist" or a "Russian bot", yet in this matter the west is pretty clearly the one most in the wrong and the one that is continuously escalating tensions.
Hell, Poland is now in talks with the US about moving nukes into their country which is right on Russia's doorstep, a blatant escalation that once again harkens back to the Cuban Missile Crisis and shows just how hypocritical western leaders have become.
As this MP in the EU so eloquently states, anyone that opposes fighting this war is smeared and threatened; despite the vast majority of people claiming to be "anti-war", they can so easily be "persuaded" into it.
It's eerily reminiscent of the last US-Iraq war, which has since been virtually unanimously considered to be a costly mistake that was brought on by false claims from the government and media about "weapons of mass destruction".
Now, it's easy to say the Iraq war was a mistake; yet so many of the same people calling for Ukraine to receive arms and fight Russia to the last Ukrainian, are the very same people who were all for the invasion of Iraq, and just like in 2003, anyone that stood up against it was labelled a "Hussein apologist" or a "terrorist sympathizer".
The tough talk regarding Russia is also one that is incredibly ill-informed - for all the money the US spends on its military and for all the troops NATO has, the west is not even close to ready for the hell that a third world war would bring, even if no nuclear weapons were used.
Warfare since WWII has largely been predicated on one power being advanced and the other woefully under-equipped, with NATO in particular utilizing vast air superiority to soften targets and provide support for ground forces - and even with such tactics they've managed to regularly botch things up against far "inferior" forces, from Vietnam to Afghanistan.
War against a peer - ie. another capable military with access to advanced equipment - has proven to be far different in practice than in theory (surprise surprise), and Russia has quickly adapted to such a situation.
Russia took out the bulk of Ukrainian air forces in the opening weeks of the invasion to claim air superiority, yet their air superiority was quickly abandoned as they realized enemies equipped with swarms of drones and advanced anti-air made things too dangerous.
While people thought true modern war between advanced militaries would be all cyber-aided tactical units and aerial dogfights and sophisticated maneouvering, the presense of advanced tech and permanent satellites on both sides make that a silly endeavour. Your $100 million+ planes get shot out of the sky by grunts with Stingers and your elite tactical squads get taken out by a fifty-year-old cruise missile.
Instead, old fashioned artillery barrages against military encampments and supply lines, combined with fast response times, have ruled the day.
After the growing pains of the initial clashes, Russia has settled into a grove that has proven incredibly effective against the NATO-backed Ukrainian forces, and while the west keeps claiming Russia is running out of equipment (they're supposedly just weeks away from being out of ammunition and missiles...it should be any day now, since those claims have been going around in the media since May), their supply lines continue to be brimming with ammunition and their missile barrages show no sign of slowing down.
As the US and its allies empty stockpiles of crucial arms, their resupplies are back-ordered for years to come as they rely on other nations to supply critical components (most commonly, computer chips which of course are hard to come by) - meanwhile Russia is smart enough to have robust internal production for military supplies and have always been able to keep up or even surpass western rocketry despite far less impressive budgets.
With the US and its allies in NATO relying so heavily on air support for military action, open conflict with Russia (which would very likely turn into conflict with China as well) would undoubtedly be a shock to western forces. The idea of "advanced warfare" that so many military enthusiasts had envisioned in their minds, would quickly be replaced by the cold thump of good old-fashioned artillery barrages.
Not to mention the fact that the west's new soy-infused generations of fighting age are pre-occupied by which letters of the alphabet they'd like to represent today, or that the internal division and strife within western societies would undoubtedly come to a boiling point should total war be declared.
And that of course assumes our ridiculous leadership don't simply deploy the nuclear arsenals at their fingertips and plunge the world back to the stone age.
Nevertheless, western leaders seem determined to sleepwalk the world into a massive war between nuclear powers of which there will be no winners, all to keep their grift going and turn attention away from their mismanagement of a crumbling empire.
For now, all that is left to do is sit back and watch the chaos unfold.