Isn't 5% a lot? IIRC even the US aren't that high. And what are we supposed to use all those soldiers and weapons for? Surely that's overkill, even for Russia? Is this actually about China?

Edit: It's 3.5% on the military and 1.5% on dual use infrastructure like roads, for a total of 5%. That's high but quite a bit more sane.

[–] Tetragrade@leminal.space 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (5 children)

It's about war with the US. Well, probably other places too. Writing's been on the wall for a while.

[–] tormeh@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

Until the USA goes full dictatorship (admittedly less hypothetical than I'd like) that's not going to happen. Democracies don't fight like this.

Also the US is who is pushing hardest for higher NATO defence spending. So that makes no sense.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 3 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Until the USA goes full dictatorship (admittedly less hypothetical than I’d like)

I have bad news for you.

I'm not trying to exaggerate the situation, but they're imprisoning journalists, kicking random people out of the country or keeping them in conditions so bad that it sometimes kills them, they just bombed a random country ignoring the system that's supposed to make that illegal without authorization, and so on and so on. They just assassinated a Democratic politician.

It's all a spectrum. People are still in the streets without being shot, they're still backing down or being forced to free some particular people. But the standard of "going to war without authorization" is a guard-rail that fell years ago, and more are falling every week now. If you're waiting for the moment to fight back against the dictatorship, this is it.

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

If you’re waiting for the moment to fight back against the dictatorship, this is it.

This is always it. There's no time and place without the threat of dictatorship. There's always evil around you, near you, to be fought or else someone else will have to fight it, or you again - but much stronger.

Western underground counterculture of 70s and 80s was very good in the sense of understanding this, the general anti-war fuck-your-pretense rock-n-roll arrest-me-officer mood, unfortunately in the 90s people got complacent.

Same with critical\progressive worldview, it got neutered, diluted, saturated with "normal", "allowed", "by the rules" struggle for the rights of protected groups and cancelling bad people from among celebrities.

While logically intersectionality dictates that your first duty as a citizen is to look for more basic dangers, and react to them not "by the rules", but with Molotov cocktails and sabotage.

Journalism "by the rules" is just PR, protest "by the rules" is just fashion, and politics "by the rules" is just collaborationism.

OK, it was very brave (/s) from me to write this, but living in Moscow, Russia, I suppose this is just talk.

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