pound_heap
Pumpkin spice flavored beer is horrendous. Change my mind.
I think this is what home NAS systems evolved into already. It’s not a network storage anymore, it’s a server that has a bunch of available apps, both proprietary and free. And many of these little boxes have enough resources to actually run a few typical “home server” services for a family and maybe some friends. They are often even marketed as a “personal cloud” or something like that.
Russia is no more totalitarian than any Western “liberal democracy”, their elections no more rigged than ours.
Ahahaha… Very funny. Can you please tell me how many politicians are imprisoned for their dissent in western democratic countries? Maybe there is a liberal democracy where the same person has been a president for 20 years plus 5 years as a prime minister? Or a democracy where a single party held majority in federal parliament for 21 years with last 8 years having more than 2/3 votes? By the way, it allowed them first to increase a presidential term from 4 to 6 years to let that one president to rule longer between elections, then to change Constitution to let that one president to be elected for his 5th term and potentially for 6th. Hey, what about a country where it is a crime to publicly say something about armed forces that contradicts what government tells people via government owned media? Up to 3 years in prison for that, you know… Like in any other western democracy, right? And that country has quite a few more laws criminalizing various public activities.
I get what you are saying about ruling class status quo, etc. Maybe from a perspective of someone who wants a radical change of the political system, Russian system might look not that different from western democracies. But totalitarian state feels very differently for people living in one. There is no political freedom, no freedom of speech, no choice, no chance to protest. Say something wrong and go to jail. It’s not an exaggeration, there was at least 3.5k prosecutions for social media posts or sometimes even for likes. The situation with freedom got much worse in last couple of years since the war with Ukraine began.
I gave maybe an oversimplified answer. I agree with you that a single person doesn’t control everything. But the government system is built to control what political entities are allowed to exist and express their views publicly. So, again naturally, the only parties that remain exist only because they follow president and party lines.
All independent parties have been stripped of the party registration or removed from all elected positions. Independent politicians get “foreign agent” status, forced to immigrate, get jailed or killed. Rigged elections don’t let almost anyone to be elected without government approval.
If we focus this discussion on LGBTQ topic, then I agree that many people in Russia are not “allies”, but as you mentioned yourself it might be caused by media (which is also far from being free) and the fact that there are laws in Russia making support of LGBTQ a crime. However, even with that, according to 2021 survey about a 1/3 of people there believed that LBGTQ people should have equal rights. Here is the link to that survey, they also have some details on trends of public opinion on the topic: https://www.levada.ru/en/2021/10/19/the-attitude-of-russians-to-the-lgbt-community/
Anyways, don’t judge people living in totalitarian state for the lack of progressive views.
Just ignore Mironov and his party. There are no independent parties in Russia, it’s all just a facade for Putin and his administration.
You still may find naive young members in Social Democratic, Communist, and even United Russia (the ruling party) that got ideas tey can do something but they either adapt to party lines or drop out over time. Mironov is a leader of the party and naturally he will say what Putin’s administration let him or tell him to say or what he thinks they like him to say.
