Huitzilopochtli [they/them]

Yeah, fuck that tbh. I don’t even think the premise is right in that China’s gains came moreso from ceasing to be a pariah and opening up trade with the west and I don’t think they really benefitted much at all from the fall of the USSR (nor really did much to hasten it, most of their aid and support to their enemies was pretty pitiful), so the whole thing is kind of just silly. China certainly benefited from not being tethered to the sinking ship, but that’s a different question.

Honestly the most amazing thing about China’s awkward post-split (attempted) realpolitik is how rarely it actually yielded any benefit for them at all (other than the trade realignment).

supported the destruction of the USSR and anti-colonial movements of the world, with the justification being that that helped the PRC.

I think I missed wherever this happened, so I don’t know the full context, but this feels like a false dichotomy. China didn’t cause the USSR to capitulate ideologically in the mid 80s, taking most of the anti-colonial and socialist projects it built up as dependencies along with it. The CPSU was rotten to the core and spent its last six years in power stabbing its dependent allies in the back and leaving them dry while trying to transform the USSR itself into a social democracy.

Hey, at least it’s the good kind of boiler failure and not the steam explosion kind.

Their parliamentary system is also crazy complex with a bunch of different types of members. Elections are first past the post, per-constituency. Some constituencies elect one member, while others elect a team of five or six all from the same party (with some mandatory ethnic representation). There are also (currently two) non-constituency members, from the opposition party, which are basically charity seats. There are also appointed members. The whole system feels knowingly constructed as a one-party system that primarily seeks opposition for the purpose of consultation, more like the États générau in pre-revolution France than a real, competitive parliament in the liberal tradition.

No they shouldn’t have? Why would they participate in weird American flag fucking rituals? It’s bad enough when people in México try to import that shit.

They really do. The only Salvadorans I can stand are indigenous, and they are treated like shit.

In a just world someone would do something to stop the perfidious Poles, but we do not live in a just world