The Times They Are a Changing???

 When I was a boy, the TV had constant ads for Hungary, being oppressed by the USSR, fighting for freedom. Hungary, once part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, was a part of the Warsaw Pact, and the USSR demanded strict obedience.

Today, Hungary are part of NATO and aren't sure they like it. They are supposed to support LGBTQRSWXYZ rights and they don't like that. They are looking at the Warsaw Pact and the USSR and Russia and seem to be confused. Religious, they still hate the USSR, but, being religious, they like Russia. oops. Russia were the USSR. But now Russia are rabidly religious. The Russians don't like transgender, they don't allow surgery to make little boys into little girls or little girls into little boys, and Hungary are looking and like what they see. As opposed to Europe where religion is denigrated and everyone must support turning little boys into surgically transgendered girls and little girls into surgically transgendered little boys. Or else.

But more is happening.

The PRC were strongly supported by the USSR. Had they not been, the PRC would not exist today. But that was in 1951. Then, in 1969, the PRC and the USSR had a war over one tiny island in the Amur River. And the PRC decided to align with the US of A, and let the US of A build lots of factories with cheap PRC labour that moved high-paying US jobs to low-paying PRC jobs and made $billions for the US oligarchs and cost ordinary Americans their employment.

In 1949, most consumer goods went to Americans:

https://youtu.be/j-6YQQ779YM

 Americans bought about half of all the cars produced in the world, more than 90% of all refrigerators.

That was then. Now, those consumer goods are more evenly distributed.

But what is worse, the PRC now sells more of their production to Asia and Africa than to the US and Europe. They are not nearly as dependent on the West for a market for their production. Which means they can live without the West. Which means they can do whatever they darn well please, and don't have to kowtow to the West. (Kowtow is from a Chinese word for subservience, and subservience from the PRC the West ain't gonna see no mo', no mo', they ain't gonna see no mo' .)

In 2012, Graham Allison wrote "The Thucydides Trap," that hegemons, faced with rising powers, go to war about 75% of the time. With the collapse of the USSR, the US became Global Hegemon, and the PRC are a rising power, so there is a 75% chance of war.

Higher, actually, because Russia became a problem that needed to be eradicated before the PRC, and now the effort to break up Russia into 20 or so independent, unarmed nations with all Russian energy going to US oligarchs as war reparations isn't going all that well. Actually, it is going that well in the Western narrative, reiterated by all the Western media, but not so well in real life. And when Tucker Carlson tried to say this, he was fired, even though he was so popular that his firing cost his former employer $1 billion in lost stock value. But well worth it to keep up the official Western narrative.

So where do we go from here?

There is an old adage: prediction is very difficult if one tries it with respect to the future.

So I always stick to predicting the past, and I generally get it right.

As to the future with regards to whether NATO can defeat Russia in the Ukraine, the answer depends on the West. If the US figure it is better to have no world at all than for the US to lose their position as Global Hegemon, then we will have no world at all.

If the leaders of the West do not trust their Fallout Shelters as safe places to shelter during a nuclear holocaust, maybe they won't destroy the world, and they will allow the US to forfeit their role as World Hegemon.

I hope we are allowed to see what the West choose. Because I fear we won't be allowed to see anything after the US make the official choice for the West.