Jesus what a wall of text. And all to say that life in Russia is great and the world is in a sorry state.

For many years Putin allowed Westernization and a modicum of press freedom and opposition. You might say the Eye of Sauron was elsewhere.

Then came the crackdown. An entire generation(who have known no other leader besides Putin) are frantically trying to get out of Russia. Navalny, who led the opposition was poisoned and then jailed. Anyone protesting the war is being jailed. There is a new iron curtain.

Running a drywall screw machine for 16 hours a day doesn't appeal much to them.

As for the sorry state of the world, we are but fellow travelers, here for threescore and ten.

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I’m of the opinion that governments are there to improve their citizen's lives.

Now here we agree. But historically that has seldom been the case. Prosperity comes and goes, governments come and go.

But it has now become possible for governments everywhere to modernize, computerize, and exist solely to improve the lives of their citizens.

That they exist instead as greedy money-grubbing whores for industry is a situation that future generations will have to change.

Good coffee, good weed, and time on my hands...