I don’t know where you get your info, but China and Russia have a frenemy relationship, a friendly rivalry, basically. This goes back to Stalin’s limited support for the CCP in their early days, or even before when the Russian Tsar conquered huge swaths of land from the Qing Dynasty during their Century of Humiliation, about the time when we Americans were busy having our Civil War. We see it to this day, where China could have a huge and decisive effect on the Russo-Ukrainian War if they wished and fully threw in with Russia, but instead are happy to sit back and war profiteer while Russia takes heavy loses and the West spends money instead of making it.

Then Iran and Saudi Arabia are archenemies. Iran is a Shia-majority theocracy, SA is a Sunni-majority secular monarchy with a history of persecuting Shias, and even warming up to Israel before Oct 7th. They have a long history of conflict.

Not sure how Turkey gets on the list either, Turkey has consistently played both sides, always being in it for Turkey. I don’t see the benefit for them to actually pick a side, thus losing their benefits from the other. We see this clearly, again, in how they’ve approached the Russo-Ukrainian War. Like cozying up to Putin, but hey, have some free Bayraktars, Ukraine!

I know a lot of people put a lot of effort into trying to make it seem like a real WW3 with fairly even sides is plausible in the near future, but it always requires a lot of cherry picking and ignoring realities for them to spin their stories together.

Heresy in the 17th century actually wasn’t as big a deal as it was in the past. This was a couple centuries after the Protestant Reformation shattered the Catholic hold on Europe, leading to decades of war in which millions died, eventually resulting in the shitloads-of-denominations we see today, where almost all of them are “heretics” of some sort to all the other ones. I mean, modern day Mormonism isn’t really even a monotheistic religion anymore. This all has its roots in the breaking of Catholic domination back in the early 1500s.

One major issue with this: The left and right are fighting for different things.

The far right would ultimately like a military dictatorship of sorts. In order to pull this off in a way the majority of the public would accept, they need people to be afraid, to have violent enemies that can only be defeated with organized military force.

The left, on the other hand, is fighting for civilian rule. This is based on the idea that laws need to apply to everyone, and that military force should not be used to suppress the public at large. In order to pull this off, it must be true that military force applied domestically is not actually necessary to have a functioning society.

Because these goals are fundamentally different, the methods of accomplishing them become different by necessity. Some methods strengthen and empower the goals of the right, other methods strengthen and empower the left. These are distinct, and it’s very important not to be manipulated into playing into the hands of your opponent.

Somebody needs to put this guy in charge of all the branding elements.