my dad always taught me not to let the workings of the world affect my personal mood
even if the world is going to shit, you can carve out a little slice of life for yourself and the people you love. take care of those people, take care of what you own, do the things you’re passionate about and let God worry about the rest
and I say that as an atheist. it’s a metaphor
ok let’s go over piece by piece to try and again reach a base set of facts we can agree on
I’m mostly curious if and why you think Russia had the right to invade.
i don’t think Russia had a right to invade. i do recognize, however, that idealistic platitudes doesn’t ultimately matter in the dynamics between nation-states. russia believed, for a confluence of factors, that invading was the correct decision and therefore they made that decision.
i’m not making any moral judgements. if it were up to me we’d all be singing Kumbaya, nuclear weapons would all be dismantled, and we’d live in a communist utopia. i don’t get to decide though. i only get to be a third party observer, doing the best i can to arrive at the closest version of the truth
what i am doing, along with you, is discussing the material conditions that led to this war and the nature of the dynamic between both ukraine and russia and the ukrainian war relative to recent history
A & B: Ukraine has had an election since 2014 so apparently there’s public support for a western friendly government.
Ok let’s once again reiterate what started this inquiry
“the ukrainian war is in a way a war of independence”
a) the ukrainian government had a radical change overnight due to a violent protest/revolution/coup
the fact that Ukraine had an election since 2014 and that there is public support for a western friendly government does not change that there was an abrupt change in government in 2014. these things are not connected
just because people supported the French revolution, doesn’t mean it wasn’t a violent revolution, correct?
b) the old government was pro-russian, the new government was anti-russian
once again, the fact that the old government (president being Viktor Yanukovych) was pro-Russian does not change whether or not there was an election post-2014 and that there is public support for a western friendly government
neither a) nor b) change based on your statement. so please
do you agree or disagree with A) and B)? they are objective statements of fact. easily provable or disprovable. can we agree to a base line reality? if we can, we can move forward
C: preparing to defend yourself from invasion doesn’t justify invading
“the new ukrainian government realized that Russia was about to invade because of this radical change and therefore they prepared for war by bending the knee to the US”
we are not talking about justification. the statement c) states that the new Ukrainian government, post Euromaidan, recognized they were about to be invaded and immediately started cooperating with the US.
again, objective statement of fact. you either agree or don’t agree.
if you cannot state “Yes this is true” or “No this is false because xyz” then you are not actually saying anything and I’m going to assume you are not discussing in good faith
i’m making every effort here to be generous to you
i dont want to sound like a moral relativist and i’m hesitant to respond because i also don’t want to be a hitler apologist
but I think it’s really hard to categorize a person into a “totally bad” position. for example, Hitler had a big ego but he probably genuinely wanted the best for Germany. He cared for animals, was a vegetarian (for the most part, especially in later years of life) and advocated for animal cruelty laws.
if he genuinely believed that eliminating the jews was necessary in order to secure the autonomy of the German people, does that make him a bad person? To a Nazi, the Jew is an evil parasite on society that needs to be eliminated for the good of the entire population.
now please understand I’m speaking from their perspective not saying it is correct
but this type of anti-semitic ideology did not spring up spontaneously in the 1930s but was something deep that developed over the course of hundreds of years and ultimately culminated in the genocide we saw
but if for example, we took everyone in this thread and raised them in 1890s Germany- how many of them would believe in tolerance and racial equality? I’d honestly be surprised if there was a single person
I don’t know. I understand there are good things and bad things. but the difference between good and bad people is more complicated. bad people i typically relegate to those individuals that get pleasure of out cruelty or suffering
another 12% responded as ‘unsure’, which I would suspect would lean toward “I don’t want to admit a socially unacceptable answer”.
i’d lean towards “i don’t know enough about the facts to make a definitive statement”
public education isn’t great and even good public education rarely dives deeply in the life of Adolf Hitler beyond the obvious “he was a megalomaniac dictator who killed Jews and wanted to take over the world”
Hitler became Hitler because of his life experiences. He served in the German military during WW1, he was homeless in Vienna, he grew up poor with a sick mother. These events, along with the movements of the then-current cultural zietgiest, radicalized him in certain directions. It’s a complex story that is hard to break down into simplistic moral platitudes of “good person” or “bad person”
we are discussing the material conditions that led up to the war. we have agreed together here that
a) the ukrainian government had a radical change overnight due to a violent protest/revolution/coup
b) the old government was pro-russian, the new government was anti-russian
c) the new ukrainian government realized that Russia was about to invade because of this radical change and therefore they prepared for war by bending the knee to the US
so let’s circle back to the statement that started this line of inquiry
“the ukrainian war is in a way a war of independence”
so instead of going off on tangents all over the place, can we circle back to that statement. now that we have agreed on a) b) and c), does the statement in bold seem true or false to you?
let’s ignore who has fallen for whatever propaganda and try to agree on a base set of facts and draw some conclusions we can agree on. if you disagree with a) b) or c) please specifically state what part of that statement is false and we can each present evidence and reasoning.
i fully intend to show to you i am speaking in good faith and i assume you are as well
Which countries would you be fine with russia invading if they win in Ukraine
why do you assume i am fine with Russia invading anywhere?
I’m making a point about the dynamics of the war.
How about this-
Do you think it’s a coincidence the invasion happened less than 4 days after the new government was appointed (unconstitutionally)? Why do you think that new government immediately started cooperating with the CIA? It’s because they knew Russia was about to invade them. Because they understood their position.
this type of autonomic response you have to somebody simply dispassionately discussing the material conditions which caused this war is quite interesting. reminds me of the anti-israel / anti-semitic tick
japan is a sovereign nation too. one that doesn’t get to decide whether a foreign power from across the pacific ocean gets to park military bases in their land.
there’s a long spectrum from totally under control -> totally independent and you will find that virtually every smaller country is rarely totally independent
i’d like to challenge you and show me one thing i said that was false. it’s easy to throw shade say something like “everything you are saying is because you have fallen for propaganda, whereas me I am pure and untouched by propaganda”
russia was content with Ukraine being loosely coupled. They were not OK with Ukraine totally leaving the Russian sphere and joining the west. this is what triggered the invasion of Crimea and the little green men from the east.
you can see a similar, albiet different, dynamic with Taiwan and China. China is content (for now) with Taiwan remaining sort-of independent. but once the US for example says something “Taiwan is an independent country” they would invade.
there was a vulernability on the iphone a while back where someone would send you a specific hindu character and it would crash the OS. it can get you no matter what you do really, use or business. the difference is a business has a lot more to lose.
as for the OS talk…
I use MacOS on my macbook & Linux on my desktop at home. I don’t think Mac is intolerably locked down. I have virtually the same experience on both. Mac is a very smooth experience once you set it up how you like. I have the same command line applications, the same config files, the same firefox profile that gets synced in between them, same unix utilities that share folders/files as if they were native, can ssh from one to the other, etc
including windows in that would be a PITA
windows is clunky and the company pushing it is becoming progressively more hostile to its users. apple is greedy but at least with their OS it’s not pushy. it’s the hardware where they stick the knife and twist in terms of price
it’s pretty dangerous not to be getting security updates. probably for regular users won’t be a big deal. i have a feeling really bad vulnerabilities will be patched even if you don’t pay for it just out of a potential PR issue. but i would almost definitely pay this if I were a business who didn’t plan on switching to Win 11 soon
on a personal level i don’t understand why anyone continues to use windows these days
war in Ukraine is not a civil war
The war started in 2014 with Euromaidan. Where the pro-Russian government got ousted in a violent coup/revolution/uprising (what you call it depends on what you believe). The pro-Russian president had to flee the country.
Then a new government was quickly appointed, unconstitutionally, and that government is the current one. That administration was made up of far right leaders (think people like Andriy Biletsky). This administration immediately started cooperating with the CIA the very first day.
Then Russia invaded Crimea and started the covert operation in Donbas a few days after that.
It’s more complicated than saying it’s an invasion of a sovereign nation. It’s not a civil war either, you are right. But I think it’s closer to the Spanish Civil War than the invasion of Poland.
Really it’s: a coup triggered a war of independence against Russia. Ukraine was firmly in Russian sphere from 91 until 2014. Once that stopped being true, Russia invaded.
But I like to think of the Spanish Civil War because it’s the proxy war before the war. It’s a place for big powers to test new technologies. Get ready for the inevitable showdown.
How you end up on the candidates being equal on immigration is more mysterious to me. One of them is talking of mass deportation and there are still kids left over from the family separation camps
i guess i didn’t communicate my message well enough. it’s not that they are equal. it’s that I think they are both equally impotent to stop the march of the zeitgeist.
if you fast forward 10 or 15 years, i don’t think it’ll matter which president wins next week- in terms of immigration. people are inevitably going into camps, no matter what, at this point in time.
One of them is talking of mass deportation and there are still kids left over from the family separation camps
remember that Biden continued using Trump’s illegal loopholes to refuse asylum to people at the border, breaking both US and international law, while also still separating kids: https://www.kpbs.org/news/border-immigration/2024/07/29/report-reveals-migrant-family-separations-continue-under-biden
it’s done “bureaucratically” instead of “cruelly” but I dare you to try and explain the difference to a scared 6 year old
i hate trump because of his racist comments. but i hate biden and kamala too. at least trump doesn’t pretend to care- would you prefer someone abusing you to be honest about it or gaslight you? is it really a meaningful choice?
To be fair I think there are scenarios where Harris is less likely to get into a war, a bit like Chamberlain was less likely than Churchill to get Britain into a war
this is frankly a reductionist take. the situation today is not like the situation in the 1930s. if anything, Biden’s approach of milquetoast risk-aversion is probably closer to Chamberlain than a hypothetical Trump presidency would be
consider why the US doesn’t allow Ukraine to use American weapons in Russia. consider why US aid is limited to just enough to keep Ukraine alive. consider why the US has been openly pumping untold millions into Ukraine under the guise of the National Endowment for Democracy since the early 90s (and almost certainly many millions covertly, too)
this is a proxy war for control of Ukraine. if you were to make an analogy to WW2 it would be more Spanish Civil War than the invasion of Poland
i’m more cynical about her. it’s not that i don’t think gay rights and women rights aren’t important. they are. but to me, the primary issues i care about, in order of importance
a) probability of war
b) attitude towards immigrants
c) economic position
d) foreign policy in general
so for example I think Kamala is probably more likely to get us into war than Trump is. That gives points to Trump.
on the immigration front, I don’t have any illusions about where the national conversation is going. I was brought here to this country illegally as a small child. I grew up here illegal and it wasn’t until my early 20s that I managed to naturalize
so i’ve been embedded in immigrant communities, with a lot of illegals sprinkled in, and have been paying attention to immigration news for virtually all of life
i can only think of two politicians who have done something meaningful for illegals. Reagan and Obama. Reagan of course gave amnesty to millions of illegals. Obama enacted the DACA policy, which wasn’t nearly as broad as amnesty, but it was definitely a good thing that helped hundreds of thousands of people. but “immigration reform” has been promised my whole life by DNC and never delivered. best was the half-assed DACA
But let’s look at rhetoric from Biden. During campaign in 2020 he advocated for a “compassionate approach” and was “pushing for immigration reform”. he promised to halt the construction of “the Wall tm”
What about the last couple years? He expanded construction of the wall which he timed with a photoshoot with Customs and Border Patrol at the southern border. He also went on TV and started using the word illegal - which is a term Democrats historically haven’t used. I don’t think it’s offensive or anything- but it’s telling to show how the overton window has sharply been shoved to the right
Now look at Biden’s successor - Kamala - the woman I voted for begrudgingly. go to her website and look at the policies and you will see zilch about compassionate approach or immigration reform. today it’s “security and strong border”
right now over 65% of all Americans (not just GOP) support deporting all illegal immigrants. Something absurd to say even a decade ago. Majority of Americans support a policy which would effectively have the military going around house to house in order to put over 10 million people in camps, which they would stay at for years while the government tries to figure out the complex and expensive logistical challenge of moving millions of people out of the country (Germans had this same problem back in first half of the 1900s. they came up with a controversial solution to that question, of course)
so i’m not saying kamala is equal or worse than trump on this. trump is partly at fault for the rise in this change. but i think long term it won’t make a difference who wins in this field. either way immigrants are screwed, so it doesn’t really matter to me in this election
economic position, i think not gonna matter much. the whole “tax breaks for first time homeowners” from Kamala is yet another bailout to the banks at the expense of regular people. Trump put in sanctions on China, raising prices for Americans… Biden kept them in place and put some more. I don’t think this is much different. the reductionist “tax the rich” is a nice slogan but without meaning. as long as the government has a money tap funneling public money to leeches, no amount of taxes will ever filter down to help the working class
foreign policy in general. again, i don’t see much of a difference. china from above is a good example. iran is another. Obama actually came up with a revolutionary deal- bringing the Iranians back into the fold. Trump torpedoed that deal in spectacular fashion and then moved the American embassy to Jerusalem. Biden maintained the “get fucked” attitude towards Iran and went to Tel Aviv in Oct of last year to bend the knee to Netanyahu.
so to summarize
for the issues i mentioned, which are the ones that matter to me, i think long term the choice of candidate isn’t going to influence anything significantly either way. the zietgiest is headed in a certain direction and i don’t think either candidate has the capacity or willingness to meaningfully change the course of things
so then we get to why did i vote for kamala. because I think it’ll be inspiring to girls and women across the country. it’ll implicitly let them know they are equal and are able to accomplish anything, even the highest office in the country
i think that alone is worth voting for her. and of course Trump is a bit of a wild card and I prefer stability.
i think breaking the barrier of sex in terms of male/female president is a powerful thing. there’s been so many women throughout history that could have been judith pulgars, politically speaking, and ended up getting pushed into more subservient positions
that’s the main reason. i dont think that’s an awful reason
as for the russian war thing, i rather like living in a pre-nuclear-war society.
this should have been done a long time ago. there’s gonna be a referendum on nov 5 2024 along with the general election: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Puerto_Rican_status_referendum
PR (pop: 3.2M) has more population than Wyoming (pop: 586K), Vermont (pop: 648K), Alaska (pop: 734K), and North Dakota (pop: 789K) combined (2.8M)
Puerto Ricans (at least outside of PR) tend to be less inclined to vote right wing unless another famous little Caribbean island
this is really just Trump searching for controversial takes to show up on headlines
realistically any real attempt to mass deport illegals would require
a) the involvement of the military
b) a dramatic increase in the size of ICE
police participating or not isn’t going to be a significant player in this
with the current stranglehold the pro-Israeli lobby has on American politics (includes both GOP and DNC) even 0.1% is a stretch
AIPAC even brags about it: https://aipacorg.app.box.com/s/t8vvqt7evxvgkzn5jktpwejate6oxo0y
98% of AIPAC endorsed candidates won their election in 2022. if you are a politician and you say something mildly critical of Israel they will go to war with you and do everything so that your opponent wins
Israel has figured out how to hack American democracy. There is no going back at this point. We are a pro-Israel country for the foreseeable future, regardless of which candidate wins this election or the next one or the next one
i guess it’s just puppeteer + ai prompting
unless AI gets significantly better in the next year or so I doubt it’s gonna be any better than someone spending an hour writing a puppeteer scraping script
which of these candidates is more likely to respond to any kind of public pressure about this?
neither. 0.0% chance for either candidate.
i only voted for kamala because she’s a woman and even though she’s an awful candidate at least we can get it out of our collective system, show little girls they can be president, and the neoliberal status quo is probably still better than Trump
i’m not entirely sure on that because I think Kamala is more likely to lead us into a war with Russia… but Trump is more volatile in general I think
Kids are disadvantaged in a number of ways compared to adults
Statement: government in Ukraine changed in 2014.
Your response: that new government had the support of the people, therefore that statement is false
This is a non-sequitor. The government either changed or it didn’t. Whether the people supported it or not doesn’t fundamentally change the statement.
I’m starting to think you are a bot, someone with very low reading comprehension, or simply a malicious actor.
If you refuse to engage in this attempt to reach a set of facts we can agree on, then we will never move forward.
I could say the sky is blue and the grass is green and you would yell me I am justifying capitalism’s embrace of carbon emissions and the death of the climate.