The Maidan protests happened because the people of Ukraine wanted to part of a rich, democratic and fair Europe and not the corrupt, colonialist dictatorship next door. That's not Nazism, that's common sense, unless you use the absurd definition of Nazism used by the Putin regime (to wit, Ukrainians who don't want to be Russians are Nazis).
take over a piece of territory
What are you talking about? Crimea was already part of Ukraine and had been for decades. How could Russian annexation prevent it being 'taken over' by the country it is already part of?
prime strategic importance to Russians, but that is also very important historically
Which is exactly the kind of revanchist militarism that I described initially when talking about Russia's war aims. Nothing to do with 'Ukraine not being a US proxy'.
It's a war of 'denazification', not conquest. Once foreign expansionists and their puppets are removed from power, the rest of Ukraine can keep on being Ukrainian.
Nope. Putin was very clear about what the purpose of the invasion was in his accidentally leaked victory speech. It was explicitly about the elimination of Ukraine as a distinct nation with a distinct identity.
Russia is restoring its historical integrity, gathering the Russian world, the Russian people, together—in all its diversity, Great Russians, Belarusians, and Little Russians. If we had abandoned this, had allowed this temporary division to become entrenched for centuries, we would not only have betrayed the memory of our ancestors but would also have been cursed by our descendants for allowing the disintegration of the Russian land.
In Putin's view, Ukrainians aren't real. They are actually 'little Russians' who have been mislead.
And yeah, Russians are taking the parts of Ukraine that are historically Russian. You think Ukrainians should be left unpunished for their stupid decisions of deciding to act as proxies for the enemies of Russia?
Crimea was made part of the Ukrainian SSR by the Russian regime in Moscow in 1954, the Russian-speaking East and South have been part of Ukraine since 1922, a century ago. The idea that Putin's quasi-genocidal war is somehow reasonable punishment for the decisions of past Russian regimes, or because Ukraine doesn't want to be the subject of its murderous neighbour, is morally abhorent.
As an aside, I have personally met some of these 'Russians' you talk about (i.e. Russian-speaking Ukrainians). I can assure you, they are not grateful that Putin has 'liberated them from Ukronazis' or whatever other propoganda seems to have taken hold in your mind. They despise the Russian regime because of the terror it has inflicted on their country and their families.
You seem to lack a theory of mind
Me? Your the one ignoring Vladimir Putin's explicit statements about what he wants and why he wants it, and instead sanewashing what he himself admits is a revanchist war of conquest into a defensive action they forced into because naughty Ukraine wouldn't do what it is told.
Ukraine is a sovereign country and the Ukrainians are a people with preferences as legitimate as any other, if they want to cooperate with the US or Europe (and after seeing what Russia would end up doing, can you blame them?) they should be able to do that without the dictator in the East being allowed to kill them in their sleep.
You seem to lack a theory of mind, so perhaps try to imagine Chinese doing a color revolution in Canada
The US didn't do the Maidan, the Ukrainians did it. Half a million in the capital alone. They did it because they recognised what being a Russian subject like Belarus would entail, and their predictions have been vindicated.
Crowstep
1d ago
What on earth are you talking about? We're talking about Russia's war aims. And you haven't as yet defended your original point that all Russia wanted was for Ukraine not to be a US proxy.
If Ukraine had kicked out all American officials, refused all American aid and publicly rejected any help or direction from the US in 2013, do you really think that Russia wouldn't have invaded the Crimea? Do you think that all of Putin's open, long-held revanchist beliefs would have vanished into the air? Because all poor, innocent Russia wanted was to not have a scary US proxy on their doorstep?
They wanted Ukraine because they considered the Ukrainian nation as illegitimate, and its lands as rightfully belonging to Russia. The regime is quite open about this, and yet it still has useful idiots in the west acting as if somehow Russia launching an explicit war of conquest against its smaller neighbour is somehow a defensive move against the US, the only nation in the world that apparently has any agency.
Crowstep
1d ago
While the resulting grade of 0 seems slightly punitive and I don't doubt it was motivated by some level of personal offense
A grade of zero should really only ever be given as punishment for cheating, plaigarism or not handing anything in. I'm sure the essay was very bad, but it was at least an essay, that I assume she wrote herself rather than getting ChatGPT to do it, I hear Mr GPT isn't that big on biblical literalism.
She got a 0 because she demonstrated the wrong political position. As for the correct political position, well, it was an essay about gender roles being marked by a guy who pretends to be a woman.
Rejecting the premise of the question is a perfectly legitimate way to answer an essay question.
Crowstep
1d ago
So Russia invaded Ukraine not because of all the reasons that Putin said Russia invaded Ukraine (including in his accidentally leaked victory speech), but actually because the FBI cooperates with the Ukrainian anti-corruption department? And Putin was offended enough by the idea of a neighbouring country engaging in policing cooperation that he needed to invade the country and kill hundreds of thousands of people.
And this is despite Putin never mentioning said police cooperation at any point before or during the war?
Crowstep
3d ago
And I know a woman who is really tall, therefore men and women are the same height.
Less flippantly, that IDF unit has 500 men in a force of 169,500. And my bet is that a supermajority of Arabs serving in the IDF are Druze and Christians.
There are also pacificistic or anti-Zionist Israeli Jews, but they are clearly not the people driving current Israeli policy.
Crowstep
3d ago
they can keep killing Ukrainian soldiers at a favorable ratio until Ukraine agrees not to be a US proxy, which is their goal.
If the Russian goal was 'Ukraine isn't a US proxy' then they could have just not invaded in the first place. The idea that the invasion of Ukraine was really Russia defending itself against the US is a bizarre fantasy. The goal was conquering Ukraine to eliminate it as a sovereign state, and to eliminate the identity of the Ukrainian people as distinct from the Russians. Putin literally wrote an essay on why the invasion was justified, it's nothing to do with America.
Russia is against Ukraine joining NATO because NATO membership might prevent Russia invading again once it has built up more strength.
Crowstep
3d ago
If you asked them about their opinion on Israeli Arabs (assuming they know they exist), they'd probably be neutral to positively inclined.
Well obviously, the Israeli Arabs are just a well-off subset of the oppressed Palestinian people, in the anti-Israeli view. That's not exactly unreasonable, the Israeli Arabs aren't enthusiastic participants in the Zionist project.
The common leftist position that every Israeli Jew deserves to be brutally murdered would be equally horrific in an alternative universe where everyone in Israel was Hindu.
I'm not sure that view is that common. The more common (if naive) view is that once the Israelis take their boot of the Palestinian throat, then everyone can live in peace and harmony in a post-sectarian democracy. The more likely outcome (massive civil war) may be realistic, but I don't think many leftists actually want it. Not least because the Palestinians would lose.
Crowstep
3d ago
As disproportionate as the Irish/Spanish/Dutch response is, I really don't think it's honest to describe it as antisemitism. These people don't hate Jews, they hate Israelis. And not because they think The Eternal Jew is conniving, but because the Israeli settler represents everything evil in the left-wing world view.
The settler is, in their minds; white, rich, patriotic, religious, nationalistic and militarist, and he is colonising the lands of poor browns. Israel is South Africa on steroids, and it's not as if left-wingers boycotted South Africa because of anti-Dutch sentiment. The Israelis are western enough to be held to western standards, but they don't behave like European countries are supposed to.
China and Pakistan get away with it because they're not white, and therefore don't fit so easily into the white oppressor archetype.
Crowstep
3d ago
That's what it should mean, in reality when I here people use street smart day-to-day, it's offered as a contrast and salve to a lack of "book smarts."
Indeed, like how 'curvy' or 'unconventionally attractive' are used.
Crowstep
14d ago
My group of friends is very proactive an intentional about socialising. We all take turns to arrange/host get-togethers. Nobody is doing all the work.
That seems a bit 4D chess to me. 'Let's import so many dysfunctional third worlders that it destroys our left wing movements'. I think the explanation is smaller scale. Among elites, broadcasting comfort with foreign cultures and a lack of interest in crime or welfarism is an effective form of counter-signalling. 'I'm so rich that I don't need to worry about immigrants suppressing wages or raping my daughter'. Multiply that by the whole western world and you get the situation that we're in now.
Crowstep
15d ago
My guy, can you tell me what it is about the Jews?
My vague understanding is that a bogeyman is needed to explain European failure at ethnocentrism. If we're being replaced and taken advantage of by hostile third-worlders, then saying 'we chose this because we are pathologically altruistic' isn't very satisfying to the highly race-conscious. In step the Jews, who 'made us do it'.
The explanation only works in America because the Jewish minority there genuinely is very influential through AIPAC. It completely fails to explain similar levels of outgroup preference in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the countries of Europe. Most countries in Europe have Jewish populations of roughly zero, because a certain 1930s dictator killed what Jews they had, and yet you still see even based conservative Belarus importing hundreds of thousands of cousin-marrying 'specialists' from Pakistan.
Crowstep
16d ago
Africa almost always means Subsaharan Africa. Carthage was a Phonecian (Lebanese) settlement. The more meaningful division between Europe and Africa isn't the Mediterranean, it's the Sahara.
Crowstep
16d ago
Getting married makes both men and women richer, because it allows them to share costs by living together and provides financial support if one spouse is in education or having a baby. Men who get married end up earning more than their unmarried peers in a way that studies suggest is genuinely causal.
Now of course having children does reduce earnings for the mother temporarily, that's obvious. But it's not as if it is permanent. A woman who gets married at 22 and has, say, 3 children over her 20s is going to end up richer than the same woman marrying the same man at 32 and having 3 kids, because they have both spent their 20s in more expensive singledom.
Crowstep
17d ago
How does one start a high ability career at age 30 after spending one's 20s having babies instead of going to school or building skills?
College degrees are mostly signalling, but even if you assume that they are a literal requirement for a professional career, they only take 3-4 years, putting our hypothetical woman at 21-22 years old.
At which point she can either alternate years between working and having kids, as is typical in the UK (women can take up to a year of maternity leave and still return to their old job). This is in no way incompatible with later career advancement. Or she can take 4-8 years and give up work entirely, before returning to the workforce in the same position as a new graduate. She'll be a few years behind her childless peers, but crucially she won't then need to interrupt her career in her 30s to have children. She'll have done the hard part while she's young and full of energy. Given that the average woman born today probably won't retire until she is 70, losing 5-10% of her working years to maternity really isn't a big deal.
And don't think I'm just speculating here. I'm literally describing a couple that I know in their mid-20s. Two young professionals who will go on to earn high salaries, and who will probably have four children (number two is due next year).
Crowstep
18d ago
It's worth mentioning that it is, in fact, possible for a woman to have above-replacement level fertility and a big significant career. If a woman marries at 20 and has four children, all of her kids will be in school by the time she is 30. The President of the European Commission has seven children, to give a real life example.
Early marriage is the secret sauce that allows us to put our best women to work and to pass on their genes.
The real problem is the extended adolescence of the modern elite.
Crowstep
18d ago
I'm not sure that's true.
What do you fear, lady?' he [Aragorn] asked. 'A cage,' she [Eowyn] said. 'To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire
Seems like she was interested in the glory of battle, not fighting because she was forced to by circumstance.
I always thought Eowyn was Tolkein's weakest character. Iron age aristocrat women didn't sit around demanding the right to kill and die like their menfolk. And the fact that she was only able to kill the Witch-king through a linguistic loophole is particularly galling.
Crowstep
25d ago
I think focusing on DEI and affirmative action is misleading. This college is talking about a change in the past five years. The US has had affirmative action since the 1970s, the expansion of higher ed started in the 1980s, grade inflation in high school since the 1960s. Some happened between 2020 and 2025 that drastically changed the competence level of the incoming cohort.
Crowstep
27d ago
I'm not claiming that jealous and envious are complete synonyms, I mentioned a distinction between them in my post.
I'm claiming that thoroughlygruntled's distinction is wrong. He's proposing a difference which could exist between them, but doesn't, and hasn't at any point in the hundreds of years that the words have been used.
Crowstep
27d ago
I'm more sympathetic to those, since they're being used for things that can pretty reasonably be infantalised.
Veggies on the other hand, drives me mad. A food group does not need a childish pet name.
Crowstep
27d ago
People tend to use them as synonyms (more often simply using jealousy for both terms)
If the average person uses a word to mean X, then the word means X, surely?
I've never heard of the distinction you're making, and apparently neither has the Cambridge Dictionary. Merriam-Webster says that they have always been used as synonyms, although jealous has the extra meaning of suspicious possessiveness.
Crowstep
29d ago
When your post started with 'humanity peaked in the 90s', I didn't think the reason was going to be that James Bond would need to learn too many languages these days, quite the curveball.
Crowstep
29d ago
Drowning in pussy, maybe not. But Indian men are not exactly known for their chastity.
Every country on the planet wants rich, intelligent, very high skilled immigrants, but there just aren't that many of them available, and they have the entire world in terms of options.
Also, a lot of the political class literally can't tell the difference between good immigrants and bad immigrants. The Conservative government in the UK noticed that Indians and Nigerians in the UK earned lots of money, so they opened the doors to India and Nigeria, missing out the fact that the reason for these immigrant groups' overperformance was the selectivity of the immigration process. They invited so many that the average wages of Indians and Nigerians in the UK went from above the UK average to below the UK average.
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