Dean
27d ago
...?
By contrast, the power of Borris Johnson to coerce, compel, bewitch, or otherwise overturn the true desires of the Ukrainian political establishment was...?
Dean
20d ago
There's also the point that the US wasn't the biggest funder of the Afghan resistance- the Muslim world was. The US brought the state-of-the-art stingers that negated Russian aviation, but in terms of raw money to pay/feed/supply troops in aggregate, the US was a modest part.
Dean
25d ago
Among other things-
-Basically no one in the world has as artillery-centric an army as the Russians, and the implications of drones and precision munitions to throttle artillery at scale mean no one else is going to want to due to the logistical throttling they enable. Russia is using artillery in its current fashion to brute-force the offense because that's what it has on hand and can procure the ammo for, not because the artillery is doing more than alternative investments would have. Even Russia post-war is far more likely to focus on drone power expansion and precision munitions than restocking dumb rounds by the billions.
-Drone and aerial siege warfare is atypical because Russia has benefited from a political, not practical, barrier that wouldn't apply in NATO conflicts. The Russians have, for example, benefited greatly from having air-standoff superiority and both in terms of air-delivered munitions and for being able and willing to use drones to target civil infrastructure while their enemies wouldn't. The Russians would not have the former in a NATO conflict, and the later one-sided nature is due to the restrictions NATO countries impose on the Ukrainians, not restrictions NATO countries impose on themselves. A great deal of Russia's economic-destruction warfare siege alternatively would not work (heavy glide bombs) or would not be unilateral advantages in the economic struggle (infrastructure targetting), but it's the 'what worked' of the current generation.
-The current war has underscored the importance of small short wars rather than long large wars to advance the national interest. Russia is continuing the war primarily because Putin made a series of strategic mistakes most countries do not make, and then doubled down on personal reasons. However, even Putin had aimed and intended a small short war, and the contrast to the long, expensive war that has lost Russia a multitude of strategic assets (military and otherwise) will drive home a lesson to planners in Russia and abroad to limit the scope of future conflicts of choice. However, the operational experience of the Russians in Ukraine will be precisely the opposite, as the small-nimble BTGs were destroyed and grinding attritional slog is what was inefficient but effective.
-The nuclear deterrence modeling and level of economic depence between relevant parties is atypical in general. Most conflicts, and most of Russia's more likely conflicts, are not cases where a nuclear-umbrella power is backing a non-nuclear state being invaded by a nuclear power. Most countries also don't have the backers of one party be economically dependent on imports from the opposing belligerent. Both of these factors significantly shaped the Western support for Ukraine, but either of these factors could easily change in both general conflicts and for Russian conflicts in particular (not least because Europe chose a strategic break from the Russian economic dependence).
A more typical conflict with correct lessons would include... probably not doing this at all, but at the very least a more precision-munition dependent strategy, smaller scope and scale, an emphasis on rapid movement rather than trench warfare, and not relying on nuclear/economic deterence against external backers of the opponent.
I frame it as absurd to think the US was responsible for the Ukrainian point of view when there is no indication the Ukrainians changed positions at all, other than claims generally fronted by Russian-originated sources which had every incentive to claim that the onus of the war continuing was on the Americans / Brits.
Characterizing negotiations breakdown as a result of the UK 'screaming at them until they stopped,' as opposed to the Russians demanding terms that would have prevented the Ukrainians from pulling a similar defense of the country in the future even as Russian atrocities were being recognized, is a silly when put in the context of what the state of negotiations were when they ended, and thus also silly when said terms and contexts aren't being acknowledged.
That the US had any way of influencing Ukrainians is truism: that's a bar so low you have to dig to not walk over it. That the US influence (by proxy, no less) was the determining factor is an appeal to the hyperagency/hypoagency framework that's a consistent flaw in understanding international affairs and especially the Ukraine conflict, which for nearly a decade has been a consistent series of Putin's Russia not recognizing Ukrainian agency and trying to attribute responsibility for resistance on others.
Dean
27d ago
I offer you two choices.
On one hand, you can own it and start chanting variations of 'Germany Number 1!'
On the other hand, I invite you to Blame Canada.
Dean
27d ago
I do appreciate the disagreements, for what it's worth. You argue straight and clearly, and even if I remain stubborn, it tends to be the kind of disagreement that triggers some introspection.
I mean it as a compliment when I say the same in turn. You are among the posters here who I've bookmarked simply to see what you're commenting on, simply because even when I disagree I appreciate having to justify to myself why. (I do try not to argue with you on anything I spot from your page directly, though. That would be creepy!)
And in any case laughing at my jokes will always trump disagreement.
Lol!
Dean
27d ago
Finland and Sweden are both two of the biggest exceptions in Europe, and is part of why their decision to join NATO was such a strategic disaster for Russia's NATO-rationalizations for the war.
Dean
27d ago
I don't have anything approaching a retort, just a smile and appreciation.
Yes, I do value the trilogy structure and design more than the worldbuilding (in part because worldbuilding is easy to find, but good series are hard). I find that good story structure is indicative of good writing more than a good character dynamic, but that's because I've seen far too many movies or shows with an interesting premise fall apart for lack of planning after winging it. Good character writing can exist regardless, but good narrative design will elevate. (I will stand by that Mordin's Tuchanka arc was one of the best moments of the series, as it was simultaneously against part of his theme in ME2 but also a natural progression of his obvious guilt, and a natural integration into how to recruit allies into the war.)
I also agree that ME2 could have absolutely evaded the pitfalls ME1 set up for lack of planning. I personally view them as one and the same and that the onus is on ME1 to write for the sake of the sequel if it was designed as a trilogy to start, but the nature of that is that nothing required tethering the sequels to a trilogy character arc. Rather, a personal favorite proposal I once read was one that every ME game in the trilogy have a separate focus character: Commander Shepard in ME1 as the 'public face' of Humanity for what it does as a galactic hero, but then PC!Jacob Taylor could have been the ME2 player character for a 'what Humanity is in the dark' thematic contrast, while not!Vega in ME3 could have been the Rising War Hero for the Reaper War. Each player character an independent character with reflections observing differences rather than 'hey, remember me Shepard?!' cameos, and in each game the previous player character is their own character characterized by the key decisions of the previous game.
I don't disagree with your criticisms of Andromeda on a lore-technical level, but I just smile and wave vaguely to the deliberately campiness of what was, at heart, a sort of first contact story. When comedy is a deliberate goal, I can overlook a lot of functional-efficiency things, and I suppose I just accept that as part of the buy-in.
(If I wanted to pick at realism, the role of Spectre as a shooting-game protagonist also doesn't make sense as presented in the trilogy. Council Space doesn't need it when legal violence is so readily available, and non-Council space doesn't respect it. Spectre status Soldiers wouldn't be useful in a setting where legally-sanctioned blackops are everywhere and legal violence is so common- the real benefitors of Spectre status would be a Volus tax-accountant who can use the status to cut through bureaucratic red tape to unroot financial crimes threatening the galactic economy, and using that Spectre status to keep a band of mercenaries as his muscle.)
(Give me biotic god pencile pusher, doom of tax evaders and counterfeit e-zero smugglers!)
Given that Ukrainian opinions on European Union affiliation were a matter of public record, it certainly would be a far reach to deny that the EU was popular for the Ukrainians.
Just as the political controversy of Yanukovych granting himself the right to shoot protestors after public Russian pressure was also a well-apparent fact at the time. Just a mite consequential, when your own government is composed of people backed by those protestors.
But feel free to fluff up the American importance in things that weren't really about the Americans. I understand they feel insecure these days, and it makes both them and their haters feel better if they're the hyperagents in a Ukrainian political movement literally named after the Euro.
Dean
27d ago
I commend you for recognizing a rare piece of insight that many don't realize. Both the premise that a leash can be tugged from both ends, and that military aid is as much a means to regulate as to enable violence.
An example of almost certainly-not-sanctioned Ukrainian resistance to Russia was the Nordstream pipeline explosion, which on further investigation was very likely- and plausibly- a Ukrainian operation of considerably sparse means of not much more than a rental boat, some divers, and far-from-impossible to procure explosions. As a result, the entire German economic strategy was derailed as the strategic premise of Nordstream blew apart, every resistance group around the world gained a sudden interest in scuba certification, and Russia lost its monopoly on under-seas infrastructure violence that it had been trying to leverage until then. Every power in the region had reason enough to cover it and pay it no further mind, not least because the people who would have wanted to take issue with Ukraine for doing so couldn't stop it from happening again, and there ceased to be an economic case for breaking with NATO in favor of Russia when any of the people between Germany and Russia could blow up the business case of Russian energy.
Giant geopolitical and global economic implications, teensy little boat. And not something particularly seen sense, despite impressively deep Ukrainian special forces intrusions to strike deep within Russia.
Dean
27d ago
I'll just add that the media bouncing has also shifted over time. In the first six months of the war, the pro-peace-via-concession element was decisively in the European court, particularly Germany before the Nord Stream pipeline explosion scuttled attempts to keep the Russian gas flowing. In the last six months of the war, as the US aid holdup began, the more US-based conession voices have increased, but more belicose support from the European powers has increased due to evolving government perspectives on what Russia would do with its Cold War over-build if a peace were to emerge. At this point, the re-activated Russian stockpiles have themselves become a national security threat, as the current attrition rate has made them a use-them-or-lose-them asset for the Russians who can't credibly modernize them after a war, but could continue to use them for a near-term war if Ukraine were to capitulate shortly.
I'd go as far as to wager that even if Trump were to try and pressure Ukraine to make a deal, the Europeans would continue to back the Ukrainians and maintain the conflict, if only to give their own arms industries more time to mobilize and attrit more of the Russian stockpile. The US isn't the only party with an interest in depleting the Russian armored corps, and the strategic logic takes a life of its own with other EU-sovereignist interests are considered.
Dean
27d ago
And he tried exercising it to find more amicable solutions to the problem. That's what the Minsk Accords were.
The Minsk Accords were many things- including the functional erosion of national sovereignty by legislating an external power's veto by proxy- but an amicable solution they were not.
Why was the west encouraging Ukraine behind the scenes to give Russia a run around, while the west poured arms into the country to bolster its strength so the government could betray the terms of their agreement?
Why wouldn't the west encourage Ukraine not to submit to unreasonable Russian demands that the Russians knew were unreasonable and would not be accepted, while bolstering the ability to resist the military coercion that pushed the demands in the first place?
The demands were unreasonable, and were made at the end of a military intervention. Europeans, as with many other cultures, tend not to support those things against their neighbors lest it be applied to them.
The US was not exactly thrilled by hostile forces extending their influence into its hemisphere during the Cold War (or any other time really), especially the forward basing of missiles. It's expected that great powers will try to avoid this.
It's also expected that Russia can read a map and is aware that it is already in the position regardless of Ukraine- so invading Ukraine to keep it out of NATO doesn't change the missile threat, and thus does not serve as a sensible rational. If NATO wanted to place missiles in range of Moscow, they don't need Ukraine to do so.
Likewise, it's also well known that the US is in range of Russian missile bases in... Russia. Russia gets no nuclear posture advantage by advancing nuclear bases into Ukraine.
The Cuban Missile Crisis logic stopped making any sort of strategic sense within two decades of it happening. The US did not need to maintain nuclear missiles in Turkey for the sake of ranging Russia, and the Russians did not need missiles based in Cuba to range the US. ICBMs and SLBMs largely rendered the role of IRBMs irrelevant, which is why they were an easy-to-negotiate away weapon in the nuclear arms control treaties as a trust-building measure.
Sensors and missiles based in Ukraine are relevant to nuclear warfare, as are Ukraine's claims to Donbass and Crimea.
Not really. The sensors and missiles that can nuke Russia can do so from the continental united states and orbit. The nuclear deterrence argument continues to fail because the technology levels involved are not the 1950s or 60s or even 70s.
If you want to argue that Ukraine is the key to a potential NATO nuclear decapitation strike of Russia, you need to establish what Ukraine brings to the table that the Baltic countries don't... and why Russia's second-strike deterrent capability only works in the invade-Ukraine scenario but not in the other.
Dean
27d ago
I don't know how well read you are on the history of what happened...
Ah, I see we are going to play the pretend we don't know game, such as--
Seems we both agree at the outset that he was democratically elected, do we not? His overthrow was explicitly supported by the US and it's allies.
-that US support for Yanukovych stepping down followed Yanukovych starting to process of shooting protestors in the streets with government snipers.
Are you not aware that there was even leaked audio of Victoria Nuland and the Ukraine's Ambassador that revealed deliberate planning of his overthrow?
Oh, hey, called it-
including the ever-handy reference to the conspiracy theory that the US Ambassador discussing candidates for Yanukovych's invitation for a unity government and considering people who could work with Yanukovych and others was actually plotting a coup against the person who she was going to discuss the candidate list with in the coming days.
Come now, we can go over the transcripts if you'd like. We can even go over Yanukovych's invitation for the opposition to join the government, which was the basis of Nuland's discussions of who would actually work well within Yanukovych's government which- again- was invited and being discussed in the context of Yanukovych running it.
NATO was never a European alliance of 'peace', it's an alliance that's aimed at destabilizing Eastern Europe, with the intention to weaken Russia
While this certainly nails your flag high, it doesn't really establish your awareness with Euromaiden-
Do forgive a homie for challenging American imperialism unipolarity.
-or that, as far as challening American imperialism unipolarity, Ukraine was such an own-goal by Russia.
This whole quagmire has absolutely zero to do with high minded moral idealism against the Next Hitler, who at the same time the media tells us is losing, running out of gas, is out of ammunition, is incompetent beyond belief; and simultaneously is preparing for world domination and his next target is going to be Poland or Scandinavia. It has everything to do with continued projecting of American and western geopolitical dominance across the planet.
Yawn. Like I said, I'd rather you build a competent historical metaphor, not your naval gazing. If your media is telling us Putin is Next Hitler, or running out of gas, or out of ammunition, pick better media, not other trash.
Miranda's ass tipping the domino that launched a chain reaction leding to the collapse of the skyscraper of game writing, makes absolutely no sense.
I know we disagree off and on, but may I commend you for making me laugh out loud at this visualization? The scaling alone...
And yet, far less so than ignoring nuclear weapons as a deterrent for invasion.
The argument that Russia was not under threat from the US axis is not made on the basis that the US wouldn't if it could beat Russia in a conventional war- not least because nothing about the Ukraine war changed the underlying reality of Russia's conventional deficit vis-a-vis the US and has only made it worse- but rather that beating Russia in a nuclear war wouldn't be worthwhile when the cost is measured not in divisions, but cities.
The Russian national security argument for invading Ukraine has always fallen to the point that it does not change the actual nuclear balance of power against the US in any conflict, and that it has been nuclear deterrence that Russia had, and all those others have not.
Are we pretending Yanukovych wasn't overthrown?
Are we pretending Yanukovych wasn't fleeing the country rather than being procedurally removed from office for granting himself the authority to shoot not only the supporters of his political opponents but also the supporters of his unity government partners that he brought into his own government, at the direct pressure of the foreign government that he fled to after his own party loyalists didn't want to conduct a bloodbath?
And are we going to pretend that giving yourself authority to shoot political opponents in the streets without legislative support wouldn't drive legislature retaliation against an Executive clearly bowing to foreign government pressure and incentives?
I am as familiar with the Yanukovych coup narratives as you, and probably a bit more familiar with various political events during Euromaidan, including the ever-handy reference to the conspiracy theory that the US Ambassador discussing candidates for Yanukovych's invitation for a unity government and considering people who could work with Yanukovych and others was actually plotting a coup against the person who she was going to discuss the candidate list with in the coming days.
Perhaps you'd like to raise the protestor-sniper theories that justified the claim to shoot-to-kill authorities, which I might counter with the state sniper evidence and various security service suspect defections to Russia in the investigations after? Or perhaps you want to make the position that the protestors had no right to protest against the sovereign right of the government to join the Eurasian Union economic association, after Yanukovych made a rather abrupt about face on the already-sovereign-agreed to European Union association agreement that was followed by Russian pressure and incentive campaigns? Maybe you'd like to retreat to the defense of Eastern Russo-phile suppression of the Russian speakers, who were so uninterested in joining in the Russian novarussia campaign that the Russian millitary had to directly intervene to keep the separatist republics from collapsing?
Come now, there's so much history we can banter on!
Dean
20d ago
Thanks!
Ye are welcome.
I didn't realize it had gotten that bad in the last few decades. I'd assumed that the Israeli left had come up with a different vision, but it sounds like they never did?
There's always going to be different visions, but there's also a reason that Israeli politics over the last several years began to center around removing Netanyahu as an individual than on the security front. Even in that the Left is damaged goods in that while Netanyahu is almost certainly corrupt, there's nothing particularly partisan-unique about it. Olmert, the guy who was PM for 2006-2009 as sort of the last gasp of the Israeli left, was under corruption prosecution and convicted in a prolonged chain of events that lasted until 2017, making that a non-contrast per see.
Ultimately, the Israeli left's different vision on the security front has always been the importance of the Two State solution both as a matter of appropriateness, as an argued necessity for normalizing relations with the rest of the Arab world, and as key to maintaining relations with the West. However, there again history and the right did no favors: Oct 7 dissuades that a truly autonomous Palestinian polity wouldn't use said autonomy to attack, and one of the purposes of Oct 7 was to disrupt the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia that Netanyahu was nearly achieving despite the dogma. Which leaves the claim of being necessary to maintain relations with the west, which is a fair bit more contentious and starts going into your perspective of the effectiveness of the Israel lobbying and Palestinian protest movements in the West especially since Oct 7.
I'd heard talk about Netanyahu being unpopular and his coalition being shaky, prior to Oct 7, but from what you say it doesn't seem like there's anything coherent that could replace him? It's just "stomp hard" or "stomp harder"... :-(
Before or after 7 October?
Before 7 October, the argument was (and still is) that Netanyahu was preventing the two state solution from solving the issue, so the alternative was to re-commit to the two state solution process. This was just part of the host of the anti-Netanyahu coalition, which included the 'I'm strong on defense but not as corrupt' alternative, the 'Israel should be more secular' perspective, and so on. But no, there was no particular coherent alternative on, say, the West Bank issue, where the politics and the various military / strategic / ideological rationals for the settlements have their own mass and inertia in Israeli politics, but the left wasn't going to do a unilateral withdrawal after how the much smaller Gaza strip worked out.
After 7 October, the main differentiating question is what to do with the Gaza Strip after anti-Hamas operations conclude, which itself is going to depend on what specific context they conclude under. There is anything from outright military occupation, to turning it back over to the PLO eventually, to a multinational security force to keep the peace. There are downsides to all of these, but I also don't believe there's anything coherent enough to match a left/right divide, not least because it's still not clear what context the war will end in.
Dean
29d ago
There's also the points that one of the key premise of the Iron Dome system as a system that doesn't just bankrupt the country is it's trajectory tracking for when things are believed to be going for low-risk impact areas. Rather than shooting expensive interceptors at everything, it, well, doesn't, and the parameters for what it does/does not accept risk on are subject to different factors.
As such, Ranger's twitter doesn't really indicate as much as one might want one way or another. Things 'getting through' the Iron Dome isn't the failure state, it's the intended state. At the same time, it doesn't mean the system wasn't being overwhelmed... but also doesn't mean that the system was running out of ammo / got hit / etc.
Without clarity on to what was being hit, there's not much saying whether the system succeeded of failed at it's purpose.
What else could they do? Israel bombs their consulate and kills their people.
They could credibly signal they intend to no longer actively engage in proxy warfare and distance themselves from their proxies. They won't, but they could.
Israel bombed the Iranian consulate because the Iranian asymetric warfare commander who has been organizing a multi-month bombardment campaign of Northern Israel was at the consulate, where he was quite likely in the business of facilitating further bombardments because that literally was part of his job. Everyone with an understanding of the region understood that context as soon as the Iranians publicized and admitted it was the IRGC Commander, and that as such this was not a tit-for-tat provocation stand-alone incident where Iran was responding to an Israeli kinetic instigation, but a tat-for-tit-for-tat cycle where Iran would be responding to an Israeli response.
The difference is significant- and telling in how the Arab states responded- as the difference between responding to a response versus responding to an instigating response is that any game cyclic equilibrium will look at the response of the response for indications on whether the cycle will continue. People who believe that an Iranian non-response would be perceived as cowardliness and Israel believing it can act with impunity aren't familiar with the region. The accusations could come regardless- how Iran chose to respond is indicative of how it intends to continue with the policies that provoked the Israeli retaliation.
Dean
27d ago
Eh. I don't intend to challenge your feelings / say that your enjoyment was in any way wrong, but I feel ME1's writing was in many respects emblematic of the problems the trilogy had a hole, which is to say a clear lack of planning.
In RPGs like Mass Effect, the 'critical path' refers to the series of must-make choices that the player cannot avoid. Sidequest choices may never be seen if you don't take a side quest, but you can't complete the main story and reach the sequel without the critical path. And every. Single. Choice. in ME1's critical path amounts to 'Kill person X, or not.'
And there was no plan- as seen in how ME2 picked up these choices- for what would follow if you actually killed someone (in several contexts, literally no content vis-a-vis a cameo of the surviving person), even as at the same time anyone who could be killed could no longer be relevant to the plot. As soon as you had the option to kill Wrex, every story arc Wrex could touch if he survived had to be carried forward if he was dead (because game development resources are limited if you weren't the Witcher 2 of the era), and this applied to everyone and everything. Later ME started to learn that not all choices needed to kill people off to suggest a difference- ME Andromeda actually had a good dynamic for its planets, like what sort of hive and scum and villainy would be the criminal underworld's dominant player- but from the start, ME1 didn't know how to build a choice structure to provide meaningful content contrasts. Especially with a penchant for choices too big to mutually co-exist as narrative drivers: the hyper-expansive rachni could only matter as much as they could exist in a narrative where they didn't exist at all, while the saved Council and the all-Human council could only lead to the same general location. No understanding that bigger choices aren't better.
Nor did it really understand how to do an ideology-morality system. Paragon was internally consistent in ME1- just defer to the Council when it's not literally the end of galactic civilization- but Renegade was just a mess. It couldn't decide whether it was human-first, Council-skeptic, xenophobic, utilitarian, sociopathic, or if it could tell a difference between them all. ME2 got even worse, as it would have the same argument positions flip sides of the morality wheel in the same conversation, but ME1 was the one to get to define a morality curve, and it couldn't.
I do agree that the writing strictly went downhill immediately after- the second game spent about a third of the trilogy introducing or reintroducing a character cast who could be dead by the end of it (thus guaranteeing they couldn't be plot-carrying characters for a game that didn't move forward the meta-plot)- and the ending of the trilogy is practically a case study for why you need to know how your story will end from the start so that you can work towards it.
Black sheep opinion as it is, but from a writing perspective my favorite games of the series were not quite ME3- which aside from the ending was actually quite solid as an apocalypse story- but actually Andromeda. While I fully accept and respect people who didn't like Andromeda's choice of tone for being campy, and the mechanical issues in presentation were real, the writing was trying to be both a deliberate sort of campy and a 'new introduction' spiritual reboot, and I honestly thought it worked better at that than ME1 did. There was enough deviations so that it was a spiritual reboot rather than a clone, even as it wrote itself out of the corner that the ME trilogy painted itself into with choices too big to ever properly reflect. Andromeda was much more judicious with its choices, leaning more on emotional relevance than 'massive geopolitical differences'- the sort of thing like which person is the hero-figure to a nation, rather than whether the nation would die or not- and these were things that were much better set up for being reflected in a sequel than the ME trilogy did. As far as writing for a trilogy, it was much better founded.
But, alas, it seems the next one will be in the Milky Way.
Dean
28d ago
The Jack romance certainly ends with a lovers relationship, and her romance is the only one where she makes meaningful emotional healing and interpersonal progression in ME2. Miranda is uniquely characterized as smiling in a way she never did before and is also only able to have a healthy emotional relationship solely if Shepard is the one to provide it (with their dick). Kelly Chambers, in so much as that one qualifies, resolves it's emotional catharsis by having her do stripper dances in your room after she was kidnapped, locked into a pod, and nearly turned into bio-goop. Tali is much less emotionally traumatized, but certainly emotionally questionable given that she risks death itself for the sake of the Shepard bone out of a mix of captain-crushing hero crush (and the fact that you covered up her father's cultural war crimes).
Ashley... is a more mature frank attraction in ME1, but Ashely's character arc also jumps to the point that the tomboy not-a-model gets a major model glow up come ME3, so who knows there.
Dean
28d ago
I've noticed that sci-fi games are far more likely to qualify as "quality writing" for me. Even my contemporary examples (such as Prey) are sci-fi as well. That's not to say I can't enjoy other types, but I'm wondering if I either have a bias; if sci-fi lends itself to deeper writing, or attracts writers who can do so; or both. Note that I can give some very bad sci-fi examples of games (I am outspoken in how much I find Mass Effect completely awful in almost every way).
Whoah. I was just about to bring up Mass Effect as an example of popular bad sci-fi. Not simply for its ending, but from structural design perspective (a terribly managed/planned trilogy structure that led to the ending), an inability to stick to character arcs (many reoccuring characters flip from their initial story arcs to fit into the narrative / character appeal niches as needed), it's heavy power fantasy dynamic verging into sycophantism, the tendency to emotionally heal traumatized women by boning them, and so on. A good enough contrarian could even write an amusing spiel on it's fascistic themes and narrative style (though admittedly most who do aren't good enough to pull it off).
Dean
20d ago
I don't know any statistics, but I do remember reading multiple articles to that effect during the Black Lives Matter protests of groups bringing in out-of-state protestors who were regularly playing the role of agitators.
There are absolutely career activist networks as well, generally parts of political machines whose job it is to organize protests using established channels. They're the sort of people who work with the people who do things like bus students to protests. The student isn't necessarily showing up for any given protest, but the network behind the mobilization is regularly being tapped and exercised.
Is your position that Ukraine conscripts are 60% free and 40% slaves?
If not, what percent do you think are the slave-analogs here? 30%? 15%
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