MayorofOysterville
No bio...
User ID: 3800
MayorofOysterville
26d ago
There are still men's clubs aren't there? Stuff like the Eagles and Elks are still around but I don't think these kind of civic clubs are very appealing to young people.
MayorofOysterville
1mo ago
The CCP might be evil and bend on world domination,
A bit of a nitpick I know but the CCP is not bent on world domination. They want the South China Sea islands and Taiwan but they don't want the network of bases and patronage world domination would require. Iran has a much more extensive list of allies, proxies and bases then China does on a paltry budget. If China wanted the type of influence the Soviets had they could have it but they don't. They are happy to sit in China* and make money. For example A see the Syrian civil war.
*That being their definition of China of course.
MayorofOysterville
1mo ago
As Iconochasm said there are lots of people who believed this not just bots. Anywhere that was part of the "Anti-imperialist west" Or thrid worldist sphere was convinced the US would lose thousands of soldiers and likely even a carrier. But if you don't look places those types hang out you wouldn't see it and they are naturally a lot quieter now.
MayorofOysterville
1mo ago
Islamic Persia has produced a huge amount of architecture, art, poetry and literature. They were the intellectual elite of the Caliphate. And have existed in that form since before England was a country.
MayorofOysterville
1mo ago
Shockingly when their entire leadership was killed and a total war declared they didn't care about "the rules based international order." They showed plenty of restraint during the 12 day war it's only now they've pulled the pin on their MAD. And every country they've constantly attacked has been a US or Israeli ally. Many of which have bases hosting US troops. It beggars belief to me that you think any other country wouldn't act the same in their situation.
MayorofOysterville
1mo ago
I'd rather not start WW3 over a bad flu. And wtf would bombing even do? China's not some shithole country you realize they can bomb back?
MayorofOysterville
1mo ago
Why would we bomb China for Covid in any scenario？
I think this is why Trump's message about Europe opening the strait themselves had some resonance with Americans. They can't. They are children who can't think strategically,
It's Trump who can't think strategically. He's the one who started a war which predictably led to Iran closing the straight and then asked the Europeans to bail him out. And both the US and Europe have the power to open the straight. France has a carrier and sealift capacity they could open if they want. And the US has the entire Marine Corps. Trump could easily open the straight he just doesn't want to pay the small butchers bill it would take do so.
Think of all of the meetings an letters and absolute bullshit that they did in response to Ukraine/Russia. It was ALL just whining (like a child would whine) to try and get us to do something.
Europe has given more aid to Ukraine then the US has. And is still supporting Ukraine even as the US has stopped. This is definitively not just whining and also shows that Europe is not just vassals they don't just jump when the US says. There are just a lot of shared values across the Atlantic but when the interests diverge Europe will go their own way. See Ukraine or China relations for example.
It's such a crazy relic of the past that there used to be young earth creationists and evangelicals all over the internet even in left wing spaces.
Haha I gotta say I got a kick out of you explaining Vivziepop's shows to the Motte. I think the answers to all your questions is tumblr the show is tumblr personified and very feminine it's just shipping tumblr OCs in problematic relationships. Which I think is why it works the show is totally steeped in wokeness and tumblr ideas but not preachy in the way a more corporate show would be. It lets it's characters be flawed and doesn't get touchy over sacred groups because it's not defensive. It's made by tumblr girl for tumblr girlies though of course the fandom has spread well beyond that.
I don't think the show really does highlight the flaws of traditional sexual norms. One of the only healthy relationships is Millie and Moxxie's which is also basically the only monogamous heterosexual one. Stolas and Stella have an arranged marriage because of rule of cool by girl norms. It lets them play out a fun subplot and exonerate Stolas while allowing a passionate gay romance to bloom. It's girl goon bait not a commentary on modern life. In many ways the show works because it isn't that. Trying to set it in the real world would make it jarring for how our society doesn't work like that. Having the main cast be hellspawn and damned sinners makes it work a lot better. Anyway I agree the worldbuilding can be kind of a mess but idk most of it's pretty fun and I like the show
I also realize I'm replying to a two year old comment but I was curious if there had been talk about either of here shows on here as they seem a prime culture war topic.
MayorofOysterville
1mo ago
Our society has completely different bas fundamental philosophies then the Medievals? The web of different rights and obligations for different classes of society has been dead a while now and was on the way out once the modern period got going.
Because doing so would trigger a war like this and get the entire leadership killed. Now that the war has happened and the entire leadership has been killed, there's no cost to doing it, that's already been paid.
MayorofOysterville
1mo ago
That's the exact reason I said the Western Allies, meaning America, England France and not "the Allies." My entire point was that the war in the West was fought largely based on civilized European norms and yes bombing cities is part of that. Everyone in World War II and World War I did it. The war in the East was a racial war of extermination between two totalitarians nightmare states. Both of which destroyed entire peoples. Yes the Germans were able to field huge number of locals desperate to fight against the Soviets. And they were welcomed in a lot places in the Western Soviet union. Until the locals realized the German plan was not to restore private property but keep them on their collective farms and starve them to feed their armies. A lot of groups made choices between the Nazis and the Soviets and most got squeezed and ground into paste no matter what side they chose.
No I don't need the Holocaust for a World War II narrative. Germany and Japan both declared war on America after having started half a dozen wars of naked aggression and conquest between them. Fighting them would be totally justified without the Holocaust why wouldn't it be？ Germany and Japan were aggressive expansionist enemies of America and the West. Indeed the entire war was fought without the Holocaust being a central aspect of war propaganda because the unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor. Your verging on being one of those Tankies who lifts up Stalin because he fought the Nazis. The Nazis fought the Soviets sure but they were also a totalitarian expansionist state and they only fought the Soviets after subjugating all of Western Europe and invading many neutral countries. They also didn't fight the Soviets for altruistic reasons but to steal and settle their land and alienated a huge number of the Soviet population with their brutality.
MayorofOysterville
1mo ago
Yeah, that's actually kind of my point, that this whole fucking sensational story relies entirely on Soviet investigators and records. Do you think that's a reliable basis for confidence in this narrative of millions of Jews being gassed inside shower rooms?
Why would the Soviets fake something that goes against their own narrative? Anyway I think it's a reliable basis for arguing that the Germans killed a lot of Jews I don't personally claim to be able to prove the method but it seems extremely obvious they did. We are going a bit round and round do you think there were Jews in the Pale of settlement? Because the exact number doesn't matter. Why don't know the exact number of Dzungars before and after nor Armenians. but there were Jews there and now there aren't so where did they go? The pre-Soviet Imperial records show a large Jewish population the post Soviet Russian Federation census shows almost none, the same with pre and post Communist Poland. You need zero communist records to prove anything if you don't want. You keep talking about Soviet investigators we don't need investigators to know places like Warsaw and Kiev had huge Jewish populations and now don't
Again it's not just quibbling about numbers there were whole Jewish districts in these cities and now there aren't. There were whole Yiddish speaking farming villages of which zero exist today. The Germans created a special unit to fight partisans and then declared Jews partisans. It's not rocket science where they could have gone. There's plenty of witness testimony in Eastern Europe of their activities. Many of which incredibly problematic to Western narratives like the Baltic populations eagerly participating. You keep going on and on about shower rooms. I don't claim to be able to prove shower rooms (though I admit I do buy it) I'm confident the Germans killed the Jews and as you say without it, it creates a hole. But we should at least agree the Germans targeted Jews before we discuss method and I probably can't prove the gas chamber beyond a reasonable doubt for you. I think I can prove the Germans shot a lot of Jews in Eastern Europe. Notably because they created whole units to do it and we have a decent amount of evidence. Such as the Germans declaring all Jews partisans.
Yes the Soviet did Katyn the Germans did a bunch of their own massacres both the Germans and the Soviets wanted to elminate Poland that's what the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was about.
It was a racial war, even the Allies treated it as that. That is how we have the Holocaust Narrative to begin with. Racial warfare, and the gas chamber narrative is a figment of racial warfare.
The Western Allies and the Germans fought the war in a much more civilized manner. Compare how German POWs were treated by the Western Allies versus the Soviets or how the Germans deliberately issued orders suspending the laws of war and conduct on the Eastern front. The Germans did not view the Western Allies as racially inferior people's to be colonized in the way they viewed Slavs. The conduct of both the Allies and Axis was extremely different on the Western versus Eastern fronts.
MayorofOysterville
1mo ago
So lets say everything you said is correct the gas chambers never existed the camps were just labor camps and the Soviets created the death camp narrative as a psyop. Would you describe the systematic murder of three million Jews as the holocaust not happening? I wouldn't and I don't think most people would. I think an argument following that would be something like the, "camp narrative" in incorrect and caused inflated number but the holocaust still happened it just involved Jews being rounded up and shot" That seems to follow from those beliefs a lot better.
The Einsatzgruppen were real, their purpose was anti-partisan measures.
This is very convenient given that the Germans considered all Jews in the Soviet Union to be partisans. So yes their purpose was anti-partisan measures which under German classifications of the time would include eliminating Jews as all Jews were considered partisans.
I've already explained that differentiating census data across years is only a theoretical approximation of mortality due to measurement error. And in the case of estimates of Jewish population, it seems the errors were in opposite directions pre-war and post-war, which is highly convenient for the narrative they rely on for their global status.
But the issue is there are no Jews left. There was a whole Yiddish speaking culture in the Pale that is just gone your quibbling about exact number but the point is how ever many there were and we have records outside of the census one showing a culture here for hundreds of years they aren't there anymore. If you say elsewhere in the Soviet Union Soviet records don't show that and you can go hunt in the former Soviet Union all you want you won't find them. And given Soviet official policy was to downplay the specific targeting of Jews there was no incentive to fake that anyway.
The Germans loudly and often declared the war in the East a racial war and one of ethnic cleansing and conflict. Given that such wars almost always involve genocide and mass killing. And given the Germans were willing to implement things like murder the Polish intelligentsia to destroy them as a nation, implement the hunger plan, suspend the laws of war in the Soviet Union and plan out stuff like general plan Ost. Which explicitly involved settlement and ethnic cleansing. Why would you expect them to spare the Jews especially because the Jews of the Pale just vanished after the Germans swept over them.
MayorofOysterville
1mo ago
As someone who was very against the starting this war and still wishes it never happened. This seems like a good idea to get some benefit. Boots on the ground seizing the Uranium and physically destroying the enrichment facilities would actually provide some benefit to the war and make Iran think twice about re-starting their nuclear program.
The mortality in Poland was especially high but we would expect that to be more evenly distributed. The pre war population of Jews in Poland was 10%. The Postwar population was virtually none and the population of in Poland is nill now. This was not according to estimated numbers but the official Polish census So where did they go? All the Jews in Warsaw just packed up and moved to the Soviet Union? The Soviet Union is not a black box you can't just through millions of people there. They kept detailed records like the totalitarian state they were and also didn't really allow assimilation in the sense that everyone had their nationality listed on their identity cards and the Soviets viewed Judaism as a nationality. There were a many totally assimilated Soviet Jews but their ID cards still said Jewish. This is why there are now pork shops in Israel because these totally assimilated Jews were still able to prove their Jewishness. Now that might make your hypothesis seem correct except the Soviet Union is also short on Jews
Vilnius and Kiev and the entire pale also have missing Jews. Because the places historically had quite a lot The numbers for this are from the Russian census in 1897 of just Yiddish speakers. Again census not an estimation. Since the 1990s we have access to the full Soviet census records and these people are not there. Nor is there evidence of a huge influx from Poland and the Soviets did keep records of this. Even totally assimilated Jews who didn't practice and eat pork were still considered Jews because the Soviet viewed them as race/nationality. These records show all kinds of other Soviet atrocities based on nationality namely Stalin's deportations they aren't sanitized. The Soviet archives were hugely open during the 90s.
As well then we get to the issue of motive. Did you know that the Soviets intensely disliked the Western holocaust narrative because they though it focused to much on Jews? They thought it elevated Jews too much when the German invasion had caused great suffering and death for all the Soviet people's the holocaust as such as a singular action was not really taught in the Soviet Union. But rather integrated into the whole narrative of the great Patriotic War. Why would the Soviets go the effort to fabricate a narrative they hate.
But if you are saying they were all gassed in shower rooms at a precisely known location, then we can review the evidence for that claim and find the weight of the evidence does not remotely justify confidence in those sensational and extremely unusual claims.
You know this isn't the mainstream narrative right? Which hold that more than half of the Jews killed died from overwork or more likely massacred in a muddy field in Eastern Europe by the Einsatzgruppen. Even if you proved that Auschwitz was entirely a myth you'd still half to deal with the missing Jews and the state sanctioned death squads. Which how do you deal with them do you think the Einsatzgruppen were a real thing and if so what were there purpose?
MayorofOysterville
1mo ago
10% of Poles were Jewish before the war. A large number of the cities that were in the Pale of settlement were majority or plurality Jewish. An the there were many Jewish farming villages in the pale as well. Where did they all go?
MayorofOysterville
1mo ago
I'm surprised actually arrrr slash movies generally seemed to love the movie from what I saw.
MayorofOysterville
1mo ago
I feel like it has worked pretty well, if you compare the West Bank and Gaza there's obviously a huge difference.
MayorofOysterville
1mo ago
The USSR actually tried incredibly hard to create logical boundaries in Central Asia. They did not deliberately leave minorities places. But Soviet ethnographers did not always access groups accurately because of ignorance on their part and lack of national consciousness on the populations part. Or more commonly because these groups were all mixed together and it was impossible to draw clear lines. Regardless if you read the commission on nationalities (headed by one Joseph Stalin) they were not intentionally leaving minorities anywhere but rather a clean national delineation was just impossible. The jigsaw boundaries and enclaves and exclaves were an attempt to gerrymander clear nations where there were none.
MayorofOysterville
1mo ago
You can call a tail a leg, but that don't make it so.
The Jewish towns in the West Bank are totally integrated into Israel and function just like Israeli towns inside the "official" borders do.
MayorofOysterville
1mo ago
People in the West Bank should have equal rights. Israel should either annex it and give everyone citizenship or withdraw. Creating an interlocking jigsaw of Jewish and Arab towns with the Jewish ones fully integrated into Israel and the Arab ones surrounded little Bantustans is not sustainable or stable.
MayorofOysterville
1mo ago
The Israelis in the West Bank have full rights and their towns are fully integrated with Israel.
The short leash and overprotective brothers thing doesn't seem to work though. It didn't work in your example your cousin still ended up a single mom and it didn't work in among the kids at my high school. The girls end up sneaking around anyway and half end up pregnant out of wedlock. The girls from middle and upper class liberal families whose brothers don't care who they date seem to have much better results. And you might say it's a class thing and sure maybe it is but still that's the half of it I can't imagine a family of respectable doctors and engineers getting together to force some disreputable boy to marry one of their relatives.
More options
Context Copy link