Mer
1yr ago
The problem is that with a few words changed, everything you've said also applies to Russia.
Russia can't replenish its materiel at the ridiculous rate it has been expending it and even the deep soviet stockpiles will begin to run dry. It's worth noting that the single greatest donor of weapons to Ukraine has been Russia courtesy of many gifts left behind in good will gestures.
As for rhetoric, if what we're hearing in the west is hysterical then I lack words for what prevails in Russia. I recall discussions of sinking the UK under a giant tidal wave caused by nuclear explosions airing on Russian national television and the ongoing drumbeat of how this conflict is an existential crisis for Putin Russia.
Nobody on this earth knows how this war will end, or when. Some people may think they do and some might even turn out to be correct, but that will be a coincidence. This kind of business is far too large, complicated and full of moving parts to understand from any angle while it remains in motion, only once all the pieces have stopped will we be able to pick it apart and declare how obvious it was how things would turn out.
That said I still favour Ukraine over Russia on this one, they've got much stronger backing, have proven to be surprisingly competent and far more motivated than their Russian adversaries. The Russians by contrast have a military so dysfunctional that it verges on that of an Arab state, which seems to be institutionally more focused on battling with reality than with the enemy. Incidentally this aspect has been somewhat dissapointing for me, a long time fan of Russian doctrine, who has frequently argued that the Ivans are not as incompetent at warfare as is popularly believed. Apparently this sage wisdom must be updated to include military as well.
The biggest handicap to Ukrainian victory at this moment is the strange reticence of some western politicians to cheaply win a decisive victory over a long term adversary.
Mer
1yr ago
So politically I think you could see the LDS reversing their stance on homosexuality at some point (assuming you think the racial reverse was done for pragmatic reasons and not because God told them to) so it makes sense to put pressure on them to become more "correct".
Hey now, lets not exclude the idea of God buckling under the social pressure to become more "correct".
Mer
1yr ago
But for the encroachment, coup, and 8 years of shelling rebel oblasts, the invasion probably wouldn't have happened.
Like most wars, this one is not mono-causal
This one absolutely is, it stems entirely from a Russian inability to face reality and accept that it is no longer a great power and that Ukraine is no longer inside its orbit. If Russia was serious about the whole "multi-polar world" thing they would have recognised that their best bet was becoming part of Europe, instead they launched a war that will impoverish Russia and Europe, strengthening China and the US.
Mer
1yr ago
They're not equivalent. Conservatives engage in hatred based on identity, and liberals engage in hatred based on beliefs.
I would say that's a pretty bold statement to make about two very broad groups of people. I've personally observed both groups hate people for both reasons.
Putting aside the excessive generality, I would say that I object to this rather glib slogan on the grounds that beliefs are quite often an integral part of a persons identity and that in fact the lines between identity and belief are often so blurred as to make the distinction meaningless.
If I, a member of the Hawkmanii tribe, attack and murder a member of the Boarmanii tribe from the next valley over based solely on him being a filthy Boarmanii (who had it coming because you can't trust these "people"), would I have killed him based on his identity or his beliefs? By modern standards we would be considered to be members of the same ethnic group, distinguished only by our styles of dress or perhaps how we choose to wear our beards. Yet both of us would become murderously violent towards anyone implying that there is anything even remotely similar about us, I was born a Hawkmanii, I will die a Hawkmanii.
This ad campaign is just a reminder that conservatives still view being trans or gay as a political choice first, and a personal characteristic second.
So these hypothetical conservatives consider gays/transgender types to be repugnant because they perceive them as making an incorrect political choice, not because they perceive it to be an immutable characteristic? This seems to undermine the argument you made in the very line above.
Mer
10mo ago
Because it's inherently engaging with the series on a very superficial level.
I'd say if you're at the point of writing fan fiction about a setting you're past the point of being "superficially" a fan of something.
A fan is not defined by how much they "get" their chosen obsession, it is defined by the level of enthusiasm/passion for it.
Being moved to write gay fanfiction that completely misses the point of the setting makes someone as much a fan as a person that memorises pointless trivia (who also misses the point of the setting, but in a male way rather than a female way).
Mer
1yr ago
I've heard this from quite a few people now on this topic and I have to say I find it a little disingenuous to be surprised that people would draw the parallels between fictional characters and established real world stereotypes/historical tropes.
It would be fair to be surprised if they were trying to draw parallels between something in fiction and between real world groups when the two just don't align at all (I've seen this a lot with people of varying shades of political alignment trying to draw parallels between orcs/orks and black people, which I've always found quite unconvincing).
Mer
9mo ago
Over the years online I've encountered a few people who make this kind of argument and I have to say that it baffles me.
I'm a man and I can honestly say I've never for a moment felt envious of women and I really don't understand the people who say that if they could choose, they would choose to be born as a woman. The only thing you've really listed that bothers me is child support and custody, I've got no kids myself but I feel for the good fathers who get a raw deal from the courts.
The "minimum deal" of life for men is worse than for women. The "minimum deal" for women seems to be "get married." The minimum deal for men seems to be: become homeless and kill yourself, if you aren't murdered first.
I'll take being homeless thanks, I'd much rather be bum-fighting a junkie than live my life as any woman. I've been in plenty of fights, brawls and various other flavours of fracas over the course of my life and I've enjoyed them all thus far, I don't know what the hell your average woman does to pass the time nowadays (eat hot chip and lie?) but I have to imagine it would be deathly boring by comparison.
Mer
1yr ago
Russians will not be cruel to the local population no matter what, because they consider the local population to be Russian.
Unfortunately for the Russians, the Ukrainians get a say as well and it is very clear that they do not consider themselves Russians, in fact they are willing to kill and die over this very point.
The Russians will be cruel because reality conflicts with what they have imagined it to be.
But in all honesty this explanation is not needed either way, the Russians will be callously brutal institutionally and commit random acts of cruelty individually, because that is an intrinsic component of the Russian way of war. My source for this claim is the past hundred years of Russian military history and the enduring hatred towards Russia from the various peoples who have come into conflict with them.
Mer
11mo ago
it is important to continue until Anheuser-Busch is driven to bankruptcy.
I would say it's probably more important to have realistic goals.
Mer
1yr ago
It’s almost like you get incredibly bored without alcohol to distract you and need to find major goals to carry yourself.
This is certainly a creative way to spin what would seem to be an unalloyed positive into something that sounds vaguely negative.
And fwiw I think a non-drinking potus is a bad thing. I think people are far more chill and get along with each other who do. It’s like being an alien who doesn’t follow the normal cultural rituals.
This to me feels like it fits in the same camp as people who say they'd be more likely to vote for someone that they could have a beer with. I get the sentiment, but it just seems to be a pretty terrible way to think about national leaders. I've had drinks with many people and not once during (or after) those encounters have I thought to myself that the person I was drinking with should be given control of a nuclear arsenal, or the ability to alter the fate of nations. I would in fact be much more comfortable handing that responsibility off to some sort of hypothetical stone cold sober ubermensch, whose only joy in life was found by bettering the lives and futures of his people.
Mer
1yr ago
so what makes Ukraine so special?
It's a big country in Europe and not in the Middle East/Africa, to put it crudely.
Putting aside the "emotional" component of things as well, there's real benefits for the US to be had in this conflict, the US has been throwing pocket change and whatever rubbish it can be bothered to pull out of mothballs in exchange for watching Russia repeatedly shoot itself in the feet and legs.
Yarvin just seems agitated that his ideological opponents seem to be winning.
This, combined with those who reflexively oppose the west, seems to explain a lot of the pro-Russian sentiment in the west for this war.
Everything bad that is happening in this war is the result of Russia starting the war. If the war continues, the bad things will inevitably continue. The bad things will stop when the war stops, and since Russia cannot be convinced with words, the only way to stop the war is to kill Russians.
This seems like a pretty reasonable position to take, more pragmatic than most in the west have been willing to publicly state. If this was a more commonly held belief in the corridors of power in the west, the war might have been over by now.
Mer
1yr ago
You can use a Toyota as a troop carrier, you can put guns on it. But you'd be much better off with an actual military vehicle, something with armor, something designed for war.
Don't make me bring up the Toyota War, I will not stand idly by while one of the greatest modern fighting vehicles is slandered so.
Mer
11mo ago
Extremists die in ditches. The strong, the canny and the lucky make history.
The number of extremists that have achieved success and changed the world are far outnumbered by those that achieve nothing and usually end up lining the inside of a mass grave. The Paris Commune did not fail due to a lack of extreme beliefs, it failed because extremists are by their very nature terrible at making the kind of compromises you need to make in order to advance your goals.
Mer
1yr ago
they did basically win in the end
I've never given much credence to the notion of the winter war being a Soviet victory. They had to settle for the demands they levied at the start of the war, which were a paper thin pretense for starting a war that would let them seize the whole of Finland.
If I went to steal someones wallet and came away with a black eye, 3 missing teeth and a torn note clutched in my bloodied hand, I don't think I'd consider that a victory.
Mer
1yr ago
the US expanding right into Eastern Europe after Russia pulled back
Damn, how many invasions did I miss?
In all seriousness, the US (or more broadly speaking, the west in general, don't know why you're leaving western europe out here) didn't "expand into eastern europe", it was invited in, largely because eastern europe was sick of Russia and what Russia had to offer.
Mer
10mo ago
Tie down Russian forces and equipment defending large stretches of land would be the biggest "real" reason. PR and morale reasons are definitely valuable as well.
Mer
1yr ago
I am strongly of the opinion that since neoliberal PMC jobs are the easiest to automatic with AI, there will be incredibly strong regulation banning AI from taking the jobs of the PMC. The power to regulate is the power to destroy, and as incapable of actual productivity the PMC and their legion of bullshit jobs are, they know how to run a grift and bask in their own self importance.
This is exactly why the crossbow and handgonnes never took off and why we still live under a feudal system ruled over by our lieges and ladies.
More seriously, this technology is too valuable to not use, anyone who does use it is going to gain a massive advantage over anyone that doesn't, its use is inevitable.
It seems odd to me to classify following the rules of the benefits / incentive program as 'gaming' . If you follow the rules and have the children, it seems like it's producing the desired outcome.
I think this would come under following the letter rather than spirit of the law.
That said, I don't think any government currently extant understands how to set up a system immune to this kind of thing, they're rather unimaginative.
Mer
1yr ago
It's exactly the same thing. Black people are stereotyped as large and violent, orcs are large and violent, so orcs are black people
Tolkeins orcs aren't particularly large and their capacity for violence is either at the behest of masters who herd them into battle with the crack of the whip, or a kind of petty and mean vindictiveness that doesn't really seem to align with stereotypes. Similarly, Warhammer orcs/orks are football hooligans and don't come across as particularly "black". Warcraft orcs are just a "noble savage" mish-mash, although they are the closest, what with the history of slavery, but it's weakened by the half a dozen other inspirations.
Maybe it's a US thing, but the assosciation between black stereotypes and orcs still seems pretty weak.
For the same reason, not every depiction of a greedy banker is intended to represent Jews, though some are.
Of course, I don't think Rowling intended any coded message about jews in her work, as I say in another post, I think she was just drawing from the cultural well in general for her book and it just so happens that a lot of stereotypes in Britain about bankers/money men have crossovers with those about jews.
Mer
1yr ago
That would be the exception that proves the rule I'd say.
Same way I'd be pretty confident in guessing that warhammer fanfiction is primarily written by and for men.
Mer
1yr ago
If you would murder someone from another tribe regardless of their personal beliefs, then you're murdering based on identity
But their beliefs are their identity, it's the only way in which they are different (from a modern first world perspective). Identity is a question of what individuals believe to be important, both in themselves and in others. You can take a Hutu baby and a Tutsi baby from their respective homelands, raise them in a black american ghetto without any information about where they came from and they would not identify or be identified as Hutu and Tutsi, they're just black. Yet raise these same babies in Rwanda and one may very well end up dismembering the other with farming implements in a wide ranging genocide based solely on their identity.
To give another example that you keep banging on about, being gay. There are plenty of examples of cultures throughout history that do not share the modern concept of "being gay". I'm massively over-generalising here, but for ancient greeks, having sex with men was something that you did, not something that defined you. If you showed up to ancient Athens and insisted that having sex with or being attracted to men was this incredibly important, immutable part of who you were, they'd probably consider you to be strange and childish.
In both the cases above, the cultural context informs the identity of the individuals involved far more than their genetics.
The trend is obvious. Liberals will frequently eat their own based on failures of belief regardless of identity, like with Al Franken. Conservatives will frequently support their own based on identity and regardless of belief, like Donald Trump and his history of cheating on his wife with a porn star.
How exactly does Justin "Minstrel Show" Trudeau fit into this? And what intrinsic genetic traits does Donald Trump share with his fellow american conservatives that is shielding him from harm? As far as I can tell, there is no genetic link between conservatives (if there was then by your logic it would be haram for liberals to oppose them based on their conservative genetics anyway).
This is evident in one of the other replies to me that claims that blue collar hostility towards gay men is justified because gay men are intrinsically likely to sexually harass straight men. The poster linked an identity, being gay, with an inevitanle political action, sexual harassment, to justify the hatred of gay men.
It is strange to me that you consider sexual harassment to be a political act. I would say it's pretty reasonable to assume that gay men are more likely to sexually harass straight men than a straight man is. Ergo, if you're afraid of being sexually harassed or assaulted by a man, you would be wise to focus your defenses towards gay men. From the perspective of our hypothetical blue collar worker, the problem is not the immutable characteristic (attraction to men), the problem is the increased risk of the bad things he doesn't want happening to him.
I wouldn't blame a woman for being more frightened of being sexually harassed or assaulted by a straight man, why would I fault this hypothetical blue collar worker for drawing the same conclusions?
This whole website is based on the idea that it's better to object on ideological rather than tribal lines, even if tribalism is powerful. Conservatives are clearly the side of power through tribalism, and liberals are clearly the side of power through persuasive ideology.
Ideological lines are tribal lines. The very next sentence you accuse the enemy tribe of being the bad mean people who are ignorant (perhaps they are also smelly?), whereas your tribe are the good virtuous ones who seek to rise above such petty nonsense. You would have to be willfully ignorant to end up on a site like the motte and not have been presented with an abundance of examples of those from the liberal tribe acting solely out of opposition to the conservative tribe.
Conservatives would like to pretend they are hating people for their beliefs, rather than their immutable characteristics, so they recast immutable characteristics as political beliefs so they can justify their identity based hatred.
They're smart enough to pretend that it's just harmful beliefs and actions from gay and trans people that they object to, like drag shows for children, surgery for children, and men in women's sports.
This commercial cleverly displays that this is just a facade designed to persuade moderate liberals such as myself that they are looking for any compelling reason to attack gay and trans people because their hatred is based on identity.
I honestly can't tell if you're trying to rile people up here or if you're just that arrogant and close minded. I would say that you started from a fundamentally flawed understanding of identity and have developed a self-serving explanation of why your team are the goodies and the other team are the baddies from there. How does your mental model account for the existence of gay conservatives for example? Trump is probably the most pro-gay president ever, he was publicly pro gay marriage while Biden and Obama were still saying that marriage was between a man and a woman.
Mer
1yr ago
You can’t
That's quitter talk, you absolutely can build enough housing, it's just a question of if the will to do so exists and what we consider to be adequate housing.
Mer
1yr ago
The term you're looking for is "backed by NATO" or "NATO backed".
I don’t think is hugely extreme to call them NATO mercenaries. False in the sense that your not hiring random country people to do the fighting.
Well then you think wrong, it's false in the sense that it's false.
No this is still very much thanks to Russia, the US may benefit from this, but Russia chose to launch this utterly idiotic and needless invasion in the first place.
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