BANNED USER: /comment/21314
Minotaur
Si vis pacem, fac bellum
White, right-wing, male.
User ID: 101
Banned by: @ZorbaTHut
Minotaur
Si vis pacem, fac bellum
1yr ago
"Russia is not optimal for Ukraine's long-term prospects" is a far cry from "Russian victory is an existential crisis".
Minotaur
Si vis pacem, fac bellum
1yr ago
That's correct but also not a response to anything I said.
Minotaur
Si vis pacem, fac bellum
1yr ago
"Demeaned by polite society" isn't the same as "universally derided". Yes, Blue Tribe -- both its left wing members and right wing members -- revile Trump. But they are not everyone.
Minotaur
Si vis pacem, fac bellum
1yr ago
Putin is indeed responsible for his actions -- yet we absolutely provoked this war and have been egging it on for the better part of a decade. There was no outcome save war from the moment we pushed the Maidan coup.
Minotaur
Si vis pacem, fac bellum
1yr ago
If prediction markets thought a war was going to be quick that bodes poorly for prediction markets.
Minotaur
Si vis pacem, fac bellum
1yr ago
I do not believe serious thinkers genuinely thought Ukraine would quickly fall into collapse. Instead, I think serious thinkers have, for decades, been strongly incentivized to play up the terrible threat of Russia, and that insisting there's no hope and all is lost and the wicked Soviet Monster is going to steamroll in (... unless we support our champ Zelensky and support sending tons of armaments and support coordinating their attacks with our own intelligence services and...) was only ever a cynical farce.
Minotaur
Si vis pacem, fac bellum
1yr ago
If it can be proven that they were lied to, I certainly hope the liars in question are prosecuted.
Minotaur
Si vis pacem, fac bellum
1yr ago
Parole and probation are, well, probationary measures; they're a supervised relaxing of a punishment conditional on good behavior, rather than a punishment themselves. If you're out on parole it means you should be in prison but we're trusting you. They don't intuitively map to me as part of the sentence.
A fine, however, is. You get sentenced to a five thousand dollar fine and five year in prison, and during that sentence you might be let out on parole.
A fine is much more centrally a part of a sentence than probation is.
Minotaur
Si vis pacem, fac bellum
1yr ago
Well, since it's literally just the s-wounds from "God'(s wounds)", you'd pronounce it the same way you pronounce wounds.
Minotaur
Si vis pacem, fac bellum
1yr ago
As a Republican, I agree that keeping criminals out of elections will disproportionately help my side.
Minotaur
Si vis pacem, fac bellum
1yr ago
Indeed, the horror that we might be forcing a woman to endure a terrible situation is awful, indeed. On the other hand, the horror that we're slaughtering innocent babies is awful, too. I don't think anti-abortion activists are "innocent to potential horrors", they're in fact very aware of a different horror.
Minotaur
Si vis pacem, fac bellum
1yr ago
Does it make DeSantis look silly and buffoonish to his supporters, his detractors, the likely voters among them, the unlikely voters among them, the swing vote? Remember, every audience is seeing their own movie. It literally does not matter at all if a million people think this makes DeSantis look bad if they're not gonna vote for him anyway -- and it'd be worth earning all of their disapproval just to make 15,000 people on his side more likely to.. well, support him.
"But he might have alienated more independents than he did excite members of the base", you could argue. And maybe! The political calculations are certainly complex.. in theory.
In practice, though, I think everyone's collectively agreed that exciting the base beats infuriating the enemy, and these complex calculations aren't actually being worked out.
Minotaur
Si vis pacem, fac bellum
1yr ago
I addressed this in my first two links.
I know you did. I asked the question to move the topic away from the irrelevant behavior of the police back to the important part: the criminality or lack thereof.
Apologetic police don't have any bearing on guilt.
Minotaur
Si vis pacem, fac bellum
1yr ago
I don't believe Zelensky has taken major personal risk by remaining. If anything, I suspect he's safer in environments wholly under the control of Ukrainian leadership and military command, rather than entrusting his fate to the west. Even if, as I suspect, Ukraine loses sometime between '23 and '25, Zelensky will have ample time and opportunity to evacuate. I do not believe it's likely he ever winds up in the hands of Russian soldiers about to take a bayonet up the ass (or a bullet, or whatever).
Offhand, my priors for leaders is that dictators who lose in civil wars tend to meet unpleasant ends, but other leaders in a majority of other fall-from-power situations live comfortably in exile.
Minotaur
Si vis pacem, fac bellum
1yr ago
Obama got more people praying than the Second Coming would, man. I was right there in the thick of it -- he was a rockstar, not a politician.
Well, if you're going to fairly call basically everyone involved heroes, fair enough.
My definition of a hero is someone who goes above and beyond the expectations of their station to achieve some pro-social outcome even if the cost to them is likely to be catastrophically high. This would put the glory of heroism firmly on the people, not the leadership, which aligns with my moral intuitions.
Some examples of heroes:
Medal of Honor and similar "super-soldiery" commendations, but not the average voluntary soldier;
Non-firemen who rush into burning buildings to help people;
A good Samaritan who confronts an active shooter, especially one who successfully kills them;
A whistleblower who exposes corruption even if it destroys their own career prospects;
Minotaur
Si vis pacem, fac bellum
1yr ago
My experience is that Obama's support among the people was equivalent to Trump's, but that Obama also had the media fawning over him, which amplified the personal charisma to legendary proportions. I say this as someone who voted for Obama when I first turned eighteen, so I was in the enthusiastic youth cohort.
Minotaur
Si vis pacem, fac bellum
1yr ago
Ukraine can and has endured with Russian sympathies in both the leadership and the people. The war is not existential.
Minotaur
Si vis pacem, fac bellum
1yr ago
Well, if Florida's mass-arresting people it doesn't have a reasonable suspicion broke the law, then all the leadership involved should duly suffer.
Minotaur
Si vis pacem, fac bellum
1yr ago
There was never a serious chance the west wasn't going to support Ukraine. We gleefully egged this entire war on.
Minotaur
Si vis pacem, fac bellum
1yr ago
I predicted Russia would win after a multi-year slog that does not result in Zelensky's exile, death, or imprisonment, and also does not end in the dissolution of the Ukrainian state. That has been my stance since all of this began: that Russia will win, that it is not worth it for them to win, and that we really just should have stuck with the pre-Maidan status quo rather than meddling and fucking everything up. This entire affair was a masterstroke of the very American hegemony I loathe as an American and I hate every side involved.
I apologize for boiling that down to low-light "lul Russia" quips. I will respond more seriously to you:
My explicit position is that this entire war is a senseless tragedy provoked by western interests. Putin is a terrible man and he is ultimately responsible for his actions, but provocation is real and we have been poking the bear for a long time for no reason other than a deep-seated hatred of Russians swimming in the very DNA of our ruling class. Russia has been a boogieman since the fall of the Soviet Union used to drum up support and justification for the ever-expanding grasp of the American leviathan. Our interference in Ukraine years ago is what set the stage for this inevitable conflict -- a conflict which at best will be a Pyrrhic victory for Russia, for even if they seized Ukraine their reward is merely having Ukraine, in no way worth the grotesque costs piling up.
The only winners are America and their chosen ones. In the Ukraine, this is Zelensky. He's a pretty face whose primary skill is performance art. He has become a culture hero for doing what would be expected of any man in his position; "run away from your country at the start of a grueling war" is not an expected default action for leaders. He's used the war to implement strongman leadership, purge political rivals, and secure his personal legacy for the rest of his life.
He is not a good leader. He has not risen above his station or demonstrated strength of character. He is a symbol of the inevitable triumph of American imperialism, and his reward will be either a long-term dictatorial political career or a cushy post-politics speaking tour on the first world's elite media circuits.
All of this is nakedly transparent. Ukraine is grossly corrupt. Zelensky is grossly corrupt. It's not even hidden, you don't have to trawl conspiracy websites, it's all in the open. People handwave it away with "oh but Putin is so super duper evil", and then worship Zelensky like he's a superhero, and it's so fucking pathetic that it arouses in me an immense fury. The shallow principles of the world -- Zelensky violates the same core liberties we allegedly damn Putin over, yet because Zelensky's the chosen one (much like Fauci for COVID), his blatant maleficence is gaslit away.
Russia sucks. They're big and have lots of production capabilities. They could probably blow up the world. But this abundance of arms and potential for the ultimate escalation doesn't make Russia an elite modern military force that can reasonably expect to steamroll the west; Ukraine's loss will be after a horrific meat grinder of a war that lasts years, costs tons of lives, and doesn't hurt Zelensky at all.
Yet Zelensky's the hero. The corrupt strongman demanding we give him more money so more of his people can die, and regardless of the country's fate or how many bodies his pride puts into the ground, a self-centered actor with no respect for the principles we've collectively enshrined in him will go down as their defender.
He's garbage, Russia's garbage, Ukraine's garbage, Putin's garbage. The only people involved who aren't trash are the ones dying so that American leadership can be satisfied they slew the Great Beast of their forefathers.
Minotaur
Si vis pacem, fac bellum
1yr ago
I am claiming that the Ukraine military with western support is on par with the Russian military. Were Ukraine on its own, totally fucked, but they aren't on their own.
Minotaur
Si vis pacem, fac bellum
1yr ago
Have you considered cultivating mindfulness and refining your ability to concentrate absent chemical stimulation, so that you needn't worry about health complications and anxiety issues? You mention a lot of issues with drugs and all your solutions seem to be some form of "more and different drugs".
That's a sufficiently nonstandard take on what qualifies as "existential" that I don't feel like engaging it further.
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