Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
User ID: 137
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
Israel is conducting an operation that by all accounts seems very bloody and, to say the least, not one where they are deliberately trying to avoid civilian casualties. Taking this into account, these polling results would appear to show American support for Israel to be notably strong, among both parties.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
29d ago
The most important figure of the American right spent a large portion of his winning 2016 presidential campaign demanding that his center-left opponent be locked up.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
Caused the greatest inflation from excessive spending since Jimmy Carter.
...wouldn't a large part of that be Trump-era Covid spending, though?
Invited naked Trans people to the White House lawn.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
Africans are happily cooperating with Russia and China, after all, who certainly don't engage in affirmative action towards blacks.
Neither has a notorious history of anti-African racism to compensate for, though. And it's not just the Black Africans - though they're an easy example here precisely because the polls show that they are strongly pro-American and the current efforts of USA to recompensate past wrongs provide an easy partial explanation (there are other factors too, of course, like the work of American-derived Christian churches and so on), the US treatment of African-Americans has generally tended to globally be seen as symbolic of the wider idea of American white supremacy and "sins of the nation", so to say.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
3mo ago
I’m not sure it’s a particularly good argument for the harmlessness of the incels that they congregate on 4chan, one of the most culturally influential websites on the planet, molding the headspaces of countless young men all over the world (some young women as well).
One of the precise risk factors of the incel subculture is that exposure to it seems to convince numerous temporarily virginal 17-year olds (or even younger types) that it’s over, women will only have sex with them if they’re a chiseled sociopathic gigachad, nothing they do can matter since they’re [short/fat/not rich/weak-chinned/Asian/etc], best not even try.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
4mo ago
What I do consider shameful is the perfect-hindsight/moving-the-goalposts tactic of bringing up vague memories of how people rejected your bailey in the past, and then going 'see, here is my perfectly reasonable motte, and remember how the other side rejected it back then? They sure have been proven wrong!'
Another example would be justifying the anti-vaxx/anti-lockdown baileys of "vaccines are going to kill millions if not tens or hundreds of millions of people within a few years"/"The WEF is going to keep the lockdowns and forced masking and vaxx mandates on forever and ever and ever to turn humans into slaves" by referring to the "Vaccines weren't nearly as good as advertised"/"lockdowns, masks and mandates were pretty useless considering how onerous and divisive they were" mottes being arguably fulfilled.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
6mo ago
Is the article supposed to go against the claim that right-wingers will trawl the social media for any and all pro-Hamas far left comments in situations like this? Because that's certainly the impression you get when you include operators like "Sarah Shahid, freelancer for Now Toronto and Spring magazine" and "At Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, assistant professor of social work Dr. Jessica Hutchison".
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
10mo ago
Instead of a Biden starting wars you get a Trump ending them.
A fairly odd statement, considering that Trump ended no wars and Biden, rather famously ended the War in Afghanistan (while not starting new ones, in the sense of American troops fighting and dying).
When it came to foreign policy, the practical differences between Trump and Biden were minor and they both hewed to a longrunning general line of American foreign policy. Clearly in this sense they both belong of the category of "local elites".
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
15d ago
"The Ukrainians only fight because they are conscripted and forced" is also something that I've seen for the entire war. The whole idea seems to have originated as cope by Russians and pro-Russians who claimed that since Ukrainians are just Russians who speak funny they'd run directly into the arms of Mother Russia once given an opportunity and who have then flailed to find explanations for why that didn't happen. You don't fight for two years with this intensity with forced and conscripted troops. It's possible that this might change at some point, but even then I'd need far more evidence to actually believe it to be true this time.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
15d ago
Vegetarianism/Veganism has already been extremely popular on the left due to animal sympathy
The bare minimum requirement to even begin considering the statement "vegetarianism/veganism has already been extremely popular on the left" truthful would be a majority of leftists being vegetarian or vegan, which isn't even true here, where these things probably have a stronger hold on left consciousness than most other countries, and hasn't been remotely true in any of the other countries I've visited and where I've encountered leftists.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
Yes, of course there are migrants coming. No-one has denied that. That's different from the dumb catchphrase "infinity migrants", let alone the implication that EU is specifically regulating AI to facilitate immigration.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
8mo ago
So the idea is insane, and the Democrats would also be bad for... opposing this insane idea? Trying to make it not happen?
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
11mo ago
The thing that I'm wondering about is why put Neely into a chokehold? There were multiple people there trying to restrain Neely, couldn't they just pin him to the ground until the cops come pick him up?
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
15d ago
I'm not sure why that should be compelling at all. "Science" isn't just one coherent entity where one scientist being wrong makes all of the rest in the vaguely same sector fundamentally wrong. One scientist, who might as well not even be alive any more, making a prediction in 1967 has no bearing on scientists making predictions right now. Much of the list isn't even concerned with scientists - neither Al Gore or Prince Charles are such - or is related to issues other than climate change, such as peak oil, which has plenty of advocates as a theory who don't consider climate change to be all that dangerous (Greer, say).
"Wow! Look at all these failed AI predictions!" is a lackluster argument in debates about when the AGI is coming, if it is at all, and this is similarly a lackluster argument in climate debates.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
When I was little, I was disciplined a couple of times by hair-pulling, and it made me too fearful of parents and their reaction to, say, meet with friends outside of normal meeting times, which in turn contributed to my social life only really getting going once I moved away from home to university (19 in theory, 20 in practice since I returned to home city for conscription in the nearby brigade).
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
4mo ago
If so, we'd be seeing more crimes in the advanced welfare states than in other states, which we aren't seeing.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
6mo ago
I'm just reminded of how the Finnish Civil War is treated in Finland. The Finnish Civil War was an acrimonious conflict with consequences that reverbate to this day; I've met people still in the present day who basically define their political alignment through what side their great-granddad fought in.
Still, the society's grand narrative since WW2 has been reconciliation, with Winter War holding a particular mythological position as the war were the "sons of the Reds and the Whites fought side by side", and the welfare state has also been seen as the fulfillment of Red goals of social equality for the working class. The reconciliation also meant that, for instance, while there had only been markers and statues commemorating the White victory everywhere, it was also now OK to commemorate Red soldiers with graves and markers; during May Days left-wing orgs still ritualistically hold events at those graves.
However, I don't think anyone has ever proposed that reconciliation meant commemorating Red generals! Granted, they were, to put it mildly, not particularly militarily impressive figures, but I don't think there are any memorials for them anywhere. If someone even proposd to put one up, well - I'd guess they'd be seen as the deepest, dankest Stalinist in existence, the sort of a guy who goes through his daily life wearing a Soviet uniform and an ushanka.
OTOH, there are memorials to CGE Mannerheim, who led the white forces, in all of the major cities. During some statues fracas in the US a left-wing youth organization propsoed moving them to museum, this proposal was widely condemned by basically all of the other major political forces, and was then immediately shelved. Then again, Mannerheim also led the Finnish forces in WW2.
One thing I've never quite caught on is how may memorials to Northern generals there even are in the US, since all the culture war about Confederate statues gives the impression that the entire South (and some other states besides) is downright peppered with them, that there are memorials to Northern generals only comes up when someone poses a "They'll come after Grant next!" hypothetical, and I haven't seen basically any mentions of notable Black Civil War era figures getting memorialized, apart from maybe Harriet Tubman?
In the end, putting up a statue to some guy is basically equivalent to putting up a sign saying "This guy is a great guy! Everyone should emulate him and be like him!" and if the society has decided that he's actually not a great guy, it would seem as natural to put the statue away as it would be to put such a sign away, though it would indeed be more prudent to put it in a museum than destroy it entirely.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
7mo ago
I meant the military fatigues, specifically.
Insofar as I’ve observed on social media, the online American factions really playing attention to Ashton-Cirillo are NAFO shibas, who would support anyone talking about killing Russians, and American conservatives who are casting out to find any evidence of Ukraine being ‘work’ for domestic culture war reasons and also probably because it makes them feel better about implicitly supporting the invading side.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
7mo ago
A rather simple explanation for choosing Ashton-Cirillo as a spokesperson would be being one of the few native English-speaking volunteer fighters with media experience compounded with a distinct lack of military experience.
Sure, the military fatigues are a media strategy, but do you really think that the main audience for that one is "only left wing of the Democratic Party"?
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
11mo ago
Trump wasn't running against some generic "Left", Trump was running against Biden, and Biden's practical policies towards China have been identical to Trump, if possible even slightly more hostile.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
15d ago
What carrot would he have had? Weapons shipment? Little need for those if Ukrainians were hell-bent for peace. NATO membership? Explicit Russian demand was for Ukraine to not be in NATO, at this point. EU membership? There was a certain event some years ago that means Boris Johnson did not exactly have leverage on this point.
I'm not sure what other stick there would have been apart from UK actually invading Ukraine itself, which, uh, would have certainly caused a lot of questions, home and abroad.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
Still gets me that the word "fisking" - a word invented by online warbloggers for their supposed eviscerations of Robert Fisk articles and which, insofar as I remember it, often devolved to just laying the article out sentence by sentence and replying to individual sentences with "Oh come on!" and "Surely no-one can believe this!" -style fare - continues to live, even though most people would in fact probably agree that Fisk was more correct about whether Iraq War was a proper decision or not than the warbloggers.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
Yes, sure, all that is older than the Cold War, but it was Cold War that created the suitable preconditions for civil rights legislation to be actualized. Plenty of seeds existed, but the field needed fertilizer.
My understanding is that while the Northern public opinion, at least, was that segregation was a bad thing, there was a lack of political will to make the actual push, as there were fears that the South would get mad and violent (or at least cause political problems). The urgency of the global struggle was an essential factor in creating that political will, which was of course then compounded the fact that Southern resistance turned out to be largely a paper tiger.
This is what mystifies me about how large the supposedly beyond the pale attacks on Romney during the 2012 campaign are such a huge theme on this forum, popping up time after time after time.
My understanding of American presidential elections is that they have always pretty much been a no-holds-barred cage match, behind the scenes, with both parties (not their ticket headers but lower figures) continuously accusing the other party's candidate of everything under the sun and negative campaign galore being the theme of the day.
However, there's now a suggestion that in this particular election, with this particular candidate, the Dems should have refrained from all this and, in effect, fought with one hand behind the back, that there was something particularly ungentlemanly about going after Romney in the typical way. And the people claiming this don't even really like Romney all that much!
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