Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
User ID: 137
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
The point of operation seems to be extremely clear. As a first-order effect, they just took out at least hundreds of enemy combatants at no personnel costs of their own, which is what any military would consider a good result. As a second-order effect, Hezbollah and other Israeli enemies will now have to exert a certain amount of care and nervousness over a lot of other foreign-imported gear, which will presumably have compounding hampering effects down the line.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
Why did Russia not attempt to absorb (at least some part of) Georgia when it was lying flat and defeated in 2008, and could have been easily cut off any prospective allied supplies?
Because Russia continues to believe that maintaining Abkhazia and South Ossetia as "independent" (without actually recognizing them) offers it influence on Georgian internal politics. If it stopped believing that it is very likely that it would first recognize them and then graciously allow their entry to Russian Federation, at least for South Ossetia, the same way as with DPR and LPR.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
Two high profile senators talking, on camera, about "taking the fight to the Russians" and that US will give them all they need is pretty unequivocal in my book.
What does this refer to? Googling "taking the fight to the Russians" just brings up statements that have been made after February 2022.
When it comes to statements made before the invasion, Biden - a figure of considerably more importance regarding US Ukraine policy than "two senators" - was quite clear in December 2021 that US is not going to send in the troops. When it comes to other aid, US and West have offered Ukraine more of it and taken bigger risks than just about anyone would have predicted before Feb 2022.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
Baghdad Bob was a meme, not a general or a person who would have been interviewed due to his particular importance.
Sergey Lavrov, for instance, has been interviewed by Western media countless times.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
Some time ago, I read both Ibram X. Kendi's "How to be an antiracist" and Robin DiAngelo's "White Fragility". While Kendi's book was not exactly high literature, it had a number of interesting aspects (for instance, Kendi came down quite clearly on the side that it is possible to be racist against whites and, indeed, that he himself had committed this sin and needed to repent of it to be a proper antiracist) and seemed at least to be heartfelt in the sense that Kendi really believes what he says. DiAngelo's book, on the other hand, came of as at least 95 % just grift; nothing original in it, a constant undertone of purpose being selling DiAngelo's own antiracism training sessions, in which she of course seems to have succeeded quite well at least quite some time after 2020.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
This passage, by itself, does not actually necessarily imply that the real figure is lower, just that this one was selected arbitrarily.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
Isn't the main reason that, since Taylor Swift is quite a bit less of a phenomenon in Europe than in US and the US tickets were thus considerably more pricey, it was actually cheaper in many cases for fans to fly to Europe than to US for a show (especially since many of them would have had to fly inside the US in any case)?
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
But those were already taking place in 2021. Vaccination centres were getting burned as early as March 2021, and probably the most notable large-scale protests internationally took place around Summer-August 2021. Never saw particular evidence that they did much beyond heightening the anger the normies and the political class felt towards the antivaxxers.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
But the thesis was that the governments were doing all of this regardless of the public opinion.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
Why would people demand such extreme interventions as imprisoning all of society to protect themselves from a spicy cold, while ignoring the 20 QALY bills littering the ground called "stop smoking", "stop being fat", "stop drinking" and such?
Well, one difference would be that Covid interventions were supposed to be temporary, which they indeed were.
If the government was so gung-ho for lockdowns, why did it then eventually stop wanting them? There's a pretty obvious narrative for why the public fear abated - Omicron meant that pretty much everyone got Covid and it was quite mild, so the fear abated - but I've never seen a proper explanation from Covid skeptics why this happened (after and during many of them were mired in doomerism about how the lockdowns would just go on forever and ever or would be reinstated "right the next winter when the cases start rising again" when that didn't happen), apart from saying that some protests in a few countries led to a worldwide ending of restrictions, which would probably make them far and away the most effective protests in the history of mankind.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
This is, incidentally, why Covid-era anti-vaccine activism was incomprehensible to a lot of boomers and the natural reaction was that stragglers were crazy and should probably be forcibly vaccinated. When the struggle had been getting enough vaccinations to cover even the poorer areas in various countries, hearing that scientists had cooked up an extra sciencey vaccine with a brand new mechanism was not a cause for concern but for joy and extra trust.
Same attitude applies to other topics - I once listened to an old local leftist lady recount how left-wingers of her generation couldn't quite always understand why the younger generation campaigned for more veggie food days for school meals, since her generation had campaigned for more days when meat was served in school meals, as one way to distribute the rising wealth.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
I always saw myself having kids but I’m not sure I can really commit to losing all of my independence and free time.
This seriously becomes less of an issue when you actually have the kid. A lot of the stuff that you spent that independence and free time on just naturally loses meaning - not all of its meaning, but definitely goes down on priority list.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
The most famous free-love advocate in early SU - Alexandra Kollontai - was certainly not Jewish.
Communism, if understood literally (and how else would you understand it), is a spectacularly unpopular ideology in all Western countries, particularly among the "normies". Generally this hasn't needed a specific effort as, due to history, for most people "communism" has been associated with the period when the communists (generally in Soviet Union) killed your grandfather or great-grandfather, or at least took their house, or threatened to drop the nuke on them during the Cold War and then, if they survived, kill them or take their house.
If we mean excessive government involvement in economy in general, that's been generally dealt with a serious man in a serious suit, or less commonly a serious woman in a serious pantsuit or with a serious skirt, going on a TV discussion on whatever measure is proposed and saying that it will harm the economy, which means less jobs and less money for the normies. Of course, how well that works depends on how much the normies trust the expert class, which is probably somewhat less so these days than before the pandemic.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
Even AOC, almost certainly the most pro-Palestinian prominent Dem, condemned antisemitism at the protests.
The condemnation and response might not have met your exact and specific standards, but it's still far cry from something that would actually mean the Palestine protests actually represent the Dems, as a party, in some way.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
I'm not sure why you'd hang specifically protests conducted against the policy of the current Dem administration, condemned widely by top Dems and crushed by Dem-friendly university administrators on the Dems.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
I think that the right-wingers do genuinely recognize an actual pattern - in left-wing circles opinion-forming happens through reorienting consensus, in right-wing circles there's more individualism but also room for strong leader types - but the category error made is thinking that the consensus shifts mainly through some actor above the grassroots, like the DNC, issuing marching orders, when it's really a more subtle and diffuse process among the activist class with at least some room for actual grassroots-level interaction.
Also, I'd guess it's easier for many conservatives to believe there was actual grassroots support for Sanders, especially in 2016, than, say, for Kamala now.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
Are you forgetting they booted their speaker for the first time in history?
And how much did that change, concretely?
Again, there doesn't seem to be a particular visible difference between the "Trump movement" and the Republican party - because the Republican Party is Trump's party, and what the Trump movement does is follow Trump and rationalize his actions, no matter what they are. Trump wants Mehmet Oz as a candidate in Pennsylvania despite him being an obvious charlatan? Then Oz is a candidate. Trump wants to moderate on abortion, or throw away free-market principles? Then that happens. Anti-vaxxers who believe the vaccine was a genocide going to bat for Trump, who couldn't stop talking about his big beautiful vaccine that came to be because of him? No sign of cognitive dissonance in evidence.
What the "non-Trump" Republican Party, insofar as it has an independent existence (staffers, politicians etc.) thinks, seems to be ephemeral. Either they pledge allegiance to Trump or they're out. And it's easy to pledge allegiance since Trump didn't want any radical ideological changes anyhow - the most radical things he did, ie. around Jan 6, were simply related to his continual desire to cling in power.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
I dunno? It's not my job to pick the US Democratic Party's candidate.
A lot of people do seem to think that way, though, from the speed at which they united behind Kamala. I'm just spitballing for reasons why that happened. I could, of course, also just go with "they're dumb lib NPCs who do what they're told", but that doesn't seem quite the satisfactory explanation.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
No, but there's an election where you vote for a ticket consisting of a president and a VP.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
The idea that you were, at one point, bound to lose (particularly immediately after the assassination attempt) and, all of a sudden, you're now bound to win is pretty exciting in itself, no?
One could argue that the Dems had a say in picking their candidate - in 2020, when they accepted Harris as the person who would take the reins if the President became killed or incapacitated. Now the President is sort of incapacitated - yes, it's a very odd sort of incapacitation that apparently means you can no longer run for Presidency but can still function as a President, technically - so Harris takes the reins for that one particular thing.
Personally, I'm not too sure whether the tension inherent in Biden being smoked out by the media and party elites has been quite resolved yet and might still come up and bite Harris on the butt after the convention fever is out, and it is certainly not confirmed that Harris's current lead will continue, but I guess it'll take until November to see what will happen.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
And yet, after getting run over, they acquiesced and acclimated to the situation very fast, and Trump ended up governing pretty much like a standard Republican, and now there's not a particular visible difference between the "Trump movement" and the Republican party in itself.
My point was more that when you're talking about the national politics at this level, there's no firm line separating a wholly grassroots movement from a wholly artificial one. All notable movements have at least some organic popular support, all movements also involve someone planning things from the above and conducting at least campaigns of at least some level of artificiality.
While they lowered their top draft age recently to 25, the fact that 18-25-year-olds are still not getting drafted should by itself prove that Ukraine is, in fact, not drafting (even "basically") every man they can find.
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