remzem
1d ago
NATO started the war in 2014 by instigating a color revolution and replacing the elected leadership of Ukraine with western puppets. This should be a question of little doubt. Round and round.
Depends on how you're defining "it"
"Russia invaded Ukraine" Is a fact.
"Russia started it" (the invasion) Is a fact.
"Russia started it" (the war) is not a fact.
The definition of starting something isn't as clearly defined and the cause of the Ukraine war is more complicated than who threw the first major blow. They were already in a frozen proxy war after the events of 2014 with occasional shelling prior to the larger invasion.
Finding the exact causes for historical conflict is always more complicated. This is why the propaganda machine keeps trying to reduce it to simplistic terms. "Mommy! Timmy punched me!!!" type child reasoning. Any unbiased adult with any experience with people is going to question what Jimmy did to piss off Timmy.
Like Incanto I find the patronizing obnoxious.
remzem
9d ago
Afghanistan and Syria withdrawals last Trump term come to mind. Generals bragged about playing shell games in Syria with troop numbers.
https://nypost.com/2020/11/13/diplomat-says-officials-misled-trump-on-troop-count-in-syria/
“We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there,” James Jeffrey, US special representative for Syria engagement, said in an interview with Defense One.
Different branch of gov, but basically the same idea. Leave wiggle room and you leave them room for to wiggle out of the order.
remzem
9d ago
Feels like this analysis is suffering from a lot of presentism. Or is including a lot in order to achieve it's political goal; singling out identity politics as a unique evil. I don't think this really holds up on closer examination though. The holocaust's identity aspects weren't unique to Nazi Germany. Jewish pogroms had already been common in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Eastern Europe and weren't seen as especially noteworthy. It's true that ancient people didn't have the same justifications, but they lacked knowledge of genetics. Really Nazi Germany was just an evolution of the same feuds you cite, incorporating newer ideas about identity, namely genetics, along with industrial advances that led to a much larger scale war and much larger scale pogrom.
The concept of Nazi Germany as uniquely evil wasn't even really a thing during and shortly after ww2. After the war things were more pragmatic, we needed West Germany to oppose the USSR and we even recruited Nazis via Operation Paperclip. The Nazis as a unique evil was mostly spun due to it's utility not due to any morality. This happened later, around the 60s and 70s. That's when a lot of holocaust documentaries and the modern beliefs about the holocaust and Nazi Germany as the most evil of evils became more widespread.
The US was fully embracing its role as empire at this point and tabooing white identity politics served these interests. Also had the civil rights movement, Hart-Celler and all that garbage happen around the same time.
remzem
12d ago
They need to audit the judiciary. Similar to how the libs tried to smear the supreme court for all of Biden's term. That didn't work out so well, but! there are only 9 justices and only 6ish Republican judges on the supreme court. They probably don't want to piss off the swing votes so that leaves only 4ish to dig up dirt on.
There are over 800 federal judges. Find a dozen or two with serious corruption and you could completely tar the entire system in the media. You'd have enough ammo to just keep releasing discrediting info on them for the whole term as they try to block your corruption purges and the more they attempt to stop things the more they look complicit with the corrupt state bureaucracy.
remzem
13d ago
Now that you mention it it's pretty funny to think of this from the pov of Indians. Vivek got removed from DOGE after his anti-american tweet. Big Balls is removed and then rehired after his anti-indian tweet.
remzem
14d ago
That's not how it works. The democratic parts of the American government are set up in a rock-paper-scissors type way. Where if any one part of government tries to get something done another one can block it with everyone just pointing fingers at each other to shift blame. This is to ensure that democratic priorities never get addressed so that the unelected bureaucracy can work on lobbyist priorities unhindered.
remzem
15d ago
This sort of imperialist belief that you can just displace millions of people and create new countries by decree without considering the blowback is what got us this mess in the first place. If the natural local balance of power doesn't allow for a people to exist, then it will only be able to exist via continual foreign intervention.
The only real solution to fix the mess the brits created is to cut the funding and let things take their course. Either Israel can genocide the place and take it, or they get washed away in the tide of a religion that outnumbers them 2 billion to 15million.
remzem
16d ago
Might be the dumbest idea he's ever had. I think the Greenland thing has far better odds of happening. It'll crater his America first image, lose support with basically every voting group other than wealthy foreign donors and the small amount of zionist republicans. Even if he could magic all the hostile Palestinians out of there in an instant, he'd still be a powerless lame duck faster than much progress could be made on moving all the rubble that needs to be cleared to even start building.
Yeah that was not subtle. I couldn't stop rolling my eyes at this book in general, and the modern immersion breaking references, but there were a lot of
I think what bugged me the most was something that bugged me about a lot of the other plotlines too, namely the timing
Also the entire recreance just turned out to be
remzem
17d ago
Finished reading Wind and Truth, fifth Stormlight Archive book. It was really not good. Books 3 and 4 had gone downhill so I wasn't expecting too much. Just figured I'd read it since it's the last book of the planned 1st arc. It was rough though. I'm not even sure where to begin criticizing it, every part has issues. It's got some culture war issues, but mostly because Sanderson up to this point has been a prude Mormon author so it feels inconsistent with his previous books. The character arcs go in uninteresting directions that feel like they have low or no stakes and often end pointlessly. Sanderson has never been a great prose writer, but in this book it's bad enough to constantly distract from the story.
It’s a shame, really, because it was refreshing to encounter a fantasy author who delivered straightforward fantasy without forced modern DEI themes. Books 1 and 2 were honestly quite good—classic, heroic epic fantasy done well. However, none of the setups in those books ever pay off. The built up character conflicts just get dropped. The love triangle just fizzles out, and a character's controversial decision is barely addressed. It’s like the characters stop interacting after Book 2. They all seem to have gone on heavy psychiatric medication and started cognitive behavioral therapy, blunting all their emotions and the actions those emotions might inspire. Instead of living and acting through their feelings and getting the self-discovery potential those actions could lead to, they just become distant and introspective, endlessly dissecting their issues in a repetitive, stagnant, psych 101 for dummies style. It's all tell and no show.
I kinda wonder if Sanderson just wants to get to his long term over arching cosmere stuff more than he wants to write good books. So everything is getting the short stick and forced into unnatural feeling storylines to keep things on track. No time to write these character interactions, gotta introduce random new cosmere lore! Which is ironic for a series whose moral was supposed to be, "journey before destination."
remzem
19d ago
Seems like this will just lead to more votes for AfD. The attitude in the west has shifted against foreigners and the center and progs will keep getting burned for it. The people that look insane in Germany these days aren't far-right.
remzem
23d ago
This is in the context of a random forum poster on an American forum. Why in the world would anyone care what Ukrainian state ideology is? They aren't really white either by racial purist standards, no matter how many ww2 tattoos they get. I was just pointing out it's funny for someone to try and disparage one county based on racial purity when their own countries are what they are these days.
remzem
23d ago
He had Bolton during his first term and didn't start any major wars. Seems like he often just picks people that are recommended to him by other people he trusts without doing much vetting.
remzem
23d ago
eh, historically maybe. People on Moscow streets are looking whiter than people on Berlin or London streets to me these days.
remzem
29d ago
It seems to only be on reddit though? I think now that Trump is in office and all the Jan 6 "insurrectionists" are being released we can finally put to rest the idea that reddit has much influence on society or any real insight into what's happening in the world. This move will actually cut them off further from normal people and just reinforce their echo chamber. The site is going from the internet's front page to the internet's asylum.
Even had the ADL themselves come out and say it wasn't a nazi salute. That's the management that has actual power. This is just janny tantrums over losing the election.
"Cruelty on immigration"
is there a less biased source?
just something with summaries and no personal commentary would be best.
remzem
30d ago
History is written by the victors. The only wrong side of history is losing.
remzem
1mo ago
Seems like they are more focused on carving off pieces of Lebanon and Syria now anyways so I don't see why they wouldn't take the deal to keep in Trump's good graces.
remzem
1mo ago
Even the white and right leaning younger people in the west aren't as fond of Israel since they are either more isolationist or further right are more ethnonationalist and so oppose helping non-whites.
remzem
1mo ago
Yes everyone knows, they all know parts of Palestine, Lebanon and Syria were always part of Israel as well, but everyone knows Crimea was never part of Russia, just as Taiwan was never part of China. We've always been at war with Eurasia.
Maybe they all live in a different cheaper state now due to WFH.
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