You're talking about Russians not upholding peaceful goals when they're not at peace. That makes no sense.
For example, imagine that I'm a Roman general and I'm talking to a barbarian tribe that I want to assimilate into Rome. I make them a promise like "If you accept our terms, not only will your current leadership be allowed to remain in power, but we promise that your tribe will maintain its freedom and we promise not to enslave any of you." The leader's response is to tell me to go screw myself. So I send in the legions, execute the barbarian leadership, and start taking lots of slaves to send back to Rome.
Now the barbarians start complaining "You promised that you would allow our existing leadership to remain in power, and that you wouldn't take any slaves!" Are the barbarians being reasonable here? My promise was entirely contingent on them accepting my terms. They didn't do that; instead they chose to fuck around and find out. So I have zero obligations towards them, and in fact from the perspective of Rome it's good that I'm making a horrible example of them because it'll teach other barbarian tribes what happens when they choose to cross Rome instead of playing nice. I think that in this example, the barbarians are out of line to complain about me failing to uphold a promise of fair treatment when that promise was entirely contingent on them playing nice and helping me to accomplish Rome's goals.
This is how I feel we're holding Russia to unfair standards. For better or worse, Russia and Ukraine are enemies now, which means we can't expect Russia to respect Ukrainian national identity. The Ukrainians chose to fuck around and find out, so now Russia's goals changed from cooperative to punitive, which is basically the entire point of a war - to punish the other side for refusing to accept your diplomatic terms. Do I think Ukraine deserves to be taken over? No, of course not. But I can't condemn Russia for trying to dissolve Ukrainian ethnonationalist identity when that ethnonationalist identity is part of what made Ukraine oppose Russian goals in the first place. They're at war and in war you have no obligation to play nice with your opponent.
I view removing Soviet monuments in the Baltic states the same way as I view the U.S. removing Confederate monuments - it is a short-sighted attempt by ideological tyrants to rewrite history and force it to conform to whatever ideological fad is currently dominant in their society. This mindset is disgusting and I oppose anybody who supports it.
Now I'm not saying that these monuments should remain standing in public when they're clearly offensive to so many people. By all means, remove them from public display in the city streets. But like it or not, they're art - and more importantly, they're art with significant historical value. They belong in a museum, where people who want to see them can go and study them to their heart's content. History never looks kindly on people who destroy historical artifacts to appeal to whichever short-term political view is trending, and I personally view people like that as barbaric savages.
saltminer
2yr ago
The reason why there aren't more left-wing posters here is because they tend to have trouble playing by the rules. I want a place where we can talk in a reasonable logical way about any topic ranging from video games to genocide, both in terms of the pros and cons. A lot of Leftists seem to have trouble disassociating their emotions from their intellect. The second somebody makes a reasonable point that emotionally disturbs them or makes them feel threatened, they tend to get angry. The solution to this is not to coddle them and indulge their emotional temper tantrums, it is to punish them until they learn that they need to change their behavior, not us.
I agree with you that it would be nice to see more diversity of thought here, but not by giving Leftists a pass to break the rules every time they get emotionally triggered. We simply need to enforce the rules and gather more power until we are the dominant narrative, at which point Leftists will be forced to change their behavior if they want to participate in the dominant online discourse instead of being marginalized in their echo chambers. How is this unfair? We're not shutting them out, we're simply preventing them from shutting down other people's discourse with emotional appeals.
saltminer
2yr ago
I understand that this happens as lot in Israel too, and fuels a lot of Israeli unhappiness towards the Hasidics (who also refuse to perform the military service that is mandatory for Israelis because it "violates their religious tenets."
No successful society tolerates parasites and freeloaders in their midst. The reason the West is failing is because our leaders are gutless people-pleasers who lack the moral culture to persecute any minorities who behave this way, for fear that they'll be accused of bigotry.
saltminer
2yr ago
Great post, I agree with everything you are saying.
I've written a lot about many of these topics in my online substack, but this is the one that I feel seems most relevant, in regards to your first point - the replacement of science with "ScIeNcE."
https://questioner.substack.com/p/how-to-make-enemies-and-influence
That kind of highly-polarised tribalism is a very dangerous game to play. In the short-term, it gets your group what they want, but in the long-term it fuels lots of resentment towards them. This kind of heavily-polarized tribal mindset is the reason that the Jews have been driven out of almost every country they took up residence in. It was only until WW2 - when Jews learned the costs of these cultural traits and adapted their society to be more multicultural and less insular - that their worldwide persecution stopped. And I think that if the Jews ever went back to their insular pre-WW2 attitudes (with the "us against them" mentality that many non-Jews find so distasteful), it would very quickly become socially acceptable to persecute them again.
Like I said, nobody likes freeloaders. You can't be part of a nation while prioritizing tribal loyalties over national identity. This kind of mindset is rightfully viewed as disloyalty at best, and treason at worst. In other words, if you are an American Jew, then you're American first and Jewish second. If you can't handle that - if you view your Jewish identity as more important than your American identity - then you don't deserve American citizenship. Likewise, if the Hasidic Israelis view themselves as Hasidics first and Israelis second, then they don't deserve Israeli citizenship.
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