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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 29, 2024

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Why? Unironically, the US is good and kills bad guys, Russia is bad and kills good guys. There’s no reason to hold different parties to the same vague principle, abstracted and zoomed out to such a degree as to blur the line between good and evil.

I beg the differ. Unironically, Russia is good and kills bad guys. Besides, quite a lot of Israelis have Russian ancestry, up to the point of having just changed their surnames, and Israel would not exist if it weren't for Russian support.

Russia is one of the great historic nations, it's never going anywhere. No amount of spite will change the fact that they launched the first man in space or erase their contributions to art and science.

  • -12

Nah, launching a war of aggression and invading unprovoked, causing suffering and death to millions, is bad. Gulags are bad, communism is evil, and exporting it all over the world to the point that we still haven't recovered is even worse. What would Korea look like today if it weren't for the USSR, for example?

Quite a few Israelis have Russian ancestry and ran away to Israel due to persecution. Not all of them, but there's generally a reason why they're not in Russia anymore.

Russia as the USSR has backed, and is still backing today, Israel's enemies. There had been a short period around Israel's founding when the USSR did help us, which it should be credited for. That, however, was the USSR 70+ years ago rather than today's Russia.

But honestly, Israel is a small blip on the map of the world, we don't actually matter. A better approach would have been to talk about the USSR's role in defeating the Nazis - to which the obvious response should be that one evil fighting another is just the nature of evil, that doesn't turn it good.

launching a war of aggression and invading unprovoked

Lmao, It must feel nice to ignore geopolitics an completely ignore the US meddling in Ukraine's elections. i guess Russia should have just rolled over dead and allowed the US to completely cut it off from the Black sea. Get real.

  • -11

This is low effort and unnecessarily antagonistic, please don't post like this.

I’m confused, what’s wrong with Novorossiysk, and how did invading areas of Ukraine that don’t border the black sea at all is related to that?

While we’re at sea access though, why not invade Turkey to secure access to the Mediterranean? Or maybe invade Spain to secure access from there to the Atlantic?

why not invade Turkey to secure access to the Mediterranean

Can you imagine what the Russian casualties would look like if they attempted this considering how Ukraine is going for them? This is discounting any outside direct NATO intervention I think just Turkey would have annihilated their expeditionary force to the last man.

Russia regained the Black Sea in 2014.

it's never going anywhere

And for my ensuring that it hold true in geographic sense is personally quite important to me.

Unironically, Russia is good

Well, Eastern Europe is going to disagree for obvious reasons.

I'm Eastern European.

Serbian? Belarussian?

Croatian (OK you caught me, South-Eastern European? But so are Serbs.)

Needless to say your nationality does not determine your stance, and I am sick and tired of these generalizations, as if we are all reducible to your average Redditor.

Well, Russians themselves and few people will disagree. But approval of Russian government and of Russia is remarkably low there (obviously, not 0 and for example in Slovakia it may be relatively high).

they launched the first man in space or erase their contributions to art and science.

How is that even remotely relevant to figuring out whether what they're doing now is good or bad?

The claim was literally "Russia is bad", so I felt that it could be countered by listing a few achievements of world-historic significance that benefited all of mankind off the top of my head

How many wanton land grabs does, in your opinion, one first man in space buy? Are historical achievements time-discounted?