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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29413 thread views

Israel-Gaza Megathread #1

This is a megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.

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As a meta-comment on all the hawkish hot takes, I'd love it if we could gather all motte hot-takers in a no-holds barred cage fight so we could distinguish between the psychopaths, veteran fighters and pissant weaklings who try to compensate for their inferiority complex with words. I think we have to be alert to the possibility that people that talk a big game could easily wet their pants in real world life and I'd love to see who those people are.

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Yeah, the ghoulish commentary from what are mostly chickenshit individuals can be a bit grating. But this is how it is in all wars. People from a distance pick sides and then cheer on them as if it were a sports team from afar.

I always wonder, why do we only get this sort of pushback on comments about warfare? I can advocate for fires being fought without somebody talking about how I might not be a very good firefighter. I can advocate for goods being delivered quickly and reliably without being a good truck driver myself. I can say putting a bridge over a river seems like a good idea without being a civil engineer. So how come it's only if I think war is necessary or suggest fighting it in a particular way that somebody will come by and claim that I'm not a good enough warrior myself? What does it matter? Can I say the reverse, that you aren't allowed to advocate for peace until you've actually watched your children be brutally murdered before your eyes by your neighbor and still advocate for peace with them?

It's easy to get detached from the consequences of war in the heat of passion if you're not the one putting your life on the line. You're probably not going to get so angry about the lack of a bridge that you completely refuse to consider the costs of building it, and the cost of building it will probably not be paid in large quantities of blood.

That's not to say that it's never valid for someone to have a stance on violence without being the one to commit it (e.g. a woman hiring a bodyguard to protect her from her stalker), but there's definitely a failure mode of a belligerent woman picking fights that don't make any sense because she expects her boyfriend to fight them for her (or the little yappy dogs that are hyper aggressive when on leash). The accusation is that we're the beliggerant woman/yappy dogs, not the sober person hiring security when necessary and appropriate.

What's the point of this comment? No one is going to get in a room and fight, you're just calling people cowards and thus engaging in the same sort of Internet Tough Guy act you're accusing others of doing. Attack arguments, not people, and if you have something to say to any specific individual about the lack of congruity between their words and their actions, make sure it's relevant, not just a sneer.

Well, I've put more sauce around it in a reply, but fair comment. I'm actually looking for an escape out of my internet habits at present so I might try a voluntary ban for a period once Ive addressed any comments that arise.

I think that if you want a ban, it would be better to just ask for one than to break the rules to get one.

It wasn't an intent, merely an afterthought and in the spirit of trying to demonstrate sovereignty I'll do it myself thanks.

I'm up for this. In what video game should we all fight?

Calvinball? It's a video game because I say it is, that's within the rules, and if it wasn't, it is now!

Rimworld PVP through mods.

I'm sure I can cobble up a Hamas and Israel faction, with suitable ideology and kit.

Or Arma 3, which certainly has the ability to represent it.

Zorba can officiate, at least in the former case.

TF2. 24/7 Insta-Respawn 2Fort only.

Nope, we fight in Dota2. My Wraith King is quite something to behold. Plus the voicelines are amazing after I wipe the floor with everyone else: https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/dota2_gamepedia/images/2/24/Vo_skeleton_king_wraith_attack_03.mp3/revision/latest?cb=20200525232529

NGL I think my thought process genuinely became more pro-monarchy after playing too much of the hero and constantly hearing his pre-recorded responses: https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/dota2_gamepedia/images/6/60/Vo_skeleton_king_wraith_attack_06.mp3/revision/latest?cb=20200525232532

I'm gonna engi-camp the intel room and there's nothing you can do about it

We'll see about zis, mon ami.

I left gaming at Tekken 2 or 3, which gives clues to my age and ongoing interests.

I played pong when it was the best available game, and currently play Overwatch 2.

Spacewar is older and better than Pong.

I’m sorry.

Ah ha good ol pong ..

I assume you're confident in your gorilla warfare skills, then? Or assuming you're not eligible since your takes are insufficiently hot?

I assume you're confident in your gorilla warfare skills, then?

I am. I have honed them in many hours of playing Donkey Kong in Super Smash Bros.

Well I have no idea of that scenario obviously, not having been in it. I've done some minor karate/Kung Fu sparring to know my skills and strength are negligible on the curve and on the street I've come off second best in several encounters though usually extremely drunk and in my youth. I suppose I have a quiet confidence that trained and with weaponry I would stand my own under fire but it's completely hypothetical. My theory is there's some advantage to calibrating your actual skills and courage to reality, rather than some wishful ego conception, so that way when it comes to crunch you don't find yourself unable to bridge to reality.

Now of course, instigating war doesn't require the instigators to have courage, they can pass that on to others, as well as the moral torments of having directly killed innocent people.

I just think I'm tired of the over-confident manner of mottizens in general. Talk is so cheap, and real thinking so expensive. So little on here has any relevance, interesting as it may be, because there is no reality test. As far as I can tell a lot of commentary just reinforces the position and ego of the commenter without persuading anyone else one way or another. On average people just like the friction of their position relative to others rather than being willing to actually adjust their position or acknowledge epistemic deficits. I'm worried that the tendency for over confident takes is actually psychological compensation and that the motte is actually riddled with a bunch of right brain autists metaphorically jerking off in their parents garage.

I think if you advocate genocide in a hot take you need to justify your bona fides. ie you should have murdered someone, or been a war veteran, or had your family murdered or something.

This site is resembling Reddit with the confident geopolitical hottakes.

I think if you advocate genocide in a hot take you need to justify your bona fides. ie you should have murdered someone, or been a war veteran, or had your family murdered or something.

Agreed, definitely! I would therefore advocate for using this framework, and logic, to permanently silence Americans off the entire internet. The amount of ignorance demonstrated by citizens of the global hegemon is a massive net fail and the foreign policy conducted as a aggregate of and on behalf of that ignorance is, in my opinion, worth kneecapping an American with a shotgun and taking away their internet access every time they say anything about anything they know nothing about and have never experienced.

Luckily, or unluckily, we don't live in a world where people's feet are held to the fire every time they say anything stupid, so people can continue to spout their hot takes as they wish.

Can we do the same for everyone in all those foreign nations that we allegedly don't know anything about who cries out for American intervention every time they pick a fight with their neighbors and get in over their heads? I'd be more than happy for us to pull out of NATO, the Pacific, etc, and best of luck to all of the nations there dealing with China and Russia without us.

Definitely! As soon as they become the world leader militarily, economically, culturally, etc. while still allowing their population to vote.

Why would Americans have a view? First, any American’s view will have zero outcome on what the American government does. Second, the impact of said foreign policy isn’t felt by most Americans. So they are rationally ignorant.

I just think I'm tired of the over-confident manner of mottizens in general. Talk is so cheap, and real thinking so expensive.

Both are free, as far as I can tell, since lurkers don't have to pay for the privilege of viewing our rants.

I think if you advocate genocide in a hot take you need to justify your bona fides. ie you should have murdered someone, or been a war veteran, or had your family murdered or something.

Maybe if the nurses keep pissing me off like they're doing today eh?

This site is resembling Reddit with the confident geopolitical hottakes.

I can't be too perplexed that a subreddit gone solo, if not wild, resembles its estranged parent.

We've always had hot takes, it's a quantitative chance and not a qualitative one, especially if you consider what it was like when Ukraine kicked off.

It seems to me that the Israeli government has taken the hawkish approach that some mottizens advocated - aka wiping Hamas out of exitance but not full bloodied genocide. We should feel very proud that it was our words that swayed the famously dovish ex Sayeret Matkal Benjamin Netanyahu (a person that has seen combat) to go this course.

Another option is that people here have the extraordinary abilities to read a map and also imagine themselves in a tough situation and think about what flies.

I think if you advocate genocide in a hot take you need to justify your bona fides. ie you should have murdered someone, or been a war veteran, or had your family murdered or something.

That's a double standard. You don't say that if someone advocates doing nothing, they should have had a relative murdered by a foreign army and had nothing done about it.

This is just an excuse to arbitrarily say that a lot of people are not allowed to advocate something.

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