Yes, because that’s exclusively what soldiers do when on deployments. They literally only shoot children.

I literally just acknowledged that they do things other than shoot children. The problem is, “I don’t just murder children, I also do other stuff” is not any kind of defense whatsoever.

EOT on my end. You’re just shouting naive platitudes from an imagined moral high ground, when in reality you’re just ignorant. No point continuing this thread.

And you’re just blindly licking the boots of your oppressors.

I never said anything even remotely similar to “the military is inherently moral”. Is moral of you to put words in others’ mouths?

Calling any form of military “unethical” is the absolute peak level of clueless wishful thinking.

Right, you only said it was “idiotic” to claim that any military was anything but moral, my mistake, that’s extremely different from saying that the military is inherently moral.

Military in normal countries is used in times of peace to help fighting natural disasters, like floods. I don’t see that as immoral. Do you?

Spend a month helping out with natural disasters, but then you go and murder one bunch of kids and everybody just remembers you as a child-murderer 😔

Or I’d have to support people who actually fight for my interests instead of blindly licking boots and rallying around a flag while dismissing all criticism because “the military is inherently moral.”

Your position can’t withstand even the slightest degree of scrutiny, lol. As expected of a bootlicker.

Hmm, but if I’m conquered by the despot one border over, then I suppose I’d have to start supporting his military, wouldn’t I? After all, I’d be an idiot to not support the only people protecting me my despot from the other despot one border over, right?

There’s no real difference between offense and defense. The more secure my position, the more easily I can attack from it without fear of retribution.

Sorry, I’m not sure I’m familiar with this particular school of moral philosophy. What’s it called? Bootlicking?

When COVID hit I was working part time at a UPS warehouse in Tennessee, we were classified as essential because we shipped medical supplies, among other things. One day, I remember it vividly, we got a new manager, and so everyone, from all over the warehouse, had to gather together in the break area, nobody more than a foot apart, COVID safety on the TV screens, not a single mask, and what does the new manager talk about? Safety. Gives a whole speech about how much he cares about our safety!

That same day, my supervisor comes up to me and says, “We’ve had too many people calling out sick and faking it so we’re doing a new policy where if you’re sick, you still have to come into work and we’ll decide if you’re sick enough to send you home.” My only regret was not getting that shit in writing because that shit was straight up illegal. But I just quit on the spot.

In case anybody was curious about how I became a fucking communist.

Shadowrun.

OK, maybe without all the supernatural elements.

I’ve seen people, including pop history channels with lots of views, talk about the Gulf of Tonkin Incident without any disclaimer acknowledging that it didn’t happen. It was just a straight up lie to get the US into Vietnam and idk how many people out there still believe it, it’s crazy.

“People used to live to be 900 years old.”

They also used to be able to fly, according to my dad, who was not happy with me when I laughed it off because I thought he was joking.

This is a really dumb perspective, in general. By that logic I could say, “If Holocaust denialism is so baseless, then why does it get censored so much? If there’s no truth to it, wouldn’t you want people talking about it?” No, it’s censored because it is baseless, because we don’t want people spreading around long debunked misinformation. Just because something is untrue doesn’t mean that people repeating it can’t create confusion, doubt, etc.

I mean, look at all the bullshit propaganda the right puts out, and because they have so much money backing it, strengthening their signal, it’s all some people ever hear, and if some spends thousands of hours watching Fox News, and the other side gets like 20 minutes once a year at Thanksgiving, which narrative they go with is going to have very little to do with what’s actually true.

That same far-right media sphere has spread out from the US to all sorts of small countries around the world. If you look at them, you’ll often find right-wingers in those countries screaming about shit that doesn’t even apply to their country, because it’s what this propaganda network told them to be mad about. I mean, fucking anti-mask protests in Japan, for example.

Regardless of your perspective on Tienanmen Square, this logic of, “If it’s not true then there’s no reason to censor it” doesn’t really hold up.

I think mistepping generally just gets you in trouble if you try to act like you know what you’re talking about or insist that a given position is correct. Just say you’re not the most informed and are looking to learn more or understand people’s perspectives rather than assert one thing or another.

My fear is that, and to be clear, this is just my own fears, not saying that this will happen, but I fear that my parents could get me exit-banned and bribe some corrupt doctor to declare me insane or something and force involuntary ECT or someshit like that and wipe my memories of their emotional abuse/neglect. But again, that’s just my fears, I hope they aren’t secretly that controlling/manipulative.

Here in the US, they are nobodys, they don’t have the Guanxi to do weird things, so its harder for them to weaponize the government’s tentacles against me. Things have to go through the courts and unlike China, they can’t just do involuntary treatments without a court order.

Well… as long as you’re not a teenager. I had pretty similar fears growing up in a conservative Christian family that my parents might send me to some camp like that. The “troubled teen industry” is very unregulated and has seen a lot of cases of child abuse and even deaths, and kids can end up there for any reason at all, it just takes parental consent. I didn’t dare tell them when I was having doubts about God until long after I had moved out and had completely left that shit behind. If they thought I was going to spend eternity in Hell there’s no telling what they might have done, and they also probably didn’t even know about all the abuse and stuff that happens there and wouldn’t have listened to me if I tried to talk my way out of it. It was pretty terrifying, and probably contributed to my far-left political views today.

I studied abroad in Japan for a year back 10-15 years ago. I definitely experienced “reverse culture shock” when I came back, the feeling when you’ve had all kinds of new experiences and have seen the world from a completely different perspective, but then everything’s just… the same. The people you left behind are just a year older, the roads and the stores are all just like they were when you left, maybe a new fast food joint opened up and that’s the biggest thing that’s changed. It’s pretty maddening. Of course, you can talk and talk about all these stories and people and all that - and in fact it was pretty good for me in that I was able to overcome some shyness and social anxiety because I had something interesting to talk about - but there’s a lot of stuff that you’ll never really be able to explain, things that just can’t be put into words. Especially with language, I feel like we’re losing something as people rely more on AI translations (useful as they are) because my experience is that speaking a different language can really shift your whole perspective in subtle ways. Translation is metaphor, it is inherently an approximation of meaning. It is, however, a lot of work.

In time, my experience of living in Japan and the unique perspective it gave me has become one of many perspectives that I can draw on, and I have other shared or relatable experiences with the people around me. Granted, my experience abroad was a relatively short time, not like actually immigrating. But ultimately, everyone has different experiences that can seem very alien to others, even within the same country or culture. When we see these differences not as barriers but as providing valuable and distinctive insight, well, that’s the dream, isn’t it?

“Here’s my card. If you wouldn’t mind signing it and giving it back to me, we just need 30% to get a vote on forming a union.”

The “pied piper” strategy, where Democrats fund far-right candidates in Republican primaries in order to create a situation where they’re the only alternative to someone abhorrent, rather than actually offering the voters what they want.

Aka the reason we got Trump.

Nobody sidestepped special effects like film noir did. They made a whole genre out of, “If we dim the lights enough, nobody will notice we stole this set from a different movie.”

The history of film noir is something really special that came together due to a unique set of circumstances (saddle up for an infodump). The Great Depression had given popularity to pulp fiction novels, generally focusing on working class protagonists struggling to keep a roof over their heads, and often viewing power and social structures through cynical terms. Meanwhile, in Germany, Hitler destroyed the German film industry, which had previously been the best in the world. A bunch of people who were generally some combination of gay/Jewish/communist/film makers came to America and brought their expertise, expressionist style, and antifascist perspectives to Hollywood, where it blended with existing American culture to create something entirely new.

Every iconic aspect of film noir was that way for a reason - even if the reason was often, “saving money,” like I mentioned before. The older, grizzled detective and the young femme fatale were cast out of necessity, especially during wartime when young men who would have otherwise dominated those roles were out fighting (or expected to be). While of course they are product of their time and can contain sexist themes, they provided roles for women that were more complex and had more agency than before. And they were also subject to censorship, but some movies, such as Crossfire (1947), snuck hidden meanings under the radar. The book Crossfire was based on was centered around a homophobic murder, but the Hays Code prohibited any mention of homosexuality, so the plot was changed to a racist/antisemitic murder (which also capitalized on the anti-Nazi sentiment of the time) - but with subtext alluding to the original plot. The effect is that the two forms of bigotry are linked together (tagline: “Hate Is Like A Loaded Gun!”), and the director later said that the Code, “had a very good effect because it made us think. If we wanted to get something across that was censorable… we had to do it deviously. We had to be clever. And it usually turned out to be much better than if we had done it straight.”

Film noir’s fans cut across demographics, popular with women and men alike. Back in those days, going to the movie theater was an all-day affair with multiple films shown, and film noir movies generally occupied the role of “B movies” (necessitating their cheap production values), but the point is that they were just targeted towards… moviegoers. And I don’t want to paint it as just, “foreign socialists promoting their agenda through hidden messages” or that sort of thing, it genuinely was a blending of perspectives and cultures that (much as I hate to say it as a certified America hater) really represents America at it’s best, the dream that we ought to aspire to. There really was something magical happening in the cultural dialogue that these movies are the product of.

But of course, we’re not allowed to have nice things. Due to McCarthyism, the alliances and blending of cultures and ideas that had allowed the genre to exist were ripped apart. People were pressured to name names and sell out their colleagues, which spawned distrust and animosity, betrayal and grudges that would disrupt the industry even after the direct threat had passed. And eventually replacing film noir and it’s proletarian focus and cynical view of society, came the spy movies, glorifying government agents infiltrating other countries as part of this global ideological conflict against communism. Propagandizing trash. Dead art taking no risks and presenting nothing to challenge the audience.

Anyway, film noir is cool and fun and artsy and had a progressive (for its time, at least) current insofar as it was allowed to.

The banning of pro-Russia parties apparently happened after Russia launched its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, so the banning can’t be a justification for the invasion.

That’s incorrect. Almost immediately after coming to power in 2014, the Ukrainian government started banning opposition parties. It appears they banned more parties after 2022 as well (my previous source may have been referencing that, which I apologize for mixing up).

In July 2015, the Ministry of the Interior stripped the Communist Party, the Communist Party of Ukraine (renewed), and the Communist Party of Workers and Peasants of their right to participate in elections and stated it was continuing court actions to end the registration of communist parties in Ukraine.

I hope that doesn’t happen and I hope Ukrainian people can choose whether they want to fight or not.

It does happen and they don’t. Both sides of the war are using conscription, and the Ukrainian government has even tried to get other governments to force Ukrainian refugees back to Ukraine so they can be conscripted, because they are facing manpower shortages.

The whole situation is a tragedy and a mess. I think it’s somewhat insane that either side saw this conflict as a viable option, there were diplomatic off-ramps that were ignored. Generally I just don’t trust the same politicians and media that led us into Iraq and Afghanistan for 20 years to get involved in any conflict, pretty much regardless of the circumstances. Because, after all, I’m a leftist.

Yes, parliament voted, after a bunch of armed men seized control of the parliament building. I never claimed that it was the armed men who voted.

As for the Russian-backed referendums in the Donbas, I don’t trust them myself, given Russia’s history of ballot stuffing and the state deliberately harming political opponents.

As for the government of Ukraine, I would say that I don’t trust them because of the US’s long history of color revolutions and the fact that there was a leaked call in which western intelligence was discussing who should end up in charge and all the people they picked mysteriously ended up in power.

However, it’s not really about who I trust or don’t trust, or what I think might have happened behind closed doors. Even if the overthrow was entirely driven by domestic forces with no outside meddling, the fact is that they proceeded to ban opposition parties and thereby effectively shut out the people in eastern regions from having a voice in government. That’s just factual. You say the votes in eastern Ukraine were probably rigged, and maybe they were. But in that case there’s no real way to know what the people actually want, because they were shut out of the political process by having their parties banned.

So, I return to my position of not thinking either side is really worth dying over. Or forcing other people to die over. And let’s remember, that’s what we’re talking about here. It’s not just a question of preferring one side over the other, we’re talking about grabbing people off the streets, giving them a rifle, and forcing them to the front, whether they want to or not. I would need a very good reason to deviate from my null hypothesis of opposing involvement in any conflict. And between a flawed democracy that may be a Western puppet, and a rebellion that may be a Russian puppet, I just don’t see it. You can argue that I ought to prefer one side or the other, but I mean, I think that if anyone really thinks there’s such compelling reason to support Ukraine, they ought to go out there and fight themselves. In reality, I think that pro-Ukraine people are just defaulting to, rather than a null hypothesis of opposing war, to a null hypothesis of trusting the government and media. And that is something that I fundamentally disagree with, in my view, that is simply national chauvinism.

When you claim Yanukovych’s removal from power counts as an “overthrow”, I’m not sure I agree with that, because Ukraine’s parliament voted to remove Yanukovych from power.

Well then, when you claim that Russia’s involvement counts as an “invasion,” I’m not sure I agree because the disputed territories held votes to break away, invite Russia to defend their sovereignty, and to become part of Russia. Of course, those votes were held after a bunch of armed men took control of their local governments, but then, the Ukrainian parliament only voted to oust Yanukovych after a bunch of armed men took control of the parliament building. In my mind, neither is particularly reliable, but if you ask me to treat one as reliable, then it’s only fair that I treat the other the same way. In that view, either Ukraine’s current government is the result of a Western-backed coup, or Russia’s involvement is a response to a request for aid from the break away regions, and it’s primarily a civil war. If either of those things are true, then it’s enough for me to wash my hands of the situation.

But anyway, maybe there is not much point in talking about where you and I disagree, because that could go on forever. I think we agree on some points

Fair enough.