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28 minutes ago, - 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖑𝖊𝕽𝖔𝖈𝕶 - said:

The electoral college is a weird holdover from horse-drawn carriage days which should be removed, the extent to which most policies are inspired by popular opinion or rich donors is pretty open to interpretation

I'll say that I do not think it is an accident that the candidate in the 2020 primaries who has received the most money from insurance and pharmaceutical industries was chosen as a result of candidates who defended the insurance and pharmaceutical industries suddenly and simultaneously ending their campaigns when a previous president who had received similar donations from insurance and pharmaceutical industries made some phone calls after 4 years of being intentionally politically neutral while a right wing wannabe autocrat ran rampant over the candidate who had won more primaries and delegates running on a platform of public healthcare for all, and adopted a lie of supporting single payer which that candidate never even tried to establish or even mentioned after the primaries, and who appointed the entirely unqualified and unpopular candidates who dropped out to extremely important positions in his administration.

 

But maybe I'm just a cynic?

 

 

28 minutes ago, - 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖑𝖊𝕽𝖔𝖈𝕶 - said:

Honest question, how many countries have or have sponsored death squads? I'd imagine it's a large proportion but it's a guess.

I'm sure many have and most would if they could.

 

But I live in this one, which spends this much more on its military and foreign intervention, and whose human rights abuses and support of dictators supposedly represent me in a supposedly representative government.

 

I have no control if [random country] supports a death squad. I do have at least nominal say if "mine" does.

 

 

28 minutes ago, - 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖑𝖊𝕽𝖔𝖈𝕶 - said:

To be clear, I'm not really saying this out of pro-US sentiment. Rather it's because I think people, all throughout history and the Earth, have a strong tendency to hunt for people and nations to be the bad guys. And then have a plan that's mostly focused on stopping, hindering, or toppling the bad guys.

...

One of the worst failures of this kind of thinking (and I'm not necessarily saying you're doing this) is that people so often think that underdogs will act different when they get power.

I think my serious problem is that i just view everyone as the bad guy, and can not excuse casual bad guy-ness of "my side," even when that bad guy-ness is opposing other bad guy-ness.

 

The lesser evil is still evil, and I will not stop pointing that out. That does not mean that I will not criticize the other evil. I hope that I will be able to criticize and highlight all abuses, with the goal of hopefully being able to influence the lesser ones who can be pressured into being slightly less evil.

 

I do hope that I can remain in a position where I do hold those people accountable (such as: being extremely critical of Morales, and certainly in not defending the atrocities of groups that simply oppose groups I oppose - such as Russia, China, the Taliban, etc).

 

 

28 minutes ago, - 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖑𝖊𝕽𝖔𝖈𝕶 - said:

Further, many (though not all) of the greatest atrocities, at least in recent times, have been done by groups that were long seen as the underdogs, by themselves and others. Germany and Japan in WW2 for example.

I think the underrepresented historical view is where those movements come from. Germany and Japan pre-1930s had extremely legitimate complaints against some powers. The Taliban and Al-Qaeda had legitimate complaints about America (and our continued support of Saudi Arabia). Very little of this is seriously even mentioned about their rise.

 

One of the more terrifying things is that fascist groups tend to start by exploiting legitimate populist angst.

 

Trump won in 2016 specifically by exploiting general unease and the Democrats running the worst possible corrupt corporate centrist establishment candidate. He did not have to make much of a point or deliver on that point for the DNC to play exactly into his false narrative, exacerbated by her outright corruption and visible suppression of that corruption in the e-mail leaks, which legitimately did expose a lot of very bad things, and all of which were buried by the establishment (including Trump after he won).

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6 hours ago, Zagadka said:

Marxist-Leninists generally live in a fantasy world where nothing is based in much reality, and far too often will do extremely dumb things like defend the Soviet Union and People's Republic of China as "anti-capitalist."

I'd say Marxist-Leninists have a much firmer grasp on reality than any status quo neoliberal.

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Fraggle Underdark
7 hours ago, Zagadka said:

I'll say that I do not think it is an accident that the candidate in the 2020 primaries who has received the most money from insurance and pharmaceutical industries was chosen as a result of candidates who defended the insurance and pharmaceutical industries suddenly and simultaneously ending their campaigns when a previous president who had received similar donations from insurance and pharmaceutical industries made some phone calls after 4 years of being intentionally politically neutral while a right wing wannabe autocrat ran rampant over the candidate who had won more primaries and delegates running on a platform of public healthcare for all, and adopted a lie of supporting single payer which that candidate never even tried to establish or even mentioned after the primaries, and who appointed the entirely unqualified and unpopular candidates who dropped out to extremely important positions in his administration.

 

But maybe I'm just a cynic?

I feel like a dishonest answer would be dismissive on my part, so I'll say that yeah FWIW this seems overly cynical to me, personally. But hey, civil disagreements in civil society, and it's definitely good people are looking out for corruption, which is awful.
 

Spoiler

 

To give my own interpretation, so this doesn't seem like just a decision to ignore this, is that people who share political ideas often work together, and that some candidates are not popular to be voted in [they might lack charisma] but can be good at a job they're assigned to. And since we only have 2 major parties, and only so many candidates, having one party or group supported by an industry doesn't prove corruption. No matter what your industry or interest is you could look at a small set like that and estimate who's best for your business, because of their policies or other effects. Someone campaigning on a promise of more public transit is going to have the support of bus and rail industry, probably.

 

That said the pharmaceutical industry has substantial features of an oligopoly right now, and I don't trust those groups much. I'm just not convinced that politicians are in their pocket. (Also I'm not really interested in getting into it, just because I think that'd be a large and complex discussion and I only like to have so many of those back to back.)

 

 

7 hours ago, Zagadka said:

The lesser evil is still evil, and I will not stop pointing that out. That does not mean that I will not criticize the other evil. I hope that I will be able to criticize and highlight all abuses, with the goal of hopefully being able to influence the lesser ones who can be pressured into being slightly less evil.

🤘

 

7 hours ago, Zagadka said:

I think the underrepresented historical view is where those movements come from. Germany and Japan pre-1930s had extremely legitimate complaints against some powers. The Taliban and Al-Qaeda had legitimate complaints about America (and our continued support of Saudi Arabia). Very little of this is seriously even mentioned about their rise.

 

One of the more terrifying things is that fascist groups tend to start by exploiting legitimate populist angst.

I entirely agree. And I do actually hear about a fair bit of that background, but that's my circles, media diet, and the education of what schools I went to.

 

7 hours ago, Zagadka said:

Trump won in 2016 specifically by exploiting general unease and the Democrats running the worst possible corrupt corporate centrist establishment candidate.

I think Hillary's haughty unlikability and missteps were costly. (I say that not to hold women in power to a double standard, as I overall liked her and relate to her; she made some of the mistakes that I have to avoid making myself.) And Obama's compromise with Republicans after the financial crisis meant that the government response was not equitable, but Obama had the helm so he took the flak. This, like all descriptions of politics, is a bit of a simplification, but still.

 

That said I think culture war grievance is Trump's big draw. Back in 2016 there were some people who were there for economic reasons, but by 2020 it seems vastly to be culture war grievance and then some folks who always voted Republican before so they still did.

 

This ties in to fascist movements coming from popular angst and complaints. Before Trump it seemed way too common on the left to uncritically assume and mock all Republicans as being evil racists. And increasing cultural and social power of liberals resulted in many liberals saying "shut up and just do what we say", which of course no human being likes. There seemed very little interest in actually persuading people and much more interest in berating and mocking them, now that liberals had gained cultural dominance in most spheres. This was not a nice way to behave, but also from a practical perspective Machiavelli made a good point. Paraphrasing, if you're going to make enemies of people, don't do it while they have power. Otherwise they will use that power to strike back. It is practical either to avoid making enemies or to literally exile them.

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29 minutes ago, - 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖑𝖊𝕽𝖔𝖈𝕶 - said:

I feel like a dishonest answer would be dismissive on my part, so I'll say that yeah FWIW this seems overly cynical to me, personally. But hey, civil disagreements in civil society, and it's definitely good people are looking out for corruption, which is awful.
 

  Hide contents

 

To give my own interpretation, so this doesn't seem like just a decision to ignore this, is that people who share political ideas often work together, and that some candidates are not popular to be voted in [they might lack charisma] but can be good at a job they're assigned to. And since we only have 2 major parties, and only so many candidates, having one party or group supported by an industry doesn't prove corruption. No matter what your industry or interest is you could look at a small set like that and estimate who's best for your business, because of their policies or other effects. Someone campaigning on a promise of more public transit is going to have the support of bus and rail industry, probably.

 

That said the pharmaceutical industry has substantial features of an oligopoly right now, and I don't trust those groups much. I'm just not convinced that politicians are in their pocket. (Also I'm not really interested in getting into it, just because I think that'd be a large and complex discussion and I only like to have so many of those back to back.)

 

Yea, that is fine; I am cynical about it, and I am aware I am cynical, and yes, we are all allowed to have our own interpretations and disagreements.

 

As far as corruption goes, it is rather blatant and outright with the sheer amount of publicly available information on direct corporate donations to candidate's campaigns and Super PACs (thanks to Citizen's United), without getting into stocks owned by public officials (Biden himself, gratefully, declared when he started that he would not own stocks, and has kept to that for his entire career. The same does not go for people like Pelosi).

 

It is not so much a matter of having an industry support a party or group (they donate to both to cover their bases). It is also seeing who they donate to and what the people they donate to doing. Specifically, doing everything they can to prevent platforms like Medicare For All or single payer plans from being introduced, keeping legislation to reform prescription drug prices or allow Medicare to negotiate price out of bills, willingly defending the patents on Covid vaccines on direct behalf of Pfizer and Moderna at the direct cost of literally everyone on the planet, and most recently keeping even the vote for CalCare from happening.

 

In an non-insulting way, I feel like it is naive to look at record numbers of corporate donations (including record levels of dark money Democrats had blasted Trump for accepting) to politicians and the resulting actions of those politicians to support those corporate interests and remain apathetic and unconvinced.

 

If a candidate I supported had a policy, received a large check from a corporation, and reversed their position on that policy, I would be infuriated at the blatant corruption.

 

 

29 minutes ago, - 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖑𝖊𝕽𝖔𝖈𝕶 - said:

And I do actually hear about a fair bit of that background, but that's my circles, media diet, and the education of what schools I went to.

Yea, it is sometimes hard to look outside of our bubbles and get an objective view of what general media exposure and discussions are about, and it is always good to try to recognize that.

 

 

29 minutes ago, - 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖑𝖊𝕽𝖔𝖈𝕶 - said:

I think Hillary's haughty unlikability and missteps were costly. (I say that not to hold women in power to a double standard, as I overall liked her and relate to her; she made some of the mistakes that I have to avoid making myself.) And Obama's compromise with Republicans after the financial crisis meant that the government response was not equitable, but Obama had the helm so he took the flak. This, like all descriptions of politics, is a bit of a simplification, but still.

It is interesting how people play the "women in power" card with Hillary (and Kamala, who also has a race card), yet do not apply the same to certain other women.

 

Obama's entire terms were compromise with people who would absolutely not compromise, which is effectively nothing, a tactic which Biden has faithfully repeated.

 

 

29 minutes ago, - 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖑𝖊𝕽𝖔𝖈𝕶 - said:

That said I think culture war grievance is Trump's big draw. Back in 2016 there were some people who were there for economic reasons, but by 2020 it seems vastly to be culture war grievance and then some folks who always voted Republican before so they still did.

Certainly, the 2020 election was entirely different. In 2016, it has to be remembered that Trump was a joke and laughing stock in almost all circles, who no one took seriously, until Hillary, the DNC, and media decided it would be a good strategy to publicize him (4 separate articles linked, all to completely standard corporate sources and not random Marxist-Leninist blogs 😉) because they did not take his rhetoric seriously and thought his lack of experience and actual policies would not be able to compete with someone whose long career just spoke for itself. This speaks of outright hubris, and also that they were so disconnected from what resonates with voters outside of Washington DC that they (IMHO) just don't think about populist movements, expressing shock and confusion when the proles rise up.

 

In 2020, and in 2024, Trump's movement is essentially a cult.

 

 

29 minutes ago, - 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖑𝖊𝕽𝖔𝖈𝕶 - said:

Before Trump it seemed way too common on the left to uncritically assume and mock all Republicans as being evil racists. And increasing cultural and social power of liberals resulted in many liberals saying "shut up and just do what we say", which of course no human being likes.

Before? During and after, as well. We are in a point where no matte what you do or say, even in an offhand comment that didn't mean anything, you will be a racist, fascist, transphobe, or a list of other things. That isn't to say that many people are those things, but those labels are just put on everything that disagrees, and that instantly shuts down conversations and makes the person sense hostility and respond with hostility.

 

Not to harp too much on Hillary, but that was the entire thing with "deplorables." In context, it meant a specific thing. In headlines on Fox News, it meant something far more broad, and no matter how much clarification, corrections, and possible apologies, is not possible to walk back.

 

Trump is a person who does nothing but make one sentence statements frequently detached from truth designed to get in headlines and get people strongly feeling one way or the other, and I feel like media and his opponents play into it by engaging with his throwaway statements.

 

 

29 minutes ago, - 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖑𝖊𝕽𝖔𝖈𝕶 - said:

There seemed very little interest in actually persuading people and much more interest in berating and mocking them, now that liberals had gained cultural dominance in most spheres. This was not a nice way to behave, but also from a practical perspective Machiavelli made a good point. Paraphrasing, if you're going to make enemies of people, don't do it while they have power. Otherwise they will use that power to strike back. It is practical either to avoid making enemies or to literally exile them.

To not even be Machiavellian, representatives in a democracy should represent those people.

 

Instead, we have two groups absolutely convinced that the other is fascists of one kind or another owned by some outside group (I am aware that I am saying this after literally implying that certain politicians are in the pocket of the healthcare industry, but I stand by that because of their demonstrated actions and my awareness of that) - and both parties are aware of that, and rely on using the other party as a threat instead of listening to public demands.

 

Imagine if there were a candidate who based their campaign on detailed policies and clearly communicated platforms with broad public support and did not accept corporate and Super PAC contributions (and imagine that candidates party not mobilizing everything against that candidate).

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Fraggle Underdark
1 hour ago, Zagadka said:

without getting into stocks owned by public officials (Biden himself, gratefully, declared when he started that he would not own stocks, and has kept to that for his entire career. The same does not go for people like Pelosi).

I very much agree that politicians briefed on high-level non-public information shouldn't be allowed to trade individual stocks. As Seth Meyers said "Dammit ... I agree with Trump."

 

1 hour ago, Zagadka said:

It is also seeing who they donate to and what the people they donate to doing. Specifically, doing everything they can to prevent platforms like Medicare For All or single payer plans from being introduced, keeping legislation to reform prescription drug prices or allow Medicare to negotiate price out of bills, willingly defending the patents on Covid vaccines on direct behalf of Pfizer and Moderna at the direct cost of literally everyone on the planet, and most recently keeping even the vote for CalCare from happening.

I'll give my honest answer which I think might disappoint you. Basically I don't have the interest to dig into the weeds of every law and vote, which would be mountains of information. So like most people I trust that analysis to others. Then it's a question of how much anyone can trust the people they outsource their analysis to. Definitely. But it's a pretty unavoidable problem, one way or the other, as no one has expertise to look into the details of everything.

 

My process is that I pay close attention to the demonstrated reliability of different sources. I also pay close attention to tones, manners, and apparent cognitive styles that are most correlated with reliable thinking. As far as concrete details of my usual sources, I get most of my news from the Washington Post, including the smart op-ed writers. (Which is most of them, including some quite liberal writers, and not including most token conservatives.)

 

Anyway to address your direct point, I haven't heard this analysis from my sources. It's possible they've written about it and I've missed it. I am of the opinion that grassroots analysis of political and legislative details frequently misses details I consider important, such as subtle economic effects or the subtle political compromises to get something good through, at the cost of something great. Also, I naturally think some Democrats are corrupt to a non-trivial extent, because Democrats are a group of people.

 

1 hour ago, Zagadka said:

Obama's entire terms were compromise with people who would absolutely not compromise, which is effectively nothing, a tactic which Biden has faithfully repeated.

Both these statements seem oversimplified, for example getting ACA through or Biden eventually being open about the Anti-Democrat's obstructionism and lack of points. From how our discussions have gone I'm guessing you had these in mind when you spoke, and were making simplified statements for persuasive/emotional effect. Obviously I'm more in the camp of avoiding simplified statements, at least for purposes other than succinctness and without mentioning they're simplified. Primarily because I think a fair number of people take simplified statements like this, by anyone, as literal truth. (And then other people build on them with statements that simplify even more until we've lost all counter-points and end up with opposing camps who literally believe different simplifications of the truth.)

 

1 hour ago, Zagadka said:

Certainly, the 2020 election was entirely different. In 2016, it has to be remembered that Trump was a joke and laughing stock in almost all circles, who no one took seriously, until Hillary, the DNC, and media decided it would be a good strategy to publicize him (4 separate articles linked, all to completely standard corporate sources and not random Marxist-Leninist blogs 😉) because they did not take his rhetoric seriously and thought his lack of experience and actual policies would not be able to compete with someone whose long career just spoke for itself. This speaks of outright hubris, and also that they were so disconnected from what resonates with voters outside of Washington DC that they (IMHO) just don't think about populist movements, expressing shock and confusion when the proles rise up.

People weren't wrong about Trump, he's an obviously corrupt, inept blowhard with no real policies, an embarrassingly bad diplomatic record, who tried to overthrow American democracy and who has caused, as some erstwhile Republicans predicted, the death of the Republican party. (There's still a party using the name, and there are a few actual Republicans left, but the party is dead.) Even the goal of winning respect for right-wing reactionaries has backfired, which I would argue was the real goal of his presidency and many of his voters. To other people's eyes, he made that group look even worse than before.

 

The politicians' mistake was overestimating the voting populace and assuming this was also immediately obvious to them.

 

1 hour ago, Zagadka said:

Before? During and after, as well. We are in a point where no matte what you do or say, even in an offhand comment that didn't mean anything, you will be a racist, fascist, transphobe, or a list of other things. That isn't to say that many people are those things, but those labels are just put on everything that disagrees, and that instantly shuts down conversations and makes the person sense hostility and respond with hostility.

 

Not to harp too much on Hillary, but that was the entire thing with "deplorables." In context, it meant a specific thing. In headlines on Fox News, it meant something far more broad, and no matter how much clarification, corrections, and possible apologies, is not possible to walk back.

I can't speak to this except that our media diets might be different. FWIW I've detected a different tone among liberal commentators, a shift from feeling like nothing can go wrong when making fun of people on the right. I detect efforts to try and leave people an exit, to attack the actions of a movement more than the fundamental character of the people in it. "Love the sinner, hate the sin" kind of thing. Obviously there will be exceptions but I feel like Trump shook the slack out of the "left's fighters in the culture war" as it were, at least the professional ones.

 

And yeah Fox News is a tabloid.

 

1 hour ago, Zagadka said:

To not even be Machiavellian, representatives in a democracy should represent those people.

FWIW that's a fairly different point. This might not have been clear but I was referring to the actions of regular people in the culture war, rather than the actions of elected officials.

 

As for whether elected officials should work towards the goals of their constituencies, or should take the actions those constituencies think will reach those goals, there's some valid room for philosophy of government there. For myself, I think of it like doctors. I want to be healthy but all things equal I don't really care what the approach is. Sometimes I have done a lot of research and I want a doctor who listens, who takes me seriously, but also doesn't tell me they agree just because they're working for me as my doctor.

 

1 hour ago, Zagadka said:

Imagine if there were a candidate who based their campaign on detailed policies and clearly communicated platforms with broad public support and did not accept corporate and Super PAC contributions (and imagine that candidates party not mobilizing everything against that candidate).

I'm not sure you were quite mentioning Bernie Sanders here but for context I've seen him do some dishonest things. I do think he's an impassioned guy who really follows his principles, but I don't necessarily trust him to argue honestly. For example he had some plan to have Amazon pay for what would be government assistance for its workers, the idea being that if it pays them so little that government assistance kicks in, then it should pay for the government assistance. But as a think tank correctly pointed out, this would heavily incentivize Amazon to just not hire anyone who looks like they're on government assistance. Which would hurt the people who most need help. But rather than address that point itself he just responded that one person in that think tank has some corporate donors or something. Fine, and that's a good reason to be careful, but we have the actual argument so ad hominem attacks at that point are pointless and dishonest.

 

I do like Bernie, I like a lot of what he does, but I don't think there are any magical saints here. He's more earnest and idealistic than some, less intellectually honest than some others.

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To be "slightly" more on topic (and by slightly, I mean at all):

 

Well, the predicted invasion did not happen last weekend. Stuff like this does, though.

 

image.png

 

 

Context:

 

Spoiler

image.png

 

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Fraggle Underdark
6 minutes ago, Zagadka said:

To be "slightly" more on topic (and by slightly, I mean at all):

 

Well, the predicted invasion did not happen last weekend. Stuff like this does, though.

 

image.png

 

 

Context:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

image.png

 

I'm in support of the Ukrainian military teaching the civilian populace how to fight, as an insurgency might end up the main way Russia's invasion is ultimately countered and that the Ukrainians stay free. Training civilians how to fight is standard when a country is likely to be invaded by a powerful military, for example the British when besieged by Germany in WW2.

 

And yeah, every country has its Nazis. We can also post pictures of Nazis or other ethnic supremacists from just about any country.

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1 minute ago, - 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖑𝖊𝕽𝖔𝖈𝕶 - said:

I'll give my honest answer which I think might disappoint you.

Your existence is least of all based on my contentment and approval. 🙂

 

 

1 minute ago, - 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖑𝖊𝕽𝖔𝖈𝕶 - said:

Basically I don't have the interest to dig into the weeds of every law and vote, which would be mountains of information. So like most people I trust that analysis to others. Then it's a question of how much anyone can trust the people they outsource their analysis to. Definitely. But it's a pretty unavoidable problem, one way or the other, as no one has expertise to look into the details of everything.

I absolutely understand and agree. Most people don't even have the energy, interest, or time in trying to understand political issues, much less the time to research the backgrounds of everyone and every issue, and really, they shouldn't have to

 

Which is one reason why outright corruption and corporate interest/"persuasion" of politicians is infuriating, and why issues like this are extremely important to me, random person who has the energy, interest, and far too much time to do those things (as well as, I do get things wrong, such as the links I posted earlier).

 

 

1 minute ago, - 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖑𝖊𝕽𝖔𝖈𝕶 - said:

My process is that I pay close attention to the demonstrated reliability of different sources. I also pay close attention to tones, manners, and apparent cognitive styles that are most correlated with reliable thinking. As far as concrete details of my usual sources, I get most of my news from the Washington Post, including the smart op-ed writers. (Which is most of them, including some quite liberal writers, and not including most token conservatives.)

An issue with this is, as your example goes, WaPo is owned by Bezos, who regularly runs misleading and false articles, particularly when things like economic issues, labor/union issues, etc are involved. That does not mean that all WaPo articles are invalid, but established sources can still carry significant bias.

 

As discussed elsewhere, tone, manners, and cognitive styles are unimportant to me. Some of the most cruel plans and misleading lies are presented by the most calm, rational sounding voices, and some of the angry screaming comes from a place of frustration with the truth not being recognized. Ideally, you would be able to combine being calm and rational with promoting the truth, but that is not as common, and is indistinguishable from the calm and rational people with their ill intent - which is why I, persoanlly, trust people who show some emotion, connection, and desire for what they are discussing.

 

 

1 minute ago, - 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖑𝖊𝕽𝖔𝖈𝕶 - said:

Anyway to address your direct point, I haven't heard this analysis from my sources.

If your sources are the Washington Post, they are one of the organizations pushing the narrative, so I would imagine not.

 

As someone with the time and energy to follow all of the stories, I have read the documents and analysis of things like the case against the DNC in 2016, in which they argued in court that they are a private corporation and did not need to follow any rules or obligations to represent the actual vote, and the more recent incidents with India Walton and Nina Turner, in which the DNC mobilized nationally to, in the former, overturn a primary victory by a democratic socialist by pushing a write-in campaign for the incumbent, and in the latter, mobilized national resources (Hillary, Clyburn, etc) to run direct lies and misleading advertising campaigns against a progressive with a huge lead in a primary in a completely safe district. These actions are far more than the absolutely nothing they did on the ground in West Virginia to pressure Manchin.

 

When you look at things like this, where the DNC regularly mobilizes more to prevent progressive and socialist candidates and policies like Medicare For All from even being on stage than they do for literally anything else, you begin to really question everything they say and do.

 

 

1 minute ago, - 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖑𝖊𝕽𝖔𝖈𝕶 - said:

Both these statements seem oversimplified, for example getting ACA through or Biden eventually being open about the Anti-Democrat's obstructionism and lack of points.

The ACA, a plan based on the Republican Romney (who would be the opposing presidential candidate)'s state plan designed by insurance companies, was passed after the Democrats lost a supermajority in which they could have passed any plan they liked, and chose to compromise for no reason to gain nothing.

 

An analysis of these events is that they never wanted anything different.

 

 

1 minute ago, - 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖑𝖊𝕽𝖔𝖈𝕶 - said:

and were making simplified statements for persuasive/emotional effect.

Ah, I see you completely understand my immature, emotional, and anarchic writing style, and can read the meaning of it. That tends to be rare, so kudos and thanks.

 

 

1 minute ago, - 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖑𝖊𝕽𝖔𝖈𝕶 - said:

Obviously I'm more in the camp of avoiding simplified statements, at least for purposes other than succinctness and without mentioning they're simplified. Primarily because I think a fair number of people take simplified statements like this, by anyone, as literal truth. (And then other people build on them with statements that simplify even more until we've lost all counter-points and end up with opposing camps who literally believe different simplifications of the truth.)

Communication is difficult, and I am not intelligent, at least not in the way where I can write well worded and calm arguments - at least not for forum posts. If I were making a public policy speech, clearly I would be much more careful, but if I am talking to a forum of relatively anonymous viewers, I tend to simplify things to express my actual point, and I use a lot of metaphors and imagery (which does go into strawman territory). My hope is that people can read the meaning and point in what I am saying, offer a reply, and be able to go into details as interested, instead of me flooding complicated word diarrhea and links to obscure sources in the introduction of an idea.

 

 

1 minute ago, - 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖑𝖊𝕽𝖔𝖈𝕶 - said:

People weren't wrong about Trump, he's an obviously corrupt, inept blowhard with no real policies, an embarrassingly bad diplomatic record, who tried to overthrow American democracy and who has caused, as some erstwhile Republicans predicted, the death of the Republican party. (There's still a party using the name, and there are a few actual Republicans left, but the party is dead.) Even the goal of winning respect for right-wing reactionaries has backfired, which I would argue was the real goal of his presidency and many of his voters. To other people's eyes, he made that group look even worse than before.

I agree with pretty much all of that, with the exception of his goal being to be a dictator. His goal was the same as literally everything else he has ever done - his own ego, wealth, and gratification. If that includes declaring himself dictator, he would. But Donald Trump is not intelligent enough and does not have any actual beliefs or platforms.

 

In the 90s, he ran as a Democrat, and independent. He made comments generally supporting universal healthcare. The winds changed, so he did, as well.

 

 

1 minute ago, - 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖑𝖊𝕽𝖔𝖈𝕶 - said:

The politicians' mistake was overestimating the voting populace and assuming this was also immediately obvious to them.

My analysis would be that their mistake was ignoring the voting populace, and being completely unaware and out of touch with the general mood and opinion, particularly that of them.

 

 

1 minute ago, - 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖑𝖊𝕽𝖔𝖈𝕶 - said:

FWIW that's a fairly different point. This might not have been clear but I was referring to the actions of regular people in the culture war, rather than the actions of elected officials.

Ah, fair enough.

 

The entire Culture War nonsense is nothing new, though. It is simply a repeat of the exact same thing that happened in the 80s, 90s, 00s, and 10s. New name, some new issues, same behavior on all sides.

 

 

1 minute ago, - 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖑𝖊𝕽𝖔𝖈𝕶 - said:

As for whether elected officials should work towards the goals of their constituencies, or should take the actions those constituencies think will reach those goals, there's some valid room for philosophy of government there. For myself, I think of it like doctors. I want to be healthy but all things equal I don't really care what the approach is. Sometimes I have done a lot of research and I want a doctor who listens, who takes me seriously, but also doesn't tell me they agree just because they're working for me as my doctor.

Yes, that would be best. Politicians tend to be lawyers because it takes understanding law to follow - and especially write - legislation. But it should also require clear ideology (as in, having a platform), communicating it, and listening to constituents.

 

I do not see very many leaders doing that.

 

 

1 minute ago, - 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖑𝖊𝕽𝖔𝖈𝕶 - said:

I'm not sure you were quite mentioning Bernie Sanders here but for context I've seen him do some dishonest things. I do think he's an impassioned guy who really follows his principles, but I don't necessarily trust him to argue honestly. For example he had some plan to have Amazon pay for what would be government assistance for its workers, the idea being that if it pays them so little that government assistance kicks in, then it should pay for the government assistance. But as a think tank correctly pointed out, this would heavily incentivize Amazon to just not hire anyone who looks like they're on government assistance. Which would hurt the people who most need help. But rather than address that point itself he just responded that one person in that think tank has some corporate donors or something. Fine, and that's a good reason to be careful, but we have the actual argument so ad hominem attacks at that point are pointless and dishonest.

Bernie is clearly the one to think of with my vague description, partly because there are very few politicians who come near the criteria I listed.  He also is definitely not perfect, and I would be an extreme hypocrite if I did not question everything he does. And he is wrong on a number of issues. I'm not familiar with that example, so I can't comment on it either way. It certainly sounds like a fair criticism (of Bernie). The proposal itself is iffy, as it does not sound serious, and does not address the issue. The reaction is a bad one, as well.

 

 

1 minute ago, - 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖑𝖊𝕽𝖔𝖈𝕶 - said:

I do like Bernie, I like a lot of what he does, but I don't think there are any magical saints here. He's more earnest and idealistic than some, less intellectually honest than some others.

Agree 100%. One of my "things" is questioning everyone, regardless of my support for them or not. If I see corruption, I am not concerned if it comes from a D or R (or I or S or anything else). Authority figures exist to be held accountable and challenged.

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31 minutes ago, - 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖑𝖊𝕽𝖔𝖈𝕶 - said:

I'm in support of the Ukrainian military teaching the civilian populace how to fight, as an insurgency might end up the main way Russia's invasion is ultimately countered and that the Ukrainians stay free. Training civilians how to fight is standard when a country is likely to be invaded by a powerful military, for example the British when besieged by Germany in WW2.

 

And yeah, every country has its Nazis. We can also post pictures of Nazis or other ethnic supremacists from just about any country.

Both of these are avoiding two points:

 

1) A civilian uprising will not stop the Russian Army in 2022*, which is not likely to invade, and what is being done with those citizens is that they are being trained by neo-Nazi groups which will lead them to relate to and fight for those neo-Nazi groups in the large number of fights in Ukraine (see the video in my OP).

 

2) This is not an isolated Nazi doing his own thing. There is a signficantly sized and organized group in the Ukrainian military, and significant organizations in the country. These are groups we are giving weapons and training

 

 

* An account of leftist veterans I follow (mostly for laughs and analysis, they are rather up front with their biases, and seeing accounts like this criticize the kinds of dumb cosplaying from miiltary enthusiaists is extremely entertaining) posted this, which explains how the idea is dumb - unless your intent is to turn Ukraine into Iraq or Afghanistan for 20 years.

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1 hour ago, - 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖑𝖊𝕽𝖔𝖈𝕶 - said:

but I don't necessarily trust him to argue honestly. For example he had some plan to have Amazon pay for what would be government assistance for its workers, the idea being that if it pays them so little that government assistance kicks in, then it should pay for the government assistance. But as a think tank correctly pointed out, this would heavily incentivize Amazon to just not hire anyone who looks like they're on government assistance. Which would hurt the people who most need help. But rather than address that point itself he just responded that one person in that think tank has some corporate donors or something. Fine, and that's a good reason to be careful, but we have the actual argument so ad hominem attacks at that point are pointless and dishonest.

I had a followup thought to this:

 

I think it is interesting you use this example as a demonstration of honesty. Well, I suppose you say "argue honestly," so that is probably your larger point, but my distinction stands. Being more upset by the tone and ad hom than by the content of the message (which I do not know the context or veracity of, and is outside of my point).

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22 minutes ago, Zagadka said:

2) This is not an isolated Nazi doing his own thing. There is a signficantly sized and organized group in the Ukrainian military, and significant organizations in the country. These are groups we are giving weapons and training0

 

- unless your intent is to turn Ukraine into Iraq or Afghanistan for 20 years.

And a further thought for myself here; this kind of thing is exactly how we ended up putting the people who would become the Taliban in power, and how we became beholden to Saudi interests that caused these conflicts.

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Fraggle Underdark
13 minutes ago, Zagadka said:

I had a followup thought to this:

 

I think it is interesting you use this example as a demonstration of honesty. Well, I suppose you say "argue honestly," so that is probably your larger point, but my distinction stands. Being more upset by the tone and ad hom than by the content of the message (which I do not know the context or veracity of, and is outside of my point).

I'll respond to the other comments but can you clarify what you meant here? Which people are you talking about being upset by which message and which tone? (I can imagine this referring to several different possibilities.)

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4 hours ago, - 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖑𝖊𝕽𝖔𝖈𝕶 - said:

I'll respond to the other comments but can you clarify what you meant here? Which people are you talking about being upset by which message and which tone? (I can imagine this referring to several different possibilities.)

Nothing really specific. Following a conversation about inherent corruption, misleading media, and tone, bringing up a case where a politician snaps at someone is just interesting. I'm not trying to be accusatory; I think we agree with how we view Bernie. It is just an interesting criticism to choose.

 

Further reflection is that I (and many people) prefer a leader who shows passion and dedication to what they are discussing. Detached indifference and simple deference to things that stop progress without putting up a visible fight put people off. Incidentally, these are traits of Biden on the occasions where he isn't caught cursing at people on a hot mic - and those are his most popular moments. Some people want someone who will stand there and tell people they suck. That is part of the appeal of Trump. I'm sure some people want a very mature and measured leader, but I don't believe that connects with people; that is why politicians go for the folksy normal guy acts.

 

Then again, I suppose I, in personal interactions, prefer someone who is honest and direct over someone who is extremely polite who will then turn around and mutter curse words at me. I value honesty, directness, and passion. Which is clearly why I am not a leader type, and would be eaten alive in a public facing role.

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Fraggle Underdark
3 minutes ago, Zagadka said:

Nothing really specific. Following a conversation about inherent corruption, misleading media, and tone, bringing up a case where a politician snaps at someone is just interesting. I'm not trying to be accusatory; I think we agree with how we view Bernie. It is just an interesting criticism to choose.

I still don't understand what you're talking about. That's not an insult just an honest statement that I'm lost. It wasn't that he snapped at someone, he dismissed a valid argument with ad hominem. Even if he had snapped at someone...I'm not sure what you're thinking my view is on that or how it relates to other things.

 

5 minutes ago, Zagadka said:

Further reflection is that I (and many people) prefer a leader who shows passion and dedication to what they are discussing. Detached indifference and simple deference to things that stop progress without putting up a visible fight put people off. Incidentally, these are traits of Biden on the occasions where he isn't caught cursing at people on a hot mic - and those are his most popular moments.

Yes, obviously people prefer leaders of dedication and passion :P Keep in mind I haven't yet talked about what I mean by "tones that correspond to reliability", I never talked about detached indifference. And obviously everyone is opposed to people who "stop progress without putting up a visible fight". And ARE those his most popular moments? Was there a poll of the electorate, or are we just talking highly liberal, heavily-online people? BTW I am pretty much asking for polls if anything, otherwise it's just differing opinions.

 

5 hours ago, Zagadka said:

An issue with this is, as your example goes, WaPo is owned by Bezos, who regularly runs misleading and false articles, particularly when things like economic issues, labor/union issues, etc are involved. That does not mean that all WaPo articles are invalid, but established sources can still carry significant bias.

As a long-term reader I've been impressed with the fairness of their coverage, including when it comes to businesses Bezos owns, and have yet to see any evidence that they let that ownership distort their reporting. You mentioned labor unions and they recently had some glowing coverage of some formation efforts. But if someone has evidence of false or misleading reporting, I'm very interested to see it! I also want to point out that every time they mention anything owned by Bezos then every single time they say "Amazon/other-company is owned by Jeff Bezos who also owns the Washington Post". They are the opposite of shy about this.

 

I suspect that a fair bit of this claim has to do with people who disagree with some of Washington Post's analyses and conclude that must be because Bezos owns them.

 

5 hours ago, Zagadka said:

As someone with the time and energy to follow all of the stories, I have read the documents and analysis of things like the case against the DNC in 2016, in which they argued in court that they are a private corporation and did not need to follow any rules or obligations to represent the actual vote, and the more recent incidents with India Walton and Nina Turner, in which the DNC mobilized nationally to, in the former, overturn a primary victory by a democratic socialist by pushing a write-in campaign for the incumbent, and in the latter, mobilized national resources (Hillary, Clyburn, etc) to run direct lies and misleading advertising campaigns against a progressive with a huge lead in a primary in a completely safe district. These actions are far more than the absolutely nothing they did on the ground in West Virginia to pressure Manchin.

We're getting into weeds again here, and it seems every time we do this the conclusion is that we have different interpretations of the same events. But if you want to give examples of lies told about those candidates, let me know. Also, isn't Manchin in a super red district? If so I imagine they can't do much to get anyone from there that's more left than he is.

 

5 hours ago, Zagadka said:

The entire Culture War nonsense is nothing new, though. It is simply a repeat of the exact same thing that happened in the 80s, 90s, 00s, and 10s. New name, some new issues, same behavior on all sides.

This is an aside, but the Culture War frequently makes me think of that line “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” 

 

5 hours ago, Zagadka said:

Both of these are avoiding two points:

 

1) A civilian uprising will not stop the Russian Army in 2022*, which is not likely to invade, and what is being done with those citizens is that they are being trained by neo-Nazi groups which will lead them to relate to and fight for those neo-Nazi groups in the large number of fights in Ukraine (see the video in my OP).

 

2) This is not an isolated Nazi doing his own thing. There is a signficantly sized and organized group in the Ukrainian military, and significant organizations in the country. These are groups we are giving weapons and training

Dedicated insurgencies don't defeat initial invasions, they often cause an occupation and assimilation to ultimately fail.

 

So I did some more research and found out about the Azov Battalion, which I believe you're referring to but didn't mention in your first post. (As an aside: I disagree therefore with saying I was avoiding any points, as all I knew was you posted a picture of a civilian being trained and one random Nazi.) Anyway about that Battalion, they're about 1000 all-volunteer troops from what I've read, which makes them about 0.25% of the Ukrainian military. Even if they've grown since that 1000 number was given, they're still tiny. That said, yes it's notable that this group has substantial Nazi leanings, with some portion being explicit Neo-Nazis.  In defensive wars nations are often willing to turn a bit of a blind eye to extremists who are wiling to fight for them, I'm reminded of the Mosleyites in WW2 Britain, who were ethnic supremacist and fascists, some of whom volunteered to fight the Germans. In any case, the Azov Battalion makes for atrocious PR and should be disbanded. It doesn't help fight Russian propaganda about Ukraine being Nazis when you allow a small group of Nazis to serve.

 

I want to specifically point out that a 2018 resolution of ours bars us from offering training to the Azov Battalion. We aren't training them.

 

5 hours ago, Zagadka said:

* An account of leftist veterans I follow (mostly for laughs and analysis, they are rather up front with their biases, and seeing accounts like this criticize the kinds of dumb cosplaying from miiltary enthusiaists is extremely entertaining) posted this, which explains how the idea is dumb - unless your intent is to turn Ukraine into Iraq or Afghanistan for 20 years.

In my experience, a number of soldiers like to make grand claims about strategy on social media. I was curious about this explicitly left-leaning group, and hoped they'd be a bit more measured and careful with this, but it seems the same as what I see in general.

 

Just to clarify, only a tiny number of people in the military receive any training about strategy. You learn how to fire a weapon, act in formation, maintain your gear, and do your specific job. They absolutely do not give most people training about doctrinal considerations. BTW many manuals of US military doctrine and tactics are available free and open online, you can just go read them. And the US military is focused and effective at what it does. It's not perfect, nothing is, but it's very good. I've been doing a lot of research on it recently and it's very good. (You can also find other militaries saying the same thing online.) So what we have here is some random veteran (and most jobs aren't combat arms, they're things like IT, supply, logistics, etc) vs decades of doctrinal practice by experienced leaders who take their job very seriously, and included the extremely standard plan to grab maps and weapons from fallen enemy in the moments after a successful ambush. That's solid. The critiques I saw on that linked tweet were disordered and silly. I was especially amused by the person saying that these people would be the insurgents if Russia invaded. Thank you Captain Obvious, yes, the US military is 100% aware these skills can be used by Ukrainian resistance even if Russia achieves conventional victory and occupation. That's neither a surprise nor a downside.

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Fraggle Underdark
6 hours ago, Zagadka said:

As discussed elsewhere, tone, manners, and cognitive styles are unimportant to me. Some of the most cruel plans and misleading lies are presented by the most calm, rational sounding voices, and some of the angry screaming comes from a place of frustration with the truth not being recognized. Ideally, you would be able to combine being calm and rational with promoting the truth, but that is not as common, and is indistinguishable from the calm and rational people with their ill intent - which is why I, persoanlly, trust people who show some emotion, connection, and desire for what they are discussing.

I'm responding to this point in a separate post since it's much more central.

 

It's not actually calm voices that I care about. At least with a lot of exceptions. It's true that human beings tend to exaggerate and distort the truth when they're really upset and they care about achieving a certain result. But some people are very careful, even in those moments, to only say things that are true. They can still be quite emotional. But it's a different tone, usually. I've read some scathing pieces of writing that are very accurate, both in the Washington Post and elsewhere. I don't actually hold emotion against people. It's just that if people are the sort of people to exaggerate when emotional, then they're likely to sound like other people who exaggerate when emotional (at least if you've paid a lot of attention to the difference in how that sounds) and then I'm naturally going to assume they're more likely to exaggerate. But it's not emotion per se that makes me distrust.

 

Another aspect is that listening to people's tone and trying to understand them better has long been a special interest of mine. I've spent many years paying close attention to how people talk and act and correlating that with different actions they take in the future and how reliable their statements tend to be. So for me, it's very doable to get a strong sense of who's reliable and who isn't. I use that word "reliable" very specifically, in that someone else may be speaking accurately but I have to check, and hearing them only means that that person said that thing. Which can give very different conclusions than simply "that claim is true". (For a simple example, it at least tells me an upset person is upset about something, for some reason.) Anyway, if someone hasn't spent a ton of time doing that, and isn't confident in their ability to get strong clues of reliability than tone, then I agree it makes sense not to pay much attention to tone.

 

This brings me to the point that everything can be abused. I'm sure from our discussions you agree but I'm mentioning it for completeness. Of course someone can act outraged so that listeners tend to think they have something to be outraged about (e.g. people talking about how awful it is that votes aren't even counted in the US [which disguises the fact that they're lying and they are]). And then if someone only examines an argument on its merits, that's open to abuse too. Just as smart people can try and trick others with tone, they can and do frequently try to trick others with misleading data, unspoken omissions, plausible but facetious analysis, etc. Lots of people are very good at that, especially these days. So merely ignoring tone doesn't necessarily solve the trust issue, of course.

 

And then someone can look into something themselves, but in addition to taking a lot of time, the researcher has to be careful that the very questions they're asking haven't been manipulated. For example "Why wasn't Hillary investigated for her crimes in Benghazi" and then not think to research whether she committed crimes in Benghazi. But getting back to the time element, if someone is researching everything themselves, then why are they reading news in the first place?? Actually before the Washington Post I used to get my news from Vox, and they were good, but they weren't reliable in their analyses. Most of the time they'd be good, but not that infrequently they'd be quite sloppy with their data to support a conclusion they liked. That meant I had to check every conclusion, in order to trust any conclusion. Which made it a waste of my time.

 

So supposing someone does decide to check everything, then they ignore everything you hear and head straight to... wikipedia? Encyclopedia Brittanica? Some other source? Which gets to the problem that this just passes the buck, and when checking whether something is true we can usually only work off of yet others conclusions. So now how do we assess each of those sources, and whether they're reliable?

 

So this is one of the reasons I like paying close mind to tone, presentation, other actions. Because I'm getting some information about how seriously that person did their research. So they could be honestly mistaken but honest mistakes don't tend to metastasize in information networks the same way that dishonest mistakes do.

 

Anyway, at the end of the day I at least recommend that everyone pay attention to histories of reliability, and not merely a given argument. If a news or information source has given poor or misleading arguments before, then there's a good chance it will again. And people are really very good at coming up with subtly misleading arguments.

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6 minutes ago, - 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖑𝖊𝕽𝖔𝖈𝕶 - said:

I still don't understand what you're talking about. That's not an insult just an honest statement that I'm lost. It wasn't that he snapped at someone, he dismissed a valid argument with ad hominem. Even if he had snapped at someone...I'm not sure what you're thinking my view is on that or how it relates to other things.

I have no context for this, and I have no link to go off of for what happened, so I really can't answer. I would define "snapping" as answering an argument with an ad hom, so not only am I operating off of your second hand description of an event I have no context for, I do not understand your distinction.

 

 

6 minutes ago, - 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖑𝖊𝕽𝖔𝖈𝕶 - said:

Yes, obviously people prefer leaders of dedication and passion :P Keep in mind I haven't yet talked about what I mean by "tones that correspond to reliability", I never talked about detached indifference. And obviously everyone is opposed to people who "stop progress without putting up a visible fight". And ARE those his most popular moments? Was there a poll of the electorate, or are we just talking highly liberal, heavily-online people? BTW I am pretty much asking for polls if anything, otherwise it's just differing opinions.

Are you asking if there is a poll from an establishing polling firm that asked an open ended question about what people's favorite Biden moment is, and if the answer to that was him telling a reporter who asked an insultingly dumb question, which the reporter acknowledged and laughed off, to f* off?

 

Guess you got me?

 

As for the comments at the start, I was not making a bold statement I had discovered all on my own, but thank you for condescending about a point we agree with?

 

 

6 minutes ago, - 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖑𝖊𝕽𝖔𝖈𝕶 - said:

As a long-term reader I've been impressed with the fairness of their coverage, including when it comes to businesses Bezos owns, and have yet to see any evidence that they let that ownership distort their reporting.

WaPo is generally fair and reliable -  their main issues are that they load headlines for impact (clearly something I can persoanlly relate to), and omit coverage of events they do not want to cover (most visibly, the way they stopped fact checking presidential claims when Trump left office, and admitted that they do not fact check official releases). They are also sometimes guilty of burying important information deep in the article, but that is more of an issue with all journalism.

 

Their op-eds can be extremely biased.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/07/21/most-effective-way-tax-rich-capital-gains/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-wealth-tax-isnt-the-best-way-to-tax-the-rich/2019/06/30/0f71da6c-99d1-11e9-8d0a-5edd7e2025b1_story.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/10/25/bidens-latest-tax-the-rich-scheme-would-be-an-unworkable-possibly-unconstitutional-mess/

 

As far as their coverage, they have notable bias against certain politicians.

 

Their recent article on the Joe Rogan controversy was essentially a how-to switch to Amazon Music.

 

As far as their fair coverage of Bezos own businesses,

 

https://www.cjr.org/the_new_gatekeepers/washington-post-bezos-amazon.php

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=209584962

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/04/04/trump-amazon-washington-post-jeff-bezos-217774/

https://boards.fool.com/amazon-coverage-on-the-washington-post-32092952.aspx *not a published article

https://fair.org/uncategorized/washpost-wants-more-anti-labor-coverage/ *significantly older, but your claim is to their long term respectability

 

And to be fair, they do offer fair coverage as well

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/12/02/amazon-workplace-monitoring-unions/

 

This is one I noticed a bit later - and I do not know the source, but the read through seems to present evidence well enough

 

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-washington-post-must-answer-for-its-bolivia-coverage/

 

 

6 minutes ago, - 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖑𝖊𝕽𝖔𝖈𝕶 - said:

I also want to point out that every time they mention anything owned by Bezos then every single time they say "Amazon/other-company is owned by Jeff Bezos who also owns the Washington Post". They are the opposite of shy about this.

I never said they weren't. They are clear about their bias, which is nice. They certainly aren't a Fox News type organization, and do do mostly good reporting - on what they choose to.

 

 

6 minutes ago, - 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖑𝖊𝕽𝖔𝖈𝕶 - said:

We're getting into weeds again here, and it seems every time we do this the conclusion is that we have different interpretations of the same events. But if you want to give examples of lies told about those candidates, let me know. Also, isn't Manchin in a super red district? If so I imagine they can't do much to get anyone from there that's more left than he is.

I am fairly unsurprised that the conditions in West Virginia have not been accurately reported in your media.

 

Long story short, Manchin runs West Virginia like his empire, using the fact that it is a red state to prevent anyone from gaining national support for a primary (and why the DNC chooses to not confront him). West Virginia is a complicated state, but it has a very strong labor history movement, and the operative part of the "red state" is social conservatism. Things like Build Back Better (the original one) were extremely popular, and Manchin's insistence on demanding cuts was not representing the people.

 

If you want some local interviews, you can try this playlist, which is largely with West Virginians and some of the politicians who challenge Manchin, though I am certain that you will have protests about the interviewer. Unfortunately, corporate media simply does not cover things like West Virginia, the ongoing Flint crisis, Red Hill, etc.

 

 

6 minutes ago, - 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖑𝖊𝕽𝖔𝖈𝕶 - said:

Dedicated insurgencies don't defeat initial invasions, they often cause an occupation and assimilation to ultimately fail.

I think this is a misunderstanding of the history of Eastern Europe and the capability for an insurgency in a split country to fight against a full force modern military from a world power. I mean, sure, it could end like Viet Nam, assuming anyone wants to do that, Ukrainians would put up that fight, and we don't just nuke each other first.

 

 

6 minutes ago, - 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖑𝖊𝕽𝖔𝖈𝕶 - said:

So I did some more research and found out about the Azov Battalion, which I believe you're referring to but didn't mention in your first post. (As an aside: I disagree therefore with saying I was avoiding any points, as all I knew was you posted a picture of a civilian being trained and one random Nazi.) Anyway about that Battalion, they're about 1000 all-volunteer troops from what I've read, which makes them about 0.25% of the Ukrainian military. Even if they've grown since that 1000 number was given, they're still tiny. That said, yes it's notable that this group has substantial Nazi leanings, with some portion being explicit Neo-Nazis.  In defensive wars nations are often willing to turn a bit of a blind eye to extremists who are wiling to fight for them, I'm reminded of the Mosleyites in WW2 Britain, who were ethnic supremacist and fascists, some of whom volunteered to fight the Germans. In any case, the Azov Battalion makes for atrocious PR and should be disbanded. It doesn't help fight Russian propaganda about Ukraine being Nazis when you allow a small group of Nazis to serve.

If you want a deeper analysis of the far right in Ukraine, this is a fairly comprehensive and, I think, fair view.

 

https://medium.com/@Hromadske/ukraines-far-right-explained-438857ec9aae

 

TL;DR:

Is Ukraine’s Far-Right Dangerous?

There is speculation abound that members of the far-right have been brought into the Ukrainian government in order to neutralize them. If a member of the far-right is a police chief or member of parliament, this shows that the Ukrainian authorities (officially) value their presence — and during a time of war, creating a united domestic front is indeed critical for Ukraine.

Still, despite a lack of electoral support, Ukrainian far-right movements are a growing source of troubles for local authorities amid the general weakness of law-enforcement institutions in the post-revolutionary country.

There is visible and growing involvement of far-right military groups in violent corporate raiding, a backside illegal business many right-wing militia and members of volunteer battalions have facilitated for years now.

On the Eastern Ukraine front line, largely uncontrolled far-fight volunteer fighters are condemned by local and international watchdogs for alleged war crimes and human rights violations. Many fear of these heavy-armed fighters coming back home and becoming a part of street gangs, once when the war with Russia is over.

On Ukrainian streets there is a visible and growing involvement of far-right military groups in violent corporate raiding, a backside illegal business many right-wing militia and members of volunteer battalions have facilitated for years now and found ways to profit out of general instability.

 

 

6 minutes ago, - 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖑𝖊𝕽𝖔𝖈𝕶 - said:

I want to specifically point out that a 2018 resolution of ours bars us from offering training to the Azov Battalion. We aren't training them.

Funny how they end up with our weapons and train civilians.

 

 

6 minutes ago, - 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖑𝖊𝕽𝖔𝖈𝕶 - said:

In my experience, a number of soldiers like to make grand claims about strategy on social media. I was curious about this explicitly left-leaning group, and hoped they'd be a bit more measured and careful with this, but it seems the same as what I see in general.

You are claiming that veterans of combat tours do not know that an insurgency tactic they faced in combat will result in artillery response, and that their analysis of "lol, they'll be killed in few minutes if they tried that" is a grand claim about... strategy? And... your claim to knowing that strategy (despite it being a comment about ineffective ground tactics) better than they do is...?

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45 minutes ago, - 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖑𝖊𝕽𝖔𝖈𝕶 - said:

For example "Why wasn't Hillary investigated for her crimes in Benghazi" and then not think to research whether she committed crimes in Benghazi.

I think that is a poor example, but for most of what you said, yes, and I do not have much to add, though it is very interesting, thank you.

 

45 minutes ago, - 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖑𝖊𝕽𝖔𝖈𝕶 - said:

So now how do we assess each of those sources, and whether they're reliable?

I do not agree that tone can always convey reliability, but that may be an issue with me not being terribly good at discerning tone. I tend to judge more on history and past actions than presentation.

 

 

45 minutes ago, - 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖑𝖊𝕽𝖔𝖈𝕶 - said:

Anyway, at the end of the day I at least recommend that everyone pay attention to histories of reliability, and not merely a given argument. If a news or information source has given poor or misleading arguments before, then there's a good chance it will again. And people are really very good at coming up with subtly misleading arguments.

To this end, and looping into the rest of the conversation, this is why I have a large issue with most media outlets (such as the Washington Post). They do have a history of poor and misleading arguments, particularly with Trump, which is, indeed, and indication that there is a chance they will again with other topics. While Trump is, indeed, deserving of it, his criticism of "mainstream media" did have valid points (all of which he exaggerated and abused).

 

The extremely frustrating thing for me, specifically, is that independent media is hard to find, and hard to trust. While outlets like WaPo, NYT, CNN, etc are certainly far more honest and fair than rags like Fox News and that ilk, they are steadfast defenders of the DNC party line, and will rarely contradict it (even more rarely will they step out to do investigative reporting undermining it).

 

To give some context, I learned my mistrust of the media very young, with Reagan, the Gulf War coverage, the many scandals and debacles of the Clintons (and the GOP obstruction), and I lost all faith after 9/11 and the Iraq War, which Western media coverage of bordered on criminal. It does not help that not only have they changed very little, they continue to front articles by people like Thomas Friedman, and hire people like Stephen Hayes.

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Fraggle Underdark

I'll respond to most points in one post and leave a 2nd post for discussing The Washington Post (thanks for all the links!)

 

6 hours ago, Zagadka said:

I have no context for this, and I have no link to go off of for what happened, so I really can't answer. I would define "snapping" as answering an argument with an ad hom, so not only am I operating off of your second hand description of an event I have no context for, I do not understand your distinction.

It's totally fine with me if we just move on but I just want to be clear that I'm really not trying to be obtuse. You originally said "Being more upset by the tone and ad hom than by the content of the message" but it wasn't clear to me if you were talking about Sanders being upset with the think tank's tone rather than the message, or me being upset by ad hom rather than the message. Partly because I don't know what message you're referring to there, if you meant Sander's ad hom because of the think tank's message or saying I was upset by Sander's policy proposal. Like I said I'm fine moving on, or elaborating, it's all the same to me, but I want to be clear I'm not trying to be rhetorical or obtuse, I was legitimately unsure what you meant.

 

Edited to add: I consider "snapping" to be a quick in the moment response, either vocally or maybe in text. Which I view as different than a deliberate attempt to permanently dismiss an argument.

 

6 hours ago, Zagadka said:

Are you asking if there is a poll from an establishing polling firm that asked an open ended question about what people's favorite Biden moment is, and if the answer to that was him telling a reporter who asked an insultingly dumb question, which the reporter acknowledged and laughed off, to f* off?

 

Guess you got me?

 

As for the comments at the start, I was not making a bold statement I had discovered all on my own, but thank you for condescending about a point we agree with?

I didn't mean to offend but yes that line was meant to be sarcastic, as I had read your statement as patronizing. In hindsight maybe my position was unclear and it wasn't obvious that I think "detached indifference and simple deference to things that stop progress" is both incorrect and justifiably unpopular. I read the delivery of your statement as if I didn't obviously agree, but in hindsight maybe it wasn't obvious how much I agree with that.

 

And I don't mean to pull a gotcha, I just mean that in the absence of some real polling data, both you and I are going to pull from our anecdotal experience and beliefs about the population. And our experiences and beliefs are different so we're not going to agree, and we'll have to leave that disagreement as it is.

 

6 hours ago, Zagadka said:

Long story short, Manchin runs West Virginia like his empire, using the fact that it is a red state to prevent anyone from gaining national support for a primary (and why the DNC chooses to not confront him). West Virginia is a complicated state, but it has a very strong labor history movement, and the operative part of the "red state" is social conservatism. Things like Build Back Better (the original one) were extremely popular, and Manchin's insistence on demanding cuts was not representing the people.

 

If you want some local interviews, you can try this playlist, which is largely with West Virginians and some of the politicians who challenge Manchin, though I am certain that you will have protests about the interviewer. Unfortunately, corporate media simply does not cover things like West Virginia, the ongoing Flint crisis, Red Hill, etc.

It feels natural to imagine that the DNC is so nervous about losing the seat, and he seems to reliably hold it, that they'd rather keep him there than risk losing the seat to an Anti-Democrat by trying to get a more progressive person in there. It sounds complex as you said, so I could imagine that if I spent a ton of time doing political strategic analysis that it'd be better to risk it. But it seems reasonable at least for the DNC to be nervous.

 

As for the interviews, I try to check out sources, but I'm sorry that playlist would just be too unpleasant for me :P I prefer written to spoken info because I can absorb it faster, and then to watch content with that apparent vibe ... as a matter of personal taste the discomfort outweighs the benefit. Anyway I'm of the belief he's somewhat corrupt.

 

6 hours ago, Zagadka said:

Funny how they end up with our weapons and train civilians.

I am specific in my word choice (absent the occasional failure) and I meant only what I said, that we aren't training them. So no I'm not surprised that some of our weapons could have ended up in that battalion, absent stipulations they don't, or that that battalion doesn't spend some time training civilians.

 

As for the other things you shared about the far-right groups in Ukraine, sure I have no disagreement, that sounds legit and jibes with my expectations with how those kinds of groups usually act.

 

6 hours ago, Zagadka said:

I think this is a misunderstanding of the history of Eastern Europe and the capability for an insurgency in a split country to fight against a full force modern military from a world power. I mean, sure, it could end like Viet Nam, assuming anyone wants to do that, Ukrainians would put up that fight, and we don't just nuke each other first.

The analyses I've read is that the Russian force is enough to take Kyiv and another big city or two but would have to be much larger to actually occupy the country. Further, support for Russia has greatly tanked in Ukraine after they invaded them twice, and would only do so further with a full scale invasion, which would involve massive civilian casualties. The Ukrainian population is highly motivated to resist Russia, who would also be undergoing crushing sanctions while they were there.

 

As for nukes I don't see much risk of that. (It's not like I'm advocating Russia invade, mind, but if they do I don't think it will be a problem). During the Vietnam war for example China had nukes, and 320,000 Chinese soldiers took part in the war, the Soviets also provided some support, and no nukes were exchanged. There were other Cold War proxy wars that exchanged no nukes (I do realize I'm stating the obvious). Ukraine is not in any alliances that have nuclear weapons AFAIK.

 

6 hours ago, Zagadka said:

You are claiming that veterans of combat tours do not know that an insurgency tactic they faced in combat will result in artillery response, and that their analysis of "lol, they'll be killed in few minutes if they tried that" is a grand claim about... strategy? And... your claim to knowing that strategy (despite it being a comment about ineffective ground tactics) better than they do is...?

Yes, to the extent that's even what they're saying. A few things to say here:

  1. They actually claimed that was an anti-insurgency tactic that didn't work to fight insurgency, but that it would be used by insurgents. Is this meant to be a critique by them? If it didn't work to fight insurgency, what use does this have to an insurgency? Plus there's nothing about taking guns and maps that is anti-insurgency. It honestly seems like this comment of theirs was mashing the keyboard.
  2. A military isn't going to direct artillery fire towards a place where a patrol is ambushed, at least not during an insurgency, or if they do it won't work well for them. (In this situation anyway.) Some members of the patrol may still be alive and very few militaries fire on their own people. Plus if this fighting takes place near a population center there would be massive civilian casualties from artillery, which is not very accurate. Shelling towns will only increase resistance to Russia both in and out of Ukraine. It's worth pointing out that the US military did not shell their own fallen patrols, (I'm assuming there could have been a handful of exceptions but no more), so it's not like these guys are speaking from experience that this happens.
  3. Let's take the stronger claim that Russian ground forces will be there in 5 minutes. Sure, plausible. That's easily enough time to loot weapons, maps, etc, and disappear. And they're going slowly in the video because they're in training, people will be doing that faster in action.
  4. Yes, a choice of doctrine is strategy. Strategy is about high-level decisions, and a choice of standard doctrine is high level. A choice about whether to follow that doctrine in a specific situation is tactical, but doctrine is strategic.
  5. Keep in mind these are some random veterans critiquing the actual Army. I'm not really making any general statement about myself knowing better strategy than Left Flank Veterans. I'm saying the actual Army knows more about strategy than some random veterans on social media.
    Sub-point on this one: if you think the US military has a good handle on what it's doing, then that's your conclusion. If you don't think it has a good handle, then why would its veterans? Either their veteran status has no bearing on their knowledge in this regard, or the actual institutions that trained them has some idea what it's talking about.
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Fraggle Underdark

I genuinely appreciate all these links about the Washington Post, thank you! It's very important to me to base my news on trustworthy sources so I definitely want to know if that's not the case, and I've changed my go-to source before as I've said.

 

Let me begin with one comment, that I'm not surprised if the Post is a little less likely to take a negative story on Amazon, a little more likely to take a positive one, a tad more likely to paint them positively when they cover them. This has always been my belief, since I learned Bezos owns them, because I share the view of many articles you posted that in some small way that kind of thing tends to affect human minds. Despite, as even the critical links say, that Bezos makes no calls to initiate, repress, or alter any stories. I deliberately said before that I've been impressed with their reporting, but it's not where I'd go if I wanted specific information on Amazon or Bezos activity.

 

(Looking back I did misspeak, or at least simplify, when I said I don't think the ownership has distorted their reporting. I rewrote that section a few times and the final version is stronger than I meant; there is likely some distortion in being a little less likely to pick up negative stories, etc, but I failed to specify that I meant what I would call substantial distortions. We might disagree on that but I'll address that below.)

 

5 hours ago, Zagadka said:

First in a general sense, yes some of the op-eds are atrocious. To see something really horrendous I'd recommend checking out Marc Thiessen's pieces, which have the intellect and rigor of an edgy 15-year-old. I honestly have begun to suspect he's there to make conservatives look bad. His rigor is so far below the standard of the Post, even far below the standard of other conservative commentators. It's weird. Anyway when it comes to their regular contributors most are good but they definitely have some random people and just in general they seem to be dedicated to a very wide spread of opinions. (It is possible they under-represent far-left thinking; it's hard for me to say because that doesn't stand out to me like conservative nonsense does, so I don't have that information mentally recorded.)

 

As for the 2 you mention by the editorial board, I basically agree with them. Speaking practically, given that I agree with them, it seems like a high bar to persuade me their position is not only wrong but extremely biased. So that probably won't be a productive discussion for us. (I'm not saying you can't try, but just that at some point we'll probably have to agree to disagree there.)

 

5 hours ago, Zagadka said:

As far as their coverage, they have notable bias against certain politicians.

Okay, I'm convinced there's been a little bias in this regard. What stands out most to me was the 3 misleading claims from their fact checker on Bernie's plan in 2018. Also I'll take this article on their word that in 2016 the Post ran 16 articles in 16 days critiquing Sanders, which I'm going to go ahead and assume was a biased move. It is right and good that they be called out for that, and since this article describes that incident as "infamous" I'll take them at their word that the Post has been. (Which of course does not guarantee they've solved the problem!) Also, they point out several particular issues with an article that have now been corrected. Good on them (or whoever) for holding the Post accountable for some bad journalism.

 

As for the rest of this I have much disagreement, not just with conclusions but their own dedication to truth. They claim it's biased to call Sander's plan unrealistic, they conflate seriousness of an attempt with amount of words typed up, they conflate the realism of a conspiracy theory with how common sense it seems, and they mention that the working class "represents the overwhelming majority of the US population" whereas a variety of descriptions seem to put it between 30 and 35% of the population. It also is relevant that The Jacobin describes itself as "a leading voice of the American left, offering socialist perspectives on politics, economics, and culture" and that Sanders is the most prominent American socialist (I don't use the word as an insult). They're not a publication that's going to be very motivated to entertain criticism of his plans. Their journalistic integrity might lead them to do it! But it'd be an uphill fight against their politics.

 

5 hours ago, Zagadka said:

I'll respond to these in a batch. (Again, my genuine thanks for the links! It's always good to check sources.)

 

As for the first, the Post stated nothing incorrectly and just mentioned Amazon a few less times. The 2nd is from when Bezos was buying the Post, doesn't speak about anything they've done, and talks about the subtle temptations to be more careful in anyone's criticism of those seen to employ them, which I agree with. (It also mentions some actions the interviewee feels can be effective at fighting most of this, and cases where ownership of a paper didn't prevent critical investigation of other properties of the owners.) The 3rd is basically just saying that Bezos owns the Post. The 4th, unless there is sarcasm here I'm missing (and I felt too lazy to look up quarterly reports from 6 years ago), is saying the Post is actually more accurate in its treatment of Amazon than most publications. (If you feel like it's inaccurate and want to go find the quarterly report, I will look at it and compare.) The 5th is saying that the Washington Post didn't cover one very small protest (on something that has nothing directly to do with Amazon or Bezos).

 

5 hours ago, Zagadka said:

This is one I noticed a bit later - and I do not know the source, but the read through seems to present evidence well enough

 

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-washington-post-must-answer-for-its-bolivia-coverage/

A good read and the Post appears to have done some bad journalism there. They really should have done their research better, and it's great they're being called out for that. That said, there seems to be a compelling case this was sloppy rather than malicious. The editorial boards op-ed was 2 days after the CEPR issued a statement pointing out OAS's flaw, so an attentive journalist should have caught it. They might have missed this though, through lack of attention on the region, having CEPR's report lost in the noise of what else was happening, and assuming an election observer wouldn't make such a dumb mistake. That's still a bad oversight but to me it's plausible. Also, as the article says, Reuters published a ton of articles on the political crises while not once mentioning the critique of OAS's work "without a trace of skepticism"; the Post might have been basing their investigation off that work. The Post's editorial board 11-11 op-ed was written after more CEPR critiques were released but may have made the same mistake as before. It's also worth noting that this link indicts most major news organizations for failing to either be aware of or report on the CEPR critiques, which makes it more likely they all assumed they couldn't all have missed something, and therefore were working a lot off each other's findings, even implicitly.

 

The Post also seems to be the place that first broke the wider news that the CEPR critiques were justified, but ultimately this was a significant journalist failure. I'll remember this but to reach a conclusion of bias I would need to see more patterns than seem to be present.

 

4 hours ago, Zagadka said:

To this end, and looping into the rest of the conversation, this is why I have a large issue with most media outlets (such as the Washington Post). They do have a history of poor and misleading arguments, particularly with Trump, which is, indeed, and indication that there is a chance they will again with other topics. While Trump is, indeed, deserving of it, his criticism of "mainstream media" did have valid points (all of which he exaggerated and abused).

 

The extremely frustrating thing for me, specifically, is that independent media is hard to find, and hard to trust. While outlets like WaPo, NYT, CNN, etc are certainly far more honest and fair than rags like Fox News and that ilk, they are steadfast defenders of the DNC party line, and will rarely contradict it (even more rarely will they step out to do investigative reporting undermining it).

While we disagree with the bias of the Washington Post I do encourage you not to trust it if you think it's been biased in the past. That's obviously the right inference from your belief they've been frequently biased. (I use the word "belief" to emphasize subjectivity, not to contrast reality; I have my own belief.)

 

For my own broader read on independent vs mainstream media, I think many of the smaller publications have the explicit or implicit desire to advance certain causes, and it's a rare human who will actively work against their own interests if they find a critique of their cause. They also can't pay journalists as much and that makes it harder to have time to do a lot of research, and harder to keep or attract the best talent. That's not to say an article by them is necessarily wrong, but it's one of those systemic possible bias and disrupts trust. And my personal experience is these articles aren't usually very careful with their reasoning.

 

This is an aside but I don't think very highly of the NYT or the WSJ, to oversimplify it's because they seem to think things like trickle down economics makes sense.

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MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that Moscow is ready for talks with the U.S. and NATO on limits for missile deployments and military transparency, in a new sign of easing East-West tensions. The statement came after Russia announced it is pulling back some troops from exercises that have raised fears of a potential invasion of Ukraine.

Speaking after talks with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Putin said the U.S. and NATO rejected Moscow’s demand to keep Ukraine and other ex-Soviet nations out of NATO, halt weapons deployments near Russian borders and roll back alliance forces from Eastern Europe.

But the U.S. and NATO have agreed to discuss a range of security measures that Russia had previously proposed.

Putin said Russia is ready to engage in talks on limiting the deployment of intermediate range missiles in Europe, transparency of drills and other confidence-building measures but emphasized the need for the West to heed Russia’s main demands.

The statement followed the Russian Defense Ministry’s announcement of a partial pullback of troops after military drills, adding to hopes the Kremlin might not invade Ukraine imminently. The Russian military gave no details on where the troops were pulling back from, or how many.

Scholz said he agrees that diplomatic options are “far from exhausted.” The announcement of troops being pulled back is a “good signal,” he said, adding that he hopes that “more will follow.”

...

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-russia-london-europe-moscow-b158645ccf222e05aede08e26b9f62c1

 

(I'll get around to replying to you in a bit, Fraggle 😉

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  • 2 weeks later...

And so the insanity begins properly... on the flimsiest of excuses. 😒 I feel sorry for the people in Ukraine, at the behest of a ... (fill in the blanks, there are many possibilities). If anyone in Ukraine reads this, I wish you strength.

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Somehow my silver bars and oil stocks going up following the invasion doesn't stop me from being sad and worried.

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26 minutes ago, Howard said:

Somehow my silver bars and oil stocks going up following the invasion doesn't stop me from being sad and worried.

Nobody fucking cares about how you're making money off of human suffering.

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1 hour ago, Howard said:

Somehow my silver bars and oil stocks going up following the invasion doesn't stop me from being sad and worried.

A bit insensitive I think. 

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Shocked and terrified.

 

Putin's actions are literally insane and unprecedented. I never expected this, and gave Putin more credit than he clearly deserves. It makes no sense, and changes the entire geopolitical situation, likely forever. Unbelievable.

 

All this will do is cause immense suffering for people across Eastern Europe - Ukraine, Russia, and bordering nations - and very possible across the entire region. All I can do is hope - I wish I could be religious so I could pray that a higher power could intervene - that this does not escalate to the point it is clearly trending to.

 

On a more micro level, the Ukrainian military is not going to be able to fend off this attack. They are at the point of distributing firearms to civilians for street to street guerilla fighting. The only result of that will be the slaughtering of those civilians, and possible intervention by European and American forces in a ground war between nations with nuclear arsenals.

 

Given how unhinged Putin's invasion is, that is absolutely terrifying.

 

We need to see how China responds.

 

Russia's economy relies heavily on gas - to Europe. Gods, no sense.

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Yeah, this is the most terrifying news I've seen a long time, possibly my whole lifetime when it comes to European safety :( 

 

I just don't see what Putin's endgoal is with Ukraine, since occupying the whole nation would be a nightmare for them - they invaded with around 170,000 troops, which sounds like a lot, but the US invaded Iraq with 190,000 and that's a much smaller country. We know how that ended up for the US, even if the situation between Iraq and Ukraine isn't entirely comparable.

 

Putin's a lot of things but he's not stupid, and I'm sure he actually learned from watching the Iraq War and wouldn't try a full occupation. Of course, I didn't think he'd actually invade either, and he just seems a lot more out there compared to even a few years ago.

 

I just feel sad for ordinary people on both sides. I'm sure almost no one in Russia wants this war either.

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12 minutes ago, Still said:

I just don't see what Putin's endgoal is with Ukraine

I just heard that according to the US intelligence (so take how you want) that it is more and more clear that the goal is to find and take/get rid of the Ukraine government and instead install a government that will do what Kreml wants.

 

And I am way more scared about what is happening then I thought.

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It is terrible situation. I was crying today. I also feel responsible for this terrible situation. I think every russian should be responsible. Of course Putin is autocrat and he doesn't care about russian people's opinion. Nevertheless we created such system, which doesn't respect human rights, soveregnity of  neighbours and even basic safety of Europe and  safety of the whole world (probability of nuclear war increased today)   by our passivity and fear.  And we should be punished and suffer for production of such system. It is begining of the end of Russian Federation in it's current form. We had chances to create great soveregn nothern EuroAsian democracy, but we lost historic chance :(Now, we are country-outcast with insane  and dangerous leader. 

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