In general I wholeheartedly agree. But if the person in front of you has done or advocated for things that cause harm or is themself a horrible person then I disagree.
the current conflict in the middle east shows why this doesn't work in the long run.
despite what a generation that grew up consuming Marvel films was led to believe, not every conflict is a clearly defined superhero-vs-supervillain, good-vs-evil affair. eventually, you will be the one who, according to some, is advocating for things that cause harm and is considered a horrible person.
Sure, but then you're handwaving away questions about why cultures align along similar axioms.
I said no such thing.
Sometimes violence is unavoidable and often it will impact innocents as well.
I agree bad acts need to be called out but you're casting too wide of a net and that just leads to a loss of clarity/nuance. Is there any war action that doesn't fall under "willful acts of violence against innocents"? Are we talking about "collateral" damage? Are we talking about the Geneva Convention?
Why is Russia a bad actor? Because they invaded? They claim to have legitimate reasons, security concerns, treatment of ethnic Russians or separatists in Ukraine? What if we side with them on the legitimacy of starting the war, does that change anything?
There are some examples here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attacks_in_Russia_during_the_R...
or how about:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/18/russia-says-uk...
Just to be clear I'm not claiming the Russians are the good guys and the Ukranians are the bad guys. I'm just pointing out it's not as simple as someone did something bad in a war. You need to look at the totality of evidence and circumstances, challenge your own viewpoints and listen to people arguing the opposite of what you think, reach some conclusions and always be open to adjust to new evidence. Be aware of who is trying to manipulate you and why, what are the biases of the various sources of information etc. Again not that I think Russia are the good guys but things are never black and white. The west did meddle in Ukraine which in my world view is a good thing but unsurprisingly Putin perceived as aggression/attack on Russia's sphere of influence. To me it boils down to Putin being a force against western values that I'm aligned with.
"Why even bother if the chance of success is less than 100%"
Ukrainian attacks are very frequently successful despite GPS jamming and air defense. And vice versa.
>Just to be clear I'm not claiming the Russians are the good guys and the Ukranians are the bad guys. I'm just pointing out it's not as simple as someone did something bad in a war.
I have yet to see any videos of Ukrainian soldiers filming themselves laughing while using a knife to slowly decapitate a live prisoner. Or cut their balls off. Or put their decapitated heads on spikes. Or execute a dozen Russian POWs at a time
Ukrainian TV channels don't expound on the need to kill "as many as 2 million civilians" to denazify their opponent the way that Russian TV does fairly regularly. I've not seen any Ukrainians wave around the skull of a Russian killed in Russia live on stage at a metal concert.
It's pretty much a bloody mess. It's also complicated. For me it boils down to the fight between freedom and democracy and oppression and totalitarianism. Putin wants the world to be a worse place for all of us and is willing to have hundreds of thousands of people die for that.
Intent?
By the way, one could just as well argue that Russia is putting its civilians in harm’s way by jamming GPS and causing drones to strike off-target.
People should just be honest and admit they're nationalists, other kinds of ideologists, or just trying to fit in when it comes to opinions about war, because that's really all it is. If it was really unambiguous who was a bad actor, it wouldn't be a war in the first place because everyone would agree.
Especially with regard to conglomerates of people, like whole nations, or whole governments. Having said that, some people and some groups do fall heavily on one side or the other. But most groups are a dynamic mix of players and situations, not good or bad in any rational or stable way.
It's easy to say, "well then they should refuse to fight", but you are not that person, and you don't know their struggles or what they feel they are capable of doing.
I think it's reasonable to say that Putin and his war-mongering crones are baddies, but you just said "Russia" and "they started the war". Lumping all people together like that is how we dehumanize people and fail to find common ground that can improve everyone's situation.
- Realistically no amount of weapons the west supplies Ukraine is going to enable them to push the Russians out of Ukraine.
- Putin doesn't seem to care about the number of Russians lost in this war.
- Direct involvement by western armies could lead to a nuclear escalation. NATO could easily push Russia out of Ukraine in a conventional war. Too big of a gamble.
- This is just part of a larger geopolitical struggle between the different powers. Russia. China. India.
We don't really know what Putin wants here but if some sort of end to the war can be negotiated that includes territorial adjustments in Ukraine I think that's the best win the west can hope for right now. The cold war wasn't won on the battlefield, it was won mostly economically. Doubling down right now on a military solution in Ukraine doesn't feel like the right path forward. Stopping the hot war and switching to a colder war is probably the path of least pain for everyone. Even if it seems like a temporary win for Putin. If the west helped Ukraine more in the early days maybe we'd have a different outcome but the west made some bad choices and here we are.
That said if Putin wants to keep fighting then the war will continue. I don't think he does but who knows.
My take anyways.
OK, general. I wasn’t aware of your military credentials. Russia is about 12 months away from completely exhausting all of its Soviet stockpiles of (tens of thousands of) vehicles and artillery, and their war economy is already unable to sustain production at replacement rates.
On the contrary, it’s only a matter of time.
EDIT: Also not clear how long the US is going to keep supporting Ukraine now that Trump is in power so that's another factor.
Ukraine benefits from being on defense, as the attrition rates are significantly in their favor. I’m not sure what will happen after Trump does whatever it is he’s going to do, but it is clear that Russia’s current trajectory is not sustainable beyond a year or so
I'm not seeing Russia just crumble away under Ukrainian assault. If that's the case how does Ukraine benefit from the continuation of the war?
I would love to see Ukraine kicking Russia out as an outcome but it seems incredibly unrealistic.
At a certain point they may have to come to the negotiating table, and the longer this drags out the less favorable their position will be.
Those cheering for Ukraine have been saying this from the start. They have been lying again, and again, about everything... The Russian MoD has been on point, again and again. Why should I trust anything camp NATO/Ukraine says?
The reality on the battlefield is that NATO/Ukraine loses badly, while spending much/much/much more money. Donated money.
Sorry bro: it's a lost cause. The russians will be victorious again, fixing Europe's nazi problem again.
Everyone who teaches their kid "Bandera is my papa, Ukraine is my momma" is a nazi to me. And according to my research, that's a lot of the Ukrainian speaking Ukrainians.
lol, lmao even
NATO isn't even on the battlefield.
> while spending much/much/much more money.
Yes, western labor has more value per hour, so the $ value of the smaller share of western effort devoted to the support of Ukraine is much higher than the $ value of the much larger share of Russian effort.
> Donated money.
See, you have to decide on your narrative. If your narrative is that NATO is who your Russian buddies are fighting on the battlefield, then it isn't donated money. If your narrative is "donated money", then you have to drop the "NATO/Ukraine" description of the belligerent opposing Russia.
https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-s...
Russia will never completely run out of materiel, but they have already exhausted most of their stockpiles of good stuff. At this point they've been reduced to using refurbished armored vehicles built in the 1950s and modified civilian cars along parts of the front.
https://www.youtube.com/@CovertCabal/videos
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2025/01/19/russias-btr...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/12/24/a-pink-comp...
It's worth pointing out that Russia's "production" claims generally include refurbishment. When they say they produced 4 million artillery shells, that sometimes means they produced 400,000 artillery shells and refurbished 3.6 million artillery shells from deep storage.
Takes like yours are equally dangerous as the brainless “Ukraine is actually winning the war” ones, even though you appear slightly more neutral and informed.
In reality, the invasion phase of the war is justified from the Russian point of view, so their heads of state and soldiers are in the right. Same goes for western heads of state and soldiers. Me and you both live in the west and therefore have our own perspective on the war. People in BRICS states have their own perspective (that I’m quite familiar with due to having actually spent the effort on reading, unlike 99% of western commentators on this war).
Besides, don’t feel bad for Russian soldiers for being victims of the circumstances. Ukraine has been snatching people off the streets against their will for the past months and dropping them on the frontlines. This is happening in the majority Russian speaking cities and towns, not majority Ukrainian ones.
There are legitimate arguments on both sides of these issues.
Couching the Outgroup's opinion on X as "erasing" or "killing" or "dehumanising" just precludes understanding.
Religious conservatives do this with abortion for instance. Is it constructive to say that Freedom of Choice advocates actually "support murdering babies"? Does it help, or is it just in-group signalling?
The point is things that appear as universal absolutes are not the same for everyone.
I should have just said "wrong", plain and simple.
Personally, I am a moral skeptic - I don't really believe that moral truths exist in the same way that physical truths exist. For me, the only questions are what kind of world do I want to live and and what power do I have to make the world that way?
If instead of this worrying you
> you will be the one who, according to some, is advocating for things that cause harm and is considered a horrible person.
you have a set of morals that centers something more or different than theoretical other people’s opinions, your example of the current “conflict in the Middle East” is still a good example just not for the reason you stated. It is a perfectly valid ethical position to think that genocide is bad and that people that advocate for genocide are also bad. To pivot to “actually the Really Bad Thing would be if you said that and someone somewhere disagreed with you” is weird and hollow.
“The truly wise know that everything is morally equivalent, except for the pursuit of unbounded approval which is Good for some reason, and believing otherwise is the same thing as getting your morals from comic book movies” isn’t a coherent or defensible moral position. The Marvel movie comparison is a thought terminating cliche.
Look at the disagreement people have over whether Israel or Hamas committed genocide in this current war. People can't even agree on the meaning of the word as it applies there. It's a novel situation that doesn't fit the mold of what this word was invented for. Are civilians really civilians if they're complicit in the fighting as in Gaza? Are they really civilians if they've done or are still doing compulsory military service as in Israel? It's just an attempt to draw a line in the sand so people will agree what's bad.
The fact that your average Joe can't explain it is as material as your average Joe being unable to write a Bash script is to computer science not being a real thing.
Essentially everyone on Earth except Israelis and religious sycophants agree what Israel has done is genocide. It is ludicrous to suggest Hamas has conducted a genocide against Israel because then you'd have to say that slaves in the US conducted a genocide against slave owners.
Yeah, and this is the crux of many philosophies, most notably small-l libertarianism, where it seems like the chief appeal is that it's a simple set of axioms that can be followed to their logical conclusions for any moral question with minimal thought and maximal aesthetic "symmetry" and therefore beauty. It's easy to reason about, and therefore it's good.
It extends quite trivially from that to the so-called effective altruism, which relies on a fundamental assumption that a unit of good done to strangers on the other side of the globe is morally equivalent to a unit of good done to your neighbors. It's beautiful and therefore it's good.
It's the moral equivalent of imagining a spherical cow.
Morality is what you do in practice, not what you invent in your head. Treating him only as a literary figure, the reason Jesus is appealing to so many is not because he said "do unto others" and stopped. It's because he actually fed the poor, advocated for social justice, lifted up the injured, spoke truth to power, and gave his life for others.
I feel like the parent comment is pretending to be deep and meaningful but is really just rehashing the 'both sides are the same' argument with a side of 'everyone is entitled to their own opinion'. It's nice to say that we should judge everyone for who they are, but if who they are is a vocal member of a group that wants to hurt other people, that's all we need to know to judge them. Pretending otherwise is silly.
I see no problem judging someone for the identities that they choose to associate themselves with.
I know people of the political party I tend to agree with who are insufferable selfish pricks and treat others terribly.
Works and words aren't always associations.
Except for the part of the time that they are devoting to supporting a political party that is actively harming you and people you love.. you can't just wave that off as not being important just because they are nice the rest of the time.
>I know people of the political party I tend to agree with who are insufferable selfish pricks and treat others terribly.
And they should be negatively judged for the latter behavior.
Both examples should be negatively judged for their behavior, you're just choosing to ignore some of the behavior of the first person.
Otherwise, all we'd have to do to be good in life would be to support political parties on internet forums. ;)
And it's pretty rare to have so much clarity about a person to know they're in the "obviously reprehensible" bucket.
I'm not saying this is what you're doing, but I often see people argue like this:
1. There are obviously bad actors in the world
2. Nobody would argue those bad actors should be given respect
3. So I won't respect people I come across who disagree with me
The fallacy is in the jump from 2 to 3, and the assumption that the existence of bad actors means the person I'm interacting with right now is one of them. The vast majority of people aren't Putin, nor can they be judged so quickly/clearly. And setting aside whether or not someone like that deserves respect, there's also a clear difference between respecting someone for who they are vs. behaving in a respectful manner out of self-preservation. The latter may ultimately keep you alive.
Now obviously there are many people who disagree with the above. But this is how I see things and I act accordingly. The call for civility comes from those who hold terrible beliefs. We are well into the Paradox of Tolerance situation in the U.S.
Oof, that's a lot of assumption.
A large majority of the people did not vote for Donald Trump.
but my guess is you don't actually think they're so terrible,
People who support Donald Trump are, in general, terrible people. They aren’t evil people doing evil things so why would I have an obligation to take action against them?
It is a fact of life that we all must live amongst people who we think are terrible human beings. Of course I haven’t the slightest idea what a person’s views are for almost everyone I interact with. I give everyone the assumption that they deserve respect until proven otherwise.
Given the context of the thread it’s ironic that you don’t seem to understand what it means to give the assumption of respect to people. I think you edited your disparaging remarks to me. It was hilarious to read those remarks given the context of the discussion at hand. Feel free to put them back. I don’t mind them.
This is not true, and that shows your narrow mindset. To give you the benefits of the doubt, can you explain why Trump supporters are not only wrong, but generally "terrible people"?
"You continue to labor in order to feed yourself rather than suicide-bombing your neighbors, so therefore you're lying" is a HELL of a take.
It’s just human psychology; people tend not to change their minds when someone screams at them and otherwise disrespects them. If the goal is to move society in any particular direction, that requires some degree of successful communication, and throwing respect out the window directly counteracts the goal. If the goal is just to hold some moral high ground for the sake of it, that’s a pointless goal if it doesn’t lead to any underlying change.
Collectively, we don’t need to change the minds of obviously evil people, but we do need to influence the population that can vote them into or out of power. I just don’t see that ever happening if your outlook on life is this extreme:
> We have entered into an era where supporters of one party’s President deserve the assumption of being terrible people
I know many people have convinced themselves that this is true, but this ultimately boils down to the question: so what then is the goal? To push these people deeper into their bubbles?
At some point one has to ask how much of the problem is being directly created by this “they’re all terrible people so I won’t even talk to them” mindset.
I have no desire to change anyone’s mind about their political views. Anyone who supports a known rapist and felon and who openly takes bribes can not be convinced of anything. I don’t engage in political discussions with such people. There is no consistency in their beliefs so no meaningful discusion can be had.
For me, my desire is secession. The country needs to beak up. This is an extreme view but will likely be increasingly held by people with similar political beliefs as mine.
By the way, the jury explicitly rejected the rape allegation. So you're just making stuff up from your high-horse:
https://apnews.com/article/trump-rape-carroll-trial-fe68259a...
I apologize. He was found liable for sexual abuse, battery and defamation. These distinctions are extremely important. He’s not quite as bad as I made him out to be. What about him calling his daughter a nice piece of ass? The other stuff?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/07/19/trump-car...
> “The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape,’ ” Kaplan wrote.
He added: “Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”
Kaplan said New York’s legal definition of “rape” is “far narrower” than the word is understood in “common modern parlance.”
The former requires forcible, unconsented-to penetration with one’s penis. But he said that the conduct the jury effectively found Trump liable for — forced digital penetration — meets a more common definition of rape. He cited definitions offered by the American Psychological Association and the Justice Department, which in 2012 expanded its definition of rape to include penetration “with any body part or object.”
>Anyone who supports a known rapist and felon and who openly takes bribes can not be convinced of anything
Clearly, they can be convinced of something, just not anything you or I might consider good.
In all seriousness, I think the truly disturbing thing about this whole sorry situation is just how many people don't actually hold any durable ethics or morality, just rank self-interest. Pearl clutching over the death of American dreams like economic mobility is a sideshow to the death knell of American idealism. America is not the shining city on a hill we thought it was, and honestly, it never was.
Yeah. I should have been more precise.
The country deserves what is going to happen.
So, you envision an enormous red country plus about forty or so small nation-states, virtually none of whom can support themselves and would be defeated by the red state's military and agricultural output in days?
Secession is unworkable. Whoever secedes from the most militarily powerful nation in history gets wiped off the map in twelve hours.
It's really hard to worry about your own guy being a scumbag, when the opposition supports a scumbag too (and then lies about it).
Nothing I’ve said against Trump is about his politics. He, as a person, is narcissistic, self centered, selfish, boorish, infantile, incurious, lustful, and greedy. He’s a despicable person and those who support him are terrible people.
Biden, as a person, is narcissistic, self centered, selfish, boorish, infantile, incurious, lustful, and greedy. He’s a despicable person and those who support him are terrible people.
Either that, or they are just ignorant -- because the mainstream press has worked hard to hide these kinds of things from us. It is why trust in them has plummeted over the last few years.
If you want to discuss Biden then start another thread. This one is about Donald Trump.
You cannot talk about Trump without putting him in context. The fact is, the reason why we have Trump for President again, is because the person who replaced him was so horrible, that Trump looked better in comparison.
And what's more, conisdering what I said -- and what you are responding to -- I have to bring up Biden, because my entire point is "both sides do it". If you want to bring back honor and decency to the White House, you have to do it with an honorable and decent person. Neither Biden nor Harris fit that bill.
I can. I did. It doesn’t need context. It’s well documented the things he did.
The fact is, the reason why we have Trump for President again…
This is not an established fact.
… Harris fit that bill.
Harris’ moral and ethical failings are nothing compared to Trump. You can do what I did and not vote and not support either candidate. Stand up for truth and righteousness and stop trying to justify your support for a person as shitty as Trump. It’s a choice to defend shitty behavior. When you do so you end up smelling like shit.
She implicitly supported Biden. She was complicit in all the lies that were pushed about Biden, particularly those about his fitness for the position. She endorsed going after political enemies with the legal system -- and then had the gall to claim that Trump would do just that himself.
And then to go on and claim that if you supported a crappy candidate, then those people are crappy too, you have basically condemned the 95% or so who voted for one or the other -- for motivations that are well beyond either yours or my understanding -- this attitude right here is why politics is so toxic these days.
The difference between me and you is that I consistently apply my morals and ethics. I don’t support rapists and bribe takers for President. I didn’t support Clinton when it became clear what he did and I don’t support Trump. Have a higher standard for yourself. Don’t support bad people.
I do judge George W. Bush for the deaths he caused. Obama too.
As far as I know, Trump wasn't convicted of rape, so it's maybe a bit of stretch to call him a rapist.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion. That's a right I wouldn't take away form them even if I could.
They are not entitled to me being nice to them. Fuck that; if they advocate for something that I think is harmful, then I'm not going to be "respectful" to them.
My grandmother in no uncertain terms said that my wife should be deported. She doesn't have any power deport my wife, so she wouldn't fall into the "bad actor" in your definition, but she's made her opinion clear on that.
I could swallow my pride, roll my eyes, and ignore the horrible racist shit she says, but why exactly? The whole point of free speech is the ability to criticize bad ideas, and sometimes that's going to involve hurting a Republican's feelings.
When your creed is basically "I only hate bad people", you have given yourself permission to hate anyone and feel righteously justified about it. And you'll never feel the need to empathize because bad people always deserve whatever bad things happen to them.
You don't need to love everyone unconditionally, but clearly more neuance is needed.
I know the answers to these questions…for me. Each person decides for themselves where the lines are drawn. It has always been this way.
As a person, looking at everything he says and does I can only conclude that he’s a narcissist that only cares about himself. But then there are a lot of trump supporters that are convinced he cares about them and the country. What am I missing that we can come to such dramatically different conclusions?
We all have our less enlightened moments. Better we not afford ourselves easy intellectual justifications for being our worst selves.
As the quip goes: the greatest evils are perpetrated by those most assured of their own righteousness.
Edit: Or in video form. Beginning summary: "brick suit guy" was apparently an extremely aggressive heckler of the media at Trump rallies. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fRSIv7alUZ8&t=95s
When the politics of a nation shift so far in one direction we get into a situation where supporters of that shift don’t deserve respect. Stalinist Soviet Union is an extreme example of this.
And how do you feel about them feeling the same about you?
Mutual righteous hostility is why ethnic and religious wars simmer forever, because there's always a convenient justification for acting violently towards others (and them towards you).
I don’t do anything at this time. But I understand why there are those who do have vitriol for supporters of a rapist who lusts after his own daughter. There are times when a nation’s society fractures as the social cohesion evaporates. We are beginning to be in such a time in the U.S. Well, it appears that way to me. Only time will tell.