valval

Could you give me some examples of insane bills that have passed? I don’t really understand the site you linked, since I browsed it for 10 minutes and saw nothing about LGBT people lacking any rights others have.

Of course it’s liberals doing it. You’re again levitating above the issue. Liberals are pushing the LGBT agenda, and conservatives are pushing back.

They can elect to never be on the news again by dropping the subject today. Frankly there’s no need whatsoever to talk about one’s sexuality or genitalia publicly.

I bet you had to look it up as well. I bet you had to go out there, and confirm that Ukraine, a country with 15x the population of Botswana, does indeed have a higher GDP.

To make your discussions easier and less embarrassing in the future, assume that 100 % of the time when someone speaks of GDP, they're speaking of GDP at purchasing power parity per capita.

Don't worry about that, he's been doing it since his inauguration. If you think his actions played no part in this war coming to be, you've been informed a bit selectively.

Would depend on the definition of this term "escalation" that you and many other people use. It sounds to me like a silly thing to say. Isn't it natural to try and win a war as quickly as possible?

Joining in on a war that you're not part of is a deliberate and calculated choice in the same manner starting a war is.

What exactly are we even arguing about? I think it's massively irresponsible of NATO to get involved in the war through military aid. Sanctions and humanitarian aid are one thing, but every single NATO member should have been involved in finding a peaceful way out of this conflict since 2010 or before.

If what you're saying is the opposite, that NATO should attack Russia with as much force as possible to "win the war" (that we have no business being part of in the first place), then I'll just call you crazy and move on. Enough brave soldiers have died on both sides, it's time to find a solution that ends the killing, not amplifies it.

Just give my party more power and resources and we’ll take care of it.

It looks like you ignored supply and demand.

Zelenskyy has stifled opposition and politically persecuted his enemies, actually.

Try GDP per capita PPP, the measure that matters for average living conditions

Of course concealing one’s true intent just enough to be able to later play dumb and deny motivations when called out is a decent strategy for online arguments, but it’s not foolproof.

Deciphering the commenter’s true meaning wasn’t super hard in this case. From claiming that a highly intelligent conservative pundit is a moron it’s easy to deduce that the person thinks less intelligent conservatives are also morons. They also explicitly said they “don’t like conservatives” which is a pretty silly statement to throw out there in general.

It’s also painfully obvious that the poster doesn’t understand the idiom “facts don’t care about your feelings” from them having now tripled down on trying to explain it or those who use it unsuccessfully.

The idiom’s intended message is as simple as it seems. It says that getting emotional about facts doesn’t change them. It’s not some deeply profound thing to say.

Frankly Botswana is beating Ukraine in GDP and Zambia in perceived corruption.

Well the somewhat obvious thing you’re missing is that Russia is waging a war against Ukraine, not the US or NATO.

From that follows the logical conclusion that it’s not the US’ or NATO’s job to “reply to constant attacks”, and instead getting involved in the conflict is just that — waging war against Russia.

A common goal seems to unite people of all nationalities.

The difference in tone between their former and latter messages is obvious.

They went from a passive aggressive “I don’t understand this idiom” straight to an unhinged tirade of “conservatives are morons” without much provocation.

Of course you share that sentiment, like the overwhelming majority of people on this very left leaning message board, but I still find it funny when it comes out so explicitly.

Unlike what you say, I think the real issue is people who have been studying something for a long time still being wrong about a subject. It’s not uncommon in any human endeavour. You can go to the gym for 20 years and never make any gains. You can also play badminton for 20 years without ever learning some essential strokes. You can study any subject without learning, it’s the default setting actually.

This becomes problematic since low quality experience is easily used to make arguments from authority with very high confidence.

It didn’t take much prodding to make you show your entire hand. Might be time to look inwards.

You're uninformed on the history of Ukraine and Russia. That's fine.

To you, no. To our adversaries, yes.

I'd probably let them take the 60%+ Russian speaking parts where I had been persecuting their countrymen and then maybe sue for peace or something along those lines.

> customary international law

If only there was such thing.

Well, since Russia has nothing to gain from such actions, you might want to assign surveillance on some other parties in case. But yes, I suppose surveillance might act as some form of deterrence.

I guess it depends on the definition of "forcing" someone. I was generous in my definition and cited placing legal repercussions on people who wouldn't take the shot. Now that didn't happen (to my knowledge), but people got fired, ostracized, and denied all kinds of services and access because of their choice. That's not cool, and I'd hope we learned from that experience as a society.

I didn't mean to fear monger or construct a straw man. I didn't directly address anyone's argument, I stated my own opinion on this subject confidently on this message board that's meant for just that.

I'm not sure who aided in constructing this mental representation for you that the number of cops is directly proportional with the scale of conflict that's about to happen.

I'd challenge that view by claiming that if the threat is of someone holding their family hostage threatening to kill them (just a guess at what these "swatters" might say to the dispatcher to get cops to actually kick in some doors, I don't know what their state-of-the-art accusation is), then sending one cop car, poorly equipped, sounds a bit silly for multiple reasons.

Well, the number of wars and conflicts that the US, UK, France, Germany, or Italy (de facto NATO) have been part of unnecessarily since 1949 is above 12 (a dozen), but then again dozen isn't a rigorous quantifier, and I was careful not to use a precise number since I knew it was somewhere between 10 and 15 but couldn't be bothered counting for my message.

I know what I said, and I was careful with my words.

We have this thing going on in the west where we are the good guys, and every war we start is an anti-terrorist operation. For Russia, the term just now was “special military operation”.

It’s hilarious when you realise how the world works. Controlling words means controlling minds. We’ve grown quite good at it.

We went to Korea and took any of our allies who wanted to fight with us. We were already NATO then. Then we went to Vietnam. Then we meddled with some civil wars here and there. Did some “interventions” and took our NATO allies with us each time. Then we started proper pummelling the Middle East.

To our adversaries, every single bullet that is shot by a NATO country is a NATO operation. It doesn’t take a full scale mobilisation, and it doesn’t matter what we call it internally. NATO is a military alliance, and our militaries are NATO’s militaries.

Of course each time it was communists or terrorists we were killing so it doesn’t matter, right? It’s like these things happen in a vacuum and aren’t a result of our intrusive foreign policy. We don’t ever speak of the events leading up to 9/11. Crazy terrorists doing their thing, savages that they are? For some reason the Ukrainian neo-nazis killing people in Donbas aren’t that, though. Wrong side of history, I guess.

And to be fair, I’m no pacifist. What I detest is trying to change the cold realities of life and making them seem like something they are not.

Are you seriously telling me that the opposing side would care about what an alliance calls themselves? Hitler could call the axis powers a defensive allience and it wouldn’t make it so. Cmon, this is basic reasoning that most 10 year olds would grasp.

NATO has engaged in a dozen wars and conflicts as aggressors.

If there are guns, there is death. Frankly, if there are no guns, there's still death.

You pulling an argumentative sleight of hand here conflating your run of the mill gun violence with terrorist attacks or mass shootings isn't cool.

It doesn't matter how the police is equipped, they can't stop a guy from walking up to his neighbor and shooting him in the face unless they're already there pointing guns at him. Although, maybe some sort of remote mind control chip is the answer there?

Also, I'm certain every shooting ends up on local news.

Not at all. It’s good that law enforcement have the tools to deal with serious threats. You’re just throwing around a fear word.

The big guns are hidden from sight anyway, and only brought out when need be. We don’t need any Oct 7th type attacks happening on home soil.

I’m like 94% sure that I could guess a list before lunch that would be closer to the truth than this one.

It’s also worth noting that sample sizes in this study are low, and without checking I know the results aren’t statistically significant.

I think this is a silly attribute of our western societies in general. Disallowing physical violence in response to emotional violence is hypocritical. The latter can be way worse, yet the former serves as a straightforward remedy.

I believe in the “talk shit, get hit” sentiment. It’s easy to spot people who have never been hit in their entire life.