I’m not just looking to history to predict the future, I’m using very recent history to analyze the present. This is basically a question of who I should believe: the source of every problem in the world for the entire time I’ve been alive (the US and its allies) or one of its victims. Maybe that makes me biased, but I’m just never going to believe anything the US says.

And the assumption I was operating under was “Russia’s claims for why they started the war are largely truthful” and “the US’s claims for why Russia started the war are largely false” which means addressing both the neonazi problem and NATO. It’s not just that there’s neonazis in the streets and in the army, it’s that they’re in the government installed by NATO and doing NATO’s bidding. In that context, it’s completely believable Crimea would want to escape the new Banderite regime that wants to exterminate their language and culture.

Ultimately, none of our arguing matters. We can go around and around in circles, but neither of us know what’s really going on. We can only guess, based on our own prior assumptions about how the world works. All we can really do is wait for history to resolve itself, maybe in a few decades we’ll know what really happened.

pls pls pls first LLM senator

Maybe we can trick it into giving us universal healthcare.

You can look at most western countries history and most events will be on the wrong side.

👀 👀 👀

Rescuing people is too much to handle, but launching yourself in an endless war that causes gigantic amounts of casualties, this is doable? I call bullshit.

The problem isn’t only the neonazis, it’s also NATO. NATO is not purely defensive, just ask Libya.

If we assume what Russia is saying is right, that Ukraine is a Banderite puppet regime installed by NATO and was on the verge of ethnic cleansing, then if they just evacuated the Donbas they’d still have a Banderite NATO regime directly on their border and eager to take back Crimea (which democratically chose to join Russia). While that solves the immediate problem of ethnic Russians being in danger in Ukraine, it creates a new problem of a hostile nation having a launching platform to attack Russia.

The choice was either launching a war in 2022 on their terms or undergoing a national crisis to absorb millions of refugees while preparing for when war came to Russia anyway.

Crises just help fascists, and Russia is going to do nothing other than strengthen the nazis both in Ukraine and in other western countries.

I don’t disagree, actually. I just think Russia was between a rock and a hard place.

We might be operating under different definitions of “troll”

Having a different opinion than you doesn’t make someone a troll.

The US being on the wrong side of every conflict is a pretty good reason to think it’s on the wrong side of this one, too. The US needs to be defeated. Besides, we can’t fight the whole world at once.

And it was already far too late to rely on influencing elections (and it’s not like Russia is uncontested - do you think the US doesn’t influence elections? ) because Ukraine was already at war with separatists in the Donbas. Russia intervened because the war was already ongoing, their options were either to invade or open the borders to refugees (and that would have caused a lot of other problems that Russia couldn’t handle). Ukraine didn’t just have neonazis. They were in the government, passing nazi policies, doing nazi things.

The equivalent would be if Mexico attacked the US for ICE putting people in concentration camps and gunning them down in the streets.

I believe Russia is right not just according to Russian sources, but from my understanding of empire. The US is usually on the wrong side of every conflict with only a couple notable exceptions that happened before my parents were even born, I see no reason to assume this is any different. It’s that momentum of history plus non-Western sources that convinced me.

And I’m certainly not going to convince you, we’ve both made up our minds, but we weren’t talking about that.

We were assuming what I’m saying is true i.e. that Russia is intervening to stop the Banderite NATO puppet regime from enacting a genocide of ethnic Russians. If we assume that is true, then Russia must be supported in this specific conflict even if they’re still reactionary on many fronts and still a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Do you disagree?

Russia isn’t some bastion of goodness or something. They have many internal contradictions that need to be resolved before they get my uncritical support. I merely see them as the lesser evil in this conflict, because they are opposed to the US empire.

Don’t you believe in supporting the lesser evil?

The question remains, why Ukraine and not a more influential country first?

Ukraine is literally right next door, and was in the process of starting a genocide on Russia’s border. That’s significant.

And again, even assuming that what you said is true… Do you really, actually believe that this would be fighting against the nazis, not just fighting exclusively for the interest of Russian people? If those alleged nazi Ukrainians were killing Americans instead of Russians, Russia would do the same? It’s all about personal gain, there is nothing about fighting fascism here.

It’s both, nations always act in their own interests. It’s not a charity.

But do you believe Russia should have just stood idly by and let a genocide against ethnic Russians happen? Do you think they even could? Their own people demanded action, they had families in Ukraine that were in danger and needed Russian support.

There’s most of the western world supporting a genocidal Israel.

Worth noting, Russia is supporting Iran in their struggle against a genocidal Israel.

And let’s push the argument then. There are nazis in Ukraine, so the country deserves to be invaded. There are nazis all throughout Europe (actually a big current problem), so Putin should invade all of Europe, possibly the whole world.

The neonazis in Ukraine were both in positions of power and engaged in the beginning of a genocide against ethnic Russians living in Ukraine. That’s not quite the same as there just being neonazi street gangs or something.

Iran can keep the strait closed even if the US goes all out, all flattening Iran would do is ensure the strait stays closed long enough for the oil reserves to run out. The US has to know this. The question is if they’re stupid enough to do it anyway.

250 years isn’t that soon.

Someone has to do the killing for you. In a firing squad, there’s only one person with a real bullet, everyone else gets blanks. Why? Because killing people is bad for us, and by diffusing responsibility it makes the killers feel less horrible about it. But it still eats at them. You know people who work in slaughterhouses are more likely to commit suicide? How do you think executioners feel?

Why force that on anyone?

What’s the point?

I’m sure it’s fine. 🫠

implemented “turbo migration”

The heck does this mean?

What did the messenger do to you?

Not really. Effectively, the Court is checked by their legitimacy. They need the public to believe that their rulings matter, because they don’t have their own enforcement mechanisms. We saw this actually play out in Worcester v. Georgia. The Court can rule how it likes, but without public buy-in they’ll be told to pound sand.

That’s why they’re actually concerned about how they appear to the public and which way the political winds are blowing. If they go too far and do something truly radical, like repeal the Constitution, they’d be ignored. Or killed.

We are limited by our material conditions. In an ideal world, every Nazi would be reeducated and rehabilitated, no matter how long it takes. We don’t have the capacity or the time for that. We have to stop them now, by any means necessary, before it’s too late.

You don’t really know what imperialism means, do you?

Hint: imperialism doesn’t mean “when military does stuff”