Ukraine

[leroy jenkins]

Are you comparing me to Lincoln? Flattered. I can't do his axe trick though.

You spend a great deal of time and effort to troll people on a ski forum. For what? Can you not make better use of your time and effort?

I spend not that much time and often don't invest much energy. I just type fast. Shouldn't be surprising.

[LongShortLong]

Does anyone in this thread, or even anyone that any of you actually know, admit to supporting Putin and wanting the US to be more like his version of Russia?

Cus you guys keep saying thats a thing, and I've yet to see it. I do see people who worry about escalation or how much the US is spending on this being accused of it, but I have never in my life met a US citizen that says anything good about Putin. I'm sure theres a few nutjobs on twitter that you could dredge up to prove me wrong, but anyone on TGR or anyone any of you actually know?


What I see is an increasingly polarized USA where both sides seem increasingly distrustful and downright paranoid of the other side, often with little basis in reality.

I may be an outlier, but I think so. I haven't asked the question the way you phrased it. But in a lot of words over several conversations, yes, they do admit to supporting Putin and wanting the US to be more like his version of Russia.

They also believe e.g. a bunch of Covid conspiracies, and one of them was recently in DC trying to overthrow the government. Paranoid suggests I fear they might try something like that. Paranoid is history now. I'm distrustful of some people. True patriots are like that.

I agree the US is increasingly polarized. I don't know exactly why. Some of it is sorting out this new communications medium. I'm sure Putin's had his finger on the scale, but I think other factors are stronger (social/ad algorithms/human nature). Never before has any crazy idea been able to spread so easily. In a democracy, we have this problem where if a lot of us crazily believe the sky is yellow, it will be. I'll always see a blue sky. Nor do I believe I should ever have to say it's any color it's not.

For your part, try a reasoned argument. Putin has some complaints about Ukraine and NATO that have some validity. He's not a neutral source, and he has invaded several neighbors. So, Putin's a bad guy. That doesn't mean all his arguments are meritless. Go ahead and try one. Or work out escalation / resolution. It's been discussed here.

[TahoeJ]

Does anyone in this thread, or even anyone that any of you actually know, admit to supporting Putin and wanting the US to be more like his version of Russia?

Cus you guys keep saying thats a thing, and I've yet to see it. I do see people who worry about escalation or how much the US is spending on this being accused of it, but I have never in my life met a US citizen that says anything good about Putin. I'm sure theres a few nutjobs on twitter that you could dredge up to prove me wrong, but anyone on TGR or anyone any of you actually know?


What I see is an increasingly polarized USA where both sides seem increasingly distrustful and downright paranoid of the other side, often with little basis in reality.

Sadly yes, it’s a real thing. I mentioned it earlier in this thread but I had a friend breakup because another friend in ukraine was killed in March and apparently me saying “fuck Putin and fuck Tucker Carlson” was too much… apparently I crossed a line. Didn’t even get a “sorry about your friend” or anything. Crazy shit.

[J. Barron DeJong]

Sadly yes, it’s a real thing. I mentioned it earlier in this thread but I had a friend breakup because another friend in ukraine was killed in March and apparently me saying “fuck Putin and fuck Tucker Carlson” was too much… apparently I crossed a line. Didn’t even get a “sorry about your friend” or anything. Crazy shit.

There’s also stuff like this:


https://twitter.com/blakehounshell/s...MwSkM3SNqK4z4A

[MultiVerse]

Mr MAGA himself released a statement today urging a pro-Putin resolution to the conflict. Probably just a coincidence several people showed up here to say the same thing....


FWIW, an article on NATO and the myth of Russian humiliation:

In 1991, Russia was no longer a great power in either population or economic terms. So why didn’t we recognize reality, reform the United Nations and give a Security Council seat to India, Japan or others? Russia did not transform itself along European lines. Why did we keep pretending that it had? Eventually, our use of the word “democracy” to describe the Russian political system discredited the word in Russia itself.
....
Our mistake was not to humiliate Russia but to underrate Russia’s revanchist, revisionist, disruptive potential. If the only real Western achievement of the past quarter-century is now under threat, that’s because we have failed to ensure that NATO continues to do in Europe what it was always meant to do: deter. Deterrence is not an aggressive policy; it is a defensive policy. But in order to work, deterrence has to be real. It requires investment, consolidation and support from all of the West, and especially the United States. I’m happy to blame American triumphalism for many things, but in Europe I wish there had been more of it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...773_story.html

[LongShortLong]

The UN has called to reopen the Odesa port in southern Ukraine to help ease a global food crisis. CNN has also reported that Russian forces are stealing thousands of tons of grain from Ukrainian farmers, as well as targeting food storage sites with artillery, according to multiple sources.

Fuck Putin

[leroy jenkins]

Sadly yes, it’s a real thing. I mentioned it earlier in this thread but I had a friend breakup because another friend in ukraine was killed in March and apparently me saying “fuck Putin and fuck Tucker Carlson” was too much… apparently I crossed a line. Didn’t even get a “sorry about your friend” or anything. Crazy shit.

Dude, I'm sorry about your friend and fuck Putin. I'm not going to say fuck Carlson because I feel like for myself that is a more polarizing message than I want to engage in personally, but I'm not a fan of his either. I'm also sorry about your other friend you lost to craziness. This is crazy shit. My first response was just to type synonyms of holy shit several times.

[subtle plague]

On Polarisation and Putin et al. :

The war, covid and screaming on social media had the exact opposite effect here in Germany. People vote more to the center and seem to Focus on compromise more than before all those things.

[abraham]

Dude, I'm sorry about your friend and fuck Putin. I'm not going to say fuck Carlson because I feel like for myself that is a more polarizing message than I want to engage in personally, but I'm not a fan of his either. I'm also sorry about your other friend you lost to craziness. This is crazy shit. My first response was just to type synonyms of holy shit several times.

I know/knew a few too. Including at least one who ended up being a Syria chemical weapons denier on a fairly intense level. No idea where that came from and it ended up with a slightly awkward car ride in silence.

I don't understand the purple who say imperialism is always bad, but it's only really imperialism if it's the US doing it. There's a disconnect in there, like it's hard to hold two ideas simultaneously.




Edit to add:
On the Ukraine news topic. Russia seems intent on making Bilohorivka into a new version of Chernobaivka. The number of people dieing there repeatedly doesn't make sense to me.

[leroy jenkins]

I may be an outlier, but I think so. I haven't asked the question the way you phrased it. But in a lot of words over several conversations, yes, they do admit to supporting Putin and wanting the US to be more like his version of Russia.

They also believe e.g. a bunch of Covid conspiracies, and one of them was recently in DC trying to overthrow the government. Paranoid suggests I fear they might try something like that. Paranoid is history now. I'm distrustful of some people. True patriots are like that.

I agree the US is increasingly polarized. I don't know exactly why. Some of it is sorting out this new communications medium. I'm sure Putin's had his finger on the scale, but I think other factors are stronger (social/ad algorithms/human nature). Never before has any crazy idea been able to spread so easily. In a democracy, we have this problem where if a lot of us crazily believe the sky is yellow, it will be. I'll always see a blue sky. Nor do I believe I should ever have to say it's any color it's not.

For your part, try a reasoned argument. Putin has some complaints about Ukraine and NATO that have some validity. He's not a neutral source, and he has invaded several neighbors. So, Putin's a bad guy. That doesn't mean all his arguments are meritless. Go ahead and try one. Or work out escalation / resolution. It's been discussed here.

In regards to polarization, my whole life I've felt like its mostly a natural consequence on news sources engaging in sensationalism for ratings, while I've also known that those same news sources are owned by people that do make them push certain things to influence our collective psyche. The Kock bros got talked about a few pages back and they've actually been very open about this and bragged about it, trying to over the decades, push the american people to be more accepting of authority and less trustful of their fellow citizens. they are not libertarians, they are authoritarians.

I know I talk a lot of shit around here recently, some of it is a kind of trolling to be honest, but its not just for the lulz, its a kind of social barometer to see what kind of replies I get and where people are at.

I know I may get called crazy for this, but this is the most sincere post I've made in a long time, possibly ever. I honestly feel like the polarization no longer feels like a natural side effect of freedom of information and speech in a democracy, I get a deep feeling it is now something being intentionally done to us. I think it always was just pretty low key but theres nothing low key about it any more. Sure, there are fringe crazies and they have more of a platform than they used to, but those platforms and the news etc are seemingly doing everything they can to increase the influence of the fringes, and create the impression that very few of the people are rational or moderate in any ways. Sure a few wierdos will argue the sky is yellow, but they don't get enough people to believe that without making the people who don't believe it feel like they have no voice and are alone and isolated. Borderline personality disorder and narccisstic personality disorder have also been becoming more prevelant for a while as well, and theres reason this isn't just a reporting or diagnostic representation but an actual reality. If you learn about those two disorders, and how thye operate and think, you can see them well represented in the fringe voices, and see our overall political discourse becoming increasingly more BPD like. Lake of ability to see nuance, etc.

As to who is doing this, well, I mean the Koch bros for one, but I've also heard the Tik Tok algorithm for the USA is far different than for CHina, prioritizing depravity and silences meaningful anything. Like you, I do not think it is crazy to have some level of distrust. For me, it isn't just the craziest citizens, its Trump and the Klintons and all the rest of them. Honestly who knows to what degree any of them are complicit with China or Russia, but it no longer seems ridiculously insane to ponder that to me. We already know they are basically owned by companies that are in bed with China, and to a lesser degree, Russia. Theres not much separation. Gates gets treated as a medical expert by the WHO, they treat his conflict of interest as qualifications and expertise. Who doesn't have much power, and is losing more all the time, are the American people.

I strongly urge you all to reflect on how to do the opposite of division and polarization. Sometimes I talk some shit on here but its all basically meant to offer a counterpoint to polarization. I probably fail to manifest that in many ways then end up even hypocritical or counterproductive to that end, but honestly I feel like its up to all of us to reflect on how to be the opposite of polarized.


Honestly I have this idea that if we all started collectively embracing the responsibility to start talking about the things we (the citizens of course, not the maggotry) can all agree about that we could find a way forward. I think if we started talking about that we'd start finding things we can all or mostly all agree on that the politicians, both sides, collectively disagree with us about. if we could start finding those things we'd really only need a couple issues to agree about each election cycle, and could then find a third party candidate that would mostly just keep the country running and not change it except for the two or three policy changes we agreed were important each election and voted for them based on. Not this clusterfuck of two wierd bundles of ideologies and stances on issues that don't even really need to be connected but are because of big business. In the absence of that dialouge and responsibility though, its pretty hard to manifest unity and togetherness without a kind of avoidant lets all get along and not talk about it ism.



For myself I know lots of conservatives, a few Trumptards, and even one who claims to be flat earther (but is probably just a contrarian) and none fo them say anything good about putin, but I guess I need to believe they're out there.

[leroy jenkins]

I know/knew a few too. Including at least one who ended up being a Syria chemical weapons denier on a fairly intense level. No idea where that came from and it ended up with a slightly awkward car ride in silence.

I don't understand the purple who say imperialism is always bad, but it's only really imperialism if it's the US doing it. There's a disconnect in there, like it's hard to hold two ideas simultaneously.




Edit to add:
On the Ukraine news topic. Russia seems intent on making Bilohorivka into a new version of Chernobaivka. The number of people dieing there repeatedly doesn't make sense to me.

IN regards to the chem weaposn denial, I've spent some time talking to conspiracy theorist types, and i feel like there is a divide between them. Some seem skeptical about things and anxious about the future because they are sensitive souls who actually care about others.

And then there are those, who seem to resort to not believing when they see human suffering, as a way to avoid having empathy or feeling things about that suffering. I have some doubts myself about some of the mass shootings, but the people that think all mass shootings are false flag events do so because they can't handle the emotional weight of those things actually having happened and being real, and need a simpler reality where nothing is real.

[jono]

Leroy, take a gander at this very concise description of the Russian playbook:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foun...of_Geopolitics

Particularly, note the 25-year old description of the plan for the United States by the Russian imperialists:

The book emphasizes that Russia must spread anti-Americanism everywhere: "the main 'scapegoat' will be precisely the U.S."

In the United States:

Russia should use its special services within the borders of the United States to fuel instability and separatism, for instance, provoke "Afro-American racists". Russia should "introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements – extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S. It would also make sense simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics".

It looks like you're just trailing behind people who see the Putin apologists as fueling divisiveness. You're still asking questions that have already been answered. (Read a little Sun Tzu if you want a peek into how this works with China.)

To be clear, just because authoritarians seek to destabilize democracies (because it helps stabilize their own control) doesn't make them the only source of division. They get a lot of help from quislings--useful idiots, outright traitors and Benny. (You give some boosts to the narrative that the Gates Foundation is evil--a great example of a lie through oversimplification which can scale up: "...and those biolabs!!!") Reject the attack on truth. We can get back to worrying about maximizing individual freedom when the existential threat is gone.

[Bunion 2020]

It was a dryer they were using because they didn't have a working air intake. Maybe not.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told lawmakers at a committee hearing on Wednesday that Russian forces were seemingly resorting to dismantling old household appliances in order to mend and maintain their dwindling supply of military hardware.

“We have reports from Ukrainians that when they find Russian military equipment on the ground, it’s filled with semiconductors that [Russian troops] took out of dishwashers and refrigerators,” she said.

Raimondo said this proved that U.S.-led international export controls, which were depriving Russia of American technology, were having the desired effect of crippling Moscow’s ability to sustain its military operations

[rod9301]

I may be an outlier, but I think so. I haven't asked the question the way you phrased it. But in a lot of words over several conversations, yes, they do admit to supporting Putin and wanting the US to be more like his version of Russia.

They also believe e.g. a bunch of Covid conspiracies, and one of them was recently in DC trying to overthrow the government. Paranoid suggests I fear they might try something like that. Paranoid is history now. I'm distrustful of some people. True patriots are like that.

I agree the US is increasingly polarized. I don't know exactly why. Some of it is sorting out this new communications medium. I'm sure Putin's had his finger on the scale, but I think other factors are stronger (social/ad algorithms/human nature). Never before has any crazy idea been able to spread so easily. In a democracy, we have this problem where if a lot of us crazily believe the sky is yellow, it will be. I'll always see a blue sky. Nor do I believe I should ever have to say it's any color it's not.

For your part, try a reasoned argument. Putin has some complaints about Ukraine and NATO that have some validity. He's not a neutral source, and he has invaded several neighbors. So, Putin's a bad guy. That doesn't mean all his arguments are meritless. Go ahead and try one. Or work out escalation / resolution. It's been discussed here.

Part of the reason we are so polarized is the ease of publishing one's thoughts on social media, no matter how stupid.
30 years ago, the same person should send a letter to a newspaper, and the editor would look at it and, no, I'm not going to publish this idiotic, fringe letter.


Sent from my moto g 5G using Tapatalk

[jono]

Part of the reason we are so polarized is the ease of publishing one's thoughts on social media, no matter how stupid.
30 years ago, the same person should send a letter to a newspaper, and the editor would look at it and, no, I'm not going to publish this idiotic, fringe letter.

That's actually closer to censorship, ironically. But yeah, editing created a less diverse message and fact checking reduced both outright lies and spin. We were better off when we all agreed that the facts mattered--even though we had to dig a little more for minority views. Back then at least the minority views were interesting.

[frorider]

Leroy your focus on the fact that you’ve never had a 1:1 conversation IRL with a Putin-supporting GOP friend is part of the problem. Did you believe that people were dying from Covid before ever watching a friend die IRL from it?

It’s well established that as fringey right wing views became seen as more mainstream in the GOP one started seeing evidence of a pro-Putin mindset built around Christian Nationalism, or racism, or homophobia, or just admiration for a ‘strong leader’. And then when the Ukraine invasion happened, this support became problematic and one could observe in real time how GOP politicians were testing the waters to figure out how to resolve this cognitive dissonance. Credible polling now shows that a smallish number (20% or less) of GOP voters buy into the Putin propaganda, which is a relief I guess.

[summit]

Bunny might have had more posts, but leroy has way more words. #walloftext #eyesglazeover

[Adolf Allerbush]

Leroy your focus on the fact that you’ve never had a 1:1 conversation IRL with a Putin-supporting GOP friend is part of the problem. Did you believe that people were dying from Covid before ever watching a friend die IRL from it?

It’s well established that as fringey right wing views became seen as more mainstream in the GOP one started seeing evidence of a pro-Putin mindset built around Christian Nationalism, or racism, or homophobia, or just admiration for a ‘strong leader’. And then when the Ukraine invasion happened, this support became problematic and one could observe in real time how GOP politicians were testing the waters to figure out how to resolve this cognitive dissonance. Credible polling now shows that a smallish number (20% or less) of GOP voters buy into the Putin propaganda, which is a relief I guess.

IMV the MAGA crowd doesn't realize they're pushing Russian propaganda and pointing it out to them just further entrenches them in their beliefs. Benny wasn't a MAGA guy and had the same issue. Certainly there are pro-Putin MAGA people as well...Tucker Carlson and several others for instance.

[summit]

Russian propaganda for Americans not primarily aimed at making foreigners love Putin. Only the least informed and least critically thinking would be prone to that, and there is that contingent for sure. That is secondary...

Russia propaganda's first target is Americans "fed up" with aspects of our current system, which is a large swath. The goal is to make them doubt everything related to anything Russia is doing and refocus emotions domestically. These campaigns stoke isolationism and disrupt the mental and moral commitment needed to counter Russian actions.

"America is corrupt. Ukraine is corrupt. We need to take care of America first. Don't waste American dollars on Ukraine. Everyone should leave everyone alone (but don't look too closely Russia doing the opposite) so fuck NATO they are parasites on America too and are just gonna get the US into trouble (that Russia might start)." -The Russian Message sold to the large swath of Americans with a jaded view of government, particularly those with a fiscal conservative or libertarian streak in their thinking, (which includes me, but I'm not buying the bullshit).

This strategy is much more effective in achieving Russian goals than recruiting Christian social conservatives to be Putin leg humpers.

[frorider]

^ totally agree. This is what’s so insidious about it. It’s reflected in the ‘both sides’ whataboutism bullshit we wade through regularly. It appeals to people who are generally not idiots but it creates idiotic outcomes.

[summit]

I think a lot of Americans are being led around by the nose by Russian and Chinese generated talking points because they are disillusioned with their own government and are easy and willing targets.

And I think they all should feel like shit for it.

This is still sad but true!

[uglymoney]

When I offered that guy I work with who was repeating Putin propoganda almost verbatim to me and bashing our free press as agents of our own oligarchs (going for the equivalent evil argument) that he should move to Russia, he wasn't pleased. But he should. Fuck him. We are back to saying hello as we pass but I am done conversing with that traitor.

Russian soldier in a trench killed by UAV dropping a munition. Warning this is pretty graphic and quite a but of good/bad luck involved. They must have heard it dropping and one of the guys ran the wrong way.

I can't imagine the 24 hour toll this takes on people. I am terrified in lightning storms which are completely untargeted death rods.

https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1...Fl70IvGNQ&s=19

[Bunion 2020]

^^^ Holy shit, bad enough hearing incoming artillery or approaching air strike. Being watched/targeted by killer flying robots is a whole new level.

[ötzi]

I feel bad for the poor dumb Russian kids sent to die for nothing. You'd think their countrymen would put a stop to it one way or another.

[TahoeJ]

It’s reflected in the ‘both sides’ whataboutism bullshit we wade through regularly. It appeals to people who are generally not idiots but it creates idiotic outcomes.

I think these people bother me the most because they think they're so enlightened...