Libs: Violence is never acceptable, even if Trump is an immediate threat to harm countless people.

Also libs: Let’s all thank the Secret Service for immediately killing the shooter.

Then factor in the hours you have to spend at a second job because your main job doesn’t pay a living wage.

Havana hard time drawing a clock

You’re right that there’s a difference between, say, Pinochet disappearing thousands of political opponents as a more-or-less open policy of internal repression and the level of police violence we’ve seen thus far in the U.S.

You’re wrong that Biden is going to do anything to help.

When people flee a poor capitalist country, they are economic migrants, not refugees from capitalism. When people flee a poor communist country, they’re fleeing communism.

We need more people to take us seriously, they get taken seriously by default.

I’m not going to vote for someone giving full-throated endorsement and material support for genocide. If that isn’t a red line, nothing is.

A second technical issue has hit the Hexbear

Where these wars happened anyway, they either weren’t between states (but civil wars or insurgencies instead), they were so lopsided in numerical or technological terms that they were over before they really began (e.g. Desert Storm) or they happened in Africa where it’s easy not to notice them for the rest of the world. There were a few exceptions, e.g. Iran-Iraq, but they don’t really change the general picture.

Some terrible history right here. Writes off a ton of “total war”-style conflicts (presumably the post-WWII phase of the Chinese Civil War, plus the entire Korean War, plus the independence struggle of Vietnam from 1945-1975) because… if they’re civil wars or insurgencies (extremely fuzzy categories to begin with) they don’t count? Doesn’t address a few peer conflicts between India and Pakistan that thankfully stopped soon after they began. Doesn’t address the wars Vietnam fought against China and Cambodia in the late 70s/early 80s. Writes off another whole category of lopsided wars that are still incredibly destructive, especially when you look at the effects of long-term destabilization (Yugoslavia and Libya come to mind). Handwaves Africa for no good reason, and recognizes a glaring example of exactly what they’re talking about (Iran-Iraq) but ignores it as an exception (it’s really not!). Doesn’t even think of comparing the damage done by industrialized warfare to mass killings in Indonesia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Latin America.

Blaming Kiev for breaking some non-existent taboo against total war is a stretch, too. There are many times Kiev could have defused the situation (from 2014 all the way to the aborted ceasefire agreement soon after the war began), but fighting a whole-ass army the only way one can fight a whole-ass army is a response you’d expect from basically any country in Ukraine’s situation (it was a prerequisite to getting a deal as good as they had right after the start of the war, too).

Finland was moving close to Germany before the nazi rise because Russia was fueling a Civil War in finland. Nothing happens in a vacuum.

This you?

imminent domain

When you definitely know what you’re talking about

Obviously I’m not talking about the clearly objectionable misuses of eminent domain. If I say only chuds have a problem with seatbelt laws you wouldn’t start talking about how cops misuse seatbelt laws to pull over black people at a higher rate than white people; all laws can be abused. The point is that the concept behind the law is not some crazy government overreach.

Getting back to the discussion, a land swap is not something so objectionable that your country has an excuse to go running to the Nazis for help. Especially when the threat of the Nazis is the reason for the land swap in the first place.

Value judgments are pretty important when you’re talking about allying with Nazis.

That’s an enormous difference. “I’m going to take your house and you can pound sand” is much more objectionable than “I would like your house and will offer you fair compensation, which can implicitly be negotiated.”

Note that the latter is what governments around the world do with eminent domain, and only right-wing cranks think that’s a fighting matter.

It’s important to note that Nazi Germany mobilized something like 18 million people over the course of the war and saw over 5 million military deaths. When Stalin suggested that the Allies would need to execute 50,000 Nazis after the war, he was talking about a small sliver of Nazi leadership and those most directly culpable for atrocities.

I then decided to shoot my shot and ask her out for dinner.

she responded that she wouldn’t really have time and we should just hang out with the whole friend group instead

I’m having a really hard time interpreting this… Maybe proposing dinner was also too uncreative?

I see this as a very clear (and very polite) “no.”

The way I look at it is: if she was interested in going on a date with you, would she respond that way? An interested person who really was just temporarily busy would propose a better time, or a different activity, or they’d fit it in because it’s something they’re excited about. They’d work with you some. Someone who can’t find time and does not try to find a way to make it happen is not interested in making it happen. It’s no fun to hear.

Oh yes, the left has never protested against the crimes of the USA

You know, you’re right. A better version of this meme would be the first world leftists complaining about U.S. imperialism when it happens… then still lining up right behind the State Department when anyone fights back.

The pure (libertarian) socialists’ ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.

Rafah is considered to be the last stronghold of Hamas

By who? There’s a great argument that this war exposed Israel’s intelligence as sorely lacking, and they have a vested interest in declaring victory.

I was expecting this whole operation to result in the destruction or near-destruction of Israel

I think it’s far more likely we see a resolution closer to post-apartheid South Africa.

those who run afoul of the ruling class simply suicide by shooting themselves… in the back of the head… with a revolver… twice

It’s more that if you don’t toe the line enough in the imperial core you lose access to sources, then lose your job (or change careers because you never get promoted) as a result of not having that access. All the viable careers in journalism require one to be a stenographer of power. This means in the long term you drum out all those who are too willing to be critical.

I put it in the same category as concern trolling, tone policing, etc. All ways of using legitimate issues (interrogating the validity of a position, discussing how words or actions are perceived) as derailment tactics. This can be used by anyone, too – I’ve seen these labels dropped into conversations to avoid answering tough, seemingly good-faith questions.

Overall, these strike me as another version of debatelords dropping the names of logical fallacies as some kind of own: they rarely do much besides derail the conversation into meta shit about what the terms mean. Effectively responding if you think someone is doing this requires more than just calling it out.

The Dachau example is a good one to raise whenever there’s handwringing about Cuban peasants killing Batista thugs or Chinese peasants killing landlords.