barrbaric [he/him]

It’s largely the active sort imo. It’s night and day since before we reverted from our custom algorithm.

You also

Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus

We must invade Texas to restore the rules-based international order and to bring about freedom and democracy.

Huh, the game isn’t even out yet. 🏴‍☠️ stay winning, I guess.

I find it very funny that none of the terrain made by GW is designed to be actually usable in 40k.

Nowadays you don’t even need to scratch a liberal, you just have to show them that they live in Omelas.

Given that Israel is militarily occupying and actively colonizing Palestine, I would say that Palestine is unable to exercise its sovereignty. Should it be granted more sovereignty? Yes, but that seems as though it will require either the radical reformation or outright destruction of Israel.

The dispute at this point is over how we define a country, especially because Taiwan clearly falls in a grey area within that definition. I claim that they are fundamentally unable to exercise their sovereignty given they aren’t formally recognized as a country by even their greatest allies and benefactors, thus they fail. You claim that they can fulfill the roles of the state, have a national identity, and have various semantic work-arounds for that fundamental illegitimacy, thus they pass. There’s also the question of the legitimacy of their founding, with me saying that the ROC was originally an oppressive colonial military dictatorship, but then you would say that it’s been long enough and their government has changed enough that it doesn’t matter, then we bicker over what constitutes a democracy.

Ultimately the argument would continue indefinitely and I don’t think there’s much chance either of us would be convinced by the other.

As an aside, the point of the prior comment was that surveys of beliefs can very easily be detached from reality, and so aren’t good evidence for claims.

In practice, Taiwan is not internationally recognized as a country. It doesn’t get to participate in many important international bodies like the UN or WHO, for instance. I get your implied point that this doesn’t mean much because it really only matters on the diplomatic level, and true enough a lot of that works out to semantics, such as their having “Economic, Trade, and Cultural Offices” instead of formal embassies despite them doing largely the same thing.

70% of US adults believe in angels, but that doesn’t make it true. No countries with any actual amount of power on the global stage recognize the ROC (see the US’ One China Policy), which means that regardless of whatever views people claim to have when surveyed, Taiwan is de facto part of the PRC.

Taiwan only exists because it served, and continues to serve, US interests as a staging point for military operations against China. A war over Taiwan would absolutely see the US using Taiwan as a proxy, much as they are currently using Ukraine against Russia.

It’s the same as the housing market or 401ks. Tie someone’s future to the institutions of capitalism and they’ll fall in line rapidly. Swap out capitalism for naked imperialism and you have the MIC jobs program.

Contrast that with America, which has had hegemony only since 1945 and already looks like it’s in terminal decline.

They’ve lasted less than the British! The BRITISH!

We’ve had one, yes, but what about second proxy war?

It’s the explanation given by even liberal news outlets.

The full source from CNN

I’ll concede that they didn’t know the specific mechanisms of the virus (hence hand sanitizer despite it mostly doing nothing), but it was pretty clearly respiratory (given its close relatives SARS and MERS) and, well, masks work against that. Also to clarify my position so you don’t get the wrong idea, I’m radically pro-mask and think that repealing the mandates was and is social murder.

Which part do you disagree with? That the CDC lied about masks working, or my explanation of their motivations?

We must invade Italy to protect human rights and democracy in Europe.

Yep, they lied to people in an attempt to save the supply of masks for people in health care because there weren’t enough stockpiled. And they wonder why people don’t trust them anymore.