Responsible and tasteful comments :)

What a handsome guy. This is what I’d call an esteemed gentleman.

I do not support a resolution in which Ukraine gives up land to Russia, period.

Well thank you for finally giving up on the evasiveness. Ukrainian agency means nothing to you.

To stand with Ukraine means to affirm the average Ukrainian’s agency. To affirm their agency to dictate the terms of the end of the war - even if it means they wish to surrender. You will not affirm Ukrainians if they decide to surrender, so you dont stand with Ukraine. You stand with Zelensky, at best. You stand with Ukraine *so long as they promise to sacrifice the last able-bodied soldier, at worst.

So let’s just all be clear and understand that you dont stand with Ukraine. You tentatively condone them, so long as…

if they decide that they are ready to give up the fight, then that’s none of my business

But if they Ukrainian people want to continue to fight, […] I’m all for supporting them

Thats some precise and deliberate language you’re using. Yet you’ve still avoided answering the simple question.

Sending tens of thousands of Ukrainians into the grinder?

"Hell yeah! Slava Ukraini! To the last man!

Ukrainians use their agency to negotiate an end to the war

“Meh, not my business”

It’s pretty clear that when this war most likely ends via negotiation and a land concession, all the gung ho support we see in threads like this one is going to evaporate.

However, when asked specifically about territorial concessions the majority of Ukrainians are not willing to accept concessions.

And never did I argue the opposite. The question was: supposing Ukrainians wish to concede territory, would you still support them?

Maybe the Ukrainian leadership knows more about what the average Ukrainian wants than you do?

Potentially, but given your own source, a solid portion of Ukrainians dont share those warm and fuzzies.

As of December 2024, 52% of Ukrainians trusted President V. Zelenskyi, 39% did not trust him. The remaining 9% responded that they could not decide on their attitude. Although trust indicators have worsened over the year, the balance of trust-distrust remains positive – +13%.

A negotiation typically ends when both parties get what they want.

This is unlike any negotiation I’ve ever been in. Id say a negotiation ends when both parties agree on what they wont get. Your negotiation with the used car salesman doesn’t end when you get half off sticker price and the salesman gets sticker price. That’s just a contradiction.

Regardless… called it what you want: surrender, capitulation, conceding territory, etc… it’s just semantics.

Suppose the Ukrainian people wish to surrender. Would you still stand with them?

Ukrainian Support for War Effort Collapses

More than three years into the war, Ukrainians’ support for continuing to fight until victory has hit a new low. In Gallup’s most recent poll of Ukraine — conducted in early July — 69% say they favor a negotiated end to the war as soon as possible, compared with 24% who support continuing to fight until victory.

This marks a nearly complete reversal from public opinion in 2022, when 73% favored Ukraine fighting until victory and 22% preferred that Ukraine seek a negotiated end as soon as possible.

What is Ukrainian leadership doing to understand the hopes of average Ukrainians - regarding an end to this war?

What if the vast majority of Ukrainians had an interest in ending the war via negotiations, or even to cede land? Would you still stand with Ukrainians?

Do you two think that being a asset/,spy/double agent means you also don’t do things to make you look less suspicious?

Why would Trump/Putin be afraid of looking suspicious? I thought yalls whole thing was that Trump’s status as a Russian spy is clear as day and known to all.

because it is easier to disturb operations from within the organisation.

And what disturbances do you mean? NATO spending has exploded in recent years. Last year NATO allies increased spending by 18%. Why would a Russian asset set about a plan that drastically increases the funding for Russia’s primary enemy? Why is Trump’s whole schtick that Europe needs to start spending more on defense?

Why would Putin kick off the Ukraine war immediately after his “agent” leaves office?

Why, in his first term, was Trump commanding Germany and EU to stop buying Russian gas? Going so far as to sanction comoanies involved with the Nordstream pipeline?

Meanwhile, in 2018, the US expelled more than 60 Russian officials after identifying them as intelligence officers. To put it bluntly, any gains Russia might have achieved through Trump’s good offices are far outweighed by the strategic, economic, and counterintelligence realities that have emerged during his presidency.

But any Russian intelligence officer would need to consider whether Trump really cares enough about kompromat and Russian money. Indeed, why enrol him as an agent of influence – a move that carries enormous consequences for both parties – when Russia could opt for a convenient friend in Washington?

In reality, even if Russia sees Trump as an asset, we’re not talking about Trump being a new Kim Philby (of Cambridge Five fame). We’re talking about Trump being a self-interested businessman who’s happy to do a favour if it works to his own best interests – and that includes staying out of jail. There’s no evidence that Trump knowingly associated with any Russian intelligence officers. And there’s a big distinction between making the wrong kind of friends and committing treason.

https://www.aber.ac.uk/en/news/archive/2021/02/title-240459-en.html

Collusion/conspiracy/coordinate… just semantics.

[Mueller] did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.

Trump is not a Russian asset. He’s an easily-manipulated businessman who does things in his own self interest, and that is as American as apple pie. There is no need to invoke Putin. Our descent into Christian Fascism is our own doing - one that Russia no doubt took advantage of. If you truly believe Trump is a Russian asset, then you have to concede that the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and the Five Eyes have all been captured by Russia as well.

If Trump is a Russian asset, why didnt the US pull out of NATO months ago? Why did Mueller’s report conclude that there was no collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia?

If Russia is blamed for Trump’s election, we avoid the unpleasant reality of our failed democratic institutions and decaying empire. We avoid facing the inevitable rise of a Christianised fascism borne out of widespread impoverishment, rage, despair and abandonment. We avoid acknowledging the complicity of the Democratic Party in the orchestration of the largest social inequality in our nation’s history, the evisceration of our basic civil liberties, endless wars and an electoral system bankrolled by the billionaire class, which is legalised bribery. The myth allows us to believe that Democratic politicians, like the establishment Republicans who have joined them, are the guarantors of a democracy they destroyed.

All the investigations into Trump’s ties with Russia are unequivocal. There was no collusion. The Steele dossier, financed at first by Republican opponents of Trump and later by Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and compiled by former MI6 British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele, was a fake. The charges in the dossier — which included reports of Trump receiving a ‘golden shower’ from prostituted women in a Moscow hotel room and claims that Trump and the Kremlin had ties going back five years — were discredited by the FBI. Sources, including the one that claimed Trump had long-held ties to the Kremlin, turned out to be fabricated. Special Counsel Robert S Mueller concluded that his investigation ‘did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.’ Mueller did not indict or accuse anyone of criminally conspiring with Russia.

• Chris Hedges

Nietzsche was not a nihilist. Nor was he a proponent of retreating when things get bad. Quite the opposite: his whole thing was about affirming your situation and living with high vitality - regardless of what life throws your way.

The only person doing whataboutism here is you.

2025, USA telegraphs a regime change in Venezuela - perfectly in line with 200 years of US history and some 40 regime changes.

“but what about Putin?”

Putin has fuck all to do with America doing what America does best - military intervention and aggression in South America.

How did Putin do this?

I have had this issue ever since Pluribus dropped, so probably for 2 or 3 weeks.

Edit: and your workaround is the same as mine

Pulling a Putin.

Regime changes in South America are as American as apple pie. No need to invoke Putin.

…

I’m still going to engage with you despite you not engaging with any part of my comment…

i don’t want to live in a country that scores [me]. I have the right to not want [that].

You sure do have that right. Your right to not want that is just dandy. However, Chinese people, by and large, do support their implementation of the social credit system. The Chinese people are developing their vision of socialism. For you to personally not like certain features of Chinese socialism is fine and dandy. But to condemn the Chinese for some aspect of their development of socialism that enjoys high support is chauvinistic of you.

This thought-terminating cliche is getting so tired. You may as well just say “let’s just agree to disagree”.

It’s telling that this cliche is most often applied when western whataboutism is correctly called out, and all it does is serve to legitimize the act of manufacturing consent against China.

USA invents credit score way back in the 50s

credit score is immediately used to pull off the most calculatingly misogynistic, racist, and classist financial enforcement in modern history.

china implements a technically similar system that aims not to control working people’s financial agency, but to strengthen public trust.

the west immediately spins up the presses and releases dozens of hit pieces a year that manufacture consent against China by portraying the Chinese social credit system as an orwellian nightmare that will rip a child out of their parent’s home if the household spends too much time on videos games.

leftists identify this whataboutism and correctly call it out

liberals drop one of their various thought-terminating cliches to (not so) subtly bolster the western narrative - thus manufacturing consent against China.

You’ve been effortlessly oriented by the State Department and its various propaganda apparatus.

The final goal of communism is a worldwide, stateless, classless, moneyless society.

This has obviously never been achieved, but the socialist and communist factions that use Marxism Leninism to work toward this goal are still nonetheless communist.

It’s also dumb to pretend the “boring” era wasn’t politically aberrant as well. They were setting the stage for what we are seeing now, and it’s telling that people are only getting upset now that fascism is getting focused inwards and domestically instead of outwardly towards other countries.