General Politics Discussion (X) [ARCHIVED] • Page 1458

Where a lot of the arguments lose me is that I would say it is wrong to give other countries a pass on the exact same behaviors simply because they happen to be doing it on a smaller scale.

 

I hear you but that’s not my position, though - I don’t think it’s good that Russia invades a country. I don’t think it’s good that thousands of people are going to be slaughtered. But the US government doesn’t have any interest in making this not the case besides continued production and sale of arms and the opportunity to take advantage of instability, so aligning yourself with them or supporting the same measures has - intentionally or not - the net effect as aligning with US imperial interests. And I’m not someone who sees intent as all that meaningful when we should know our history and learn from it.

If your version of not giving them a pass is to follow the recommended military strategies or policy prescriptions as the US government, or to otherwise exercise US power, I don’t think that’s going to wind up being the ethical stance in the fullness of time that people currently have convinced themselves that it will be, e.g. the Soviet-Afghan War.

 

see, where we both part is that I see and reject a flattening of these bad behaviors.

 

There's the rub.

 

Oh man the way Blowback season 4 ends.. Brilliant

directly tying everything that happened over the course 50 years that led to the outcome in Afghanistan, to the American money and weapons that are currently flowing into Ukraine. Making allusions to the Ouroboros, the snake eating it's own tail.

 

I can't speak for anyone else, but for me there is very little about US foreign policy and how we exercise power in the world that is even remotely ethical, and it's a tragedy that in our current system the two parties we get to choose from have very little that distinguishes them apart in this regard.

I don't buy the argument though that other countries doing the exact same thing are in the right because they like to frame it as pushing back on US hegemony.

It's why I'll never make a good communist revolutionary.

 

see, there’s that flattening or as you say, the rub, again.

you know these aren’t inherently Marxist or communist positions tho.

 

Blowback 5 has gotta on post-Soviet Russia now. No way you end season 4 like that and not have the west's machinations in post-1991 eastern Europe, and how it led to what is happening now be the story of season 5.

 

Imagine caring that someone likes a fictional story (regardless of the now super shitty author). Imagine caring they do something a little silly regarding that story that harms no one.

 

Thread got weird today

 

cant. The last chapter, the war in Ukraine, is still being written.

 

Did you read the part where i said it’s not good? Or are you arguing with someone you’re not quoting?

 

It's a psy-op so we can understand how neutral countries feel when they're in the middle of two other countries going at it.

 

It shouldn't really be weird for the politics thread to get political.

 

yeah see I disagree with this. It’s more that the right thing to do in Ukraine also happens to align with US foreign interests for once—this is probably the first time this has ever happened in our lifetimes, except maybe Desert Storm which you could make a case for being a similar situation.

What’s the right thing to do here? Help the country being invaded by a foreign invader so they aren’t crushed and erased from the map. Will the US Govt look to leverage an Ukraine victory to further help their economic and geopolitical goals? Yeah, most likely. Their track record certainly points that direction. But what they will do after doesn’t change what the morally right thing to do is right this moment. We’re just not used to the right thing also being the thing the US Govt is doing, even if their motivations for doing so aren’t going to be as righteous as what the people who support helping Ukraine want.

 

it got weird when Nate started getting “not Asian enough” on the half white half Asian guy living in Asia. Otherwise this is pretty par for the…wait for it…chorus

 

Arsenal of Europe or: The antisemitism belt

 

there's only cool point on there but most of you are farthest from it tbh