If you adopt a specific outlook, the duplicity is less stark.
Russia is attacking a sovereign nation and when they took land, they took people. To most, that makes them the bad guys.
Backing away from that and making this a geopolitical chess game, both players have coaches. Sounds fair.
One of the themes I’ve seen here is people saying someone said something they didn’t then taking issue with what they heard/inferred.
I didn’t say they don’t have eminent domain, as an example. I’m saying that the closest thing I’ve seen to their model is eminent domain - and even then, it’s different.
It’s as if people here are so keen to land a point that they invent one. I’ve been on a variety of fora for decades. The frequency of misrepresentation and zero fucks about making it right is… I’ve never seen it so prevalent. People act like they aren’t talking to people.
Straight Dope, people cared. Giraffe board (after the switch), people cared. StumbleUpon, Reddit… people cared that they were seen “arguing” in good faith. They curated their reputation by listening and if they fucked up, many (not all) would try to reset and some would apologize.
I’m not simply describing my experience. I’m describing threads or branches where all I do is read comments.