My cat’s name is Nancy Reagan. She’s almost lived up to it. And no, she doesn’t like you either and if you try to pet her you’ll get what you deserve.

Some cats have official titles. I had another cat whose title was “Chief Inspector.” He was known to do home invasions and conduct snap inspections of my neighbors houses. He had more friends in the neighborhood than me.

I can and do agree with everything you argue while also maintaining the objectively obvious fact that context matters in politics.

You either get it or you don’t. I can’t help you with your lack of reading comprehension.

They specifically said that “you can be mad” about it.

You want to have it the way that they’re pushing some kind of agenda, when in fact they’re simply stating what’s true.

“There’s nothing here but war, where the murderin’ cannons roar, And I am sick and tired of this hard fighting.”

They specifically said you can be mad. It’s the first sentence in OP’s comment. WTF are you on about?

These people are morons with 8th grade reading comprehension skills.

Come to think of it, maybe they are in fact 8th graders?

On its own it’s not, but it definitely is in the current political and cultural context. There’s no getting away from that. It’s going to provoke a political reaction in any conservative and there’s no point in pretending otherwise.

This is actually a win for UAW. They want to unionize Tesla’s workers, so any anti-union activity on Elon’s part just gives them more ammunition with the NLRB, which has strict rules regarding what ownership is allowed to say publicly. It plays directly into their hands.

Also worth saying that the Biden NLRB is the most pro-union and labor-friendly in history.

No, this is a straight up win for UAW. They are trying to unionize Tesla’s workers, so any anti-union activity on Elon’s part only plays into their hands at the NLRB level.

This is a win for UAW though. They are trying to unionize Tesla’s workers and this behavior gives them an edge on the already labor-friendly NLRB by showing that Elon is actively anti-union.

If anyone thinks for a moment that union organizers don’t actively plan this kind of thing out, I can assure that they do. It’s part of their job description. My union is a lot smaller than UAW and our organizers get up to all kinds of subterfuge and shenanigans, so I can only imagine what the UAW people are doing.

And your point is…?

As a guy wholly descended from the peoples of the British Isles, I have a similar feeling, only in my case, it really is true that my people have trashed the world for their personal benefit.

Granted that the Irish side of my family was never entirely on board.

Same. There was some initial confusion when I first switched over to Lemmy that resulted in the creation of superfluous accounts. I am better now thank you.

That’s a fair take and may well be accurate. I am no expert and accordingly don’t have a strong opinion either way, and that’s leaving aside the rather obvious point that most/many of our so-called “experts” keep getting it wrong in the first place.

Remember when Kyiv was going to fall in a matter of days, then that got adjusted into a matter of weeks and then months and now here we are a year and a half later?

The loud and clear lesson from that is that the so-called experts often don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.

Where did I “[spend] paragraphs telling [you] an argument is bad”?

Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Maybe you’ve mistaken me for someone else.

I used a few short and simple sentences to explain why your position is crap. That’s it.

This doesn’t mean what you seem to think it means. It’s not the case that Russia is somehow holding back and has huge additional reserves and resources that it can throw at the conflict. The Russian military isn’t about to collapse or anything, but it’s not doing great either and has largely been exposed as far weaker than was previously supposed.

No, you shouldn’t do it because it’s stupid. If you had real arguments you would use them, but you don’t, so instead you trot out this garbage. It’s a sign of intellectual weakness and dishonesty.

I’m not talking about anyone being justified; I am talking about realpolitik and the fact that in international relations it’s often the case that what ought to be is often in direct conflict with what actually is.

It would be awesome if we could live in a world of absolutes wherein national interests never conflicted with moral ambiguity, but that’s just not reality at all, sorry to inform.

I don’t think I follow your arguments. Is there a way you can rephrase your point such that a dummy like myself might understand it?

Unfortunately NATO wasn’t designed in a way that conceived of a rogue member state like Turkey. This means that it has a very limited toolkit for reigning in Erdogan’s excesses. He also has a huge amount of leverage due to Turkey’s pivotal role on the Black Sea which is obviously critical to everything happening in Ukraine. For now, NATO really does have its hands tied with regard to Turkey.