History is full of lots of things that aren't coming back. You know, theoretically, we could all go back to riding horses and buggies everywhere instead of using cars, but being concerned about that happening to the point where you feel the need to build a stable in your backyard because IT HAPPENED BEFORE SO IT COULD HAPPEN AGAIN would be irrational. Similarly, if you know anything about how modern governments work, their relationships with business and the creation and directing of wealth, the idea that they would randomly decide to throw all that away so they could kill the consumers that keep laying golden eggs for them is if anything batshit crazier than us all going Amish.

When I get to a desktop, yes.

This discussion was merged into The American Gun Control Debate

Besides, if your government killed y'all who would be left to buy guns? This whole misadventure sounds bad for business, which apart from anything else, guarantees it won't happen

If you lived up a mountain or in the middle of a forest, it might not be too easy to take you out, though I doubt you'd survive long there anyhow, and 99% of Americans don't live up mountains or in forests; they live in urban areas or on open land. In the amazingly unlikely event your government went nuts and decided to wipe you all out and the military said, 'fine, let's do it', it would take an even more amazingly unlikely scenario for you stand a hope in hell against them. Anyhow, the fact that you spend more than milliseconds of your time entertaining this is suggestive of an inability to rationally assess risk. You're more likely to be killed by a shark in your bathtub than to live out this fantasy.

Government serves us by enforcing a system of social relations that's conducive to mutually beneficial interaction and general personal security. The cost is we play ball and obey the law. Overall, it's a reasonable trade. Fretting about Mad Max scenarios, or fantasising about vanquishing tanks and planes with guns is a sad and delusional way to live, and completely unnecessary.

Can you explain how making it easy for people in violent neighbourhoods to get guns makes them less violent? It seems you are making the argument for gun control here.

The police don't carry guns here because they don't need them and neither do we because we don't have a gun culture. So, it's not an issue.

If trained soldiers came to your door, you would shit your pants and surrender immediately. We know it, you know it, so no idea who you think the act is convincing here.

Can't imagine being more neutered than being so scared all the time I have to carry a gun everywhere.

We are sacrificing tens of thousands of lives to firearms each year in order to shelter an adult fantasy. — Maw

It's not just the fantasy of being able to take on the U.S. military that's disturbing, it's that the fantasists believe they represent or could ever represent 'the people' rather than a small minority of extremists thereamong. This invalid self-identification also serves to extirpate as non-people the real enemy, the democratic majority, who disagrees with them, and highlight that it's democracy per se their guns are aimed at.

Daddy social must get turned upside down and have the crucifixes and pornography shaken out of his pockets every now and then lest the whole lot go to his head. Or do I have it backasswards?

I've deleted dozens of posts just in the last couple of days and I've had enough of baseless complaints we're not moderating the thread, especially by someone who needs moderation as much as anyone else here. Future comments on moderation will be deleted. Stay on topic or stay away.

If a response offends you, flag it, and then, most importantly, don't just copy the exact same tone, that just so offended you, in response. — Isaac

We don't spend every moment of our day watching this thread, therefore moderation not being instant is not evidence that it won't be forthcoming. You can expedite the process by doing the above.

It would be unrealistic to expect non-partisan moderation. The moderators are human beings; they have friends here, and you and I do not feature among them. — Olivier5

Hate to interrupt your martyrdom, Jeanne d'Arc, but same applies to you. Further complaints can be directed to feedback or PM.

Not always... :halo:

Or we can point out that nothing fundamental about Russian culture has changed since they were the world's heroes for overthrowing communism.

And you do seem to regard Russian society as somehow defective and inferior, and therefore in need of being "corrected" by you. — Apollodorus

E.g. That's a better way to make the point.

It's right to point out prejudice, which was on display in Christoffer's post, but all of you are looking for excuses to make each other look as bad as possible.

A lot of that back and forth is just going to get deleted anyhow and I don't know who's bullying who but there's not much in the way of charitable interchange going on for sure.

It's a nice one for the newspapers for a week or two, but other than that it's a big zero

The problem in your comments as I see it is the overgeneralization. Critiques of culture require nuance and objectivity, which you've lacked. You are not the only one who does that and I wouldn't call it racist, but it's clumsy and unhelpful, just like some of the criticisms of America, the West, and NATO have been. I've been guilty of that myself too at times, and the consistency and intensity of the prejudices on display here remind me why sometimes I just need to keep my hands off the keyboard.

Much as this Mark-of-Cain-for-Ukraine-Nazi-thesis-perpetrators sounds like fun, I think Big Bird will probably be against it.

Anyhow, the vitriol on this thread does nothing for its quality is all I'll say.

Posters should argue in good faith. But if we were to mod everything we thought was false, we'd not unjustifiably be accused of censorship and bias.

I said I'd judge that reaction when and if that comparison becomes valid. My argument is against the validity of the specific comparison, not against Western complicity in the war in Ukraine. Separately, I've already put the West on the hook for helping to cause and extend the war. That was probably the main argument I've made during this discussion.

I don't know, why did Big Bird kill Snuffleupagus? What is the relevance of this to anything I said?

The vast majority of people would never have heard of Ukraine if all that happened was what's happening in Somalia. You used an example because it was current not because it was apt in order to make a point that has some truth to it. But it's not as if there aren't tons of better examples, e.g. Yemen as you mentioned.

We call it a lollipop for all I care. It's irrelevant. What is relevant is the differences in the circumstances. When and if the U.S. send hundreds of thousands of troops along with heavy armour and air support into Somalia and kill tens of thousands of Somalis, I'll gauge Western reaction then and judge hypocrisy or lack of it on that basis.

Nothing I said involved taking a position on U.S. troops in Somalia. It's consistent to be absolutely against that move and recognize that the US hasn't launched a massive invasion of the country, that there aren't tens of thousands of U.S. troops there, that they're not bombing cities there or trying to overthrow the government etc. Maybe they will. That's also irrelevant.

I couldn't care less what Putin or NATO say about it. The comparison is valid or invalid based on reality not what competing propagandists say. America has either launched a massive invasion of Somalia akin to Russia's invasion of Ukraine or it hasn't. There have been thousands of civilians killed or there haven't. The government either invited them or they didn't. There's some leeway for ambiguity there but not so much we can't make our own judgements confidently based on the evidence available, no?

The Somalia angle might make sense if what happened in Ukraine was that Zelensky asked Putin for a couple of hundred Russian troops to help suppress an insurgency and Putin obliged. Of course, that's just about the opposite of what happened, so the comparison doesn't work.

That doesn't mean if the US sent 100,000 troops backed by heavy armour and air support into Somalia, bombed some of their cities to dust and killed thousands of their citizens, that the reaction of the West would be as sympathetic to Somalia as it is to Ukraine. It just means that's a hypothetical and arguing a hypothetical as if it was a reality isn't going to fly.

I don't say this to extend this aspect of the debate but hopefully to truncate it as it's not going anywhere.

I'm aware everyone hates each other and we are possibly in an episode of Sesame Street where Big Bird beheads Snuffleupagus and hangs the Cookie Monster from a lamp post, but can we dial things down a notch, please?

Ok.

Make an argument if you have one and no more silly videos, please.

It means what it says. Not sure where the confusion lies...

It's not that trivially simple. Big capital can get unequivocally fucked over too by changes in monetary and fiscal policy, which is why they're so active in trying to control it. If someone wants to start a thread I'll contribute but let's not go too far off topic here.

It's ok if you have something new to say and/or the issue has become current again, as with the Roe v Wade thread. That's not bumping. Bumping is posting a reply purely to get attention for a thread, usually one that posters are losing interest in.

My to-do list for the day: Give granny more-fatal cancer. Murder all preborns. Take dog for a walk.

Don't blame Wiki for your amateur attempts at spin. And if you think I haven't been critical of NATO, you haven't been reading the thread. Of course, you don't appear to think you need to.

One of the current Irish parties of government has its roots in the Irish fascist 'blue shirt' movement of the thirties. Have they anything to do with fascism now? No, zero. But I suppose if we wanted to join NATO, the Russian troll army would be calling us Nazis too. :lol:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blueshirts

Your issue is trying to throw mud at Sweden and Finland by dragging up irrelevancies like pre-Nazi swastikas and a few fascist policeman from the thirties. Pretty desperate stuff tbh.