This is bad in so many ways. It pisses off Trump's critics and Ukraine's supporters. It pleases Putin. It impresses Trumpers who think this kind of bullying shows strength. The one actual upside...
This is bad in so many ways.
It pisses off Trump's critics and Ukraine's supporters.
It pleases Putin.
It impresses Trumpers who think this kind of bullying shows strength.
The one actual upside is that Europe can remove all doubt and go full speed ahead on building up their own militaries. The Euro-Canadian partnership should seriously start moving forward as quickly as they can to cut us out. It breaks my heart and I'm so sorry on behalf of my shameful country.
Sincerely, me and the other 30-50% of Americans who still care.
The president and his admin are corrupt, pathetic, compromised buffoons. What a disgrace they've brought upon the United States and what a tragedy for Ukraine and free people. Any republicans or...
The president and his admin are corrupt, pathetic, compromised buffoons. What a disgrace they've brought upon the United States and what a tragedy for Ukraine and free people.
Any republicans or conservative "influencers" who try to spin this as something good for the United States or the world are evil idiots.
As I've seen others point out, dismantling your own alliances, trade deals and soft power is normally only something you would do when you lose a war and someone makes you.
As I've seen others point out, dismantling your own alliances, trade deals and soft power is normally only something you would do when you lose a war and someone makes you.
I initially felt it was extreme and conspiratorial to say that Trump is a puppet or agent of Russia. I mean, I still think so, but not as much as before.. or maybe the explanation is so simple...
I initially felt it was extreme and conspiratorial to say that Trump is a puppet or agent of Russia. I mean, I still think so, but not as much as before.. or maybe the explanation is so simple that he thinks what he's doing is great strong arm tactics and will get what he wants this way. Some truly stupid bluffing or whatever. No matter the reason though, it is catastrophic.
What's happening a tragedy in so many ways. I hate to go against the vibe and venting after something fucked up happens isn't wrong. But demonizing groups of people doesn't seem like a good idea....
What's happening a tragedy in so many ways.
I hate to go against the vibe and venting after something fucked up happens isn't wrong. But demonizing groups of people doesn't seem like a good idea. I mean this more in general, your post just happened to be the one I replied to. Grouping and judging people is something the left is understandably doing a lot of right now.
That doesn't seem like a good idea to me. I watched the video (the first half anyway) and rage is a completely reasonable response. Trump, Elon, say whatever you want about them as far as I'm concerned.
But judging general groups of people isn't a slippery slope, it's a cliff. And I think we should give ourselves time to come down from our rage, however justified, before we take to the streets.
I should say that "conservative influencers" from your post isn't a good example of what I'm talking about. IMO they're almost universally insincere in their "beliefs", it's all about attention and triggering strong emotions for personal gain. They're fair game.
I find this comment curious. In this specific scenario, which group of people do you think are being vilified as a group ? The other portion I find interesting is that, while the sentiment of “we...
I find this comment curious.
In this specific scenario, which group of people do you think are being vilified as a group ?
The other portion I find interesting is that, while the sentiment of “we shouldn’t judge and group people across the board” is true, it comes from the assumption of “because if you were in reversed positions you wouldn’t want someone to do that to you”. However, that is not currently what is happening here. The facts are that grifters and conmen and their pawns have overtaken our government and they are indeed grouping and judging people. This should demonstrate to you that they lack the empathy to consider the flip flopped position that is the basis of empathy and compassion.
So my question is, should you continue to show compassion and empathy to someone who continues to show you they are not doing the same, given the circumstances ?
I suppose you could continue to turn the other cheek and let the person slap you until you’re dead. At least you died on the moral high ground.
I appreciate you posting a contrarian viewpoint ! And I also agree that allowing our reactive feelings to dissipate is healthy, so thank you for encouraging us to do so.
This is frustrating. I said twice in my post that I was not referring to this specific scenario. Probably I assumed the larger scenario was obvious when I shouldn't have. The sentiment I see...
In this specific scenario, which group of people do you think are being vilified as a group ?
This is frustrating. I said twice in my post that I was not referring to this specific scenario.
Probably I assumed the larger scenario was obvious when I shouldn't have.
The sentiment I see expressed a few times in this thread and elsewhere in recent months (years really) is that Trump voters are racist, nazi scum or similar. When in reality Trump voters are a broad spectrum of people, largely ignorant in my view, but not fundamentally bad. Some are, some aren't, as with any large group.
The same applies to conservatives in general, Russians, Israelis and so on. It applies less to right wing influencers, but raging at them still achieves nothing save to add to the rage they've worked so hard to create.
Rage feels constructive at a time when people aren't sure what to do but it almost never is. Rage (and its parent emotion fear) is part of what got us here. More of it will not get us out.
Not really though. The Republicans have been courting bigots...well basically for their entire existence. It ebbed and flowed throughout the years, but almost the entirety of their platform is...
Not really though. The Republicans have been courting bigots...well basically for their entire existence. It ebbed and flowed throughout the years, but almost the entirety of their platform is dedicated to maintaining or rolling back the status quo.
The turning point for the Republicans marching toward full fascism was with Newt Gingrich in the 90's. Before 1994, the Democrats controlled the House for 40 years. Gingrich coauthored "Contract with America," the 90s version of Project 2025. A lot of our ills today can be traced to that.
And, even more than that, is how Gingrich pioneered weaponizing government shutdowns to get their way.
As I've been saying for years now, Trump is merely the unhinged result of a decades long attack on Democracy. The 'point of no return' in my mind was 2015, when Moscow Mitch refused to bring a Supreme Court justice confirmation to the floor.
Let me clarify: there is very obviously a functional difference between someone who voted for Trump because of X and a literal nazi. I'm not talking about the party; just the voters. The claim is...
Let me clarify: there is very obviously a functional difference between someone who voted for Trump because of X and a literal nazi. I'm not talking about the party; just the voters.
The claim is just pure nonsense: if it were true there's no point in pursuing any sort of politics in the US at all.
Well no, I'm just saying it's always worthwhile to fight against Republicans, voters inclusive. At best, they will always be on the wrong side of justice and democracy so long as their core values...
Well no, I'm just saying it's always worthwhile to fight against Republicans, voters inclusive. At best, they will always be on the wrong side of justice and democracy so long as their core values remain as such. They might not be literal Nazis, but they certainly have been embracing of bigotry and suppression for well over 100 years.
As my teachers have told me time and again; Ignorance is not an excuse.
It doesn't matter if you didn't know you were breaking the law, you were still breaking the law. It doesn't matter if they didn't know Trump was a fascist and was going to do a bunch of fascist things, because they remained ignorant and naive....Project 2025 laid it all out after all. They still said "Yes, I want my party to be lead by a fascist."
And as they say: If you're at a dinner party with a Nazi and you don't kick them out; you're at a Nazi party.
I don’t disagree but I’m not sure what point you think I’m making that you’re responding to? I don’t agree with most Republican policies either — I was just responding to the claim that there is...
I don’t disagree but I’m not sure what point you think I’m making that you’re responding to?
I don’t agree with most Republican policies either — I was just responding to the claim that there is no functional difference between any R voter and a literal nazi (or charitably between any R voter and the worst, most twisted parts of their platform).
If you think that’s true you mind as well give up now, because a majority of the country voted for that. But it’s obviously not true and the messaging battle continues.
Oh, it just means that the majority of the country is literal Nazis. Or at the very minimum: Are Nazi enablers cheering them on. Which is a distinction without a difference. The Germans in 1930...
Oh, it just means that the majority of the country is literal Nazis. Or at the very minimum: Are Nazi enablers cheering them on. Which is a distinction without a difference.
I'll often argue the same sentiment and in a similar way, but the other commenter has a point. We all hold 'judge not lest ye be judged' feelings and I'd hope that anybody making a point about the...
I'll often argue the same sentiment and in a similar way, but the other commenter has a point. We all hold 'judge not lest ye be judged' feelings and I'd hope that anybody making a point about the behavior of a certain group takes that into account. In fact, I'd expect them to add the caveat in any criticism to prove that they aren't unfairly generalizing.
That said, the subtext under the original criticism is certainly there.
The best time to take to the streets is when angry. You don't bottle up the anger, you paint it on the walls. If you conceal it,others won't feel it. I've had this centerist friend who espouses...
But judging general groups of people isn't a slippery slope, it's a cliff. And I think we should give ourselves time to come down from our rage, however justified, before we take to the streets.
The best time to take to the streets is when angry. You don't bottle up the anger, you paint it on the walls. If you conceal it,others won't feel it.
I've had this centerist friend who espouses about how lumping Republicans in a group and discriminating is wrong. I contend it is not for a few reasons:
Republicans move as a cohesive political unit. It doesn't matter if they are individually good if, as a class, they continue to double down on authoritarianism to remain in power. Especially as they recognize that they need to suppress voters to win elections.
This is not the same as discriminating for say minority status. They're being discriminated against for having views which fundamentally are about suppression and bigotry. They have the ability to abandon those views, or at a minimum recognize that their views cannot reasonably be imposed on others in a free and Democratic society.
Republicans are happy to lump all non-Republicans in a group and discriminate. I am returning the favor.
I will happily stop discriminating against any individual Republican as soon as they stop voting Republican while saying things like "I don't like Trump, but I can't vote for a Democrat," or "Not all Republicans."
Republicans consistently attack institutions that dare speak facts. This alone tells me that as a political unit, they are an enemy. A political movement that cannot accept the truth is a wrong one.
Conservativism, at its core, is an antidemocratic philosophy that will always trend toward oligarchy, dictatorship, theocracy, or monarchy. Generally happy to embrace fascism if it furthers that trend. Anybody who claims otherwise is ignorant at best.
You make so many assumptions here about what republicans are that, with respect, you aren't qualified to make. No one is, it's too large a group. Rage against the systems, the capitalist market,...
You make so many assumptions here about what republicans are that, with respect, you aren't qualified to make. No one is, it's too large a group.
Rage against the systems, the capitalist market, legislative capture, misinformation campaigns, far right politicians and the money that supports them. Not against a group of human beings, many of which are afraid, poorly informed, financially insecure and are just listening to what the people around them are telling them (as an example). There are so many types of republican voters in addition to racists and so on.
I totally get what your saying and we probably shouldn't generalise a entire group of people but as the days go on its becoming clearer that a large portion of these people are willfully ignoring...
I totally get what your saying and we probably shouldn't generalise a entire group of people but as the days go on its becoming clearer that a large portion of these people are willfully ignoring logic and what's right. These people should be jumping ship and bringing as many of the people who lack the education with them.
The situation is a lot more complex and the propaganda machine is a beast that's in full swing but the current government is so comically evil and inept and the antithesis of what most people want that it appears as if most Republicans actually want this.
I think that there are a lot of people who voted Republican and now have buyers remorse, or vote and don't pay attention after. Those subgroups don't deserve the same level of criticism as the...
I think that there are a lot of people who voted Republican and now have buyers remorse, or vote and don't pay attention after.
Those subgroups don't deserve the same level of criticism as the deliberate grifters. The idiocy, ignorance and laziness that brought them to vote for Trump a second time are worthy of their own kind of criticism, but like @Post_Below, I also have issues with the generalizing.
Dante wrote about different levels of hell for a reason ;). The garden variety ignoramus isn't Hitler and vice versa.
It’s simpler than that. It further entrenches Trump supporters on this issue because they can now use the excuse of “that Zelenskyy guy was so disrespectful to the president!”. While I’m certain...
It impresses Trumpers who think this kind of bullying shows strength
It’s simpler than that. It further entrenches Trump supporters on this issue because they can now use the excuse of “that Zelenskyy guy was so disrespectful to the president!”. While I’m certain that you’re correct that many of Trumps supporters view this as a display of strength, I also know for a fact my conservative family members will place blame on Zelenskyy purely for taking the bait and acting out.
They’ve somehow been warped into a memetic strain that values alignment with authority above all else. Liberals don’t seem you have much of a common meme. We’ll need one.
They’ve somehow been warped into a memetic strain that values alignment with authority above all else.
Liberals don’t seem you have much of a common meme. We’ll need one.
I really do disagree. Just in my time when growing up it was the religious right who spent 90% of their time telling me that what I did or wanted to do was wrong. God knows the liberal's have...
I really do disagree.
Just in my time when growing up it was the religious right who spent 90% of their time telling me that what I did or wanted to do was wrong.
God knows the liberal's have jumped on the morality police train before, but usually have come down on the side of freedom of speech over supposed moral crisis.
These days, true or not, their image is "everything or nothing" in that you must support all of it completely and correctly, intent be damned, and those who waver get no voice. And it feels just like how the religious right criticized and preached.
Play a video game we don't like, use words we don't like, make jokes we don't like, etc then you're not one of us.
There is a large range from jerk making offensive jokes on 4chan and legit 100% KKK style racists (and yes the first can turn into the second) and yet the dominate position of the modern American left is they're the same thing and same level of hostility, and it's using the same absurd extremist moral panic arguments.
Someone somewhere doesn't like how you put things, so rather than say "ehhh this isn't clever and you might want to work on what you're doing" it's "how dare you, and you're gone, because someone somewhere might have taken issue with that".
They have literally gatekept their own party at a time when screaming that they need to win at any cost.
They are the same though. The alt-right is 100% born out of 4chan. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if they're joking....they're still assholes, the same way you'd call someone doing...
There is a large range from jerk making offensive jokes on 4chan and legit 100% KKK style racists (and yes the first can turn into the second)
They are the same though. The alt-right is 100% born out of 4chan. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if they're joking....they're still assholes, the same way you'd call someone doing blackface for a Halloween costume an asshole. But somehow doing blackface on an anonymous forum is somehow seen as tolerable because they're shielded from the consequences.
Gamergate was a doxxing and harrasment campaign organized primarily on 4chan. Charlottesville was the attempt to coalesce the distributed and leaderless alt-right into a movement.
There are only varying degrees of racism, and anti-racism. There is no non-racism.
The KKK members are far less of a problem than the white moderates who complain about Affirmative action hurting white people. Because they are a staggeringly huge number.
This is the same kind of overgenalization that would be rightly called out on so much else. There are plenty of people with bad taste in humor, poor decisions in life, and actively poor views who...
They are the same though.
This is the same kind of overgenalization that would be rightly called out on so much else.
There are plenty of people with bad taste in humor, poor decisions in life, and actively poor views who are still capable of showing empathy, being reasoned with, and caring about their fellow human beings. I have met them. They exist. This is, to me, not up for debate.
That's because yes I have met the alternative "would actually kill someone they don't think should be allowed to exist if given a chance" extremist and it is completely insane to me that you don't see how insulting and damaging your take is.
Yes there are alt right assholes in 4chan, yes that number is VASTLY higher today than it was, and I think a part of that is exactly this kind of shortsighted lack of empathy position that demonized the shit out of people who were just being fucking idiots.
Gamergate was a doxxing and harrasment campaign organized primarily on 4chan.
It would be more accurate to say that a major part of gamergate was this. Again you are telling me my lived experience and thoughts and feelings are just not real, and it's mind boggling the certainty with which you say this. There were absolutely people, like me, like many of the people I knew, who were not on twitter or in those spheres, whos main engagement at the start with gamergate was "yeah surprise game reviews are just as shoddy as everything else".
Hardly being the first shitstorm to be covered with all sorts of slants and lousy views, but being massively low on just about anyone's list to bother looking into more, it was surprising to find that it didn't take long before "well yeah I think it's shit journalism" was "you're supporting death threats, and it was always about that and you're just hiding your hatred!".
I know literally no one who started with "yeah gaming journalism is shit and there's probably lousy crap going on there" and then stuck with "oh yeah this woman deserves everything the internet is doing to her" when they found out what it had become. Quite the opposite, in fact I know nobody in real life or even my extended circles who thinks any of that behavior was acceptable or condoned it once they became aware of it.
And hell I don't even like bothering to mention this experience because "uh well this was my experience with the thing, and I think there might be a lot of miscommunication because of a bunch of loud assholes", is apparently going to be met with
They are the same though.
In fact it's sadly common for this to happen in sooo many other circumstances. I don't recall the Stephen Universe being completely hated because it's fans were WAY the fuck out of line, and it's hardly the only example (The SuperWhoLock community is infamous and god knows its all over anime fandoms).
Gamergate, like so many other things, feels like trying to draw lines in the sand that just aren't there. There's 100% legit assholes involved, but if your take is that anyone and everyone who ever supported a #gamergate hashtag is basically a 4chan klansmen i'm sorry but you're only making shit worse. The actual kind of racists you're worried about love this shit because it isolates people and makes them easier to prey on, and again, I've fucking watched it happen.
So yes, when you directly reference the lived experiences of people I've cared about, who no sane person would ever consider violent, dangerous, or honestly anything but hurt and alone at their worst, a racist, I see a group of people who are completely willing to push away allies.
For all the supposed message of community, inclusivity, and education, I have found these ideals to and behaviors from statements like yours to be the exact opposite. And the irony being it's almost always targeted at the same fucking people that the left supposedly wants to help? Worse, it comes at the cost of furthering your actual supposed goals.
In clutching your pearls at someone who can be reasoned with by starting at "look do you actually think people are less than you" and working from there, you're helping secure the victory of the people who's answer to that question is sincerely "yes and they should die or live like animals" because you've driven the ones who could be allies to sit on the sidelines and feel despised by everyone.
I want to point to a simple example that a 'moderate' friend shared. I don't have time to break down the layers of sexism present there, but the fact it was shared by AntifemComics is a pretty big...
They just laugh at the memes, making it more and more socially acceptable.
I want to point to a simple example that a 'moderate' friend shared.
I don't have time to break down the layers of sexism present there, but the fact it was shared by AntifemComics is a pretty big tell.
Gamer Gate initially started as a protest against Access Journalism. That by itself is a very fair target for questioning. And it still is a massive problem within games journalism. It was...
Gamer Gate initially started as a protest against Access Journalism. That by itself is a very fair target for questioning. And it still is a massive problem within games journalism. It was ultimately warped because the journalist in question happened to be female.
It was not misogynistic by design, although it was both easy to pile onto the misogynism as well as defend it.
No, it didn't. I highly reccomend Why are you so angry. The tldr is that the "games journalism ethics" was always a thinly veiled cover for a harassment campaign against women. Some people (myself...
The tldr is that the "games journalism ethics" was always a thinly veiled cover for a harassment campaign against women. Some people (myself included) got caught up in some of that cover, which sadly helped legitimize and perpetuate the harassment campaign that rages to this day.
I only know the Zoe Quinn and Nathan Grayson part of things which I always thought was about access journalism. I literally did not follow anything beyond that, so thanks for correcting me.
I only know the Zoe Quinn and Nathan Grayson part of things which I always thought was about access journalism.
I literally did not follow anything beyond that, so thanks for correcting me.
I have to wonder if my lack of sexism is what kept me out of GamerGate. It never struck a chord with me. I can recall just ignoring the whole thing and needing to look up what it was years later....
I have to wonder if my lack of sexism is what kept me out of GamerGate. It never struck a chord with me. I can recall just ignoring the whole thing and needing to look up what it was years later. And back then I was on Reddit all the time, so I had every chance to get familiar with it.
I'm sorry if my comment is not as productive as the others, but I honestly feel like you're overthinking your examples. If you were (subjunctive mood!) to hang out with bigots, should you really...
I'm sorry if my comment is not as productive as the others, but I honestly feel like you're overthinking your examples. If you were (subjunctive mood!) to hang out with bigots, should you really be surprised if people were to assume that you were also a bigot?
I'm sorry... I was there when gamergate blew up. It was misogynistic, it never wasn't. People following it were using it as an excuse to easily display their contempt of women and women in games....
I'm sorry... I was there when gamergate blew up. It was misogynistic, it never wasn't. People following it were using it as an excuse to easily display their contempt of women and women in games. It was really plain to see their real problem was she was a woman and they got to dogpile on her. I mean it started cause a guy was feeling spurned by her (I think she cheated on him) and a way to get people to dogpile on her. It then spread to any one they saw as representing feminism (it was a great excuse to go after Anita Sarkinson).
Maybe you had privledge (as in you aren't a woman and can ignore a lot of the not so obvious shit) and didn't get to see what was already brewing to see how it was all in gamergate and it was harder to see it at first, but it never was about shitty journalism, that was just the excuse to thinly veil the misogyny.
I definitely hate the idea that we need to be offended on behalf of other people well before we even know how those people feel. Still, I think if there was any kind of identity or drive beyond...
I definitely hate the idea that we need to be offended on behalf of other people well before we even know how those people feel.
Still, I think if there was any kind of identity or drive beyond winning then that stuff wouldn't be so bad. People in-fight to establish what the new narrative is. But they're in-fighting over the most stupid bullshit. Give them something better to fight about and it'll get better.
I think you both are right. I practically never see Republican infighting in the US. There's disagreement about plenty of things but it seems to be very small things. Everyone is on the same page...
I think you both are right. I practically never see Republican infighting in the US. There's disagreement about plenty of things but it seems to be very small things. Everyone is on the same page in every other regard. They are a totally unified whole in comparison to Democrats who look like they are just convenient allies sort of. Even as a minority who has been called a lot of slurs, I still think the "everything or nothing" point mentioned above is true. And as much as I hate to admit it, there is indeed too much morality police - not because I don't want people to change and stop calling me nonsense that I do not deserve, but because it harms the whole. There are for sure a lot of people on the fence who see it as the final straw and then they jump to the other side. Just one ad convinced like 1-2% of voters to go to Trump. At least, I think that that was the number? "Kamala supports taxpayer funded sex changes for prisoners" - I have no idea if it's actually true, but it worked.
Civil and human rights.. yes, but look what happened now. It pushed people to vote for something so contra to it. It's a moral/philosophical question and I don't have the answer, but it's detrimental to not just me and other minorities but now to literally everyone else as well because things like that ad won the election.
Just pointing out that "traditional values" and high minded "harm reduction" initiatives that toss every library book before 2008 still result in books being banned. The right hates a just future,...
God knows the liberal's have jumped on the morality police train before, but usually have come down on the side of freedom of speech over supposed moral crisis.
Just pointing out that "traditional values" and high minded "harm reduction" initiatives that toss every library book before 2008 still result in books being banned.
The right hates a just future, the left hates the contradictions of history - they're both extremists who can't manage the discomfort of nuance.
Sure - it was my take on a podcast I listened to recently. The topic was on book burning - or less dramatically, the 'weeding' of library books in school libraries. The discussion centered around...
Sure - it was my take on a podcast I listened to recently. The topic was on book burning - or less dramatically, the 'weeding' of library books in school libraries.
The discussion centered around how left and right deem books to be harmful with the right in Florida recklessly banning LGBTQ oriented books and a well intentioned school board in Ontario using a politically charged rubric for determining whether books were 'harmful' to basically erase anything subjective from before 2008.
Paul Wells is a longtime, respected Canadian journalist whose work is commissioned out of one of our major public universities. The interview was captivating and touches on the silly political convictions that crusaders on both sides fall victim to.
I will say, this is one of the first cases like this I've heard of. Broadly speaking, banning of books is an anomoly on the center or the left in the USA. You might be able to find a tiny handful...
I will say, this is one of the first cases like this I've heard of.
Broadly speaking, banning of books is an anomoly on the center or the left in the USA. You might be able to find a tiny handful of liberal bans from locale to locale, but it is nowhere near on the order of scale that conservatives enact into full law every chance they get. Flordia banned on the order of 9,000 books in 2024, with the vast majority having gay or non-white main protagonists or prominent side characters. For contrast, the leftiest state, California, banned broad arbitrary book bans entirely. As did New Jersey.
You'll be able to stroll up to most any public library in America and get a copy of Mein Kampf. If not on the stacks itself, almost certainly via an ILL. A left that can't look at history wouldn't tolerate that much, would they?
By contrast, The 1619 Project was banned in numerous conservative areas.
Same, though I'm inclined to believe that it's because conservatives are bombastic and ruthless about their bans whereas, in this case, liberals frame bans using academic frameworks and high...
Same, though I'm inclined to believe that it's because conservatives are bombastic and ruthless about their bans whereas, in this case, liberals frame bans using academic frameworks and high minded justification.
I'll have to look back for examples, but as recently as last year there were secondary ed institutions revising their relationship with teaching the classics -- works that (though controversial) are intended to broaden the mind. Under the guise of many being too Eurocentric, too rooted in the old world (ie: pre-2000s, that the rhetoric was deemed harmful and abandoned.
My education included courses that explored the classics (history of western thought, specifically), and frankly, I'd agree that they were focused on a specific canon to win the award for a broad education about 'thought'. That said, the move to internationalize the course material abandon the purpose of the course.
With inclusion as mandate, the course was no longer about western thought. In appealing to all, the original vision for the course was changed. All of this was done under the guise of progress (which in some ways it was - I love Sun Tzu), but failed to consider what the change did to the purpose of the course.
To me, this is a telling example of the left's approach to discarding politically misaligned learning materials.
I don't agree that changes to such courses fail to consider the change to the purpose of the course. The previous presupposition was that "Western thought" much like "Western civilization" was...
I don't agree that changes to such courses fail to consider the change to the purpose of the course. The previous presupposition was that "Western thought" much like "Western civilization" was somehow worth holding above that of the rest of the world - nevermind how much western philosophers and authors and civilizations were inspired by others or how fuzzy the "West" is as a concept.
In creating western "canons" we took books that were often taught contemporarily and ossified them. Shakespeare is hilarious until it's being read aloud by 15 year olds unwillingly and untranslated. Chaucer is raunchy until sanitized by a public school teacher. Dickens makes cutting commentary on his time that is relevant to today if taught right. But relevant, and funny, and cutting too are hundreds of other books that are ignored because they weren't written by white straight British/American men. (See also philosophy by non-European men.)
I think the people reworking those classes are in fact aware, they're generally in possession of doctorates in the fields (and hopefully understand pedagogy) and while to an extent they're yes trying to avoid a public school classroom reading the N-word and hurting their peers by removing Huck Finn, change isn't a bad thing. And the canon is only the canon because some people decided it should be.
I can't speak for your specific class, and there are always outliers as we said, but as a rule whenever I see these changes they're absolutely considered and thoughtful. They might not be perfect but allowing changes lets you fix that rather than doubling down and reading the driest thing a 14/18 year old can imagine.
And changing the canon isn't banning books. Flat out the two are different.
Agree with most points, and maybe it's important that I clarify what's being considered 'classics', both in the class I was in and from what I've read about shifts in the academy. Less...
Agree with most points, and maybe it's important that I clarify what's being considered 'classics', both in the class I was in and from what I've read about shifts in the academy. Less foundational literature, more foundational philosophy.
Gochberg's anthologies are some of the most widely used and include of everything from Plato and Aristotle to Mark Anthony, Aquinas, Kant, Smith, Marx, Woolfe etc. the words of foundational ancient, medieval and enlightenment thinkers that can be used to explore the boundaries of thought that informs western society, and through a historical lens. https://www.amazon.com/Classics-Western-Thought-Renaissance-Reformation/dp/0155076833
It's a stitched together canon that's based around the value gained from different opinions. Some of it is objectionable, of course, but it's value comes from understanding the context within which each were written.
Removing content from undergraduate curriculums because of perceived harms is where the issue comes up.
I guess I don't see evidence that they were being changed "to avoid perceived harms" vs "intentionally broadening the philosophy being taught" especially at the collegiate level. It's acknowledged...
I guess I don't see evidence that they were being changed "to avoid perceived harms" vs "intentionally broadening the philosophy being taught" especially at the collegiate level.
It's acknowledged that women philosophers are almost entirely excluded from the Western Canon for example. And the wiki has the example of Du Châtelet who though cited by Kant is never mentioned by Norton Introduction to Philosophy.
And that's just looking at gender. If the canon is in fact so flawed, why keep it unchanged? You only mentioned one woman, and I'm genuinely curious if you had to actively try to, not out of criticism of you but of how the canon makes us think. I'd struggle to come up with a non white male philosopher off the top of my head too (my classes were also 20 years ago)
But is it flawed? It's a thing that probably doesn't deserve the title "History of western thought" thanks to all of the omission of racialized, poor and other gendered voices, but acknowledging...
But is it flawed?
It's a thing that probably doesn't deserve the title "History of western thought" thanks to all of the omission of racialized, poor and other gendered voices, but acknowledging that western history is full of (if not made up from) it's contradictions, what's wrong with teaching the canon with all of those things baked in? It's like the argument for contextualizing statues instead of tearing them down.
Our first Prime Minister was a total shithead, but nothing is learned by letting his head roll. Leave the statue, decorate it with the buckets of blood from his genocide, the regalia of a nation builder and the bottles of a high functioning alcoholic. Let it all stand.
Insofar as the course asked us to explore these inconsistencies, they did a good job. Sure, Saint Hildegarde Von Bingen made an appearance as a mystic in the middle ages, and Simone De Beauvoir and Hannah Arendt among others appeared in the 20th century, but I don't think that the purpose was representation. It was exploring the writings of the people that the West' considered it's most influential throughout 'the last two centuries.
As much as it was a way to learn about history and thought, it was also packaged as a breakdown of our collective psychology over the years -- blemishes, successes and everything in-between.
I'd advocate for a less holistic title for the field (classics, western thought assumes all are seen in it), but it exists as a canon for a reason. Undergraduates are free to dive into so many variations on so many subjects - why hammer this one into the ground?
As for evidence, I'm looking for what it was that I read. It may be one direct instance that's evolved out of a broad devaluation of the humanities and social sciences, but I'll look nonetheless.
But what is that reason other than the repetition and compounding of the sampling errors over time? Are they the most influential at this point only because they've been in the canon when others...
but it exists as a canon for a reason
But what is that reason other than the repetition and compounding of the sampling errors over time? Are they the most influential at this point only because they've been in the canon when others were excluded? Did others make those points first and should be credited for them?
Canon isn't sacred. There's nothing inherently wrong with teaching it, but neither is there anything inherently wrong with it being altered, especially to better teach the topic. Which again is generally the goal of people looking to revamp a course.
Canon isn't sacred, but I think it's simplistic at best to assume that what was learned and engaged with was not worthwhile. We could call it something else -- something more specific to the...
Canon isn't sacred, but I think it's simplistic at best to assume that what was learned and engaged with was not worthwhile.
We could call it something else -- something more specific to the writers and their histories than "classics" -- but why turn over an anthology whose impact on countless people was both real and important?
To me, it's iconoclastic in the name of progressivism. The baby thrown out with the bathwater, at a moment when there are plenty of bathtubs to go around.
I don't think it all must be thrown out, I just think no work is too previous to be reconsidered, even if it makes some people feel good. If you're teaching BritLit in high school, you're probably...
I don't think it all must be thrown out, I just think no work is too previous to be reconsidered, even if it makes some people feel good. If you're teaching BritLit in high school, you're probably starting with Beowulf, Chaucer, Shakespeare... But you don't have to, if the historical work isn't the focus. You could start more modern and work backwards, or move out of middle and old English quickly into modern English and focus on different authors. Theyre different classes that way but they're not inherently bad. (And what makes some folks feel "good" isn't the same for others. Sometimes that's because it's 40+ years later, sometimes it's because in high school, some white kids think saying the n-word is a rare opportunity, so Huck Finn makes your black students feel like shit and they shut down.)
There are only so many bathtubs, so many professors, classes, etc. And so many works excluded from one that's not inherently better than anyone else, it just happens to be interesting to you. And it's great that they're meaningful to you, for example, but if you'd been taught something else those works might be meaningful to you.
Professors that develop courses are thinking about what the goals of the course are, and are the materials being taught achieving that goal. It makes sense that they'll reconsider whether "Western Canon" is the goal they want to achieve and whether the current "canon" is accurate.
I'm not saying what books should or shouldn't be included, I don't teach philosophy or literature, or history, but I've attended a number of those classes and frankly the most interesting history class I ever took was about the Eastern Roman Empire, because it was different and not the same rehash over and over. My two Western civ classes were the same history I'd learned in high school... Over and over. I'd read multiple Shakespeare plays in school before going college and one book by a black person, it was Beloved, and I was not prepared to understand that work by the education I'd had at the time. I took 3 philosophy classes in college and the success of them was how quickly they went away from just telling me what the canon thought about things.
I'm really not iconoclastic. I'm saying add more diverse idols. I'm in favor of yeeting many bathtubs, babies, bathwater and all. You can't teach all the works in the world, and there's zero evidence to me that there is a list of 10, 20, 132, or whatever "best works" in these fields. I'll leave the edit up to the professors wanting to teach that material, whose field this is, and who have read far beyond the same white dudes that make up so much of the standard "western" canon and can make those decisions far better than myself and other non-experts.
Once again though, none of this is comparable to the nationwide book bans.
It's weird to me to compare an isolated outlier with a nationwide trend as if they're either motivated by the same goals or are in anyway equivalent in magnitude. It's a long walk to get to both...
It's weird to me to compare an isolated outlier with a nationwide trend as if they're either motivated by the same goals or are in anyway equivalent in magnitude.
It's a long walk to get to both sides being bad, IMO.
Not bad, absolutely. The right is rocking some very hairy rationale and has been for decades. That said, both have their outliers, and since they're both obsessed with purity test logic on some...
Not bad, absolutely. The right is rocking some very hairy rationale and has been for decades.
That said, both have their outliers, and since they're both obsessed with purity test logic on some level, it's important for discerning minds to call bullshit while supporting important aspects of the cause.
Sure they both have outliers, but some book bans are happening across the US in multiple states. Many trans folks believe that next steps will be making sharing trans literature illegal (and...
Sure they both have outliers, but some book bans are happening across the US in multiple states. Many trans folks believe that next steps will be making sharing trans literature illegal (and they're not overreacting IMO). Even just what is occurring now isn't comparable to the actions of a couple of school districts, in a different country, with motivations of inclusion, however misplaced.
Even here you said they both have outliers, but what are the non-outlier leftists doing that's a problem? Because the non-outlier rightwing are absolutely banning books. That's why I think the substack you linked is engaged in disingenuous comparisons of the two.
He likes to throw those lines in when he's made a fool of himself. Like when the Maine governor said she'll follow laws and not executive orders. Trump said "I'll see you in court" and "That'll be...
“This is going to be great television.”
He likes to throw those lines in when he's made a fool of himself. Like when the Maine governor said she'll follow laws and not executive orders. Trump said "I'll see you in court" and "That'll be an easy one". He knows Fox will edit down the interaction to have the best possible spin, so he gets in the last words with something they can run with.
I've been bullied, which started by two of my 'friends', and it's one of the reasons I developed complex PTSD. Needless to say, this whole shitshow brought up some really bad memories for me....
I've been bullied, which started by two of my 'friends', and it's one of the reasons I developed complex PTSD. Needless to say, this whole shitshow brought up some really bad memories for me.
Honestly, I think Zelensky did far better than most of us could handle this situation. He has been carrying his entire country through a bloody war for years now. I really can't imagine the toll that must take. The fact that he tried to be respectful despite all the previous actions of Trump, and continued to do so until it broke, is probably more impressive than most people realize.
All I heard when Vance was claiming that Zelensky wasn't grateful enough was a not so veiled, "Bow and kiss the ring! Kneel and grovel before the king, servant!" I can't believe the level of...
All I heard when Vance was claiming that Zelensky wasn't grateful enough was a not so veiled, "Bow and kiss the ring! Kneel and grovel before the king, servant!"
I can't believe the level of narcissism. Its the same thing when Trump signs his executive orders in the Oval Office. The orders themselves are worrisome, but its having his subjects stand there and fawn all over him with ridiculous, excessive flattery that just boggles my brain. Is this really happening or is this a Saturday Night Live sketch, I can't tell anymore?
For the record, as a Canadian, the backlash against his ridiculous comments about Canada becoming the 51st state have highly offended my fellow Canadians. There is a very strong and growing backlash against all American goods, services and especially tourist spending in the US.
I'm shocked at how Trump ever made it this far in politics and now I'm quite worried for the US as well. He's making enemies out of friends and he's destroying America's reputation on the world stage. Who the hell can get his outrageous ego under control? Even Putin seems like a rational leader in comparison.
I liked Vance in the vice presidential debate, but after seeing how aggressively condescending he was to Zelensky, I believe I have misjudged his character from that single well-rehearsed...
All I heard when Vance was claiming that Zelensky wasn't grateful enough was a not so veiled, "Bow and kiss the ring! Kneel and grovel before the king, servant!"
I liked Vance in the vice presidential debate, but after seeing how aggressively condescending he was to Zelensky, I believe I have misjudged his character from that single well-rehearsed performance.
Zelensky said nothing inaccurate, irrational, or offensive. I have the same question he has. How can anyone trust a truce with Putin? Without a guarantor willing to draw a line in the sand and go to war for Ukraine if the agreement is broken, I don’t see how a ceasefire will be helpful.
IMO ending Putin’s war does involve managing his ego strategically, but that’s completely different from appeasement. He has to be allowed to “win” but also lose, where continued aggression will exact a price higher than he’d be willing to pay. If nobody is going to make Putin pay that price, then letting him “win” is letting him… win. And letting him actually win will encourage other wannabe conquerors to begin making moves.
Anders Puck Nielsen had a great video about this. I tried to find it but can't - maybe someone else can. It's basically what you said though. They have to lose in a specific way or it will be a...
He has to be allowed to “win” but also lose
Anders Puck Nielsen had a great video about this. I tried to find it but can't - maybe someone else can. It's basically what you said though. They have to lose in a specific way or it will be a loss for both sides. The gist of it was that losing big will be catastrophic for both Russia and the rest of Europe because their country may spiral out of control,
To my eyes, it struck me that every proper opportunity Zelenskyy had to speak, he remained very calm and gave very smart, measured statements. It felt as if Trump's and Vance's increasing loudness...
To my eyes, it struck me that every proper opportunity Zelenskyy had to speak, he remained very calm and gave very smart, measured statements. It felt as if Trump's and Vance's increasing loudness later during the meeting was to simply crowd Zelenskyy out of further opportunities to speak and retain their version of the narrative.
Because probably the only option, after Putin violates whatever deal was negotiated, is sending US troops in to Ukraine. Not even GOP warhawks will go for that. After crapping on NATO and the EU,...
I think the next question to ask is why Trump and Vance seem so desperate to avoid answering this.
Because probably the only option, after Putin violates whatever deal was negotiated, is sending US troops in to Ukraine. Not even GOP warhawks will go for that. After crapping on NATO and the EU, Trump can't bring them in. Trump and Vance have no answer, and Trump is in this only because he saw an opportunity to get Ukrainian minerals, leveraging whatever relationship he thinks he has with Putin.
If any member of congress does not rebuke Trump and Vance's behavior today, they are too far gone. Shameful, embarrassing, pitiful. I'm not holding my breath.
If any member of congress does not rebuke Trump and Vance's behavior today, they are too far gone. Shameful, embarrassing, pitiful.
I haven't as much as lightly slapped anyone since I was a child, but even I had this feeling that I wanted to do that - or at least laugh and ridicule or stand up and leave. It's a low bar to set,...
I haven't as much as lightly slapped anyone since I was a child, but even I had this feeling that I wanted to do that - or at least laugh and ridicule or stand up and leave. It's a low bar to set, I know, but honestly I admire him for taking these punches and just sitting still and remaining as calm as anyone possibly could in the face of such grave offenses to himself and his entire country and people.
Spineless behavior. Couldn't tolerate a single word before throwing a tantrum like a child while playing with the lives of millions. I've had more constructive disagreements with my two year old....
Spineless behavior. Couldn't tolerate a single word before throwing a tantrum like a child while playing with the lives of millions. I've had more constructive disagreements with my two year old.
Fucking disgraceful if this is what a presidency amounts to.
It's like... Yeah, they've build up this alliance to seize power. And now they're waving it around carelessly, with no real long term plans, only acting in their own interest. And that alliance of supporters is all but guaranteed to come crashing down.
And then life will suddendly be very different for them.
I’m still most worried about Trump causing another pandemic. The US is going to lose its place in the globe as the #1 superpower. But I really really don’t want a human transmissible bird flu or...
I’m still most worried about Trump causing another pandemic. The US is going to lose its place in the globe as the #1 superpower. But I really really don’t want a human transmissible bird flu or something incubating in Africa.
Its weird how homogeneous the comments on that video are. I dont often see a comment section so consistently repeating the same take. "Wow, such transparency, this is what America needs to see,...
Its weird how homogeneous the comments on that video are. I dont often see a comment section so consistently repeating the same take. "Wow, such transparency, this is what America needs to see, the transparency is really refreshing, these conversations usually take place behind closed doors but the transparency here is incredible, Forbes is doing Gods work vis-a-vis transparency."
Hmmm... There sure are a lot of usernames with a string of numbers after them in that comments section. Top comment with 34k votes by teufelhunden3094, and replies to it from carld2796, 4589-hl,...
Hmmm... There sure are a lot of usernames with a string of numbers after them in that comments section.
Top comment with 34k votes by teufelhunden3094, and replies to it from carld2796, 4589-hl, yasin2011, WarrenGdog28, hanaaboya5835, etc.
With other top ranked top-level comments by streamofconsciousness5826, AmericaFirst20000, JFirn86Q, Oxamyt3109, AC-ed1jz, floris44, trepan4944, rawradinosaur56, ChristinaMyers-c9e, TomasGraf-rr6co, truthseeker4491, tiniestavenger6329, januszokonato4633, moggers51, aswinasok6039, RamK-bd7sg, ibrahimjaved5574, undersound33, epluribusunum8597, len6482, willstf92, Jo-k8g, NB-ky5ol, diegomora7608, Pandita221, bitcoinyoda8321, stichclark3980.
And the same username pattern just keeps going like that, page after page. Totally not suspicious at all! /s
Methinks the Russian troll farms and Republican bots are out in force for this one.
Social engineering by sock puppets. That indeed is exactly what you're seeing in the comments. Fortunately right now its fairly obvious to anyone with a few years of online experience, a critical...
Social engineering by sock puppets. That indeed is exactly what you're seeing in the comments.
Fortunately right now its fairly obvious to anyone with a few years of online experience, a critical eye and a healthy dose of skepticism. I do wonder what happens in a few years when AI is even better and the usernames aren't so obvious.
Unfortunately it's the toupee fallacy to think it is obvious-- you notice the bad ones. Better usernames are trivial and AI is already at a point it is often preferred to student's writings in...
Unfortunately it's the toupee fallacy to think it is obvious-- you notice the bad ones.
Better usernames are trivial and AI is already at a point it is often preferred to student's writings in colleges. When that fails, on the cheap you can get a Floridian to put on a stunt with a cage and Hillary in a prison uniform, or Tim Pool and other influencers to push a foreign agenda.
We're all susceptible, and by far the thing the makes us vulnerable to misinformation (recent meta-analysis) is whether we've seen a claim before.
YouTube has had a really bad bot problem for a while now. Most people have seen the WhatsApp scam posters that impersonate big channels, but another flavor that’s far more prolific are those that...
YouTube has had a really bad bot problem for a while now. Most people have seen the WhatsApp scam posters that impersonate big channels, but another flavor that’s far more prolific are those that shill for specific, named financial advisors. They show up in the comments on just about any video having to do with money — stocks, bonds, saving, whatever. They follow a handful of formulas and are pretty convincing if you haven’t seen them in enough comment sections to be able to pattern match.
I haven't seen anyone talk about this, but I'm pretty certain that Youtube implemented a system to push positive comments to the top a little while back. You're likely to see homogeneity in...
I haven't seen anyone talk about this, but I'm pretty certain that Youtube implemented a system to push positive comments to the top a little while back. You're likely to see homogeneity in top-level comments no matter what video you're looking at, at least in terms of overall positive sentiment.
While I agree with the sentiment, it's nice to see this without some anchor hyping this up and "breaking news" banners everywhere, yes the comments are mostly bots.
While I agree with the sentiment, it's nice to see this without some anchor hyping this up and "breaking news" banners everywhere, yes the comments are mostly bots.
Thank you America, thank you for your support, thank you for this visit. Thank you @POTUS, Congress, and the American people. Ukraine needs just and lasting peace, and we are working exactly for that.
A correspondent for TASS, a Russian state media organization, was among a group of hand-picked pool reporters present in the Oval Office...
The apparent gaffe comes three days after the White House announced it would wrest the choice of pool reporters from the White House Correspondents’ Association, breaking with decades of precedent.
Apologies for this post maybe not being as on topic as it should be for such a serious news peice. My partner and I have been watching a lot of Married at First Sight recently and watching this...
Apologies for this post maybe not being as on topic as it should be for such a serious news peice.
My partner and I have been watching a lot of Married at First Sight recently and watching this video gave me real vibes of some of the most narcissistic, emotionally unavailable people on the show.
It's how defensive Trump and his VP are to every statement and how they have to control the conversation or they get upset.
Like, a good relationship (romantic or otherwise) has both parties listen to each other and try to compromise. This is just bullying here and it's not fun to watch.
It's shocking the times we live in. We are going to study this in years to come. The effects of propaganda are so real on the Internet.
The strategy is known as DARVO: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. It's not necessarily a conscious strategy, but it's a pattern abusive relationships of all stripes tend to follow.
The strategy is known as DARVO: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. It's not necessarily a conscious strategy, but it's a pattern abusive relationships of all stripes tend to follow.
Wise words of warning from the leader of the US, which is located in...wait, shit - The World! His joke at the end to deflate the tension also serves as a bit of a reminder that these guys are...
You’re gambling with World War III
Wise words of warning from the leader of the US, which is located in...wait, shit - The World!
This is going to be great television
His joke at the end to deflate the tension also serves as a bit of a reminder that these guys are performing. And their blustering is just part of the act. It's hard to know if Trump wants more resources out of the deal or if he does not want a deal (for whatever Russia-related reason) and the resources (or 'disrespect') are just an excuse not to make one.
I feel bad for Zelenskyy (and the Ukrainian people) for having to work with this guy.
You may enjoy this interview about what President Trump may have learned from American professional wrestling.
His joke at the end to deflate the tension also serves as a bit of a reminder that these guys are performing. And their blustering is just part of the act.
You may enjoy this interview about what President Trump may have learned from American professional wrestling.
Yeeeup. This is where things are going to get ugly and a lot of the onus will either be put on Europe, or the US will just functionally align itself with Russia.
Yeeeup. This is where things are going to get ugly and a lot of the onus will either be put on Europe, or the US will just functionally align itself with Russia.
I watched the full video. I won’t condone Vance‘s words and attitude toward Zelensky, he’s known to not care about the country at all, but very stupid on Zelensky‘s part. Why he took Vance’s bait...
I watched the full video. I won’t condone Vance‘s words and attitude toward Zelensky, he’s known to not care about the country at all, but very stupid on Zelensky‘s part. Why he took Vance’s bait I can’t understand and to be completely fair to the situation, Zelensky really shouldn’t have been speaking that way in a televised meeting in the first place. Bad form on the part of all three of them, all Zelensky had to do was play nice and sign the minerals deal - tough for me to swallow when his country‘s life is on the line
Having Vance there turned a one-on-one disagreement into a two-on-one dogpile. I don't think Vance's baiting was an accident -- I think that was entirely the point. The "deal" was nonsense to...
Having Vance there turned a one-on-one disagreement into a two-on-one dogpile. I don't think Vance's baiting was an accident -- I think that was entirely the point.
The "deal" was nonsense to begin with. Zelenskyy arrived hoping to convince Trump that a deal requires the exchange of things of value. But if Trump couldn't offer a security guarantee, then he might as well have been offering nothing. And in exchange for this nothing, the US would acquire some fraction of Ukraine's mineral wealth.
Clearly Trump never intended there to be an agreement, merely a dictation from bully to victim. Trump's continued references about Zelenskyy "not having the cards" gave the game away -- he doesn't care about Ukraine, only about its resources.
If this is directed at me, I don't disagree and don't see how anything in my comment shows otherwise. As I said, Vance's views and disregard for Ukraine are very well known - him trying to bait...
I don't think Vance's baiting was an accident -- I think that was entirely the point.
If this is directed at me, I don't disagree and don't see how anything in my comment shows otherwise. As I said, Vance's views and disregard for Ukraine are very well known - him trying to bait Zelenskyy, which is obvious that it was deliberately done, is no surprise. What is surprising is that Zelenskyy as a head of state would not be prepared for this and walk right into that trap.
I don't want to spend too much time talking about the Minerals Deal because I'm not sure how much I personally support it or not but I don't think it's fair to say that it offered Ukraine nothing. Investment by US firms would provide a lot of revenues to the Ukrainian state and having the bulk of those revenues directed towards rebuilding the country's infrastructure is not what I would term a raw deal. Sure, there were no explicit security guarantees given and I can definitely understand Ukraine's concerns there but you can't ignore the reality of the implicit security guarantees that such a deal would provide. The last fifty years have shown us how entangling economic interests provides stability and peace, here we could have seen it at work on a small scale. And, as much as it shames me to say it, we all know how much the US loves to adventure overseas when it comes to protecting American business interests.
While I don't think this type of international relations behooves the US and is not in my opinion morally completely morally sound, I can understand Trump's basis for the Minerals Deal. He's essentially saying that Ukraine has already received a lot of help for free, if you want to keep receiving help then you need to give us something for it. That logic is unfortunately sound and I can see how a lot of Trump's supporters could get behind it.
Trump's continued references about Zelenskyy "not having the cards" gave the game away -- he doesn't care about Ukraine, only about its resources.
I think that this ignores the context. Zelenskyy was a fool to start lecturing the two top government officials of his biggest (by far) benefactor. Even Biden famously had serious troubles at times with Zelenskyy, who he felt was being too ungrateful and/or outspoken about US support, but at least he had the decency to keep it off camera. Trump's "not having the cards" statements were in reference to Zelenskyy's lecturing, the Ukrainian president has no position to tell the US how it is when his country is already losing the war even with US support. As I said, bad form on the part of all three of them but even when I don't agree with how it's being said both Trump and Zelenskyy had fair points to make.
Yes you can. I wouldn't trust an explicit guarantee from Trump, let alone an unspoken one where Trump could plausibly claim he never intended to offer security promises in the first place.
but you can't ignore the reality of the implicit security guarantees that such a deal would provide.
Yes you can. I wouldn't trust an explicit guarantee from Trump, let alone an unspoken one where Trump could plausibly claim he never intended to offer security promises in the first place.
When did Zelenskyy start lecturing? From what I saw he pushed back on the notion that Ukraine started, and that there could be peace without security guarantees, and then Vance started lecturing...
When did Zelenskyy start lecturing? From what I saw he pushed back on the notion that Ukraine started, and that there could be peace without security guarantees, and then Vance started lecturing about diplomacy? Zelenskyy was in an impossible position where he either had to accept the damaging false premises being laid out by the other two, or to hold his ground.
I disagree with your characterization of Trump's intentions. Trump is telling Zelenskyy, both in actions and words, I do not understand why we should help you. I do not understand what we gain...
I disagree with your characterization of Trump's intentions. Trump is telling Zelenskyy, both in actions and words, I do not understand why we should help you. I do not understand what we gain from this arrangement. It's the reason there's even a mineral deal, which is potentially worth hundreds of billions of dollars -- far more than the US has actually spent in assistance to Ukraine. Trump only sees Ukraine as an economic asset. He fundamentally does not care about (or probably even understand) its larger geopolitical history. Trump has no interest in doing the right thing because it is the right thing; his concerns are purely transactional.
Hence the "not having the cards" comment. Trump is not offering the fair market value of the aid. Rather, he's offering a shakedown: Pay-up or I'll let your country perish. But if only money talks, then how can anyone trust Trump to care about who governs the land? Russia will gladly give away Ukraine's mineral rights at a discount.
As for speculating about Zelenskyy should have done, I think the Atlantic put it best:
Might Zelensky have gotten a different outcome by taking Trump’s abuse and stream of lies with more self-abasement? Sure, it’s possible; if you reason backwards from a bad outcome, any different strategy is almost axiomatically smarter. Zelensky had no good options at the White House. He walked into an ambush with a president who empathizes with the dictator who wants to seize Ukraine’s territory. Everyone who spent years warning about Trump’s unseemly affinity for Putin had exactly this kind of disastrous outcome in mind.
And the last month (and Trump's first term before that) showed us that implicit guarantees, like those famous "checks and balances", don't mean anything at all.
you can't ignore the reality of the implicit security guarantees that such a deal would provide. The last fifty years have shown us how entangling economic interests provides stability and peace
And the last month (and Trump's first term before that) showed us that implicit guarantees, like those famous "checks and balances", don't mean anything at all.
The minerals deal is not a real deal and Zelensky has absolutely no reason to trust people who talk to him like that to follow through on their end of it. Europe needs to sack up and defend...
The minerals deal is not a real deal and Zelensky has absolutely no reason to trust people who talk to him like that to follow through on their end of it.
Europe needs to sack up and defend Ukraine on its own. America is lost.
I've read your other reply below but I'm responding to this top level comment. I watched the entire hour long video I found on YouTube. Zelensky showed a lot of restraint, and on occasion stood...
I've read your other reply below but I'm responding to this top level comment.
I watched the entire hour long video I found on YouTube.
Zelensky showed a lot of restraint, and on occasion stood his ground and clarified some things that the Trump regime has cast doubt upon, like whether Putin was the aggressor. He's also sticking up for his people knowing that these negotiations that the Trump regime and Putin are having without him likely involve talks of Ukraine ceding territory to Russia, which Trump has mentioned in the past. He's making his case on the world stage and countering their narrative to their face, as he should.
Wild that you are trying pin the collapse of these negotiations on Zelensky. The White House canceled them because Trump is a soft ass wimp. Blame the bullies. Not the victim.
Zelensy should not have to act scraping and servile to Trump's dirtied diaper ass for support. Europe needs to step up, because they're on Putin's roadmap of expansion. And no deal should be made that cedes territory until there is no chance of winning. Right now, hope is not lost. Either way, fuck Putin and fuck Trump.
As a European, I want Europe to unify and be strong. That said, Europe simply cannot offer what the US had been offering militarily. Their intelligence network is better than ours. We cannot...
As a European, I want Europe to unify and be strong. That said, Europe simply cannot offer what the US had been offering militarily. Their intelligence network is better than ours. We cannot replace their assistance pinpointing targets on the ground. We cannot provide the munitions the Ukrainians need in the volume they need them. We don't have the massive logistical equipment and, crucially, expertise, to manage a force projection of the kind needed. These things are widely acknowledged by Euro leaders.
There's no doubt that Europe has been lazily relying on the US for its defensive shield for way too long. I think it's also been fashionable to mock the US for its exorbitant military spending ... while also calling on them to put it into use when it's needed (Libya 2011, for example).
I think the "minerals deal" is little more than extortion, but it seems that Ukraine is over a barrel here. Europe has committed more total value to Ukraine, sure, but the "cream" of the military assistance has come from the US.
Adjusted for purchasing power parity, Russia spends more on its military than all the EU countries put together (source).
I hate it, it sickens me, but our European leaders have given themselves a very poor platform to negotiate from.
This is one of the irritating things about online discourse with regard to the US's military spending. It's commonly viewed as a complete waste which only exists to perpetuate the military...
This is one of the irritating things about online discourse with regard to the US's military spending.
It's commonly viewed as a complete waste which only exists to perpetuate the military industrial complex and keep defense contractors rich. While there is certainly plenty of that, the common framing in left leaning spaces online is that the US is too obsessed with military spending, and if we just cut that in half or down to a quarter what it is now, we could have socialized healthcare and large social safety nets just like the Netherlands and we wouldn't even have to pay higher taxes!
The reality is that US military spending is what keeps, and has enabled the world order to exist as it does. That spending enables the Netherlands and other Western European countries to have the social services they do because they don't feel that they have to spend much on defense, since it's within the US's best interests to protect the world order.
The US can't significantly slash military spending, or the western hegemony will start gradually losing power. The EU has been a strong ally for the US precisely because it mostly supports the US's vision of the world, where the US is the planet's military powerhouse and gets to enforce order and our interests where we see fit. One cannot exist without the other though. If the Trump admin continues down this road of distancing us from the EU, Europe will need to significantly increase military spending, which means either higher taxes, or reduced social benefits.
Personally I don't see how this benefits the US at all, the main result will just be an increasingly influential China as the EU seeks new allies and trading partners, but I do see it as sort of a positive that the citizens of the EU finally see what the American end of this arrangement entails.
It sucks to be poor in the US because of about a thousand different reasons, but subsidizing Europe's security and acting as the defecto sheriff of the world is a large one of those. I don't think it will not suck to be poor under Trump, and I don't think that poor people are even really human to him, but that doesn't change the fact that our military obligations are a large factor in why our society doesn't provide for it's people in the same way as many western European ones.
It's such a silly argument. NATO without the US has a larger standing army than the US alone. I will not deny Europe did not spend enough for defense. But to elevate the US into being enablers of...
It's such a silly argument.
NATO without the US has a larger standing army than the US alone.
I will not deny Europe did not spend enough for defense. But to elevate the US into being enablers of health care is just silly. We can provide just as much health care at 1,5% as we can at 2% or 3%. Poland is currently doing it at 5%. The argument is rubbish. I've been hearing it for years and it's just as stupid now as it is then as it significantly undermines what soft power the US gained from spending this much on defense. Significantly. As if they did it from the good of their heart.
It also conveniently ignores everywhere else in the world where this is irrelevant and they also have health care.
Truth of the matter is that the US doesn't want to have a functioning health care system regardless of defense expenditure.
I didn't say the US didn't benefit from the arrangement. I said the opposite. I would say the US benefits more than Europe does in fact, it's one of the main reasons we've been able to maintain...
I didn't say the US didn't benefit from the arrangement. I said the opposite. I would say the US benefits more than Europe does in fact, it's one of the main reasons we've been able to maintain the largest economy in the world for 75 years. We have 35,000 troops in Germany alone. That's over 15% the size of the entire German military. More importantly, NATO has the backing of by far the most widespread nuclear payload delivery system in the world, which NATO doesn't come close to the capabilities of without the US. That deterrence is largely what's kept wealthy nations from going to war with each other. Again, the US benefits hugely from this as it lets us effectively dictate our will globally, but that doesn't mean Europe hasn't also benefitted. Budgets are a zero sum game after all, and defense is massively expensive. If you get much of it subsidized by someone else, that frees you up to do other things without having to raise taxes that will slow your economy, or create or borrow money which will increase inflation.
I agree that the US could have socialized healthcare if we wanted to, even with defense spending, but having to do that after you're spending almost a trillion dollars every year on defense while carrying $36 trillion of national debt (largely caused by massive defense spending) is a lot less politically palatable.
Please tell me if you think this makes sense, I’m just spitballing. Post war Europe and US traded security guarantees for economic access and global hegemony, pseudo imperialism. So we can keep...
Please tell me if you think this makes sense, I’m just spitballing.
Post war Europe and US traded security guarantees for economic access and global hegemony, pseudo imperialism. So we can keep our republic monicker. Now that the economic growth is not as high, we are upending the world order? Who gains?
This is bad in so many ways.
It pisses off Trump's critics and Ukraine's supporters.
It pleases Putin.
It impresses Trumpers who think this kind of bullying shows strength.
The one actual upside is that Europe can remove all doubt and go full speed ahead on building up their own militaries. The Euro-Canadian partnership should seriously start moving forward as quickly as they can to cut us out. It breaks my heart and I'm so sorry on behalf of my shameful country.
Sincerely, me and the other 30-50% of Americans who still care.
The president and his admin are corrupt, pathetic, compromised buffoons. What a disgrace they've brought upon the United States and what a tragedy for Ukraine and free people.
Any republicans or conservative "influencers" who try to spin this as something good for the United States or the world are evil idiots.
As I've seen others point out, dismantling your own alliances, trade deals and soft power is normally only something you would do when you lose a war and someone makes you.
I initially felt it was extreme and conspiratorial to say that Trump is a puppet or agent of Russia. I mean, I still think so, but not as much as before.. or maybe the explanation is so simple that he thinks what he's doing is great strong arm tactics and will get what he wants this way. Some truly stupid bluffing or whatever. No matter the reason though, it is catastrophic.
What's happening a tragedy in so many ways.
I hate to go against the vibe and venting after something fucked up happens isn't wrong. But demonizing groups of people doesn't seem like a good idea. I mean this more in general, your post just happened to be the one I replied to. Grouping and judging people is something the left is understandably doing a lot of right now.
That doesn't seem like a good idea to me. I watched the video (the first half anyway) and rage is a completely reasonable response. Trump, Elon, say whatever you want about them as far as I'm concerned.
But judging general groups of people isn't a slippery slope, it's a cliff. And I think we should give ourselves time to come down from our rage, however justified, before we take to the streets.
I should say that "conservative influencers" from your post isn't a good example of what I'm talking about. IMO they're almost universally insincere in their "beliefs", it's all about attention and triggering strong emotions for personal gain. They're fair game.
I find this comment curious.
In this specific scenario, which group of people do you think are being vilified as a group ?
The other portion I find interesting is that, while the sentiment of “we shouldn’t judge and group people across the board” is true, it comes from the assumption of “because if you were in reversed positions you wouldn’t want someone to do that to you”. However, that is not currently what is happening here. The facts are that grifters and conmen and their pawns have overtaken our government and they are indeed grouping and judging people. This should demonstrate to you that they lack the empathy to consider the flip flopped position that is the basis of empathy and compassion.
So my question is, should you continue to show compassion and empathy to someone who continues to show you they are not doing the same, given the circumstances ?
I suppose you could continue to turn the other cheek and let the person slap you until you’re dead. At least you died on the moral high ground.
I appreciate you posting a contrarian viewpoint ! And I also agree that allowing our reactive feelings to dissipate is healthy, so thank you for encouraging us to do so.
This is frustrating. I said twice in my post that I was not referring to this specific scenario.
Probably I assumed the larger scenario was obvious when I shouldn't have.
The sentiment I see expressed a few times in this thread and elsewhere in recent months (years really) is that Trump voters are racist, nazi scum or similar. When in reality Trump voters are a broad spectrum of people, largely ignorant in my view, but not fundamentally bad. Some are, some aren't, as with any large group.
The same applies to conservatives in general, Russians, Israelis and so on. It applies less to right wing influencers, but raging at them still achieves nothing save to add to the rage they've worked so hard to create.
Rage feels constructive at a time when people aren't sure what to do but it almost never is. Rage (and its parent emotion fear) is part of what got us here. More of it will not get us out.
There is no functional difference in the end result between "literal Nazi" and "single issue voter" as long as the ballots look the same.
I mean this is plain nonsense unless you constrain your time of evaluation to a single election.
Not really though. The Republicans have been courting bigots...well basically for their entire existence. It ebbed and flowed throughout the years, but almost the entirety of their platform is dedicated to maintaining or rolling back the status quo.
The turning point for the Republicans marching toward full fascism was with Newt Gingrich in the 90's. Before 1994, the Democrats controlled the House for 40 years. Gingrich coauthored "Contract with America," the 90s version of Project 2025. A lot of our ills today can be traced to that.
And, even more than that, is how Gingrich pioneered weaponizing government shutdowns to get their way.
As I've been saying for years now, Trump is merely the unhinged result of a decades long attack on Democracy. The 'point of no return' in my mind was 2015, when Moscow Mitch refused to bring a Supreme Court justice confirmation to the floor.
Let me clarify: there is very obviously a functional difference between someone who voted for Trump because of X and a literal nazi. I'm not talking about the party; just the voters.
The claim is just pure nonsense: if it were true there's no point in pursuing any sort of politics in the US at all.
Well no, I'm just saying it's always worthwhile to fight against Republicans, voters inclusive. At best, they will always be on the wrong side of justice and democracy so long as their core values remain as such. They might not be literal Nazis, but they certainly have been embracing of bigotry and suppression for well over 100 years.
As my teachers have told me time and again; Ignorance is not an excuse.
It doesn't matter if you didn't know you were breaking the law, you were still breaking the law. It doesn't matter if they didn't know Trump was a fascist and was going to do a bunch of fascist things, because they remained ignorant and naive....Project 2025 laid it all out after all. They still said "Yes, I want my party to be lead by a fascist."
And as they say: If you're at a dinner party with a Nazi and you don't kick them out; you're at a Nazi party.
I don’t disagree but I’m not sure what point you think I’m making that you’re responding to?
I don’t agree with most Republican policies either — I was just responding to the claim that there is no functional difference between any R voter and a literal nazi (or charitably between any R voter and the worst, most twisted parts of their platform).
If you think that’s true you mind as well give up now, because a majority of the country voted for that. But it’s obviously not true and the messaging battle continues.
Oh, it just means that the majority of the country is literal Nazis. Or at the very minimum: Are Nazi enablers cheering them on. Which is a distinction without a difference.
The Germans in 1930 mostly weren't Nazis either.
I'll often argue the same sentiment and in a similar way, but the other commenter has a point. We all hold 'judge not lest ye be judged' feelings and I'd hope that anybody making a point about the behavior of a certain group takes that into account. In fact, I'd expect them to add the caveat in any criticism to prove that they aren't unfairly generalizing.
That said, the subtext under the original criticism is certainly there.
The best time to take to the streets is when angry. You don't bottle up the anger, you paint it on the walls. If you conceal it,others won't feel it.
I've had this centerist friend who espouses about how lumping Republicans in a group and discriminating is wrong. I contend it is not for a few reasons:
You make so many assumptions here about what republicans are that, with respect, you aren't qualified to make. No one is, it's too large a group.
Rage against the systems, the capitalist market, legislative capture, misinformation campaigns, far right politicians and the money that supports them. Not against a group of human beings, many of which are afraid, poorly informed, financially insecure and are just listening to what the people around them are telling them (as an example). There are so many types of republican voters in addition to racists and so on.
This should be obvious!
I totally get what your saying and we probably shouldn't generalise a entire group of people but as the days go on its becoming clearer that a large portion of these people are willfully ignoring logic and what's right. These people should be jumping ship and bringing as many of the people who lack the education with them.
The situation is a lot more complex and the propaganda machine is a beast that's in full swing but the current government is so comically evil and inept and the antithesis of what most people want that it appears as if most Republicans actually want this.
I think that there are a lot of people who voted Republican and now have buyers remorse, or vote and don't pay attention after.
Those subgroups don't deserve the same level of criticism as the deliberate grifters. The idiocy, ignorance and laziness that brought them to vote for Trump a second time are worthy of their own kind of criticism, but like @Post_Below, I also have issues with the generalizing.
Dante wrote about different levels of hell for a reason ;). The garden variety ignoramus isn't Hitler and vice versa.
At the very least some people are gonna get a strong in told you so and some solid jibes for being absolute muppets
It’s simpler than that. It further entrenches Trump supporters on this issue because they can now use the excuse of “that Zelenskyy guy was so disrespectful to the president!”. While I’m certain that you’re correct that many of Trumps supporters view this as a display of strength, I also know for a fact my conservative family members will place blame on Zelenskyy purely for taking the bait and acting out.
They’ve somehow been warped into a memetic strain that values alignment with authority above all else.
Liberals don’t seem you have much of a common meme. We’ll need one.
The common liberal meme is "no you're not doing it right" and it needs to go away.
I see that as background noise. But there’s no signal above the noise, so it’s all noise. Add something useful and it should calm down.
I really do disagree.
Just in my time when growing up it was the religious right who spent 90% of their time telling me that what I did or wanted to do was wrong.
God knows the liberal's have jumped on the morality police train before, but usually have come down on the side of freedom of speech over supposed moral crisis.
These days, true or not, their image is "everything or nothing" in that you must support all of it completely and correctly, intent be damned, and those who waver get no voice. And it feels just like how the religious right criticized and preached.
Play a video game we don't like, use words we don't like, make jokes we don't like, etc then you're not one of us.
There is a large range from jerk making offensive jokes on 4chan and legit 100% KKK style racists (and yes the first can turn into the second) and yet the dominate position of the modern American left is they're the same thing and same level of hostility, and it's using the same absurd extremist moral panic arguments.
Someone somewhere doesn't like how you put things, so rather than say "ehhh this isn't clever and you might want to work on what you're doing" it's "how dare you, and you're gone, because someone somewhere might have taken issue with that".
They have literally gatekept their own party at a time when screaming that they need to win at any cost.
They are the same though. The alt-right is 100% born out of 4chan. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if they're joking....they're still assholes, the same way you'd call someone doing blackface for a Halloween costume an asshole. But somehow doing blackface on an anonymous forum is somehow seen as tolerable because they're shielded from the consequences.
Gamergate was a doxxing and harrasment campaign organized primarily on 4chan. Charlottesville was the attempt to coalesce the distributed and leaderless alt-right into a movement.
There are only varying degrees of racism, and anti-racism. There is no non-racism.
The KKK members are far less of a problem than the white moderates who complain about Affirmative action hurting white people. Because they are a staggeringly huge number.
This is the same kind of overgenalization that would be rightly called out on so much else.
There are plenty of people with bad taste in humor, poor decisions in life, and actively poor views who are still capable of showing empathy, being reasoned with, and caring about their fellow human beings. I have met them. They exist. This is, to me, not up for debate.
That's because yes I have met the alternative "would actually kill someone they don't think should be allowed to exist if given a chance" extremist and it is completely insane to me that you don't see how insulting and damaging your take is.
Yes there are alt right assholes in 4chan, yes that number is VASTLY higher today than it was, and I think a part of that is exactly this kind of shortsighted lack of empathy position that demonized the shit out of people who were just being fucking idiots.
It would be more accurate to say that a major part of gamergate was this. Again you are telling me my lived experience and thoughts and feelings are just not real, and it's mind boggling the certainty with which you say this. There were absolutely people, like me, like many of the people I knew, who were not on twitter or in those spheres, whos main engagement at the start with gamergate was "yeah surprise game reviews are just as shoddy as everything else".
Hardly being the first shitstorm to be covered with all sorts of slants and lousy views, but being massively low on just about anyone's list to bother looking into more, it was surprising to find that it didn't take long before "well yeah I think it's shit journalism" was "you're supporting death threats, and it was always about that and you're just hiding your hatred!".
I know literally no one who started with "yeah gaming journalism is shit and there's probably lousy crap going on there" and then stuck with "oh yeah this woman deserves everything the internet is doing to her" when they found out what it had become. Quite the opposite, in fact I know nobody in real life or even my extended circles who thinks any of that behavior was acceptable or condoned it once they became aware of it.
And hell I don't even like bothering to mention this experience because "uh well this was my experience with the thing, and I think there might be a lot of miscommunication because of a bunch of loud assholes", is apparently going to be met with
In fact it's sadly common for this to happen in sooo many other circumstances. I don't recall the Stephen Universe being completely hated because it's fans were WAY the fuck out of line, and it's hardly the only example (The SuperWhoLock community is infamous and god knows its all over anime fandoms).
Gamergate, like so many other things, feels like trying to draw lines in the sand that just aren't there. There's 100% legit assholes involved, but if your take is that anyone and everyone who ever supported a #gamergate hashtag is basically a 4chan klansmen i'm sorry but you're only making shit worse. The actual kind of racists you're worried about love this shit because it isolates people and makes them easier to prey on, and again, I've fucking watched it happen.
So yes, when you directly reference the lived experiences of people I've cared about, who no sane person would ever consider violent, dangerous, or honestly anything but hurt and alone at their worst, a racist, I see a group of people who are completely willing to push away allies.
For all the supposed message of community, inclusivity, and education, I have found these ideals to and behaviors from statements like yours to be the exact opposite. And the irony being it's almost always targeted at the same fucking people that the left supposedly wants to help? Worse, it comes at the cost of furthering your actual supposed goals.
In clutching your pearls at someone who can be reasoned with by starting at "look do you actually think people are less than you" and working from there, you're helping secure the victory of the people who's answer to that question is sincerely "yes and they should die or live like animals" because you've driven the ones who could be allies to sit on the sidelines and feel despised by everyone.
I want to point to a simple example that a 'moderate' friend shared.
I don't have time to break down the layers of sexism present there, but the fact it was shared by AntifemComics is a pretty big tell.
Gamer Gate initially started as a protest against Access Journalism. That by itself is a very fair target for questioning. And it still is a massive problem within games journalism. It was ultimately warped because the journalist in question happened to be female.
It was not misogynistic by design, although it was both easy to pile onto the misogynism as well as defend it.
No, it didn't. I highly reccomend Why are you so angry.
The tldr is that the "games journalism ethics" was always a thinly veiled cover for a harassment campaign against women. Some people (myself included) got caught up in some of that cover, which sadly helped legitimize and perpetuate the harassment campaign that rages to this day.
I only know the Zoe Quinn and Nathan Grayson part of things which I always thought was about access journalism.
I literally did not follow anything beyond that, so thanks for correcting me.
I have to wonder if my lack of sexism is what kept me out of GamerGate. It never struck a chord with me. I can recall just ignoring the whole thing and needing to look up what it was years later. And back then I was on Reddit all the time, so I had every chance to get familiar with it.
I'm sorry if my comment is not as productive as the others, but I honestly feel like you're overthinking your examples. If you were (subjunctive mood!) to hang out with bigots, should you really be surprised if people were to assume that you were also a bigot?
I'm sorry... I was there when gamergate blew up. It was misogynistic, it never wasn't. People following it were using it as an excuse to easily display their contempt of women and women in games. It was really plain to see their real problem was she was a woman and they got to dogpile on her. I mean it started cause a guy was feeling spurned by her (I think she cheated on him) and a way to get people to dogpile on her. It then spread to any one they saw as representing feminism (it was a great excuse to go after Anita Sarkinson).
Maybe you had privledge (as in you aren't a woman and can ignore a lot of the not so obvious shit) and didn't get to see what was already brewing to see how it was all in gamergate and it was harder to see it at first, but it never was about shitty journalism, that was just the excuse to thinly veil the misogyny.
I definitely hate the idea that we need to be offended on behalf of other people well before we even know how those people feel.
Still, I think if there was any kind of identity or drive beyond winning then that stuff wouldn't be so bad. People in-fight to establish what the new narrative is. But they're in-fighting over the most stupid bullshit. Give them something better to fight about and it'll get better.
I think you both are right. I practically never see Republican infighting in the US. There's disagreement about plenty of things but it seems to be very small things. Everyone is on the same page in every other regard. They are a totally unified whole in comparison to Democrats who look like they are just convenient allies sort of. Even as a minority who has been called a lot of slurs, I still think the "everything or nothing" point mentioned above is true. And as much as I hate to admit it, there is indeed too much morality police - not because I don't want people to change and stop calling me nonsense that I do not deserve, but because it harms the whole. There are for sure a lot of people on the fence who see it as the final straw and then they jump to the other side. Just one ad convinced like 1-2% of voters to go to Trump. At least, I think that that was the number? "Kamala supports taxpayer funded sex changes for prisoners" - I have no idea if it's actually true, but it worked.
Civil and human rights.. yes, but look what happened now. It pushed people to vote for something so contra to it. It's a moral/philosophical question and I don't have the answer, but it's detrimental to not just me and other minorities but now to literally everyone else as well because things like that ad won the election.
Just pointing out that "traditional values" and high minded "harm reduction" initiatives that toss every library book before 2008 still result in books being banned.
The right hates a just future, the left hates the contradictions of history - they're both extremists who can't manage the discomfort of nuance.
I would love for you to expand on that more. I've not really heard this criticism before.
Sure - it was my take on a podcast I listened to recently. The topic was on book burning - or less dramatically, the 'weeding' of library books in school libraries.
The discussion centered around how left and right deem books to be harmful with the right in Florida recklessly banning LGBTQ oriented books and a well intentioned school board in Ontario using a politically charged rubric for determining whether books were 'harmful' to basically erase anything subjective from before 2008.
Paul Wells is a longtime, respected Canadian journalist whose work is commissioned out of one of our major public universities. The interview was captivating and touches on the silly political convictions that crusaders on both sides fall victim to.
https://open.substack.com/pub/paulwells/p/ira-wells-on-book-banning?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=g1yqe
I will say, this is one of the first cases like this I've heard of.
Broadly speaking, banning of books is an anomoly on the center or the left in the USA. You might be able to find a tiny handful of liberal bans from locale to locale, but it is nowhere near on the order of scale that conservatives enact into full law every chance they get. Flordia banned on the order of 9,000 books in 2024, with the vast majority having gay or non-white main protagonists or prominent side characters. For contrast, the leftiest state, California, banned broad arbitrary book bans entirely. As did New Jersey.
You'll be able to stroll up to most any public library in America and get a copy of Mein Kampf. If not on the stacks itself, almost certainly via an ILL. A left that can't look at history wouldn't tolerate that much, would they?
By contrast, The 1619 Project was banned in numerous conservative areas.
Same, though I'm inclined to believe that it's because conservatives are bombastic and ruthless about their bans whereas, in this case, liberals frame bans using academic frameworks and high minded justification.
I'll have to look back for examples, but as recently as last year there were secondary ed institutions revising their relationship with teaching the classics -- works that (though controversial) are intended to broaden the mind. Under the guise of many being too Eurocentric, too rooted in the old world (ie: pre-2000s, that the rhetoric was deemed harmful and abandoned.
My education included courses that explored the classics (history of western thought, specifically), and frankly, I'd agree that they were focused on a specific canon to win the award for a broad education about 'thought'. That said, the move to internationalize the course material abandon the purpose of the course.
With inclusion as mandate, the course was no longer about western thought. In appealing to all, the original vision for the course was changed. All of this was done under the guise of progress (which in some ways it was - I love Sun Tzu), but failed to consider what the change did to the purpose of the course.
To me, this is a telling example of the left's approach to discarding politically misaligned learning materials.
I don't agree that changes to such courses fail to consider the change to the purpose of the course. The previous presupposition was that "Western thought" much like "Western civilization" was somehow worth holding above that of the rest of the world - nevermind how much western philosophers and authors and civilizations were inspired by others or how fuzzy the "West" is as a concept.
In creating western "canons" we took books that were often taught contemporarily and ossified them. Shakespeare is hilarious until it's being read aloud by 15 year olds unwillingly and untranslated. Chaucer is raunchy until sanitized by a public school teacher. Dickens makes cutting commentary on his time that is relevant to today if taught right. But relevant, and funny, and cutting too are hundreds of other books that are ignored because they weren't written by white straight British/American men. (See also philosophy by non-European men.)
I think the people reworking those classes are in fact aware, they're generally in possession of doctorates in the fields (and hopefully understand pedagogy) and while to an extent they're yes trying to avoid a public school classroom reading the N-word and hurting their peers by removing Huck Finn, change isn't a bad thing. And the canon is only the canon because some people decided it should be.
I can't speak for your specific class, and there are always outliers as we said, but as a rule whenever I see these changes they're absolutely considered and thoughtful. They might not be perfect but allowing changes lets you fix that rather than doubling down and reading the driest thing a 14/18 year old can imagine.
And changing the canon isn't banning books. Flat out the two are different.
Agree with most points, and maybe it's important that I clarify what's being considered 'classics', both in the class I was in and from what I've read about shifts in the academy. Less foundational literature, more foundational philosophy.
Gochberg's anthologies are some of the most widely used and include of everything from Plato and Aristotle to Mark Anthony, Aquinas, Kant, Smith, Marx, Woolfe etc. the words of foundational ancient, medieval and enlightenment thinkers that can be used to explore the boundaries of thought that informs western society, and through a historical lens.
https://www.amazon.com/Classics-Western-Thought-Renaissance-Reformation/dp/0155076833
It's a stitched together canon that's based around the value gained from different opinions. Some of it is objectionable, of course, but it's value comes from understanding the context within which each were written.
Removing content from undergraduate curriculums because of perceived harms is where the issue comes up.
I guess I don't see evidence that they were being changed "to avoid perceived harms" vs "intentionally broadening the philosophy being taught" especially at the collegiate level.
It's acknowledged that women philosophers are almost entirely excluded from the Western Canon for example. And the wiki has the example of Du Châtelet who though cited by Kant is never mentioned by Norton Introduction to Philosophy.
And that's just looking at gender. If the canon is in fact so flawed, why keep it unchanged? You only mentioned one woman, and I'm genuinely curious if you had to actively try to, not out of criticism of you but of how the canon makes us think. I'd struggle to come up with a non white male philosopher off the top of my head too (my classes were also 20 years ago)
But is it flawed?
It's a thing that probably doesn't deserve the title "History of western thought" thanks to all of the omission of racialized, poor and other gendered voices, but acknowledging that western history is full of (if not made up from) it's contradictions, what's wrong with teaching the canon with all of those things baked in? It's like the argument for contextualizing statues instead of tearing them down.
Our first Prime Minister was a total shithead, but nothing is learned by letting his head roll. Leave the statue, decorate it with the buckets of blood from his genocide, the regalia of a nation builder and the bottles of a high functioning alcoholic. Let it all stand.
Insofar as the course asked us to explore these inconsistencies, they did a good job. Sure, Saint Hildegarde Von Bingen made an appearance as a mystic in the middle ages, and Simone De Beauvoir and Hannah Arendt among others appeared in the 20th century, but I don't think that the purpose was representation. It was exploring the writings of the people that the West' considered it's most influential throughout 'the last two centuries.
As much as it was a way to learn about history and thought, it was also packaged as a breakdown of our collective psychology over the years -- blemishes, successes and everything in-between.
I'd advocate for a less holistic title for the field (classics, western thought assumes all are seen in it), but it exists as a canon for a reason. Undergraduates are free to dive into so many variations on so many subjects - why hammer this one into the ground?
As for evidence, I'm looking for what it was that I read. It may be one direct instance that's evolved out of a broad devaluation of the humanities and social sciences, but I'll look nonetheless.
But what is that reason other than the repetition and compounding of the sampling errors over time? Are they the most influential at this point only because they've been in the canon when others were excluded? Did others make those points first and should be credited for them?
Canon isn't sacred. There's nothing inherently wrong with teaching it, but neither is there anything inherently wrong with it being altered, especially to better teach the topic. Which again is generally the goal of people looking to revamp a course.
Canon isn't sacred, but I think it's simplistic at best to assume that what was learned and engaged with was not worthwhile.
We could call it something else -- something more specific to the writers and their histories than "classics" -- but why turn over an anthology whose impact on countless people was both real and important?
To me, it's iconoclastic in the name of progressivism. The baby thrown out with the bathwater, at a moment when there are plenty of bathtubs to go around.
I don't think it all must be thrown out, I just think no work is too previous to be reconsidered, even if it makes some people feel good. If you're teaching BritLit in high school, you're probably starting with Beowulf, Chaucer, Shakespeare... But you don't have to, if the historical work isn't the focus. You could start more modern and work backwards, or move out of middle and old English quickly into modern English and focus on different authors. Theyre different classes that way but they're not inherently bad. (And what makes some folks feel "good" isn't the same for others. Sometimes that's because it's 40+ years later, sometimes it's because in high school, some white kids think saying the n-word is a rare opportunity, so Huck Finn makes your black students feel like shit and they shut down.)
There are only so many bathtubs, so many professors, classes, etc. And so many works excluded from one that's not inherently better than anyone else, it just happens to be interesting to you. And it's great that they're meaningful to you, for example, but if you'd been taught something else those works might be meaningful to you.
Professors that develop courses are thinking about what the goals of the course are, and are the materials being taught achieving that goal. It makes sense that they'll reconsider whether "Western Canon" is the goal they want to achieve and whether the current "canon" is accurate.
I'm not saying what books should or shouldn't be included, I don't teach philosophy or literature, or history, but I've attended a number of those classes and frankly the most interesting history class I ever took was about the Eastern Roman Empire, because it was different and not the same rehash over and over. My two Western civ classes were the same history I'd learned in high school... Over and over. I'd read multiple Shakespeare plays in school before going college and one book by a black person, it was Beloved, and I was not prepared to understand that work by the education I'd had at the time. I took 3 philosophy classes in college and the success of them was how quickly they went away from just telling me what the canon thought about things.
I'm really not iconoclastic. I'm saying add more diverse idols. I'm in favor of yeeting many bathtubs, babies, bathwater and all. You can't teach all the works in the world, and there's zero evidence to me that there is a list of 10, 20, 132, or whatever "best works" in these fields. I'll leave the edit up to the professors wanting to teach that material, whose field this is, and who have read far beyond the same white dudes that make up so much of the standard "western" canon and can make those decisions far better than myself and other non-experts.
Once again though, none of this is comparable to the nationwide book bans.
It's weird to me to compare an isolated outlier with a nationwide trend as if they're either motivated by the same goals or are in anyway equivalent in magnitude.
It's a long walk to get to both sides being bad, IMO.
Not bad, absolutely. The right is rocking some very hairy rationale and has been for decades.
That said, both have their outliers, and since they're both obsessed with purity test logic on some level, it's important for discerning minds to call bullshit while supporting important aspects of the cause.
Sure they both have outliers, but some book bans are happening across the US in multiple states. Many trans folks believe that next steps will be making sharing trans literature illegal (and they're not overreacting IMO). Even just what is occurring now isn't comparable to the actions of a couple of school districts, in a different country, with motivations of inclusion, however misplaced.
Even here you said they both have outliers, but what are the non-outlier leftists doing that's a problem? Because the non-outlier rightwing are absolutely banning books. That's why I think the substack you linked is engaged in disingenuous comparisons of the two.
Honestly I am betting Trump and ilk planned the blowup and this was never in good faith in the first place.
What the fuck?
The subtext was "this is your opportunity to be seen kissing the ring. Just let Putin know I own you and I won't feed you to him immediately".
He likes to throw those lines in when he's made a fool of himself. Like when the Maine governor said she'll follow laws and not executive orders. Trump said "I'll see you in court" and "That'll be an easy one". He knows Fox will edit down the interaction to have the best possible spin, so he gets in the last words with something they can run with.
I've been bullied, which started by two of my 'friends', and it's one of the reasons I developed complex PTSD. Needless to say, this whole shitshow brought up some really bad memories for me.
Honestly, I think Zelensky did far better than most of us could handle this situation. He has been carrying his entire country through a bloody war for years now. I really can't imagine the toll that must take. The fact that he tried to be respectful despite all the previous actions of Trump, and continued to do so until it broke, is probably more impressive than most people realize.
All I heard when Vance was claiming that Zelensky wasn't grateful enough was a not so veiled, "Bow and kiss the ring! Kneel and grovel before the king, servant!"
I can't believe the level of narcissism. Its the same thing when Trump signs his executive orders in the Oval Office. The orders themselves are worrisome, but its having his subjects stand there and fawn all over him with ridiculous, excessive flattery that just boggles my brain. Is this really happening or is this a Saturday Night Live sketch, I can't tell anymore?
For the record, as a Canadian, the backlash against his ridiculous comments about Canada becoming the 51st state have highly offended my fellow Canadians. There is a very strong and growing backlash against all American goods, services and especially tourist spending in the US.
I'm shocked at how Trump ever made it this far in politics and now I'm quite worried for the US as well. He's making enemies out of friends and he's destroying America's reputation on the world stage. Who the hell can get his outrageous ego under control? Even Putin seems like a rational leader in comparison.
I liked Vance in the vice presidential debate, but after seeing how aggressively condescending he was to Zelensky, I believe I have misjudged his character from that single well-rehearsed performance.
Zelensky said nothing inaccurate, irrational, or offensive. I have the same question he has. How can anyone trust a truce with Putin? Without a guarantor willing to draw a line in the sand and go to war for Ukraine if the agreement is broken, I don’t see how a ceasefire will be helpful.
IMO ending Putin’s war does involve managing his ego strategically, but that’s completely different from appeasement. He has to be allowed to “win” but also lose, where continued aggression will exact a price higher than he’d be willing to pay. If nobody is going to make Putin pay that price, then letting him “win” is letting him… win. And letting him actually win will encourage other wannabe conquerors to begin making moves.
Anders Puck Nielsen had a great video about this. I tried to find it but can't - maybe someone else can. It's basically what you said though. They have to lose in a specific way or it will be a loss for both sides. The gist of it was that losing big will be catastrophic for both Russia and the rest of Europe because their country may spiral out of control,
To my eyes, it struck me that every proper opportunity Zelenskyy had to speak, he remained very calm and gave very smart, measured statements. It felt as if Trump's and Vance's increasing loudness later during the meeting was to simply crowd Zelenskyy out of further opportunities to speak and retain their version of the narrative.
Better put: What have they been promised? What will they lose when Putin inevitably screws them?
Trump won't be screwed over; he won't live long enough to be. It will be Americans and America's allies.
Probably right.
Because probably the only option, after Putin violates whatever deal was negotiated, is sending US troops in to Ukraine. Not even GOP warhawks will go for that. After crapping on NATO and the EU, Trump can't bring them in. Trump and Vance have no answer, and Trump is in this only because he saw an opportunity to get Ukrainian minerals, leveraging whatever relationship he thinks he has with Putin.
If any member of congress does not rebuke Trump and Vance's behavior today, they are too far gone. Shameful, embarrassing, pitiful.
I'm not holding my breath.
Watching Vance try to lecture Zelenksy about propaganda made my blood boil.
I haven't as much as lightly slapped anyone since I was a child, but even I had this feeling that I wanted to do that - or at least laugh and ridicule or stand up and leave. It's a low bar to set, I know, but honestly I admire him for taking these punches and just sitting still and remaining as calm as anyone possibly could in the face of such grave offenses to himself and his entire country and people.
I am simply speechless. NATO is dead, it's time for Europe to defend itself.
Spineless behavior. Couldn't tolerate a single word before throwing a tantrum like a child while playing with the lives of millions. I've had more constructive disagreements with my two year old.
Fucking disgraceful if this is what a presidency amounts to.
I'm appaled at the speed everything is collapsing.
Slowly, then all at once.
What's worse is that I'm not sure if we're at the all at once part yet.
Whenever I look at what Trump, Musk and Vance are doing I'm reminded of the last conversation Kaiser Wilhelm II had with Otto von Bismarck:
https://www.bismarck-biografie.de/en/quellen/politische-kommunikation/862-gespraech-mit-kaiser-wilhelm-ii-1897
It's like... Yeah, they've build up this alliance to seize power. And now they're waving it around carelessly, with no real long term plans, only acting in their own interest. And that alliance of supporters is all but guaranteed to come crashing down.
And then life will suddendly be very different for them.
I’m still most worried about Trump causing another pandemic. The US is going to lose its place in the globe as the #1 superpower. But I really really don’t want a human transmissible bird flu or something incubating in Africa.
The full unedited 11 minutes can be found here https://youtu.be/uqOOOR7Kr-s
Its weird how homogeneous the comments on that video are. I dont often see a comment section so consistently repeating the same take. "Wow, such transparency, this is what America needs to see, the transparency is really refreshing, these conversations usually take place behind closed doors but the transparency here is incredible, Forbes is doing Gods work vis-a-vis transparency."
Hmmm... There sure are a lot of usernames with a string of numbers after them in that comments section.
Top comment with 34k votes by teufelhunden3094, and replies to it from carld2796, 4589-hl, yasin2011, WarrenGdog28, hanaaboya5835, etc.
With other top ranked top-level comments by streamofconsciousness5826, AmericaFirst20000, JFirn86Q, Oxamyt3109, AC-ed1jz, floris44, trepan4944, rawradinosaur56, ChristinaMyers-c9e, TomasGraf-rr6co, truthseeker4491, tiniestavenger6329, januszokonato4633, moggers51, aswinasok6039, RamK-bd7sg, ibrahimjaved5574, undersound33, epluribusunum8597, len6482, willstf92, Jo-k8g, NB-ky5ol, diegomora7608, Pandita221, bitcoinyoda8321, stichclark3980.
And the same username pattern just keeps going like that, page after page. Totally not suspicious at all! /s
Methinks the Russian troll farms and Republican bots are out in force for this one.
Social engineering by sock puppets. That indeed is exactly what you're seeing in the comments.
Fortunately right now its fairly obvious to anyone with a few years of online experience, a critical eye and a healthy dose of skepticism. I do wonder what happens in a few years when AI is even better and the usernames aren't so obvious.
Unfortunately it's the toupee fallacy to think it is obvious-- you notice the bad ones.
Better usernames are trivial and AI is already at a point it is often preferred to student's writings in colleges. When that fails, on the cheap you can get a Floridian to put on a stunt with a cage and Hillary in a prison uniform, or Tim Pool and other influencers to push a foreign agenda.
We're all susceptible, and by far the thing the makes us vulnerable to misinformation (recent meta-analysis) is whether we've seen a claim before.
YouTube has had a really bad bot problem for a while now. Most people have seen the WhatsApp scam posters that impersonate big channels, but another flavor that’s far more prolific are those that shill for specific, named financial advisors. They show up in the comments on just about any video having to do with money — stocks, bonds, saving, whatever. They follow a handful of formulas and are pretty convincing if you haven’t seen them in enough comment sections to be able to pattern match.
Yeah, the comments section on YouTube is not exactly a reliable space to find good-faith discourse.
I haven't seen anyone talk about this, but I'm pretty certain that Youtube implemented a system to push positive comments to the top a little while back. You're likely to see homogeneity in top-level comments no matter what video you're looking at, at least in terms of overall positive sentiment.
While I agree with the sentiment, it's nice to see this without some anchor hyping this up and "breaking news" banners everywhere, yes the comments are mostly bots.
Youtube comments tend to always be pro whatever video they are under. I'm not sure how they do it, simple moderating cannot be enough.
It was literally the first thing he said, you buffoon.
Vance had that queued up and didn't even pay attention to anything else. He just needed to say it cause he thought it would be a good soundbyte.
Zelensky statement after leaving:
Russian state media was present at the Oval Office, removed:
Apologies for this post maybe not being as on topic as it should be for such a serious news peice.
My partner and I have been watching a lot of Married at First Sight recently and watching this video gave me real vibes of some of the most narcissistic, emotionally unavailable people on the show.
It's how defensive Trump and his VP are to every statement and how they have to control the conversation or they get upset.
Like, a good relationship (romantic or otherwise) has both parties listen to each other and try to compromise. This is just bullying here and it's not fun to watch.
It's shocking the times we live in. We are going to study this in years to come. The effects of propaganda are so real on the Internet.
The strategy is known as DARVO: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. It's not necessarily a conscious strategy, but it's a pattern abusive relationships of all stripes tend to follow.
Wise words of warning from the leader of the US, which is located in...wait, shit - The World!
His joke at the end to deflate the tension also serves as a bit of a reminder that these guys are performing. And their blustering is just part of the act. It's hard to know if Trump wants more resources out of the deal or if he does not want a deal (for whatever Russia-related reason) and the resources (or 'disrespect') are just an excuse not to make one.
I feel bad for Zelenskyy (and the Ukrainian people) for having to work with this guy.
You may enjoy this interview about what President Trump may have learned from American professional wrestling.
Yeeeup. This is where things are going to get ugly and a lot of the onus will either be put on Europe, or the US will just functionally align itself with Russia.
Vance; "I'll respond to this, so look-"
And from that moment it all went south real fast
I watched the full video. I won’t condone Vance‘s words and attitude toward Zelensky, he’s known to not care about the country at all, but very stupid on Zelensky‘s part. Why he took Vance’s bait I can’t understand and to be completely fair to the situation, Zelensky really shouldn’t have been speaking that way in a televised meeting in the first place. Bad form on the part of all three of them, all Zelensky had to do was play nice and sign the minerals deal - tough for me to swallow when his country‘s life is on the line
Having Vance there turned a one-on-one disagreement into a two-on-one dogpile. I don't think Vance's baiting was an accident -- I think that was entirely the point.
The "deal" was nonsense to begin with. Zelenskyy arrived hoping to convince Trump that a deal requires the exchange of things of value. But if Trump couldn't offer a security guarantee, then he might as well have been offering nothing. And in exchange for this nothing, the US would acquire some fraction of Ukraine's mineral wealth.
Clearly Trump never intended there to be an agreement, merely a dictation from bully to victim. Trump's continued references about Zelenskyy "not having the cards" gave the game away -- he doesn't care about Ukraine, only about its resources.
If this is directed at me, I don't disagree and don't see how anything in my comment shows otherwise. As I said, Vance's views and disregard for Ukraine are very well known - him trying to bait Zelenskyy, which is obvious that it was deliberately done, is no surprise. What is surprising is that Zelenskyy as a head of state would not be prepared for this and walk right into that trap.
I don't want to spend too much time talking about the Minerals Deal because I'm not sure how much I personally support it or not but I don't think it's fair to say that it offered Ukraine nothing. Investment by US firms would provide a lot of revenues to the Ukrainian state and having the bulk of those revenues directed towards rebuilding the country's infrastructure is not what I would term a raw deal. Sure, there were no explicit security guarantees given and I can definitely understand Ukraine's concerns there but you can't ignore the reality of the implicit security guarantees that such a deal would provide. The last fifty years have shown us how entangling economic interests provides stability and peace, here we could have seen it at work on a small scale. And, as much as it shames me to say it, we all know how much the US loves to adventure overseas when it comes to protecting American business interests.
While I don't think this type of international relations behooves the US and is not in my opinion morally completely morally sound, I can understand Trump's basis for the Minerals Deal. He's essentially saying that Ukraine has already received a lot of help for free, if you want to keep receiving help then you need to give us something for it. That logic is unfortunately sound and I can see how a lot of Trump's supporters could get behind it.
I think that this ignores the context. Zelenskyy was a fool to start lecturing the two top government officials of his biggest (by far) benefactor. Even Biden famously had serious troubles at times with Zelenskyy, who he felt was being too ungrateful and/or outspoken about US support, but at least he had the decency to keep it off camera. Trump's "not having the cards" statements were in reference to Zelenskyy's lecturing, the Ukrainian president has no position to tell the US how it is when his country is already losing the war even with US support. As I said, bad form on the part of all three of them but even when I don't agree with how it's being said both Trump and Zelenskyy had fair points to make.
Yes you can. I wouldn't trust an explicit guarantee from Trump, let alone an unspoken one where Trump could plausibly claim he never intended to offer security promises in the first place.
When did Zelenskyy start lecturing? From what I saw he pushed back on the notion that Ukraine started, and that there could be peace without security guarantees, and then Vance started lecturing about diplomacy? Zelenskyy was in an impossible position where he either had to accept the damaging false premises being laid out by the other two, or to hold his ground.
I disagree with your characterization of Trump's intentions. Trump is telling Zelenskyy, both in actions and words, I do not understand why we should help you. I do not understand what we gain from this arrangement. It's the reason there's even a mineral deal, which is potentially worth hundreds of billions of dollars -- far more than the US has actually spent in assistance to Ukraine. Trump only sees Ukraine as an economic asset. He fundamentally does not care about (or probably even understand) its larger geopolitical history. Trump has no interest in doing the right thing because it is the right thing; his concerns are purely transactional.
Hence the "not having the cards" comment. Trump is not offering the fair market value of the aid. Rather, he's offering a shakedown: Pay-up or I'll let your country perish. But if only money talks, then how can anyone trust Trump to care about who governs the land? Russia will gladly give away Ukraine's mineral rights at a discount.
As for speculating about Zelenskyy should have done, I think the Atlantic put it best:
And the last month (and Trump's first term before that) showed us that implicit guarantees, like those famous "checks and balances", don't mean anything at all.
The minerals deal is not a real deal and Zelensky has absolutely no reason to trust people who talk to him like that to follow through on their end of it.
Europe needs to sack up and defend Ukraine on its own. America is lost.
I've read your other reply below but I'm responding to this top level comment.
I watched the entire hour long video I found on YouTube.
Zelensky showed a lot of restraint, and on occasion stood his ground and clarified some things that the Trump regime has cast doubt upon, like whether Putin was the aggressor. He's also sticking up for his people knowing that these negotiations that the Trump regime and Putin are having without him likely involve talks of Ukraine ceding territory to Russia, which Trump has mentioned in the past. He's making his case on the world stage and countering their narrative to their face, as he should.
Wild that you are trying pin the collapse of these negotiations on Zelensky. The White House canceled them because Trump is a soft ass wimp. Blame the bullies. Not the victim.
Zelensy should not have to act scraping and servile to Trump's dirtied diaper ass for support. Europe needs to step up, because they're on Putin's roadmap of expansion. And no deal should be made that cedes territory until there is no chance of winning. Right now, hope is not lost. Either way, fuck Putin and fuck Trump.
A unified Europe will be a welcome sight. If they can fight off their own rightward turn.
As a European, I want Europe to unify and be strong. That said, Europe simply cannot offer what the US had been offering militarily. Their intelligence network is better than ours. We cannot replace their assistance pinpointing targets on the ground. We cannot provide the munitions the Ukrainians need in the volume they need them. We don't have the massive logistical equipment and, crucially, expertise, to manage a force projection of the kind needed. These things are widely acknowledged by Euro leaders.
There's no doubt that Europe has been lazily relying on the US for its defensive shield for way too long. I think it's also been fashionable to mock the US for its exorbitant military spending ... while also calling on them to put it into use when it's needed (Libya 2011, for example).
I think the "minerals deal" is little more than extortion, but it seems that Ukraine is over a barrel here. Europe has committed more total value to Ukraine, sure, but the "cream" of the military assistance has come from the US.
Adjusted for purchasing power parity, Russia spends more on its military than all the EU countries put together (source).
I hate it, it sickens me, but our European leaders have given themselves a very poor platform to negotiate from.
This is one of the irritating things about online discourse with regard to the US's military spending.
It's commonly viewed as a complete waste which only exists to perpetuate the military industrial complex and keep defense contractors rich. While there is certainly plenty of that, the common framing in left leaning spaces online is that the US is too obsessed with military spending, and if we just cut that in half or down to a quarter what it is now, we could have socialized healthcare and large social safety nets just like the Netherlands and we wouldn't even have to pay higher taxes!
The reality is that US military spending is what keeps, and has enabled the world order to exist as it does. That spending enables the Netherlands and other Western European countries to have the social services they do because they don't feel that they have to spend much on defense, since it's within the US's best interests to protect the world order.
The US can't significantly slash military spending, or the western hegemony will start gradually losing power. The EU has been a strong ally for the US precisely because it mostly supports the US's vision of the world, where the US is the planet's military powerhouse and gets to enforce order and our interests where we see fit. One cannot exist without the other though. If the Trump admin continues down this road of distancing us from the EU, Europe will need to significantly increase military spending, which means either higher taxes, or reduced social benefits.
Personally I don't see how this benefits the US at all, the main result will just be an increasingly influential China as the EU seeks new allies and trading partners, but I do see it as sort of a positive that the citizens of the EU finally see what the American end of this arrangement entails.
It sucks to be poor in the US because of about a thousand different reasons, but subsidizing Europe's security and acting as the defecto sheriff of the world is a large one of those. I don't think it will not suck to be poor under Trump, and I don't think that poor people are even really human to him, but that doesn't change the fact that our military obligations are a large factor in why our society doesn't provide for it's people in the same way as many western European ones.
It's such a silly argument.
NATO without the US has a larger standing army than the US alone.
I will not deny Europe did not spend enough for defense. But to elevate the US into being enablers of health care is just silly. We can provide just as much health care at 1,5% as we can at 2% or 3%. Poland is currently doing it at 5%. The argument is rubbish. I've been hearing it for years and it's just as stupid now as it is then as it significantly undermines what soft power the US gained from spending this much on defense. Significantly. As if they did it from the good of their heart.
It also conveniently ignores everywhere else in the world where this is irrelevant and they also have health care.
Truth of the matter is that the US doesn't want to have a functioning health care system regardless of defense expenditure.
I didn't say the US didn't benefit from the arrangement. I said the opposite. I would say the US benefits more than Europe does in fact, it's one of the main reasons we've been able to maintain the largest economy in the world for 75 years. We have 35,000 troops in Germany alone. That's over 15% the size of the entire German military. More importantly, NATO has the backing of by far the most widespread nuclear payload delivery system in the world, which NATO doesn't come close to the capabilities of without the US. That deterrence is largely what's kept wealthy nations from going to war with each other. Again, the US benefits hugely from this as it lets us effectively dictate our will globally, but that doesn't mean Europe hasn't also benefitted. Budgets are a zero sum game after all, and defense is massively expensive. If you get much of it subsidized by someone else, that frees you up to do other things without having to raise taxes that will slow your economy, or create or borrow money which will increase inflation.
I agree that the US could have socialized healthcare if we wanted to, even with defense spending, but having to do that after you're spending almost a trillion dollars every year on defense while carrying $36 trillion of national debt (largely caused by massive defense spending) is a lot less politically palatable.
Please tell me if you think this makes sense, I’m just spitballing.
Post war Europe and US traded security guarantees for economic access and global hegemony, pseudo imperialism. So we can keep our republic monicker. Now that the economic growth is not as high, we are upending the world order? Who gains?
Wow very cool love living here