Cory1848

You wrote, “Ukrainian land and people are not worth the life of one NATO soldier.” You also wrote, “Yes, if necessary,” to the question “I assume you also want to let Russia keep the tens of thousands of Ukrainian children it kidnapped as well.” Saying that it’s not your problem doesn’t mask the fact that you’re devaluing a whole people. Before the abolition of slavery in the US, the US government set the value of an African American at three-fifths that of a white person. I don’t know who your “one NATO soldier” is, but he must be some kind of superman. The kind of crass appeasement you are advocating has never worked, regardless of the kind of weaponry in the stockpile. As someone else said, get your head out of the sand.

Your posts here are the funniest things I've read all day -- stop, you're killing me!

A government is not a business. The latter focuses on the profit motive, the former on its civic responsibility. Sure, a government needs to be able to manage a budget, but their respective "mission statements" couldn't be more different.

OK, so that’s where you’re coming from. A Ukrainian is less than human. How about this: we give the Ukrainians everything they need to chase the Russians off their soil, let Putin be hounded from office for his stupidity and failure, and let the chips fall where they may. I think, following this strategy, the chips may fall more favorably all around.

False equivalence. The current system in Russia, an increasingly tyrannical dictatorship, is not like the system in Ukraine, which may be corrupt but in the “normal” ways (the United States is deeply corrupt and undemocratic, with all that money in politics). What I find tiresome about so many Russian apologists is that they entirely discount what the Ukrainians themselves want. If Ukrainians wanted to be like Russians, they would have rolled over. What the hell do you think they’re fighting so hard for? They have seen relative prosperity in their neighbors like Romania and Poland who have joined Western institutions, and that’s what they want for themselves. And why shouldn’t they. It’s like the old joke. After the war, officials were delineating the new border between Poland and Russia, and the initial survey had the border running straight through the middle of a farm belonging to an old woman. Not wanting to split the woman’s property between two countries, the officials decided to ask her which country she would like to belong to. “I think I will choose Poland,” she said. “The Russian winters are so hard!”

No no, I meant that *my* suggestion that everyone around the world be allowed to cast actual ballots in US elections was a bit of a stretch (although a serious argument could be made for it!). Your comment that people around the world have a very big interest in the outcome of US elections is spot-on; I couldn't agree more.

Well, to the degree that high-level Russian leaders be allowed to cast legitimate ballots in US elections, along with all people of voting age in Sweden, Denmark, etc. But the original suggestion was obviously silly ...

Right. As I said, I expect there would be some resistance to the idea!

Absolutely. Sometimes I think the entire world should be allowed to vote in US elections, but I expect there would be some resistance to that ...

Stopping the fighting is indeed something to aim for, but it depends on where Ukraine would be made “smaller.” It ought to be up to the people who actually live in those currently Russian-occupied areas, but the Russians would never allow a fair referendum, so you’re back to square one. There may be some pockets in the far east of Ukraine where the residents would prefer to be in Russia; and Crimea is a case apart, having been transferred from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR only in 1954, apparently because Khrushchev had a soft spot for Ukraine. In the end, allowing an aggressor to get away with it, even partially, is almost always a mistake. And I don’t think anyone should care a whit whether Putin loses face; if this costs him his job (or more), that’s his own fault. It very much is the US’s job to come to the aid of European NATO, as per NATO treaty obligations. Given the profit-seeking nature of the US defense industry and its outright purchase of, I mean close ties to, Congress, the US is going to spend 3 percent of GDP on defense whether NATO is in a war or not. And you’re right, only about a third of other NATO countries are meeting the 2 percent minimum (they include all the front-line states). So that’s an issue for sure, but not enough of one for the US to renege on its own obligations.

That is a big difference, and I hope you're right, but I wouldn’t bet on it with the aggressor thinking he’s Peter the Great. Fresh off a victory in Ukraine after the US and EU grew tired of sending money, Putin might see some openings. The Suwałki Gap (a modern-day Danzig Corridor?) is 60 km wide; secure that and the Baltic States become vulnerable, and would the rest of NATO really come to their defense, with their civilian populations (read: voters) already tired of all this? Maybe this scenario sounds nuts, but it makes so much sense to just give the Ukrainians everything they need right now to end this thing.

No, it’s not a waste. The “big-picture payback” is stopping unprovoked aggression, and you’re right, the US isn’t giving enough, or the Europeans. Seriously, sending boatloads of money and arms to the Ukrainians and letting them do the fighting (and dying) is a bargain at this point. Ever hear of Munich, or Neville Chamberlain?

I wouldn’t dismiss Smith because he’s a stand-up comic (hell, so was Zelensky) or a libertarian (which is a long-standing political position, as extreme as I often find it). No, I dismiss Smith for allowing the likes of Nick Fuentes and Richard Spencer into his studio and giving them airtime; if he calls Fuentes a “fellow traveler,” I assume it was a friendly interview. For this, he is disgusting; he is stupid and wrong, and I would never waste time listening to his podcasts. Sorry. All sides *aren’t* worth listening to, and sometimes it’s not hard to make quick judgments.

My post was actually dripping with sarcasm. In all seriousness, it *is* important to know a little bit about someone like Fredrick Töben and the Adelaide Institute, but I have no intention of rooting out his documentary.

OK, I was curious and Googled “Judea Declares War on Germany.” Turns out it’s a documentary film by a gentleman named Fredrick Töben, founder of the Adelaide Institute in Australia who has a Wikipedia page that tells you all you need to know. Seriously, I had no idea, and I thank you very much for bringing this to my attention. It’s important to know these things.

Are you a woman? Do you have any idea what it's like to go out in public in a woman's skin? Didn't think so.

What really funny about this is Republicans getting all excited about prosecuting someone on gun charges, and not very serious ones. If it were absolutely anyone else, they’d crying about Second Amendment rights.

<sigh> I sometimes wonder why I fall into online arguments with complete strangers; at best, it’s useless. Cats are supposed to help reduce blood pressure, so at least I have a cat ...

If you want to call the Israeli settlements on the West Bank “genocide,” go for it. You wouldn’t be the first, the word has lost all real meaning anyway, and it’s a boring argument. What I object to is people using a word like “genocide” to equate what the Israelis are doing with what the Nazis did, in terms of actual magnitude of the crime. There’s another word for that.

Don’t be absurd. “Not holocaust numbers” indeed. There are several magnitudes of evil between what Nazi Germany did and what the Israelis have been doing. Nazi Germany, as a matter of state policy, rounded up six million civilians in the entirety of the territory they controlled and murdered them, simply based on the perceived “race” of the victims. I am in no way diminishing the crimes and excesses of the Israeli government in the occupied West Bank. What *you* are doing, however, is watering down the real meaning of words like “genocide” and “Nazi.”

Oh c’mon, now you’re just throwing stuff at the wall. Netanyahu is an actual criminal who needs to stay in power to stay out of jail and has aligned himself with religious zealots to do so (sound familiar?). Some earlier Israeli PMs negotiated with the Palestinian leadership. And the Palestinian Authority have not always been the easiest negotiating partners, and the leadership of Hamas in Gaza has been atrocious. Neighboring Arab countries have treated Palestinian refugees like political pawns, not allowing them to assimilate into their own societies (for how many generations now?) based on unrealistic promises of a “right of return.” Sure, and when is the Jewish refugee in Israel going to get his flat in Basra back again? There’s plenty of bad behavior all around. I’ll repeat myself: Those who focus exclusively on the *very real* crimes of the Israeli state while ignoring the *very real* crimes of, for instance, Israel’s neighbors, may have a world view that’s less than objective.

These are two entirely different issues. (1) Israel is violating the human rights of Palestinians in the West Bank. (2) Antisemitism has existed in the world for two millennia. I am NOT vilifying critics of Israel; I myself am a critic of Israel, particularly under Netanyahu, as are most of my friends in the US and elsewhere, many of whom happen to be Jewish. I AM vilifying those critics of Israel who criticize Israel obsessively and don’t care a hoot about violations of human rights in other parts of the world, as this MIGHT be an indication that their concern about Palestine is rooted in something other than an objective awareness of current events. This might sound a *little* complicated, but it’s really not if you think it through.

There are tons of people who are obsessively critical of Israel, who otherwise take little interest in world events and couldn’t find Tigray on a map. It may be “innocent” -- perhaps they have some personal connection in the region. It may be because they get their news from dubious sources and simply have a twisted, one-sided view of the world. Or it may be because they illogically hate Jewish people and obsess over crimes committed by the state of Israel as a way of justifying and reinforcing their hatred. I wouldn’t presume to judge a person, including people on this forum, without knowing where they’re coming from, but I do know several people personally who fall into the latter category above, and their obsessive focus on Israel clearly derives from antisemitism.

You may be overreacting with regard to the “downfall of the West”; there is indeed a widening wealth gap in the US and probably in other Western democracies as well (and I use the word “democracy” loosely), but calling out the “decimation” of the middle class might be a bit much. There’s some stress for sure, at least on the lower middle classes -- e.g., people working at big box stores in the US who are limited to part-time hours, meaning the corporation doesn’t need to provide worker benefits. Perversely, it’s these very same workers who continue to vote into office those politicians who are most likely to continue to provide favors to their corporate donors. But this doesn’t require blowing up the system; it requires much stricter regulation of capitalism, getting money out of politics, and other major tweaks. What else did you have in mind -- and remember what Churchill said: “Democracy is the worst form of government -- except for all the others that have been tried.” Assassinating a head of state of course is insane, no matter how much better the world might be without a Vladimir Putin in it, and nobody in a position of power in their right mind would consider it. I’m also not too concerned about “WWIII” (presumably, between Russia and NATO); neither side is about to attack the other directly. Then again, I never imagined that Putin would actually invade Ukraine, so what do I know ...

“One world government” sounds scary and dystopian, and one needs a system that accommodates human nature. (Communism might have sounded good on paper, but it fell apart when actual people tried to apply it.) Still, we need to move in some sort of collective direction, as more and more broad issues require global cooperation and response -- climate change, pandemics, international crime and terrorism, resource allocation, an integrating global economy. Without such cooperation, we will not survive as a species. Someone mentioned the EU, that it had effectively stopped warmaking among Europeans, and I think that’s a good model; why shouldn’t the EU (plus NATO, or some military alliance) grow, not only farther east but to North Africa, Latin America, East Asia? Maintaining a system of nation-states for local administration while developing a shared set of values, and a framework for global action? Not going to happen in our lifetimes, but it seems important to start thinking a little further ahead than next month ...