Yes, what's good for the goose is good for the gander after all or - in Dutch - 'Gelijke monniken, gelijke kappen'.
Say, mr. complain-about people calling for comment equity (everybody can play this game), I'd be interested to hear whether you agree or disagree with what I wrote, both here as well as the previous times you complained. Instead of going ad-hominem the discourse here would be improved by trying to get to the core problem, that what lies behind the smouldering fires in western politics. That core problem is the intense polarisation which pits the 'good' side against the 'bad' one - where 'good' and 'bad' depend on which side you're on - instead of the realisation that we're mostly on 'our' side and might want to settle these petty disputes so we stand a chance of first of all standing at all instead of lying down and second standing our ground here in 'the West'.
if you want to reframe the debate from good vs. bad to west vs. invaders, you might have first to recognize that the current US administration is compromised by Russia, if not completely owned
and who more than Russia wants to abolish identity politics?
Let's see where the current negotiations around the ceasefire in Ukraine lead to.
What do you think will be the outcome and, maybe even more important, what do you hope will be the outcome? I'll give you mine: I hope the talks lead to a ceasefire which will lead to an end to the conflict. I think Russia will keep control over the Krim peninsula and the Donbass region. I can more or less support the former given that the population of that area seems to largely support it and the area used to be part of Russia until Khrushchev added it to Ukraine in the 50's, I am less enthusiastic about the latter but I do not see how the conflict can be resolved at this moment without this compromise. One solution would be to have a referendum in the area but it will be hard if not impossible for such a referendum to take place without it being influenced by either parties in the conflict. I also suspect that the outcome of such a referendum would be a very close call even without undue influence given that this region was also (next to the Krim peninsula) the least enthusiastic when a referendum was held to decide whether Ukraine should declare independency from the Soviet Union [1].
Here's some background to chew on while you consider your answer:
I notice that you did not answer my question on where you stand on these subjects. Please do so instead of posting yet another snarky comment, it would be interesting to know and improve the discourse on this site.
With what exactly? In the course of our 'discussion' - which consisted of me attempting to discuss while having ad-hominems and snark thrown at me by you - a few questions arose, namely:
> you were "telling the left to become more like the lunatic right in order to win the elections".
Well, no, that is not what I said as will be understood by anyone who does not let his emotions take over when confronted with someone with a dissenting voice. Here's what I said:
I hope the "democratic" party burns down to ashes and that a new Democratic party will arise from those ashes, one which does not need to be put between quotes and which deserves the capital D. The same has happened with the Republican party which currently stands more united and stronger than they've been in a long time. While this may be good for them it is not good for the USA to have one of the two parties be in disarray for an extended period, the system is built around having the two main parties hold each other in check. The current "democratic" party has shown it does not have the capability to put up any believable sort of opposition against the Republicans which runs the risk of those Republicans getting delusions of grandeur. They need to be kept in check just like the "democratic" party needed to be - and was as a result of the last elections - kept in check.
So, Democrats, pick up your pitchforks and torches and burn the whole thing down so that something better may arise, preferably before 2028. Trump did the same to the Republican party, now it is your turn. Ditch the identity politics, get rid of the looney lefties, listen to your (potential) voters - and by that I do not mean only those with funny coloured hair in the humanities departments but especially those out in the boonies, those who never went to college - and please stop the absurd reductio-ad-Hitlerum and demonisation of anyone who dares to voice an opinion outside of what is tolerated in the hallowed halls of Harvard, Yale and Princeton.
Read this again and you'll notice I do not call for the "democratic" party to become more like the lunatic right - you seem to have been triggered by my use of the term looney lefties here - but instead call for the party to stop focusing on their extreme fringe so they can function as effective opposition to the currently fairly united Republican party. They don't need to become more like the Republicans in policy but in appeal to the electorate and they'll only accomplish that by moving their public focus (which is different from their internal focus, another problem they need to solve) away from the divisive identity politics and fringe interests. They need to get over [their] preening and [their] moral superiority [1] as James Carville pointed out not that long ago, climb down that rickety ivory tower they built themselves and start focusing on reality, stop larping revolutionaries. That way they might stop bleeding people towards the Republican party - notice that a sizeable fraction of the current top in that party used to be "democrats" (including the orange man himself) while the "democratic" party pulled in Liz Cheney and her ilk - and start gaining mass appeal. While that term might sound "dirty" to the academic fringe with diverse hair colours it is essential to keep the other side in check and that is what I am calling for.
Now to my other question: What do you think will be the outcome and, maybe even more important, what do you hope will be the outcome with regard to the negotiations around the war in Ukraine. You did not answer this question either but gave a snarky comment about me not being 'as compromised as the administration'. I'm still interested in hearing your take on this, do you think it is time for Realpolitik or should this proxy war continue? If the former, how? If the latter, why?
Did you read what I wrote there? Just in case you did not I'll quote it with emphasis on the important parts:
"One of the differences between this site and the otherwise comparable Reddit is that politics is supposed to be mostly off-limits here where it can run wild on the former site. Had the election been won by 'the correct candidate' (according to the same vocal minority) I suspect that similar griping from the opposing side would have been slammed down hard as being off-topic so my question is: what is different this time around? Why is politics suddenly a relevant topic here?"
It is the rules for thee but not for (D) which I reacted to there. Either all politics are off-limits or none are. Given that political discussions seem to be the new thing here the latter seems to be the case.
dictator, in modern political systems, a single person who possesses absolute political power within a country or territory or a member of a small group that exercises such power. The term comes from the Latin title dictator, which in the Roman Republic designated a temporary magistrate who was granted extraordinary powers in order to deal with state crises. Modern dictators, however, resemble ancient tyrants rather than ancient dictators. (from Britannica [1])
In some ways this fits the election of Donald Trump - he was designated as a temporary magistrate who was granted extraordinary powers in order to deal with state crises - but in most ways it does not. Trump does not possess absolute power nor is a member of a small group which possesses such power as the plethora of court cases blocking his decisions make clear. The real important bit here is this:
> apparently 77M Americans
That is the majority of the voting public which you're lambasting for making the wrong decision. Here's a bit more on that subject, read it well:
Don't agree with the majority and think they should listen to you or your group instead? There are names for such forms of government as well, names which are generally portrayed as being opposites of the two I pointed at earlier.
Que eu fui lá fora e vi dois sóis num dia
E a vida que ardia sem explicação
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