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Volkerball posted:We've seen large groups of tyrants in alliances before, but this has to be a high water mark when it comes to the percentage of dictatorships in the world that are aligned with one bloc. China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, etc etc. Dictatorships all over the place that have nothing else in common are cozying up now that the rules are getting more and more restrictive. So what? In a world where America is not the police, these nations don't have to be democratic. America is not capable of forcing them to acquiesce to our own system of government, and playing Global Hegemony Dickwaving Contest for a hundred years is not going to change that. If the world at large thinks that it is worth trying to fix the middle east, they better come up with a global plan that involves genuine good faith action from the free nations of the world in making the world better, because America taking charge and doing it by itself has caused a hundred problems for every one its fixed. Volkerball posted:At the same time, the democratic world is falling apart. The EU is fracturing, Trump has isolated the strongest democratic nation in the world from all the others, and everyone is dealing with growing right wing extremist movements. The fact is that right now we live in a global environment in which fascism is trending up, and democracy is trending down, which obviously could have very bad long term implications if nothing changes. America, the country that elected Donald Trump and is sliding quickly into internal discontent, right wing extremism, and possibly straight up fascism is the one we want trying to run the world and put an end to war and genocide in the most violent and incompetent ways possible?
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Feb 9, 2018 15:41
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OK who's your great alternative then. Russia?
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Feb 9, 2018 16:36
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A Bag of Milk posted:The actual day to day lives of people in places like Manbij, Tabqa, and Kobani are materially significantly improved because of US intervention. Please check out that Intercept interview just upthread on why seeing everything from just the perspective of America or 'the west' is incomplete and can lead to some pretty dark places. Sure, America is a really cynical bad actor, but sometimes we choose to back the one side that allows some freedom of expression + the press and doesn't routinely massacre people. the opinion of literally every person i know who's lived in rojava or been a foreign fighter for them pretty much agrees that yeah the us has helped in the short term but it's a hollow victory when they expect an inevitable betrayal since they know the us government doesnt actually care about. they happen to align with us interests for the moment. they might just as easily become as hosed as yemen if the us government so chooses and the people of rojava really dont fuckin want that. Kanine fucked around with this message at 17:19 on Feb 9, 2018 |
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Feb 9, 2018 17:13
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Mozi posted:OK who's your great alternative then. Russia? Kanine posted:lol its like when an abuser gaslights their partner by saying "if you leave me than someone will come along and hurt you even worse"
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Feb 9, 2018 17:18
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ChairMaster posted:So what? In a world where America is not the police, these nations don't have to be democratic. America is not capable of forcing them to acquiesce to our own system of government, and playing Global Hegemony Dickwaving Contest for a hundred years is not going to change that. If the world at large thinks that it is worth trying to fix the middle east, they better come up with a global plan that involves genuine good faith action from the free nations of the world in making the world better, because America taking charge and doing it by itself has caused a hundred problems for every one its fixed. The post was already going to be too long, so I didn't elaborate, but when I'm talking about democracy here, I'm not talking about forcefully installing a US model of it everywhere. That's obviously counter-productive. Each culture has their own political environment and their own values, and that has to be respected. However, they should be able to choose what their government values, and how it operates, democratically. In such a position, you'll see a lot of constants that emerge when it comes to the demands of people. Independent judiciaries, no police states, leaders that are accountable to their people, fairness, etc etc. Individually they aren't "democracy," but rather, the foundations for lasting governments that their citizens can be a part of. I think you can stand by those values publicly just about anywhere and you'll find common ground with most people. And in the promotion of those values, there's a lot of positive things that can be achieved when it comes to human rights, terrorism, and quality of life, without imposing something unnatural on people. As for the second half of this paragraph, I 100% agree. quote:America, the country that elected Donald Trump and is sliding quickly into internal discontent, right wing extremism, and possibly straight up fascism is the one we want trying to run the world and put an end to war and genocide in the most violent and incompetent ways possible? I think a lot of the reason Trump is in office now is because of how badly we wasted the Obama presidency. With all the eggshells he had to walk on to avoid the perception that he was GW in a mask, the policy results were soft. So when Trump came up as a candidate saying kill them all and let god sort them out, during a time when fighting ISIS was a big issue, (they weren't actually the JV team in hindsight), it resonated a lot more. At the same time, a lot of the people who always attacked Obama from the anti-imperialist view were doing the same to Hillary. Hillary stood her ground more than Obama did, and that's part of what cost her. It's less prominent now that we've seen how reckless Trump can be, but at the time, Trump was portrayed by some of the big mouthpieces like Greenwald as the responsible and smart candidate on foreign policy. Hillary was the destabilizing establishment hawk. She was the dangerous one. So I do think Trump is in office at least in part due to that dynamic I posted about earlier, in which the "anti-imperialists" can act more effectively against social democracy than they can against fascism from within. While there may be some positive things we can achieve during/despite the Trump administration, you're right that it's definitely a difficult situation we find ourselves in right now. But US presidencies are short. Bashar often brags about how his father ruled through 7 of them. When it comes to the dictators on the opposite side, short of internal revolt, there is going to be limited domestic change. We on the other hand, are going to get better opportunities at some point, just like we did in 2008. And each one we don't capitalize on is going to make the world a more unstable, dangerous place. Volkerball fucked around with this message at 18:02 on Feb 9, 2018 |
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Feb 9, 2018 17:45
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Sinteres posted:The SDF is attacking SAA positions east of the Euphrates near DeZ, so it'll be interesting to see if that attack is met with a big response by Assad and/or Russia, or if the US is going to defend the attack as retaliatory. If the SDF does wipe out regime positions east of the Euphrates, you'd have to imagine it'll lead to increased pressure on Tabqa, which is west of the Euphrates. It would make sense they'd want the river to act as a buffer in future after this, since that's literally the only stretch where the SAA fully control a bridgehead right now. Still, we'll see just how far they feel they can push this...
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Feb 9, 2018 17:56
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ChairMaster posted:I don't honestly know what you're talking about anymore. It is kinda funny to see you suddenly say I'm using a strawman, after doing exactly that for so long. So do you believe it's good to reduce imperialism or not? Just give a straight answer. This shouldn't be hard. Fututor Magnus posted:your actual posts were so trite, ill-thought out, that if anyone were to assume that you actually made a point and argued against it, you can come back with "lul is strawman So yeah like I thought, you have no coherent argument, you just want to be moaning vaguely and have 0 care for the region. I suggest you try Twitter to post aimless conjecture about the middle east.
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Feb 9, 2018 17:59
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https://twitter.com/BrendaStoter/status/961705570242834432quote:Shahd Khodr Mirza, a 16 year old Yazidi girl, passed away after being enslaved by ISIS for over three years. She was rescued a few weeks ago, but died from acute heart failure caused by the physical and psychological torture she suffered.  At least ISIS has been reduced to a small smattering of villages in the rear end end of nowhere.
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Feb 9, 2018 18:06
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does anyone in the forums actually take fishmech seriously on anything at this point?
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Feb 9, 2018 18:23
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Just because he's pedantic doesn't mean his opponent is correct.
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Feb 9, 2018 18:25
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Mozi posted:Just because he's pedantic doesn't mean his opponent is correct. It's hard to be correct when some pedant is nonstop putting words in your mouth and attributing emotions you've never felt onto you. Which is exactly why I never engage when  activates, be it him or someone else playing his role.
CrazyLoon fucked around with this message at 18:47 on Feb 9, 2018 |
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Feb 9, 2018 18:43
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CrazyLoon posted:It's hard to be correct when some pedant is nonstop putting words in your mouth and attributing emotions you've never felt onto you. Which is exactly why I never engage when I pointed it out in another thread a while ago that he was making GBS threads up, but take a look at his profile stats. Hes posted 60 times a day, every single day, for almost 12 years(!). He must spend the guts of 10 hours a day exclusively posting here. Anyone with that kind of commitment to shitposting (and/or lack of real world life) is best just ignored rather than debated, hes clearly got far more time in his life to devote to it than everyone else here.
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Feb 9, 2018 20:13
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Mozi posted:OK who's your great alternative then. Russia? Bhutan.
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Feb 9, 2018 21:50
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Blut posted:I pointed it out in another thread a while ago that he was making GBS threads up, but take a look at his profile stats. Hes posted 60 times a day, every single day, for almost 12 years(!). He must spend the guts of 10 hours a day exclusively posting here. i'm wishing for whatever serendipitous kidney malady this jumped-up bostonian MENA expert acquired to advance to the point where she can't post anymore. a thousand flowers will bloom in the desert of the middle east thread and doubtlessly many, many others. edit: poo poo, she got a transplant. here's praying the other kidney and the transplant get that same thing so we can all be spared.
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Feb 9, 2018 22:06
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Mozi posted:OK who's your great alternative then. Russia? This is just pathetic, is your takeaway from any post in this thread that Russia is good? Russia and America can both be bad at the same time, I dunno if you've realized. In a world where America is not the police, Russia can do a bad thing without the lack of American intervention being seen as agreeing with that bad thing. Is it really this hard to imagine a planet where America can be uninvolved with even a single thing that is happening somewhere on it's surface? Same goes for this question: fishmech posted:So do you believe it's good to reduce imperialism or not? Just give a straight answer. This poor fool is so unable to see the world as anything but the plaything of the United States that he sees "a reduction in American imperialism is good" as the same thing as "Chinese and Russian Imperialism should be increased". When someone argues with his implicit statement that reads something along the lines of "American imperialism is bad because the only way to reduce worldwide imperialism is by having America ramp it up to maximum", he then claims to have never made the argument, and can be technically right because he only continuously implies it, rather than ever having the balls to outright state anything on any issue of substance. Desperately trying to assign the names of logical/argumentative fallacies that you've memorized doesn't actually convince anyone of anything, you'd have to make a counter-argument if that was your actual goal. The answer is "no poo poo", by the way. Volkerball posted:I think a lot of the reason Trump is in office now is because of how badly we wasted the Obama presidency. With all the eggshells he had to walk on to avoid the perception that he was GW in a mask, the policy results were soft. I don't disagree entirely with some of this, but I'd be pretty reticent to assign the majority of Clinton's failure in the election to foreign policy, much less the entirety of it. The 2016 election was pretty far from being decided on military foreign policy alone. Volkerball posted:The post was already going to be too long, so I didn't elaborate, but when I'm talking about democracy here, I'm not talking about forcefully installing a US model of it everywhere. That's obviously counter-productive. Each culture has their own political environment and their own values, and that has to be respected. However, they should be able to choose what their government values, and how it operates, democratically. In such a position, you'll see a lot of constants that emerge when it comes to the demands of people. Independent judiciaries, no police states, leaders that are accountable to their people, fairness, etc etc. Individually they aren't "democracy," but rather, the foundations for lasting governments that their citizens can be a part of. I think you can stand by those values publicly just about anywhere and you'll find common ground with most people. And in the promotion of those values, there's a lot of positive things that can be achieved when it comes to human rights, terrorism, and quality of life, without imposing something unnatural on people. Certainly those values are all positive things, but for the duration of our entire lives those values have not been the driving force for American intervention, and I strongly doubt that they will ever again be represented militarily by the United States. Once again, the US is perfectly able to support those ideals without blowing things up and killing people, war is not the only mechanism with which nations can interact with each other. quote:But US presidencies are short. Bashar often brags about how his father ruled through 7 of them. When it comes to the dictators on the opposite side, short of internal revolt, there is going to be limited domestic change. We on the other hand, are going to get better opportunities at some point, just like we did in 2008. And each one we don't capitalize on is going to make the world a more unstable, dangerous place. I suspect that a long-term military commitment cannot plausibly exist in any manner that produces net positive results within the current structure of the American government, certainly not with those being run by any of the governments we've seen in our lifetime. The idea that "American imperialism could be good if it was good" is not a particularly compelling one in convincing anyone that we should keep doing the same destructive poo poo we've always been doing. If an internal revolt is what's needed for any country to be free, then that's what's needed, the US is not going to help. ChairMaster fucked around with this message at 22:57 on Feb 9, 2018 |
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Feb 9, 2018 22:44
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Volkerball posted:The post was already going to be too long, so I didn't elaborate, but when I'm talking about democracy here, I'm not talking about forcefully installing a US model of it everywhere. That's obviously counter-productive. Each culture has their own political environment and their own values, and that has to be respected. However, they should be able to choose what their government values, and how it operates, democratically. In such a position, you'll see a lot of constants that emerge when it comes to the demands of people. Independent judiciaries, no police states, leaders that are accountable to their people, fairness, etc etc. Individually they aren't "democracy," but rather, the foundations for lasting governments that their citizens can be a part of. I think you can stand by those values publicly just about anywhere and you'll find common ground with most people. And in the promotion of those values, there's a lot of positive things that can be achieved when it comes to human rights, terrorism, and quality of life, without imposing something unnatural on people. volkerball, cite me any examples of american war adventures leaving behind stable and prosperous democratic states, in which the americans took the time to design a robust constitutional system well suited to the demographic and sociocultural factors of the region, and also the country didn't suffer under global neoliberalism in the years after, and all the people of that country praises america's name to this day.
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Feb 9, 2018 23:16
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Imperialism is a zero sum game. That's how geopolitical interests work. Every identified interest of any other major power is a substantial geopolitical gain if you can deny it to them. You deny it to them by moving in in their moments of weakness and then proactively and aggressively defending and asserting your claim. If you are unfortunate enough to be born on top of, say, a major resource deposit you will absolutely be the target of the major powers. Which one is mostly a matter of region, legacy, local politics, and internal politics of the major/regional powers. Like you're hosed no matter what. This is an interesting subject btw which if you go back and look at the actual resource extraction deals (i.e. the imperialism that carved up the ME originally) the British/French/Dutch era deals were 85:15 (+/- 5%) in favor of the Europeans and, significantly, a british/french official had veto power on all decisions and all the accounting was closed books and in the hands of the respective European powers. The US specifically became so dominant in the region because they offered a 50:50 deal with comparably open accounting, more substantial military protection, and no demand for a power to veto local politics. The US absolutely and completely changed the game and angered tf out of the established colonial powers, that we call it imperialism as opposed to colonialism speaks to that. The 85:15 era was the colonial era, the 50:50 you retain complete control was the post ww2 US soft imperialism era. You have to remember that as a former colony the US had actual real experience with how poo poo colonialism is and that that makes up the core, foundational American ideology. After ww2 that became less exclusively the American ideology that children were raised in, but its effects absolutely lingered and it was still prominent. American anti-colonial sentiment was a real thing even in spite of periodic contradictory efforts. Imperialism is bad, but to treat all foreign interests as equally bad is myopic and reductive. It's a gently caress of a lot more complex than that. The US specifically gained its position of prominence by offering wildly less lovely deals than anyone had previously.
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Feb 9, 2018 23:20
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Herstory Begins Now posted:You have to remember that as a former colony the US had actual real experience with how poo poo colonialism is and that that makes up the core, foundational American ideology. Get the gently caress out of here with this poo poo. Have you heard of the Philippines? Just loving lol at the idea that the white ruling class of the US had or has anything in common with the downtrodden poor of 19th and 20th century resource extraction colonies. They were franchisees of British empire who saw a chance to start up their own chain and ran with it. Orange Devil fucked around with this message at 00:02 on Feb 10, 2018 |
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Feb 9, 2018 23:59
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Fututor Magnus posted:volkerball, cite me any examples of american war adventures leaving behind stable and prosperous democratic states, in which the americans took the time to design a robust constitutional system well suited to the demographic and sociocultural factors of the region, and also the country didn't suffer under global neoliberalism in the years after, and all the people of that country praises america's name to this day. Japan, West Germany, Italy, France, arguably South Korea and Taiwan. That was a long time ago and murky unilateral bullshit has mostly backfired since, but the "leader of the Free world" myth wasn't totally baseless.
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Feb 10, 2018 00:03
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Duckbox posted:Japan, West Germany, Italy, France, arguably South Korea and Taiwan. That was a long time ago and murky unilateral bullshit has mostly backfired since, but the "leader of the Free world" myth wasn't totally baseless. Dunno about Japan, but in all the other examples the design of the states was entirely a domestic product, not an American one in the slightest.
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Feb 10, 2018 00:07
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Duckbox posted:Japan, West Germany, Italy, France, arguably South Korea and Taiwan. That was a long time ago and murky unilateral bullshit has mostly backfired since, but the "leader of the Free world" myth wasn't totally baseless. You realize South Korea and Taiwan were dictatorships into the 80s and 90s right?
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Feb 10, 2018 00:11
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Herstory Begins Now posted:You have to remember that as a former colony the US had actual real experience with how poo poo colonialism is and that that makes up the core, foundational American ideology. After ww2 that became less exclusively the American ideology that children were raised in, but its effects absolutely lingered and it was still prominent. American anti-colonial sentiment was a real thing even in spite of periodic contradictory efforts. the american "revolution" was literally staged by rich white slaveholders who didnt want to pay taxes to other rich white slaveholders. Kanine fucked around with this message at 00:22 on Feb 10, 2018 |
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Feb 10, 2018 00:19
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ChairMaster posted:I don't disagree entirely with some of this, but I'd be pretty reticent to assign the majority of Clinton's failure in the election to foreign policy, much less the entirety of it. The 2016 election was pretty far from being decided on military foreign policy alone. I said "at least in part," which doesn't contradict this. quote:Certainly those values are all positive things, but for the duration of our entire lives those values have not been the driving force for American intervention, and I strongly doubt that they will ever again be represented militarily by the United States. Once again, the US is perfectly able to support those ideals without blowing things up and killing people, war is not the only mechanism with which nations can interact with each other. The driving force, absolutely not. But humanitarian causes can overlap with American objectives. Bernard Kouchner talks about this subject quite a bit, and he's more eloquent than I am. But essentially, it's about picking your battles. You're never going to get majority American support for something that appears to be detrimental to the US, even if a byproduct of that thing replaced rain worldwide with gummy bears. That goes for pretty much any country. But in instances where there's the potential for political gain for the US as well as gains for the cause of human rights, those are the situations in which you lobby for action. And yes, those situations exist. Particularly in regards to fights against dictators and terrorists, which present a security threat to the American people and American strategic objectives, and which are both most effectively fought by promoting representative governments that can serve their people, and contribute to global stability. To address the elephant in the room, I don't think anyone can argue that Afghanistan or Iraq were effectively carried out strategically. They were both catastrophic failures. In both instances, it was only after years of a "kill em all and let god sort em out" strategy failing that the Bush administration started to understand that they couldn't impose stability, and brought in Robert Gates and the hearts and minds approach. But even then, it was half-assed, and few were held accountable for abuses. Ask anyone who was in civil affairs and dealt with the Afghan and Iraqi people directly, and they will tell you that this was perhaps the single biggest contributor to a US failure in those countries. So it's not as if the US has been defaulting to racist, selfish policy because it's proven to be effective. We just do it because usually there's a selfish racist in office and nature takes its course. But that's an interactive problem, not a foregone conclusion. quote:I suspect that a long-term military commitment cannot plausibly exist in any manner that produces net positive results within the current structure of the American government, certainly not with those being run by any of the governments we've seen in our lifetime. The idea that "American imperialism could be good if it was good" is not a particularly compelling one in convincing anyone that we should keep doing the same destructive poo poo we've always been doing. If an internal revolt is what's needed for any country to be free, then that's what's needed, the US is not going to help. Unfortunately, with the nature of the world today, if the western world turns their back on people, then we're leaving them at the mercy of dictatorships. They consistently rally together and kill whoever they have to kill. Not only in their own countries, but in the case of Russia and Iran in particular, they're expanding. There's stories all the time coming out from paranoid, small European states that are worried about Russia trying to bite off a piece, and for good reason. The only thing barbarians understand is force, and in the absence of it, they're going to continue to make gains. I'm always of the mind that it's easier to confront a problem when it's small rather than waiting for it to develop into something much worse, and odds are that we are going to be forced to draw lines at some point. I think it's a lot less painful to do it now than it might be in 20 years. The options available then may all be a lot worse. Obviously non-military action like civil projects, aid, and diplomacy are key aspects. Just bombing poo poo out of context isn't going to achieve anything. But at the same time, we need to be honest about the nature of these enemies. There's immediate limits to what we can achieve honestly engaging with people like Assad and Putin. Volkerball fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Feb 10, 2018 |
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Feb 10, 2018 00:47
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Orange Devil posted:You realize South Korea and Taiwan were dictatorships into the 80s and 90s right? You realize China and North Korea still are, right?
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Feb 10, 2018 00:55
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Volkerball posted:You realize China and North Korea still are, right? Yes but neither of them received the support that Taiwan and South Korea have from the US so, again, calling the US the leader of the free world is a hollow pronouncement.
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Feb 10, 2018 01:05
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love how certain posters in this forum actually think capitalist amerikkka will ever act in good faith towards the rest of the world.
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Feb 10, 2018 01:18
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Kanine posted:love how certain posters in this forum actually think capitalist amerikkka will ever act in good faith towards the rest of the world. Nice straw man.
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Feb 10, 2018 01:21
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I've read on a few sites, none I'm familiar with, just recently that Lebanon and Russia have signed an agreement where Russia will provide training to the Lebanese Army in exchange for access to it's ports for the Russian Navy.
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Feb 10, 2018 01:29
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BHL got an op ed in the WSJ to promote making Turkey a pariah state. He was one of the more influential voices in the lead up to the intervention in Libya. quote:Unless the West comes to its senses, 2018 will live in infamy as the year that Turkey dropped an iron curtain over the Kurdish people. https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/stand-up-to-erdogans-brutality-1518046582?__twitter_impression=true
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Feb 10, 2018 01:46
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ChairMaster posted:
Stop trying to deflect by claiming any discussion is inherently about America. Why were you so angry when I said you wanted to reduce imperialism then? Why were you so angry when it was pointed out that imperialism is not reduced by merely changing which imperialists are currently actively at work in an area? Fututor Magnus posted:i'm wishing for whatever serendipitous kidney malady this jumped-up bostonian MENA expert acquired to advance to the point where she can't post anymore. Nice meltdown. It's telling that all you halfass "anti-imperialists" can ever put up when discussion is actually engaged is crap like this. But of course it's clear that the Middle East doesn't even exist to you, it's just some sort of role playing game you can argue about.
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Feb 10, 2018 01:52
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fishmech posted:Stop trying to deflect by claiming any discussion is inherently about America. Any discussion of imperialism is inherently about America though? I don’t think you quite get what imperialism actually is
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Feb 10, 2018 01:58
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Are you really just falling back on the "u mad" defense? Do you have anything to say about any issue of substance?
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Feb 10, 2018 01:58
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Duckbox posted:Japan, West Germany, Italy, France, arguably South Korea and Taiwan. That was a long time ago and murky unilateral bullshit has mostly backfired since, but the "leader of the Free world" myth wasn't totally baseless. none of those had explicit american assistance in regime-building, except maybe japan but even that shouldn't count for what i'm talking about, which is modern day american military adventurism, not world war ii, those days are long gone. pumping money into europe after the war is not what i'm talking about even. also south korea turned into a right-wing dictatorship which was american supported too. "leader of the free world" is a meaningless slogan unless you think pinochet's chile should belong in the free world, or saudi arabia.
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Feb 10, 2018 02:09
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Duckbox posted:Japan, West Germany, Italy, France, arguably South Korea and Taiwan. That was a long time ago and murky unilateral bullshit has mostly backfired since, but the "leader of the Free world" myth wasn't totally baseless. I can grant you Japan. As demanded by the post you're replying to, the Constitution was created by Americans who took into account Japan's situation, history and culture, keeping elements of the older Japanese Constitution when it didn't hinder modernization into a liberal democracy. West Germany made its own Basic Law but within constraints provided by the allied powers. So I guess it counts for half a point. Italy made its own Constitution with much less American meddling. No point. France also escaped American meddling. No point. South Korea and Taiwan, as mentioned, were not changed into democracies by the USA. Taiwan had the extremely rare luck of having Dear Leader's Son decide to transition his country to democracy. Something a lot of people hope for in the Middle East every time a dictator is succeeded, but that has yet to happen in this area of the world. South Korea was already democratic on its own, thank you very much, and became dictatorial after a coup in 1961 which the USA cheered on. Minus one point. After the dictator's assassination, South Korea gradually returned to democracy through constitutional reforms and political activism, not anything of the USA's doing. Then you could look at all the dictators that the USA put in power, especially in South and Central America, where Tillerson recently went on to say the Monroe Doctrine, which to them is synonymous to banana republics, fascistic terrorist militias, and death squads, is back in full force. Volkerball posted:BHL got an op ed in the WSJ to promote making Turkey a pariah state. He was one of the more influential voices in the lead up to the intervention in Libya. Why do people still publish anything this imbecile writes? The man is an embarrassment.
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Feb 10, 2018 02:12
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fishmech posted:Nice meltdown. It's telling that all you halfass "anti-imperialists" can ever put up when discussion is actually engaged is crap like this. lmao, you replied to a post that wasn't even a reply to you. if you actually cared about fighting imperialism, you would argue against the actual loving imperialists in this thread like volkerball. anyway, praying for your speedy reacquisition of debilitating renal disease <3
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Feb 10, 2018 02:13
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Fututor Magnus posted:lmao, you replied to a post that wasn't even a reply to you. if you actually cared about fighting imperialism, you would argue against the actual loving imperialists in this thread like volkerball. Fishmech is insufferable, but leave the kidneys out of this.
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Feb 10, 2018 02:26
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A Typical Goon posted:Any discussion of imperialism is inherently about America though? I don’t think you quite get what imperialism actually is There are more imperial powers in this world than America. If you believe otherwise, you're not capable of understanding English. ChairMaster posted:Are you really just falling back on the "u mad" defense? Do you have anything to say about any issue of substance? No, that's what you're doing. You flipped out when I said you wanted to reduce imperialism and commented on why a particular action would not lead to that, then tried to act like portraying you as wanting to reduce imperialism was inaccurate.
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Feb 10, 2018 02:37
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Orange Devil posted:Get the gently caress out of here with this poo poo. Have you heard of the Philippines? Hi, I'm sorry US history is not as black and white as it would be ncie to believe. I'd also suggest Vietnam as another contradictory example. Fact remains, the anti-colonialism movement was immensely influential (and was even heavily informed by reactions back home to the absolute barbarity of what went down in the Philippines). To emphasize: the US has never been united ideologically whatsoever, much less come close to having a unified 'white ruling class;' interventionism has been immensely unpopular for most of US history. The irony is that interventionists have usually been more motivated by something approaching compassion while the popularity of non-intervention was much more of a 'gently caress the browns let them die, who cares.' That's still over-simplifying it, but the US is actually a complicated, often contradictory actor. Trying to view the US in purely black or white terms doesn't really accomplish anything or lead to actually understanding anything. Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 02:51 on Feb 10, 2018 |
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Feb 10, 2018 02:41
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fishmech posted:There are more imperial powers in this world than America. If you believe otherwise, you're not capable of understanding English. Ah so it actually was ‘I don’t understand the words I’m being a ridiculous pedant about’ thanks for confirming how stupid you actually are
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Feb 10, 2018 02:45
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fishmech posted:No, that's what you're doing. You flipped out when I said you wanted to reduce imperialism and commented on why a particular action would not lead to that, then tried to act like portraying you as wanting to reduce imperialism was inaccurate. Yea, I'm sure you honestly just meant to dissuade me from the notion that America is the only imperialist power in the world that you definitely thought I believed, and not doing the same exact garbage you always do. I'll just take your word for it.
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Feb 10, 2018 02:45
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