Ukrainians are mostly killing foreign mercenaries, prison conscripts, and the elderly surplus population?

Yeah! That’s in “The Art of War,” right? You’re supposed to send your “elderly” and other random dregs you can dig up first to fight a critical war. And then, once you’ve depended on all those “surplus” people for several years, you move on to your trained troops, the actual military. Obviously. It’s just part of the Russian mastery of military strategy that meant they took over the country in three days slowly pushed forward and got the mission accomplished and went home in a few months fought a Pyrrhic victory over the space of a year and a half and then negotiated a partition and then started rebuilding and preparing for next random invasion of some neighbor country got stuck at the border for years, ruined their economy and any respect their military or kit might have had on the world stage, and are now scrounging around for any possible military-age males they can lay hands on to keep feeding into the grinder, hoping that if they keep it up long enough, it’ll work.

I have more to say about the rest of your ridiculous message, but I don’t think it’s really necessary.

Unfortunately, they’re outnumbered by more than an order of magnitude. They’re getting ground down as time goes on, and for all its stupidity the Russian military is not small or fragile. Basically, the Russians only have to win once to win, Ukraine has to survive every month that goes by, time after time.

The good guys don’t always win. Just ask the Palestinians.

Deep cut 😀

Unlike in Vietnam, I’d say “they’re trying to kill us all and take our home, but we’re killing them instead” is a pretty good model of success for the Ukrainians.

It would be great if they had other options. Hanging Putin and demobilizing everyone, and rebuilding both countries, would be a great start.

Yeah, Reddit is super weird. There are a bunch of rabidly pro-Israel people who have infiltrated its world news communities in exactly the way that some Lemmy people love to imagine that they have done on Lemmy.

They’ve killed about a million Russians so far, and held the invasion a few hundred km from their border. I’d call that something they can do about it.

They have the luck (“luck”) of the entire first world funding them to defend against Russia, instead of Gaza where it’s 100% the opposite, so they’re not in the horrifying situation the Palestinians are in. Which I’m sure frustrates Russia to no end.

For the Israelis, it’s working out great. They allow just enough violence to happen to justify “retaliation,” i.e. doing what they wanted to do anyway, which is seize land and kill Palestinians.

I highly doubt that it would work well for Russia though. I mean, the Ukrainians will never agree to anything like this, the only reason it even works in Palestine is that Israel has tons of money/technology support from the first world to do whatever they want on the ground and the Palestinians have 0. In Ukraine the equation is 100% the opposite.

It’s pretty clear that this is normal Russian strategy of talking gibberish with a straight face to distract and cause commotion. No one aside from a few dozen idiots on Lemmy actually believes that rejecting imaginary deals like this makes it Ukraine’s “fault” that this is happening because Russia “wants peace.” I think the whole point is just to degrade the concept of diplomacy as a useful activity, in favor of bullets and bombs which are more Russia’s wheelhouse historically.

Yeah, you broke the code.

Can’t imagine why any Ukrainian person wouldn’t be on board for that. “Peace!” That sounds great, why don’t you like peace?

(Actually they pretty much did that in 2014 already. The details were a little different, but absolutely they were organizing ethnic Russians trying to violently seize control of the government in Ukrainian areas, and then they sent the Russian army to “protect” them when the Ukrainians started objecting and shooting back.)

Yeah. A lot of times it’s pretty simplistic thinking. Anything that sounds vaguely like you’re saying that Israel isn’t evil can just get shouted down without getting engaged with, and usually people will cheer for that reaction.

Also people don’t like to “lose” internet arguments whatever are the facts of the matter, and me being an unrepentant dickhead during the disagreement definitely doesn’t help make it easier to have the conversation. Whatever man

Certainly possible, most politicians are, I think. I was just saying that you wouldn’t have to be some nutty apartheid-supporter to look at Rasoul’s statement and have some objections to it.

Absolutely correct. So anyone who’s doing that (or supporting it, making excuses for it, whatever), that’s real fucked up and they’re a bad person. I should have clarified, that type of broad category I’m fine with.

What I was saying is that someone who has been tirelessly advocating for the US to stop funding Israel, showing photos of the genocide and starvation on the senate floor, introducing votes to defund Israel, showing up at protests, all that kind of thing, if you manage to introduce a category of “Zionist” into the conversation, and then say “Well he’s a Zionist so he’s supporting genocide,” that’s a stupid way to reason. That’s what I’m saying about broad categories. That type of broad category (using imprecise language to strategically make it sound like someone’s supporting something they’re not supporting) are useful tools for getting people confused.

Makes perfect sense.

Almost as if you can’t look for morality or amorality in broad categories, and you need to look at what someone’s actually doing (or advocating or whatever), and be specific.

!experimentalfilm@sh.itjust.works

Beastie Boys had one of the first and biggest of the anti-Iraq-War songs, I can’t think offhand of one that was more “mainstream” at the time and still explicit and specific about it.

Well I’ll be sleeping on your speeches 'til I start to snore
Cause I won’t carry guns for an oil war
As-Salamu alaikum, wa alaikum as-salam
Peace to the Middle East peace to Islam

And so on. It might not have been the best (IMO that is “Empire” by Dar Williams, with haunting sadness, historical scope, and irony), but it was big.

A buddy of mine was leaning towards joining the military, and it was interacting with the recruiters and observing that they seemed miserable that changed his mind about it.

The pay is closer to $43k.

Oh, well in that case

Many words have multiple, often contradictory and historically loaded meanings: “christianity”, “socialism”, “honour”. What’s weird about talking about them?

If somebody was writing about the “evils” of socialism, I would actually have exactly the same complaint about it for exactly the same reason. I would actually fully expect people to have precisely Tim Kaine’s reaction to it, basically to say “Whoa WTF are you talking about, I am socialist, and I’m not evil.” That’s actually a pretty good example to explain what I am trying to clarify with you.

Christianity’s a little different… I think “honor” actually has enough of an agreed-upon definition that you wouldn’t need to get tangled up in the definition of “honor.” That’s actually another instructive example: Two people arguing about whether a third person “has honor” are unlikely to be unintentionally wrangling about “what does honor mean,” and so getting themselves confused about it in the same way that they might be if they’re arguing about “Zionism” or “socialism,” and so it’s more likely to be productive. They might disagree, but they won’t extensively go in circles about it. With these kind of broad and definition-varies-by-the-person definitions, you just have to be really careful with how you apply it and talk about it, especially when huge issues of good and evil are involved, or else you’re going to do material harm to people who are trying to help you, and make it more difficult for them to help you.

So… you’re on board with defining some people as “evil,”

Where the actual fuck did I do that?

When you posted the article about “the ‘evils’ of Zionism” along with “Zionism has proven how evil our society can be” and “a supremacist ideology created to destroy and conquer everything and everyone in its way. This is Zionism.”

Again, he’s not wrong. I get what he’s saying, it is accurate. But you can understand how someone who thinks “Zionist = anyone who thinks Israel should be allowed to exist” could read that and then object to it. Right? Or no? I feel like you’re having a lot of trouble grasping simple points here.

I’ve actually seen people get accused of being Zionists

I already told you: “I personally don’t consider the word “zionist” to be a slur.” I don’t use it as an accusation. So I don’t know what to do with your defensiveness here.

Advanced reading comprehension: Why did I bring this up? I get that you don’t know what to do with it, but what point was I trying to make when bringing up accusations of someone being a Zionist that I’ve seen before? I’ve touched on it and why it is important a few different times.

Yeah. It’s also notable that Rasoul is a Democratic committee chair, and he’s been railing against Israel’s “war” for years now, and all of that has always been fine. It became an issue with this particular post, for the reasons you specified, and now people are trying to use it as a way to spin up this whole thing where the Democrats hate the Palestinians and want to silence his criticism of Israel, and this is just more proof.

You are saying that the word means too many different things to too many different people and therefore is not helpful to be used. Did I get it right?

100% right. Doesn’t that make sense, though? You don’t necessarily have to agree with me that it’s not helpful, but isn’t it weird to just kind of keep using it and acting like we’re talking about what the “real” definition of it should be when you know that that’s my argument?

I did answer, I told you I don’t care.

Point out to me where I applied the term it to any particular person.

So… you’re on board with defining some people as “evil,” but you couldn’t care less whether any particular people are or are not in that category that you’re calling “evil.” You just know that people in this vague category are evil. Sterling. I’ve literally never heard of that working out bad for any reason, in history or anywhere else.

The whole substance of the kerfuffle to me is that different people mean different things when they say it. Rasoul means one thing, and I get what his message means, it makes sense to me. But then some other people see it, and they think he’s talking about a totally different group of people, and they get heated up about it, which also makes sense. Now you’re coming in with a third definition, which I’ve actually never heard before (I’ve actually seen people get accused of being Zionists and then extensive arguments about why they are Zionists and what it means, they definitely didn’t get to use your definition “well I say I’m not, so that means I’m not.”)

This is no way to run a railroad. The purpose of language is communication. It’s actually fine if different people mean different things when they use words, it doesn’t take too much to get to the heart of the issue and people can talk it out without the language getting in the way. But you seem totally unconcerned about any of this, and just kind of want to make a simplistic point without needing to define your words well or get everyone on the same page. I don’t think that will work, I don’t think it’s a good way to try to type messages, that’s why I am disagreeing with you.