For anyone wondering how bad brain rot can get, even here on Lemmy.

This. This is how bad it can get

The passive aggresive small d**k energy this person is showcasing is part and parcel of the normalization of authoritarianism and idiocracy in modern times. This is the type of acute mental darkness that awaits all of us if we don’t resist and organize against fascism and the rise of Big Stupid.

Tell me you have no expertise in political science without telling me you have no expertise in political science

Me reminding you that a hypothesis needs to be disprovable through observation in order to be valid and that the burden of proof is with the one making the claim, not the one trying to disprove it, is the exact opposite of arguing in bad faith.

Exactly! You can’t just assume that the situation in Ukraine is equivalent to the genocide in former Yugoslavia. As with any claim originating from an authroitarian regime, it must be evaluated critically.

Have a nice day.

Care to explain where I did that? How is the pro-NATO narrative not by an authoritarian regime?

Yep, let me refreshen your memory. You equated NATO’s justification (stopping a genocide) to Russia’s justification for a full scale invasion of Ukraine and are acting (or pretending) like we don’t have an abundance of information showing otherwise. This is called a false equivalency.

Next you’re gonna ask me how we know they’re not equivalent. And at some point down the line, you’re gonna ask how we know that 2 + 2 = 4. Ask me how I know.

You can call yourself a potato for all I care. It matters not what you call yourself. I judge you based on your claims and actions, not your self-reported internal monologue or the way you want others to see you.

With that out of the way, why don’t follow your own suggestion and scram.

Have a nice day tho

Indeed, giving up intellectual responsibility and promoting the propaganda of authroritarian regimes (I couldn’t care less which ones you fancy in particular) should be named and shamed and ridiculed within the confines of the law.

Feel free to engage or disengage in whichver which way you want friend, couldn’t care less, my messages are not directed at you

You don’t need to buy anything, you just need information literacy and critical thinking. Which is not to say you shouldn’t be critical of US foreign policy - god knows there’s lots to criticize. But comparing the genocide in Yugoslavia to the War in Ukraine is a clear sign of acute mental darkness or you intentionally amplifying authoritarian propaganda.

You’re a loser either way because of your utter failure to take intellectual responsibility. You might be just one in a sea of millions of ignoramuses but that’s not excuse

Indeed, it’s not something that can be disproven, as in it’s nonsense that shouldn’t be entertained in rational discourse.

I think you are just repeating the same old talking points and conspiracy theories that we’re all well-familiar with without actually adding anything of substance or factology to the conversation.

Russia does not do the same. In fact, it does the exact opposite. It would be fantastic if Russia actually supported human rights and the rule of law instead of bombing children’s hospitals like Israel does.

I won’t touch the entertainement / Hollywood reference to soft power as that deserves a discussion in its own right.

But as someone who works with … or used to work with US diplomats abroad on a daily basis, I would urge you to educate yourself and people around you about the myriad of activities that US diplomats are engaged in. Contrary to conventional ‘wisdom’, US foreign policy consists of a lot more than bombing the Middle East and supporting Israel. Nobody talks or knows about all of the other things but I can tell you for a fact that American diplomats were (and in some cases still are) helping a lot of people in Eastern Europe. We were helping a lot of people. Shelters for the homeless, schools and museums for kids, whole new campuses for universities, orphanages, adn the list goes on, and on. There’s a reason why over 75% of state department employees working abroad are not republicans. They are not the people most think they are.

We were doing good work with the Americans here. We were helping children, we were exposing corrupt oligarchs. We were in this fight together, not just in Eastern Europe but all over the world. Yes, even the US Marines stationed at Constanza and Novo Selo, ready to fight should the Russkies anything, deserve respect. As one marine told me recently “Don’t worry, come what may, we will stay and fight with you”.

Then everything changed this year. My old American friends were replaced with incompetent political commissars sent by the new idiocratic regime in DC.

The US marines are still here though, and they are still ready to die. I’m just not sure if its worth it anymore.

TLDR: Educate yourself and resist the temptation to parrot oversimplified narratives. Just because you only know about the bad and don’t care to learn about the good, doesn’t mean the latter doesn’t exist.

Edit: in an attempt to preempt incoming windmills: I detest Trump, Netanyahu and imperialism in general. But that does not mean anything American (or whatever nationality) should be presented as black and white. There are 340 million Americans. Each one of them here is proof that America is not black and white, and neither are its citizens.

“This imaginary thing created this other imaginary thing”

This is what this argument boils down to. It isnindeed difficult to believe how little ideational progress we’ve made since the dawn of “man in the sky”.