It’s worth pointing out that the two opposing countries / nations / city states in this cartoon would have to have similar governments with similar charters, and similar selection processes for their representatives.
It is lunacy to say things like “Obummer was a dictator!” when he was selected twice by people voting, and then peaceably left the office after his two terms completely in line with the Constitution.
Now can you say the same thing about, for instance, Putin?
It’s important to follow the laws of the land, otherwise there is damage to the system. Legal framework, electoral framework, political framework. So when answering your question about Putin, the electoral rules and legalities of Russia’s system must be examined. Were they violated?
That is also a question on the US national agenda for Trump. It is important to consider his case in context of the system. And to compare his real estate dealings to others who deal in real estate. What was the severity and nature of the alleged crime? Are these kinds of behaviors common in the American political class?
Shh don’t try to get them to understand, they need their safety blanket of good vs evil because without feeling like they’re one of the good guys they’ll have to confront their own personal failings.
I’ve said plenty “to your face” and all you see me as is another anonymous with a preset of opinions you’re already set on disagreeing with. You don’t give me the benefit of even having a face. But you expect it from others? Next time you see me , ask something about me and get to know me.
You seriously believe this? This isn’t a great documentary, it peddles conspiracies theories without attempting to prove any of its claims.
The channel this is posted on is clearly of one opinion and is pushing an agenda.
They are brought to a detention center, for a week, longer if they are showing signs of cult behavior. The video tries really hard to show this to be horrible and makes zero attempts to balance this in anyway. To me this sounds like a deprogramming center but to a tankie it is primed to accept its sinister and therefore will accept it without thinking.
This video actually proves that not everyone can be deprogrammed. Near the end the one of the North Korean’s literally says North Korea is awesome and not a dictatorship because it says so in the constitution. Also, the lack of protesters during the famine are proof that every one believed in the leadership so much that there was no need to protest.
That’s cult mentality. There are people who believe everything they hear and lack critical thinking skills. You might be one of them, but I am not.
To a critical observer this only serves to show how subversive propaganda is and how it can permanently break some people’s minds.
The fact that that exists, shows we have freedoms. Show me the anti-north Korean propaganda that North Koreans can freely access.
Not European, but there’s Voice of America: Russian, which was originally headed by Richard Carlson from 1986 to 1991. You might not recognize Dick, but his son Tucker is also a fixture in the media business.
Our objective news - is really just a mess of different slants, some being propaganda, that are not censured even when their content approaches slander due to heavy political bias.
Our combating disinformation - is largely unexisting to the point that several large social media providers have abolished or acted against the control they had for doing so and that their CEOs shamelessly meet with presidential candidates with ties to them.
Our glorious leader - is hardly accepted as a glorious leader and the portion of the society that does also tend to have absolutely no qualms about becoming more authoritarian by their own admission.
Our great religion - is criticized within the country and an increasing number of people are becoming atheists.
Our noble populace - Our heroic adventures - Ok, who is writing this meme? Who thinks their society thinks this way? Half the other populace disagrees with the other half, even going so far as to be described as hate, and any mythos of heroic is easily dismissed the moment it becomes convenient to do so not to mention the amount of criticism armed forces get.
This is whataboutism 101. Not all sides are completely black and white, but not all sides are equally grey.
Except that at least nationalists can be criticized in mine, creating such a mess in a first place. In theirs, if not explicit social censorship, there’s clear persecution of the barest opposition.
The whole point is that the two nations are the same, but some of the population doesn’t see it that way. Of course our news is filled with propaganda, that’s what this meme is saying. Of course our troops are carrying out the whims of a despot. But blind nationalism paints these as the right and true path.
I feel like the artist originally wanted to make this primarily medieval themed. But then realisied “Oh yeah, news and stuff are a thing.” And then just added laptops and antennas.
There is a reason the Geneva Convention (and the Hague protocols before it) prohibit assassination. That reason is that the Glorious Leader and the Wicked Despot have more in common with each other than they do with us peons. Don’t anyone get too excited during our “war” (population reduction, economic stimulus package, domestic troubles distraction). Invest in defense contractors, the elite will keep them fed.
Remember the average dude in China, Iran, Russia, etc is no more interested in dying to aggrandize his rich owners than you are.
Remember the average dude in China, Iran, Russia, etc is no more interested in dying to aggrandize his rich owners than you are.
True, and you also have to remember that many of them have it ingrained in their culture to hate enough to kill gays, other religious people, races, etc.
Despite how much people love to say one culture isn’t better than any other… There absolutely are if you’re looking through a lens of equality. Particularly if you’ve grown up in a more westernized nation where non-perfect progress has been made on those points.
Let’s just hope the west doesn’t continue turning into Yallqaeda and all the lost Fascists suddenly earn a Herman Cain award.
Or maybe there’s a dozen alternatives that could work better and both of us are staring at this from the bottom of a pro-hierarchy well that we’ve been stuck in ever since one guy convinced another one he should be in charge.
I don’t have a full solution, I just want us to be flexible enough to figure one (or more) out.
One guy will always convince another of that. If the other guy disagrees, well, time for sticks and stones.
My point is you either go small, and groups self assemble however you want, but you’ll have many neighbors who might not see it your way.
Or you go big, and everyone’s efforts go to one shared goal, and everyone is a equal “citizen”. Ideally with collective shared goals folks are doing ok.
Or you go medium, which is what we have now. Some groups are positioned and prepared to do good stuff, and others are fighting with and nail just to hold it together. There’s gonna be friction with neighbors, like with “small” but the problem is “mediums” got some real big sticks and stones.
There’s no right answer and I obviously didn’t cover everything. But without groups of some kind, people will get picked off. There’s no period of human history that disagrees with me.
Provide a single example of anything aside from what I described, in any period of human history that both:
did not maintain power through economic or just militaristic dominance of their local region
did not experience conflict with their neighbors.
They either had cohesive, hegemonic domination within their borders and geographic separation from rivals, or had challenges with bordering nation states.
What if instead of taking it as saying all things are symmetrical we take it to mean that we have a tendency to consider outsiders to be “savage” or simply “other” even when the evidence doesn’t support that? Then this shitpost would be more like a warning against xenophobia.
You chose an interpretation you didn’t like just so you could dismiss it. And you don’t think your goal in doing so is to feel intellectually superior? You’re another.
What if instead of aggressively going off on people we consider that they may have valid experiences shaping their worldview, and that their point is not even necessarily opposed to ours anyway?
One side thinks the answer is “do fascism”, so I think it may be fair to conclude that one of the proposed answers is at least wrong in every situation.
One faction has a messiah fixation, thumps a Bible they’ve never even read (they just let some pastor tell them what’s in it), obsesses over guns and other peoples’ private (by which I mean sexual) lives and reproductive organs. They’ve been told and so believe that Sodom and Gomorrah was about the sex, but it was about righteousness and hospitality - and these are two things that they themselves lack completely.
There is a real problem, a real danger, because it fits historical patterns we’ve seen before - the so-called “ideas” that they spout with the language that they use - and they end up mindlessly, senselessly bringing EVERYBODY down with them.
They are a menace to all of us. Including themselves, but they don’t see it. And neither does the “both sides” argument, a lazy excuse for not acknowledging that the proverbial emperor has no clothes.
After we stop pretending that the morally superior view is one where everyone is equally awful.
Being sympathetic I get what the picture is trying to convey. Really ask yourself if different is worse or is it just different.
Being realistic it smells of in every conflict everyone involved is evil. And that simply is not always true. Giving a real world example is the invasion of the Ukraine. There is no both sides in this. One is a democracy the other is a dictatorship. One is defending their homeland and the other is invading. One of it loses is looking at genocide and the other if it loses has some egg on their face. They are not the same.
So far all you’ve figured out is that this meme must not be about Ukraine then! And yet you’re still talking about it. You only want to disagree. That’s why you’re posting. That’s why you’re responding to me. That’s why you’re here. You want to disagree with shit to feel intellectually superior, and the hilarious part is that you are disagreeing with something on the grounds that they just a make a ploy at intellectual superiority! And by the way, calling this “enlightened centrism” just for the purposes of disagreeing with it is actually making a strawman, not whatever that other comment was.
“No.” what? “No.” you won’t keep reading beyond the first sentence, or “No.” you didn’t fire that off after only reading the first sentence? Those are contradictory.
But I’m not going to play dumb. I know your terse responses are to signal that you aren’t taking me seriously and you’re treating my words with contempt. I get it.
But the weird thing is that you’re all over this thread challenging people to disavow putin, and the moment somebody does, you won’t even acknowledge it. Is that because you put so much stock in the idea that we’re enlightened centrists that you didn’t actually bother to form a coherent thought beyond that?
I know that. Is this you giving up on the argument but still needing to get the last word? If you don’t want to talk you can just stop replying. Continuing to reply without really saying anything is just exposing how little you really have to say.
Ah yes, the runaway Reddit train of: “Anyone who sees anything in the world as more than plain good vs evil is evil”
Like most subreddits, what started as an interesting idea (calling out people who supported fascism by saying anti-fascism was as bad as it) devolved into an absolutely moronic circlejerk (anyone who says anything is the same as anything else is a bot).
Because it isn’t always true? Sometimes you government just has regular levels of suck while the other government is really awful. I am confident that the South Korean government has room for improvement I am not willing to put them on the same level as North Korea. Plus you can look at migration flows. There is a reason why some countries have people willing to risk death to get into and other countries people are trying to get out of.
I’m not sure whether the version of this I saw previously was the original and this post was cropped, or if this post is the original and the other text was added later. But I much prefer the context here:
Ahh see this I can get behind, reminds me of the Soviet anti alcohol poster that’s become a meme too
Good original intent, less good modern applications
The dawn of nationalism was definitely the mistake of the previous age I think. Peoples should be able to self govern autonomously, but not under a guise of “the nation” which inherently forms an out group to be excluded.
I like the Arabic/American way to do it, “You wanna be one of us? Well then you’re already half way there!”
I speak very little Arabic but my teacher has told me that I already know enough to get the long list cousin’s welcome among most L1 speakers lol.
I can only apologise for my fellow countrymen. They’re pricks, especially a group of lads or the typical Gammon family unit, and it’s why I try to holiday in places with as few of them as possible.
Accusing the British of being Brutes is like accusing Germans of being Nazi’s. It is rooted in the historic actions of these nations, rather than anything in particular they’ve done today. Sure British tourist have their stereotypes, but honestly they aren’t worse than Chinese tourist, or Muslim migrants. As long as British tourist are still paying customers, many nations will still be happy to host them. Don’t take these comments so seriously, it’s all in good humor.
Brexit on the other hand is a tragedy so awful that you can wonder how a nation once known for it’s ability to govern an empire spanning the entire globe, and innovators of capitalism, made such a stupid decision. Like pointing a gun to your head and pulling the trigger thinking it will cure your headache. It’s so ridiculous I still can’t come up with a proper insult to throw at the Brits concerning their decision to commit economic suicide.
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