Russia - Ukraine “peace negotiations”

  • Thread starter Thread starter nycfan
  • Start date Start date
  • Replies: 4K
  • Views: 152K
  • Politics 
superrific said:
Such a lame copout. Didn't know randman posted under this alias.

If you could articulate an objection you would. But you can't, because none exists, because it's neither awful nor false to note that Russia in 2025 and Pearl Harbor in 1941 decimated the respective countries' aerial capacities in one day.
Click to expand...

The two situations are so obviously incomparable... anyone drawing this conclusion obviously knows very little about what happened at Pearl and/or the events which led up to Ukraine's attack on Russia. If calling me lame for refusing to lend credence to such an obviously flawed mischaracterization of the two events allows you to thump your chest and claim internet superiority, have at it.
 
superrific said:
Sigh. Et tu? Y'all need some serious refreshing about the nature of an analogy.

1. Analogies do not have to be perfect to be apt -- indeed, if they are not perfect, they wouldn't be analogies. They would be descriptions.

2. Analogies can be apt in part and inapt in other parts. In fact, this is common. Refer to my post above about analogies in law. Judges developed environmental law in England initially by analogy to the escape of fenced animals. Last I checked, there are some ways in which smoke emitted from a brickworks are like loose cows, but there are many more ways in which they are different. Yet, that was the analogy that was used and it's still used today.

3. Here are a couple of other analogies that people use even though they are inapt in the details:

Appeasement. We say that Trump is appeasing Putin like Chamberlain did Hitler. Is that bullshit, because it is more or less the same analogy and it has the same inaptness (namely, Europe was not at war during Munich)

We say that Trump's firing of US attorneys was like the Saturday Night Massacre. Is that an exact comparison, or are there apt and inapt parts to it?
Click to expand...
My objection to your analogy is that your logic relies on stripping away key context differentiating a surprise attack preceding any declared war versus a surprise attack (by the victim of invasion) during a prolonged war. If we were arguing how far a baseball home run with an exit velocity of 105 mph should fly and your argument relied on assuming that the game is played in a vacuum, so there is no resistance, ok, fine, we don’t live in a vacuum but we’re just shooting the breeze anyway.

But in an actual war the context is exactly what the propagandists promoting the comparison want people to miss or ignore so they see Russia now and the U.S. then as brothers in arms, equivalent victims of a devious sneak attack, even though there is an obvious critical context intentionally elided by propagandists that undermines the analogy.

To me, your innocent but context-free analogy reinforces (or even creates a permission structure for) dishonest propaganda that is intending that the context be stricken from the conversation for nefarious purpose. Hence my objection.
 
nycfan said:
My objection to your analogy is that your logic relies on stripping away key context differentiating a surprise attack preceding any declared war versus a surprise attack (by the victim of invasion) during a prolonged war. If we were arguing how far a baseball home run with an exit velocity of 105 mph should fly and your argument relied on assuming that the game is played in a vacuum, so there is no resistance, ok, fine, we don’t live in a vacuum but we’re just shooting the breeze anyway.

But in an actual war the context is exactly what the propagandists promoting the comparison want people to miss or ignore so they see Russia now and the U.S. then as brothers in arms, equivalent victims of a devious sneak attack, even though there is an obvious critical context intentionally elided by propagandists that undermines the analogy.

To me, your innocent but context-free analogy reinforces (or even creates a permission structure for) dishonest propaganda that is intending that the context be stricken from the conversation for nefarious purpose. Hence my objection.
Click to expand...
Thank you for the response. I must be missing something here. Obviously I do not want to reinforce dishonest propaganda. It just doesn't seem to me that it's the only way to look at it, given that the analogy also occurred to me.

I guess the question is as follows: is there severability between the different facets of Pearl Harbor? There's the narrow military outcome (that was my thought), and then the broader moral sense of it being a surprise attack of aggression? My analogy only applies to the former and I wouldn't think it would have anything to say about the obviously inapt latter point. If "Pearl Harbor" fundamentally links those two ideas, then the analogy doesn't play. I think of it as an event rather than a concept, but maybe that's not standard.

Maybe the problem is that I can't imagine anyone trying to claim that this attack was like Pearl Harbor in terms of aggression. It's beyond ridiculous, so I don't give it any thought. And if I'm wrong about that, then I can see why people would be eager to reject the analogy. It's not an airball though.
 
dukeman92 said:
The two situations are so obviously incomparable... anyone drawing this conclusion obviously knows very little about what happened at Pearl and/or the events which led up to Ukraine's attack on Russia.
Click to expand...
Oh go fuck yourself. I know the relevant timelines very well, thank you. All you are doing is focusing on the analogic discrepancy to the exclusion of the analogy itself. Well, every analogy is inapt in some ways. It doesn't make the analogy wrong in every way.
 


“…
Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social account that his call with Putin lasted approximately one hour and 15 minutes.

  • "We discussed the attack on Russia's docked airplanes, by Ukraine, and also various other attacks that have been taking place by both sides...President Putin did say, and very strongly, that he will have to respond to the recent attack on the airfields", Trump wrote.…”
——-
Truth Social is super glitchy but I am not finding this post.
 
IMG_7195.jpeg
It sure if it got deleted of just the buggy Truth Social issues but I am not seeing this post on Trump’s Truth Social feed.
 
nycfan said:
IMG_7195.jpeg
It sure if it got deleted of just the buggy Truth Social issues but I am not seeing this post on Trump’s Truth Social feed.
Click to expand...
Jesus Christ. This guy is SO far over his head. I've literally never been more afraid of a nuclear war than I am right now, and it's all because we elected a president who has no FUCKING clue what he's doing in Russia and Iran.
 
Sounds like Putin knows Trump really wants a deal with Iran and will use his assistance to that end as leverage against Ukraine in any Ukraine/Russia negotiations.
 
nycfan said:
IMG_7195.jpeg
It sure if it got deleted of just the buggy Truth Social issues but I am not seeing this post on Trump’s Truth Social feed.
Click to expand...
I hope I'm panicking unnecessarily about this, but I'm not sure there's been a more terrifying communication in the nuclear era than this one.
 
lawtig02 said:
Jesus Christ. This guy is SO far over his head. I've literally never been more afraid of a nuclear war than I am right now, and it's all because we elected a president who has no FUCKING clue what he's doing in Russia and Iran.
Click to expand...
I think Trump seems to have “authorized” Russian reprisal against Ukraine and get the worries about what that could look like. And I can see this being as scary as any potential nuclear threat since the collapse of the Soviet Union, but TBH I feel nothing like the constant existential dread of nuclear annihilation that I felt in the Reagan (and to a lesser extent GHWB) administration.
 
dukeman92 said:
Why is he speaking to Putin about Iran? Why are we normalizing the relationship this administration has with Russia?
Click to expand...
Russia is a traditional ally of Iran and has at least some sway with the decisionmakers there. If US and Russia can coordinate a joint position on a nuclear deal with Iran, it makes it easier to effectuate a deal.

That said, Russia will leverage Iran cooperation to get what it wants in Ukraine and not sure that is a trade off worth making.
 
nycfan said:
I think Trump seems to have “authorized” Russian reprisal against Ukraine and get the worries about what that could look like. And I can see this being as scary as any potential nuclear threat since the collapse of the Soviet Union, but TBH I feel nothing like the constant existential dread of nuclear annihilation that I felt in the Reagan (and to a lesser extent GHWB) administration.
Click to expand...
Thanks. I was REALLY young in that era, so I can't speak to it, but it feels to me like MAD put the bumpers on the bowling alley, and Trump has suddenly announced he's willing to let the best bowler in the world shoot for strikes.
 
Calheel said:
Russia is a traditional ally of Iran and has at least some sway with the decisionmakers there. If US and Russia can coordinate a joint position on a nuclear deal with Iran, it makes it easier to effectuate a deal.

That said, Russia will leverage Iran cooperation to get what it wants in Ukraine and not sure that is a trade off worth making.
Click to expand...

I know that Russia and Iran are terror buddies. I want to know why the administration is negotiating nuclear dominoes with Russia... (rhetorical) but more importantly why the people of this country are seemingly okay with it.
 
nycfan said:
I think Trump seems to have “authorized” Russian reprisal against Ukraine and get the worries about what that could look like. And I can see this being as scary as any potential nuclear threat since the collapse of the Soviet Union, but TBH I feel nothing like the constant existential dread of nuclear annihilation that I felt in the Reagan (and to a lesser extent GHWB) administration.
Click to expand...
And by the way, if the President of the United States of America actually did authorize a Russian reprisal against Ukraine, in any rational world, impeachment proceedings would commence immediately, and not a single motherfucking member of Congress would hesitate for a second before removing him from office.
 
Maybe if St. Donald of Mar-a-Lago hadn't acted like like some high school idiot when Zelenskyy was in the White House and shown he was something other than an echo chamber for Vlad "the Ras" Putin's megalomaniacal ravings, we wouldn't be looking at replacing our technological society with a hunter-gatherer society. Thanks a lot MAGA. Looks like all those guns, ammunition, and survival rations you stocked up on are going to come in handy. But I do wonder if MAGAs have a firm grasp on how complicated the supply chain for the prescription medicines that keep them alive is?

ETA: Link - Insulin Supply Chain: Complexity of Drug Deliveries – Logmore Blog
 
Last edited:
dukeman92 said:
I know that Russia and Iran are terror buddies. I want to know why the administration is negotiating nuclear dominoes with Russia... (rhetorical) but more importantly why the people of this country are seemingly okay with it.
Click to expand...
Putin is almost certainly the one who brought it up.
 
I'm hoping by the limited response to this thread that I'm overreacting. I'm just absolutely beside myself that an American president would say something as reckless as that.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top