gearhog

I've used the word "fantasy" multiple times in this thread to describe these completely unrealistic positions/goals. You're explicitly telling me you're fantasizing. You're not going to be king. Nobody who thinks like you is going to be in a position to decide in favor of the things you want to happen. Some of you need to step back and consider the totality of the circumstances. You're focusing on variables that aren't going to change. Allowing oneself to dwell on pipe dreams and delusions is unhealthy.

Because it's a hilariously overly simplified comparison. For starters, we were a stronger power fighting a conflict 6-9 thousand miles from home. Russia/Ukraine are fighting a conflict 0 miles from their border. There are thousands of other variables, (social, language, economic, ideological) that make this situation different, just as in the earlier WWII examples. It's lazy to attempt to frame this conflict as the same as any other just because you can claim there is a strong player and a weak player, one was somewhat more committed, one was somewhat less committed. Nonsense. You could say Israel cannot win against the Palestinians because they're super committed. Your rule of thumb doesn't seem to apply there, does it? You're cherry picking a single argument. That's just one of my points in a post with several others. If you want to talk commitment, I would like for just one of you to explain to me how your individual support for Ukraine goes beyond pecking a few keys to whine about how we (collectively) are not dumping hundreds of billion$ more into this fiasco.

You quoted me and said "I literally answered this the other day", but the only question I had asked was if you were just going to complain every time reality doesn't align with what you wanted to happen. What is it that are you so intent that I reply to? Quote it or repeat it. So you're listing our military failures as justifications as to why we should give military support to Ukraine? Well, I'll give you credit: that's a completely new and unexpected way to look at this. I don't think anyone has ever made that argument. It might be the least intellectual point attempted in this thread, but at least it's original. I got nothing for you. If Ukraine has plenty of international volunteers, why do they have conscription? Why are we seeing countless vids of them abducting their own citizens from the streets? Again, this is just basic logic. Your points are really, really bad. "I'd totally help if it weren't for my ADSC." "I'd totally help if I were allowed to fly airplanes." Funny how all of the ways you say you want to help conveniently have conditions, while all the ways you can actually help have none. Show me one receipt. Let's reel it back in to reality: Your SQ isn't getting called. You're not going to help or make sacrifices. Russia isn't just going to pack it up and put it in reverse. There will be a negotiation. Both sides will make concessions. The killing will stop. Life will go on. We'll look back just as we do on AFG, IRQ, Vietnam and say, "Well...that was f'n stupid".

Never saw it. Russia should just quit? How does that even enter into your mind as a realistic solution let alone as being in the realm of remote possibility? What a mind-numbingly ignorant position. That's something you'd expect to hear from your average TikTok account, not an educated military officer. How does Ukraine attain a position of strength? Their population is being drained of warfighters. The world can supply them unlimited weapons and money, but no one is willing to replace Ukraine's soldiers with their own... including you.

CBS poll regarding President Trump's joint address to Congress. It was shocking to see how many people disapproved. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-speech-joint-address-congress-poll-2025/

It's not discernable to you because the senseless killing of hundreds of thousands (millions?) is inconceivable to you as a valid reason to cease hostilities. Name once instance, from anywhere, of anyone here who has said Russia was an ally. You can't. All of your reasonable justifications to continue war have been defeated, so it seems the lot of you must resort to inventing false positions or statements to argue against. Logic, not wishful thinking, will always dictate the ultimate outcome of an event. What are you going to do, make a post every time reality doesn't jive with your position? Fortunately, most people are not like you. Most people believe protracting a foreign conflict where millions continue to die is not in our best interest nor Ukraine's best interest. Thank goodness for real democracy. Events are clearly going to diverge at an increasing rate from your poorly considered desires. I suggest you surrender to the fact our support for this conflict is ending, or you're just going to be yet another in a long line who whine a lot, but never actually do anything to contribute to your cause. You win some, you lose some. Pickyourbattles.

Zelensky bends the knee. Makes public concessions after his meeting with Trump and says he’s “ready to work under President Trump’s strong leadership.” Please whine about it and cope below 👇

Wrong. I've covered this multiple times in this thread. Ypu're regurgitating something you saw on the internet without even bothering to verify it. Their "constitution" was abridged in 2015 by a statutory law that allows them to suspend elections in a time of war. After the coup. The original constitution was not written with a provision for suspending elections under "Martial Law". Here is the link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martial_law_in_Ukraine Just because a document outlining a system of government is called a "constitution" does not mean it is in the same class or category as the US Constitution. As I said before, we held elections during the Civil War and WWII, two of the most consequential conflicts in our nation's history, and we were better off for it. A democracy isn't just about people voting for frivolous policies about what potholes get filled or where people can smoke weed. A true democracy exists when a nation's citizens can decide the direction of their country in it's most important and pivotal moments. The Ukrainian people are denied the opportunity to decide if their citizens continue to die. Don't speak of idiocy while also not knowing the history of martial law in Ukraine. No one here ever said it's ok. You can understand something without condoning it. Another BS Straw Man fallacy argument. The world is full of crimes and injustices and we simply do not have the money and resources to correct them all. And they're not all a direct threat to us. Shit happens. And don't play it up as if you're hyper-sensitive to the plight of Ukrainians. Like most of those wringing their hands over how a sacrosanct piece of foreign dirt got trampled upon, you'll argue for 200+ online discussion forum pages about what a tragedy this is while not doing anything of substance to help. You even have the means and ability yourself to help Americans suffering within a few miles of you. Think about how much of that you're doing. It's all virtue-signalling and no substance. Check out the concept of "Suicidal Empathy" in Gad Saad's upcoming book. You can be manipulated to become so deeply empathetic to a cause while having absolutely zero first-hand exposure to it, that you'll knowingly or unknowingly harm yourself for its benefit.

Today. AM: PM: How far away is it now?

I've already said: I don't care if you did or you didn't seek help online to create a reply. But I do appreciate the recent human responses. Now we're getting somewhere. So you want direct conflict between the US military and the Russian military. However (and this is a big however), you're not ready to commit ground troops. Just a little limited near-peer engagement in the air. Delusional. Acceptable to whom? What percentage of the threats in your vault are manufactured in Russia? I'd hope if you're ready to send Airman into direct conflict with the Russkies, you'd have something a little more solid than some off-the-hip hypotheticals that it won't escalate. Do you really think there are any plans for a scenario where our aircraft attack Russia and Russia just takes it and elects not to lob a few tactical nukes our way? Silly. "Why should the world exist without Russia?" That's always their response when asked about strategic defeat. Do you hear yourself? Would you say this to any Ukrainian? "Here's some money. We need you, as a former second world country, to fight an adversary of the first world. Try not to die." I'm not going to admit it's not straightforward. It absolutely is. Stance A. Stance A. You think we need to start WW3 because your "world order" is under some sort of perceived threat. It's not. The Cold War was cold because we avoided a hot war and defeated the USSR by just being a better country. We were economically, socially, morally, and diplomatically superior. Countless lives were saved, perhaps the whole planet, because cooler heads prevailed. You're like a modern day Buck Turgidson.

Haha. You specified ChatGPT when I said "or any other LLM" but whatever. I don't really care. I can argue with AI or Google as well as anyone else. It's kinda disappointing, though. There is nothing new under the sun. I can't forget things that I read. So when you say you Googled logical fallacies, I know exactly when I've had this conversation before. You're just repeating what everyone does. All arguments end up being the same. It's not original. And it doesn't work. There is literally no tactic you can use in this thread that hasn't already been used by someone else, probably multiple times. Moving on... I asked if you would go to fight, and you qualified it with "I would fly a fifth generation fighter". Of course, who wouldn't?The people that you support being prod into the front lines don't have 5th gen fighters. You could go fight with whatever they have to fight with, right? I also asked another question. If Ukraine does run out of soldiers, do you believe the USA should supply them? This is probably my most avoided question. No one wants to answer this one. Do you vote to send Americans to the front line? Again, you're not the one making the sacrifices, so it's incredibly easy for you to say that others should.

You avoided the question. Did you use ChatGPT or another LLM to help create a reply? That's all I want to know. It's either Yes or No. It's not a personal attack. It's not an emotional question. It's just a statement of fact.

Huh. No way. The structure and style of your reply doesn't match your earlier replies. And you wrote all of that in a few minutes. This reply is exactly that of a language model. It's why you didn't hit the reply button. I copied and pasted my post into ChatGPT, told it to create a rebuttal, and got a similar response. I'm sure you want to portray yourself as noble individual, right and wrong, and all that. You probably have some morals, values, and principles. Answer me this: Did you use ChatGPT or any other language model to help you create a response to my earlier post? I noticed that the response you copied and pasted above didn't address anything pertaining to your personal belief. That's the flaw in ChatGPT. Should American soldiers be committed to directly engage Russia over the conflict in Ukraine? Are you willing to go? LLMs can't answer this.

In your mind, that is the entirety of the situation. It's a simple-minded comparison and you could draw a thousand meaningless parallels. The present circumstance is far more complex than "A bad guy invaded somebody else". But as to the last part, are you asking me to give you an example of a country... that invaded another country... under false pretenses in the last 150 years? If you were to guess at the example I might be compelled to give... what would it be? I don't know? I posted a lot. Go read it. So your belief is it is never okay for a sovereign country to be annexed by another? We're allowed to reach back into history for examples, correct? I'm just trying to think of one as I sit here on the 25th floor overlooking the great state of Texas. I'll get back to you on that. Good point on the dismantling of international agreements. "Good morning. I’ve just concluded a meeting of my National Security Council. We reviewed what I discussed with my friend, President Vladimir Putin, over the course of many meetings, many months. And that is the need for America to move beyond the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. Today, I have given formal notice to Russia, in accordance with the treaty, that the United States of America is withdrawing from this almost 30-year-old treaty. I have concluded the ABM Treaty hinders our government’s ability to develop ways to protect our people from future terrorist or rogue-state missile attacks." https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/article/article/1924779/us-withdraws-from-intermediate-range-nuclear-forces-treaty/ History didn't start in 2022. The USA meddled in Ukrainian politics as has been documented extensively here. And as a result, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian lives have been lost, the nation is in ruins, divided. It is not for you to say what is best for Ukrainians. https://x.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/1895983497464225938 As I said, this has been covered here. Ukraine didn't have nukes. Europe does. How is that difficult to understand? Have you followed your position through to a logical conclusion? What is the resolution you envision? None of it makes sense. Where do you think continuously feeding Ukrainians into the meat grinder leads? It's clear you do not want a negotiated peace. Why not? Perhaps you think if we fund Ukraine enough, they'll never run out of young men to kidnap off the streets? Do you think that's reality? Russia has existed for what, a 1000 years? You think it's just going to fold? If Ukraine does run out of soldiers, do you believe the USA should supply them? This is probably my most avoided question. No one wants to answer this one. If the USA does supply boots on the ground, do you believe the cause worthy enough to go yourself, or just some infantrymen from Ft. Campbell? If the cause is worthy then, why isn't it worthy now? There's a line you'll draw that defines the limits of your support to Ukraine. Where is it? There is absolutely nothing stopping you from providing direct material support to Ukraine now. Why is your fervent support only limited to your zinger replies to me? Virtue-signalling. Fact: you really don't believe what you are typing. You don't think Russia is an existential threat to you or your country or your actions would match your words. Simple logic. I don't want my country, my money, protracting a deadly conflict that is not a threat to my nation. It's a great position. All I have to do is call BS when you break out in hysterics "Putin is literally Hitler!" Your position is much harder to defend because testing your "belief" requires you to do much more than advocate for others to continue the conflict. You're not gonna like this: I think you'd send 100K more Ukrainians to die only so that you would win an online debate. You would not trade places with any of the young men in the videos above being thrown into a van. Now relax. Because it's not going to happen. You can claim that you "would have" joined the fight now knowing the fight is ending. The US is done. Like it or not, it's reality. Complain about it as much as you want because you're pissing in the wind.

Huh? You were begging me to address your concern and participate in an intellectual discussion and this is all you've got? Just gonna abandon the whole issue you were so insistent to discuss, eh? Out of all that, the only thing you find to comment on a was a perceived offense to your delicate sensibilities. It just further illustrates my point that in a debate, you respond with emotion, while ignoring all the reason and logic. If I described a category of human that stereotypically exhibited that characteristic, what immediately springs to mind?

Again, a comparison to Nazi Germany and Hitler is the ultimate fall back position for a failing argument. It's a cliche. Neville was dealing with a rapidly rearming Germany with a leader who explicitly stated his goal was domination of Europe and wasn't bound by any international agreements or institutions such as the UN. Hitler nearly entirely rejected coexistence with the nations he believed to be responsible for the ruination of Germany. Russia requires international economic interdependence through sales of energy and other resource exports. Germany did not. Russia is a nuclear nation, yet doesn't seek a totalitarian endgame like Hilter's Thousand Year Reich. Neville and Europe were still reeling from WWI and didn't have the economic or military power to meaningful oppose Hitler in a conventional conflict. Both Europe/NATO and Russia are nuclear armed. Neither is gong to invade. How can you expect Russia to launch and invasion of Europe when they could barely push a few dozen miles into Ukraine? And that was with no NATO troops participating. Putin may be a terrible person, but he's pragmatic whereas Hitler was ideological. Your comparison is desperate and an intentional conflation of two completely difference scenarios, periods of time, technology, motivations, etc. All of your arguments are just hyperventilating fear-mongering touting an imaginary worst-case scenario. You're the type of person where someone could plant a seed of fear and doubt, and you'd ruminate on it until you worked yourself into frenzy believing there is no action that shouldn't be take to completely eliminate your perceived threat. You're motivated by emotion, whereas I try to find reason and logic.

You mean with a series of posts containing no arguments, just insults and memes? I got a few minutes. Let's see your best "intellectual discussion". LOL

Wow, you really outdid yourself. I remember it, I just wanted to see if you'd search for it. First, you didn't make any case. That's why I didn't respond. You said I might want to look him up. I might not. Lay out an argument. I doubt you'd be able to type a single paragraph from your memory of the event. While doing so, remember Godwin's Law that states the longer an online discussion becomes, the probability of the losing side invoking Nazi and Hitler approaches 1.

Go find it and post it below.

Straw man tactic. Not one has said this. You're inventing positions to argue against (or, in this case, copy/paste memes as a response) because you you're not equipped to make your case intelligently. It's apparent to me, and it's apparent to you.

If you're going to attempt petty insults, at least embed them in some sort of a rational argument. Otherwise, it only appears you're trying to deflect from a debate you can't win. I've been here more than 20 years. I have seen every debate tactic. You're simply not going to have an effect. Either win, or find another way to cope. Why didn't you just combine the posts? Not once have I ever said Russia was our friend. But their threat the the United States is as ineffectual as your insults are to my feelings. For the record, I love my country and I support the decisions our country is making with regard to this conflict. It seems you're a little put off by the position the USA has taken with regard to seeking peace. You don't dislike America, right? You don't seem supportive of the idea of peace and stability. Very strange.

Starmer after giving Zelensky two whole billion dollars: "The UK is prepared to back this with boots on the ground and planes in the air. Together with others, Europe must do the heavy lifting. But, to support peace in our continent and to succeed, this effort must have strong US backing." Looks like the rest of NATO is finally stepping up to the plate and opening that fat wallet. 😄

How does one spin that the USA has stopped attacking one of the nations it's actively engaged in brokering a peace deal with? Serious question? Here's one you'll find equally baffling: Shot... https://x.com/stillgray/status/1896151547853382092 Chaser... https://x.com/clashreport/status/1896287319730295136

Please keep us updated, @SurelySerious @Sua Sponte. What a predicament. https://x.com/Breaking911/status/1896280128432623774