the_dunk_tank
It's the dunk tank.
This is where you come to post big-brained hot takes by chuds, libs, or even fellow leftists, and tear them to itty-bitty pieces with precision dunkstrikes.
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Rule 9: if you post ironic rage bait im going to make a personal visit to your house to make sure you never make this mistake again
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we're ideologically much, much further away from Putin than they are. if he didn't intervene in Crimea or Ukraine but kept all his policies otherwise intact, including the ones repressing minorities and pro-market ones, he wouldn't be nearly as hated by these people.
libs fall over each other for the esteemed opportunity to lick the boots of the most depraved, most despotic, most comically evil politicians and oligarchs, with three exceptions: when they carry out those acts in a transparent way rather than hiding it behind veils of "we need to cut social security because of X"; when they use the state for economic interventions rather than free market "solutions"; and when they decide to snub America on a certain issue (but are otherwise perfectly willing lapdogs)
e.g.
unhinged rightwinger: "I will kill 100,000 poor people."
libs: "nooooo! we need to register with our local police department to hold a 1 hour march through the city and then get teargassed anyway and then mutter "just a few bad apples" on the way home! but it's important to remember that China does way worse things! stop using whataboutisms by bringing up America!"
unhinged rightwinger: "fine. I will reduce social security spending and cut funding to hospitals and homeless shelters (this will have the effect of killing 100,000 poor people)"
libs: "hm, yes, very wise, for I am also socially liberal but fiscally conservative and I think it's important to reach across the aisle and engage civilly with our opposition so that they will give us policies in return (they won't). the efficiencies in this sector will go up 4.7% according to this think tank's analysis..."
leftwinger: "we should increase funding to hospitals and build more houses in this city to fix the homelessness problem (this will have the effect of saving 100,000 poor people)"
libs: "noooo! you're using state funds which will increase the big magical national debt number! you're not allowing the free market to build the best and most efficient housing! we can't do this while there's inflation! read economics 101! some of those building materials come from Russia and China, you're a tankie!"
The concept of a national deficit is so hard for me to grasp.
So a deficit is when the government spends more money than they take in from taxes, cool. So government just raises taxes when they end up doing that, sort of like how I up my tax contribution if I end up owing at the end of the year. Wait, they only raise taxes on the working class? Because the capitalist class, through their money, is able to organize and consolidate power? That's shit but surely it doesn't get worse.
Okay, so where do they get the money to spend if they're spending more than they take in? It's gotta come from somewhere, I'm sure they just print more and that can't be bad. Oh, so when they print more money that makes the existing money worth less... Well that goes for the capitalists too, so at least that's even. Oh, you mean that they get to park their money in appreciating assets while mine gets spent day to day and my wage stagnates so my purchasing power and meager savings just fucking declines... It surely can't get worse.
Yeah, I remember that appreciating assets thing. Get it over with, how does that fuck me over? So the government issues bonds, basically guaranteeing a set return on the money capitalists spend on them. How can the government guarantee that? Isn't the market too volatile for that kind of guarantee? Ah, of course they would make up the difference with taxes, which I just learned are dis-proportionately paid by the working class.
Liberals have no consistency and are totally operating on vibes. I remember liberals used to really like Israel.
They've even somehow rehabilitated George W. Bush even though he's evil incarnate. They also admire literal monarchy? Like they were really into Elizabeth II back when she was around. They'll all trip over themselves to say nice things about Churchill, about Alexander Hamilton (slave owner), and will say war crimes like the atom bombing of Japan are complicated. Other things their heroes did just aren't in their worldview at all, like Clinton bombing Yugoslavia and Sudan, or Obama overthrowing Libya. Those events just vanished into nothingness for liberals. Or if you bring them up you're accused of whataboutism and the conversation stops.
And yet they have the gumption to say we're bootlickers?
And they criticize us for saying otherwise factual things about Russia? Not even bootlicking, just very neutral information like that NATO is openly hostile to Russia and that Crimea is currently administered by the Russian state. That's enough to be called pro-Putin, but more than that, you're not just expressing a political reality, your mind has been infected with Putin and you're a bad person now.
The bit where they had Bush giving candy to Michelle Obama six fucking years after the "end" of the Iraq War.
Actual quote from Michelle Obama.
HE MURDERED A MILLION PEOPLE OBAMA!
(I never know how to refer to the spouses of major political figures. First name, for women especially, seems demeaning but not in a useful way, while last name is confusing, and fuck me if I'm putting "Mrs".)
He's just a kind old feller who spends time painting nowadays. Wholesome harmless grandpa with a guilt free conscience.
Yes it does
I politely and respectfully disagree with killing one million Iraqi people, Mr. Bush.
If she held Dubya to a higher moral standard than this, she might have to consider doing the same to Barack, and she definitely doesn't want to do that.
Hadn't thought about Clinton bombing that pharma factory in Sudan for a while. : |
Try telling them that there was no political reality where Russia would allow Ukraine to sieze control of Crimea and had it to NATO. Watch them seethe at you for denying the holiness of national sovereignty. Watch their minds bounce off the idea of strategic interest like a duck bouncing off a jetski. Oh, and try telling them that pretty much everyone in Crimea in some way worked for or worked to support the Russian Black Sea Fleet, so Russia didn't have to invade because they already had a huge military base there. They just took the old flags down and put new ones up.
There's also no political reality where NATO would actually let Ukraine become a member.
This whole thing stinks to high heaven.
You know that is one I haven't seen any libs reckon with? Most of them are firmly convinced Russia invaded Ukraine because Putler is evil with no real analysis beyond that, but the fact that Ukraine has been yelling about joining NATO for years, while NATO has repeatedly said that will never happen, should have raised some kind of flag at some point.
Obama did Honduras too in 2009
all the old putin tough-guy memes are plenty of proof of this - you couldn't go anywhere on the internet without seeing that one picture of him on a horse
Oh god I forgot all about those! They were everywhere! And videos of him doing systema with his body guards, fly fishing, all kinds of shit.
To defend Azov, I've had a lib send me a picture of Putin riding a horse where it's reins had a metal swastika buckle and tried to imply that Putin is a nazi using the same logic but
That wasn't Putin's horse, he was borrowing it on a visit.
His visit was to Mongolia where Buddhism is the largest religion.
I expect swastikas in Buddhist countries. Swastikas in Europe only mean one thing.
I wonder what that lib thought of Shinzo Abe's warcrime jet
"Wow what a weird coinkydink"
Of course that think tank is bought and paid for by a deranged right-winger, but being critical of your sources is a concept libs only understand insofar as to ask "who published it? Oh CNN, then it must be fine". They don't actually employ any skepticism or source critique, propaganda is something that happens to other people far away
Their idea of source critique is typing "media fact check" into google and clicking on the first result that pops up
I honestly cannot remember how they talked about him in the before times. It certainly wasn't with this level of mindlessness, but I'm also pretty certain they hated him back them too.
it depends whether you define the "before times" as pre-2022 or pre-2014. I think before 2014 he was just another world leader to some extent. he was initially hated a lot post-2014 I remember but because the invasion of Crimea was so quick (relative to this invasion) it was hard for a ton of self-reinforcing narratives to be set up in the media, and this was before the rise of calling everybody a tankie or calling out China on every political post, so within a couple years it was back to "strong-man Putin". Russiagate obviously made his reputation tumble but if you weren't really into that, you could still have been neutral on him leading up to 2022.