A country can be losing but in an existential conflict seem to rarely outright surrender. Ukraines position, while dire, is far stronger than the talibans after the US invasion of Iraq. 20 years later, they were still fighting and ultimately prevailed.

In my mind, this Inevitably is in ukraines future if allies don’t continue to materially support Ukraine - either way the Russian occupation ultimately fails, the question is does Ukraine defend itself and remain a sovereign nation or do they fall and an insurgency later force it’s reinstatement.

I guess you didn’t edit your reply to me either?

With the edits your post comes across a lot less like astroturfing. I’m not sure that skepticism of the intent of anonymous users on social media is “trouble with listening skills” or cause for offense - we should all be aware malicious players want to influence us in different ways.

Suggesting that the CCP is open to letting lesbians live their life seems pretty surreal after what happened to Naomi Wu. It’s shocking how quickly the dust settled on that.

Though to anyone trying to encourage discontent to westerners with socially liberal beliefs, it’s a pretty helpful narrative to push.

The first one where he was a drifter somewhere in the Pacific Northwest getting taunted by cops? I think you mean the 2nd or 3rd.

Part of the problem for the US is that such a huge amount of gdp is buried in the masses of beauracracy that makes up the US healthcare system, it’s essentially acting (economically) as proxy government spending to prop up a failing economy. The average US citizen is so heavily propaganda’d into hating government run projects that the sensible economic stimulus (government infrastructure projects or public services) are well and truly off the table.

What this ultimately means is fixing healthcare isn’t just breaking up the cartels, preventing price fixing and untangling the web of nonsense that makes up the US private system… unless you want to inspire a massive crash (which absolutely has real human cost), it also means redistributing government spending and implementing (unrelated) government run services and/or projects to keep all these people employed (which would also mean re-training and potentially relocating) - all of which needs to be done against the overwhelmingly loud voices screeching “government employee bad”.

With the respect, the Trump team failed to invade the US Capitol when they controlled it’s defense apparatus, they are more likely to kill themselves than succeed in any ground invasion.

Right, why would commercial media want to underhandedly support the candidate who generates constant outrage and hate porn, which directly increases their bottom line. Why would they lie

If you just look at numbers maybe, we can see from Russia (large navy) vs Ukraine (no navy) that there are serious disadvantages when waging a war of attrition, even with relatively near distances and supply lines.

The Israeli navy has no meaningful capability control Norwegian waters and they would be insane to try.

Norway having a small military and being easy to bully sounds familiar, perhaps the Russians remember how that goes and can explain.

It’s claiming that pushing men out of civilized communities, spaces and conversations ultimately leads to them embracing more accepting alt-right ideologies and movements.

To be clear, what I said was “I think that’s a strange comment” to someone saying “Americans want to kill me” in comparison to those in the Middle East.

If you read that back carefully, you might notice that I was careful not to say “I support the systematic and brutal murder of millions of people” - that’s because, like any sane person, I see that what Israel are doing is abhorrent. I never argued or insinuated that lgbtq people should support the genocide of bigots, but again for the sake of clarity my position is that only a literal insane person could think that. An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.

So, with that said, your post that I responded to seems to imply that you think Americans (in general) hate you in the same way that many in the middle east hate you. To me, that is an incredibly naive view, and a very strange thing for someone who’s never lived there to make.

I think that it’s possible to condemn elements of a culture, in an honest way ie. that the Islamic attitude to LGB is worse than that in western countries, however bad western countries often are (for some reason I think there’s sometimes less hate for the T in Islamic culture) but pull short of supporting the worst elements of western culture (like islamophobia) and absolutely without endorsing literal war crimes.

This is a dumb comment, to millions even being allowed in school is a privilege. source

Have you ever spent time in a middle eastern country and been visibly “out”? (I’m assuming you’re saying this in reference to existing somewhere on the lgbtq spectrum)

If the answer is no, but you have spent time in America, then I think this is a strange comment.

What do you think “math” is?

And I think it’s nearly universally acknowledged that ceding to the government the power to decide how its individual citizens should live their lives is a terrible idea. If we were talking about almost anything else, there would be an uproar.

Marijuana among many other drugs are illegal in New Zealand with no uproar. How is that different than cigarettes?

If you’re saying it’s tyranny to prevent people from taking actions, that the majority feel shouldn’t be allowed, that drive up healthcare costs then that’s one thing. However if your position on this is based on a liberal ideal of people being allowed to do what they want, then it should surely equally apply to the taxpayers (particularly if they are majority voters) who don’t want to pay for the decisions of others. Either way that is government intervention restricting individuals freedom.

I think it’s not right to say “the governments money” as if an administrative body that is beholden to the voters has true autonomy over how it’s spent - that is the populations money and should be their choice on how it’s spent. One can argue it’s immoral to refuse migrants access to the country and healthcare but that isn’t accepted as justification for open borders. I also don’t understand, assuming cigarettes are some special case different than immigration where morality should trump democracy, why it’s more valid to say this taxpayer control over how their money is spent should be restricted based on your moral judgement compared to someone else’s moral judgement who’s claim is cigarettes are immoral (for whatever their chosen reason).

The claim of smokers dying younger and therefore costing less is something I didn’t consider and is an interesting point (that very well could prove true). But even if you discredit the taxpayer funded health argument, there’s moral arguments around selling addictive substances, human pain caused by premature death and sickness etc. that could just as readily be made as any argument based around individual freedoms. Why should your claims on what’s moral have precedence over someone else’s?

Most new zealnders don’t smoke, if most new zealanders don’t want to fund smoking how is that different than any other drug being illegal? Would you describe illegal cannibas or prescription only medications as tyranny of the majority?

There are checks and balances in place to prevent actual human rights abuses. You still haven’t answered why tax paying new zealanders should be forced to pay health costs for smokers when the majority don’t support it. If banning smoking is tyranny of the majority, forcing taxpayers to fund smokers against their will is surely tyranny of the minority.

It’s a democracy, the people have the right to value different things differently if they choose. The previous administration ran for office with the cigarette restrictions as part of their policy package and people voted for that. They didn’t vote for alcohol or fast food or whatever else your claiming is the same, if people wanted to ban other things they have the right to vote accordingly.

New Zealand has publically funded health care. If the government can force me to pay for your medical treatment (via tax), why is it a stretch for them to prevent you from running up those costs by engaging in self destructive drug use?

In any democracy, the voting public should choose how tax money is spent. If the majority don’t want to pay to manage smoking related illness, or pay to enforce a two tiered medical system, a democratic system would restrict or ban smoking.