Look, everyone is saying Saruman is just as bad as Sauron, but here's the thing:

Yes he is moving towards Sauron strategically on specific issues, but these issues are important to his base and he has to throw them a bone.

Yes he is illegally killing Rohan civilians, but nobody claimed the defense of the regions west of his Stone Circle system would be painless.

Yes his armies look and foreign policy look eerily similar to Sauron's, but he promises he's trying to stop him actually.

You purists in the Shire keep saying it's not necessary to destroy the whole forest of Fangorn but he got the endorsement of Lurtz, so he clearly knows more about politics than you do.

Anyone serious understands that resisting Sauron means voting for Saruman.

I swear the process is designed to discipline labor. It's a weird hazing ritual we've normalized as part of making a living so you feel indebted to whoever hires you for ending the madness.

Yeah it seems like maybe real experience with us is changing opinion more broadly. I was expecting a dogpile.

Yeah there's a commenter pointing that out in the thread and laughing at how bad the OP was at having a discussion

Well he's in a bind honestly, going by the people I know that profess to like Trump. They want imaginary stupid things that can't be said out loud without being obviously stupid or contradictory.

Like, he wants to run as anti-war, and also oppose a cease fire in Gaza? He wants credit for Afghanistan but not to accept that losing a war means an embarrassing retreat. He wants to support the Jan 6th people but also not get yelled at for being supportive of overthrowing the government. He's gonna end the war in Ukraine before he even comes in, but the terms Putin is asking for are unacceptable?

You have to keep banging on about immigrants because if you get concrete about anything else someone might notice that it makes no fucking sense.

Oh that guy, he got owned by a bunch of hexbears on a thread about Ukraine news, he's probably just gonna find a reason to take that out on whatever hexbears he sees.

Good. They're afraid and have no counterargument. Scare them Comrade.

"Round here we call it Shapiroing"

I think it got a lot of goodwill by being derived from Rocz's solo YouTube stuff which was actually pretty good, class conscious urban development and planning stuff. His dry delivery kinda gave him the air of a based lefty Plinkett. Genuinely sad that the YouTube stuff has been left to die in service of the podcast.

Are some of the kids you’re teaching not know how to genuinely read?

Gotta love it when this is the person soliciting all the commentary on how kids these days can't read or write. The post is almost incoherent.

The enshitification of all things is so frustrating. You witness perfectly useful technology being destroyed in the pursuit of like 5 dollars. I don't answer the phone unless I've told someone to call me because it's always a robot, my email inbox is full of garbage I didn't ask for so I don't check in much, now they've got robots texting me scams. I can't even pay for petrol in peace, because they make a nickel having a tiny television try to sell me an energy drink. And nothing is done because heaven forefend that anything should come in the way of an extra .02% increase in some asshole's quarterly report.

In my experience alt right folks are pretty anti China, to the point where that is often the reason they oppose the Ukraine war, as it is dividing the attention of the Christian west from the rising, menacing Tigers that threaten white society.

Hexbears are often skeptical of Adrian Zenz who is usually the source of claims about China. Most that I've seen acknowledge that there are camps (China openly says it is running programs to deradicalize separatists and fundamentalists in the region), but disagree that they are as bad as western media depicts them, and would probably argue that western nations are concern trolling about the issue regardless because it is easy to question whether American foreign policy is motivated by concern for Muslims. Genuinely curious, who is an alt-right guy who doesn't think there are camps in Xinjiang? I've never encountered a pro-Chinese reactionary.

As to Korea I thought MAGA types just memed about Kim Jong Un because Trump sort of got along with him. Hexbears think that the Korean War was bad and that Korea is acting predictably given that a nuclear power is constantly threatening them with annihilation. There are a variety of positions in Hexbear on the DPRK though, and I can't really account for all of them, but I think they arise out of a genuine anti-imperial and anti-war sentiment, and a healthy doze of skepticism of western narratives of a state enemy. I don't think you could say that for the alt right.