PugJesus

It’s very understandable to handwave it away and dismiss it,

I very much disagree. Handwaving it and dismissing it misses the entire point of why deliberately murdering civilians is bad.

but yeah, we should just briefly accept that violence against innocent people is wrong and immediately turn it back to Israel, who, by far, hurt and kill way more innocent people than Hamas ever could.

I don't know about 'ever could' - if the IDF was entirely incompetent instead of just vile, I wouldn't trust Hamas not to simply play this card in reverse. Their long history of antisemitism remains... suspect. On top of being theocratic loons.

But that's why Israel supported Hamas to undermine Fatah. Much easier target for Israeli PR.

Welp, looks like he started the whole thing off an old comment he found. He was looking for a fight by directly going with the most controversial statement he could find.

That's not even the most controversial statement in the thread, man.

From my point of view, Israel is waging war on civilians mostly. Hamas is a non issue that can only deal the damage Israel let’s them.

I would agree. I would go so far as to say that calling it war is generous. It's nothing more than a genocide. Hamas isn't much more than a cat's paw for Israeli domestic politics - which makes the defense of their targeting of civilians (something both morally abhorrent and without significant gain for the Palestinian people) all the more ridiculous. At least, ridiculous from an anti-Zionist point of view.

Terrorist groups can’t be defended, but they can’t be used as justification for wholesale slaughter of a civilian population either. That’s the main issue that I think gets people riled up.

The main issue in the real world (thankfully). Unfortunately, on the Fediverse, there's a fairly large contingent of folk who think that ethnic cleansing is Good, Actually, if it's pointed towards Israelis.

Thanks for the link.

np

First stop was Hungary, but yes.

The crusaders incurred a huge debt contracting with the Venetians, and when the lackluster crusade didn't turn up enough people (rich OR poor) to fund the full debt for the transport fleet (which was much larger than it needed to be, since they were expected a larger turnout for the crusade), there was a 'no refunds' policy taken by Venice. Venice demanded payment in other forms - first to subdue some local Christian cities they regarded as 'rightfully' Venice's.

After that, the crusaders were still short on cash and running low on supplies, as the strongarming was only to cover the remainder of the contract that they couldn't afford, and the contract's duration for providing supplies to the crusaders was running low - in large part because of the time taken by the strongarming detour. They could have disembarked as-planned, but would have done so with almost no food deep in hostile territory, which was not the original plan - hardly an auspicious start to a 'successful' crusade. The deposed Byzantine Emperor contacted part of the crusade and offered to pay off their whole debt to the Venetians and provide troops and support to the Holy Land if they put him back on the throne. The Venetians, seeing a chance to fuck over the Byzantines, their traditional enemies, were strongly in favor of the plan.

Of course, this ran into one small problem - the Byzantine Empire was in no shape to pay off massive debts or provide large armies to military adventures at this time. It was only barely holding itself together. When the crusaders sacked Constantinople and put the previous Byzantine Emperor on the throne, they found out that his promises were largely empty, and that even the entire Byzantine treasury couldn't pay what they were promised.

... so they couped (and killed) the Emperor they themselves had installed by coup, and instead founded what is usually referred to as the "Latin Empire" in modern histories, a Catholic crusader state which ruled over Constantinople and the surrounding area, with only the fringes of the Byzantine Empire remaining free from Catholic control. This section of the crusade never did actually tangle with the Muslims, and the section of the crusade that DID reach the Holy Land (largely made of crusaders who refused to do either sack, Hungary or Byzantine) disbanded because they were too few by that point to convince the local crusader states to start another war with the Muslim polities.

The Pope was reportedly legitimately unhappy about every part of this.

I'm just happy to be a little useful to the Fediverse! 🙏

My favorite part of an FPS is the part where you warm up your rations in the Alpine winter 😭

(unironically, if there was a WW1 sim that went all out like that, I probably would love it)

Speaking of fallible, I've certainly taken my fair share of well-deserved lumps from moderation, lmao

Moderator action establishes a baseline for conduct in the community. Sometimes, even regular contributors need a whack on the nose with a newspaper - otherwise it ends up a tightly-knit clique with "rules for thee but not for me".

Not sure about when it was recognized that the Peninsula was a boot, but it was drawn as such in maps derived from 2nd century AD originals, and high heels became popular in the 17th century AD amongst male nobility who wanted to emphasize their height, status, and the resulting fact that they needed to do nothing requiring practical movement.

By "no matter what their own voter base actually wants", you mean "some bizarre envisioning of the Dem voter base as far-left"

https://www.newsweek.com/democrats-want-party-move-right-poll-2030713

The poll of 1,001 adults nationwide, conducted January 21 to January 27—just days after Trump returned to office—found that more Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents want the party to move toward moderation rather than becoming more liberal or staying the same.

It found that 45 percent of Democratic respondents wanted the party to become "more moderate," compared to 34 percent in 2021. The poll also found that Democrats are less satisfied with the state of party politics, with 22 percent wanting the party to stay the same, down from 31 percent in 2021.

Meanwhile, 29 percent of participants want the party to become more liberal, compared to 34 percent in 2021.

The breakdown of the vote percentage shows that 50 percent of nonwhite participants support the party becoming more moderate, compared to 42 percent of white participants. The shift also trends higher among higher-income earners.

I have an overwhelmingly negative view of Newsom, and let me tell you: most of the people shitting themselves in fury over Newsom on here are the kind of people who celebrate their 'principled' advocacy of nonvoting in order to allow literal fascists to murder American minorities. They do not want to express approval of any good policy from 'the Dems', because that would weaken their argument that no one in the current system is capable of doing anything to improve anyone's life, which justifies their total abstention and visceral hatred for participation in 'electoral' politics.

And on the side of the spectrum I’m calling left to left-centre, we seem to let the fewer things we disagree with get in the way of the many more things we would agree with each other.

The problem is the same issue that leads to right-unity, but in reverse.

Most people do not make political allegiances based on policy opinions.

The right doesn't agree on anything, despite how it appears to many who are unfamiliar with right-wing discourse. But they define themselves as a community, largely defined in objection to modernity.

The left defines itself as many communities, and what ends up being important is not policy, but in-groups and out-groups. It doesn't matter what policy would help the working class, or minorities, or establish a more just or even more left-friendly situation going forward. What matters is the in-group being opposed to the out-group.

There are people on here who literally and openly decry 'turbolibs' as worse than literal Nazis. There are many who equate liberals with literal fascists (and they would spare not an instant reminding you that Bernie Sanders is a liberal).

They don't care about the people they claim to champion. They don't have actual policy concerns, though they might express opinions on policy in the abstract. All they care about is in-group and out-group.

Are you really living in a democracy when only one of two parties can ever win, and both are 100% commited to neoliberal economics? Nothing is gonna get better in the long run under a system that is designed to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. No war but class war.

I'm so glad nothing has improved since 1789 in your eyes. As we all know, minorities and the actual working class, as people don't actually matter; only being able to beat your chest about how 'pure' you are over championing the abstract demographic at the expense of the actual living human beings who make up these classes matters.

I'm so fucking tuned out to how I used to be just one short year ago. I know it's just a nonstop avalanche of fascism that I, as an individual, will not be better equipped to combat by following closer. I used to follow Congressional bills, debates, presidential speeches, etc.

Now my attention to national politics is utterly minimal and restricted to informing myself of only what I need to for the sake of local activism and keeping up with international politics (which I still follow fairly closely).

I'm still probably more tuned-in than most of the American electorate. But fuck, I can't just watch every individual step of fascism going forward here on out. I'm close enough to blowing my brains out without that additional inducement.

Oh, thank goodness! I always wondered what happened. I wish him the best!