You were the polite one and I was the rude one. No need for you to apologize.

Appreciate the discussion. Hopefully the world we leave is a better place than when we were born into it.

My tone was a bit over the top and I generalized regarding instances. For that I will apologize.

The USA is an “easy target” because it’s incredibly active in the world stage. Very few nations have the resources available to it to do what the USA is capable of doing. With that said this is the classic man in the arena argument – the USA is most certainly in the arena and there are good and bad things that come with it. I believe your argument to be reductionist at best – USA bad because XYZ. There’s a whole hell of a lot more to it than that. So you’ve mentioned Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan. What about long, successful alliances between USA with Jordan, Egypt, Israel (hot button I know), and Saudi Arabia.

The struggle in the region today is very much Iran and Saudi Arabia throwing their weight around and many groups of people are caught in the middle. USA included. Israel was on a path to discuss normalization of relations with Saudi Arabia and suddenly that is not a thing anymore. Hrm. Convenient. Wonder why?

Things are not as simple as you make it out to be. It takes two to tango.

The tried and true bot everything bad because USA … do you argue that things would be fundamentally better or worse today if the USA had never been involved? Half these commie ML troll bots on the internet keep spitting out the same old crap. Profit bad. Bad. Bad. They ignore the fact that a woman got shot for wearing a head scarf. You going to blame that on the USA? Get out of here with that crap.

Check out https://wiby.me/

The Internet gained steam through hobbyists and is now that corporate shell as described. In my opinion it absolutely was a better place 25 years ago. Today the internet is filled with social engineering everyone’s trying to influence something and it’s terrible.

… why not… why shouldn’t I… gollum gollum

When people are content what is there to say? People tend to post about topics that anger or frustrate them. The quality of the post varies on the sincerity of the user. Anything from shitposting to actually articulate arguments. You’re unlikely to find the latter on any form of social media. Most constructive conversation happens face to face. It’s just too easy to derail an online conversation and there are powers that be that are literally troll farms because it works.

There was a message yesterday about the game werewolf. An informed minority will generally control the uninformed majority. You get a small number of people to troll and that’s all it takes to derail conversation around any topic they don’t like.

🤯 mindblown

The current situation is dogshit. But let’s not gloss over the fact that President Obama had a chance to fill Scalia’s seat and he capitulated with the assumption that Clinton would win.

Do not take anything for granted. Everyone must vote.

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Growing up latch key many a canned chicken was turned into chicken salad.

Tastes better than it looks but that’s not saying much. Would not recommend but if yer hungry dive in.

Sounds like schizophrenia to me. Fear-mongering by politicians only exacerbates existing mental health issues.

Sad day.

Where we disagree is in saying Hamas didn’t start this current conflict. They certainly did. Has shit been going on here for millenia? of course. The “strawman” was to remind you of the fact this opened with mass rape and murder at a music festival – that’s a fact.

You seemed to argue that thousand years of history seemingly justifies that and I’m telling you that it does not. " If Hamas did "… So you’re absolute when it comes to Israel but when it comes to Hamas there’ are modifiers. Your bias is showing.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67613153

https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/06/middleeast/rape-sexual-violence-hamas-israel-what-we-know-intl/index.html

Israel has done plenty of things that they should not be doing. The warlike bombardment of a city is not justified and has soured world opinion against them.

Yeah, so mass rape and terrorism is OK in your book if the ends justify the means? Hamas did start the conflict.

Israel was in talks with Saudi Arabia to normalize relations and Iran didn’t want that at all and they gave Hamas the green light to attack.

https://www.usip.org/publications/2023/09/saudi-israel-normalization-agreement-horizon

Everything that happens in that region is about Saudi Arabia and Iran.

It’s just water under the fridge.

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… it’s Shia LeBeouf!!

!The concept of sex in movies already reached its peak with Porky’s, and any attempts to improve on that are just embarrassing.!<

Never change Onion. 😄

Not my intent. I made an edit to address that.

I don’t disagree with you if that extends beyond borders. External forces seem to dictate what happens there.

I’m very saddened to hear about the death of this young woman. I’m also sad to hear about deaths of many, many Palestinians. I do not think it’s coincidence that Hamas decides to launch a major offensive in the midst of talks with between Saudi Arabia and Israel to normalize relations between the two after many years of relative peace. We can’t have peace in the Middle East because it doesn’t serve the ends to the major regional powers.

Both sides in this conflict are used as pawns for the political ends of others. Innocent people are those that get caught in the midst of it all. Hamas didn’t do this without a green light so as much vitriol being spilled in this thread we have to take a step back. These fights have been brewing and going on for generations. If you take the short term view much of the strife we see today is the fallout from WWII and that is used as leverage by other nefarious parties.

It’s not the Israeli people’s fault they do not have a home. It’s not the Palestinian people’s fault they do not have a home.

Some of the comments in this thread are sickening, hateful, narrow, and short-sighted.

I wish more of us gave each other the benefit of the doubt. I refuse to believe most people are assholes… only some. Don’t let the few dominate your thoughts.