“Commanders rejected calls to restore democracy” What a framing, like that is ever something Nuland has been concerned with.

I stand corrected comrade. I admit I lack the technical expertise on doohickeys, I need to study more.

The fact you guys have The Blaster as an emoji is just

Yamagami has enough fans now he definitely could, they just need to let him out.

I generally agree, but speaking for me it depends on a few factors.

One is where I am posting. I don’t post exclusively on lemmygrad communities, and I am aware that if I am posting about politics on other instance communities will probably meet with a more hostile reception. I have even noticed lemmy.ml has definitely been drifting more and more liberal recently. I try to engage in good faith there when I can not necessarily because I expect to change their mind but other people may become interested (I even maintain a second account there just so people don’t instantly disregard everything I say because of my instance). Whereas the liberals who wander into lemmygrad communities are either there to actively troll or very very lost; there’s not much of an audience that needs convincing because a lot of the audience will be well…us.

Obviously there is the content too. If they are willing to argue in good faith I am more inclined to have a polite discussion. I think it is important we recognize the difference in people who are actually interested in discussion and those who are just couching their trolls in more polite language. I have definitely been fooled by people in the latter category before I realized they weren’t even reading my replies to them and just using a mask of respectability to sound more appealing.

Speaking personally, I remember back when I still identified as a socdem and hadn’t really read theory much yet. I remember checking out /r/genzedong /r/genzhou and /r/sino specifically because I heard they were horrible places, and I wanted to see why. Not only did I find that not to be the case, I found them to be very friendly and welcome for the most part. I probably would have become a socialist regardless of reddit as I actually read books, but it definitely didn’t hurt.

I always try to engage with people fairly, but at the same time you can usually tell very quickly when people are honestly just misinformed and when they are actively hostile/trolling. I often see people actually give long and detailed answers to folks who ask legitimate questions, even if it may seem readily apparent to us.

Source: Their HOI4 game.

I would say the US is already pretty busy humiliating themselves, they don’t really need any help with it.

Are box cars an official term of measurement in the states now? Man, the imperial measurement systems are weird.

“That’s a great embarrassment for dictators. When they didn’t know what happened.”

Unlike Biden, President Xi is pretty aware of what is happening in and around his country. I have little doubt he knew what happened to the balloon, but I also can’t imagine he was particularly embarrassed about it. He wasn’t the one who missed shooting at a freaking balloon.