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Koumei
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Post by Koumei » Mon Dec 12, 2016 3:10 pm

For what it's worth, I wouldn't say America were the obvious good guys during the Cold War, I would just say the Soviets were also the bad guys. And if you ask most people who weren't from the USSR or America about things like the Cuban missile crisis, you can't bet money on them pointing to either side as "the people who were in the wrong". When you ask about the power blocs as a whole, then they hate whichever force fucked with them more - so for places like the Ukraine, Poland, Czechoslovakia and so on, that's Russia, and for places like Australia and much of Central and South America. that's America.
But absolutely the rest is right: that was too long ago for most people (myself included, I have read up on this stuff but I was born in 1984), followed by a big empty period of America being "those guys over there" and then the Bush jr. years. And obviously nothing at all has changed since then. Am I right, people called back from the war, legally married gay couples and others?

> Count Arioch the 28th wrote:There is NOTHING better than lesbians. Lesbians make everything better.

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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik » Mon Dec 12, 2016 4:06 pm

> Koumei wrote:For what it's worth, I wouldn't say America were the obvious good guys during the Cold War

1) I'm specifically talking about global perception, not my express opinions.
2) Neither would or did I: "Once upon a time, there was a cold war with a clear and obvious bad guy" The clearness and obviousness of Russias badness does not in fact make the US good guys, but it surely greatly tempers the criticism directed at the US as compared to now, when people like PL keep claiming that China and Russia are non interventionist non expansionist utopias who totally won't do anything, and that's why dissolving Nato is fine and nothing bad will happen to the Baltic states, and it will just be a coincidence that they all vote to rejoin Russia while Russian soldier occupy their cities.
3) Presumably if you were alive back during Vietnam, you'd correctly shit talk the US for that, regardless of Russia's then badness.

> DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?

The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.
That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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nockermensch
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Post by nockermensch » Mon Dec 12, 2016 4:07 pm

What Koumei said: "cold war with a clear and obvious bad guy" is amazingly tone deaf.
That said, it's still perfectly reasonable to dislike USA for what they did (and keep doing) and still realize that Russia and China aren't better picks for the position of Planetary Overlord. We are now in a nightmarish situation where the three world powers are (or will be, in like, 40 days) at the hands of authoritarian people with very little regard to free speech and the rule of law*.
It'll be seriously bizarre when 2017 comes and we'll be forced to conclude that fucking China* has the Government with the better accountability, and that'll be just because Xi Jinping still have to answer to the Communist Party, while Putin and Trump like to roll like it's the 1930s again.
*to make this even funnier more horrible: Iran's "supreme leader" still answers to (and can be deposed by) a council of clerics that's open to any Iranian -- they just need to become a cleric. In my book, this still makes Iran infinity times more open and representative than Russia (and Saudi Arabia) and at about as democratic as China. It'll be a fun depressing activity to look at Iran and at Trump's USA and try to figure which country is less of a democracy.
Last edited by nockermensch on Mon Dec 12, 2016 4:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
@ @ Nockermensch

> Koumei wrote:After all, in Firefox you keep tabs in your browser, but in SovietPutin's Russia, browser keeps tabs on you.

> Mord wrote:Chromatic Wolves are massively under-CRed. Its "Dood to stone" spell-like is a TPK waiting to happen if you run into it before anyone in the party has Dance of Sack or Shield of Farts.

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maglag
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Post by maglag » Mon Dec 12, 2016 4:11 pm

Kaelik is fine with death by Obama as long as they didn't belong to the glorious invincible flawless USA military.
Since the still current USA president has the government organizations train foreign people to kill each other.
And let's not forget that Obama thought a caliphate in Syria was a really great idea.
Also under Obama, gunshiping an hospital for more than an hour is not a war crime. The worst you'll get is a stern warning.
Obama simply got a better propaganda press than Bush II, besides having about a hundred times more personal charisma, so yes it's expected he has a lot more people defending him. Heck, he got a fucking Peace Nobel barely in the office! And then went to fuck up Lybia and increase the production of death bots and gods know what else.
I guess if you're a grunt in the USA military, Obama is indeed pretty great compared to Bush II. But if you're somebody living in the middle east, things are even worst because the guys wanting to gun you down probably aren't even wearing uniforms anymore.

> FrankTrollman wrote: Actually, our blood banking system is set up exactly the way you'd want it to be if you were a secret vampire conspiracy.

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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik » Mon Dec 12, 2016 4:14 pm

> nockermensch wrote:What Koumei said: "cold war with a clear and obvious bad guy" is amazingly tone deaf.

Again, look at what I actually said. For fucks sake, is there no lengths people won't stoop to. Yes, Soviet Russia was a clear and obvious bad guy, that's not even debatable unless you literally lived with guns pointed at you telling you otherwise, or you knew literally nothing that didn't get filtered through insane propaganda.

> DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?

The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.
That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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nockermensch
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Post by nockermensch » Mon Dec 12, 2016 5:26 pm

> Kaelik wrote:

> > nockermensch wrote:What Koumei said: "cold war with a clear and obvious bad guy" is amazingly tone deaf.

> Again, look at what I actually said. For fucks sake, is there no lengths people won't stoop to. Yes, Soviet Russia was a clear and obvious bad guy, that's not even debatable unless you literally lived with guns pointed at you telling you otherwise

The world as you remember surely sounds nice, but I didn't grow up on it. I grew up at the shittier world, where there were two asshole super-powers bankrolling dictatorships and wars. The actual difference between USA and Soviet Russia, as far as I could tell, was that one of them was fighting for something that could actually benefit humanity while the other one had better TV shows.
But really, this is a pointless historical aside. Russia is capitalist too now, while China has this amazing brand of "socialism" where people depend on their children to not starve in their old age, so FOL.
@ @ Nockermensch

> Koumei wrote:After all, in Firefox you keep tabs in your browser, but in SovietPutin's Russia, browser keeps tabs on you.

> Mord wrote:Chromatic Wolves are massively under-CRed. Its "Dood to stone" spell-like is a TPK waiting to happen if you run into it before anyone in the party has Dance of Sack or Shield of Farts.

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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik » Mon Dec 12, 2016 5:41 pm

> nockermensch wrote:The actual difference between USA and Soviet Russia, as far as I could tell, was that one of them was fighting for something that could actually benefit humanity while the other one had better TV shows.

Yes, I'm sure totalitarian dictatorship is the only thing that can actually benefit humanity.
Sorry kid, you aren't 70, so you weren't even alive at a point when you could reasonably claim that Soviet Russia was fighting for redistributive policies or helping the poor.
Last edited by Kaelik on Mon Dec 12, 2016 5:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

> DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?

The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.
That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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DSMatticus
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Post by DSMatticus » Mon Dec 12, 2016 6:16 pm

Maglag, I vaguely remember challenging you to explain the situation in Libya and being treated to crickets. I'm going to be honest: you know fuck all about Libya, or Syria, or any of these crises - and you don't give enough fucks to learn. They are props you use because you think they make nice segues into "fuck the U.S." and that is as far as you care and it's honestly really obvious.
There was this thing called the Arab Spring. It turns out that the Middle East is full of corrupt, brutal governments (many of which are in place because of western imperialist bullshit) and in early 2011 a variety of factors converged to spark mass regional protests against some of those governments. The U.S. did not trigger that. The U.S. does not have the power to trigger that. The protesters' grievances were legitimate, not manufactured. In Libya, Gaddafi made a determined effort to cling to power by using military force against protesters and that resulted in civil war. The U.S. did not push a big red button labeled "destabilize Libya." The Libyan people pushed a big red button labeled "destabilize Libya," because they were not happy with the Libyan government.
The U.S. made the decision to intervene, and the result is that Gaddafi didn't get to march his army into densely populated civilian areas and exterminate the protesters like cockroaches, as he had threatened to in public speeches. And it also meant that instead of his regime murdering a bunch of people and ultimately reestablishing an even more brutal regime than before, we got a double dip civil war. It's difficult to do the utilitarian calculus on that, because we don't have a crystal ball, but non-intervention was "a bunch of people die and the Libyan government reestablishes control on a doctrine of murdering dissent." That's a not great outcome.
It's very easy, in hindsight, to point out ways we could have improved the intervention. For example, Obama has admitted that it was a mistake not to get more involved in crafting a Libyan government post-Gaddafi. Of course, if Obama had gotten involved in government-crafting post-Gaddafi, sure we might have ended up with a stabler region, but you would still be here bitching about U.S. imperialism. Because get this - you don't actually fucking care about the outcome in Libya! You aren't doing any sort of comparisons whatsoever between the potential outcomes, and you are clearly not even equipped with the basic knowledge of the situation you'd need to do so in the first place. This shit has always been about "U.S. bad." You're like a shitty liberal hipster stereotype; the kind who exploits discrimination for credibility and your personal feel-goods, as opposed to any sort of actual fucking empathy. Except people like that are supposed to be a fucking fairytale conservatives use to mock civil rights advocates because conservatives actually just hate black people and the people who think they deserve equal rights, and yet... maglag.

> nockermensch wrote:The actual difference between USA and Soviet Russia, as far as I could tell, was that one of them was fighting for something that could actually benefit humanity while the other one had better TV shows.

Ahh, I see the problem. You know fuck all about the political ideology of the Soviet Union.
Unsurprisingly, totalitarianism has never worked out for anyone who has ever tried it. If you have no means by which to assert your will over your government, you will be neglected at best and massacred at worst. It's almost like democratic accountability is essential to preventing tragedies like... Donald Trump, and no government which ever criminalizes political dissent is ever really fighting to benefit humanity - they are fighting to benefit themselves at your expense. Perhaps if you want examples of socialism that don't suck you should look at progressives in Scandinavia, who want your votes and not your coerced obedience, and as such have a stupendously better track record vis a vis human rights AND economic outcomes.
Don't be so cynical it turns you into a gullible fuckwad. You are better than tussock.

> Kaelik wrote:Sorry kid, you aren't 70, so you weren't even alive at a point when you could reasonably claim that Soviet Russia was fighting for redistributive policies or helping the poor.

70 years is quite possibly in the midst of peak totalitarianism. Don't get me wrong, Khrushchev was still an anti-democratic asshole who threw political dissenters in psychiatic asylums, but he made soothing noises about political reform, whereas Stalin just shot you. You'd probably have to go back to the 1910's or 1920's to find calls for democratic accountability that didn't end in execution, imprisonment, or exile.
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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik » Mon Dec 12, 2016 6:43 pm

> DSMatticus wrote:

> > Kaelik wrote:Sorry kid, you aren't 70, so you weren't even alive at a point when you could reasonably claim that Soviet Russia was fighting for redistributive policies or helping the poor.

> 70 years is quite possibly in the midst of peak totalitarianism. Don't get me wrong, Khrushchev was still an anti-democratic asshole who threw political dissenters in psychiatic asylums, but he made soothing noises about political reform, whereas Stalin just shot you. You'd probably have to go back to the 1910's or 1920's to find calls for democratic accountability that didn't end in execution, imprisonment, or exile.

I'm not saying Stalin wasn't a totalitarian shitbag, I'm saying that there are points in history where, because of the difficulty of getting accurate information, you could plausibly believe that in addition to being a totalitarian asshole, Stalin was also a totalitarian asshole who wanted to reform the country to help everyone be better off. Hell, that was probably even true at one point, even if his motive was "So we could build a big army and conquer things."
But that even all of those times were over by the 50s, much less the 60s, so if you were actually 70, then when you were 14 it was already past the point at which you could be arguing that Russia's totalitarianism was (still) benevolent for the poor.
Last edited by Kaelik on Mon Dec 12, 2016 6:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

> DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?

The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.
That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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Shatner
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Post by Shatner » Mon Dec 12, 2016 6:55 pm

It looks like that whole "CIA confirms that Russia influenced the election for realz" thing is picking up steam, so much so that McConnell is making a statement on it that's more than just "nuh uh!"
So, what are possible outcomes of this? What even happens when it becomes official (not just clear, which it's been for awhile now) that a recent presidential election was meaningfully skewed by an unfriendly foreign power?
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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik » Mon Dec 12, 2016 7:16 pm

> Shatner wrote:It looks like that whole "CIA confirms that Russia influenced the election for realz" thing is picking up steam, so much so that McConnell is making a statement on it that's more than just "nuh uh!"
> So, what are possible outcomes of this? What even happens when it becomes official (not just clear, which it's been for awhile now) that a recent presidential election was meaningfully skewed by an unfriendly foreign power?

No one fucking knows. Literally no idea. Probably "best" case scenario is that inauguration is put on hold until Congressional investigation with full CIA support/FBI support (after you promise them that no matter what happens some filthy fucking republican will be president and Clinton will be jailed for her heinous non-crimes) looks into Trump hardcore to find out how much he knew, and how much quid pro quo was going on (Spoiler Alert, right now some crazy fucking idiot trump adviser who has long been vaguely suspected as being too close to Russia is in Russia saying literally the exact same things that Bolton and Fiorina are saying at Trump's request, and basically all trumps' foreign picks for cabinet have russian ties, so the answer is probably not nothing.) and then Mike Pence becomes President? I supposed the investigation also has to go into him.
Real Best case scenario, Electors just vote Clinton. But that will never happen because dumb Clinton hatred is more powerful than anything in the universe, and Democrats always cave when one side has to cave, so if 40 repub electors and all the Democrats get together and decide to vote conscience/avoid putting traitor in white house, it's going to be some fucking Republican.

> DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?

The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.
That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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DSMatticus
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Post by DSMatticus » Mon Dec 12, 2016 7:42 pm

Nothing. The people in power are going to be Republicans and Republicans stopped pretending to give the slightest fuck about the legitimacy of the government in 2008 - and fucks were sparse before then.
I know you want a miracle, but you are not getting one. There is not a single branch of government which is sympathetic to your complaints about how Donald Trump is not the rightful president because of voter suppression, FBI partisanship, or Russian interference. Not a single fucking one. Republicans control both houses of congress. The Supreme Court is 4-4, about to be 5-4. Obama - in a misguided effort to be bipartisan - staffed a bunch of executive agencies with the people who threw the election to Trump in the first place, and even if you have delusional fantasies about some kind of executive coup, the coup you would actually get is the government shooting yet another black dude.
Republicans are making the noises they are making because they want to be hawkish on Russia, and because they don't want to be affiliated with this shit when it inevitably hits the fan. Your "miracle" is hoping that the blatant corruption of and egregious harm caused by the Trump administration actually gets covered by the media, and as a result he is a one-term president who costs Republicans a bunch of state governments and legislative seats. And that's a long shot, because:
1) The media will do no such thing. BOTH SIDES.
2) Trump already understands how fucking terrible his ideas are. The Republican strategy of "repeal and replace" has turned into "repeal and delay," as in "we will pass the repeal now, but it won't actually be repealed until after the 2018 midterms, maybe even later, because we like winning elections." Republicans are going to put a bunch of ticking time bombs into our laws and they are going to go off once the public's forgotten Republicans put them there, and possibly even during Democratic administrations, because HAHAHAHA FUCK YOU.
3) Even if Trump is replaced you are not getting your democracy back, because Republicans are doing this now. This is their thing. Voter suppression started well before Trump. Comey's FBI didn't do this for Trump; they did it for Republicans. You may or may not get rid of the Russian puppet, but you will not get your democracy back.
The fact is that progressives have lost everything. The foreseeable future is simply the gradual rollback of our democratic rights in a system that has already been strained to its breaking point. Even after Trump is gone, Republicans will almost certainly continue to control the Supreme Court until 2030 if not 2040 - and not only contol, but drift further right than it already was. Democrats are incredibly unlikely to take the house until the census after they take the court, so that's 2040 or 2050. I suppose you could make the case that demographic change will sort that out, but contested voter suppression flipped this election and now we have cabinet members who are so racist that they think it's disgraceful for white lawyers to represent black clients. And that same voter suppression - along with the way the country is demographically sorted - could plausibly give Republicans the advantage in presidential elections throughout this whole period to boot, extending their control over the Supreme Court and pushing back this timeline even further i.e. indefinitely.
It is easy to dismiss this as being overdramatic because "this is America and this shit doesn't happen to us," but it turns out it does and it just did and we're fucked. Progressivism is dead for a couple generations, and it'll be a fucking miracle if we get it back without the collapse of the United States government under its own bloated, corrupt weight.
Last edited by DSMatticus on Mon Dec 12, 2016 7:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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PhoneLobster
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Post by PhoneLobster » Mon Dec 12, 2016 9:20 pm

Oh for fucks sake you actually think America were the good guys in the cold war? They were the worst guys in the cold war, and they worked HARD to beat out the competition for that title.
And as an added bonus in your glee to try and dismiss me as a kid who just wasn't there man you manage to forget everything about me you SHOULD know from things I've told you in the past on this forum about my early political roots.
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nockermensch
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Post by nockermensch » Mon Dec 12, 2016 9:38 pm

Seriously, fuck this tangent sideways.
@ @ Nockermensch

> Koumei wrote:After all, in Firefox you keep tabs in your browser, but in SovietPutin's Russia, browser keeps tabs on you.

> Mord wrote:Chromatic Wolves are massively under-CRed. Its "Dood to stone" spell-like is a TPK waiting to happen if you run into it before anyone in the party has Dance of Sack or Shield of Farts.

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Mask_De_H
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Post by Mask_De_H » Mon Dec 12, 2016 10:32 pm

> nockermensch wrote:Seriously, fuck this tangent sideways.

Don't bring up what you can't put down.

> FrankTrollman wrote: Halfling women, as I'm sure you are aware, combine all the "fun" parts of pedophilia without any of the disturbing, illegal, or immoral parts.

> K wrote:That being said, the usefulness of airships for society is still transporting cargo because it's an option that doesn't require a powerful wizard to show up for work on time instead of blowing the day in his harem of extraplanar sex demons/angels.

> Chamomile wrote: See, it's because K's belief in leaving generation of individual monsters to GMs makes him Chaotic, whereas Frank's belief in the easier usability of monsters pre-generated by game designers makes him Lawful, and clearly these philosophies are so irreconcilable as to be best represented as fundamentally opposed metaphysical forces.

> Whipstitch wrote:You're on a mad quest, dude. I'd sooner bet on Zeus getting bored and letting Sisyphus put down the fucking rock.

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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik » Mon Dec 12, 2016 10:46 pm

> PhoneLobster wrote:Oh for fucks sake you actually think America were the good guys in the cold war? They were the worst guys in the cold war, and they worked HARD to beat out the competition for that title.

1) As before, "America was worse than Soviet Russia" said only idiots ever.
2) Koumei: I wouldn't say America was the good guys.
Me: And neither would I, nor did I.
PL: YOU THINK AMERICA WERE GOOD GUYS!!!!!!!!! HAAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!

> PhoneLobster wrote:And as an added bonus in your glee to try and dismiss me as a kid who just wasn't there man you manage to forget everything about me you SHOULD know from things I've told you in the past on this forum about my early political roots.

No you idiot, I never dismissed you as a kid, I described how literally any person under 40 could just as easily be in your position. Kid can be stretched for the purposes of insulting, but surely "You are less than 40" ain't fucking one of them. I'm saying that you are a piece of shit who doesn't care about Domestic US deaths, and who doesn't actually care about Foreign deaths caused by the US, because you care more about complaining about them, so justified complaining is better for you than fewer deaths. That's a hell of a lot of pretty vicious insults, if you are going to whine, pick one of those things to dispute, rather than the non-insult of being a kid that I didn't even say.
But yeah, spoiler alert, you are a whiny shitstain who is crowing about how great it is that Trump is elected because now you get to see the end of those filthy Democrats, that's only distinguishable at all from someone crowing over Regan beating Carter in that it's a worse version of the same thing. If you ever had even the faintest hint of a connection to real important priorities, you lost them long ago. And as a person who literally literally introduced himself to me by calling me a rapist for a secret thread that didn't exist, it really shouldn't surprise you that I don't know your fucking history because you have never once portrayed yourself as a reasonable person ever.
Last edited by Kaelik on Mon Dec 12, 2016 10:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

> DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?

The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.
That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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Voss
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Post by Voss » Mon Dec 12, 2016 10:49 pm

> Shatner wrote:It looks like that whole "CIA confirms that Russia influenced the election for realz" thing is picking up steam, so much so that McConnell is making a statement on it that's more than just "nuh uh!"
> So, what are possible outcomes of this? What even happens when it becomes official (not just clear, which it's been for awhile now) that a recent presidential election was meaningfully skewed by an unfriendly foreign power?

The possible outcomes are... basically nothing, except maybe some finger waving in Congress in the general direction of Russia.
The intelligence report is looking to turn into a congressional investigation, and that will take time, likely longer than 39 days. Meanwhile this is the summary this shit is getting in places like the NY Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/11/us/po ... dence.html

> Now that a partisan squall has erupted over exactly what role Russia played in influencing the election, there is growing momentum among both Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill to have a congressional investigation.
> “I’m not trying to relitigate the election,” said Senator Angus King, independent of Maine, who is one of the lawmakers calling for such an investigation. “I’m just trying to prevent this from happening again.”

Note the words 'partisan squall' and 'just trying to prevent this from happening again.' Nothing suggests rejecting the vote as invalid, just more dicking around. And with Trump doubling down on how meaningless it is (even with some Republicans going, 'well, maybe we should look at it'), it is very likely to be squelched hard once he is in office.
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nockermensch
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Post by nockermensch » Mon Dec 12, 2016 11:19 pm

> Mask_De_H wrote:

> > nockermensch wrote:Seriously, fuck this tangent sideways.

> Don't bring up what you can't put down.

Alright. Let me roll a Will Save to resist the obvious bait...
Everybody who chimed in on this stupid tangent but Koumei and me is being retarded. The Cold War was ugly and depressing and while The Soviets did some rather horrid and well known things, the fact that I was born inside an USA-backed Dictatorship makes both kaelik's badly conceived tirade about clear moral winner and DSM patronizing post misguided at best and hypocritical at worst. Well guys, I'm sure it was nice to get to live in Coruscant lmao. Of course the Galactic Empire couldn't be really that Evil, right?
BUT EVEN KNOWING THAT, it's PL, Tussock, maglag and the others at the Americans are Evulz camp that irk me more. Because get this: Without America around, what we get isn't World Peace, but domination by some other country. History shows that there's also dominant countries in any age, and frankly, Russia and China don't look the slightest more attractive than USA in this regard. At very least, USA tolerates dissenting opinions (this part may sound quaint if you're reading from the future!)
There, I'll say it again: The Cold War was exactly two hypocritical asshole superpowers dicking it out while a terrified Rest of the World watched. One of the hypocrites talked more about Spreading Freedom while actually supporting Dictatorships all around the world, the other one talked more about Equality while actually nurturing Aristocracies. The side shouting "freedom" unsurprisingly provided more freedom to its citizens, while the side shouting "equality" had less economic unequally and less extreme misery (Russia's life expectancy fell with the end of Socialism), surprisingly absolutely no-one. That war ended without a clear moral winner, unless your morality is literally Might Makes Right.
@ @ Nockermensch

> Koumei wrote:After all, in Firefox you keep tabs in your browser, but in SovietPutin's Russia, browser keeps tabs on you.

> Mord wrote:Chromatic Wolves are massively under-CRed. Its "Dood to stone" spell-like is a TPK waiting to happen if you run into it before anyone in the party has Dance of Sack or Shield of Farts.

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DSMatticus
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Post by DSMatticus » Mon Dec 12, 2016 11:55 pm

Political philosophies do not begin and end at how best to structure an economy. In fact, the classical political debate - arguably the root of all political philosophy - is where does legitimate authority come from. There have been a lot of answers to that question, ranging from "my dad's balls" to "all this money I have" to "the fist I am capable of beating the shit out of you with" to "voting." The U.S. goes with that last one, and it - like pretty much every other democracy - has a bunch of asterisks on it. Until recently we were gradually removing those asterisks. Now we are adding a bunch more.
This is a debate soviet revolutionaries actually had in the 1910's when it was clear they were going to be successful and they'd have to organize a government that could actually get shit done, and the faction that won believed legitimate authority came from The One True Party. That is, unsurprisingly, a terrible model for legitimate authority, as it produces fuck-all in the way of accountability and as a result the Soviet Union did terrible things to its own citizens with impunity (and the only thing that's really changed since is the scale and the level of subtlety). The Soviet Union also really did gobble up surrounding states Hitler-style, and also really did sponsor a global brand of totalitarian "communism" that mostly involved murdering dissenters and then installing yourself as the god-king of a subjugated people. It's not hard to judge the two powers by their footprints; South Korea is a corrupt multi-party democracy. North Korea is North Korea. The Soviet Union sure as fuck was not sponsoring democratic socialist revolutions.
In the sense that comparisons are a thing, yes, the U.S. are the good guys. In the sense that the world is complicated and "the good guys" are a fucking fairytale, the U.S. did some stupid and terrible shit, but absent lines in the sand from the west there would in fact be a lot more "former Soviet Union satellites" in Europe and the brutal genocidal regimes in Asia probably would have been slightly more successful than they already were (which is pretty successful) and the Middle East would still be a shit show regardless. The alternate history where the U.S. goes isolationist after WW2 is also bloody, violent, and horrifying, and in many cases more so. It's good that there's a South Korea. That is fifty million people who are not living under the brutal whims of Kim Jong-un, and instead are living under a deeply corrupt democracy - just like us proper 'Muricans. And there was a death toll that had to be paid to make that happen, and it was still worth it because Kim Jong-un would have killed a bunch of those people and then forced the rest to live in absolute misery and poverty.

> Nockermensch wrote:less extreme misery

Believe it or not, ethnic genocides are extremely miserable for the people who go through them.
Also, I would love to see where the hell you got statistics on life expectancy. My understanding is that the Soviet Union got close sometime in the 60's and then managed to stumble into reverse as shit went to hell. If they really did take the lead, it was for a couple years tops.
Also also, I would love to see any basis whatsoever for your claims about economic equality other than "well, they're communists weren't they?" They were also a brutally corrupt regime with an illegal underground economy that often got ignored because lolcorruption, and if Piketty's estimates are right then during the 1950's-1980's the U.S.'s GINI was actually really damn good, hovering in the .30 - .35 range, which is pretty damn close to where actual democratic socialism gets you, if Scandinavia is any indication.
Last edited by DSMatticus on Mon Dec 12, 2016 11:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik » Mon Dec 12, 2016 11:56 pm

> nockermensch wrote:both kaelik's badly conceived tirade about clear moral winner

IT'S SO FUCKING WEIRD HOW THE STUPID PEOPLE KEEP DEMONSTRATING THE CAN'T FUCKING READ. LEARN TO FUCKING READ YOU FUCKING IDIOT.
This is the third fucking time I've corrected this point since originally making it, if you missed the first time, sure, I wasn't very clear, but for fucks sake, I've corrected this twice already in explicit terms and you are somehow more wrong than PL who was probably just lying on purpose.

> DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?

The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.
That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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Mask_De_H
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Post by Mask_De_H » Tue Dec 13, 2016 2:07 am

I tried to warn you, nock.
The lesser of two evils is evil, but still lesser. Kaelik wasn't saying "America was the good guy in the Cold War," it's "The Soviets won the race to the bottom of human atrocity that comprised the darker parts of the 20th Century."
What you went through was tragic and inexcusable. What is even more tragic and inexcusable is the tragedy is that happened to you is happening to others, has happened to others, and will continue to happen to others still, and an uncomfortable number of people don't actually give a damn.

> FrankTrollman wrote: Halfling women, as I'm sure you are aware, combine all the "fun" parts of pedophilia without any of the disturbing, illegal, or immoral parts.

> K wrote:That being said, the usefulness of airships for society is still transporting cargo because it's an option that doesn't require a powerful wizard to show up for work on time instead of blowing the day in his harem of extraplanar sex demons/angels.

> Chamomile wrote: See, it's because K's belief in leaving generation of individual monsters to GMs makes him Chaotic, whereas Frank's belief in the easier usability of monsters pre-generated by game designers makes him Lawful, and clearly these philosophies are so irreconcilable as to be best represented as fundamentally opposed metaphysical forces.

> Whipstitch wrote:You're on a mad quest, dude. I'd sooner bet on Zeus getting bored and letting Sisyphus put down the fucking rock.

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hyzmarca
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Post by hyzmarca » Tue Dec 13, 2016 2:18 am

> Kaelik wrote:

> > nockermensch wrote:both kaelik's badly conceived tirade about clear moral winner

> IT'S SO FUCKING WEIRD HOW THE STUPID PEOPLE KEEP DEMONSTRATING THE CAN'T FUCKING READ. LEARN TO FUCKING READ YOU FUCKING IDIOT.

Reading is for losers, Kaelik.
Winners yell loudly, without understanding what they're saying. The election has taught us that much.
Last edited by hyzmarca on Tue Dec 13, 2016 2:21 am, edited 1 time in total.
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maglag
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Post by maglag » Tue Dec 13, 2016 2:46 am

> nockermensch wrote: BUT EVEN KNOWING THAT, it's PL, Tussock, maglag and the others at the Americans are Evulz camp that irk me more. Because get this: Without America around, what we get isn't World Peace, but domination by some other country. History shows that there's also dominant countries in any age, and frankly, Russia and China don't look the slightest more attractive than USA in this regard. At very least, USA tolerates dissenting opinions (this part may sound quaint if you're reading from the future!)

[Citation needed]
Funny that you complain about Russia and China in specific, because those are both the countries that for hundreds of years have mostly been happy to keep to their borders.
This is, after the nazis were finished, the Soviets could've totally kept a zerg rush accross Europe.
Instead the super-evil russians decided to show that humans could go to space.
Not WW III. Not conquest of other countries Instead they opened a whole new frontier for humanity. Such evil.
And no, the USA does not take kindly to dissenting opinions.
Where did Snowden find refuge? Ah, yes, super evil Russia.
As an extra, do notice that neither China or Russia have sponsored terrorrist glorious rebel groups that end up killing up peopleall over the world years later.
"World peace"? You call this "world peace"? Living in constant fear that anywhere anybody opens up their jacket to reveal a suicide vest?
North Korea is the worst example anyone can come up with, and it's not pretty.
But even North Korea is better than "behead everybody that looks funny and put it up on youtube, rape the women and destroy all the culture" ISIS.
Last edited by maglag on Tue Dec 13, 2016 2:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

> FrankTrollman wrote: Actually, our blood banking system is set up exactly the way you'd want it to be if you were a secret vampire conspiracy.

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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik » Tue Dec 13, 2016 2:53 am

> maglag wrote:Funny that you complain about Russia and China in specific, because those are both the countries that for hundreds of years have mostly been happy to keep to their borders.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
EDIT: On further consideration, I was going to point out how wrong you are, but then on further further consideration, I realized that literally any idiot in the world who can even read already knows why that statement is full of shit, so I just posted this instead.
Last edited by Kaelik on Tue Dec 13, 2016 2:54 am, edited 1 time in total.

> DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?

The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.
That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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maglag
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Post by maglag » Tue Dec 13, 2016 3:03 am

If super genius kaelik gets to say the USA are the "relative" gud guyz , then yes I get to say Russia and China "mostly" (not fully) keep to their borders because they don't fund terrorist groups all over the globe neither engulf multiple adjacent countries in civil wars that rage for years.

> FrankTrollman wrote: Actually, our blood banking system is set up exactly the way you'd want it to be if you were a secret vampire conspiracy.

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