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Author Topic: Ukraine is under attack. It's a full on war.  (Read 100797 times)

Shrieking Banshee

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Re: Ukraine is under attack. It's a full on war.
« Reply #480 on: March 17, 2022, 06:06:00 PM »
I don't think that's entirely true.
Well I mean he most certainly got some points by not just running or rolling over, but before this everybody knew him for the corrupt censorious toad he was.

Jaeger

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Re: Ukraine is under attack. It's a full on war.
« Reply #481 on: March 17, 2022, 06:23:55 PM »

I don't think it is clear that surrender saves lives in the long run -- just like how paying terrorists what they want doesn't save lives in the long run. Putin isn't honest and good-hearted and just wanting to protect Russia. He is engaged in this war for *profit*, not for defense. Giving him what he wants isn't going to make the world safer by appeasing him. It will send a clear signal that invasions for profit are allowed and encouraged.

In my opinion:

The people currently running the US are not honest or good-hearted and just wanting to protect Ukraine...

Their interests have been demonstrably shown to be interventionist, self-serving, and corrupt.

And if anyone has been sending signals to the world that wars for profit are Ok; for the past thirty years it has been the US.



You and Shasarak are speaking as if the only reason that the Ukrainians are fighting is because the American elites are telling them to, which I think is bullshit. The Ukrainians are fighting because it's their country. If they want to surrender, I wouldn't blame them - but if they want to fight, then I think they should be supported.

It is not the only reason. But Americas continued lies and false promises of some theoretical victory by our out of control propaganda are a factor.

I don't blame them for fighting for their country. It is the natural thing to do.

But they fought. And in my opinion, we are at the point that nothing the West can give them will stave off the inevitable.

Forcibly conscripting all adult males, and passing out weapons to untrained civilians are not signs that things have gone their way...

All their trained armed forces are split up. They are all completely surrounded in different pockets throughout the country. And they are slowly running out of supplies with no ability to get more. Russian armed forces have surrounded some of the major cities and are laying siege.

That is the current situation as I understand it.

What conventional weapon system we can give to them that will suddenly turn the tide here?
"The envious are not satisfied with equality; they secretly yearn for superiority and revenge."

Shrieking Banshee

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Re: Ukraine is under attack. It's a full on war.
« Reply #482 on: March 17, 2022, 06:39:15 PM »
It is not the only reason. But Americas continued lies and false promises of some theoretical victory by our out of control propaganda are a factor.

Im not the ultimate boots on the ground warrior, but I think your overvaluate what Ukrainians think of USAs propaganda. Zelenksy mocking Russia was the factor of thinking NATO would immediatly have his back. So in that sense he has possibly made it worse alongside of NATO and the west. But the avarage person living in the Ukraine doesn't have immediate internet access at all.

I don't really know why Ukrainians are fighting. When this began I thought it would be over in a week or less. Ukraine wasn't a place everybody really wanted to be. One of the lowest brith rates on the planet.

Im guessing there is a sense that there isn't much to gain from a surrender in the long term. If they surrender now and promise to turn belly up, what happens when Putin feels like he needs a win and does this again? What happens if he feels like he needs troops stationed in West Ukraine to show up the west? Or says 'I don't like this EU trade deal, stop it'.
Ukraine has a history of taking abuse from Russia to a genocidal degree.

But do I see victory? No. But I don't see Russia really winning either. It doesn't have the economy to pump into an occupation or bribing the country into an illusion of liking Russia. You can't have a puppet state when the avarage civilian genuinly and utterly HATES you.

Edit: My Father is however boots on the ground in the Russian economy. Russia is prepared to wait this out economically in a very short term only.
« Last Edit: March 17, 2022, 06:41:40 PM by Shrieking Banshee »

Redwanderer
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Re: Ukraine is under attack. It's a full on war.
« Reply #483 on: March 17, 2022, 06:42:47 PM »
These people got screwed as bad as Poland. No matter who won ww2 they lost.


Millions of Ukranian christians  got murdered around ww2 it was called the Holodomor. We were supporting those commie bastards who never did anything for anyone else. But I guess that and this damned pandemic weren't enough.

Good luck you guys in Ukraine. I'll hope the best for you this St. Patrick's day.

Redwanderer
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Re: Ukraine is under attack. It's a full on war.
« Reply #484 on: March 17, 2022, 06:46:23 PM »
It is not the only reason. But Americas continued lies and false promises of some theoretical victory by our out of control propaganda are a factor.

Im not the ultimate boots on the ground warrior, but I think your overvaluate what Ukrainians think of USAs propaganda. Zelenksy mocking Russia was the factor of thinking NATO would immediatly have his back. So in that sense he has possibly made it worse alongside of NATO and the west. But the avarage person living in the Ukraine doesn't have immediate internet access at all.

I don't really know why Ukrainians are fighting. When this began I thought it would be over in a week or less. Ukraine wasn't a place everybody really wanted to be. One of the lowest brith rates on the planet.

Im guessing there is a sense that there isn't much to gain from a surrender in the long term. If they surrender now and promise to turn belly up, what happens when Putin feels like he needs a win and does this again? What happens if he feels like he needs troops stationed in West Ukraine to show up the west? Or says 'I don't like this EU trade deal, stop it'.
Ukraine has a history of taking abuse from Russia to a genocidal degree.

But do I see victory? No. But I don't see Russia really winning either. It doesn't have the economy to pump into an occupation or bribing the country into an illusion of liking Russia. You can't have a puppet state when the avarage civilian genuinly and utterly HATES you.

Edit: My Father is however boots on the ground in the Russian economy. Russia is prepared to wait this out economically in a very short term only.


Nobody thought the Civil War would last.

Nobody thought a dime-a-dozen assassination of a guy called Ferdinand would matter- then it was World War 1.

Nobody really thought Japan was dangerous in China. Until they took it over.

You look at history and before any big mess everything seemed normal just a few years before.

Lynn

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Re: Ukraine is under attack. It's a full on war.
« Reply #485 on: March 17, 2022, 07:09:37 PM »
Well I mean he most certainly got some points by not just running or rolling over, but before this everybody knew him for the corrupt censorious toad he was.

After I read your comment I asked my long time colleague and friend in Kherson if his opinion had changed since he was online. Many of my older generation contacts were extremely skeptical of him (and because of so many not great ones before this one) after he was elected and thought he'd roll over immediately to Russia.  Anyway, my colleague mentioned that _NOW_ he seems more like a real politician, but that he also has a strange obsession to meet with Putin himself, even though it is thought they had met in 2019 in France.
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Pat
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Re: Ukraine is under attack. It's a full on war.
« Reply #486 on: March 17, 2022, 07:44:30 PM »
This is where I think a lot of people disagree with your position. I think there will 1) be no WW3, and 2) Russia will pull back from Ukraine. We shall see. But if that does happen, if Russia does pull back from Ukraine without WW3, then you will spin and dance and bluff your way into claiming either they didn't withdraw despite it being obvious they withdrew, or that WW3 did happen despite it being obvious it didn't happen. Because...that's this message board and nobody is ever wrong they're just correct from their own perspective.
This message board is certainly full of people telling other people their future actions. It's almost as common as mind reading or thorough psychological evaluations, based on a single opinion.

Pat, do you disagree with what I said or did you think that snark was helpful in some fashion beyond the entertainment value of snark? To be clear, I am not denigrating the entertainment value of snark. Just checking on your intent here.
I disagree, but I addressed that in another post. In this one, I was pointing out that you're attacking the person, not the argument.

Pat
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Re: Ukraine is under attack. It's a full on war.
« Reply #487 on: March 17, 2022, 08:15:32 PM »
Russia has enough nuclear weapons to wipe out both the EU and the US.

So the world is going to sit, and wait to see what Russia does with Ukraine with much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

You have a lot more faith than I do in the world's leaders.

I do have some Hope that they won't go full retard and do shit like a "No Fly Zone" over Ukraine.

Admittedly, their current temper tantrum of shipping more weapons and "aid" into Ukraine is certainly not helping matters at all!
Reminds me a lot of the worries about the first atomic bomb test. The scientists were concerned it could set off an uncontrolled chain reaction in the atmosphere. It got bumped up the chain of command, rejected, and the nucleomagicians made a small sun appear over Trinity.

Studies since have suggested such a chain reaction is impossible. They were worried over nothing. But they didn't know that, at the time. While it was a fringe theory and they were pretty confident it wouldn't happen, they weren't sure.

What if they were wrong? Then the Earth's atmosphere would have exploded, and every human being, every animal, and every plant would have died.

That's why it was the wrong call. A slim chance isn't zero, and we need the chances to be as close to zero as possible, when the potential downside is the end of the human race. Roll the dice once, and we're probably fine. A thousand times, and we might still be good. But how many millions or billions of years of future does the human race have? How many times will we roll those dice? Getting it wrong just once could end everything.

Why did they make that call? Human reasons. Pressure to get the job done. Delight in seeing one's work put to the test, instead of shelved forever. The exigencies of war, bureaucracy, psychology, and the culture of science. But most of all, we're just terrible at making risk assessments around existential threats. We apply our normal, everyday human standards, but that's the wrong framework. And it's the framework even non-foolish (I dream) politicians and scientists use.

I don't think it's likely the happy fun armored conga line in the Ukraine could lead to WW3, and I think there's a vanishingly small chance a no-fly zone could escalate into blossoms of hard radiation and heat over major world capitols. And most nuclear outcomes aren't that bad, when compared to human extinction. Even if it clusterfucks on top of clusterfucks and we bomb ourselves back to the Stone Age, that's just a setback of a few thousand years. In the cosmological scheme of things, it barely qualifies as a blip.

But there is a chance, and it's not pushed as far down toward zero as possible. Which should worry us.
« Last Edit: March 17, 2022, 08:40:34 PM by Pat »

Pat
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Re: Ukraine is under attack. It's a full on war.
« Reply #488 on: March 17, 2022, 08:33:24 PM »
This is where I think a lot of people disagree with your position. I think there will 1) be no WW3, and 2) Russia will pull back from Ukraine. We shall see. But if that does happen, if Russia does pull back from Ukraine without WW3, then you will spin and dance and bluff your way into claiming either they didn't withdraw despite it being obvious they withdrew, or that WW3 did happen despite it being obvious it didn't happen. Because...that's this message board and nobody is ever wrong they're just correct from their own perspective.
This message board is certainly full of people telling other people their future actions. It's almost as common as mind reading or thorough psychological evaluations, based on a single opinion.

He seems to extrapolate/read more from people's posts than what they actually wrote.

He then restates his extrapolation as if you had used those exact words yourself, and then proceeds to argue against it.

I am not the only poster in this thread, let alone this site, to experience this.
I'm constantly told what I believe by posters on this site, who demand I defend the fictitious positions they made up for me.

99% of the time it's not Mistwell.

Point it out when it happens, but don't pretend it's the fault of a single person. In this age of partisan bad faith and hubris, it's almost omnipresent.

Pat
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Re: Ukraine is under attack. It's a full on war.
« Reply #489 on: March 17, 2022, 08:38:10 PM »

I don't really know why Ukrainians are fighting. When this began I thought it would be over in a week or less. Ukraine wasn't a place everybody really wanted to be. One of the lowest brith rates on the planet.
I think we should call the inevitable baby boom Putin's Baby Bump.

Shrieking Banshee

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Re: Ukraine is under attack. It's a full on war.
« Reply #490 on: March 17, 2022, 11:08:21 PM »
Well if this is true, this seems like a OK way out. This depends entirely on the amount of territory Russia wants. If Ukraine can get a security guaruntee from NATO, I think this would be alright. So Ukraine would be a part of NATO, just in a way Putin can tell himself was a win. Id be honestly really happy with an arrangement that placates Putin and ensures that Ukraine just can't get invaded again.

I just REALLY, hope this isn't a ploy to waste time by Putin.

Pat
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Re: Ukraine is under attack. It's a full on war.
« Reply #491 on: March 17, 2022, 11:20:37 PM »
Well if this is true, this seems like a OK way out. This depends entirely on the amount of territory Russia wants. If Ukraine can get a security guaruntee from NATO, I think this would be alright. So Ukraine would be a part of NATO, just in a way Putin can tell himself was a win. Id be honestly really happy with an arrangement that placates Putin and ensures that Ukraine just can't get invaded again.

I just REALLY, hope this isn't a ploy to waste time by Putin.
Turkey playing the intermediary is weird, but better than China.

Shrieking Banshee

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Re: Ukraine is under attack. It's a full on war.
« Reply #492 on: March 17, 2022, 11:25:52 PM »
Turkey playing the intermediary is weird, but better than China.

It is, but I seriously just want the fighting to end. If Putin can say 'And I made Ukraine De-Nazify!' to his base, then fuck it, let him have that Phyrric victory while he sits apon an economy he has sabotaged for the next 5-20 years.

My biggest hope is that Ukraine also takes this as somewhat of a win, and maybe gets some public unity out of this for once. Managing to eek out anything out of Russia is still impressive. Foriegn support or not, failure on Russia or not, somebody had to stand up and face the Russian army, which is what I thought no Ukrainian civilian or army man had the guts to do.

Mistwell

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Re: Ukraine is under attack. It's a full on war.
« Reply #493 on: March 18, 2022, 01:13:15 AM »

Nobody in Ukraine likes Zelensky. If Russia bombed him in his sleep, it would be one tjing. But Russia has made itself an existential threat of Ukraine. Whatever Putins plan was, I get the sense that this wasn’t it.

From 8 days ago, "Eighty-eight percent of Ukrainians said they are favorable toward President Volodymyr Zelensky"

He wasn't very popular a few months ago. Now? He's very popular. I think you might be a tad behind the times on that one.

KingCheops

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Re: Ukraine is under attack. It's a full on war.
« Reply #494 on: March 18, 2022, 11:36:14 AM »
Seems to me the only reason Ukrainians are fighting is because literal neo-nazis are summarily executing fighting age men who try to leave and are keeping their families as hostages/human shields to try and create humanitarian tragedies for propaganda purposes.