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Although this thread does not function under the same strict guidelines as the USPMT, it is still a general practice on TL to provide a source with an explanation on why it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion. Failure to do so will result in a mod action. | ||
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warding
Portugal2396 Posts
On June 04 2017 19:27 a_flayer wrote: How about you change the first option to "are genetically predisposed to be a threat to Europe, und wir müssen die Russen ausrotten" Because I don't like the use of strawman arguments | ||
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Gorsameth
Netherlands22476 Posts
On June 04 2017 19:27 a_flayer wrote: How about you change the first option to "are genetically predisposed to be a threat to Europe, und wir müssen die Russen ausrotten". And you know, with regards to your poll as it is: it's a little of both. They are treated unfairly, AND they have policies that do not match with our interests. "someone made a radical statement, quick lets act like it is the dominant position of everyone on the forum because I dont have an actual counter argument". | ||
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a_flayer
Netherlands2826 Posts
On June 04 2017 19:29 warding wrote: Because I don't like the use of strawman arguments Yet you're fine with the phrasing of the other one. It's not a black or white issue. It's not all or nothing. | ||
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a_flayer
Netherlands2826 Posts
On June 04 2017 19:32 Gorsameth wrote: "someone made a radical statement, quick lets act like it is the dominant position of everyone on the forum because I dont have an actual counter argument". I'm not pretending that at all. I'm saying that there is some level of sensationalism and misrepresentation in the media, and it is influencing public opinion just like it has with Muslims. And just as Islamic terrorism constitutes some level of threat, so does the Russian state. But in both cases the perception of the threat is blown out of proportion. Clappers statement is merely one example of some of the absurdity. And it's a dangerous development to throw such a level of fear, hatred and vitriol out there in the public because it results in policy shifts and legislation passed to match that fear, etc. | ||
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Simberto
Germany11927 Posts
On June 04 2017 19:33 a_flayer wrote: Yet you're fine with the phrasing of the other one. It's not a black or white issue. It's not all or nothing. Because it is an utterly different statement? One says that the russian government is bad. There are a lot of bad governments. I doubt anyone would dispute that. Thus, this is not an incredibly radical statement. The other states that the all of the russian people are bad because racism. This is obviously contrary to any civilised values. If you can't understand the difference, that is a problem. | ||
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a_flayer
Netherlands2826 Posts
Because the poll only has two options, and there is no degree of nuance whatsoever. You can't pick something in between. It's either one or the other. Of course I would pick the option that aligned behind the goals of my own nation's perspective on the matter. That'd also be my inherit bias. But it is a bias nonetheless, and I have to fight through that bias too when I read things from a Russian perspective. This bias is being exacerbated in the media through the things I said in the paragraph above. If you can't understand that, then that is a problem. All that the results of the poll indicate is that the majority of people who voted are not Russians. | ||
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warding
Portugal2396 Posts
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a_flayer
Netherlands2826 Posts
On June 04 2017 21:26 warding wrote: I'm pretty sure that if I made a poll askng whether people thought Morocco was a jingoistic autocracy that poses a threat to Europe nobody would agree with that option, despite that perhaps none of us is Moroccan. I believe that is called a false equivalence. I consider Russia to be a potential threat to certain European countries and at the same time I think it is receiving a biased & sensationalistic media treatment as such a threat. Tell me, how am I supposed to pick either of your options? And there is no "pick the one you agree with most" because there is no indication of the level of threat or the level of unfair treatment in the poll options. I cannot measure this based on the poll options at all, so how can I pick which one matches my views best? I would just pick the one that suited my perspective's interests, which will always be the one that is derogatory towards Russia (and that just happens to be exactly what the media is doing in their coverage of Russia). Speaking of what the media is doing: you are doing it also in the specific wording of the poll options. More neutrally worded options, if you want to stay limited to the idiotic two non-exclusionary picks, would be: - Russia constitutes a threat to European interests. - Russia is treated unfairly in western media. You went with "jingoistic autocracy" and "rest of Europe" (surprised you didn't go with 'all of democracy') which is already using adjectives that put in some level of hyperbole, so if you want to go with your description of the potential Russian threat then you must also take an adjective-laden description to cover the other option (and still people would naturally pick the first one because it matched their interests/perspective). | ||
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Incognoto
France10239 Posts
For the time being seems like Macron is doted with lots of common sense and isn't a regressive extremist in either direction. So I'm really hopeful. | ||
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Ghostcom
Denmark4783 Posts
On June 04 2017 19:29 warding wrote: Because I don't like the use of strawman arguments On June 04 2017 21:26 warding wrote: I'm pretty sure that if I made a poll askng whether people thought Morocco was a jingoistic autocracy that poses a threat to Europe nobody would agree with that option, despite that perhaps none of us is Moroccan. But false equivalencies are A-okay. | ||
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LegalLord
United States13779 Posts
On June 04 2017 21:26 warding wrote: I'm pretty sure that if I made a poll askng whether people thought Morocco was a jingoistic autocracy that poses a threat to Europe nobody would agree with that option, despite that perhaps none of us is Moroccan. And despite the fact that no one knows all that much about Morocco either, right? | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On June 04 2017 22:18 Incognoto wrote: I think the best thing about Macron's election is how much it pisses off Mélenchon and his voters. Love it. For the time being seems like Macron is doted with lots of common sense and isn't a regressive extremist in either direction. So I'm really hopeful. His policies must be pretty shallow if you can't find a substantial positive effect.  | ||
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LegalLord
United States13779 Posts
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On June 05 2017 00:06 LegalLord wrote: The Germany voter bloc probably can't be happier about Macron being elected. It will allow them to forget that he in all likelihood will follow the Hollande trajectory of popularity. I don't think so about his popularity. We are in a phase of economic expansion. People like leaders who happen to be at the right place at the right time. They will simply believe that it was him. Winning elections right now is much more important than a few years ago in Europe. Whatever you do, people will believe that is the type of policy necessary to create wealth. That the yearly growth of flat prices is higher than my gross salary won't matter to the vast majority as long as the media tells you that things are really good! | ||
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warding
Portugal2396 Posts
A flayer claims that negative attitudes towards Russia are in large part due to media bias. The thing about media criticisms is that they're too easy to make and not that easy to disprove because 1. There are 20 000 media sources, you're bound to find a set of particular crappy ones to prove your point, 2. You can't really substantiate an argument for or against the impact of sensationalist media coverage on public perceptions without a pretty profound study which none of us here will actually undertake. Given that, we should look at whether there's a good reason for Europeans to have a negative attitude towards Russia. This is where the difference lies. If you have liberal and democratic values and believe in the post-war/international law/UN world order, you'll be prone to really dislike Russia. If you're somewhat more cynical about international politics and see Bush and Putin, US and Russian imperialism as two sides of the same coin, then you're less bound to feel antipathy towards Russia. I actually think the media is too lenient on Russia and the public doesn't realize the threat that Russia represents - not necessarily in the military realm but ideologically. | ||
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TheDwf
France19747 Posts
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LegalLord
United States13779 Posts
On June 05 2017 00:14 Big J wrote: I don't think so about his popularity. We are in a phase of economic expansion. People like leaders who happen to be at the right place at the right time. They will simply believe that it was him. Winning elections right now is much more important than a few years ago in Europe. Whatever you do, people will believe that is the type of policy necessary to create wealth. That the yearly growth of flat prices is higher than my gross salary won't matter to the vast majority as long as the media tells you that things are really good! It's an oft-repeated claim that Macron just needs to fix the economy to ward off populism and your point seems not all that far from that general sentiment. I think it's fundamentally flawed, in that while the economy does play a large part in people's tolerance for the status quo and it does seem that regional support for candidates tends to be generally correlated to the economic situation, that is nevertheless an altogether simplistic appraisal of the situation. This isn't the first time that there have been economic troubles and the issues certainly run deeper than just economic interest. It's worth mentioning that in the US at least, the current economic bull run is not altogether based off fundamentals, but also in large part to the hopes that Trump will repeal finance regulations that make life difficult for our profit centers. Indeed, the larger scale problem - concentration of wealth in the hands of the wealthy coastal elite and well-educated specialists - is certainly not unique to the US. Bottom line being, there is hardly any fundamental reason to think that the problems that caused the recovery to be so sluggish are showing any signs of fading; the current run does not seem to be a very rational one. The same could probably be said for other runs but in this case the issue is far more widespread. And the other issues that led people towards other candidates - security, social factors, Euroscepticism and the like - it doesn't seem that Macron will do a great job on. Right now his popularity can be described as average - about where Hollande and Sarkozy were this early in their tenure. That's reasonable; unless you're Trump and make your own problems, you get a bit of a honeymoon before people start to judge your policies on their merits. When that happens, I am quite sure that Macron will plummet in the polls. Though none of us can predict the future, I don't think it is a particularly controversial prediction to say he won't maintain his honeymoon popularity or be remembered well in five years. | ||
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warding
Portugal2396 Posts
If there's anything we've learned in the past two years is how conventional wisdom has been proven wrong: brexit won, trump won, le pen want an electoral threat and neither was wilders. In Portugal everyone was predicting the left coalitionlike government to fall in one year and it's grown popular riding a wave of economic growth we haven't seen since the 90s. The only predictable development is how incompetent trump turned or to be but that was only dependent on one, always visible, variable. Predictions that depend on a billion different variables are much harder to make. | ||
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LegalLord
United States13779 Posts
Russia is in part to blame for this lack of knowledge, in that the Soviets didn't really put as much effort forward as they should have into Western media outreach. The circumstances were understandable given the hostilities between the two, but it was certainly a mistake. Putin has actually felt that that's an important factor throughout his tenure and the situation is now such that there are at least a few Russia-linked sources of news in the West. RT is the most noted, which would be odd if people were particularly interested in actual news considering that even in Russia RT is considered to be a bit "out there" in terms of being a credible news source. The reason of course is that much of its popularity comes from its constant criticism as an evil source of communist-Putinist propaganda. Truth is that Westerners seldom even care to know the actual state of affairs in Russia, preferring instead to focus on caricatures and feel-good narratives about how Russia evil Europe/America Western justice-bringers instead of seeking to find out what things are and aren't true. To an extent it's hard to blame them, since it's understandable that one wouldn't be predisposed to have sympathy for a foreign country outside of your closest circle of friends. But while I can't speak for every country, in the case of Russia at the very least the misunderstandings go far deeper than just the public conscience. For example, the understanding of the situation in Russia by the US legislature and intelligence is criticized by Russians, pro-Putin and strongly anti-Putin alike. Probably because it's generally full of shit. It's at a point where as an individual it doesn't really seem like there's any point in trying to make people see nuance. Why bother when the response is almost certainly going to be akin to polls such as, "is Russia a voodoo jiu-jitsu dictatorship or unfairly depicted by the kind-hearted Western media?" There are, for example, good means by which to explain why Crimea was fully justified as a military venture. But if any such explanation is met with insistences about voodoo jiu-jitsu dictatorships, there is no reason to bother. So I don't, and neither do any of the other Russian posters that ever occasionally frequent this thread. It would be like trying to convince a devout Catholic that God doesn't exist. Oh well, no skin off my nose. | ||
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a_flayer
Netherlands2826 Posts
If the local governments in Flanders now ask the Dutch-German alliance (which remained strong after the fall of the EU) for military support, would we not come to their aid? Would we not support their secession from Belgium if that is what the majority of Flanders wanted? We'd send our military to secure their borders from a possible Wallonian rebel incursion, and allow them to take a vote in safety, would we not? It's obviously never going to happen in Belgium, but this is basically how I look at Ukraine/Crimea. I can imagine France would probably object to the Dutch-German military occupation and call the vote illegal, etc, etc. "We demand you give Flanders back to Belgium!" And you're right about the social media boards LegalLord. It's really easy to make up nasty shit about Russia and get a ton of support from people. You're basically playing into confirmation bias by saying bad shit about Russia, while any degree of nuance or neutrality is dismissed as coming from a paid Russian shill because it couldn't possibly be true. It's like trying to convince people in /r/The_Donald how Trump is just as guilty as Hillary for selling arms to the Saudis. | ||
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