Keep us updated how vlad is winning.

You're legit the lowest IQ poster I've seen on these forums and there's been a lot of dolts that have come and gone. Do me favor and don't engage me, i don't like being nasty.

But how are you gonna make the Russians give up on this war and settle for the status quo if there's no war fatigue among its people? Putin himself is wildly determined to pull it off, he won't lose interest anytime soon. If there are neither economic realities nor domestic political pressure forcing him to wrap things up, he will go on until he croaks.

It surely is a delicate balance that Ukraine needs to strike here - make the average Russians realize the perils, dangers and hardship of the war, but not in a way which triggers nationalistic reflexes and causes a rally around the flag effect.







The Gaza War and the Iran War. The European refugee crisis and its aftermath. The handling of climate change and what I call "the green agenda". Our approach to Chinese neo-mercantilism which is increasingly eroding our economic position. Public debt. Homelessness. Crime.

What these issues all have in common is that the Western populace, and the pampered upper middle classes in particular, are not willing to stomach short-term uncomfortableness or effort for the sake of a better long-term future. The liberal middle class lives in some sort of fairytale world in which negotiations and "international cooperation" can solve all conflicts, inequality of any kind is never justifiable, entitlements can only ever increase and crime or 'evil' is only ever the consequence of prior injustice or discrimination.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jun 19 2026 02:00pm

You said: If we know one thing from recent history, it's that sheltered and privileged middle classes tend to become soft and yielding in the face of hardship, preferring appeasement and foul compromises over seeking long-term solutions which come with short-term suffering.
I said: Recent history, like the Israel conflict?
You said: Huh? I don't see how the Gaza War, or the wider Middle East conflict, fit into this pattern.
I said: If you are now saying it does not fit, then which conflicts were you referring to
You now said: The Gaza War and the Iran War.
===========

Your position is not sound.

You don't like being nasty, yet your first sentence calls me the lowest iq poster on these forums. Got it.

Same calculation its been for multiple years now. Russia is winning the war of attrition, Ukraine is being depopulated and running out of troops, the lines are a stalemate with very minor gains for Russia. Putin doesnt want to shake things up when he's ahead. The Ukrainians stand to lose more the longer it goes and its in their interests to accept any offer sooner, but at the EU's urging and behest of nationalists they make maximalist demands, reject compromise and seek more desperate and provocative measures. Because if you're losing a conventional war of attrition you can provoke Russia into flipping the board and hope you come out on top of the chaos- even if the odds are it would be even more catastrophic than giving up their defunct claims to territory.

Nothing has changed in any of that formula. It was all true a year ago and a year before that. Ukraine is getting more pointed at poking Russia but Putin has no reason to be anything but implacable. He still has reciprocal and proportionate bombardments that don't upset his static lines, instead of incinerating civilians or dropping a nuke or ordering a blitzkrieg.

If there is a changing factor I'd say its this- it used to look like Ukraine was at risk of total collapse of their lines if Russia could bleed them out long enough, as their manpower shortage becomes so critical Russia just pushes them over like Homer Simpson boxing Boxcar Bob. Now I think the rise of AI drones gives rise to a spooky prospect- Ukraine could completely run out of soldiers and still be flooded with autonomous weapons that continue the fight indefinitely, like a minefield being ever replenished by the EU at range. What happens if they DO fight to the last Ukrainian- and keep going?

Oh yeah, now I see where you're coming from. I was being unclear, so let me explain:

In my second post from tonight, I was referring to the Western middle classes who couldn't stomach the suffering in Gaza which would be inevitable while Hamas and its infrastructure were being purged. Which is why they were so excessively vulnerable and receptive to pro-Palestine and anti-Israel propaganda (see, e.g., the NYT greenlighting and later defending the ridiculous piece about 'Israeli rape dogs'). And this, in turn, has caused them to apply political pressure to their own (Western) governments and basically forced those to stab Israel in the back. So when I mentioned Gaza tonight, I wanted to say that the Western middle classes' reaction to the Gaza conflict fits into the broader pattern of getting soft and weak.


What I was talking about yesterday... or let's rather say where my mind was, are the middle classes of the belligerents, Israel in the case of the Gaza war and Russia in the case of the Ukraine war. My argument was basically that the there is little reason to assume that Russia's privileged middle class wouldn't fall into a similar pattern of getting soft and weak (even if not to the same extent as their Western counterparts), because the Ukraine war just isn't existential to them. My second post from yesterday, after you had pondered about Israel, was that the Israeli middle class should not fit as neatly into this pattern because to them, the(ir respective) conflict actually is an existential threat.


I should have made this distinction much clearer all along, my bad.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jun 19 2026 06:52pm

There is ALOT in here, so I am very happy to debate these one by one, there is way too much stuff to give a blanket response. Without further ado, in response to :

"In my second post from tonight, I was referring to the Western middle classes who couldn't stomach the suffering in Gaza which would be inevitable while Hamas and its infrastructure were being purged. Which is why they were so excessively vulnerable and receptive to pro-Palestine and anti-Israel propaganda (see, e.g., the NYT greenlighting and later defending the ridiculous piece about 'Israeli rape dogs'). And this, in turn, has caused them to apply political pressure to their own (Western) governments and basically forced those to stab Israel in the back. So when I mentioned Gaza tonight, I wanted to say that the Western middle classes' reaction to the Gaza conflict fits into the broader pattern of getting soft and weak."

I respond with:

Can we please have a robust conversation/debate on this, with an open mind.

Based on the above, your position is : Horrific Images / Stories led to a Middle Class Vulnerability which was exploited using Propaganda by Israel's enemies which led to misguided Western Middle Class outrage which put pressure on (Noble?) Governments.
My position is : Horrific Images / Stories and 75,000 dead led to universal opposition against actions which are not European values, therefore across Europe there continue to be calls to sanction Israel.
Poling does not support your position ( I can expand on this on request ).

Public reaction (which is not exclusive to middle class) is not evidence of "weakness" or being "duped." It is a predictable moral and political response to a conflict they perceive as involving disproportionate force and unacceptable civilian harm. This perception reinforced by extensive real-time evidence from Gaza. Calling that "getting soft" misses the point – it's people acting on what they see as fundamental principles. My position is that this was a disproportionate response, can you be clear on your position?

The Israeli argument is that this is an existential threat and that International bodies, such as the UN, are biased against Israel and are in fact, supporters of Hamas (misguided). Is this your position as well? Do you remember the report i posted last year, which documented everything Israel had done and not some NYT story about some dogs? The report is entitled "Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel". Have you read this report, if not, can you read it and give your thoughts on it? is it Propaganda?

This post was edited by ferdia on Jun 20 2026 04:06am

"Israeli rape dogs"- the only mistake in this statement is that the second word is not a verb.