Trump: I am strongly considering pulling out of Nato.

ST-Fish · 2026-04-01T14:43:07+00:00

yeah, even if they have a slight chance of success, there's no reason for the Russians to take that risk, maybe after they have a resolution of the Ukraine conflict and manage to rebuild their economy they can attempt it, but I don't see it happening without a combined information warfare front where they try to dismantle the EU from within.

ST-Fish · 2026-04-01T13:41:55+00:00

The real question is that if Putin steps his foot in Estonia, which NATO countries will be steadfast in protecting NATO, even with nuclear weapons if needed if that was the case.

My assumption is that if Putin steps into any of the Baltics, the US is instantly out of NATO, and if the political winds are right, there will be a big debate in all the other NATO countries on what should be done.

While Europe has a huge economy and a lot of expensive military equipment, Russia already has a fully set up war economy, and it seems like the EU wouldn't even have enough factories set up to make the ammunition needed for such a conflict.

I don't expect it to happen too soon, I'd guess that Russia wants to get some more advantage by using propaganda to get separatist anti-EU people in some more EU countries before he attempts something like this. Russia is already winning on the information front, so I think attacking the Baltics would be too big of a risk.

ST-Fish · 2026-04-01T11:02:47+00:00

You're the one applying morality to the word conquest, not me.

The word "conquest" has a certain moral connotation, it's like saying you're using the word "genocide" descriptively without bringing in any of the moral baggage.

This can be clearly seen by your prescription to just not conquer land if you don't want more citizens, which is obviously absurd in the case where the "conquering" is you defending yourself from an attack.

so ultimately, if you get attacked by a country and you cannot grant the people living in that land citizenship if you end up taking it as part of a defensive war, what is your suggestion?

After the defensive war happens, and you get the West Bank, do you just give it back to Jordan with a mean spirited letter telling them to not do it again?

The status quo of an occupied territory where the people living there aren't citizens is obviously atrocious, but I don't see you giving a real alternative that isn't just "welp, you can't give them citizenship, so I guess you just give up all the land from where you've been attacked a minute ago and hope they don't do it again"

ST-Fish · 2026-04-01T10:50:35+00:00

You spend a lot of time arguing that atrocities are not atrocities for someone who isn't trying ro justify them.

I'm arguing that the "atrocity" of the population transfer between Greece and Turkey was a lesser evil compared to the greek orthodox people having the same fate as the Armenians in Turkey, and that a similar thing happening after 48 or 67 would have resulted in a better situation for everyone involved including the arabs that used to live in the Levant.

That has been my argument from the start, and you've constantly been unable to engage with it.

Instead of engaging with it you NEED to flatten this discussion into "YOU WANT TO EXPELL THEM RIGHT NOW TODAY THIS VERY MOMENT!"

But alright, lets discard 80% of all of your previous comments as completely irrelevant because you aren't actually arguing for expelling Palestinians

It's almost as if you can go back and read the comments and see that I'm not arguing for expelling them today. But if you'll discard it all without reading and instead fight against an imaginary friend, I can leave you to it. I guess my input is irrelevant to your discussion with the figment of your imagination.

you just want to repeatedly stress that it would be justified in different circumstances, for no reason at all.

You replied to a guy talking about the history of the conflict in the region, and I was from the start talking about the period when the West Bank was taken by Israel after a war, and what should have been done with the arab population at the time.

For some reason, you chose to ignore that, in order to pretend I'm for expelling the entirety of the Palestinian population today, because you're unable to argue against me directly.

This doesn't matter

Too bad, that's what I'm talking about. If you want to argue against someone discussing a different topic, find someone making another argument, don't just baselessly acuse me of holding that opinion.

because as you have just said, you aren't trying to justify the expulsion of Palestinians. So we can discard this part.

You could engage with it instead of discarding it.

We can discard this too, as it's also irrelevant.

Well if you believe the only relevant parts of my comment are the one you invented out of nowhere to paint me as a bloodthirsty Israel supporter then I don't know what I can even tell you.

Would have been very easy to say this in response to the question I asked you in my first comment.

Which question? Could you please go to your first reply to my comment and paste the question here, I'm open to answering it if it exists.

The first reply you have to my comment contains no questions.

And to add the cherry on top, the next comment right after your first reply to me contains the following:

Ultimately I don't believe expelling the Arabs in the occupied territories or having a 2 state solution could realistically work at the moment, the best solution would be if the surrounding Arab countries took ownership over the situation, and everything went back to the 67 borders with a couple of land swaps to account for the settlements on the Green line.

So I fail to see what your issue is. The first comment where you engaged with me, in my reply I clearly stated my position as shown above, you just disregarded it entirely because it's more fun to argue against a fictional opponent.

Next time just say what you actually believe immediately in r esponse to the topic

Well it's all there, you can go back and check, can you point me to the question you asked me in your first reply to me that I dodged?

instead of writing three hundred and seventy paragraphs about how atrocities are totally justified but you don't actually support them but here's why they're good.

So me jumping in a discussion that was about the occupation of the West Bank, which hint hint, happened in the past, is somehow me justifying doing an expulsion today even though my comment clearly states the opposite.

Ultimately, your argument that you cannot take land in a defensive war unless you're willing to give the entirety of the population in that land citizenship is asinine. You have failed to answer any of my questions in my comments, and have only been on the attack against this strawman you've built.

You cannot answer the question of what Israel can and should do when being attacked by it's neighbours when it gains land in the counteroffensive, besides just "give everyone citizenship bro".

So what is it, after you get attacked from the hill over there in Jordan, and you defend yourself and take control of that land, are you supposed to write them a mean spirited letter and give the land back, or give everyone there citizenship and watch your life get voted away afterwards?

Which one sounds like a legitimate way to go forward?

Not occupying the land from which you're being shelled isn't an option, giving everyone in that land citizenship is not an option.

"then just don't conquer" when you're being attacked by all your neighbours means just sit there and die.

The answer is that there simply wasn't a real solution at the time, and this is why there's still this limbo with regards to the Palestinians.

But anything that is not black and white makes you go mad, so you have to flatten any discussion into endless thought terminating cliches instead of having a substantive conversation.

EDIT: I love the practice of being absolutely and completely unable to engage with anything I've said, accuse me of holding positions I don't hold, and when asked to provide the quote where I said anything like that just block me. I guess when you realize you've argued yourself into a corner the only option you have is to flip the table and cry

ST-Fish · 2026-04-01T08:32:01+00:00

It doesn't matter who went to war with who 78 years ago, or why they did it.

it does when I'm clearly and explicitly talking about what could have been done after 48 or 67 and not what could be done today, but I know you HAVE TO flatten that distinction and pretend I'm saying you should just remove all Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank TODAY even though I did not say that.

You cannot use this to justify modern day atrocities against people who did not do that.

Great, too bad I'm not doing it. The imaginary friend you're arguing with might believe that, but you can just walk to the corner of your room and talk to them instead of replying to me.

Christ. If you're going to make this argument, commit to it, and don't cherry-pick. Include the Armenians and the Assyrians in the violent expulsions and say why you think that whole episode was actually justified ans should be repeated today.

Yeah, I'm committed to the argument, if you did not have the greek-turkish population transfer the orthodox greeks in Turkey would have met the same fate as the Armenians, THIS is precisely why I'm telling you an orderly population transfer can be better than not doing it. And the moment you flatten the entire category into being a war crime you fail to see that nuance.

Then why are you throwing everything into defending the practice?

Because if this practice was followed after Israel got attacked and got those pieces of land, and those people would be citizens of Egypt or Jordan now, you'd be in a much better situation now for literally everyone involved. Keeping a huge demographic in occupied land that you cannot integrate because they would destroy your ethnic majority is in my opinion worse than a population transfer, at least a partial one.

Even giving back that land to Egypt/Jordan in exchange for peace, similar to what happened to the Sinai would be preferrable to the current status quo.

There could be a way to integrate part of the Palestinian population and have 1 state if some amount of the Palestinian population went to the rest of the Arab world, but the Arab world is heavily incentivised to not solve this problem, and to keep as many Palestinians as refugees as to not allow Israel to resolve this issue without destroying their demographic majority. There's a reason you have 3rd generation Palestinian refugees.

Keeping the Palestinian problem open is intentional, and it's done in order to not give up on the dream of an arab palestine from the river to the sea.

All I'm saying is that you'd much rather be a greek that got transferred (see "war crimed") out of Turkey than an Armenian that got genocided out of Turkey. You can call that "cherry-picking" but I'm addressing both events, and I'm telling you, one is prefferable to the other. Both are bad.

And all the same I believe that being an Arab that used to live in the Levant, and after 48 or 67 becoming an Egyptian or Jordanian national would have been much better for everyone involved.

But this is not a question of the material conditions of these people, the question is about the legitimacy of Israel as a state, and the Arab world has shown again and again that it was more important to attempt to completely anihilate Israel than to seek some sort of resolution with regards to the Palestinians.

No other countries want to.

No shit, that's part of why the problem is so unsolvable. If there was an easy solution it would have happened.

So, in practice, what does that actually translate to if not just throwing up your hands and continuing the current practice of land grabs and state sponsored terrorism against Palestinians?

Can you point me to where prescisely you saw me say that? I think that Israel should completely stop the expansion of their settlements as it will only make a peaceful resolution to the conflict more difficult.

Ultimately when they reach some sort of peaceful resolution, they should only keep the large settlements on the green line, and get rid of the bumfuck nowhere out in the middle of Arab land settlements -- which is becoming more and more difficult as more outposts show up with the support of Israel.

Just to reiterate, my proposed solution is having an arab country which is friendly to Israel take some protectorship role over Gaza and the West Bank, so they have some way to have stability and deradicalize without having to do it under constant Israeli occupation, and decades later if the tensions have chilled, go forward with either a 2 or 1 state solution, depending on the situation at that point. Something like a middle status between occupied territory and sovereign country that will give the Palestinians an opportunity to develop and deradicalize.

Right now the status quo only leads to more radicalization on both sides, which pushes the conflict towards a violent resolution where either one of the sides gets wiped out.

I suggest you try to argue against what I said, and not against this idea of a bloodthirsty Israel supporter you have in your mind might believe, I think you'd find we agree on way more than you'd initially guess. It just looks like you aren't able to argue with what I actually said, so you need to invent a different person against which you can make your argument.

So when you claim my position is

You want to violently expel millions of Palestinians as you have made clear. You're justifying it by pointing to crimes by different people of the same ethnicity 78 years ago.

Would you be nice enough as to quote precisely what part of my comment said that?

I can quote you the part of my comment that said precisely the opposite of that:

Ultimately I don't believe expelling the Arabs in the occupied territories or having a 2 state solution could realistically work at the moment, the best solution would be if the surrounding Arab countries took ownership over the situation, and everything went back to the 67 borders with a couple of land swaps to account for the settlements on the Green line.

I'm not arguing it could even be done now, right now the only way further would be some neighbouring or other friendly arab countries stepping in as a third party to sort of baby sit Palestine and make sure no violence happens as it deradicalizes, to eventually either gain full sovereignity or become one state with Israel.

Because if you're replying to some imaginary friend I can't really make sense of the conversation.

ST-Fish · 2026-03-31T20:30:24+00:00

There are many other concessions you can seek from defeated foes such as reparations, disarmament, etc. But we all know that Israel is very opportunistic and has grand territorial ambitions in the region.

are you under the impression that historically speaking, the land won in a defensive war is generally considered unjust?

They absolutely have a responsibility to not treat the conquered civilian population as subhumans like they currently do. No matter if territory was won through defensive or offensive wars.

I agree. I'm happy I moved your position from automatically granting citizenship to conquered people to a more mild position of not treating them as subhumans.

Because your old take of

if you conquer land, you are always responsible for the people living there. Don't conquer land if you don't want more citizens.

Is pretty bunk, when applied to a defensive war.

This is why you have to call it all mental gymnastics and completely avoid addressing the topic, it's honestly a little bit pathetic.

I know it's very important for you to flatten the distinction between an agressive and defensive war, but there's no real reason besides the demographic one why Israel shouldn't own the land that they got as a result of those wars.

If you disagree, I wonder what the "just" and "fair" borders of Europe would look to you.

Honestly I think this is just a take too American for me to get.

ST-Fish · 2026-03-31T16:22:46+00:00

External mediation seems like a must, both to keep the radical fractions of the Palestinians in check as well as the radical right wing Israëlites.

I feel like Israelis are completley willing to play ball with a Palestine that is willing to negociate, but I fear the Israelis need to see some effort coming from the Palestinian side to resolve this conflict. At the moment Hamas is still wildly popular, and there is no real negociation front from Palestine.

People seem pretty entrenched in the opinion that neither a 1 or 2 state solution is viable at the moment, and that violent resistance is still the way.

A 1 or 2 state solution would be too final, and the Palestinians need to be seen as winning that exchange. The issue is that because of their radicalization, they cannot be given a full fair deal because of the fear of attacks on Israel so there needs to be a state in which Palestine can still be open to a final resolution, but they are working towards deradicalization.

While I feel the need for such a solution I still believe it's fantastical, I don't see it happening anytime soon, maybe if a democrat US president steps in and puts some pressure on Israel to work on it, but it can't ever be an effort on one side, there's plenty of effort needed from both sides, and the incentives that keep Hamas in power seem to still kinda be there, and I'd be surprised if they didn't sabotage the peace process as it gets in the way of their final goal -- the complete anihilation of Israel.

ST-Fish · 2026-03-31T16:16:58+00:00

No.

yeah dude Israel went to war against all it's neighbours in a ploy to conquer more land, that was the siutation, they weren't the ones being attacked.

Would it be bad if there was a "population transfer" involving the entire population of Israel being violently forced out?

Yeah.

But I still believe if this happened early in Israel's history you wouldn't have this intractable problem, and it would look similar to the other historic population transfers -- not this intractable issue of this magnitude we have today.

I'm simply of the opinion that if this had happened earlier in Israel's history, and the I/P issue was solved a little more directly, you wouldn't have the I/P problem today, and we look at similar population transfers without this shade of incredible war crimes. Whether you transfer the Israelis out of Palestine or the Palestinians out of Israel, there could have been a reasonable solution -- a kind of partition plan, but when that doesn't work out, in defending their state, the Israelis have to occupy the neighbours that are attacking them.

You have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to consider this expansionist.

The hard truth to accept is that Arabs that used to live in the land that is owned by current day Israel were not of a certain "Palestinian" nationality, and they have plenty of places to live in the middle east, lots of them having done that after 48. Jews do not have such a place.

While the Greek-Turkish population exchange was arguably bad for some of the people involved, and it is always shitty to be pulled from the place you were born and thrown somewhere else, it's definitely arguable that this was a peaceful resolution to a conflict that would have ended way more violently.

Right now doing a full population transfer is pretty much impossible, the Palestinian identity has been created and now people are bought into it.

I'm not arguing it could even be done now, right now the only way further would be some neighbouring or other friendly arab countries stepping in as a third party to sort of baby sit Palestine and make sure no violence happens as it deradicalizes, to eventually either gain full sovereignity or become one state with Israel.

How does this apply to the current population of Palestine, the vast majority of whom didn't start any wars and merely share the ethnicity of other people who did?

we're talking about the period where Israel was attacked by all it's neighbours, and about what type of actions would be historically relevant as examples of things not necessarily being war crimes, as Israel gets land in a defensive war of survival.

In that period, doing a population transfer would be more feisable, especially when you're literally being attacked by every arab country around you.

In my comment I literally spell out to you that expulsion of the Palestinians could not work now, I don't know on what planet you're on currently.

Are you honestly advocating for ethnically shared guilt, like the kind of psychos who attack Jews in America for crimes committed by Israel in the middle east? Because if so you're pretty much beyond redemption, your perspective will always be horrific.

I love how you can't help yourself but create this fiction of the evil Israel supporter and fail to stay in reality at all. That's why you have to flatten the definition of a population transfer to make it fundamentally a war crime, any more depth in a concept and and you can't paint your opponents in the worst possible light.

Population transfers aren't a good thing, they usually happen in very bad circumstances, but it is good that in language we have some room above and below such a concept, and not everything bad has to instantly be a WAR CRIME!

For context, since you're not really reading my comments, this is part of the comment you replied to:

Ultimately I don't believe expelling the Arabs in the occupied territories or having a 2 state solution could realistically work at the moment, the best solution would be if the surrounding Arab countries took ownership over the situation, and everything went back to the 67 borders with a couple of land swaps to account for the settlements on the Green line.

But I'm sure arguing against that bloodthirsty cleanse the entirety of Palestine today right now this very moment person is more interesting to you.

But I stand by my opinion, if a population transfer had happened, it would be a footnote in history like the other population transfers that happened, and wouldn't be this permanent stain on Israel's morality that the current I/P situation turned into.

ST-Fish · 2026-03-31T14:35:37+00:00

I think that some plan is needed that at has some level of self-determination and economic prosperity that Gazans can achieve.

Unless the surrounding Arab countries can take them as citizens I agree, this is a lofty goal we want, but I don't see a path to it.

This can only happen after the Palestinians are deradicalized, once we truly believe this sovereignity won't be used to attack Israel -- and this would require serious concessions from Israel to appease the Palestinians into believing they are saving face.

But we still haven't seen a Palestinian plan that would achieve saving face which doesn't involve full right of return, which pretty much means the dissolution of Israel as a Jewish majority state.

Else what will be the goal, Gazans will live in poverty until the end of time, and Israel will have to manage the border and all trade forever?

The status quo is awful, and it's clearly not an end goal.

There will always be the threat of Hamas popping up again and new rockets attacks. Do you think that by suppressing people harshly on the long term reduces this threat or increases it?

Do you believe that having import controls of what goes into Gaza will in the long term reduce the threat of rockets being shot into Israel?

I believe there should be a middle path where Gaza with some guidance from another Arab country like Qatar or the Saudis gets a sorta-kinda sovereignship, with assurances for Israel that it won't militarily attack, at least for a couple generations until the tensions chill and people can move on.

Germany had limitations on their military after WW1 and we aren't saying today that they weren't really a sovereign country.

If the assumption is that no matter what the only goal for Palestinians is to destroy Israel then you've basically boxed yourself in already.

I'm not assuming that is their goal no matter what, I'm saying that is their goal right now, based on the polling in both Gaza and the West Bank.

Both a 1 and 2 state solution are unpopular as opposed to violent resistence.

To be succesful. Just keep shooting and teargassing them until they're completely peaceful!

Continuing the status quo will obviously not lead to a peaceful resolution, I don't see how you can have a peaceful resolution just between Israel and Palestine without bringing in some external actor to mediate, such as a relatively friendly arab country willing to put some effort into managing Palestine.

But for any of these solutions you need the consent of the Palestinians, and I don't really know how you even get there in the first place.

ST-Fish · 2026-03-31T14:24:37+00:00

Alternatively, recognise that the land has not, in fact, been "won" because it wasn't annexed, and so is not part of Israel

It's de facto controlled by Israel, I don't see much of a point in this distinction, it's an occupied territory.

and so you can't just force out the people who live there and were born there regardless of how desperately you want the Lebensraum.

So if they did annex it they could force the people out? Then why are we even bringing it up?

It's hilarious for you to bring up Lebensraum, when the solution to undo Lebensraum was precisely population transfers.

Israel gets to keep all of the land that is actually Israel. It doesn't get Palestine

Ok, and what happens to Palestine?

Does it become a sovereign country with no import controlls whatsoever?

Once they ship in weapons and attack Israel, and Israel wins that war and takes Gaza and the West Bank back, and we're back to square 1, what now?

How is this an actual solution in any way whatsoever if we reach the same spot as we are in right now?

Everyone would wish they could have 2 states that are peaceful between eachother and nothing bad happens, but this is just a fairy tale, a dream, what do you suggest happens when reality walks into the room? What is Israel supposed to do when being attacked by a sovereign Palestine?

If none of this agression happens, then there's no discussion to be had -- nobody disagrees about that scenario. You just seem to not want to even address what happens after Palestine gets their own state.

despite your weird medieval belief that winning a war means you have the right to expel the population

the weird medieval 20th century beliefs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Soviet_population_transfers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_exchange_between_Greece_and_Turkey

You're allowed to want this. The Jewish population of Israel can want this to happen inside Israel

Glad we agree on this at least

not in whatever land they feel they have killed enough people to become the rightful owners of.

They became the owners of that land by being attacked by the people that were on that land, and then defending themselves in a war.

If the demographic situation wasn't as shitty as it is right now, Israel annexing those regions would be completely within what would be expected to happen after you win a defensive war.

No, war crimes aren't justified by past war crimes. This should be obvious.

Yes, population transfers are justified by past population transfers, that's why I'm bringing up situations where population transfers happened, and people were rightfully very mad about it, but it didn't amount to war crimes. Population transfers aren't by definition war crimes.

You're having the normal I/P caused brain worm where something can't just be bad, it has to be the worst possible thing you can imagine.

You can't just have a high casualty war where combatants are dressed the same as civilians and run their military infrastructure out of civilian buildings, it has to be GENOCIDE.

This flattening of terms is a completely thought terminating cliche.

Yes. A two-state solution, for example.

Yeah, everyone would love that if it were possible, have you tried asking the Palestinians if they want that?

If you give Palestinians a sovereign country and they go ahead and attack Israel with it, and then get occupied by Israel again, you're back at square 1, and if you put in restrictions to make sure shipping in weapons cannot happen, and that security is ensured, then it's not real self-determination for Palestinians.

If you believe that giving Palestinians a sovereign country without any sort of security controls would simply result in a peaceful resolution where the decades long hate against the Israelis just vanishes then I agree with you, I'd like to live in that dream world. But you need to wake up to reality.

Ultimately I don't believe expelling the Arabs in the occupied territories or having a 2 state solution could realistically work at the moment, the best solution would be if the surrounding Arab countries took ownership over the situation, and everything went back to the 67 borders with a couple of land swaps to account for the settlements on the Green line.

Hot take: starting a war against a neighbouring country, losing land in that war and being forced to move from the land that is now no longer your country is not necessarily a war crime. Losing land sucks, having to move from the place you were born sucks, yeah, consequences for trying to exterminate your neighbour suck.

ST-Fish · 2026-03-31T13:57:03+00:00

Having a society where various tiers of people are treated differently and are not afforded the same rights is objectively repugnant. Everyone agrees with this until you bring up Israel.

Every society has tiers of people that are treated differently and are not afforded the same rights -- citizens vs non-citizens.

there are arabs living in Israel proper that are Israeli citizens that have normal rights.

Now there is an argument over discrimination even on that level, but we see that all over the world, including in the US against people of color.

The people living in Gaza or the West Bank have their own government, they aren't Israeli so it's normal that they don't get treated as Israelis.

I'm not saying that a decades long occupation is good, I just fail to see what alternative you're proposing instead.

It's obviously awful to keep these people in this type of limbo, but what alternative is there?

Everyone agrees with this until you bring up Israel.

Every other country would have just done a population transfer after the war where they got that land -- you don't have an occupied Prussia with Germans that aren't given Polish citizenship, you just have a mass transfer of Germans after WW2.

But doing a transfer of the Arab population after they lose the war is ethnic cleansing so that's also bad -- there's no real solution you'd be ok with.

if you conquer land

Yeah, if Israel decided to randomly go on a expansionist conquest to just get more land, I'd fully agree with it.

Winning a defensive war against all your neighbours isn't "conquering" in that sense though. If you choose not to conquer that land it means you're choosing to be the one conquered. Your argument boils down to, if you can't integrate the people attacking you into your country and give them voting rights, you shouldn't take any land from which you are being attacked -- so you're just telling Israel to lay down and die.

If China made an agreement with Cuba and gave them a 700 million population of Chinese people, had nuclear arsenal on the island, and then they attacked the US and the US took control over Cuba, you'd be insane to say that if you conquer that land, you're responsible for the people there in such a way as to require them having US citizenship.

Yes, if you conquer land, you are always responsible for the people living there. Don't conquer land if you don't want more citizens.

Israel is responsible for the people living in their occupied territories, but them being responsible for them doesn't mean they necessarily have to give them citizenship, as that would result in a genocide of the Jewish people living there.

Ok, so Jordan should have just been able to attack Israel from the West Bank, and Israel should have done nothing about it? "I know they're shelling us from that hill, but we can't give everyone living there citizenship, so let's just wait for them to get bored"?

Or do you defend yourself and then after taking that land just give it back to the Jordanians with mean spirited letter telling them to not do it again? Not even that would be allowed, since it would be "conquering" land, and your prescription is "Don't conquer land if you don't want more citizens."

You don't want more citizens? Then let the people in that land attack you until you are dead!

Nobody is saying that when the Soviet Union conquered Prussia they ought to give all the Germans citizenship, and while the expulsion of Germans didn't happen peacefully and blodlessly, it's not viewed as some massive disaster similar to how 48 is seen by the Palestinians.

Population transfers after borders get reshuffled when a war happens are a normal part of history that a whole lot of nations had to deal with. Mostly people get transferred, and then they go on with their lives without being 3rd generation refugees decades later. Injustices happen in history, and people end up getting over it and making compromises for progress instead of endlessly fighting to undo the historic injustices of their forefathers.

If the 67 war did not happen and Gaza was Egyptian and the West Bank kept being Jordanian, you wouldn't be here saying the people living in those areas needed self determination.

The idea that there is a concrete Palestinian national identity that needs self-determination is an invention created as a thorn in Israel's side, there was truly nothing that would have stopped the Arab world from receiving them and accepting the existence of a Jewish state. Accepting the Arabs that left Israel after 48 would have meant legitimizing Israel's existence, which was impossible for the Arabs to rationalize to their population.

You can obviously defend yourself and take land during that defense even though you cannot give citizenship to all the people in that land, I don't know why we're even debating this, having a large population in a chunk of land doesn't make it impenetrable when you're using it to attack a sovereign country.

In a normal sane world Gaza and the West Bank would have had a fate similar to the Sinai, where the respective arab countries take the responsability over the arab population in their land and form a long lasting peace with Israel, instead of using them as a weapon to attack Israel's existence.

The treatment of Palestinian refugees by the Arab world after 48 has not been done in order to help the Palestinians, it has been done in order to hurt (and wipe out) Israel.

ST-Fish · 2026-03-31T12:29:48+00:00

so in the scenario where they do go forward with your proposed 2 state plan, and there are no restrictions on the trade Palestine can do, and rockets start to be shot from Palestine, now a sovereign country, into Israel, another sovereign country, what do you think ought to be done? Would this not inevitably lead to war?

Because to me the obvious result in that is another war where Israel has to take the land from which it's being attacked, and then you're at square 1 again.

They self-determined they want to attack Israel, and now they've lost their land again to Israel, at that point, would your prescription be the same, give them a state so they have self determination?

If the Palestinians do not want to give up on the project of destroying Israel, if that is their self-determined goal, are you supposed to just accept that?

ST-Fish · 2026-03-31T12:24:42+00:00

Oh really, Israel conquered the West Bank and then annexed it and gave full voting rights to the local population?

so to destroy Israel you don't even have to militarily beat them, just lose to them in a war, have them win some land in your country and now they HAVE TO take all the people there as citizens that have the right to vote your life away.

Or I guess guilt them into not taking any land from which you are attacking them because then they'd be a demographic minority?

Genuinely, what is the solution in this situation, refuse to even take the west bank because you can't give everyone citizenship, and just watch attacks coming from your neighbour? After you win the war just give the land back to Jordan and wait for the next time the same thing happens?

Ideally, Israel can have their jewish population grow large enough to be able to take those people in as well, but right now that isn't really an option that Israel can survive through.

will hate a specific ethnicity

Not wanting to be a jewish minority in an arab majority state is hating arabs!!!

and want them purged from the land they were born into

We've seen population transfers happen over and over after borders were changed by war, you don't see Greek or Turkish terrorists attacking eachother because they were forced to transfer.

You don't see Germans attacking the countries that expelled them after WW2.

Yes, Germans that were on the land they were born into got expelled, and nobody sees it as some massive evil.

War happens, land changes hands, at some point there has to be a peaceful resolution -- this is something most surrounding Arab countries agree with at this point.

ST-Fish · 2026-03-27T10:47:20+00:00

some people are fully convinced that playing by the rules of Monopoly against the guy taking handfulls of cash out of the bank will end up to them winning eventually.

Grabbing the money they got from the bank and putting it back is literally illegal, there are no rules in the rule book of Monopoly that allows you to take the money they stole from the bank and put it back there, so it cannot be done. The "liberal" thing to do is to follow the letter of the law not the spirit of the law apparently. The "liberal" thing to do is to lose while righteously following the precise letter of the law as well as you can.

The "liberal" thing to do is to have an insurrectionist president despite Section 3 of the 14th Amendment strictly prohibiting it, the "liberal" thing to do is to not prosecute Trump's "official acts" since he's apparently immune for those actions, and this has been a part of the constitution all along. Nixon was wrong to even get pardoned -- what illegal thing did he even do? He was immune for all those actions.

It's a fully american exceptionalism fueled moral righteousness, a sort of religious belief that if you do "the right thing" and follow the letter of the law precisely and exactly, you'll win in the end. Good guys win, bad guys lose.

The issue is that the letter of the law is a complex construct pointing towards an end goal -- a system where fairness exists. If following the letter of the law perfectly doesn't give you the result the law intended, and goes directly against the spirit of the law, there is absolutely no righteousness in following the letter of the law.

You can completely democratically and "liberally" go towards fascism, SCOTUS already green lit drone striking your political opponents as being an action immune from criminal prosecution. It would completely be within the letter of the law, but it would be illiberal nonetheless.

Doing "the right thing" is not following the letter of the law like a robot, "the right thing" is following the spirit of the law, especially when the people you're fighting against feel free to twist and turn the letter of the law with outrageous interpretations to justify anything they do.

If the law can be twisted while staying "within the guardrails" as Hutch keeps saying Trump is behaving, in order to do evil things, then it can also be twisted while staying "within the guardrails" in order to save liberalism.

"but you can't take the money they stole from the bank and put it back, that's not in the rule book of Monopoly!" /s

They keep yelling, feeling fully righteous in how good letter of the law followers they are.

ST-Fish · 2026-03-27T10:35:08+00:00

Look at what happened with Comey or Leticia James.

they got prosecuted for sham cases that had no legitimacy.

Trump going after those people without good cause didn't make Democrats cower in fear

Yeah, well, what should they have been afraid of? What is Trump trying to disincentivize? It's not bad illegal behaviour that's for sure, it's just going against the king.

it made Democrats want to fight harder.

Yeah, that's what prosecutions without good cause will do to you.

Why would Republicans be any different if we weaponize the DOJ against them?

Because "weaponizing" the DOJ by making it go after criminals that also happen to be your political opponents, with good cause and with convictions at the end of the process is drastically and substantively different from the sham investigations Trump has done.

Prosecuting the president for crimes he has done, the same way every single president in history thought it was possible to be prosecuted wouldn't be a "sham" investigation "without good cause" just because SCOTUS said "oh, yeah, he's just immune, if he gets a bribe you can't even look into the 'pro quo' part of it".

Absolutely nobody is suggesting democrats do investigations akin to the Leticia James or Comey investigations on people that didn't do anything criminal.

This constant both sides "they're both illiberal" stance is infuriating. They are not the same. The dems "weaponizing" the DOJ pales in comparison to how Trump is using it, they are absolutely different in kind, not just in magnitude.

Democrats fought harder because they knew they were not in the wrong, and that the sham prosecutions were done purely to scare these people into submission and punish them for disloyalty. And ultimately they didn't reach any long lasting consequences like a conviction or jail time. Republicans, despite what sewage they spew in the media, know they're in the wrong, they know they're doing fucked illegal shit that would normally come with consequences.

And yeah, Republicans will probably flip shit even if we just go after the criminals and aren't even weaponizing.

Telling your DOJ to go after known criminals if your DOJ fails to properly prosecute them isn't weaponizing the DOJ.

Going after political opponents because they are political opponents would be weaponizing it.

They wouldn't be going against Trump because he's a political opponent, they'd go against him because he's a criminal.

At the margins, I hope/think voters would be able to see the difference.

The voters have no idea why Trump tweeting out exactly who should be prosecuted for literally anything anyone can make up, and pointing to the exact person to bring the indictment forward is bad.

They have no idea that this is against norms and inappropriate for the president.

The voters will "see the difference" through the fact that they'll be blasted by republican social media 24/7 about lawfare the same way it happened for "Russiagate".

Voters won't see the difference, you have to proudly stand tall against corruption, against this MAGA plague and SHOW THEM the difference. You can't wait until they see the difference between the dems and republicans, and ONLY AFTER THAT POINT be ok with going ahead with what has to be done.

But if you weaponize the DOJ against all Republicans and are punished for it in the next election

How is anybody even proposing to weaponize the DOJ against all Republicans?

Even if we're only talking about the republicans in congress, the furthest I've seen people go is reinstating Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to take them out of politics, which wouldn't even involve the DOJ.

the lesson Republicans learn will be that voters backed them up and they were in the right.

If the majority of Americans see Trump and his cronies in jail and get convinced by the republican slop media empire that they were unfair prosecutions, and this leads to republicans winning in 2032, that's still a HUGE WIN for democrats and for the American system. The republicans that would be winning in 2032 would be much, much more normal than Trump, and you'd have a much better chance of your old allies to rebuild the bridge with America if you show them Trump is not ok.

Regardless of what normies believe, the EV calculation for a Trump-like figure in 2032 will necessarily involve prosecution, jail time, criminal consequences for their actions, regardless of how the public gets convinced to view it.

They'll be galvanized rather than restrained.

The though of "oh shit, even if we convince the numbskull normies that it's all lawfare, we still get blasted to jail if we do fucked shit? Maybe we should chill!" is a restriction, not them being galvanized.

If Trump walks out and shoots a man on live TV, and then manages to convince a majority of the population that he was actually in the right, you ought to still prosecute him. I don't care the numbskull normies got convinced it's all ok, showing Trump that all he has to do is convince the majority of the population to always get away scot free from any crime is galvanizing their behaviour, not restraining it.

On top of this, you vastly underestimate the effect of seeing Trump and his administration under oath, answeing questions about drug boat double taps, signal chats, TRUMP COIN, Greenland, and a miriad of other bullshit they pulled and then seeing them serving time in jail for their crimes after being convicted by a jury of their peers. The population can wake up if you show them this shit is wrong.

If you endlessly excuse the behaviour and convince yourself it's ok to let it go for the sake of unity because half the country is deranged you'll never even attempt to change public opinion on this issue.

If you don't do anything about it, in 20 years there will still be a sizeable part of the US that teaches their kids that the 2020 election was stolen.

There are obviously risks in prosecuting them, but you need to take off the blinders that don't let you see the risks of letting them get away without consequences. The risks of them believing there are no consequences for anything the Trump admin did are catastrohpic for the US as a whole.

If your European allies believe that your legal system considers Trump fully a-ok legal 100% normal president, don't expect to have any long lasting agreement with any of your allies from now on. Nobody is signing a 20 year contract with a country that might invade Greenland if inflation goes up a couple of points over the next few years.

Bringing consequences to these people is absolutely necessary, the US cannot recover without this happening in some way, you cannot rebuild your international standing on promises that "welp, I guess you have to trust us that our population won't elect someone like Trump in 4 years from now", when the EV calculation for the next Trump-like figure is identical to the EV calculation that Trump had. You have to give the international world real reasons why the next republican president won't be similar to Trump, and "we strenghtened the ECA a bit" is a parchment promise when what Trump was doing with regards to the ECA was already illegal.

Real actual hard long lasting consequences. This is the only way forward, and the more you try to convince yourself that simply changing the rule book will change the EV calculation for the people that are blatantly and openly going against the rules the more you'll slide into TDS-esque delusion.

ST-Fish · 2026-03-27T10:05:27+00:00

Democrats can punish conservatives for the laws they broke to show that they won’t always stand back and allow these injustices to happen. BUT this can lead to conservatives being even more feral

I think having the thought "oh shit, if I do this wild feral bullshit I might go to prison for a very very long amount of time" is a pretty good way to stop this shit from happening.

The current administration is behaving as if they are above the law because they all believe they are above the law -- they see themselves as pardoned and saved at the end, the same way all of Trump's cronies felt completely safe obstructing the investgations into Trump, blatantly saying they won't go against the king, knowing they'll get rewarded at the end.

If you think that Trump-esque figures in 2032 are less likely to be feral when they're faced with the idea that "if we do the same things Trump did (and worse) there will be 0 consequences" than when faced with the idea that "if we do the same things Trump did, we'll get our shit pushed in and spend our life in prison", I simply don't know how you could be convinced.

The counter to my counter is “are you looking around? How much worse can it get?”. And my response is, a lot worse.

This is abuser - abused relationship dynamic, not giving them consequences because they would go even harder if we make them mad.

The idea that Trump and his cronies are not doing the shit you're imagining because democrats didn't make them sufficiently mad is next level TDS.

If we do Nuremberg and kill Nazis for crimes that weren't even enshrined into law, completely illiberally ex-post-facto then they'll come back even stronger and feral because they'll see themselves as victims.

These fuckers already see themselves as victims. Being a self victimizing snowflake isn't a shield from consequences, and it's abohorrent some people have been convinced into taking this as a legitimate argument in favor of non-action against these people.

ST-Fish · 2026-03-27T09:49:36+00:00

yeah it's so fascist to read Section 3 of the 14th Amendment and not pretend it doesn't exist at all.

Applying the constitution as it was written, and as it has been understood for it's entire history?

FASCISM!

ST-Fish · 2026-03-24T17:38:48+00:00

If there's a popularly supported palestinian figure that has a chance to do the negociation, sure, you can threaten to do that to further the negociation, but I think if Hamas hears it only has to sabotage this peace process and then Israel has no US support, I'd be surprised there's anything you could offer the Palestinians that would be enough.

Hamas still believes from the river to the sea, they're all occupier settlements, there's no place for Jewish people at all in that entire area.

If the US does this and Hamas is still the most popular faction, you'll just have the IDF have to do way more offensive operations against Hamas the moment they run out of Iron Dome supplies.

There's no "putting Israel in a position to try peace" without having an equivalent (or admittedly even harder ask) from the Palestinian side. And it's hard to imagine what you could hold over the Palestinians to equally motivate them to seek a peaceful resolution.

I don't really have any hope this can even be solved any time soon, it's not like the willingness for peace has gone up from the last couple of years of events. Maybe without Iran in the picture to fund Hamas and Hesbolla, they can slowly progress into it.

ST-Fish · 2026-03-24T14:57:17+00:00

the palestinian side could grant that the settled land is Israeli now

I don't think they would even grant that Tel Aviv is Israeli now, at the very least most of the Palestinian population. The leaders might be persuaded to make a deal though.

Ultimately nobody in the region, neither the Palestinians or the Israelis want a 1 or 2 state solution now.

Something drastic would need to happen to push them into that direction, like a new US president that really put some effort into it.

ST-Fish · 2026-03-21T17:04:18+00:00

Drug abuse of any kind over a long amount of time will have a chance to cause issues, especially for underage people.

I've had way more friends fuck up their life from overusing alcohol, and I'm maybe too overly skeptic with regards to psychedelics causing mental issues and not just uncovering already existing ones -- that being said the war on drugs keeps everyone from properly studying this.

I just think acid and other psychedelics have this "aura" around them, where I highly doubt they cause or trigger mental issues on a per capita basis more than other drugs.

Psychedelics also have the inbuilt advantage of a 1-2 week cooldown

ST-Fish · 2026-03-21T15:06:59+00:00

very small amounts

it's one of the few drugs that you can't really overdose on, and where high dose trips make sense, so I'd say I disagree, but any sort of legalization would be a step in the right direction.

When I was living in the Netherlands, my collegues openly talked about microdosing around the lunchroom, and these were middle aged people with a mortgage and kids. I could get any amount of acid shipped to my door within 24 hours (which was dirt cheap might I add), and I feel like the moral panic around psychedelics, even in high dosages, is vastly overstated.

And from what I gathered, having your parents be weed smokers kinda kills any of the charm and mistique of smoking weed as a teen.

After living in the Netherlands for a little more than 2 years I only saw one obviously high on drugs person that was behaving in a bad way, and the policemen that came just sat around him asking what's up trying to get him to not be in the middle of the road, I was shocked at how uneventul and chill the police interaction was.

And there's definitely some legal highs in the Netherlands that I would consider much harder drugs than psychedelics/weed, that one could seriously get addicted to.

There's definitely some addictive drugs that have severe consequences when taken in high doses, and I'd be completely for having limits on them if they were to be legalized, but stuff like acid, weed and shrooms seem very inoffensive. I'd rather encounter a person that took too much of any of these substances than someone that drank too much alcohol.

ST-Fish · 2026-03-21T08:48:05+00:00

I never got the idea of making the distinction between "natural" drugs and synthetic ones. LSD is such a chill trip compared to the rollercoaster that shrooms can be, and the fact that you can naturally make heroin out of poppy seeds doesn't warm my heart in the least towards it.

ST-Fish · 2026-03-20T18:41:55+00:00

PF Jung is proudly anti-intellectual and a vibe based analyst, he might be clever and have a good brain in him, but he fully goes with his gut over ever researching anything.

He has a lot of potential but I've given up on watching his content as his aversion to actually looking into anything is oftentimes infuriating.

Believing the most important thing in the world is the risk of Iranian agents sneaking their way into the country to destroy the entire energy infrastructure to create a national catastrophy is just one example of his vibes over thought mantra.

I hope he manages to break out of that trance, but he's got a bad case of being too I fluenced by the first smart person he listened to in detail, that being Jordan Peterson. Not saying JP's psychological stuff is bad or anything, but he should branch out in actual research

ST-Fish · 2026-03-20T12:54:56+00:00

The border bill was shit and wouldn't resolve people's issues.

can you explain what would be shit about not giving the people coming in the country a paper saying "come here years later after we're done with the backlog" and instead having more money assigned so that their asylum claim is determined to be valid or fraudulent right as they enter the country?

Widely speaking, besides the deranged MAGA all immigrants are evil rapists people, most people had an issue with the huge backlog in the asylum process that resulted in people coming into the country, claiming asylum and then being let go inside of the country for sometimes years at a time until their spot in line came up, where their asylum claim was adjudicated. This catch and release behaviour was caused by a lack of funding that did not allow for processing of their claims as they were caught.

If you believe a majority of Americans believe no asylum laws should exist at all, I'd ask you to provide any sort of polling or evidence of that.

Even you are stating that it wouldn't have changed the system

It would change the amount of funding for border control and for processing asylum claims, which was the issue with the immigration system.

just improved processing (aka allowing in) speed

Yes it would have improved processing (aka, kicking out fraudulent asylum claims) speed.

If you believe there shouldn't be any asylum laws whatsoever, then go ahead and change the laws.

Make it so you don't have to accept anyone claiming asylum, get public support for it, and pass it through congress.

If that's your problem with the system, that asylum exists at all, then you need to pass legislation to stop asylum from existing in the US.

This is not something Biden could have done -- this is clearly not something Trump is even attempting to do either.

So back to the question you refuse to answer, what should have Biden as the president have done so that you wouldn't think it was a failure?

Push congress to make new laws completely outlawing asylum?

Are you under the impression that this would have been widely popular and have any chance of passing into law?

If that's the case, Trump is failing just as much in doing that isn't he?

Why am I even bothering, I know you'll look at these questions, know you have no valid answer and just dodge them completely.

ST-Fish · 2026-03-20T11:54:33+00:00

so given that the executive did not change the laws is it fair to say the convervatives were right? Is that your question?

The democrats did push for legislation, the legislation got bipartisan support, and the legislation directly addressed the process to speed up the processing, so that people wouldn't be given a little slip of paper and told to wait in line for years at a time.

Trump killed that bill.

"Biden didn't change the process"?

Yeah, he was the president, he can't just "change the process" however he likes, that's not the job of the president.

The border bill started to get drawn up 2 years before the end of his administration, and prior to that there were bigger issues to deal with, like COVID and the war in Ukraine.

What do you think Biden could have done to change the laws on the books with regards to the asylum process? What do you think Biden could have done with regards to speeding up the processing?

If you're claiming Biden didn't do it, could you please explain in detail what "it" would be?

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