Whelp. So I actually had the most interesting discussion I’ve had on ML. Generally, I ignore the nasty comments there and only respond to those who are actually trying to have a somewhat decent discussion. They’re few and far between, but they exist. Which ended up happening - I had an extended discussion with Cowbee on what a dictatorship is and what democracy is. While IMO there were pretty huge gaps in his arguments, I have to respect that he actually engaged in the discussion without the usual name-calling, putdowns and insults I’m used to on that corner of the fediverse (yes, it’s a low bar, but credit where credit is due). And I’ll be honest, it was a fascinating window into the world view of people who think like that. Call me crazy, but I actually learned something.
At some point, the discussion started going in circles, and I figured there’s no point continuing, since as far as I could tell, everything relevant had already been said, and he didn’t exactly seem to have anything new to add, either - so I stopped responding. (To be fair, I stopped responding once before because life got in the way, but the discussion resumed after I noticed that the thread was actually still alive for whatever reason.) This morning, I wake up - banned for 6 days. Reason: imperialist. The discussion had next to nothing to do with imperialism. It’s like whoever it is who banned me didn’t even bother trying to give a proper explanation. Meanwhile comments like
That’s literally exactly what that means you fucking moron
didn’t get a ban, even though they’re in blatant violation of rule 1:
Be civil and nice.
Interestingly enough, my comments are all still up. I’ve tried to archive it (unfortunately neither archive.org nor archive.is worked) because I actually genuinely found the discussion interesting, even if Cowbee’s arguments ended up reinforcing my own opinion more than I thought it would.
Weird place, ML.
EDIT: I checked lemmy.ml’s modlog and interestingly enough, my ban isn’t listed there, even though I’m very clearly banned from the community. Not sure what’s going on there (or if I’m maybe misunderstanding how this works)
I literally just argued with some stupid idiot about this.
In Ukraine it becomes ILLEGAL to have elections during Martial Law.
The president does not declare Martial Law, it is a joint decision.
Martial Law was declared because of the Russian invasion.
The president’s term also is not 5 years. It specifically is after the election. The election is what decides the end, which typically happens every 5 years. Unless there is a reason why not.
That’s it. Very simple, easy to Google.
I remember having this “discussion” with someone on ML. I ended up pulling the actual digital document, in Ukrainian. Where it literally says, Elections are not to be held during martial law. (https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/389-19 if someone is interested)
Now I’m gonna give you some options, and you can play a game of guess what they did.
a) Concede that they were wrong, and that Zelensky did in fact not cancel elections to remain in power.
b) Declare the digital copy of the documents coming off an official Ukrainian website are doctored.
c) Admit I am correct but that it has been edited since after the Invasion started, courtesy of “Zelensky the Dictator”
d) Say that despite the law, Zelensky could, if he wanted to, hold elections, he just don’t want to.
correct answer
C
If only the same site had all previous versions of the same document and you could check the original 2015 version /s
Lol I’m gonna go with B because that sounds about right for their userbase
Expecting any sort of coherent and good faith argument on ML (and specifically from Cowbee) was your first mistake there. They’re going to run around in circles specifically to provoke you to say anything that can be stretched into a bannable offense, and if they can’t, they’ll make it up.
Their stance is basically what MAGA is but you swap American conservatives for Soviet and Chinese totalitarian dictatorships. Whatever the Good Camp does is good by definition, everyone else is bad by definition.
Unrelated but I find it really funny that everyone here knows cowbee lol, lemmy is funny.
Besides the bots, there’s only a few thousand of us regulars. Most users aren’t here full time. Imho he’s the street corner preacher raving to the night about conspiracy theories and only making bad arguments . On the next corner over is Desalines.
They are often in discussions regarding anything ML related (even to the point some accused them of using bots to write comments), so it’s difficult to avoid noticing them if you care at all about anything related to their instance. Like, for example, my country is currently being invaded by russia who they defend, while branding me and other Ukrainians as Nazis. Not easy to remain indifferent with that.
They insult you for your nacionality? that sounds silly, and xenophobic and even if we say it is true, it would be an awful generalization.
But honestly I wouldn’t care, I mean it’s the internet, people have all kinds of opinions, that’s both the beauty and ugly of it… kinda but still, not like you can do much anyways. But I am guessing you don’t engage anyways.
My current Lemmy instance isn’t even federated with .ml or other tankie instances, so no, I don’t engage directly. And yet they position themselves as one of the “main” Lemmy instances for general use on the basis of Lemmy developers also being admins and mods on .ml. So I do participate in communities like this one, which calls out their most egregious bullshit.
And also even funnier everyone here hates them.
That’s the thing, though - I actually found the arguments somewhat coherent, which is the reason I continued the discussion - something I’m not used to from ML. Otherwise I would have stopped responding a long time ago.
I mean, I know those are the stances there, but I still find it interesting to understand how they get there. Incidentally, I’ve also had plenty of discussions with people who are in the MAGA direction (those more IRL), and at least some of them I found very interesting - and they also taught me to understand how they think, which is one of the first steps to effectively counter that ideology IMO.
I’ve perked through the thread you’ve linked. It certainly seemed coherent, but at one point I’ve realized they started arguing an opposite thing from the OP.
I’ve been in a few arguments with .ml regulars in the past. When I realized they all eventually boil down into goalpost swapping and spamming paragraphs of text with dubious source links, I’ve stopped engaging. It’s fun the first time, then it’s all the same.
but at one point I’ve realized they started arguing an opposite thing from the OP.
Holy crap, I didn’t even realize that… I had just about forgotten about the original même.
Basically everyone who argue with cowbee will experience the same thing, at first you will think they are debating in good faith, then you will realise the argument is full of hole and when applied to the side they defend, have the exact same thing they hate the other side for, then you will see the similarity with people like Ben Shapiro and Charlie Fountain Kirk.
Well, I wasn’t expecting to kick start a discussion about Ukranian elections, but it’s nice to see a civilized, informed debate on the matter.
It’s just a tankie propaganda outlet.
Found your ban in the modlog.
Of course, it is in Memes. I have never experienced such thin skinned mod as there. I am sure I am probably permabanned from there for some bogus reason. Edit: I am surprisingly not banned from there after checking modlogs
I can understand .ml’s defense of China and NK as they outwardly claim to be communist. I simply cannot wrap my head around why they defend Putin and Russia. Which is not in any way socialist or communist, nor does it pretend to be.
The main argument as I understand it is that since Russia and Putin oppose the western capitalist empire, that makes them anti-imperialist. Despite them just being a different. Arguably far far worse imperialist force. It just doesn’t make any damn sense though.
honestly I can’t understand even that. people don’t want communism just to have communism. people want communism because they believe it will fix our problems. but russia, china and NK are not exactly examples of how great communism is.
these people are lost, or they just want to hate someone without actualy having any values.
Those countries aren’t even really communist. Communism doesn’t involve dictators brutally oppressing their own people, putting them in camps or whatever the hell else is going on there.
these people are lost
This is the key IMO. I mean let’s face it, things aren’t great at the moment, and they’re not exactly getting better. The problems are complex and not exactly easy to wrap your head around. Their belief of Communist utopias, Xi as a savior, or even other people’s belief of Trump as a savior is a beautifully simple answer that spares you the headaches of understanding the complicated, messy, real world.
EDIT: I checked lemmy.ml’s modlog and interestingly enough, my ban isn’t listed there, even though I’m very clearly banned from the community. Not sure what’s going on there (or if I’m maybe misunderstanding how this works)
No, it’s there.
Your comments are still there because they were not removed.
Weird, I can’t find it there. I must be doing something wrong.
I can’t see the post at the link, as it must have been removed, but going by your description, that’s also how it was for me on Hexbear (the Web Archive link there works). I ignored the worst comments but replied to the ones that seemed reasonable, yet ended up banned anyway. Then they proceeded to literally harass me against the comm’s rules, with one admin threatening to ban me from a reddit community they moderate over that incident on Lemmy. There’s hardly a better example of textbook harassment. I don’t think there’s any hope for them as a collective. I feel like us expecting reason from them is just our naivete or belief in people being better. And to be clear, they obviously don’t represent all or even a significant subset of people - it’s just that we were looking for hope and reason in the wrong places.
Edit: Slightly clarified; improved a link.
The link was to a reply, not to a comment by op. Here is the comment: https://lemmy.ml/post/47610829/26677473
Zelenzky didn’t the Russians did by invading Ukraine thus triggering the martial law clause in the Constitution. (That being said I do find it a fumble on the western powers in helping Ukraine be able to hold elections under war time conditions. Seriously that would be a feat worth cerebrating.)
As for Netenyahu, erm which elections are you referring to? If it’s Palestine that feels like saying neither Hama or the PA are to blame in failing to orginize elections. If you are referring to Isreal when did that happen? Hell they have an election in October at the latest and polling suggest the Zionist Opposition Bloc (IE Zionist parties against Netenyhu) are to with win by a slim margin, or have the plurality and need to convince the Arab parties to let them govern.
I don’t know if it’s feasible to organise elections in Ukraine even with help of other countries. Like, a good third of the voting populace is out of the country and another third is on the occupied territory and/or frontlines trying not to get killed. We’d need enough pressure on russia to get an actual lasting ceasefire they don’t dare to break, and at that point we would already have effectively won.
It’s actually illegal to have an election during Martial Law for them. They can’t have one which makes sense.
A president’s term is also not 5 years. It’s after the election which happens every 5 years unless there is a reason it doesn’t.
Well, yeah, that’s one side of it. Though Zelensky had publicly said he’s ready to try and have an election if a true ceasefire is achieved. I know that’s more of a taunt to putin who will never agree to one, but still.
Well the diaspora is possible as multiple nations use some kind of expat voting system. As for the troops the US and I suspect other nations have built infrastructure to allow deployed troops still vote.
I will acknowledge no solution for civilians in Russian controlled territory and POWs still incarcerated.
Still though getting an election even if flawed I would find worth it, it shows even under such terrible conditions Democracy can still function.
That wouldn’t be democracy, though. Such an election would not be a fair representation of Ukrainian people, nor would it be safe as any gathering of people within Ukraine (and this would be publicly announced, mind you) will immediately become a target of massive russian attack.
It’s bad enough that they target civilian buildings and infrastructure, you definitely don’t want to give them a crowd of people to launch a missile at.
Hence I wouldn’t except such a system be some standard everyone gathers at the physical polling place.
I don’t have some perfect grand solution. All I know is I prefer democracy overcoming the challenges it faces such as Russia’s Invasion/Genocide
There us no reason for western countries to push for Ukraine to have elections during a war when Ukraine already decided they didn’t want to have elections during wartime. If leadership is effective then holding elections is going to undermine the defense of the country.
This isn’t some trumped up martial law, they were invaded by the country NATO was formed to defend against. Western powers helping Ukraine end the invasion so they can have elections would be worth celebrating.
Hence I put the blame on Russia. No Invasion means no Martial Law
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