The innocent man also says “I’m not guilty” and my point is that anyone saying they’re not guilty is not an indicator of whether they’re actually guilty or not. An innocent person is just as likely to say “I’m not guilty” as a guilty person would be. So really the only dumb comments here are yours. You believe a false premise which led you to a false conclusion and instead of accepting you’re wrong you’re doubling down on that stupidity.

You’re free to take your anecdotal evidence and believe stupid shit, but if you’re going to say it out loud you better be prepared for the public dunking you’re inevitably going to get, because while we can’t make you not believe it we can tell you it’s a stupid thing to believe.

So what does an innocent man say? “I’m guilty”?

Assuming all of those things are inflicted by republicans, how can they get away with it? You’re supposed to have grit and take back power, but somehow you’re letting republicans run wild? How doesn’t this rub of on all Americans?

You’re doing the country equivalent “I’m not pathetic, look at how big my muscles are”. Doesn’t matter if you have shitty public education, shitty public transportation, shitty worker rights, shitty health care and a shitty political system that makes change impossible, you can beat the shit out of anyone calling you pathetic.

Such a simplistic view I can absolutely believe you’re American.

Because these people don’t see the bigger picture. They see they could get $35 if they didn’t have to pay the union. What they don’t see is that the union is the reason they’re “getting” $35 and without the union they’re definitely not going to get $35. And obviously any non-monetary benefit (such as more days off) goes way over their heads.

Max has said it’s not true and Norris backed it up saying Max doesn’t try to intimate.

I have given you actual sources to my arguments or have based my arguments on information that is easy to verify, meanwhile the only sources you’ve given are vague “NATO think tanks” and an author to a study you wouldn’t even name. Great sources. Maybe I should also cite my argument with “Ukrainian think tank said so” and you can go scour the web for this nebulous source.

And nothing I’ve said about Finland is manifestly ignorant, the only one manifestly ignorant is you because what you said literally contradicts history. If you do confidently double down on Finland go ahead, show me proof how Finland alternated between pro-USSR and pro-NATO government during the cold war. I know for a fact there is no proof because it did not happen.

This Wiki graph is a bit of an abomination. There is no point to jumping between different pollsters between months. But it’s also a very incomplete picture of A) Ukraine’s intentions B) the role that ethnic breakdown of these polling outcomes and C) whose views actually matter for security policy in Ukraine. And once again I return to the ethnic schism in Ukraine.

Not at all surprised to see you dismiss actual data with your own made up hypotheticals. That’s exactly why I didn’t bother to piece together data from the same pollster, I knew beforehand it wasn’t worth the effort.

You claimed that when it comes to NATO membership for Ukraine, it’s not about NATO’s wishes or Russia’s wishes, but Ukraine’s wishes. I am arguing that it’s not the case at all since both NATO and Russia had deep influence over Ukraine economically, politically and militarily.

Now I have no idea what you’re even arguing about. You’re literally telling me the basis of my original argument, that Ukraine was never neutral to begin with.

What point of mine are you responding to here? I never said anything to contradict that. I’m not making a moralistic argument, I’m making a causal one. Russian meddling was a huge part in depressing support for NATO membership in Ukraine, and Euromaidan was an enormous blow to Russian meddling. QED That’s why Russia switched from meddling to compellence.

You can ignore this part because I tried to make sense of your original nonsense. Not that your edit was any better considering you’re literally defending Russia attacking Ukraine with “Ukraine didn’t give Russia any guarantees”. That is such a horrible take I’m just going to straight up ignore what you said because that is something I’d expect to see in Lemmygrad.

Actually it is. Neutrality involves both pro-Russia and pro-West parties coexisting, alternating and sharing power. That’s almost always been the case with neutral/buffer states. Finland had a pro-USSR and pro-NATO leaders alternating for the entire Cold War almost.

What? I don’t know what kind of make-believe neutrality you’ve conjured up, but I’m going to call it bullshit on the account that I know your Finland statement is complete bullshit. For the entire duration of the cold war Finland had a total of 3 different presidents and all of them followed a foreign policy that has been coined as “Finlandization”. At no point during the cold war was there even a whiff of NATO in Finland because Finland didn’t want to give the Soviet Union any reasons to turn their military gaze at Finland.

That’s absolutely not true. Finland in particular came quite close to joining NATO several times and a long-term trend towards public and political support for joining NATO. In fact, if you read NATO think tank studies on the matter from 2000-2012, you’ll find that the matter went from uncertain to being treated as inevitable. The main issue was always concern over Russian economic ties. But that went out the window when Russia was subject to nuclear sanctions after invading Ukraine.

More bullshit. Joining NATO was a discussion point in politics around 2006-2007, but the general public has had very little desire to join NATO. I have no idea what NATO think tank studies you read, but that had to be NATO fanfic because it’s so far from reality it’s hilarious.

Sweden is actually a similar case. It has basically acted as an auxiliary partner in basically all of NATO’s major operations in the past. There is also a good study on how it used the threat of NATO-ization as part of its economic diplomacy with Russia (I think by Henrik Larsen). But it joining after the nuclear sanctions on Russia also makes sense. There have never been any downsides to the prospect of joining NATO except for 1. being dragged into others’ conflicts 2. damaging economic and political relations with Russia. Following nuclear sanctions, there really were no more incentives not to join. I think with Sweden it’s more complex as there are ideological factors which are more prominent than in Finland.

I’m not that familiar with the specifics of Sweden, but considering how wrong you’ve been about Finland and how closely Swedes cooperate with Finns I’m going to assume it’s also bullshit. But feel free to find some actual sources backing up your claims instead of hand-waving sources.

Exactly. Ukraine didn’t want to join NATO. If you make a claim this outrageous, you need to back it up

Polling data good enough?

Ukraine officially entered into negotiations to join NATO and entered a membership action program to do so.

So why didn’t Russia do anything about it back in 2010 when the plan of action was approved? Seems kinda odd to wait 4 years and then suddenly make an issue out of it.

It does in fact matter what the two forces with most impact on Ukraine’s economy, politics and security environment believe and aim for.

I don’t even know what you mean by this sentence.

Except Russia annexed Crimea before the election. If Russia was worried about a pro-NATO government why would they do something that guarantees a pro-NATO government? I already answered this. Euromaidan was a Ukrainian nationalist movement.

Euromaidan was a nationalist movement because the catalyst for the movement was, surprise surprise, Russian meddling. Or did you forget that Putin specifically made a deal with Yanukovych to throw the EU deal under the bus and choose closer ties with Russia. You can’t expect to have a non-nationalistic and not anti-russian protest when the reason for the protest is the desires of the population getting undermined by Russia wanting to maintain their sphere of influence.

What do you mean about the election lol? By March 1 no one on earth was waiting to see if Ukraine would vote in another pro-Russia candidate lol.

I thought it was about being neutral and not about being pro-russia? Pro-russia isn’t the same as being neutral. Ukraine could’ve gone down the path of not wanting to be a part of NATO but wanting to be a part of the EU. Those two things are not the same as evident from Finland and Sweden who for decades were members of the EU and had no desire to be a part of NATO (until Russia threatened them). But we never got to see a potentially neutral outcome because Russia made sure the newly elected government will be pro-NATO.

The EU-Ukraine agreement wasn’t the single issue in 2014, though it the catalyst. Economic integration with the EU was seen by both the West and Russia as a vital step in reforming Ukraine so that it could become part of the Western alliance - this was said explicitly over and over in Western capitals and NATO papers. Inside Ukraine it wasn’t seen that way, as most Ukrainians wanted to enjoy good relations with both sides but to elevate themselves to Western standards - until 2014.

Exactly. Ukraine didn’t want to join NATO. It doesn’t matter what NATO or westerns think or Russia thinks, it was up to Ukraine. They had no intentions of joining NATO, until Russia annexed Crimea.

For Russia however, it meant the end of economic influence which was its chief way of exerting political influence to keep Ukraine neutral or friendly, and for an important subset of Ukrainian security and political actors who would win out during 2014, it was in fact a path to NATO.

Except Russia annexed Crimea before the election. If Russia was worried about a pro-NATO government why would they do something that guarantees a pro-NATO government? I think it’s pretty obvious neutral Ukraine was not the goal for Russia.

If the key question is security neutrality how exactly was the EU-Ukraine association agreement a security issue for Russia? Because Euromaidan wasn’t about joining NATO, it was about wanting the possibility of joining the EU.

I’m not going to entertain the thought of what “neutrality” would mean, because the entire “neutral buffer” argument is just Russian propaganda. Ukraine wasn’t neutral before 2014, it was squarely within the Russian sphere of influence since the collapse of the union. Let’s reverse the situation. Let’s say Russia wins, dismantles the current Ukrainian government and sets up the “legitimate” Ukrainian government, would Ukraine become a “neutral buffer”? No. It would become a vassal state of Russia because Russia can’t give Ukraine the autonomy to make their own decisions, otherwise they might decide to turn westward again.

Maybe that’s the hypocrisy the meme is pointing to, that the neutrality argument in its entirety is bullshit because Ukraine was never neutral to begin with.

I guess its worth mentioning that Ukraine was never “neutral” to begin with. Since the fall of the union Ukraine had been in the Russian sphere of influence and they were neutral only to the extent where it wouldn’t undermine Russian control over Ukraine. That’s why the EU accession agreement started this, because it undermined Russian power and Russia was not okay with losing that power. Russia never wanted neutral buffer states, Russia wanted countries that they could control.