Moonbox

Hahahahaha. Karen's really out-Karen'd herself here. 🤣

Your clarity wasn't the problem. It was your logic. This cuts both ways. I think Pelosi and Harris should go to jail and are guilty as sin. By your own reasoning, you've therefore agreed that Trump should be in prison. Way to argue yourself into a corner. 👏 Your "point" was dead-on-arrival, and I've only entertained it as long as I have because your debating tactics were so curious/novel. I've been on this forum for 16 years and never seen anyone lean into petty semantics, ultra-literal word mongering and mealy-mouthed lawyer-speak as you have in this thread. You've literally tried warping and reinterpreting my statements based on my use of fonts and emojis. 🤣 That's what we call rock-bottom, and I'm not engaging with it any further.

That's the question you now have to answer, since your own goof reasoning just agreed to Trump's guilt, which is what you were arguing against since the beginning of the thread. 👏

Nobody said it did. The treaty made life in Germany shit, and a shit life is the only sample of Democracy the German people ever got. It doesn't matter if democracy wasn't responsible for the poor conditions - distinguishing between causal and coincidental relations is too much nuance for the average rube. A "democratic" process tainted by tens of thousands of thugs policing the election ballots, and the imprisonment and murder of his political opponents, whose assets and forced labor were used to fund his later "successes". I think you need to go reread some of those books you were talking about. Look up the DAF, and what happened in 1933/1934. Trade unions were outlawed, their assets and offices confiscated and leaders imprisoned (or killed). The work week was increased to 72 hours, striking was made illegal, workers couldn't negotiate their wages, and they weren't even allowed to leave their jobs unless their employers gave them written permission (which they typically didn't). Nobody's proposing Iran should be "Gifted" with democracy. I'm suggesting that the people are not as happy with their government as you presume they are.

That's not what I said. Versailles set the abysmal economic conditions that made it nearly impossible for democracy to succeed. The Germans couldn't be sold on democracy, as you say, because they were given a rotten deal. Saying problems got better under Hitler comes with some colossal, glaring caveats. Economic expansion was bought and paid for with slave labour, confiscated property and longer working hours with no increase in wages. I'd say a lot of history would suggest otherwise, considering that's exactly what ended up happening with Germany, almost the entire Warsaw Pact, and Iran itself in the 1950's prior to having their nascent democracy stamped out by foreign powers.

I literally just addressed this argument and offered my counter to it. You unsurprisingly dodged...electing instead to uselessly repeat what I responding to. Your point was foolish. I agreed that Nancy and the Democrats were guilty of the BLM riots, so now you've admitted the Trump was guilty. Well done. 👌

More smarmy semantics!?!? Okay! 🤣 The "IF" qualifier doesn't change anything unless you disagreed with it. Did you? The emoji is irrelevant. That's tone. You weren't honestly asking the question, so what foolishness were you playing at asking it repeatedly, complaining that I wasn't answering, then going nowhere with it when I did finally answer? What was your point? Where was that reasoning supposed to take us? Why are you ignoring these questions? 🙄

Nobody said they did. The Treaty of Versailles set the conditions that made democracy almost certain to fail. When Germany went from super-prosperous European powerhouse under the Kaiser to an impoverished rump state under the Weimar Republic, it's no surprise there were a lot of angry people looking for other options. The fact that democracy wasn't really to blame is too nuanced for the average angry mook, not when you can use it and the jews, communists and capitalists as scapegoats. No, my argument is that the Iranians are living under comic-book-villainous repression, and live in poverty. Dictatorships only remain popular when the social contract (prosperity/safety in exchange for freedom) is upheld. When it is not, as it is not in Iran, sentiment turns sour. In that environment of repression, the protests in 2022 were remarkable. This wasn't a bunch of hooligans causing a fuss and getting clapped with fines and petty jail time. These were people going out knowing they faced very real risk of injury, death or disappearance. That isn't "special knowledge". That's just common-sense inference. In what world is a violent crackdown where you kill and maim 1000+ people an indication that Iranians are pleased with their repression?

Why are you accusing him of "lying "here? Maybe you have the Rosetta Stone for his banal natter, but to me it looks like the same unintelligible nothing-speak he spams everywhere.

I explicitly conceded the use of the word "nothing" by its literal meaning was wrong, and now you're trying to say I double and triple downed on it? Jesus. I think it's obvious who's being objectively, brazenly dishonest here. I didn't answer before because it wasn't really a question. It was an accusation barely disguised as a question (more bad faith debating). It was nothing more than you projecting your tribal biases, and in one of the most boring and least original ways possible. "Whatabout BLM".... 🫠 When I finally did answer your dumb question, it wasn't the answer you were looking for and you had nowhere to go with it. Predictable.

That might be the narrow definition you take, but the overall sentiment cuts both ways.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on the definition of "wide support". I'd consider the fact that he never won even 40% of the vote until he imprisoned/murdered the opposition and began "monitoring" the polling stations with tens of thousands of thugs to question that, but I guess we can just agree that there was obviously "enough" support for him to do that. The Treaty of Versailles and the crippling reparations had nothing to do with the anger and hopelessness of the German people in the early 30's? Really!? What do you figure you'd need to "see" to lead you to the opposite conclusion? Remember the censorship and brutal repression within Iran?

No. He didn't end democracy with support of the people. He mobilized a deluded, angry "hunk" of the population into a band of thugs, and he terrorized and intimidated his opposition into submission. Also no. Germany's monarchy was forcibly dismantled by the Allies, along with crippling reparations. They weren't just forced into democracy, they were also forced into hopeless poverty. The Iranians chose secular democracy in the early 50's. The US and Britain helped overthrow that and reinstall the Shah, who ran a repressive police state for ~20 years before the revolution that ushered in what turned out to be an equally repressive or worse regime. I think you're underestimating the resentment but also fear that goes along with that.

and that you're still hung up on, unable to move past lame petty semantics, that have already been clarified. That was your hint, genius. If the claim is that silly and absurd, why would you settle on the most absolute and literal, but least reasonable interpretation, rather than the less literal, far more reasonable one? Failing to recognize that isn't a big deal. What's lame is that you didn't just assume the dumbest meaning behind the words, you insisted on them, argued them for 3 pages, accused people of lying, and refused any attempts to clarify. That's what you call good faith debate? Ookay. 🙄 No, this is just you projecting your tribal assumptions on me. Nancy and Hilary caused the BLM riots. Al Gore and the Democrats never conceded to Bush. Now what? 😑

It's less about preferring a more authoritarian state, and more about lacking the legal and democratic institutions that could safeguard against it. Hitler "won" an election in 1933, supported by a massive campaign of violence, repression and intimidation, along with the jailing of political enemies. Prussia alone had 50,000 SS or militia members 'monitoring' the polls. There are always going to be people who are dumb and cynical enough to support/enable dictatorship. If that dictatorship can deliver results, they may even end up with wide popular support...but only until the music stops. It's when things aren't going great that folks start to rethink their choices, and by then it's too late. Regardless, Iran already attempted secular democracy back in the early 50's...until US and British intelligence organized/facilitated a coup to restore the Shah.

I believe him. You're just too dumb, and too uneducated to think outside your lazy, tribal heuristics. Every that disagrees with your clueless bullshitting is a Trudeau-loving lefty. It doesn't matter how many times you agree with the criticism for Trudeau, or even that you agree he's the worst PM Canada's ever had. In Canfux clownworld, you're still a Justin-lover if you're not on board with his Poilievre-fluffing. 🤡🤡

Of course you were. You were the example I was following. Maybe you realize now how irritating and pointless it is. Maybe not. That's up to you! 🫡

Big difference between protesting in Iran, and protesting in the USA. The former killed over 500 and blinded hundreds more. The latter had...what...25 people die? How many were killed by police? But sure, people love living in repressive dictatorships where they can go to jail for not dressing properly. North Koreans love Supreme Leader as well. Leader is wise. Leader is benevolent.

What you wrote was mealy-mouthed. I said it appears you deny Trump's culpability in the riot, and asked you to clarify. It was a simple question, with an affirmative or negative answer. Your response was more dissembling and word-games: What am I to make of this? He had not-nothing to do with it, apparently, but he did not incite a riot in any illegal sense of the word? 🙄 When you follow that up with a bunch of gratuitous projection and goofy whataboutism (whatabout BLM? whatabout Al Gore? whatabout, Hilary, Nancy Pelosi etc...), and in the same post accuse me of bias, I abandoned any notion that you were debating seriously and/or in good faith.

You are dumber than a stump. Period. The pictures were meant to remind you (more likely inform you in the first place, lol) of the large scale protests after Mahsa Amini's death in prison...for not dressing the way Supreme Leader likes. In the ensuing demonstrations, hundreds were killed by Iranian security forces and ~20,000 imprisoned. According to you, however, they seem to like their religious leaders. 🙄

I asked you to clarify, and this is the best you're willing to do? He had "something" to do with it? He did not incite in "any illegal sense of the word"? If this sort of marble-mouthed nothing-speak is the debating standard you're going to stick to, I'm not even going to read the rest of your post.

Whoops. That was the first picture I came up with. Is this better?

NO YOU? No, you dissembled and played semantic word games, you're doing it again here, and I'm not the only one pointing it out. 🙄

No, it doesn't. Your various arguments collapse in on themselves as soon as you can't hide behind your strictly literal semantics. Here's another example: Everything you've said on this thread appears to deny Trump's culpability for the riot. If that's not the case, here's your opportunity to clarify. Otherwise, this is yet another example of deflection via petty semantics. Since he instigated it in the first place, then it's absurd to assume that his feeble and transparent token of de-escalation was sincere or intended to have any effect. When Trump was told Mike Pence had been evacuated, he apparently said, "So what?" and instead of asking the mob to calm down, he went on another tirade about how Pence lacked courage. This was 15 minutes before the heroic Gandhi-esqued tweet you keep talking about. As I've said (and you keep ignoring), his staff, his party members and even his family members begged him for hours to tell the rioters to stop and go home, and he refused. 4:17, January 6th. His concession to Biden was an acknowledgement that he wasn't going to be allowed to stay president. He's never given up on his lies about the election being stolen, has claimed he'll pardon most of the rioters convicted, and even claimed that they're patriots. So...yeah...he totally condemned them. He did not try to stop it, as I've explained above. Any suggestion otherwise is a joke, along with your BLM whataboutism.

Yes, they definitely love the Ayatollah. Supreme Religious leader provides for and loves all of his people, and makes sure they have every comfort they deserve. 🤣