You still can't do basic logic here. Russian currency is not at a 17-month low. That doesn't even make sense. The exchange rate between the USD and RUB is at a 17-month low. It's been lower before. It spiked up in 2022. What's the root cause? What's the impact? What other data points do you have for comparison?

The fact that I went to college is meaningless. The fact that we both went to college in the same culture and generally have the same upbringing and that you and I disagree should tell you there's more to the story than me being a paid shill. And here's where the evidence matters. You frame the exchange rate trend as "Russian currency is low" and I frame it as "The rate of exchange is low". You think the Russian currency being low is an indicator of Russia's imminent collapse from internal economic woes. I think the exchange rate trend is happening with other countries as well and that the countries in question have completely different relationships to Western sanctions. You think all I do is pump Russian talking points, but I am concerned about the weakening of the RUB against the CNY because that exchange rate is going to matter far more in the long term than the exchange rate between the RUB and the USD.

We are not the same.

Bleh. I had a long response and lost it somehow. I'll try to be brief:

It’s hugely ironic that you keep saying how other people are too fragile to accept that other’s might have different world views, while showing yourself to be totally unwilling to consider anyone elses point of view on this subject

If I can't get through to you on this, I don't know if you and I are capable of communicating. I literally held the opposing viewpoint in my past. I have changed my viewpoint by listening to opposing viewpoints and investigating them. I don't know how else to communicate this: I am a USian, I believed red scare rhetoric, I supported the USA, I wanted to join the Air Force, I had books with NATO war planes in them and built model air planes from them, I played red scare video games, I read red scare books, I believed the narrative. I literally held the opposing viewpoint. Then, I changed. I am so willing to consider other viewpoints that I literally believed other viewpoints. How much more consideration can you demand from me?

Next. You accuse me of strawmanning. Here are yours.

If you choose to believe that Russia is the lesser of two evils in this conflict, despite objectively being the one who invaded the other, then by all means go ahead.

I have said clearly I don't believe morality exists. There is no good nor evil. You clearly don't know what I believe and you are putting a strawman in place that makes it easy to dismiss. So easy that you dismiss it in the same sentence. Do you know what strawmen are?

Presuming that everyone who doesn’t think the same way as you is just incapable of seeing the truth is a sure sign of a small mind.

Another strawman. I do not presume that people are incapable of seeing the truth, I am reading their words and they are expressing either easily falsified claims or they are denying easily provable claims. There is no presumption here, Western libs are demonstrably not working from the same set of evidence that the rest of the world works from. They are excluding evidence that doesn't fit their narrative.

To tie this pack to other points of view, to assess the Russian invasion of Ukraine I have considered the view points of the following communities: Western liberals, the American state, the Russian state, the Russian people, Russian socialists, Chinese state, American MLs, American MLMs, Indian MLMs, American anarchists, American Republicans, American anti-war organizers, international anti-war organizers, and international academics. I did this, and continue to do it, because each group accentuates different facts and different narratives. They also draw upon different historical events to buttress their position. The ML position has been far and away the most comprehensive and the most consistent with events as they unfold. You can call that a small minded mentality, but I think you'll find that it's mostly liberals who refuse to even entertain arguments that run against their moral position and listening to alternatives is seen as a moral breach, and I can't really imagine a smaller minded mentality than that.

the only references to “Russian Orcs” has been from lemmygrad and hexbear users who are pretending that it’s common terminology among all Ukraine supporters

Come on. This is easily disprovable with a search for "orcs" in the Lemmy search feature.

Fuck those orcs. Slava Ukraini

Who let the Orcs in? There’s something obvious here, but it’s not Russian victory.

From what I gather, some of Wagner forces’ bases were recently bombed, killing lots of orcs, and Prigozhin is blaming Putin.

What’s historical fact is Putin openly talking about wanting to annex Ukraine since before he came to power, and the documented war crimes and atrocities he’s committed in power before, up to and during this war of aggression that - for SoMe ReAsON - you orcs support. Get. Fucked. Tankie. Fuck. 🤡😂

I love seeing orcs get fucked.

Do I need to continue?

FWIW I totally agree with you that calling Russian Soldiers Orcs is both counterproductive and inherently unempathetic and even evil. My heart goes out to every Russian conscript who has been forced to march to Ukraine, either to die a pointless death, or to kill other humans all for Putin’s idiotic ambitions. But the fact that Russian Conscripts are people too doesn’t mean that Ukraine should just cede its sovereignty so that they don’t have to kill the soldiers that Russia is using to try and take away their independence.

This is so perfectly crafted it's a thing of grotesque beauty. You virtue signal that you're not a racist by saying you agree with me when I have never said that the reason using the term "orc" is bad is because it is counterproductive, nor unempathetic, nor evil (I deny evil exists, remember). You just assume that's why I think it's bad because it's why YOU think it's bad. So you make yourself feel better by talking about yourself and projecting it onto me. Then you get deeper in your virtue signalling by saying your heart goes out to soldiers, but your reasoning is that their death is pointless and directed by an ambitious idiot. Psychologizing your enemies is classic liberal brain rot. Putin's being an idiot is clearly not supported by the decades of evidence, but you just have to say it to make sense of the world. And of course, you have to imagine that his invasion was launched due to his ambition because it would be impossible for you to consider it was launched for defense. In your mind there's nothing idiotic nor ambitious about NATO deploying nuclear capabilities on an indefensible border that was used to invade Russia twice already (Napolean, Third Reich). Nope, not idiotic even though literally the entire diplomatic community was discussing 30 years ago that doing so would provoke an attack from Russia. Nothing ambitious about deciding that the juice was worth the squeeze and let's go forward anyway and provoke that attack. Nope, only Putin is idiotic and ambitious and that's why you have to have empathy for Russian soldiers. In fact, you'd be doing them a favor if you destroyed their country with sanctions and warfare, took over their politics, and installed a Western puppet regime because then they wouldn't be led by an ambitious idiot.

And that's only half of the toxic waste you put in here. The other half is 2 strawmen. The first is that there's an argument that because enemy soldiers are humans therefore Ukraine should cede sovereignty, which no one is making. The second is that Russia invaded Ukraine to "take away their independence". I mean, that second one is about as close to "They hate us for our freedoms" as you can get. Nice job, Bush. Neither of these positions are positions of your opponents. They are strawmen that are easily dismissed. The reason calling Russians orcs is bad is because it is evidence of a propaganda campaign to instill irrational bloodlust in the population. Normally this is reserved for soldiers so they can dehumanize their opponents, but the fact that it's everywhere in social media is evidence that this racist structure is developing within society and it will result in completely irrational and destructive behavior. The fact that you liberals hate tankies more than bloodlusting racists is a tell.

But it only keeps getting better. You accuse me of being unwilling to consider alternate viewpoints, but you are fully committed to this narrative that Russia is invading Ukraine to take away their sovereignty when it is very clear that they are invading Ukraine to secure Russian national security and have stated clearly they have no aims to occupy Ukraine nor to absorb it. You don't consider the alternate viewpoint that Russia is acting based on its national security interest because you have assigned "evil" to the act of initiating the invasion, so you shutdown all conversation about how this alternate viewpoint could possibly be held because anyone who disagrees with you is immoral.

I don't need to respond to the rest. This was enough.

Oh, and while I was writing this, another one got posted: https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/1585352