You're not wrong, it's just that they were becoming a little too frequent and generated nothing useful, when I think most people come here to gain information and not so much to have fun and shoot the shit
back in late August I was thinking "wouldn't it be hilarious if they did it on October 7th? nah, probably not"
now I'm beginning to think that they might
I love how often the "warm-water port" thing comes up, it's like Baby's First Geopolitics. It's not terribly incorrect that they would like other ports than Sevastapol and St Petersburg but because it's such a cliche, it leads people into saying bizarre things (like the image above, or that part of the motivation for invading Ukraine was that they want a warm water port). Maybe the average American just has terminal navybrain or something?
Russia invaded my bathroom because they needed a warm water port for their Navy (my bathtub)
even more doomer opinion: every single Resistance fighter will die. perhaps 80 years from now, but even so
I'm personally not in favour of banning pessimism, that would be an odd thing to do, and I think that there's a subcategory of it which can be genuinely enlightening - more of a sort of "here's how things suck about XYZ, here's how the left has been beaten down in that arena, here's some suggestions about what could be done next (but I don't have a ton of hope that it'll happen)" quasi-doomerism than a defeatist "well, that's it. we might as well surrender."
perhaps it just requires a tightening of the rule that requires nothing low effort or off-topic in top level comments, as that would strangle a lot of the just outright defeatist stuff. very few people are gonna write up paragraphs and paragraphs detailing every single reason why socialism is impossible and fighting back is less than worthless - I'm curious as to why they'd even be here posting if that was the case, they should be on r/politics or something - they're just gonna go do what defeatists do (grill, I assume)
ultimately it doesn't really matter, Nasrallah isn't looking at Hexbear going "...fuck, they're beginning to doubt us..." we could all give up tomorrow and say that Israel and the US will rule for the next thousand years and all it would do is make the site a) unbearable if you're, like, a minority/nonwesterner who's trying to actually find ways to fight back, and b) incorrect
it's mainly just "would I rather read a bunch of pessimistic shit about how doomed we all are or a bunch of positive messages about how doomed the empire is? would I eventually leave if everybody here was just depressed about everything all the time?" and the answer to the first question is 'positive messages' (well, technically it's 'I would like to read well-reasoned analysis regardless of whether it comes to a conclusion that makes me feel good' but Hexbear is not a serious scientific site, it's a vibes-based site with relatively frequent good analysis on it) and the answer to the second question is 'yes'
it's not that I believe that by posting pessimistic takes that they will manifest in the real world and so we must silence them, it's that I believe that if I (and many others) read like five comments in a 10 minute span about how "it's so over, everything is doomed, they're gonna get away with it" then I (and many others) would be like "wow, this place sucks to be in. I'm gonna go find somewhere else that's not a drag on my mental health, and has some real insightful comments and historical comparisons with which to enrich my understanding of the situation"
Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle.
I think this is the issue when it comes to the long-term planning as opposed to short-term actions. Long-term, you're likely not going to see the results of it for a painfully long time, and it feels like nothing's really changed. Meanwhile short-term actions might not end up panning out in the long run, but they sure do make it feel like you're winning by constantly making headlines and being very in-your-face.
Kharkiv in September 2022 is a good example of this. Russia fucks up by assuming that all their soldiers are gonna stay and not wanna go home to their families, Ukraine storms into Kharkiv and takes pretty much the whole oblast, they then later have to withdraw from Kherson City, mass panic by the pro-Russia side. The sky is falling, NATO is winning, Russia is on the verge of total defeat, this is merely Stage 1 of the grand Ukrainian plan to roll up Russia back to the border, and then... nothing really happens. I mean, Putin announces they're mobilizing more troops but there's no grand, sudden response which totally paralyzes Ukraine in a the-gloves-are-off moment. Russia looks insanely cucked and cowardly for not declaring outright war and merely firing missiles in barrages at the electrical grid. Doesn't Putin know that you HAVE to respond tit-for-tat?! Then, months later, Bakhmut eventually falls after a grueling siege. Then, the gradual construction of defenses in Zaporozhye pays off when Ukraine fails to make progress there. Then there's almost nothing else for all of 2023 and a big part of 2024. Then Ukraine invades Kursk, stalls almost immediately, and Russia accelerates the clearing of the Donbass. The triumph of long term planning over a mere sequence of short-term semi-victories.
I feel like the bloomers and the doomers (and I count myself in the first camp, I'm no impartial observer) are more or less talking past one another because we simply disagree on fundamental tenets like whether the Resistance should perform flashy short-term operations, or whether every action by Israel necessitates an immediate reaction in the same style (if Israel strikes us with a missile, we must strike them with a missile instead of something potentially more effective but more subtle). I've witnessed enough conflict management over the last couple years to know that the most effective strategy for military commanders is almost always to just sit, calm down, think through what the consequences of an event are likely to be, think about whether you must respond, and if you must, in what timeframe, and so on.
Anybody who's fairly good at chess knows that when your opponent slides in and takes your piece in a bombastic move, often the instinct for beginners is to immediately take back, even if repeatedly doing that will quickly lose you the game. Instead you have to look at the whole board and consider options for counterattacking or defending. Iran, Hezbollah, Yemen, etc should not feel pressured to make a response to an Israeli attack if performing that attack leaves them in the same or a worse position. They might be called cowards by people online, but I'd prefer them to be like "Well, our best analysts and informants have concluded that if we respond in three weeks/months rather than three hours, then it's likely that it'll have a bigger effect because of our other operations weakening this aspect of the Israeli military etc, so we shall do that." They're trying to win a war, they have zero interest in helping you look less foolish online because you promised some Zionist lib that Hezbollah will DEFINITELY rain down missiles on Tel Aviv soon, and oh boy, you BETTER be scared! and then that didn't actually happen.
incoming doomer opinion: the Battle of Huế proves that South Vietnam and the US are still absolutely in this fight and we'll probably see this war wrapped up soon as the Tet Offensive is failing
Based on yesterday's MoA post though, it seems that Israel is gearing up for a war with Hezbollah, which would make the story of the discovered explosions more plausible. So the possibilities are like:
Israel intended to use the device explosions to hamper an initial Hezbollah response, but they were discovered and it had to be done early, which is unfortunate for them if Israel intends to invade in the coming days or weeks. The most popular explanation here, I think? It's what my opinion is.
Israel did not intend to use the device explosions to hamper an initial Hezbollah response, just general disruption of Hezbollah (and any civilians that die are a "bonus"), therefore the discovered explosions story is false/irrelevant because it's fine if it's activated at any time. This seems kind of a strange thing to do, but there's a lot of unknown unknowns here.
Israel did not intend to use the device explosions to hamper an initial Hezbollah response because they think that it would not be effective for whatever reason (perhaps Hezbollah has several backup communication methods?), it was purely for terrorism and to boost internal support (and any soldiers that die are a "bonus"). This seems to be what MoA is arguing if we want to keep their posts consistent.
@SeventyTwoTrillion
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