You said that they are a reactionary government, but you also implied that their reactionary justification to invade is legitimate.

You said you “don’t fully agree” with Russia intervening in the civil war (by shelling kyiv I guess, because theres definitely civil war there). As if they didn’t provoke it in the first place to justify their invasion.

I also wouldn’t expect people who are criticial of war to say that they “don’t fully agree” with Russia waging a war of aggression and commiting mass murder and war crimes in Ukraine, I would expect some actual condemnation of such atrocities.

Yeah, I don’t fully agree with their decision to intervene in the Ukrainian civil war

Of course Russia had nothing to do with the war. They would never fund and support the separatists, or spread anti Ukrainian propaganda amongst the Russian speaking population, because Putin loves democracy and just wants the best for everyone, of course. /s

Read the second paragraph again. I explicitly said that I’m not happy about their suffering, regardless of their political opinions.

It’s just disingenuous to claim that people merely take issue with their opinions when it’s the actions that are the real problem, although that still doesn’t justify schadenfreude.

This is “people with a different political opinion are suffering, yaaaaaay!”

To be fair, the issue isn’t that they have “a different political opinion”, the issue is that they will cause insane amounts of suffering and deaths down the line if they get their way. Climate change will kill millions of people, and trump and his supporters seek to make it even worse for short term political gain (aside from the attempts to install an authoritarian dictatorship and all that stuff).

That being said, I’m also not happy when indoctrinated people suffer, regardless of their murderous ideologies. Imo it’s more of a cultural issue, and nobody has any direct control over the culture/social environment that they grow up in.

But the majority of us loves our animals

And when the milk production drops, the vast majority of dairy cows get their throat slit and their bodies sold for profit. I surely wouldn’t treat those that I love that way, but I guess animal farmers just have a very different concept of “loving animals” compared to people who have pets, for example.

The NSDAP had no issues working with Russia, as long as it was in their interest.

We’ve already come a long way on price, thankfully. When I go to local supermarkets or discounters (Lidl, Kaufland, Aldi, Penny,…), the store brand meat alternatives are already as cheap as their factory farmed products. Same for the milk alternatives, soy yoghurts, and so on. So price parity has already been reached in many cases, at least here in Germany.

I guess now the issue is that many of the discounter alternatives don’t taste the same as meat yet (although they’re getting better), and the premium plant-based products taste great, but are still more expensive than the cheapest meat products.

Serious question, what could possibly convince them?

We all learnt about the atrocious living conditions on factory farms long ago. We all know that the meat industry is terrible for the environment and climate. We learnt about the avian flu being spread on cattle farms, with owners hiding the cases from the authorities, with 0 regard for public safety. We all know that migrants and children are systemically exploited by slaughterhouses, many get PTSD or become alcoholics, some get severely injured or die because of accidents.

Yet after all of that, meat eaters still happily give their money to these places every time they go to a supermarket or restaurant.

The meat industry got people so hooked on animal products that they can get away with basically anything, change my mind.

deleted by creator

I guess we should start barbequing pet dogs then. At least that’s less cruel than factory farms, fwiw.

This one isn’t human to human transmittable. It jumped to one human, but can’t infect other humans from there, so unless it mutates in a bad way it won’t start a pandemic. That’s very unlikely with one infection, but there will be more if it stays on animal farms.

It would take away breeding ground for human transmittable mutations. With literally billions of animals, mainly in filthy conditions, we just keep rolling the dice every day for a strain that starts a pandemic. We can either try to abolish factory farming, or just hope that the next pandemic won’t be much worse than covid.

Those Russian speaking separatists got heavily influenced by Russian disinformation and propaganda for years in preparation of the invasion, and supported by the Russian armed forces, precisely to have this justification. This is like saying Putin got 88% in the election, so clearly that’s the will of the people. Assuming that authoritarian regimes lead by secret service agents play by the rules of democracy is dangerous.

Imo it’s remarkable how successful they are at spreading their twisted narratives, even in western countries.

Thanks for the elaborate response. It’s interesting how different considerations are at such remote places. Here in Germany, a place is generally considered “in the middle of nowhere” when the nearest small town is like 10 km away, and a 20 minute drive to the next supermarket is exceptional.

The cultural differences between rural and urban regions here seem enormous already, I can’t even imagine what it’s like in the US.

I’m not familiar with food deserts, but wouldn’t it be possible to order dried and tinned foods in bulk every few months to get more reasonable prices?

I wouldn’t say they’re equivalent. Obviously beating a fly isn’t as bad as beating a dog or a pig. But is beating a human much worse than beating a dog? For me it comes down to capacity to suffer I guess.

That’s probably because you criticized their behavior (in a rather provocative way), which is often perceived as hostile and leads to downvotes.

Haven’t you been told that we don’t talk about that kind of oppression here? Everyone knows that mistreatment of humans is bad, but mistreatment of animals is just how things are supposed to be. They are just lesser beings after all, and such kind of thinking hasn’t lead to anything bad in history, so it’s not at all problematic.

Progressivism is about fighting oppression when it suits you, and meat is just soo convenient. The mega corps promised that nothing bad is happening there, so praise the factory farms!

But that breeds diseases like avian flu and swine flu that will eventually kill loads of humans when they become human transmissible. It’s all just a bit delayed this time.