u/Proud3GenAthst

I’m Czech, so this election is barely of any relevance to me, but I’m currently interested in geopolitics and I wonder what will change if Bennett or Eisenkot becomes the next Prime Minister of Israel.

I mostly care about Ukraine and Iran. While I realize that most Israelis don’t love Ukraine very much, there are people who say that Netanyahu is chummy with Putin, but with so much antisemitic bias on social media, I can’t tell what’s true and what isn’t. I’m curious if either candidate wants warmer relations with Ukraine and maybe even talk about cooperation. As a sidenote, few months ago, when Zelenskyy went on his small tour over the Middle East to strike drone deals, there was a report that Netanyahu is interested in Ukrainian drone expertise as well, which seemingly turned out to be a misinformation, which disappointed me.

I also care about destroying the Islamic republic. Would either candidate run the war better?

What other things are expected to change?

I’m probably paranoid, but for the past couple of months, I feel like Ukraine hits an oil refinery every other day and now it’s been 3-4 days since they hit the last one.

I’m also worried about how I didn’t hear about the fuel crisis and gas lines for 2-3 days, when I’ve been hearing about it about 20 times a day.

Is Russia somehow fixing that or should I touch some grass?

It’s my understanding that this sub is more pessimistic than other pro-Ukraine subs and that you view Ukrainian victory as more of a longshot than others.

For what it’s worth, my wishful thinking is that:

Ukraine will keep hitting Russia at its most sensitive spots until Russian economy goes to so much shit that Russian people will just rebel like they did in 1917 (this part doesn’t seem to be that far fetched at this point)

Russian troops will have to return to Russia, either to do something about the unrest or simply to mutiny because of no money

Russia then descends into full on civil war, rich Ukraine would take advantage of and annex border Russian oblasts (Kursk, Bryansk, Krasnodar, Belgorod and Rostov)

Putin gets killed by someone from his inner circle and his replacement will formally surrender to Ukraine and will be forced to pay reparations of at least double of the damages caused

The civil war in Russia continues until it balkanizes

Now, I know that this is a pie in the sky or perhaps more honestly, deluded, and almost certainly won’t happen. Especially knowing about the Ukrainian manpower crisis that is unlikely to be resolved with the stubborn Soviet era commanders refusing to reform.

But if the situation in Russia becomes truly critical and descends into absolute chaos, what is realistic worst case scenario for people outside Russia and Ukraine?

At the beginning of the war, there was concern trolling about Russian nuclear stockpile and arguments that Ukraine must surrender because the alternative is nuclear Armageddon.

Since Putin has been kicking the can down the road for so long and so far, at this point it seems pretty clear that he won’t nuke anyone to not piss of China who cares about world stability. But what if the situation in Russia goes so chaotic that it might affect nuclear safety? I am personally bit worried about the Islamic republic of Iran or Response breaking into Russia to steal some nukes. But in case of nuclear war, another option is that different factions in Russia would use them to nuke each other. Or a third party for that matter.

With or without Russian nukes getting into play, what is the realistic worst case scenario for Russia or potential negative consequences for the people outside Russia and Ukraine if Ukraine wins?

I have geopolitical fever right now and I’m trying to make up my mind which one book I should buy right now. I should only buy one book, because if I buy several, they’d just spend collecting dust, because I need to only give myself one task.

I’m trying to choose one book out of several with several different themes and only one is about Iran. It’s The Book of Fate by Parinoush Saniee. But it’s not a book about geopolitics or even non fiction, but a novel. Apparently it’s about a woman living through 5 decades, starting with the 1979 revolution.

I’m considering buying that or something else entirely. If you happen to know this book, would you recommend it as an amateur’s guide to Iranian society? If not, what would you recommend for me to buy someone later?

I was disappointed that this winter’s Duel tour had too expensive meet & greet and I couldn’t afford it. I figured out that when Jinjer opens for Spiritbox, it should be cheaper.

But only about 2 months away, I can’t see any VIP packages for Jinjer being available.

I’m currently struggling with money and with how expensive a meet & greet for Annette Olzon is, so I’m hoping that there’s no Jinjer meet & greet and I won’t be forced to make the decision to buy it.

Is there Jinjer meet & greet this fall?

I was excited when Anette announced this tour and even the possibility of furthering my autograph collection.

But I was skeptical over the obscure Brazilian promoter and apparently, many people afterwards shared my view that the tour appears to be kinda sketchy.

There’s a concert I’d attend next month and don’t have my ticket yet. I want to meet Anette too.

So since the tour is so close, what is your experience so far? Did you get your tickets and VIP upgrades?

I’m excited at the prospects of a country that for a long time (for bad reasons) worked on becoming the middle eastern hegemon, becoming a democracy. But I also know that reality is reality and reality tends to be quite disappointing and that free Iran won’t become a firebrand democracy everyone will want to move to.

I care about gay trans, trans rights, reproductive freedom, tolerance of ethnic and national minorities and immigrants, generous social safety net and public education, stuff like that…

Right off the bat, I guess that Iran won’t be a safe haven for western LGBTQ people for probably a few decades, because progress is slow and gradual. I’d be surprised if it won’t be a safe haven for LGBTQ people from the Middle East, but I guess that it will take a while before gay people will be able to have civil unions.

But honestly, what I’m interested in the most, is what will free and democratic Iran be like on the world stage? I do know that countries don’t choose foreign partners based on morality, but shared interests, which is why some ostensibly cool countries stick with some horrible countries.

So, what will free and democratic Iran be like? What should I expect be disappointed about?

I do not mean the Islamic Republic of Iran. I mean Iran, the nation.

I do know that the Islamic Republic is Israel’s mortal enemy, because they chant “death to Israel”. But I’d like to know if it’s true that Israelis and Iranians are truly friends waiting for Iran to be free and for the 2 nations to become close allies again.

Until fairly recently, I had no strong feelings towards Iran one way or another. I thought it’s just another underdeveloped Islamic theocracy and thought that America shouldn’t tease it with a bare foot.

But then, the January protests happened and I instantly started cheering for freeing Iran, because Islamic republic is a close and crucial ally of Russia and also a huge source of natural resources that could be useful to Europe once Ukraine finishes Russia off. And since I look up to Zelenskyy and he supports Iranians, I took it as a worthy cause. I heard that most Iranians are pro-liberal democracy, but it would be hard to prove.

So in any case, could you explain the relationship between Iranians and Israelis from the standpoint of average Israelis (yourself and what you perceive to be the modus Israeli view)?

Antisemitic leftists want me to believe that the reason why Israel wants to fight Iran is not to get rid of its mortal enemy, but because Iran is according to them the only country in the region that wants to hold Israel accountable and block it from its imperialist ambitions to create Greater Israel. So Israel wants to destroy the country to turn it into a failed state governed like Libya or Afghanistan.

Well, if Iranians are really as patriotic and civically advanced as some people say they are, I think that largely speaks volumes of the left’s racism of low expectations. And also their ignorance of history. While I know next to nothing about the history, I do know that Jews and Iranians are longtime friends whose friendship goes back millennia and the idea that Israel wants to destroy one of the very few historic friends it ever had, sounds asinine.

So would you say that just the absurd notion that Israel wants to destroy Iran to create Greater Israel, is utterly idiotic also because most Israelis actually like Iranians and want to liberate them? Also, with the sloppy job Trump is doing, do you think that free Iran is still possible?

I’m a political junkie who during Biden’s presidency was lurking on various social media and talking about trans rights. Trans people were honestly my biggest concern coming into the 2024 election and in regards to the Project 2025, even though I’m not trans, have no trans family members or friends or an American.

All that time, I was under the impression that around 70% of humans are perfectly normal and not at all frothing at the mouth idiotic bigots who are stupid enough to fall for Republican transphobic propaganda that rapists can be deterred by anti trans laws.

Besides the fact that Trump’s reelection didn’t turn out to be as horrible for trans people as I imagined (because what I imagined was that by this time, all trans people would be in camps. Apparently, he’s too busy for that), I also largely reoriented onto different political issues and kinda forgot about trans people. Because the new discourse was mostly about immigrants and I honestly kinda gave up on America.

But to get to the point, I’m genuinely baffled at how normalized transphobia has become. At this point, I feel like not being transphobic is unusual.

I’m Czech. Even though we’re not really progressive paradise, we’re largely tolerant of gays and we’re perhaps the least religious country in the world that isn’t communist dictatorship. And yet, I’m genuinely relieved when I talk to someone, the topic of trans people happens to arise and the person is normal about it.

Shortly after the 2024 election, long anticipated second season of Squid Game was finally released. The season of course has a trans character, Hyun-Ju who’s beloved on the Squid Game sub and I suppose that among online trans community as well.

My sister, who’s 36 now and I always was normal person with IQ higher than her age, likes the show and I was shocked when I heard her getting passed over me saying that the Hyun-Ju is portrayed by a cis male actor and referring to her as “that transgender”. To make it clear, Czech is very gendered language, and pronoun “that”, when referring to a person is gendered too. She referred to him as a male.

That was before shortly after Charlie Kirk, famous transphobe, homophobe, white suprematist, misogynist, antisemite, xenophobe… was killed. Besides being surprised she knew who he was (or that I’m not the only Czech who did, for that matter), I was shocked to find out she viewed him as truth-talker.

This one is much less of a surprise, as I knew that my brother who’s 34 now, has been swallowing right-wing propaganda from Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson and now even Kirk and Michael Knowles, which makes me disgusted, since at least 2018. And it’s needless to say that he falls for anti trans propaganda too. Although when I asked him in 2018, he said that he wouldn’t mind dating a trans woman. Which is confusing.

So… why is transphobia so mainstream? Are most people just so fucking stupid? Do most people have the need to hate some group of people like it’s their nature? Do trans people emit some yet-to-be-discovered substance that makes most people hate them for absolutely no reason and most people aren’t immune to? I’m genuinely baffled why is transphobic propaganda that falls apart the moment one uses their brain for 3 seconds, so successful and so mainstream?

I didn’t really care about trans people until Trump’s first election. Probably because they didn’t make popular discourse. But I feel like most people genuinely didn’t care or most likely didn’t know. I actually knew very little about trans people until then, but I’m pretty sure that at the time, I could easily recognize obvious bigotry.

So why do you think that even the most average people are getting so deranged over your mere existence?

There’s obviously Jimmy Carter whom Iranian diaspora hates for letting Khomeini take over Iran. Then there was Ronald Reagan who secretly supported Iran by illegally selling it missiles (Iran-Contra). Then there was George HW Bush who used the US military prowess to cure the Vietnam War syndrome by liberating Kuwait from Saddam and makes sense that he didn’t want to use it for anything else to protect the good reputation of the US government he just recaptured in Iraq.

Then there were Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Barack Obama. Obama was not in the feasible position to destroy the Islamic republic, because Dubya destroyed America’s reputation once again with Iraq and Afghanistan. Possibly the only feasible person to do it was Bill Clinton who was significantly more conservative than modern democrats and was wildly popular and could take advantage of the Persian Gulf War revitalizing Americans’ faith in the government.

It’s a shame that America doesn’t have the POTUS who’s willing to push it to the end right now. I’m really horny to see Free Iran and hope that if it’s not freed within the next 3 years, then I hope that the next president who will almost certainly be a Democrat will have his or her hand forced to do so.

I realize that Iran is significantly more oppressive and theocratic than Pakistan, but it is my understanding that Pakistan is still extremely flawed Islamist state.

Pakistan has history of coddling and sponsoring terrorists and I believe that it’s one of if not the biggest producer of anti-Israel bots that drive the anti Israel traffic, pushing antisemitism further and further into the mainstream. And it is my understanding that Pakistanis care about the Islamic republic of Iran survival.

And what exactly is the source of the fear about Iran getting nukes? I do know that it’s a country ran by religious lunatics that chants “Death to America!” and ”Death to Israel”, but IAEA never found any evidence it was violating JCPOA and even American intelligence under the leadership of Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s hack, said that it found no evidence it’s building a nuke.

Just to clarify, I ask this as someone who wants to see free Iran and who doesn’t have much trust in Islamist countries having nukes.

I’ve heard from about million different sources that the war isn’t over in spite of the damage it’s done to the aggressor, because Putin knows that if he ends it, he’s done. He’ll anger someone and then dies. That’s my interpretation that is.

So he is probably willing to go anywhere. I feel like he’ll turn Russia into the next Venezuela before he willingly ends it. But what do you think is in the end?

It’s my dream to see Russia beaten down so horribly it won’t be able to get on its feet for several generations. But I’m afraid that if it goes so far that it ends up with civil war, where Russia turns on itself, there will be 6000 nuclear weapons that will be up for grabs, either by Russian anti European fanatics or by Islamist terrorists like the government of Iran or Taliban who would happily take advantage of the situation.

I’m 27 years old. I never had a full time job in my life, took me really long time to finally find a university to finish (I just submitted my bachelors paper that I’m half convinced will fail and for what it’s worth, found out it may not have been the right field after all). I have no useful skills, experience, discernible talents… I don’t even have drivers license. I still live with my parents, work 2 no skills part time jobs and I’m obese.

All in all, I’m a total screwup.

But ever since COVID, I’ve been decently introspective and self reflecting and got to know something about myself. Mostly that I have rather poor relationship with myself and that I have the tendency to find something cool and then quickly burn out.

I’d like to give some context. As a kid and teenager, I had no extracurricular activities, hobbies or interests to speak of. I only listened to music and watched TV shows. Then at the age of 18, I discovered Lindsey Stirling to whom I developed, shall I say, an unhealthy parasocial fixation. I got charmed by her success story and her saying how anyone can achieve their dreams when they have the courage to work for it.

My fixation turned obsessive and in something between a year and a half and 2 years of listening to her, I stopped to preserve my sanity. I listen to her again, but now my fixation on her is pretty normal now. Just an artist I like. But that fixation also gave me anxiety and depression because her story revived my desire to become successful at something. I decided to become famous musician, even though by the age of 18, I never expressed any interest in music, other than listening to it (and briefly learning to play guitar when I was about 10).

After few years, I never picked up an instrument and I was getting more and more depressed. But since then, I got more realistic and grounded and those “dreams” of becoming famous musician dissipated.

But here I am now. I’m 27, still with no skills and no major self improvement to speak of. And I just realized something. Now that I finally submitted my twice postponed bachelor’s thesis, I got the feeling of emptiness I got every time when a school year ended ever since elementary school. School was over, then there were 2 months of freedom and I quickly got blue for school. I just realized that it was me finding myself with lot of free time on my hands and that this feeling can be used to start doing something productive I might like.

I’m a spoiled manchild. My parents never forced me to even do chores, no extracurricular activities, nothing. The only things I liked to do in my free zone was wasting it. Playing video games and watching music, because they took no effort. And before I started with various part time jobs in my early 20s, I pretty much never even entertained the idea that a concept of effort must be present in my life. And now that I have a time on my hands, I think it’s a decent time to change sobering about myself. I won’t have to find a full time job for the next couple months, because I have to prepare for my final exams. I also consider getting master’s degree via distance study.

There are lots of things I thought would be cool to get famous in: singing, playing guitar, stand-up comedy, writing novels… Even though I never seriously pursued either of them. So I’m currently thinking about trying them just so I could know for sure that it’s something I like or not.

I’m also considering attending therapies, because I feel I have lots of internal issues I think I need to sort out.

But to finally get to the point, where should I start? If you were in my position, what would you do to break free from this imaginary conformity cocoon of mine?

I’ve turned pro-Israel a year ago, even though I’m super progressive and politically have much more in common with pro-Hamas leftists than I have with the far-right Zionists like the Republican Party. So while it finally clicked in me that pro-Hamas or even Hamas-owned media are vastly less credible than the media of a country with freedom of speech that is Israel, I’m quite defenseless against the endless streams of disinformation about Israel.

Like that Israel funds Islamophobia worldwide. Or that Israel only wants to destroy Iran because Iran wants to keep Israel from creating Greater Israel, or that Mossad killed Charlie Kirk because he was about to turn against Israel…

You know. Basically every nonsense that would be blamed on Jews themselves if Israel didn’t exist.

There’s about 10 new outrageous claims about Israel every day and I need some kit to effectively counter every one of them. But before that, I think I should get just educated on Israeli history, politics and society, which would be necessary to get the context.

Let’s be honest, I probably need some books, because no website can be comprehensive and exhaustive enough to give me the info I need. So what do you recommend?

I know that people in the context of this recent feud with Poland often mention Pilsudski and Armia Krajowa. The trouble is I don’t know what exactly they did to Ukrainians.

But regardless of that, I wonder who are some other other countries’ national heroes that are comparable to Bandera and UPA in relation to Ukraine. I actually asked Chat GPT and I don’t think it gave me sufficient answer.

I suppose that for the US, Founding Fathers and many 19th century politicians count, because they built their country but at the expense of killing Indians and Mexicans.

Lithuania I believe has Kazys Škirpa, who is a figure similar to Bandera. A fighter against Soviet occupation who temporarily allied with Nazis in the hopes of gaining independence.

I’m Czech and to some, Jan Žižka is considered a terrorist and to some a hero. In context of 20th century, I guess Emil Hácha counts as Nazi collaborator, but I’m not sure if we consider him a hero. I think he’s more of a neutral figure in our history.

So what genuinely problematic national heroes of other countries are you familiar with that Ukraine detractors don’t seem to be troubled with?

I’m 27 years old. I never had a full time job in my life, took me really long time to finally find a university to finish (I just submitted my bachelors paper that I’m half convinced will fail and for what it’s worth, found out it may not have been the right field after all). I have no useful skills, experience, discernible talents… I don’t even have drivers license. I still live with my parents, work 2 no skills part time jobs and I’m obese.

All in all, I’m a total screwup.

But ever since COVID, I’ve been decently introspective and self reflecting and got to know something about myself. Mostly that I have rather poor relationship with myself and that I have the tendency to find something cool and then quickly burn out.

I’d like to give some context. As a kid and teenager, I had no extracurricular activities, hobbies or interests to speak of. I only listened to music and watched TV shows. Then at the age of 18, I discovered Lindsey Stirling to whom I developed, shall I say, an unhealthy parasocial fixation. I got charmed by her success story and her saying how anyone can achieve their dreams when they have the courage to work for it.

My fixation turned obsessive and in something between a year and a half and 2 years of listening to her, I stopped to preserve my sanity. I listen to her again, but now my fixation on her is pretty normal now. Just an artist I like. But that fixation also gave me anxiety and depression because her story revived my desire to become successful at something. I decided to become famous musician, even though by the age of 18, I never expressed any interest in music, other than listening to it (and briefly learning to play guitar when I was about 10).

After few years, I never picked up an instrument and I was getting more and more depressed. But since then, I got more realistic and grounded and those “dreams” of becoming famous musician dissipated.

But here I am now. I’m 27, still with no skills and no major self improvement to speak of. And I just realized something. Now that I finally submitted my twice postponed bachelor’s thesis, I got the feeling of emptiness I got every time when a school year ended ever since elementary school. School was over, then there were 2 months of freedom and I quickly got blue for school. I just realized that it was me finding myself with lot of free time on my hands and that this feeling can be used to start doing something productive I might like.

I’m a spoiled manchild. My parents never forced me to even do chores, no extracurricular activities, nothing. The only things I liked to do in my free zone was wasting it. Playing video games and watching music, because they took no effort. And before I started with various part time jobs in my early 20s, I pretty much never even entertained the idea that a concept of effort must be present in my life. And now that I have a time on my hands, I think it’s a decent time to change sobering about myself. I won’t have to find a full time job for the next couple months, because I have to prepare for my final exams. I also consider getting master’s degree via distance study.

There are lots of things I thought would be cool to get famous in: singing, playing guitar, stand-up comedy, writing novels… Even though I never seriously pursued either of them. So I’m currently thinking about trying them just so I could know for sure that it’s something I like or not.

I’m also considering attending therapies, because I feel I have lots of internal issues I think I need to sort out.

But to finally get to the point, where should I start? If you were in my position, what would you do to break free from this imaginary conformity cocoon of mine?

This one is perhaps silly, but as of late, I can’t shake off the funny remark when he talks about driving in Carlin on Campus:

“My car has one of those door handles — a lot of people have I think now — the kind of door handle that’s recessed little bit into the door and your fingers actually go little in before you grab it. Don’t you like that? I like that. That’s why they’re not gonna make it anymore. They found out we like that.”

As of late, I’m using it for pretty much anything, because it feels so true. Like everything that’s good in the world is quickly discontinued. Like how streaming services seemingly cancel every good show after 1 season, Hollywood quickly ruins franchises by ending things people actually like, manufacturers of smartphones and other gadgets regularly do some stupid choices with their products that for some reason people always hate, good flavours of soft drinks are discontinued, business establishments you like seem to close often, or in my case, when I go to a covet (which I do often), there are always some great songs the artist will leave out (which tbf I think is inevitable) or when I go to a music festival, it’s always artists that I’m going to see who cancel it (which is admittedly just personal bias).

What are some other minor jokes that seem to ring true everyday to you?

I’m a Czech political junkie who only recently took interest in geopolitics with Ukraine being in the center of it all. I also became much more anti-Islam recently. I realized that if it’s to be expected from a progressive like me to hate Christianity as a paternalistic, anti intellectual death cult, why shouldn’t I have the same view of Islam.

That being said, I recently became very active in the subreddit r/NewIran, which supports foreign assisted regime change in Iran. From there, I also found out about polls from GAMAAN, which shows that overwhelming majority of Iranians despise their government and would replace it with democracy.

The trouble is that r/NewIran is obviously very biased, because it’s very optimistic about Trump’s war in Iran, while the rest of Internet thinks it’s lost cause that’s making Iran stronger. And people say that the GAMAAN poll is highly skewed as well. I didn’t read the whole report, but I know that they used weighing to create reasonably accurate picture of the public opinion of Iran. But somehow, I find it hard to believe that a Dutch think tank managed to accurately gather data from Iranians of all social strata, using social media and VPNs.

So I was thinking that maybe I’ll get more accurate or representative views from here. I suppose that there are quite a few Iranians here or at least people who know some. If you are from Iranian diaspora and lived in Iran or has family members in Iran or been there at some point in your life, how would you describe most Iranians? Do you think that Iran could actually become stable democracy?

There are 2 things that give me a hint that Iranians might be more liberal than other middle eastern groups:

1. According to ADL, while people from most middle eastern countries hold antisemitic views at least 80% of the time, usually over 90, in Iran, it’s only 49%.

And 2. I feel like Muslim diasporas are almost exclusively at least inclined to actively support left-leaning foreign policy. Think of pretty much any publicly known pundit who’s Muslim. There is Mehdi Hasan, Cenk Uygur, Hasan Piker and I’m due there are more. But also think of all the celebrities that are of Muslim origin. They almost exclusively oppose American meddling in the Middle East. But somehow, there are many publicly well known Iranians who support right wing foreign policy, because right-wing foreign policy wants to see secular Iran.

Israel has been criticized for its weak response to Russian full scale invasion of Ukraine, even though most Israelis support Ukraine over Russia.

Common argument why Israel isn’t bigger ally of Ukraine is that Israel has to thread carefully with Russia because of the countries’ conflict of interests in Syria, where Russia was supporting Assad, who was Israel’s enemy. But that argument can’t be made now because Assad was toppled and Russia lost any leverage over Syria.

Israel still didn’t sanction Russia nor did it provide any particular support for Ukraine if any. And that’s despite Ukraine being very pro-Israel. According to some polls perhaps one of the most pro-Israel countries in the world.

And most recently, there was the scandal where Israel was caught accepting stolen Ukrainian grain from Russian ship, to which Ukraine reacted with wanting to sanction which even users of r/Israel were in favor of.

Why isn’t Netanyahu and by extension Israeli government more anti-Russia? Especially given that Russia has warm relations with both Hamas and Hezbollah and it’s one of the closest and most important allies of the Islamic Republic of Iran, for which Zelenskyy expressed support to the, because they provide Russia with Shared drones. Ukraine is one of very few countries that support toppling the regime, so Israel and Ukraine have a rare and very important interest in common.