Exclusive War with Iran starting this week? (3 Viewers)

[THE HCP]

Hey guys….. just got to the hotel out here. Sitting down to watch some basketball. Got a salad instead of a big cheesesteak….. thought I’d check out the forum. Did I miss anything?

 

[SlyPokerDog]

Hey guys….. just got to the hotel out here. Sitting down to watch some basketball. Got a salad instead of a big cheesesteak….. thought I’d check out the forum. Did I miss anything?

Both sides played hard.

 

[RR7]

Both sides played hard.

There you go both sidesing things again.

 

[BLAZINGGIANTS]

Hey guys….. just got to the hotel out here. Sitting down to watch some basketball. Got a salad instead of a big cheesesteak….. thought I’d check out the forum. Did I miss anything?

Yeah. About half of my lawn, FAMS!

 

[MickZagger]

 

[THE HCP]

Yeah. About half of my lawn, FAMS!

 

[BigGameDamian]

 

[julius]

The left already knows what we'd do

 

[2Fluffy4U]

The people know. The people know Russia is wrong. The people know Israel and the US is wrong as well.

They will respond how they respond, regardless of your take on geopolitics.

If they feel they have been wronged then they will resist. And they'll never stop.

"The people know" is not a fact. It is an emotional framing designed to sound like consensus when none exists. The actual data shows: a deeply divided world, a Global South that refuses to take sides, and Western publics split along political lines.

According to this logic, all we need to do is evoke emotions, base our decisions on perceived, expected, and actual feelings, and let that be our compass for leading humanity forward.
I disagree.
I fully agree that those in power try to evoke emotions. But I want to connect your chain of thinking to something more grounded: facts, information, data. Because emotions untethered from reality are not a moral compass, they're a weapon waiting to be aimed.
I sense deep emotional investment here — a bleak, heavy view of the world. I understand it. But I'd ask: what are those emotions actually based on? Where do they come from?
Consider four sources:

1. Your real-life close circles
2. Your real-life outer circles
3. Your digitized personal world (forums, social media friends, curated interests)
4. Your digitized non-personal world (legacy media, Twitter, Instagram, etc.)

Here's the critical question: are your feelings of Israel and US as 100% wrong is driven more by sources 3–4 than by 1–2? Because sources 3–4 are anything but neutral — they represent the interests of those in power, or those who oppose those in power, and everything in between. Feelings that originate there should be taken with significant self awareness.

My point is to try to distinguish between what I feel and what I know. That distinction matters. It's the only thing that separates moral clarity from mob sentiment.

 

[Phatguysrule]

"The people know" is not a fact. It is an emotional framing designed to sound like consensus when none exists. The actual data shows: a deeply divided world, a Global South that refuses to take sides, and Western publics split along political lines.

According to this logic, all we need to do is evoke emotions, base our decisions on perceived, expected, and actual feelings, and let that be our compass for leading humanity forward.
I disagree.
I fully agree that those in power try to evoke emotions. But I want to connect your chain of thinking to something more grounded: facts, information, data. Because emotions untethered from reality are not a moral compass, they're a weapon waiting to be aimed.
I sense deep emotional investment here — a bleak, heavy view of the world. I understand it. But I'd ask: what are those emotions actually based on? Where do they come from?
Consider four sources:

1. Your real-life close circles
2. Your real-life outer circles
3. Your digitized personal world (forums, social media friends, curated interests)
4. Your digitized non-personal world (legacy media, Twitter, Instagram, etc.)

Here's the critical question: are your feelings of Israel and US as 100% wrong is driven more by sources 3–4 than by 1–2? Because sources 3–4 are anything but neutral — they represent the interests of those in power, or those who oppose those in power, and everything in between. Feelings that originate there should be taken with significant self awareness.

My point is to try to distinguish between what I feel and what I know. That distinction matters. It's the only thing that separates moral clarity from mob sentiment.

Attacking Iran the way we did is 100% wrong and stupid.

This is my opinion.

You will find out that I'm right because more in Iran will hate the US and Israel than did before the attack.

That's how this works. Unless you are planning on exterminating the population.

 

[2Fluffy4U]

Attacking Iran the way we did is 100% wrong and stupid.

This is my opinion.

You will find out that I'm right because more in Iran will hate the US and Israel than did before the attack.

That's how this works. Unless you are planning on exterminating the population.

"Hate" as a permanent inevitable outcome, is that actually how history works?
After WW2, the most devastating conflict in human history, do Japanese people hate Americans? Do Germans hate Jews, or Jews hate Germans? The answer is overwhelmingly no. And we're talking about atomic bombs, the Holocaust, carpet bombing of entire cities. The scale dwarfs anything happening today.
What changed? Shared interests. Trade. Reconstruction. The moment it became more valuable to cooperate than to hate, hate quietly dissolved. Because hate isn't a fixed state — it's a weapon that requires constant maintenance to stay operational. Regimes and terror organizations depend on cultivating it precisely because a population focused on prosperity is very hard to radicalize.
Based on history, I'm actually quite confident: the moment Iranian aggression stops and conditions for normal life return, that hate will subside faster than most people expect. I may well be wrong. But this is another post I am more than willing to revisit around next year play-offs time and test the 'hate' meter temperature.

 

[Phatguysrule]

"Hate" as a permanent inevitable outcome, is that actually how history works?
After WW2, the most devastating conflict in human history, do Japanese people hate Americans? Do Germans hate Jews, or Jews hate Germans? The answer is overwhelmingly no. And we're talking about atomic bombs, the Holocaust, carpet bombing of entire cities. The scale dwarfs anything happening today.
What changed? Shared interests. Trade. Reconstruction. The moment it became more valuable to cooperate than to hate, hate quietly dissolved. Because hate isn't a fixed state — it's a weapon that requires constant maintenance to stay operational. Regimes and terror organizations depend on cultivating it precisely because a population focused on prosperity is very hard to radicalize.
Based on history, I'm actually quite confident: the moment Iranian aggression stops and conditions for normal life return, that hate will subside faster than most people expect. I may well be wrong. But this is another post I am more than willing to revisit around next year play-offs time and test the 'hate' meter temperature.

We discussed these different cases earlier. This is not the same.

Japan and Germany both took ample punishment. They had their governments remove and destroyed. And the Allies helped rebuild both countries.

If the Iran wins and the US and Israel has our governments removed and destroyed and Iran helps build us back up then we will probably understand why they took such terrible action and respect their fair treatment of us. Because we attacked them.

See the difference?

 

[2Fluffy4U]

We discussed these different cases earlier. This is not the same.

Japan and Germany both took ample punishment. They had their governments remove and destroyed. And the Allies helped rebuild both countries.

If the Iran wins and the US and Israel has our governments removed and destroyed and Iran helps build us back up then we will probably understand why they took such terrible action and respect their fair treatment of us. Because we attacked them.

See the difference?

Any chance you can consider US and Israel as not the aggressors here? Would you consider it as a feasible reality? or is the basis understanding for you and baseline viewpoint is that the US and Israel are the attackers and therefore are also evil. Does that also mean Iran is the victim of an aggressor (US and Israel)?

 

[crandc]

Any chance you can consider US and Israel as not the aggressors here? Would you consider it as a feasible reality? or is the basis understanding for you and baseline viewpoint is that the US and Israel are the attackers and therefore are also evil. Does that also mean Iran is the victim of an aggressor (US and Israel)?

When a country invaded another country it is the aggressor . In no universe did Iran invade or attack the US.

And BTW to the end of her days my mother would not buy anything made in Germany and when my parents toured Europe they didn't go there.

 

[2Fluffy4U]

When a country invaded another country it is the aggressor . In no universe did Iran invade or attack the US.

And BTW to the end of her days my mother would not buy anything made in Germany and when my parents toured Europe they didn't go there.

The definition of 'aggressor' gets complicated fast when you factor in proxy warfare, nuclear development in violation of international agreements, and decades of state-sponsored attacks through intermediaries. Iran may not have sent troops into US territory, but it has financed, armed, and directed groups that have killed American and Israeli citizens for years.

Think about it this way: imagine your neighbor has been shouting threats at your family every morning, slashing your tires, and paying the local troublemaker to throw rocks at your windows, all while technically never stepping foot on your property. One day you've had enough and confront him on his lawn. You will call him the aggressor. He will call you the aggressor. And here's the thing, you're both right, from where you're each standing.

Which is exactly why the 'aggressor' label is a dead end IMO. It doesn't resolve anything, it just gives each side a clean story to tell itself. Every conflict in history has two parties convinced the other one started it. The more useful question is never who fired first, it's what interests are at stake, and whether those interests can be reconciled. That's where actual solutions come from. The aggressor discourse is a tool that keeps people emotionally invested in being right, rather than thinking clearly about what is real and tangible in the world.