What difference does it make. Saying “gay people exist and we shouldn’t discriminate against them” doesn’t make more gay people. They were there already. It’s just deciding not to be a total piece of shit and making others lives worse over some immutable part of them beyond their control.

If Japan took its population decline issue seriously, they’d be doing more to make it affordable and possible for young people to start families, instead of spending all of their time an energy working just to be able to live in a box in a metropole. They may also consider allowing more immigrants into the country.

A food already quite common and popular in immigrant communities being profiled as a “new discovery” in the NYT food section? What a quaint and completely foreign concept in 2023.

Next you’re going to tell me that pizza shops opened up in non-Italian neighborhoods serving worse product for a 500% markup.

You're not answering the question. There were Polish communists who wanted to join the USSR, just as you yourself pointed out there were Polish fascists who wanted to participate in the Holocaust. Neither of those points have any bearing on whether Poland was somehow rightfully part of the Third Reich or the USSR. Also not sure where Ukrainian Red Army soldiers come into this. Of course there were valiant Ukrainians in the Red Army, it was a multiethnic army of an imperialist state. This is one of the many reasons why Russia acting like it is the true successor to the USSR and sole claimant to its various achievements is an absolute farce. But this is a red herring.

I genuinely am confused with you bringing Maine into this discussion. Are you claiming that the relationship between the Second Polish Republic and the USSR, two separate countries formed at roughly the same time, are the same as a US state and the US federal government? That only makes sense if you already subscribe to the USSR's blatantly imperialist ambitions in eastern Europe.

Finally, a country can "liberate" another from one evil overlord and then proceed to brutally subjugate it. Those aren't mutually exclusive. I wouldn't call it a true liberation, though, if you're just replacing one yoke for another (even if the new one is less overtly genocidal towards the "liberated" people in question). That just allows any regime to use whataboutism to excuse away their own issues.

As was I. Just wanted to make sure people weren't confused into thinking the communists were interested in the well being of any of the countries they "liberated." After all, they proceeded to oppress those very same countries for another half century.

EDIT: Actually, thinking about the age of various nations at that time, how old were the Third Reich and the USSR when they partitioned Poland? And is it somehow more legitimate in your view to partition a country if it's newer?

Communists originally sided with Hitler to conquer Europe and only joined the good side after Hitler screened Stalin's calls.

Truly spectacular. I know nothing about cricket but it seems to me Pakistani fans are on the cutting edge of meme production in that sport. Wasn’t the angry hands on hip meme guy a Pakistani cricket fan too?