Have you ever seen people say Vladimir Putin is a good leader?

[DespondentFishdeathMasochismo]

I hear he assassinates his political opposition, he bans people from making memes about him, plus the "no gay propaganda" law. I watched a documentary about being gay in Russia, it's a fucking war zone. It's a completely homophobic country, people get outed by groups of homophobic gangs, they get beaten up, anyone who tries to speak out against it gets arrested. 

So how much more do I need to know to believe Putin is an absolute Tyrant? My younger brother is very informed, he reads a ton of news, he could argue about foreign politics and tell you about his favorite economist. He fucking says Putin is a good leader, I see people on facebook saying Putin has done great things for Russia. What the fuck? I guess that's not enough dirt on a guy to make him an awful person.

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I've heard him called a thug and a gangster from a few people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ_aSl3ktjg

Americans love dictators.  That's why Trump will become the next President.

Trump says he'd get along well with Putin. No surprise.

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Uggggggggggh. How can you call someone a good leader who makes people's lives a living hell?

How can I distinctify between a freedom fighter and a terrorist....?

How can I distinctify between an effective teaching technique and brainwashing...?

How can I distinctify between heaven and hell themselves...?

With feeling. Which is good and which is bad to me. Is this good to me. Is this bad to me. How does this make me feel. Good. Or. Bad.

.... And a little bit of self-understanding as to whether something is helping you (feeling) or hurting you (feeling, or helping those you love (feeling) or hurting those you love (feeling), or just generally being undefinable and leaving us uncertain until we either take a leap of faith to reach a conclusion, or wait for more evidence as to whether something is bad or good before we take a leap of faith to reach a conclusion, which may or may not be negotiable.

We are machines. 0s and 1s. Yesses and nos. With the ability to feel, either for ourselves, or for others, or for both: we can accomplish compartmentalization along lines of 'bad' and 'good', and create for ourselves (or learn it from others teaching us bad from good):

Morality.

Okay, yes I understand the argument. But the way I see it, if x number of innocent people get hurt, and y person or people could have prevented it, then there's a variable that you can add to it, which is empathy. (I suck at math but bear with me.) So yeah, your statements are true, they're very nice statements actually, which put things in perspective. What is right and wrong is what feels right and wrong. Except my point is that when you add care for other people's pain, then whether or not you care is independent of whether or not caring for them is right. Right being determined by if innocent people are being caused harm.

Yes, there's a lot of different ways you can look at any moral argument. There's some really complex ones that I still remember from high school. One such argument was, if a friend walks into a bathroom and sees his other friend raping a little girl, is he obligated to report that person? Is he complicit with the crime? Yeah, there's very complex moral issues, but I think that you can measure quite a few of them. One such issue which I always seem to be repeating like a broken record, is is it right to persecute gay people? I'd like to think that any arguments against that that doesn't hold up to scrutiny could be refuted. Why would we even have the word refute if there wasn't a statement that could be defined as true or false? So anyways, my point is Putin persecutes gay people, he makes the lives of innocent people horrible. I fail to see how he's a great leader.

[KUSA]

[Gormo]

Im late in this discussion, but has anyone yet brought up his feelings about Josef Stalin, the most prolific mass murderer of all time?

Im not sure he's gone so far to say as he admires him, but he does attempt to gloss over his immense crimes. That is seriously fucked up, tantamount to claiming the ends justified the means when it came to murdering something like 50 million people.

Perhaps some are not adequately acquainted with this man, or Stalin, but I would recommend it before coming to any conclusions.

He is a smart politician, and has used the world's animosity towards the US quite well in the stances he takes, unfortunately.