it’s non-Marxists that paint Marxism as dogmatic and inflexible.

Yeah, it's such a tired trope that it's almost become a meme.

The situation is more complicated than your comparison and your analysis shows a fundamental lack of understanding about what critical support is or why it's given. It only appears like cherry-picking when you don't understand the underlying reasoning that informs these decisions and how they are consistent with Marxist-Leninist theory.

A better metaphor for comparison is if you think of Putin as chemotherapy. Chemotherapy is poisonous, it's bad for your body, and enough of it will kill you. It sucks and it hurts to go through, however, it also kills cancer cells (weakens US/Western hegemony/imperialism). No one likes chemotherapy and everyone recognizes that is bad for your body, but we suggest the use (critically support the use) of chemotherapy in the fight against cancer (Western Imperialism/capitalism) because it helps us progress toward our ultimate goal.

If the West had allowed Putin to join their hegemony as he had always wanted, then there would be no critical support for him from MLs because all the geopolitical waves he makes that are destructive towards the Western imperialist geopolitical waves would not exist. Anytime you see an ML saying "I love you daddy Putin" please understand that it's a joke. People misrepresent our positions all the time and we cope by embracing them in jest. He's a capitalist pig who we'd like to see gone or reformed like the others, but he's a strategically useful pig in that his actions are weakening Western Imperial power in the current moment. By the ML definition, imperialism = capitalism (it's just the stage we are in) and the biggest base of imperial power comes from the US. Once the bigger threat is defeated, if he's still around and up to capitalist bullshit, Putin will not have our support. While his actions help support our goals, it makes no sense for us to actively oppose him when we could better spend that energy elsewhere. It's similar to "the enemy of my enemy is my [strategic] friend". ML prefers an approach that is more focused on pragmatism than ideological purity.

Not all leftists agree on this type of critical support. Typically, those are the ones shouting for more purity and are typically who we call ultras. The same reasons they would not critically support Putin are the same reasons they don't support China and call it capitalist (a focus on ideological purity rather than a practical approach toward achieving our goal of communism).

If you want to better understand why certain leftists do what they do, there is plenty of material out there explaining leftist theory and contemporary geopolitical analysis. Likewise, you could always ask us why we take certain positions on Lemmygrad or Hexbear. There is likely someone happy to take the time to explain or a well written explanation that already exists that can be linked for you if you show genuine interest and a willingness to listen, though you should be warned to expect some prickly responses in those spaces due to people who asked before you and turned out to be trolls.

The extent of the energy I'm willing to spend on the topic now ends here. Hopefully it helped clarify what we mean by critical support.

Much ado about nothing

So are pig stations, corporate mansions, US military bases, and summer homes...but they are guarded. Usually.

We did an experiment in my microbiology teaching lab once where we made cell cultures from some food we had blended without washing first, comparing spinach to raw hamburger.

The spinach was worse. MUCH worse. It also had nastier types of cultures that popped up. I have always washed my veggies thoroughly since that day.

Totally agree with that last statement as someone working in that industry. Would be nice to not only see public labs gain stable funding, but to see publicly-owned infrastructure for bringing treatments from the lab scale to full production too. For medications at least, this would mean we could get rid of the private sector (or at least provide an alternative option) that didn't inflate the costs of treatments and constantly seek IP that kills treatments that are potentially more effective and/or incredibly cheap to produce and provide to those in need.

The private sector provides a necessary service currently, but only because they have ensured that they have a monopoly. Ultimately, they serve as leeches holding the advancement of medical science back.

Iraq and Afghanistan are just two of the countries in the region that US politicians have openly been plotting to invade for decades. Syria, Yemen, and Iran are also on this list. They've plotted this since the 70s and have openly admitted to it in interviews since then.

Iraq was part of the bigger picture, like Iran. It wasn't just opportunistic, it was part of the plan from the beginning.

Literally the only answer this one deserved.

They can't find the war assets the Pentagon bought either.

If they can't find the money they spent to kill people, why would they spend more money to heal people? They need to focus on fixing their Pentagon audit issues by not doing anything about the audit issues first!

It was kind of the opposite. Bush Sr did the setup and the blowback landed on his son's administration...which then made it worse before they kicked the can further down the road.

The Democrats are pushing xenophobic ads this year too. In our state, every ad contains sinophobia and red scare tactics. Shit is ridiculous and my lib friends don't understand how I could possibly choose to "throw away my vote" by not voting for Biden.

I should just start solely gifting Lenin and slipping quotes into all of my messages to them.

That first image isn't a real clip from the movie, it's just a good fake. The origin of the "brave Mujahedeen fighters" line is from Ronald Reagan himself.

That said, you are right.