[HN Gopher] Americans' views on the war reveal a striking genera...
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Americans' views on the war reveal a striking generational divide
Author : ptr
Score : 125 points
Date : 2022-04-14 16:28 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| [deleted]
| ComradePhil wrote:
| Boomers were brainwashed with cold war propaganda all their lives
| and don't see Russians as people. Even millenials were exposed to
| the same propaganda as kids.
|
| Younger Americans are more balanced so far... and newer
| propaganda is not as effective to anyone other than the
| laziest... because anyone interested can look for the information
| from other points of views just as easily because of
| democratization of media and information.
| nerdjon wrote:
| My views on this invasion have NOTHING to do on my feelings on
| the Russian people.
|
| I feel for them, I really do. It sucks that they have to deal
| with the sanctions and the type of government they have.
|
| But I feel more for the people that are being killed and raped.
| The country that is being invaded for no logical reason.
|
| Russia started this, they had no reason to start this War.
| redmen wrote:
| "Younger Americans are more balanced"
|
| It doesn't have much to do with laziness. It has to do with
| your ability to filter and discern what is going on, your
| ability to hold multiple and opposing ideas in your head at
| once, etc etc.
|
| Laziness is one factor.
| grumple wrote:
| > Boomers were brainwashed with cold war propaganda all their
| lives and don't see Russians as people. Even millenials were
| exposed to the same propaganda as kids.
|
| What...? We absolutely do see Russians as people. We also see
| this as a unilateral war of aggression created by a corrupt
| autocrat which has resulted in the unjustifiable murder, rape,
| and destruction of Ukrainian people.
|
| > Younger Americans are more balanced so far... and newer
| propaganda is not as effective to anyone other than the
| laziest... because anyone interested can look for the
| information from other points of views just as easily because
| of democratization of media and information.
|
| I'd love to see what information justifies the rape of 25 women
| in a basement [1]. Or the widespread destruction of civilian
| areas, rampant rape and murder.
|
| 1. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61071243
| ComradePhil wrote:
| > I'd love to see what information justifies the rape of 25
| women in a basement [1]. Or the widespread destruction of
| civilian areas, rampant rape and murder.
|
| Any modern war is an information war more than anything...
| and I mean everything from the first world war.
|
| You linking to a BBC website is very interesting because they
| were the first successful mass propaganda machine distributed
| all around the world via radio.
|
| Even more intersting bit what the BBC doesn't report. The
| same things have happened in every war where the western
| forces and allies have been involved, and the real
| information only comes out, if ever, after it becomes
| irrelevant. If it comes out while it is relevant, we know
| exactly what happens to those who are responsible... look at
| Manning and Assange.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Wow I'm an old man.
|
| With the youth I'd say this generation is more affected by any
| other by the sheer noise of modern media. It's also one of the
| first where there was less emphasis on indoctrinating people
| towards the government's view on the cold war, the first to grow
| up with a government that lied to them about a significant non-
| cold war war (Iraq), and the first that actually has the means to
| cheaply find other views on things.
|
| So maybe it's not so strange that young people think this way.
|
| I mostly blame the Iraq war. Yes, the west has done a lot of bad
| things in the past. But in recent memory Iraq stands out as where
| we blew any pretense of moral superiority. (It does happen now
| and again, but the Cold War is a really good excuse for a LOT of
| bad things). People would have seen this and seen that whatever
| our governments say, you gotta take it with a grain of salt.
| snakeboy wrote:
| According to Gallup, the proportion of Americans who trust mass
| media a "great deal" or a "fair amount" dropped 10 percentage
| points during the Iraq war, and then never fully recovered.
|
| Of course, broken down by political party shows Democrats have
| restored their trust in mass media just fine, especially since
| Trump...
|
| [1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/355526/americans-trust-media-
| di...
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Yes there is a solid 30% of america that is Trump america
| (and probably was before Trump even came on the scene and
| made them bolder). They don't trust the government (but
| gladly accept donations from the government), don't trust
| mainstream media, largely support alt-right news like Fox and
| OAN, tend towards white supremacy, fear "the other" and base
| most decisions around that fear, and will always vote
| Republican.
| snakeboy wrote:
| > and will always vote Republican
|
| I'm not sure I would go that far. I can easily imagine a
| situation where the Republican party pulls out all the
| stops and ensures Trump doesn't win the nomination, only
| for Trump to run on the MAGA party ticket. I would expect
| him to easily get 10% of the vote.
|
| We didn't get any democrats who really dared test this on
| the left in 2020, as even Bernie (the strongest cult of
| personality on the left, for comparison) fell in line
| behind Biden.
|
| That is to say, strong personalities, more than
| institutions, seem to carry the most power. Perhaps this
| has always been true? How much of mass media's historical
| confidence was due solely to Walter Kronkite?
| _bohm wrote:
| Adding to this, young Americans have never seen anything gained
| from war. The war in Afghanistan lasted 2 decades and cost
| trillions of dollars, yet we have next to nothing to show for
| it.
| 10xrubberduck wrote:
| Add Libyan intervention (2011) as well - that put the country
| into 9 years of civil war (is it still peaceful there? IDK).
| Though this one is combined mess of NATO.
| 8note wrote:
| When is the last time America has seen benefit from going to
| war? The 50s with a stalemate in Korea?
| onos wrote:
| One problem with all these reviews is that we can't see the
| counter factual. That said I agree Iraq war was likely a
| very bad thing for our country and certainly is responsible
| for much of our internal strife right now.
| _bohm wrote:
| Arguably the first Gulf War. The US successfully protected
| it's economic interest and expanded its military
| establishment in the region.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| And liberated the Kuwaiti people from scud missiles,
| invasion, and occupation from a brutal Saddam regime?
| That's a pretty important benefit to miss, but maybe
| you're just limiting it to benefits for a US citizen. (of
| which selfless ones would consider it a benefit)
| _bohm wrote:
| That is indeed the perspective I was looking at if from.
| But you are right.
| pessimizer wrote:
| People who don't go to war always gained from war. Lots of
| jobs. The post-WWII afterglow is when we defined our
| middle-class mythologies. The good old days.
|
| The US had 419K deaths from WWII. That's like half as much
| as covid _thus far._ Americans like to go to war because
| they sacrifice nothing. It 's a game.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| It made stock prices go up so a bunch of retirees could live
| comfortably and also made several presidents look
| presidential while they heartfelt condolences over flag-
| draped caskets.
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| Another possible explanation is that younger people tend to rely
| more on far right or far left media, which tends to be much more
| pro-Russia than mainstream media (sometimes organically,
| sometimes through paid sponsorship like
| https://twitter.com/bamnecessary/status/1499162014895296516).
|
| Hasan Piker for example, the #1 politics streamer on Twitch, is
| quite far left and is much more pro-Russia than say CNN.
| Miner49er wrote:
| > Hasan Piker for example, the #1 politics streamer on Twitch,
| is quite far left and is much more pro-Russia than say CNN.
|
| I don't think Hasan is even remotely pro-Russia. What makes you
| say that?
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| Hasan talks on his show about how he thinks Russia was right
| to annex Crimea:
| https://clips.twitch.tv/ElegantTemperedApplePicoMause-
| VCY99f...
| nicholasnorris wrote:
| I don't think this particular clip shows a strong support
| for the Russian Federation in general. He seems to be
| saying that a majority of the people of Crimea want to be a
| part of Russia, having been more tied to Russia proper
| historically than any independent Ukraine, and they were
| able to make that switch without much violence.
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| It completely ignores the context (which you would see in
| more mainstream sources) for why most people see that
| annexation as unethical.
|
| In particular, the lack of a "status quo" option for
| Crimea (the referendum only had two options, go
| independent or join Russia) and the lack of international
| observers (OSCE observers currently in the Crimea were
| asked to leave by the Russian authorities in the area)
| made the whole thing iffy from the get go.
|
| And that's not even getting into the fraud allegations
| ...
| sudosysgen wrote:
| That's definitely true. However, it's not really arguable
| that a majority or close to a majority of Crimea was
| moreso favourable to joining Russia than staying in an
| anti-Russia version of Ukraine. Independent polls confirm
| this :
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2015/03/20/one-
| year-a...
|
| There was no status-quo option because at the time,
| according to the dominant legal opinion (as in, backed by
| force), Crimea had already seceded from Ukraine. To
| consider the status quo that Crimea was part of Ukraine
| would undermine the legal basis for a referendum without
| assent from Kyiv, which is why it was not included. It's
| for sure bullshit to the moral level, but it couldn't
| have been done differently while still being a referendum
| on joining Russia. They could have done a referendum on
| returning to Ukraine, I guess.
| nicholasnorris wrote:
| To be fair, it is a tiny clip of an off-hand response;
| hard to compare to focused articles and segments on the
| topic. I can see the criticism of piecing together an
| opinion from a bunch of off-hand comments vs fully
| expressed arguments. It might be better to compare a full
| discussion on the specific topic from the criticized
| party to the lauded one.
|
| One problem with many mainstream outlets is that they are
| often give free passes to organizations like OSCE. For
| example, the OAS, an organization that serves a similar
| watchdog position in the Americas, completely bungled
| their duties in recent Bolivian elections. So much so,
| that they helped legitimize a violent far-right coup in
| 2019.
| aigen001 wrote:
| He glosses over the fact that native Ukrainians in those
| regions were displaced in the 1930s during the Holodomor
| and replaced with Russian settlers. That might explain
| why Russian sentiment in those regions is high.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor#Aftermath_and_imm
| edi...
| nicholasnorris wrote:
| The problem with that argument is that Crimea had been
| considered a part of Russia as far back as about the
| founding of the United States, and prior to that had
| nothing to do with a Ukrainian National project. Crimea
| isn't even mentioned by name once in the Wikipedia
| article you linked. Why would they be targeted as
| Ukrainians at that time?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_transfer_of_Crimea
| chmod775 wrote:
| He does not say "Russia was right", he said the annexation
| was justifiable and clearly not justifiable as in "right"
| but as in "defensible".
|
| Saying he is "pro-Russia" is a big claim, because you're
| saying their position on Russia's action are overwhelmingly
| one of agreement. In that clip he appears to call Russia's
| actions defensible (which is not the same as agreement) on
| the Crimea issue, while being unclear but likely opposed on
| the Donbas issue.
|
| Also given that many people are capable of more nuance than
| blindly supporting or opposing a country on every issue,
| you might as well be calling them a simpleton.
| Miner49er wrote:
| But he also used his stream to raise $200k for Ukranian
| relief efforts.
| ffwszgf wrote:
| I mean his is the quintessential "both-sides" take that
| pushes (younger) people to be "unsure" about who they
| support, no?
|
| Russia is bad, but so is Ukraine and NATO, too. Russia is
| bad but Ukraine does have a Nazi problem. People like him
| are probably the greatest contributors to the large
| amount of Gen Z who are unsure as to who they support.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Yes, in real life the truth is often that all
| participants in a conflict have morally ambiguous
| motivations and do bad things when they think they can
| get away with it. It's OK to acknowledge that while also
| acknowledging that in a certain narrowly focused issue
| one side is less wrong and one side is more wrong.
|
| If you're arguing that young people should accept that
| Russia (which is already a complicated concept) is
| universally Bad and the western friendly powers (another
| nearly uselessly complicated concept) are universally
| Good then you're arguing for a false view of reality.
| Give the public a little credit, they can tolerate a
| little bit of moral ambiguity and still make a reasonable
| decision of right and wrong.
| pessimizer wrote:
| To middle-class retirees in the US, this is literally
| sedition and you are a Russian asset.
| brundolf wrote:
| > younger people tend to rely more on far right or far left
| media
|
| Anecdotally, this is the opposite of my experience
| barbacoa wrote:
| >>far right or far left media, which tends to be much more pro-
| Russia than mainstream media
|
| I wouldn't say pro Russian but anti-war. This kind of framing
| reminds me of GW Bush's "you're either with us or with the
| terrorists" accusation against people who opposed invading
| Iraq.
|
| Also "far right or far left media" would be more accurately
| characterized as non-corporate non-MSM journalism. For reasons
| that aren't entirely clear, the MSM literally promotes every US
| war and foreign intervention no matter the cost or predictable
| disastrous consequences. It's as if they have become engulfed
| in the military industrial complex.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| > For reasons that aren't entirely clear, the MSM literally
| promotes every US war and foreign intervention no matter the
| cost or predictable disastrous consequences.
|
| It's almost like the CIA and NSA might use their unregulated
| surveillance to get leverage over the media.
| barbacoa wrote:
| I wouldn't go so far as saying it's blackmail, but when you
| read in the paper "official familiar with the matter say",
| it really should read "CIA/NSA asked us to tell you". It's
| hard to bite the hand that feeds you.
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| I don't think the far right or far left media is more "anti-
| war" than the mainstream media.
|
| After all, the NYT is also publishing opeds about how the US
| shouldn't institute a no-fly zone:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/25/opinion/no-fly-zone-
| ukrai...
|
| Anti-war is the mainstream opinion in the US from pretty much
| top to bottom.
|
| When I talk about something being pro-Russia or not I am
| referring to stuff like Hasan saying that Russia's annexation
| of Crimea was ethical, Nick Fuente's literal cheering for
| Putin, etc.
| nicholasnorris wrote:
| Anti-war might not even be entirely the right word, but
| it's possible that a more "anti-imperialist" sentiment is
| growing. Sort of along the lines of the old "world police"
| critique. A lot of these people are probably both
| sympathetic to Ukraine, but also not in favor of some
| countries extending their military and financial influence
| far beyond their borders.
|
| I think Hillary Clinton said in an interview, something
| along the lines that Russia should be prepared for the West
| to turn Ukraine into another Afghanistan. Seems like a
| pretty harsh way to view the people that are supposed to be
| supported.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Hillary Clinton, like other neocons, thinks it would be
| great if Ukraine turned into another Afghanistan.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLANOdsNhPg
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| That isn't "anti-imperialism", that's just good old
| fashioned isolationism.
|
| True "anti-imperialism" seems like it would imply some
| duty to stop imperialism done by non US actors.
| nicholasnorris wrote:
| That's where you get into a muddy mess of where to draw
| the line between "imperialism," and something else. There
| are different takes on what constitutes imperialism, and
| whether one State trying to push back on what it
| perceives as creeping imperialism is legitimate.
|
| The argument a lot of people are making, not just Russia
| or Russians, is that overextension of NATO influence was
| a major cause for the conflict. This might be something
| like if the Soviet Union had refused to deescalate
| military support to Cuba during the missile crisis and
| the US went ahead with military action there.
|
| That's not to say that I personally would agree with US
| intervention in Cuba, or Russia in Ukraine, just trying
| to understand the logic that's being played by here.
| ptr wrote:
| The "nukes in Cuba" in this situation are democracy, free
| speech, LGBT rights and other Western principles. Yes,
| they are a threat to Putin and his system.
| Veen wrote:
| I'm not so sure that's true. The logic of both left and right
| people I've talked to is something like: Western elites are
| terrible, Ukraine colluded with those elites/is their puppet
| (wanted to join Nato/EU/etc), Russia is opposed to Western
| elites, and is therefore a positive force. I've talked to
| many people of both political persuasions and they try to
| minimize Russian wrongdoing and emphasize Western provocation
| (poking the bear).
|
| Of course, they have different reasons for disliking western
| elites, but their arguments end up remarkably similar.
| barbacoa wrote:
| Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor was spurred by America oil
| embargo on Japan, and 9/11 was spurred by American meddling
| in the middle east. None of those statements should be
| necessarily seen as minimizing or justifying those
| subsequent acts. There is nuance in the world, nothing
| happens in a vacuum.
| Veen wrote:
| As I said: "they try to minimize
| Russian/Japanese/Islamist wrongdoing and emphasize
| Western provocation"
| pessimizer wrote:
| Or rather that they don't have facts that you can be
| condemned as a traitor for mentioning.
| barbacoa wrote:
| >>Russia is opposed to Western elites, and is therefore a
| positive force
|
| Ukraine is corrupt and the USA doesn't care about
| civilians and is acting to turn Ukraine into Russia's
| next Afghanistan.
|
| It is a jump to go from there to saying Russia is good.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| > Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor was spurred by America
| oil embargo on Japan
|
| ...and the embargo on Japan was due to it's continuing
| invasion of China...
| barbacoa wrote:
| Correct.
|
| Without American oil imports, Japan was forced to seize
| Dutch oil production in Indonesia to keep their economy
| running. That would drag the USA into the war, therefore
| it was a logical conclusion to strike the USA first.
|
| It's not hard to see Russia's action as a logical action
| to protect their interests. That however is not the same
| as condoning Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Sure, which the US didn't oppose as a matter of principle
| but as a matter of empire.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| The US and the EU repeatedly told Japan to stop it's
| invasion. Japan did have some cassus belli initially but
| after several atrocities happened the response grew much
| louder - specifically after a pastor was killed by a
| stray bomb and the photograph made it's way back to
| western audiences with an accounting from his daughter.
| nicholasnorris wrote:
| I agree. The younger respondents tend to consume media that's
| not only more politically diverse, but often a little more
| nuanced than many of the mainstream outlets. Less black-and-
| white thinking is bound to lead to opinions that aren't so
| easily reflected in a "Yes, No, Unsure" poll.
| dc-programmer wrote:
| There are people out there who are weirdly pro-russia. Oliver
| Stone was gassing Putin up for years, defending his actions
| such as his anti-gay legislation. The Putin documentary he
| created was nothing short of a hagiography.
|
| The ostensible reasons would be he wants to stick it to
| America or that he likes the attention his contrarian
| opinions give him (which is much less in our transgressive
| age). Maybe some people naturally gravitate to
| authoritarians. One interesting fact though is that his son
| worked at RT.
|
| It's all deeply weird to me. I try to grapple with it
| intellectually but it's beyond my comprehension. If you are
| someone who truly believes America is irredeemable, why
| wouldn't you esteem more peace loving nations over countries
| with overt expansionist intentions?
| secondcoming wrote:
| Oliver Stone has blood on his hands with that documentary.
|
| People cite it as a source of ultimate truth, yet it's lost
| on them that Putin is far too clever to appear in something
| he doesn't fully control.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| I think one of the big reasons is that this generation came of
| age during the Iraq War.
|
| They saw how the whole media and US military and intelligence
| community could push a story that was designed to inflame people
| and push for war.
|
| And we saw the huge cost of that.
|
| Fool me once...
| formerly_proven wrote:
| This is sort of the Chomsky syndrome: Assuming that government
| A is always lying, and that therefore the opposite claim by
| government B has to be right.
| rcpt wrote:
| Fool me once... shame on... shame on you. You fool me you can't
| get fooled again!
| ericmay wrote:
| Yea but it would also be a mistake to just assume that this is
| the case yet again, especially given that the United States has
| adamantly refused to put troops in Ukraine and has sought
| diplomatic solutions from the start. The US government has
| really pushed against inflaming the US population toward war.
| If recognizing atrocities, however, pushes people toward war
| than there isn't much you can do about that besides continue to
| do what the US has done which is not get into the war.
|
| I went to Iraq. The war was probably misguided (although there
| is still a democratically elected government in Iraq... so...
| idk) - Ukraine is quite unlike Iraq and if this generation
| (which I think includes me?) is drawing comparisons than it's
| because of a lack of thought and education around world events.
| emerged wrote:
| I visit some fringe political forums once in a blue moon just to
| take a pulse. I was surprised to see a sizable pro-Putin
| sentiment which is basically a result of the whole "Russia Russia
| Russia" thing.
|
| Boy who cried wolf is a real thing.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I check out some of these forums too occasionally, out of
| morbid curiosity.
|
| Within the last decade or so, many of various unrelated
| political fringes have sort of loosely joined forces together
| and organized, but instead of being organized in service of a
| goal, it's just in service of vague contrariness for the sake
| of contrariness.
|
| These various groups, no matter how far apart ideologically
| they are, have sort of all coalesced on "If the 'Mainstream' is
| for it, we are against it, even if we can't articulate why!"
| naoqj wrote:
| >"If the 'Mainstream' is for it, we are against it, even if
| we can't articulate why!"
|
| This argument has worked out just fine. The mainstream is
| generally against me.
| long_time_gone wrote:
| > a result of the whole "Russia Russia Russia" thing.
|
| Can you explain who the "boy" was and how they "cried wolf"?
| Did you read the Senate Intelligence report? PBS: Senate panel
| finds Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election [1].
|
| "The nearly 1,000-page report, the fifth and final one from the
| Republican-led Senate intelligence committee on the Russia
| investigation, details how Russia launched an aggressive effort
| to interfere in the election on Trump's behalf. It says the
| Trump campaign chairman had regular contact with a Russian
| intelligence officer and says other Trump associates were eager
| to exploit the Kremlin's aid, particularly by maximizing the
| impact of the disclosure of Democratic emails hacked by Russian
| intelligence officers."
|
| [1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/senate-panel-finds-
| rus...
| sfblah wrote:
| That second quote you gave is just really slanted. The right
| framing here is Trump is not a smart man. Sure, his folks
| talked to Russian operatives. That's for two reasons:
|
| 1. They're stupid and easy to manipulate.
|
| 2. They urgently wanted negative stories to publish about
| Hillary.
|
| Yes, Russia was trying to influence our election. But, no,
| Trump isn't some clever Manchurian Candidate taking over our
| country on behalf of another country.
|
| The right framing here is that famous SNL sketch about Reagan
| from the 80s, where Reagan acts like a bumbler but then when
| the doors close suddenly becomes some kind of genius mob
| figure. That skit was funny, because the "mob boss" version
| of Reagan was obviously just not true. Same thing for Trump.
|
| Turning to American media. Sure, they can dig up stuff about
| Trump's behavior with Russia. Along the same lines, there are
| tons of stories across decades painting the Clintons as
| pretty terrible people.
|
| The difference here, and this is important, is that outlets
| like CNN do have a massive bias in favor of Democratic
| candidates. That's where the "Russia Russia Russia" narrative
| by Trump supporters is actually right. Mainstream media's
| treatment of events like the Russia story, Jan 6, BLM
| protests, etc. is absolutely biased. That's where the
| suspicion comes from.
|
| The solution is for mainstream journalists to reduce their
| bias. Easy places to start:
|
| * Tell the truth about the relative propensity of a white
| versus black suspect to be shot by police.
|
| * Investigate political candidates in an evenhanded way, and
| be as honest as possible about errors on stories like Hunter
| Biden's laptop.
| long_time_gone wrote:
| > But, no, Trump isn't some clever Manchurian Candidate
| taking over our country on behalf of another country.
|
| A claim neither I nor the article made. The Trump Campaign,
| however, had many ties to Russia (Manafort, Rick Gates) and
| clearly served Russian interests (changing the party
| platform on Ukraine, ghost written op-eds). Some of them
| even went to prison for it and you are still trying to
| claim it never happened. Did we ever figure out why his
| campaign manager gave campaign polling data to a Russian
| oligarch?
|
| > Sure, they can dig up stuff about Trump's behavior with
| Russia. Along the same lines, there are tons of stories
| across decades painting the Clintons as pretty terrible
| people.
|
| Whatabout-ism in plain sight.
|
| > The difference here, and this is important, is that
| outlets like CNN do have a massive bias in favor of
| Democratic candidates.
|
| It was a PBS article, so this is not relevant comment. Even
| so, the article was referencing a release from the
| Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee. Why would
| they repeat Democratic talking points?
| sfblah wrote:
| It wasn't whataboutism. I was pointing out that much of
| the media's objective is just to create controversy, not
| to clarify issues. They do it in both directions. Yes,
| the article didn't explicitly say he was a Manchurian
| Candidate, but that's the implication, and it's a bad
| read.
|
| Someone can commit a crime without being a Russian agent.
| Same goes for Hunter Biden and his stupid laptop and
| weird deal with that company in Ukraine. I don't think he
| was a spy. I just think he's an idiot and greedy. He and
| Trump are the same.
|
| The core issue here is thinking there's some real moral
| difference between left and right. There isn't. Think of
| the political spectrum in absolute value terms. People in
| the middle are the best people. People on both wings are
| the bad people.
|
| Edit: Also, you know full well no one is going to read
| all 1,000 pages of this report. PBS is well known to have
| a large liberal bias. I downloaded the report and went
| through a bit of it. One thing I noticed is there's a big
| partisan split in the report itself about what the report
| means. Democrats say it essentially means Trump is a
| Russian spy. Republicans say it shows there was no
| collusion. Note which story PBS published.
| long_time_gone wrote:
| > Yes, the article didn't explicitly say he was a
| Manchurian Candidate, but that's the implication, and
| it's a bad read.
|
| The article is inconsequential, the report it is
| describing (and the evidence within that report) is the
| thing you keep dancing around. The report lays out in
| great detail all of the activities and connections.
|
| > Someone can commit a crime without being a Russian
| agent.
|
| Another thing nobody claimed. You have failed to engage
| in any of the substance. It's just deflection after
| deflection.
|
| > The core issue here is thinking there's some real moral
| difference between left and right. There isn't. Think of
| the political spectrum in absolute value terms. People in
| the middle are the best people. People on both wings are
| the bad people.
|
| Sounds like you've figured it all out. No need to
| continue.
| emerged wrote:
| The boy was the media and left wing politicians for about 1-2
| years straight. The supposed wolf was something like a puppy
| was seen in one of Trumps cars once and it looked Russian,
| according to XYZ political enemies of Trump.
| long_time_gone wrote:
| The Senate Intelligence Report was released by a
| Republican-led committee and clearly outlined the many
| connections between the campaign and Russia. That committee
| and it's findings had nothing to do with "the media", "left
| wing politicians", or "XYZ political enemies of Trump".
|
| https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/doc
| u...
| sfblah wrote:
| I guess you've decided not to count the letters in the
| report from Republican senators specifically saying there
| was no collusion as part of the report. Also, the word is
| "its" not "it's".
| spamizbad wrote:
| Spoke with a young person who had an interesting take: He says he
| sympathizes with Russians because he feels like they're also
| getting dragged into pointless wars by their government.
| (memories of Iraq and Afghanistan)
| deepsun wrote:
| I was anti-military and anti-gun ownership, until I happened to
| be in Ukraine at the time of attack, and until I happened to be
| in Belarus at a time of dictatorship.
|
| PS: although I think organization and coordination is thousands
| times more important than weapons.
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| "If we just...."
|
| Young Americans, in general, do not understand or internalize
| national security or great power competition; and instead project
| high ideals and generosity to countries whose _leadership_ does
| not share the same view of their nation or the world. With
| Russia, using OP example, there was & probably remains the very
| serious risk of food & energy dominance by Russia at the expense
| of democratic nations - none of whom can make the transition to
| so-called green tech in-time to avoid that outcome. There remains
| the risk of a Sino-Russian alliance that would result in a very
| different world from today's somewhat free & open societies. I
| could go on at length, but will sum it up by saying the world
| doesn't work the way we wish it would, and we have to face
| reality head-on and not wish it away.
| ip26 wrote:
| Rather than a "fault" of young Americans I would just point out
| that they have never experienced a significant militaristic
| national security threat nor witnessed a great power
| competition, and old-fashioned tanks-and-bombs conquest has
| been rare from the first & second world countries for their
| entire lives.
| specialp wrote:
| This is a "fault" of almost everyone living in Europe and USA
| at the moment. Europe for a while neglected military spending
| because the great evil Soviet Union was gone. In the USA we
| got to the mode where Russia isn't exactly our friend but
| they are contained to their vast land and nobody cares. Our
| focus too was on the Middle East.
|
| But now, I am not really old enough to know what it was like
| living under the threat from Russia, but I am old enough to
| know from 1 generation of separation family and friends what
| it was like. And 2 generations was WWII. So Russian
| aggression has me worried.
|
| Now Gen Z is another generation forward. I have found that
| Gen Z as a whole seems to be more empathetic, and very anti
| violence. The thought of someone coming in and flattening
| your neighborhood is the last thing they would think of. The
| things they more empathize with at the moment are the issues
| in the USA with social justice. And seeing Russian minorities
| in Ukraine persecuted from Russian sources resonates with
| them more than the narrative from the USA that Russia is an
| imperialistic country. They are also deeply skeptical of that
| narrative from our government as reflections on the USA's own
| history in the middle east, and central/South America
| lolinder wrote:
| The last 70 years of (relative) peace are the exception, not
| the norm. Remaining ambivalent when a great power makes it
| clear they are intent on upsetting the balance on which peace
| hangs is clearly a "fault". It doesn't matter if that fault
| is the result of ignorance of history, it's still a problem.
| 01100011 wrote:
| This is an example of the quip 'Hard times create strong men.
| Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men.
| And, weak men create hard times.'
|
| The younger generations have grown up in a bubble. The Soviet
| empire was no more. They were probably too young to remember
| or not even alive for 9/11. The modern wars the US was
| involved in could mostly be ignored. The economy was, for the
| most part, booming and full of distracting consumer goods and
| excess capacity leading to a full table of innovative goods
| and services.
|
| I'm a late gen X. My wife is a late millennial. I try to
| relate to her how the world used to be when I was young(less
| wealth, less choices, more uncertainty) but until you've
| lived it you can't understand it.
| whymauri wrote:
| The current generation is just barely eaking out of a
| nearly three year long 'once in a century' pandemic with
| broad impacts on education, employment, and housing
| costs... and yet, they apparently haven't suffered through
| enough 'hard times.'
|
| OK.
|
| Notwithstanding the constant ongoing war in the Middle East
| and that anyone born before 99' definitely remembers 9/11.
| I know people who still haven't adequately processed the
| trauma of the Great Recession -- and they weren't old
| enough to make the massive gains from the economy, either.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| > none of whom can make the transition to so-called green tech
| in-time to avoid that outcome
|
| The Germans brought it upon themselves with their anti-nuclear
| views.
| blub wrote:
| Maybe when life's good it's easy to ignore what one's
| government is misspending on the military.
|
| But when job security's low, education costs a fortune and the
| social safety net barely exists, asking why one's government is
| sending billions in help to a country at the other end of the
| world is not at all a crazy question.
|
| Now that's the US, but I'm in the EU and I'm still deeply
| disappointed at how much money the EU is spending on helping
| everyone except EU citizens. It's unacceptable to spend money
| at such scale when we have areas which are dirt-poor in Europe
| and _many_ children are severely materially and socially
| deprived.
|
| https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
| dougmwne wrote:
| This is very true. I think for young people it's very difficult
| to appreciate that we live on the knife's edge of peace. Peace
| is not the natural human condition, and vast numbers of people
| are ready and willing to commit incredible violence and
| atrocities in the name of their tribe. Absolutely nothing about
| human nature has changed since the uncountable wars we have
| fought since our very first moments as a species. Peace exists
| only in the liminal space between great violence and terrible
| powers.
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| Peace is the natural human condition in small groups. As the
| groups increase in size so does competition, insecurity and
| conflicts of interest. Its this dynamic that gives rise to
| conflating our own peaceful orbits with tribal or state
| rivalry; and conversely its often an abused imbalance of our
| interpersonal relationships that gives rise to individual
| leaders with power compulsivity.
| prepend wrote:
| > Peace is the natural human condition in small groups.
|
| I don't think this is true. I read Sapiens by Harari and he
| presents lots of info on how early man, living in small
| groups was very violent. With gravesites from the time
| showing violent deaths at young ages.
|
| I romantically would like to think this but believe the
| reality is that humans are violent and it's large
| civilizations with complicated rule of law and
| interdependency is the reason for peace. Sort of the
| Leviathan argument that humans are evil and it's a struggle
| to overcome and improve on that nature.
|
| Although I hope that one day this changes and we eventually
| evolve to be more peaceful.
|
| Evolutionarily speaking I think violence was too much of a
| shortcut to survival so mammals evolved against peace.
| dougmwne wrote:
| Yes, peace is a technology for sure.
| dougmwne wrote:
| Oh is it now? I'm so happy for you and your harmonious
| family.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Edge of peace. I like that phrase. I may end up borrowing it.
|
| I think overall I agree with your post. We truly do suck as a
| species. The past few decades were a massive aberration in
| our history ( and even that relatively peaceful -- for a
| westerner -- period saw some horrifying conflicts that just
| did not make the front pages ).
|
| I do not wish for another major conflict. No sane person
| does. We should do what we can to prevent it.
|
| Still, I personally see one on the horizon. Best I can do is
| talk to my social circle, but even that seems futile. The
| actual decisions about matters like these happen way outside
| those.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _We live on the knife 's edge of peace_
|
| Peace for _who?_ America just formally ended a 20 year long
| war, with very little to show for it. Someone who is 18
| today, has only known America in a time of war. How can you
| call this peace? (I know how, it 's because you only talk
| about peace as peace for western nations.) Anyone would
| immediately be skeptical to the thought that we should
| immediately enter another war several thousand miles away.
|
| It's only when majority white western christians are being
| blown up that we are at the "knife's edge of peace". What is
| it called when it's muslims in the middle east or northern
| africa being blown up? I'm not convinced America needs to be
| proactive in an engagement with Russia to hold up what you
| consider "the knife's edge of peace".
| lolinder wrote:
| Afghanistan and Iraq were and remained local conflicts.
| Twice in the last century and once in the century before
| (Napoleon), a local conflict in Europe escalated into a
| world war in which millions died in the span of a few
| years.
|
| That doesn't make the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq right or
| just (I don't believe they were), but Europe has long been
| an extremely dangerous powder keg. We have had _relative_
| peace in the last 70 years because European great powers
| have successfully avoided actively shooting at each other.
| This move by Russia is a major threat to that stability and
| is categorically different than the invasions in the Middle
| East not because of race but because of the likelihood of
| escalation.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > Afghanistan and Iraq were and remained local conflicts.
|
| Sort of, but Pakistan might not agree.
|
| The disastrous Iraq invasion had huge consequences for
| neighbouring countries and people argue over its
| contribution to significant knock on effects like the
| Arab spring.
| dougmwne wrote:
| The conflict statistics bear out that we are in a lengthy
| era of peace. I am not being eurocentric, it's true for a
| vast stretch of the world since WW2. If you think we have
| not been in a time of peace, just wait till you find out
| what a time of war looks like. It will go from 3 ongoing
| conflicts to 100.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Peace for me. And I want my government to prioritize that
| over peace for other countries at every opportunity. It
| ain't pretty, but it's how the world works.
|
| And nobody gives a damn about "white western Christians."
| We set whole cities of white western christians on fire in
| WWII, and bombed white western Christians in the 90's on
| behalf of a Muslim population (Serbia / Kosovo).
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > How can you call this peace?
|
| I think you already know the answer to that. When the 20
| year old war is mostly all about sending some soldiers over
| to the middle east to bomb it, then it doesn't _really_
| feel like a war. For people in the US who choose to ignore
| it, they absolutely live in peace every day.
| dash2 wrote:
| You, too, may experience a difference if war comes not for
| a faraway people whom you like to feel indignant about, but
| to your own country, landing on your doorstep and
| destroying your neighbourhood. Perhaps it's very wrong that
| you will feel differently. But you will. That is what the
| knife edge means. Using the miseries of far-off people to
| encourage cowardice or putting your head in the sand is
| wrong, and foolish.
| edrxty wrote:
| Disagree. I'm in the 'young' bracket here but researching
| geopolitics/military is something of a hobby for me.
|
| I'm not arguing that the young are all like me, but rather
| that I applaud my generation for being skeptical, at least
| from an intervention POV. I still side strongly with Ukraine
| but this is a complex issue and rolling the tanks against a
| country with less GDP than NY does not make the world
| inherently safer. The older generations, on the other hand,
| were raised in the context of Russia being a world power
| while at this time they've revealed themselves to be
| objectively not.
|
| However, a Sino-Russian alliance would be an absolute
| nightmare scenario and direct military involvement would give
| China a possible excuse to back Russia. As long as they
| remain neutral-ish then it's safe to let this play out,
| particularly given how things are going so far.
|
| Now, the area that concerns me is how many are openly
| supporting Russia. Skepticism is great but I don't think
| there's any reason to voice support for Russia at this time.
| salawat wrote:
| You're a few steps behind the ball my friend. The overtures
| of Sino backing of Russia have been pretty loudly
| resonating over the last few years. The neutrality now
| likely being a consequence of trying to gauge whether the
| U.S. is actually willing to flex in response to an invasion
| by another nuclear power. They've had their eyes on Taiwan,
| and if their leadership thinks they can get away with it,
| they'll likely give it the old Hong Kong treatment.
|
| Especially since Ukraine, being the leading source of neon,
| is also a sizable link in the U.S. semiconductor supply
| chain. Not quite as big ticket as TSMC, but big enough to
| serve as a useful gauge for strategists and planners.
|
| Gen Z has little or no exposure to outright saber rattling.
| Just proxy wars, which globalization somewhat optimized for
| until realpolitik came back around to start biting once
| folks started understanding the soft power play of post
| cold war economics.
|
| 3 generation rule at play. We've got the direct witnesses
| of heavy geopolitical action on the way out.
|
| The boomers->X->Millenial know the aftershocks, and at
| least know what didn't work for the "The Greatest
| Generation". Z and forward are a refreshing breath of fresh
| air in de-bullshitting, and have access the way more
| information than any previous generation had all at one
| time, but that's a vulnerability at the same time without
| strong bullshit filters, and a collective sense of both
| unity and the real. The Real* is not entirely a "here's
| your canned reality" from the media, but a collective and
| relatable ground truth experience that crosscuts the
| population. I'm afraid one thing we've really dropped the
| ball on is as teachers, and institutional raisers and
| propagaters of strong bullshit filters. Especially given
| the information augmented battlefield of today.
|
| Definitely keep doing what you're doing though. Ain't no
| way to get the head for it but to do it.
| edrxty wrote:
| Interesting points but I'm struggling to find the thesis
| here, at least with respect to military intervention.
|
| Russia and China have a weird relationship. They were, in
| a way, born together into their current statuses, but
| Russia isn't Soviet anymore and they don't necessarily
| represent the image China is going for. Meanwhile Russia
| wants China for it's economic might and China probably
| has an interest in resources and land north of Beijing,
| but at the moment any agreement wouldn't net much for
| China and represents a great deal of risk in the long
| term.
| dougmwne wrote:
| China's aspirations go far beyond Russia. They will not
| be content with vast reaches of methane burping tundra as
| their international policy showpiece. They want true
| superpower status and to set the tone for the world
| order. They will wait decades more if they have to.
| bllguo wrote:
| Do we have any reason to believe this "common knowledge,"
| or are we just projecting from Western imperialist
| tendencies? China has a _long_ tradition of being
| insular.
| vannevar wrote:
| > I applaud my generation for being skeptical, at least
| from an intervention POV.
|
| As I read it, the poll was not about the wisdom of
| intervention. I think even the older generation is
| extremely wary of direct military action by the West againt
| Russia. Rather, the poll is about the relative moral
| position of the two combatants. And I think the sympathy
| for Russia among the young reflected in the poll probably
| stems from comparative indifference and skepticism about
| world politics (leading to a tendency to simply ignore the
| subject), and different media consumption habits. Young
| people don't watch nearly as much television news, they
| tend to absorb their news through social media (which of
| course is filtered through their friends, who also tend to
| share the same indifference to global politics). It becomes
| a case of the blind leading the blind.
| fhood wrote:
| What about this issue is particularly complex? Other than
| nuclear weapons? Russia has spent the last 20 years acting
| with total impunity, relying on a western reluctance to
| intervene. Russia _is_ a world power if they are allowed to
| throw their weight around without consequence. The only
| reason not directly aid Ukraine in securing their borders
| is the threat of nuclear war. China is not going to got war
| with Russia against the US because of military intervention
| inside Ukraine 's borders. That is an insane claim.
| edrxty wrote:
| >only...nuclear war
|
| Uhhhh 0_o
|
| That seems like a good reason in its own right... Right?
| That said, they're suffering a lot of consequence at the
| moment so it's worth letting that pan out. The west
| drastically overestimated their capability, by that
| standard NK is a world power. I get it, I don't think
| your position there is wrong but...semantics.
|
| >China is not going to [go to] war with Russia against
| the US
|
| Never claimed that. The game for China is if they don't
| provide material aid, they get to maintain better
| relations with the west. I think the west broadly
| misunderstands their goals for international standing.
| They want to be recognized but if push comes to shove
| they'll just buddy up with Russia. Best to not provoke
| that. If the US decides to world police some more, along
| with three EU, that makes world policing the standard for
| world power and China will happily rise to that. They're
| very much watching what we do here.
| fhood wrote:
| China's government, like Russia's uses the west as a tool
| to consolidate power. The western world, and specifically
| NATO (which is really just another world for America in
| this context) serve as a looming enemy. We have now
| clearly seen that the actual actions of the West do not
| matter. China and Russia suffer from intense corruption,
| low overall standards of living, and the massive income
| and power gaps that arise from these types of
| governments. Western democracy ain't perfect, but there
| is a good chance that given the ability to accurately
| compare their options the Chinese and Russian populace
| would start to push back against the power structures.
| You can see this in the case of Hong Kong, and in
| Ukraine's westward trajectory.
|
| Thus the people in power need to control information and
| unify the population in order to stay in power. If the
| west doesn't directly provide ammunition for this
| information war, they will just make it up. And they
| already do this. I have come to realize over the last 5
| years or so that China and Russia have ZERO information
| in maintaining a truly friendly relationship with western
| (there needs to be a word for this that doesn't ignore
| Japan and Korea) democracies. They will continue to act
| in whatever fashion preserves the power structure, and
| that will include simply inventing threats. Such as
| Ukraines doomed bid to join NATO.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >I still side strongly with Ukraine but this is a complex
| issue and rolling the tanks against a country with less GDP
| than NY does not make the world inherently safer.
|
| Putin takes Luhansk and Donestsk, consolidates the southern
| coast, and links to Transnistria. Ukraine is now a
| landlocked welfare case for Europe, with millions of
| refugees streaming out and a government in collapse. Just
| like that, Russia has a salient into Western europe, and
| the world order of national sovereignty comes to an end.
| There is no complexity to the issue. This is the clearest,
| most mortal threat to Western civilization since the
| collapse of the Soviet Union. Do not fall for "let's hear
| both sides" whataboutism.
|
| It doesn't happen often, but sometimes in life there is
| simply right and wrong.
| kcatskcolbdi wrote:
| The world order of national sovereignty ends because
| Ukraine loses eastern territory?
|
| There have been much greater refugee crisis' (Syria, for
| example) that has not resulted in the entire fall of
| civilization.
|
| Having a prolonged conflict over Ukraine would be great
| for Northrup Grumman and Delloit. Finding a peaceful,
| quick diplomatic resolution will be better for the rest
| of the world.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > There have been much greater refugee crisis' (Syria,
| for example) that has not resulted in the entire fall of
| civilization.
|
| Ukraine has, as of now, produced 4.7 million refugees,
| with another ~7 million internally-displaced people. That
| is over the course of 6 weeks.
|
| The Syrian Civil War took _4 years_ to reach that refugee
| population, and currently stands at about 6-7 million
| refugees with roughly an equivalent number of IDP.
|
| If the Ukrainian war persists for several months (which
| sadly seems likely), then the Ukrainian refugee count
| will eclipse the decade-long Syrian refugee count _by the
| end of the year_. Syria 's refugee crisis--itself the
| biggest since WW2--isn't exactly "much greater" than
| Ukrainian's refugee crisis; if anything, it's the other
| way around.
| secondcoming wrote:
| Transnistria is the interesting one. If Russia eventually
| goes into Moldova to 'liberate the Russians there' then
| we know the narrative around Ukraine was total bullshit
| (it's absolutely true that Ukraine treated those in
| separatist areas poorly for years).
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > (it's absolutely true that Ukraine treated those in
| separatist areas poorly for years).
|
| The "separatist areas" are a product of the first wave of
| the current Russian invasion; they weren't pure homegrown
| movements, Russian troops, both regulars and the Wagner
| "private" military company that is Russian and appears to
| work exclusively for Russian state interests were
| involved in the fighting which established them, around
| the same time as the Russia also seized Crimea.
|
| We've know the justifications of the wave of Russian
| invasions starting with Georgia in 2008 has been bullshit
| since the beginning, and people who haven't figured it
| out in the last 14 years aren't particularly like to
| click over with a new round in Moldova.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Given how Russia treats its own citizen and how the
| Russian state views human rights, I'm surprised anyone
| believe Russia's claim that it's defending its people.
| edrxty wrote:
| That's why I left the "at this time" caveat in there.
| Yeah, if the Russian military actually gets its shit
| together and manages an offensive that achieves that we
| need to reevaluate but...I don't think they have any
| chance of pulling that off. Their troops have spent weeks
| retreating from a meat grinder with nonexistent morale
| and will be asked to do it all again, "but it'll work
| this time".
|
| Further, would you take landlocked Ukraine and _possible_
| welfare state over a Sino-Russian axis? I think I would.
|
| This isn't "let's hear both sides" it's "this _will_ get
| really nasty if we pull the old so-i-started-blasting
| strategy. "
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Further, would you take landlocked Ukraine and possible
| welfare state over a Sino-Russian axis?
|
| Those are not alternatives, they are a package deal; if
| you accept the first, the second comes along free for the
| ride. The Sino-Russian axis exists _now_ , the only way
| to disrupt it is defeating one of the poles in a way
| which results in a realignment (and, more likely, that
| weakens rather than fully disrupts it.) Permitting it
| victory just makes it stronger.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >This isn't "let's hear both sides" it's "this will get
| really nasty if we pull the old so-i-started-blasting
| strategy."
|
| It already _is_ really nasty. Ask the people of Bucha. I
| think my overall point here is that the war has already
| begun, and we in the West are sticking our heads in the
| sand and praying for it to go away. History shows that
| evil men will stop at nothing short of a forced hand. And
| any talk of negotiation with Russia at this point sounds
| painfully like "peace in our time". There is no "choice"
| to avoid this conflict anymore. I wish to god that there
| was. But that choice was made 20 years ago when Ukraine
| was alienated from NATO. Our only option now is to accept
| the reality of our state of war with Russia, or to sit by
| and watch them win.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _we in the West are sticking our heads in the sand and
| praying for it to go away._
|
| So you want boots on the ground? Whose? Yours? Your
| children's? Do you think that will lead to less
| bloodshed? Negotiation is the way out.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > Negotiation is the way out.
|
| How? Putin isn't going to leave if you ask nicely, and
| hasn't left with increased sanctions or when bloodied.
|
| What is the negotiation? Give him half Ukraine?
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >So you want boots on the ground? Whose? Yours? Your
| children's?
|
| Boots _are_ already on the ground. Ukrainians childrens
| boots. They are already fighting the largest land battle
| in european history since World War II at this very
| moment. Russia has already taken greater losses than
| Germany did with the invasion of Poland.
|
| Ukraine's fate is our own. And the longer we pretend this
| is just another foreign conflict, the more danger we will
| be in.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > Negotiation is the way out.
|
| Okay. How do you get the two sides to come to an
| agreement? Right now, one side wants the other side to
| not exist [1], the other side appears to be willing to
| concede status quo ante bellum.
|
| [1] To be more precise, they have given several
| conflicting answers as to what they actually want. I
| personally find this answer to be the most likely to be
| true, especially given that the other side is willing to
| agree to the demands implied by several of the other
| answers, and yet this side is unwilling to accept such
| agreement.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Negotiation is the way out.
|
| Negotiation isn't a way out against an aggressor who
| isn't convinced that you can and will use force
| otherwise.
|
| What you have then is at best surrender to their current
| demands and hope they don't decide to see what they can
| take you for next after that. This _isn't_ novel
| territory.
| samastur wrote:
| I wouldn't because I don't believe that's the choice I
| have. You can sacrifice Ukranians, accept landlocked
| Ukraine, hope it will stop there and you are still
| unlikely to prevent Sino-Russian axis that has been
| building for years now and clearly has a more matching
| world view than other current combinations.
|
| This was started in 2014 and thinking it will go away if
| only Putin gets a big enough chunk of Ukraine is, I
| think, wishful thinking.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > This was started in 2014 and thinking it will go away
| if only Putin gets a big enough chunk of Ukraine is, I
| think, wishful thinking.
|
| I mean, it worked with Hitler and Czechoslovakia, right?
| "Peace for our time" and all that...
| fallingknife wrote:
| Sino-Russian axis is here, so get used to it. It wasn't
| started by this war, and it won't be stopped by stopping
| it. Russia and China have larger aligning geopolitical
| interests and that is the driver.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Do not fall for "let's hear both sides" whataboutism._
|
| Your comment is spot on, but this is strange. It _is_
| complex; there _are_ two sides. The ideals of "Western
| civilization" aren't held by the globe, so it's important
| to understand why things work the way they do. It isn't
| "good" versus "evil".
| fhood wrote:
| Watching the actions of the Russian and Chinese
| governments over the past few months I think the issue
| has gotten much more black and white than these things
| usually are. Not necessarily good vs evil, as that is too
| subjective, but definitely somewhat of an ideological
| standoff between truth and...not truth.
| dougmwne wrote:
| I am absolutely on the side of the Ukraine and the West,
| but that is too simple. We are also post-truth. I think
| we are much closer to the real truth than Russia state
| media, but the president calling Ukraine a genocide is
| inventing a new definition for the term.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >The president calling Ukraine a genocide is inventing a
| new definition for the term.
|
| How many more bodies do the mass graves need to qualify
| as genocide?
| salawat wrote:
| Nah. There is one side. Two collectives competing over
| influence and sovereignty. The West, advocating for
| everyone has their lines and we're good, and Russia now
| going imperialist/expansionist.
|
| NAP. Don't start nothing, won't be nothing.
|
| Russia started something. There is now something. Failure
| to respond and restore the equilibrium is tacit
| acceptance of Russia setting terms, which sets a
| precedent.
|
| It's pretty clear.
| dougmwne wrote:
| Though to be fair, the West 's position is everyone has
| their lines but plays by our rules. The western
| governments put huge pressure on the rest of the world to
| conform their laws and norms to be beneficial to the
| globalized world order they themselves invented. This
| world order includes good things like human rights and
| rule of law, but also questionable things like the deck
| being heavily stacked in favor of the incumbents and
| winner takes all hypercapitalism.
| helij wrote:
| This 'national sovereignty' and 'world order' degrade
| didn't start with this war. Russians are now just using
| our double standards. They don't recognise our sui
| generis. You can call it whataboutism or however you
| like. World order is a thing for powers to sort and
| national sovereignty is just an illusion for smaller and
| weaker countries.
|
| Call me a cynic...
| thriftwy wrote:
| Russia has to take Odessa to do what you have described,
| and at the moment it looks like it can't.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >Russia has to take Odessa to do what you have described,
| and at the moment it looks like it can't.
|
| It seems like people have forgotten that wars last longer
| than a month. This will be a years long proccess of
| attrition if it isn't stopped.
| kevin_b_er wrote:
| I would argue a greater threat is the attack upon
| democracy in the United States. One of the major
| political parties now rejects election results they do
| not win. A fall of the United States to a fascism that is
| allied to Putin would very likely be worse for Europe and
| "Western" society.
| baq wrote:
| countvonbalzac wrote:
| What a lazy comment.
| antisthenes wrote:
| It's not. Contrarian takes on the internet are 90%
| trolling and 9% clueless/bad faith arguments being
| presented as if they had the same weight of evidence
| behind them as the (usually) established view.
|
| The 1% of actually contrarian arguments are usually well
| received, even if they differ significantly from the
| status quo or say something outside the Overton window.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| The people who came of age after the internet but before it
| was censored into something safe enough to sell ads on are
| far more aware of how nasty things can be than the people
| before and since.
|
| If anyone is gonna set out on a path of "real violence" it's
| likely going to be a subgroup of millennials.
|
| Edit: the above only applies to the US
| pessimizer wrote:
| > I think for young people it's very difficult to appreciate
| that we live on the knife's edge of peace.
|
| That doesn't seem like thought that supports the position of
| the old, as characterized here, who are encouraging the
| escalation of a war against a nuclear power with a ruined
| economy.
|
| I blame the generational gap on that particular US generation
| who has lived through major wars but never had to worry about
| war on their own territory, who have gone through wars where
| only an extreme minority have had to participate (and that
| being privileged enough to be in college or to have an
| important job was enough to get you out of participation),
| and who have been hammered by propaganda their entire lives
| that the final battle would be the commies vs the
| bootstrappers.
|
| Half of them are praying that this will be the end of the
| world, like God said it would be.
|
| They supported every war except Vietnam, because Vietnam was
| the only war they were in danger of participating in. Those
| wars didn't affect them badly at all, in fact the wars helped
| the economy because everybody got jobs creating expensive
| things that would be burned (in the occupied homes of Iraqi
| families.)
|
| I would call them a reflection of Russian nationalist
| aggression, but they're really not, because Russians have
| known suffering from war. Russians have pretty good excuses
| not to want NATO weapons, missile defense systems, and troops
| stationed on their border. Americans are afraid of their
| vital fluids being corrupted by the demonic Russians and
| their sole goal of creating discord by spreading propaganda
| that the issues that everybody who isn't an old wealthy
| retired homeowner is concerned about aren't something that
| should be completely ignored.
|
| Young people generally see them as insane chickenhawks that
| are useless domestically and hyperaggressive internationally,
| and rightfully so.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| I think this is an extremely ungenerous take. I think more
| objectively young Americans simply have different ideological
| preferences than older Americans.
|
| The cold war mentality, talk of "free and open" societies is in
| itself deeply ideological, not "facing reality head on". It's
| the wish to remake or maintain the world in America's image. If
| anything I think young Americans are the less ideological group
| here. They see America's domestic issues, international
| overreach, they have less of a preference for liberalism in the
| broad sense of the term, and they demand a foreign policy that
| is more focused on America's domestic interests in the face of
| a changing, more multipolar world.
|
| the general opinion of younger Americans seems much more
| aligned with realist schools of foreign policy than with the
| moralistic, idealistic mentality of older generations.
| creato wrote:
| Realist as determined by some social media bubble, some of
| which are engineered by foreign intelligence agencies, sure.
| jwmhjwmh wrote:
| Which intelligence agencies do you think have the most
| control of the Twitter discourse?
| peppustimbus wrote:
| kurthr wrote:
| There are levels of grey to open (e.g. free speech,
| expression, democracy) vs closed (e.g. prison for political
| speech, totalitarianism), but the US and EU are a world apart
| from Russia or China. I recommend speaking to someone (who
| isn't state sponsored as many Tiktok & Youtube influencers
| are) from that country to understand. Do not think that you
| will not be shot by a conscripted soldier who wants your
| stuff to take back to his impoverished family or that if you
| are it will make the world a better more "equal" place. Many
| Russians are afraid of the return of soldiers from this war
| (special operation?), because each time before it has led to
| more violence.
|
| Having your pronoun misused by a teacher in school isn't
| right, but it is fundamentally different type of oppression
| from working in a prison camp in Siberia or Xinjiang.
| jwmhjwmh wrote:
| My understanding is that--according to Western sources--
| Chinese people report high satisfaction with their
| government, much higher than US citizens. I feel that this
| metric should also be considered when evaluating the
| quality of life in a society.
|
| As for the point on Xinjiang, I think the oppression of
| people there is real, but oppression of religious
| minorities isn't just a non-Western phenomenon; look at
| France, for example.
|
| Consider the source of your information about other
| societies. The elites of Western society, who have a great
| interest in preserving Western societies as they are and
| who hold a lot of control of the media, want to align the
| populous against the enemies of the Western elites. The
| flaws of enemy countries will therefore tend to be
| exaggerated, sometimes highly so. Western societies will
| tend to be portrayed as the best anyone can hope for.
| kurthr wrote:
| I've traveled to China for two decades. There is both
| great prosperity and astounding poverty there
| ($300=2000Yuan/year is defined as poverty). Whatever you
| may see on TV there is plenty of homelessness even in
| Shanghai/Beijing/Shenzhen (for many who lack an
| appropriate identity card) and also much greater
| destitution in the outlying regions. There is no free
| medical care. Of course "people report" high satisfaction
| with a government that can and does throw them in jail
| for disagreeing. That visibly happens even in independent
| Hong Kong. Be careful what "Western sources" are actually
| propaganda outlets. It is amazing what large monetary
| donations to journalism and research universities can buy
| in the US, EU, and Australia, but there is plenty of
| other documentation.
|
| That you compare "religious suppression" (reeducation
| prison camps with forced labor and sterilization) in
| Xinjiang to not wearing a hijab in France is quite
| frankly shocking.
|
| https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22311356/china-uyghur-
| bir...
|
| https://apnews.com/article/ap-top-news-international-
| news-we...
| randcraw wrote:
| This is a matter of ideology? You're saying the principles of
| young people in the US say it's OK to invade another country
| that did not attack first? Or because they found some news
| sources saying Putin is justified?
|
| I guess I just don't see any sense in that argument. Do kids
| today not think for themselves? Have they no principles of
| their own?
|
| Wow. Today is _definitely_ the right time to reinstate the US
| military draft.
|
| If nothing else, the prospect of _yourself_ dying in the mud
| of a distant foreign land should motivate US kids to finally
| give a damn about power-crazed politicians killing multitudes
| of human beings for... whatever platitude manages to get a
| million retweets.
| nemothekid wrote:
| This is a very condescending view of Young Americans. I think
| any analysis that does not start with an economic analysis of
| Americans _today_ vs Americans 40 years ago is bound to end up
| on these soft attributes of "ideals and generosity".
|
| It's abundantly clear for any Young American, that there is no
| upside to war. If American maintains her dominance, then they
| are still suffering under a gerontocracy and growing wealth
| inequality. What person would risk nuclear war for the
| privilege to struggle to pay rent every month? Likewise, the
| risk of a Sino-Russian alliance only effects those who stand to
| extract rent from "democratic" countries (in the form of
| foreign ownership). If capital is increasingly owned by a small
| few, why should Young Americans care if their oligarchs are
| American or Chinese?
|
| I think most Young Americans don't have the luxury of wondering
| about power competition especially since so many of them don't
| have a stake in the game. It's hard to convince people the
| effects of what Russian oil dominance will have where they deal
| with much more pressing survival issues that are a lot closer
| to them.
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| > If capital is increasingly owned by a small few, why should
| Young Americans care if their oligarchs are American or
| Chinese?
|
| Here's why:
|
| - Rule of law, including health, safety & environment.
|
| - Minority rights.
|
| - Free-ish speech.
|
| - Mostly equal application of law.
|
| Could say more, but you get the point.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Those are all also things that the oligarchs of the enemy
| can promise to do better on (and perhaps even actually
| deliver) to buy off Americans away from loyalty to their
| hometown billionaires.
| pueblito wrote:
| Does China have those things? Because America certainly
| doesnt
| Gollapalli wrote:
| >rule of law
|
| We don't have that NOW.
|
| >minority rights
|
| I'm sorry, but the BLM riots in 2015 have made me
| immediately suspicious of anyone towing this line. I just
| don't trust you.
|
| >Free-ish speech
|
| We just banned Russia Today (not to mention all the issues
| with alt-platforms getting dehosted)... oh yeah and the
| Babylon Bee.
|
| > Mostly equal application of law.
|
| See pt. 1
| nemothekid wrote:
| I really don't understand this response. Are you seriously
| implying that today most young Americans have an healthy
| environment? At least China is _pretending_ to roll out
| some sort of universal health coverage. Minority rights?
| Let 's ignore our own highly politicized conversations on
| minority rights and look to our allies, like Israel. I'm
| not sure I see too much a difference of the genocide of the
| Uighurs in China and the genocide of the Palestinians. So
| no, I don't get the point. The bullet points you have
| posted are shaky at best and don't convince me that anyone
| should risk nuclear war for "ideas" like "free-ish speech".
|
| I'm not implying China is perfect; or that America is
| wholly evil. It's that you must consider the day-to-day
| implications for _most_ Americans (who are probably unlike
| you and don't make six figures working in tech or own any
| capital), and that the system doesn't provide any material
| returns to them; and therefore any "change in leadership"
| is likely immaterial. Risking nuclear war, and billions of
| tax dollars for such a war does not make sense, especially
| when it makes life harder at home.
| throw__away7391 wrote:
| People think they're being "enlightened" for holding such
| views, being able to hold up the magnifying glass to
| their own society...but it's far more likely that they
| just live in a bubble. It appears as something of an
| irony that these very same free societies they criticize
| not only permit but actually _encourage_ this kind of
| self reflection through their traditions and
| institutions.
|
| I think that to truly appreciate life in a western
| democracy you need to have some real exposure to the
| alternative/absence.
|
| As I've travelled more, gained life experience, I've
| become less and less impressed with the ACT of expressing
| such criticism (particularly the knee-jerk reflexive
| "whataboutism" sort so frequently launched in response to
| any criticism of authoritatian regimes) and more
| appreciative of the fact that it's freely allowed and
| part of the culture of the free world.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _I think that to truly appreciate life in a western
| democracy you need to have some real exposure to the
| alternative /absence._
|
| Fine. Let's ignore the implication that I live in a
| bubble and let's focus on this right here.
|
| Most Americans have never left the state they live in.
| Most Americans don't have the luxury to travel. Most
| Americans have been left with rising housing costs, food
| costs, and gas costs. Most Americans have increasingly
| taken an isolationist view point as the quagmire in the
| middle east spent trillions abroad with nothing to show
| at home. By your own yardstick, why is it surprising that
| many young americans aren't enthusiastic to jump into yet
| another foreign war?
| throw__away7391 wrote:
| Meh, it is what it is. Surprising? Maybe not, just
| unimpressive. Most people are a product of their
| environment and that's never going to change no matter
| what. I don't think there's much to gain here except
| perspective and appreciation at an individual level...and
| in my personal experience a great deal more happiness as
| a result.
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| If you live in America and this is what you believe you
| really need to live elsewhere for awhile. I recommend
| living in Fushun, China and getting to know universal
| healthcare there. It's close to the North Korean border
| where you can explore China's close ally. When you get
| there let me know how many Uighurs serve in the National
| Congress of the Chinese Communist Party as compared to
| how many non-Jews serve in the Israeli Knesset. For extra
| credit rank for world genocide and let's see where
| Palestinian so-called 'genocide' falls.
| nemothekid wrote:
| So now we have gone from "rule of law" to "we don't do as
| much genocide as the other guys".
| pasabagi wrote:
| I think in general, western democracies do a lot better
| on elite freedoms than China, or indeed eastern
| democracies. When it comes to the actual freedom enjoyed
| by normal people, it's more patchy. Living in
| contemporary America, or indeed any fast-paced, high-bill
| liberal democracy, is essentially a lot of work for most
| people: usually the vast majority of their waking time is
| spent at one or more jobs. This usually delivers no real
| security, they usually have no real control over what
| they do, to a very fine level (acceptable emotions to
| display, and so on) during this time.
|
| China is like that too, but the only people that would
| really experience a night-and-day difference are the
| elite, who coincidentally write all the academic papers,
| news articles, etc.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| this response IMO cherry-picks a single line, which is
| easily setup with an "appeal to USA flag-waving
| nationalism" rebuttal. Clearly capped off with a "love it
| or leave it" literally.. not intellectually honest in
| addressing the real point here, which is perhaps "young
| people have serious daily life and future adult life"
| problems which have nothing to do with Great-Powers, Great-
| Games manipulation. Similar discussions could have been had
| for three millenia of nationalistic warfare, and I side
| firmly with the parent post myself, empathy towards the
| young adults in the USA, not flag-waving "you people need
| to honor the flag that gave you all of THIS" type stuff
| Clubber wrote:
| >It's abundantly clear for any Young American, that there is
| no upside to war.
|
| I would argue there is plenty of upside to war, otherwise
| countries wouldn't wage it. Compare the US economy in 1939 vs
| 1949 for a clear example.
| nemothekid wrote:
| That had far more to do with Europe being destroyed and
| creating a dependence on American resources. It's not as
| clear cut for America pre and post the Vietnam war, or the
| Gulf war or War in Afghanistan.
| fallingknife wrote:
| > I think most Young Americans don't have the luxury of
| wondering about power competition
|
| Precisely the opposite. Americans have the luxury of not
| worrying about great power competition. Eastern Europeans,
| for example, do not have this luxury. You think that great
| power competition does not affect you, but you are very wrong
| about that. You just think so because you are a citizen of
| the most powerful great power.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| An important aspect to understand is that "democratic nations"
| fighting together for their ideals is fiction created for the
| purpose of propaganda and of manufacturung consent. Countries
| fight for their interests, not for ideals.
| flatearth22 wrote:
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| akimball wrote:
| Support for Russia is not antiwar.
|
| Boomers were famously opposed to US involvement in Vietnam.
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| > Support for Russia is not antiwar.
|
| I didn't say it is?
|
| > Boomers were famously opposed to US involvement in Vietnam.
|
| Then the 80s happened.
| asdff wrote:
| Not all boomers were opposed to the US involvement in
| vietnam, plenty drank the koolaid and were happy to enlist.
| tediousdemise wrote:
| Hit the nail on the head. Boomers grew up in an age without the
| internet, where government propaganda was spoonfed to them
| straight through their brand new living room television sets
| and doorstep newspapers.
|
| Just imagine: the only bastion of information was your local
| library. Granted, information in libraries is curated and of
| substantially higher quality than the unfiltered garbage that
| you can encounter on the internet... but who was really going
| to libraries that often back in the day? Information was
| sparse, and that was exploited to manipulate people to an
| uncanny degree.
| redmen wrote:
| And now rather than being spoonfed, propaganda requires just
| a click or two.
|
| Even worse imo. Makes you feel like you are in control of the
| content you find when for the vast majority of people you are
| not.
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| Having the option to do your own and the opportunity to
| engage in critical thinking (whether or not you take
| advantage of it) out of all of the available content on the
| internet is worse than being spoonfed propaganda on a few
| broadcast stations?
| redmen wrote:
| For the masses. Not for people who know how to think. It
| gives people a false sense of confidence and arrogance
| when they tell you they know how to research
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| Sounds elitist to me.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Those seem an odd selection of questions, which made me
| immediately suspect they asked many other questions then skipped
| over them to generate a story.
|
| Similar to how pharma companies have to pre-register research
| questions, do these polls have to publish their full methodology
| somewhere?
| rank0 wrote:
| Obviously I don't actually know whats going on over there, but I
| find it hard to believe that the Russian military as a whole is
| "deliberately targeting civilians".
|
| From the first estimate I found searching the web:
|
| On April 10:
|
| > Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)
| recorded 4,232 civilian casualties in the country: 1,793 killed
| and 2,439 injured.
|
| <2000 civilian deaths in a full-scale invasion of a country with
| ~44 million citizens seems FAR too low to declare that targeting
| civilians is a goal. Mariupol is currently fighting to the bitter
| end, despite being surrounded for weeks and even bisected by
| Russian forces. This is a city that had a population of >400k at
| the start of the war.
|
| If the goal was really to kill everybody in sight, the Russians
| would've just carpet bombed their targets day 1 and killed
| hundreds of thousands. It seems like everyone has forgotten what
| war is. There's no "humanitarian" way to commit war. It's always
| awful and always creates unintended death.
|
| Again, not an expert here nor do I believe any statistics to be
| 100% accurate.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| > OHCHR believes that the actual figures are considerably
| higher, as the receipt of information from some locations where
| intense hostilities have been going on has been delayed and
| many reports are still pending corroboration. This concerns,
| for example, Mariupol and Volnovakha (Donetsk region), Izium
| (Kharkiv region), Popasna (Luhansk region), and Borodianka
| (Kyiv region), where there are allegations of numerous civilian
| casualties. These figures are being further corroborated and
| are not included in the above statistics.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| how can you read what they did in Bucha (raping, torturing,
| execution style murders in the street) and say you don't think
| they're targetting civilians. That was a warning from Putin to
| Ukrainians about what happens if you fight back and don't
| surrender 100%
| SpaceL10n wrote:
| Give a 20 year-old Russian conscript a gun and drop him in a
| warzone. Anyone not wearing a Russian flag is now a potential
| threat because he's in hostile territory. Then, at some point,
| the young man gets tired of all the potential threats and just
| starts eliminating them. At that point, Russian military as a
| whole is quite culpable.
| pessimizer wrote:
| But if you're going to make up a story, why not make up a
| different one? A nicer one where this person who doesn't
| exist isn't guilty of doing the thing that didn't happen, and
| the entire country of Russia wasn't to blame.
| layer8 wrote:
| The OSCE published a report yesterday:
| https://www.osce.org/odihr/515868
|
| Some quotes:
|
| "The Mission is not able to conclude whether the Russian attack
| on Ukraine per se may qualify as a widespread or systematic
| attack directed against any civilian population. It however
| holds that some patterns of violent acts violating IHRL, which
| have been repeatedly documented in the course of the conflict,
| such as targeted killing, enforced disappearance or abductions
| of civilians, including journalists and local officials, are
| likely to meet this qualification. Any single violent act of
| this type, committed as part of such an attack and with the
| knowledge of it, would then constitute a crime against
| humanity."
|
| "It is not conceivable that so many civilians would have been
| killed and injured and so many civilian objects, including
| houses, hospitals, cultural property, schools, multi-story
| residential buildings, administrative buildings, penitentiary
| institutions, police stations, water stations and electricity
| systems would have been damaged or destroyed if Russia had
| respected its IHL obligations in terms of distinction,
| proportionality and precautions in conducting hostilities in
| Ukraine."
| fhood wrote:
| Why do you find that hard to believe? Targeting civilians
| doesn't mean wiping out the population. And if there wasn't
| such a large body of prior evidence I might be tempted to agree
| that some of what we are seeing is isolated, or simple
| incompetence. But it now seems undeniable that Russia is
| intentionally targeting civilian infrastructure. And although
| that may have been effective in Syria, I have no idea what they
| hope to accomplish with it in Ukraine.
| dash2 wrote:
| "deliberately targeting civilians" is not the same as "going
| out to murder everyone". Obviously, Russia could just nuke
| Ukraine. They haven't done that. However, they have verifiably
| used cluster munitions in cities; abducted, raped and murdered
| civilians in areas they control; bombed hospitals; shot and
| shelled civilians trying to flee; and so forth.
|
| All of this is very much what they have form for in Syria. Is
| it not getting reported in the US? It is in Europe.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Younger people are so far removed from actual war that they have
| the luxury of being ambivalent about it. It's become easy to
| believe that war is simply a thing of the past and Americans
| won't ever experience it again. Ukraine is just pictures on a
| screen, nobody is going to drive tanks into America or fire
| missiles at our hospitals.
| Gollapalli wrote:
| Which war did you fight in?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Desert Storm. You?
| arbitrary_name wrote:
| Young person here: aren't you the dolts who lied to us about
| Afghanistan and Iraq, then just got chased out with your tails
| between your legs?
|
| Why should we believe a single thing you have to say about going
| to war?
| crocodiletears wrote:
| Generally my mentality. This is a European war in Europe's back
| yard. CNN and Fox (with the exception of Carlson) are in
| lockstep, Google's demonetizing content that's dismissive of,
| or opposed to Ukraine.
|
| Ukraine is the victim here, not the aggressor. I hope they win,
| I doubt they will.
|
| But domestically, the rhetoric around the war has infuriated
| me.
|
| A redneck shows up to a domestic political rally with his tacky
| Confederate flag, and everyone involved is a bigot, a fascist,
| or a potential domestic terrorist.
|
| A country constitutionally bans same sex relationships, turns
| trans refugees fleeing the conflict away at the border because
| they're 'actually' men, supports the efforts of a pseudo-
| autonomous militia whose ~10k soldiers walk around wearing
| sonnenrads, and its only a tiny minority that we should
| overlook. Facebook even made an exception for their policy on
| supporting them.
|
| I'm fine with nuance. It's important. But why is it only a
| thing when it means we might get to spill American blood in a
| police action for someone else's benefit?
|
| I'm still disgusted that the US tolerated afghan allies who
| indulged in bacha bazi. Now people on my facebook feed and in
| the news who spent the last six years hyperventilating about
| neonazis and demanding restrictions on speech to stop them are
| telling me that supporting ethnonationalist militias is the
| price of democracy in Europe.
|
| The EU is rich. This is their neighborhood. I've heard plenty
| of lectures from EU nationals that the US needs to stop
| enforcing its will on the rest of the world. If they want US
| arms in Ukraine, buy them from us.
|
| I don't want American boots on the ground, and I'm leery of
| providing military aid with tax money that could be better used
| serving the people who paid it for a war that likely won't end
| in a win.
| erdos4d wrote:
| Some questions:
|
| 1) Who do you think started this violence? Did Ukraine invade
| Russia or did Russia invade Ukraine?
|
| 2) Who do you pull for when one person attacks another? The
| bully or the victim?
|
| To me, these two questions and their answers determine my
| sympathies. You were lied to about Iraq and you are right to
| mistrust the US government, but the world media is not the US
| government. If you see reports from multiple news sources about
| mass graves and such, you should believe them.
| bllguo wrote:
| yeah the problem is that these are obviously the wrong
| questions. You behave like a doctor treating the symptoms
| rather than the root cause. Why not ask "_why_ did Russia
| invade Ukraine?" The answer is that nobody wants to deal with
| the inconvenient truth that the US contributed heavily to the
| inflamed tensions.
|
| You present a false dichotomy. I can have sympathies for
| Ukraine and distrust the US at the same time. Not viewing
| Russia as a cartoon villain is far more realistic than what
| the Western media is pushing.
| Gollapalli wrote:
| >Who do you think started this violence? Did Ukraine invade
| Russia or did Russia invade Ukraine?
|
| Who cares? Not our fight.
|
| >Who do you pull for when one person attacks another? The
| bully or the victim?
|
| Such infantile moralizing displays a profound case of
| arrested development in the moral faculties. Geopolitics is
| not a marvel movie.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Not our fight? Have you heard of Chamberlain?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeasement
| Jensson wrote:
| The fact that Ukraine now defends itself means that we
| are in a very different situation. None of the countries
| Hitler annexed during the appeasement actually defended
| themselves, he got them for free through diplomacy. If
| they did defend themselves instead of joining the German
| side then Germany wouldn't have been threat, and there
| would be no need for an alliance against them and Germany
| wouldn't have been the biggest threat in WW2. That is the
| situation we see today, Ukraine is defending itself,
| there is no way Russia can continue invading like that,
| they can't afford it, so the WW2 scenario has already
| been averted.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Just as Russia is complex, so is Ukraine. The blame-throwing game
| can go on for quite some time by cherry-picking memes.
|
| I hope the war ends soon.
| philipov wrote:
| pay walled
| WithinReason wrote:
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bypass-paywal...
| stuxnet wrote:
| https://archive.ph/btVtx
| rossdavidh wrote:
| never loads, for me
| guntars wrote:
| Turning off Javascript on the Economist website also shows the
| full article. I'm using uBlock for this. Besides the paywalls,
| I find that turning off JS improves the user experience on the
| vast majority of news sites.
| asdff wrote:
| A lot of sites will just break without JS. I just tried with
| my ublock origin and cnn.com with javascript disabled, and
| only the site map on the footer loads.
| drewcoo wrote:
| It's strangely appropriate that someone would need to tear down
| that wall to let everyone read about this particular
| generational divide.
|
| The first time I've appreciated a paywall.
| beefman wrote:
| Insightful episode of South Park on this recently...
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| IIUC, the poll's questions used the term "Russia", which
| implicitly lumps together the following groups:
|
| - the Russian government
|
| - the Russian military leadership
|
| - Russian career soldiers
|
| - Russian conscripts
|
| - regular Russian citizens
|
| If I were taking the survey, my answer to all 3 questions would
| depend on those distinctions.
| MikePlacid wrote:
| Yep. I am observing this interesting gap in political
| correctness for a long time now. When Russians are concerned
| nobody (in my perception) is using a politically correct
| formulas (formulae?) like "a Putin-paid disinformation
| campaign", usually it's "a Russian disinformation campaign".
| Since all gaps in political correctness are (in my humble
| perception) deliberate, I've always wondered why it exists.
| cbg0 wrote:
| Saying that anything bad that Russia is doing is Putin's
| fault is very reductive.
| pessimizer wrote:
| It also makes people pretend like understanding the
| conflict is just a matter of doing amateur psychology with
| the image they get of Putin through the television as a
| James Bond-style bad guy.
|
| Every time some plain old person tells me what Putin thinks
| or what Putin wants or what Putin can't stand, I have to
| leave or change the subject. The way they talk about the
| Ukraine conflict has no actual physical references. It's
| like they're telling fairy stories about an evil wizard.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| The title is backwards. There is a striking generational divide,
| and it extends into views of war.
| nerdjon wrote:
| TBH I don't really know how to take this.
|
| I am 31 so my age group is not represented at all by this graph.
| I am curious why they left out 30 to 64.
|
| At least within my friend group (which I don't think any are
| younger than 29... not that I really talk about age often) we are
| universally against the invasion of Ukraine and want them to
| survive.
|
| I don't feel like even at my age that I have experience or other
| events that are impacting my opinion. I also don't get most of my
| news from major news organizations.
|
| So I am very curious why this is the case.
| V__ wrote:
| I wonder whether 18-29 year olds have more pressing problems to
| care about and are therefore more apathetic?
| vippy wrote:
| College debt and housing costs are killing the 30+ crowd.
| whymauri wrote:
| I'm vouching for this comment, because it's an entirely
| reasonable thought that crippling debt and housing costs lead
| to apathy (graphs 3 "Do you care who wins?"). I do not
| believe it leads to supporting Russia, though.
| V__ wrote:
| Yeah, I wish these polls would also ask "null-
| hypothesis"-questions (for a lack of a better word). Like
| "Do you care about the war in Ukraine?" and then get more
| specific.
| kodah wrote:
| I appreciate the other threads here on this. My viewpoint may be
| a minority, but I fought in a war and live with the aftermath so
| I think my perspective might be of some value. I'm going to try
| to be careful with my wording but please realize this is a bit
| emotional even a decade later.
|
| I fought in Afghanistan. Real authoritarians with a very real
| tyrannical streak that's comparable to cartels, with tactics to
| boot. I watched the Obama administration lie about how well the
| war was going. We were getting reports of Marines being shot in
| the back by their counterparts continually. We were finding posts
| abandoned. Our bases were getting attacked while understaffed,
| our patrols were minimized, and our ROE was changed such that we
| had to be shot at directly to return fire. I watched national
| rhetoric coalesce on "they signed up for these injuries" when
| veterans needed help the most, culminating in people comitting
| suicide outside of hospitals.
|
| I will _never_ for those reasons support sending another soul
| down range.
| deepsun wrote:
| Don't compare your experiences with Ukraine. They fight a very
| different war, on their own territory (often their own cities).
| They literally defending their families, no less.
| baq wrote:
| The difference is, Afghanistan was of negligible importance in
| comparison. Stakes here are different. Just listen to Putin and
| take his words literally, because he means them.
|
| Either way, Ukraine needs weapons and bullets. They don't need
| more soldiers.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| This comment is weird. Who cares about the stakes? Dead
| people are dead people. Unless you want to get into a
| "realist realpolitiks" analysis, which coincidentally can
| also be used to justify the russian war of aggression. I've
| seen this take pretty often and to me it boils down to
| "ukraine is in europe and ukrainians are europeans so it's
| different and it makes this war so much worse" which to me
| sounds extremely... problematic?
|
| Like the hundreds of thousands of deaths in Iraq and
| Afghanistan still make those wars and the Civil wars they
| caused much much more destructive than what's happening in
| ukraine. It's not a competition, for sure, but it's important
| to keep that in mind before dismissing or downplaying the
| consequences of American policy and the enthusiastic support
| for those wars of the American public .
| ip26 wrote:
| A generous interpretation of your parent comment is that, "
| _because of the stakes, the government will take it far
| more seriously_ " and, e.g., stand with our soldiers.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > ukraine is in europe and ukrainians are europeans so it's
| different and it makes this war so much worse" which to me
| sounds extremely... problematic?
|
| It sounds more practical than problematic to me.
| Afghanistan is 10 times farther away from Western Europe
| than Ukraine is. If Europe didn't feel a lot more
| threatened by Russia, they would be insane.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| I agree, from a national policy perspective. But on an
| individual level, which I think was the scope of the
| discussion, I still don't think that it's okay to value
| ukrainian lives more than middle eastern/Muslim lives.
| Jcowell wrote:
| I don't think it's been a matter of lives dying or who
| lives are dying. Not for anyone who isn't Ukrainian
| (after all then Palestinian, Yemenis, Ethiopian, and
| other states in conflict would matter as well). It's
| about what it would mean if Russia is not only successful
| but met un challenged. The last time Europe as a
| continent allowed appeasement the whole world eventually
| got pulled into the second greatest conflict less in the
| span of 50 years. Another one would be devastating since
| a good some of the actors have world ending weapons to
| use against one another.
| baq wrote:
| I'm not from the US. I'm from Eastern Europe. Our
| grandparents survived the Red Army liberation from Nazi
| Germany. The Russians were much worse. This is an
| existential war for not only Ukraine, but whole eastern
| NATO flank. Putin more or less denies agency of all our
| countries.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I think, regardless of the value of the point you're trying
| to make, saying this in this context is callous at best. The
| comment you're responding to was careful and vulnerable, and
| if you read between the lines even a tiny bit there is pain
| there.
|
| We all know what happened in afghanistan right?. Anyone who
| spent significant time there witnessed horrific suffering.
| Watched friends come back completely different or not at all.
|
| "Negligible importance" to who? Not to the people who died
| there, or killed and have to carry that with them forever, or
| who didn't when they think they should have and have to carry
| _that_. Have a little compassion come on.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| However one can't simply say everything is Afghanistan. I
| never supported the war there. We had to many other ways to
| hit Bin Laden. However I completely support the war in
| Europe. This war of aggression is just the start if we just
| roll over for Putin. He won't stop at Ukraine, it will just
| be a pit stop to Poland and the Baltic states and who knows
| what after that. Ukraine doesn't stand a chance if we don't
| send them weapons, food, material, and intelligence
| reports. I also don't think my opinion is invalid just
| because I didn't serve on a battlefront. I pay taxes and
| vote so I get a voice too.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >He won't stop at Ukraine, it will just be a pit stop to
| Poland and the Baltic states and who knows what after
| that.
|
| I find it hard to believe this narrative when the US and
| Ukraine has refused to negotiate on the terms that Russia
| offered to prevent, and then later stop the war. The
| rationale given is that Russia was not sincere, but I
| think we should have tried. From my perspective in the
| US, a NATO demilitarized Ukraine would have been a win-
| win for both countries.
| keneda7 wrote:
| I feel like you are ignoring a major issue with Ukraine. Its
| a corrupt country. After Russia it is consistently ranked as
| the most corrupt country in Europe. https://www.google.com/se
| arch?q=most+corrupt+countries+in+eu...
|
| How do we even know any of our aid is being used
| successfully? I have no problem giving aid that is used to
| fight a proxy war with Russia. I have a huge issue giving aid
| to a country whose politicians are trying to make money for
| themselves. Kolomoisky, who is one of Zelensky's main
| backers, was indicted in the US for bank fraud. He is also in
| the panama papers. The politicians in Ukraine are corrupt,
| not as corrupt as old putin imo, but still corrupt.
|
| Now they are saying they need 7 billion dollar a month? I
| would be okay with this if everything was tracked and open
| for all to see. Buts it not. For all we know they are going
| to take 6 billion for themselves.
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-14/ukraine-u.
| ..
| 01100011 wrote:
| Sorry we, as a society, failed our soldiers so badly. It's
| trite to say but thanks for serving. You'll carry those scars
| to the grave.
|
| That said, what does this have to do with the article, which is
| talking about generational sympathies with either Russia or
| Ukraine? Is there a serious push to get US troops involved, a
| move which would surely spark WWIII? We're not talking about
| sending souls down range. Putin already did that. He is sending
| Russian souls down range and forcing Ukrainian souls down
| range.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >That said, what does this have to do with the article, which
| is talking about generational sympathies with either Russia
| or Ukraine.
|
| The relevance is as an example of the broken trust people
| that grew up during Iraq and Afghanistan have in the
| narrative that we are the good guys in foreign policy. After
| being repeatedly sold a bag of Lies, many look for how we
| could be tricked into thinking we are the the good guys yet
| again.
|
| This skepticism and openness to alternative narratives is at
| the center of the generational divide
|
| The skeptics are primed to ask in what ways the US is
| complicit in brining about this war, and it what ways it
| stands to benefit. The dangerous part is that a long track
| record of lies and self interested foreign wars adds a lot of
| weight to otherwise less credible narratives regarding
| Ukraine.
| fhood wrote:
| This is a crucial and under-represented perspective. I don't
| necessarily agree with the conclusion, but it is hard to ignore
| the inherent callousness of arguing over a conflict that will
| have no direct impact on me or my family.
| _moof wrote:
| Thank you for your service.
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| > I will never for those reasons support sending another soul
| down range.
|
| Even if Poland or a NATO ally gets attacked?
|
| I don't think anyone major is proposing sending troops to
| Ukraine, so this discussion is sorta irrelevant for the current
| conflict, but it seems like this line of reasoning would
| necessitate pulling out of NATO as well.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| That's the trouble with relying on a democracy to be the big
| muscle in your defense pact.
| dkirill wrote:
| This is quite sad that your reasons for lack of support of the
| wars are that you (an invader) had a bad time there, not that
| you were part of the force destabilising and destroying another
| country
| akira2501 wrote:
| People sign up for the military often with good intentions,
| yet they don't often get to choose what the military then
| does with them. You're seemingly assigning responsibility for
| an entire invasion to a foot soldier.
| dkirill wrote:
| I didn't intend to put a blame of invasion on a single
| soldier. But I do put blame on a soldier, that he came to
| another country to kill people there for no good reason.
| There is a choice
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The difference isn't that many more are supporting Russia. The
| difference is that many more don't have clear-cut sympathy for
| any side.
|
| I personally are much more sympathetic to Ukraine on different
| principles than most, but I definitely understand why many are
| not willing to trust the main media line on this. We went from
| hearing about how Ukraine was a deeply corrupt country, barely a
| democracy, to immediately hearing about how they are only being
| attacked because of how democratic and amazing it is and that
| Putin is scared Russians will want to live like Ukrainians. Media
| started glossing over Nazi imagery on the very pictures of
| soldiers they spread, not even mentioning it. There were many
| more narrative flips that I won't get into as a matter of time.
|
| Because of this, people that are less informed or that have a
| more traditional understanding of the morality of conflict will
| naturally get skeptical and decide that they don't want to
| sympathize with anyone.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| > We went from hearing about how Ukraine was a deeply corrupt
| country, barely a democracy, to immediately hearing about how
| they are only being attacked because of how democratic and
| amazing it is and that Putin is scared Russians will want to
| live like Ukrainians.
|
| Can't forget the regime change--excuse me, anti-corruption
| protests--in 2014 directly after the old regime chose economic
| partnership with Putin over closer integration with the EU.
| Much of the civil conflict within Ukraine, which Putin
| ostensibly invaded to pacify (remember, lying to justify a war
| isn't a US-only skill), is due to their residents/leadership
| not recognizing the results of the 2014 governmental changes.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Young people are the Cheng Xin of this world. In the past, we did
| not know the lies that the mainstream media was attempting to
| broadcast as part of large scale population unification and
| pacification. Without control of that process, lots of these lies
| are now visible and faith has deteriorated in public sources of
| information.
|
| It's like how everyone knows the NIAID is useless today.
| Unfortunately, another casualty of all this is truth. This is the
| problem with lying for what you think is the greater good. At
| some point, the fact that you lied ruins the future entirely and
| poisons the info well. If even the guys we chose to help us are
| going to bullshit us, we must live in a world of perpetual
| information mistrust.
|
| This, plus, it's worth remembering that 16% of people have an IQ
| less than 85.
| Miner49er wrote:
| The graphic is important I think. It's not a binary. While the
| younger generation showed more support for Russia, most of the
| difference between the generations was due to the younger
| generation giving an "unsure" answer.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Excellent point. If the younger generation were not more often
| "unsure" about a foreign policy question, that would mean
| either:
|
| 1) they have spent a lot of time studying foreign policy
| questions (unlikely with any generation when young), or
|
| 2) they just accept whatever their elders tell them
|
| 56% of young people supporting Ukraine, is a result we would
| consider a crushing victory for either party in modern
| presidential elections, and that's when there's a lot fewer
| "unsure". There is a generational difference, sure, but it's a
| lot less dramatic than most of the posts here are suggesting.
| _Nat_ wrote:
| PDF of cited poll:
| https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/l8ynsbxwgl/econTabReport.pdf
|
| Cited figures from Table-14, on (PDF/printed)-page-55.
|
| Looks like they polled 4 age-groups: 18-29; 30-44; 45-64; and
| 65+. The results for 30-44 were pretty close to those for 18-29,
| and the results for 45-64 were pretty close to those for 65+. In
| fact, if we combine the two younger groups and two older groups,
| such that it's 18-44 vs. 45+, then the reported-results really
| don't change much.
|
| Tangentially, it's really weird for news-articles to not link
| their sources.
| [deleted]
| Gollapalli wrote:
| This should be pinned.
| ffwszgf wrote:
| Most younger people are quite skeptic of mainstream media so they
| don't trust the narrative CNN and Fox News are trying to sell
| them.With the elderly it's the opposite.
|
| Further, most of the elderly lived at a time when the USSR was
| the clear and obvious enemy of "freedom", so it's not hard to
| fathom Russia being back into its usual shenanigans.
|
| Gen Z is also more diverse and broadly anti-American (or "anti-
| imperialist") so they're less willing to blindly support US
| foreign policy and feel less connected to European conflicts than
| previous generations.
|
| Finally Russia has, in my opinion, waged a fairly successful
| social media campaign to muddy the waters. Those videos of
| Ukrainians discriminating against people or color were signal
| boosted everywhere on Twitter. Same with the Azov Batallion which
| some people believe are the entire Ukrainian army. You also have
| people bringing up Yemen, Syria, Palestine, etc to emphasize the
| "white-supremacist" support of Ukraine receiving overwhelming
| attention.
|
| Gen Z has thus mostly understood this conflict through the
| propaganda wars that play out in social media and thus have
| conflicting and/or "both-sides" takes.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| > Gen Z is also more diverse and broadly anti-American (or
| "anti-imperialist") [...] and feel less connected to European
| conflicts than previous generations. [...] Those videos of
| Ukrainians discriminating against people or color were signal
| boosted everywhere on Twitter. [...] You also have people
| bringing up Yemen, Syria, Palestine, etc to emphasize the
| "white-supremacist" support of Ukraine receiving overwhelming
| attention.
|
| I've noticed this too, and I need to make a point:
|
| _In the long run, this will be a serious security threat to
| Europe._
|
| In this, Europe took almost completely the wrong lessons
| regarding America's role in NATO. _Yes_ a stronger NATO is
| good. _Yes_ , stronger ties to America are necessary to counter
| Russia.
|
| But _now is not the time to abandon strategic autonomy_. Just
| the opposite. Macron is right, just as DeGaulle before him was
| right. Yes, Europe should ally with the United States, but it
| also _must begin to stand on its own two feet_.
|
| Why? Because _the next American generations don 't give a shit
| about Europe_. In a very deep way, Europeans _have not
| absorbed_ the social earthquakes that have hit the United
| States. In younger American minds, _Europe doesn 't _matter _.
| Ukraine doesn 't _matter _._
|
| Europe should maintain its alliances, but it also needs to plan
| for a future in which it depends only on _itself_ for its
| defense. It needs to do this seriously and as though its life
| depends on it.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| >In this, Europe took almost completely the wrong lessons
| regarding America's role in NATO.
|
| I think you misinterpret what Europe is doing, because it's
| mostly doing exactly what you propose. Hell, even Germany
| seriously plans to overhaul it's dismal army.
| dankboys wrote:
| > You also have people bringing up Yemen, Syria, Palestine, etc
| to emphasize the "white-supremacist" support of Ukraine
| receiving overwhelming attention.
|
| This one really annoys me. Yes, people care more about people
| who look like them, and certainly those who are closer and
| where war is less common. Same reason predominantly Muslim
| diasporas in the west care about Palestine a lot
| rayiner wrote:
| > Same reason predominantly Muslim diasporas in the west care
| about Palestine a lot
|
| I don't think that's true. It's true the Muslims I know care
| about Palestine. But, for example, nobody cares about
| Uyghurs, who are Muslim. I don't know any Bangladeshis that
| care about the Rohingya, even though they're at least closely
| related to Bangladeshis (and "look" the same and speak a
| closely related language). My impression, being part of this
| "diaspora," is that the common support for Palestine is more
| about shared animosity against Israel. This animosity is
| partly just anti-Jewish, but also partly anti-Anglo-meddling,
| insofar as Britain was instrumental in enabling Jewish
| repatriation of Israel, and the United States continues to
| support Israel.
| ravitation wrote:
| As a younger millennial on the left, I am routinely frustrated
| by "anti-imperialist" attitudes (especially among my
| generation, and younger). I think "anti-imperialist" is one of
| the least useful labels for a political worldview in
| contemporary politics.
|
| Prior to the invasion, there was rampant criticism of NATO, and
| calls for its dissolution, on left-wing media, as an instrument
| of American imperialism, despite the fact that Russia has a
| history of aggression against post-Soviet states (e.g. Georgia)
| in the 21st century. With the outbreak of the war (outside of
| east Ukraine), some have walked back the more extreme aspects
| of those statements (as NATO's potential usefulness has been
| illustrated), but American imperialism via NATO is still
| discussed in the same breath as Russian imperialism via a
| military invasion and territorial annexation.
|
| The truth is we have very little choice in our great powers or
| global hegemonies, and I will always take the NATO brand of
| "imperialism" (e.g. where countries literally ask for American
| military bases to ward against actual aggression) over the
| Russian brand. Should we be skeptical of NATO? Of course, as we
| should with all power structures, especially when they engage
| in actual violence; but to not have a nuanced discussion about
| what actual imperialism looks like in the 21st century, and to
| simply be blanket "anti-imperialist," is juvenile, and I'd
| argue probably detrimental to those that actually feel its real
| world effects.
| [deleted]
| johnny22 wrote:
| At least it should be easy to understand why though. If
| you've never seen it used for good in your own eyes, then
| it's easy to stick with that take.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >Prior to the invasion, there was rampant criticism of NATO,
| and calls for its dissolution, on left-wing media
|
| Can you provide examples? I have not seen this, and as
| dissolution of NATO or otherwise weakening NATO was a goal of
| the previous administration, I am confused at this claim.
| ravitation wrote:
| You've vastly oversimplified the politics of the American
| left and right, which are themselves varied. Just because
| Trump criticized NATO member states and potentially
| weakened NATO with his rhetoric, does not mean it was ever
| actual policy of the mainstream Republican Party, or really
| even the Trump administration, to dissolve NATO. In fact,
| Trump himself now claims that, if not for him, there would
| be no NATO [1]. Trump is a president that ran on no clear
| platform (e.g. his 2020 presidential campaign did not even
| publish one) or real coherent policy.
|
| With that in mind, here is an article from 2018 in Jacobin,
| a left-wing magazine, saying that, regardless of Trump's
| comments, NATO's continued existence remains a valid
| question [2]; in fact, the Democratic Socialists of America
| (the primary progressive/socialist/labor party in the US)
| has calls for the US to immediately withdraw from NATO as
| part of its stated policy, even after the Russian invasion
| of western Ukraine [3]. These are among the most well
| stated positions regarding NATO skepticism on the American
| left, but similar opinions were expressed throughout left-
| wing independent media in the months leading up to the
| invasion (and earlier).
|
| 1. https://abcnews.go.com/US/trump-seeks-rewrite-role-
| bolsterin...
|
| 2. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/07/nato-donald-trump-
| putin-c...
|
| 3. https://www.dsausa.org/statements/on-russias-invasion-
| of-ukr...
| qiskit wrote:
| > despite the fact that Russia has a history of aggression
| against post-Soviet states (e.g. Georgia) in the 21st
| century.
|
| The aggression against georgia was due to NATO. Just like the
| current aggression against ukraine. NATO's existence is a
| threat to world peace just like the soviet union was. Any
| sane person would be for the elimination of NATO.
|
| > and I will always take the NATO brand of "imperialism"
|
| Yeah because syria, libya, etc are doing so great. NATO's
| imperialism has murdered far more people than russia's. Even
| in europe - yugoslavia.
|
| > (e.g. where countries literally ask for American military
| bases to ward against actual aggression) over the Russian
| brand.
|
| There are ukrainians who asked russia to protect them too...
| formerly_proven wrote:
| > The aggression against georgia was due to NATO. Just like
| the current aggression against ukraine. NATO's existence is
| a threat to world peace just like the soviet union was. Any
| sane person would be for the elimination of NATO.
|
| A complete inversion of reality. Post-soviet states want to
| be part of NATO _because_ they are afraid of Russian
| agression, and Russia is afraid of those states joining
| NATO, _because that means it cannot agress against them_.
| Hence, Russia starting border conflicts in countries that
| wish to join NATO in order to secure Russia 's ability for
| further aggression later.
|
| If you don't mind me asking, do you think the invention of
| the nuclear bomb was a mistake, and the world would be
| better off if nukes wouldn't have existed (1945-)?
| deeg wrote:
| I don't think this is a modern phenomenon. Certainly it was the
| younger generation that was against the war in Vietnam. It
| would be interesting to see polls from the Korean War and World
| War I. My guess is that we'd see a similar split between young
| and older generations.
| rayiner wrote:
| > Gen Z is also more diverse and broadly anti-American (or
| "anti-imperialist") so they're less willing to blindly support
| US foreign policy and feel less connected to European conflicts
| than previous generations.
|
| I don't think it's accurate to say they're "broadly anti-
| American" because they're "more diverse." The increased
| diversity in the younger generation is due to Hispanic and
| Asian immigrants and their kids.[1] First and second generation
| immigrants are equally or more patriotic than native born
| Americans, and are significantly less likely to say they are
| "ashamed" of any aspect of America:
| https://www.cato.org/publications/immigration-research-
| polic....
|
| All else being equal, immigration-driven population change is
| driving down "anti-American" sentiment. Indeed, the only
| political group where a majority say they're "ashamed to be
| American," progressives, is also amongst the whitest:
| https://hiddentribes.us/profiles.
|
| I think what you see amongst immigrants is a less ideological
| view of foreign policy. They have often seen first hand that
| American has done a lot of harmful things abroad. At the same
| time, they compartmentalize that because they don't view
| foreign policy in terms of "good and evil." They may also feel
| less ownership of America's role and status as world
| "lawgiver."
|
| I also think immigrants are more cynical than Americans. I'd
| describe my dad and myself as "pro America," but neither of us
| care about Ukraine. (And frankly I see no connection between
| being pro-American and supporting Ukraine.) As immigrants from
| Bangladesh we don't have idealistic notions about sovereignty
| and human rights. "The strong do what they can and the weak
| suffer what they must." (It drives my Daughter of the American
| Revolution wife nuts when we say "some countries' fate is to be
| a buffer state.")
|
| And of course "immigrants" are not homogenous but rather from a
| wide range of different countries that have various
| idiosyncratic positions on foreign policy. Some of the most
| rabidly patriotic people I know are kids of Vietnamese
| immigrants. Meanwhile in India and Bangladesh, there is a
| historical affinity with Russia from the Soviet times.
|
| [1] The Black population share was 11% in 1960 and 12% in 2010,
| and is projected to rise to 13% in 2050.
| https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/files/2012/11/117.jpg.
| The white population share will decrease from 85% to 47%, with
| almost all of the delta due to Hispanics, and to a lesser
| extent Asians.
| yobbo wrote:
| It seems likely that "gen z" americans have few clues about
| what historic and present day russia is, and generally about
| the land mass between Poland and Korea.
|
| They are just now waking up from two years of debating whether
| not wearing masks was a hate crime.
|
| Maybe in their minds, the conditions on the opposite side of
| the world just seem too brutal to belong in the same reality.
| It looks and sounds too crazy to be real, so they can't decide
| if it's fake.
| dekhn wrote:
| I was a high school student during the collapse of the SU and
| even before that had a bit of a fascination on Russia. When I
| went to college (~1992), I took a Russian Politics class
| because I wanted to understand the collapse and what was
| going to happen. at the end of the course the teacher asked
| if we thought that Russia was on its way to becoming a
| western democracy and we all nodded. He said "you learned
| NOTHING! Nothing has changed in Russia except a slightly
| newer generation is in power. Their leadership and government
| are still corrupt and are handing over the russian state
| assets to oligarchs who share little with the people of
| russia. By the way, keep your eyes on these guys Khodorkovky
| (the oligarch) and Zhirinovsky (the ultra-nationalist) as
| they represent two directions that Russia could go."
|
| I don't recall putin or medvedev ever being mentioned in that
| class, but it's clear that's the time that mattered to them,
| defining their worldview.
| pueblito wrote:
| Or, maybe, they grew up talking to people from all over the
| world and have a far better understanding than boomers raised
| on television
| fhood wrote:
| Neither is correct. Gen Z, like all young generations, is
| idealistic, anti-status quo, and thinks their experiences
| and perspectives are completely unique and novel. As they
| get older they will transition, hopefully retaining some of
| their more progressive and forward thinking values, which
| will become imbedded in society and so the cycle will
| continue.
| erdos4d wrote:
| Former university lecturer here. In my experience, gen Z
| have ZERO understanding of history or geopolitics. I'm
| serious, they just don't know what happened before their
| lifetime and cannot hold a coherent conversation about
| historical events or the geopolitical realities which flow
| from them. So no, this is not true.
| dekhn wrote:
| what's really crazy is my 12 year old is watching a lot
| of political stuff on youtube and was asking me about
| what will happen with belarus, and the fate of all the
| other ex-soviet union countries. He also asks a bunch
| about world war II, which in my opinion is the most
| important historical event to understand because it's
| what led to the current situation.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| I have dealt with people on a large spectrum of literacy
| -- it is true that many people have little practical
| knowledge of even major international events, but a
| simple measure misses an important point. People _care_
| about those events to vastly different degrees; people
| _know_ about those events to vastly different degrees;
| and then people know and care about parts of real
| history, in skewed and incomplete ways, as an inevitable
| part of the human condition.
|
| by example -- I knew about ancient greeks partly due to
| interest in classics as a young intellectual.. most
| people at that age did not know any details of ancient
| greeks. But I did not care very much about military
| history, so even if I knew it, I didnt factor it into
| relevant thinking. Next, wrt middle ages history of
| Ottoman slave society, fluxes in military rule in North
| Africa, or endless tribal and cultural clashes in eastern
| Europe.. I just did not know many of those things, to
| this day. Maybe I might care, but I had literally not
| heard of certain things (like Mongols in Poland, or
| Napolean imprisoning a sitting Pope, or Vikings in
| Turkey) and did not know they existed, even as as active
| learner.
|
| So to sum up, people may know a little bit, but do not
| care, therefore do not apply it to reasoning. Even people
| who do have greater capacity for details, may not know,
| due to incomplete learning and local teaching of history.
| Last, wikipedia really is a remarkable thing in our time.
| bsder wrote:
| > Or, maybe, they grew up talking to people from all over
| the world and have a far better understanding than boomers
| raised on television
|
| I would argue precisely the opposite.
|
| Support in tech for Ukraine is quite high because most
| people have worked with Ukranian programmers, generally
| find them to be decent human beings like all human beings,
| and seeing posts/pictures from someone you know _in the
| midst of being attacked_ upsets you.
|
| Most Americans working non-tech jobs, even the supposedly
| worldly younger-than-Boomers, have never had contact with
| somebody outside American borders. Tech can expand your
| world. Tech can also simply provide a safe bubble that
| never disturbs your delicate sensibilities.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| >Gen Z is also more diverse and broadly anti-American (or
| "anti-imperialist")
|
| An irony, considering that Russian imperialism is the one that
| actually performs land grabs and ethnic cleansing without even
| trying to cover it up.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| The US was in Iraq and Afghanistan accidentally bombing
| schools, hospitals, and wedding parties for the entirety of
| Gen Z's lives.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| How is it ironic? It's like, "Gen Z hates assault... An
| irony, considering that murder is even more violent."
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| It's 2022. Fire up TikTok, start liking videos, and choose
| whatever narrative you want. Everything you don't like is
| crisis acting and media bias? Sure! Digital reality is
| becoming schizophrenic.
| steveylang wrote:
| It's like the opposite of '1984', and yet somehow the same.
| whoopdedo wrote:
| Read Fahrenheit 451 instead.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| At least Russia actually declares war when it places another
| country within its empire's sights. The USA just acts like it
| owns the entire american continent and the means to its
| imperialistic ends range from cultural exportation and
| massive economic leverage to literally teaching dictators how
| torture and repress dissidents. Look up School of the
| Americas for an example.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| "Special military operation"
| secondcoming wrote:
| Has Russia formally declared War on Ukraine, or is it still
| a Special Military Operation?
| jcadam wrote:
| Are formal declarations of war even a thing any more?
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| It seems to me that openly invading a country is a rather
| unambiguous way to declare war. Compared to espionage,
| covert operations and such.
| Arrath wrote:
| And the attempted assassinations of dissidents/defectors
| with nerve agents only available to one country seems a
| rather unambiguous way to declare it was a state-
| sanctioned hit, yet it was denied up and down.
|
| As is this invasion portrayed as a 'special military
| operation', what distinction that actually is from an
| invasion is up to the rules lawyers, apparently.
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| They are not allowed to call it that in Russia. It's a
| "special operation".
| nickthegreek wrote:
| you know they cant call it a war on russian tv right?
| mc32 wrote:
| It's because kids are effed by the media. They have been fed
| a whole bunch of lies and propaganda one way or another in
| order to get them to support or denounce some cause or other
| so they don't know what to believe. So they throw their hands
| up and give up and "let them sort it out"
|
| The media and establishment want it both ways. in the '80s
| imperialism was BAD. Now, rebranded as globalism, this
| imperialism is good, but that one over there by them is BAD!
| and so on it goes.
|
| Can't blame them after the Iraq war and everyone getting on a
| bandwagon of lies including the left, right and center with
| the exception of Libertarians.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _Can 't blame them after the Iraq war and everyone
| getting on a bandwagon of lies including the left, right
| and center with the exception of Libertarians._
|
| This is only true if your conception of 'the left' is just
| American liberals. Plenty of people and groups on the left
| were against the invasions from the get-go.
| mc32 wrote:
| Sure and we also had a handful of people on the right who
| were against it too. I'm talking about groups that matter
| --those that make up more than 5% of a pop.
|
| Main point stands though. the media want to have it
| multiple ways, like John Kerry, one day it's for
| something, then, the next, it's against the same thing,
| and a third day it's back on.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Ok, for groups that matter, a majority (61%) of US House
| Democrats formally opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2002.
| Even a majority of US Congress Democrats.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Mi
| lit...
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| > so they don't know what to believe. So they throw their
| hands up and give up and "let them sort it out"
|
| This is a result of a common propaganda attack by a party
| that wants to cover up the truth: seed multiple competing
| story lines through varying outlets to create a sense of
| confusion. That way, when the truth is reported, people
| will react to it like it's just 1 more among the many
| competing stories.
|
| Russia in particular has been running this play both
| domestically and abroad. It's a formidable approach, and
| defense against it is difficult.
| mc32 wrote:
| In some cases the above is true. But we have many
| examples of not just the same organ but the same author
| saying one things one day, and making a 180 the next time
| it's convenient. Why censoring blah blah is good! Why
| censoring blah blah is bad! Why sympathizing with blah
| blah is racist, Why sympathizing with blah blah is
| actually anti-racist.
|
| You get enough of this and people tune out and don't give
| a lick any more.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Can't blame them after the Iraq war and everyone getting
| on a bandwagon of lies including the left, right and center
| with the exception of Libertarians.
|
| The Left (including most of the center-left Democratic
| faction in Congress) was against the Iraq War, the more
| dominant Democratic center-right faction was for it (or, at
| least, against _not_ giving the President the authority to
| wage it conditionally, which some of them will distinguish
| by suggesting that the required determinations made by the
| President under that authority were in bad faith, but that
| was pretty predictable...)
| tonguez wrote:
| ">Gen Z is also more diverse and broadly anti-American (or
| "anti-imperialist") An irony, considering that Russian
| imperialism is the one that actually performs land grabs and
| ethnic cleansing without even trying to cover it up."
|
| you should learn about this thing called the 2003 invasion of
| Iraq, then the Vietnam war, etc.
| huragok wrote:
| Just as more than one thing can be bad, you can be against
| imperialism, stand with oppressed peoples and deeply question
| the official American story.
| ncallaway wrote:
| Agreed that you don't have to accept the official American
| story.
|
| You can not be "anti-imperialist" and tolerate this war,
| however. This is a war of Russian imperialism.
|
| American imperialism is bad, I agree with that. But Russian
| imperialism is also bad. As was British imperialism.
|
| If you're an anti-imperialism, you must be against the
| Russian invasion.
| huragok wrote:
| I agree?
| ncallaway wrote:
| I wasn't really trying to disagree with you on this. I've
| seen a sentiment from some "anti-imperialist" voices that
| end up being primarily anti-western voices, that assume
| that _only_ the US and the West behave with imperialist
| policy.
|
| Anyway, I wasn't trying to disagree with you or anything.
| Just adding my own clarification around the context from
| some of the other discussions I've had on this topic.
| See, for example, macanchex's reply to my topic, which
| places all of the blame for this war on Western powers.
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| In India, even very right wing people are ambivalent or
| only somewhat supportive of Putin, whereas the supposedly
| "anti imperialist" Communists seem to have fallen in love
| with him. They go to great lengths to localize and
| translate Russian propaganda.
| pmontra wrote:
| This might be a case of the enemy of my enemy (capitalist
| USA) are my friends. Actually they are only the enemy of
| their enemy and also capitalists, but the hopes of a
| lifetime can be self delusional.
| macanchex wrote:
| https://www.thepostil.com/the-military-situation-in-the-
| ukra...
|
| The dramatic developments we are witnessing today have
| causes that we knew about but refused to see:
| on the strategic level, the expansion of NATO (which we
| have not dealt with here); on the political
| level, the Western refusal to implement the Minsk
| Agreements; and operationally, the continuous and
| repeated attacks on the civilian population of the
| Donbass over the past years and the dramatic increase in
| late February 2022.
| ncallaway wrote:
| > the expansion of NATO (which we have not dealt with
| here)
|
| A voluntary alliance isn't an imperialist agenda
| (assuming that the sovereign nations have the opportunity
| to make a _truly_ voluntary decision, without outside
| coercion).
|
| In fact, many nations have requested _voluntarily_ to
| join NATO. Ukraine was one such nation, and wasn 't
| allowed in.
|
| Arguing that Russia should get a veto over which
| defensive alliances other nations join is a _pro-
| imperialist_ position. You 're taking the view that
| Russia gets to determine the behavior of other nations,
| because they are "in its security umbrella". I'm sorry,
| but that position is inherently untenable for an "anti-
| imperialist".
|
| It's a coherent position for Russian Nationalists, or for
| believers in Super Power Imperialism.
| Calavar wrote:
| > on the strategic level, the expansion of NATO (which we
| have not dealt with here);
|
| This is an Orwellian distortion of language.
|
| Expansion can be interpreted in a literal sense or a
| metaphorical one. Organizations expand in a metaphorical
| sense. When we say that a company "expands" by by
| entering a new market or hiring new talent, we know that
| this is metaphorical.
|
| NATO is a defensive pact with voluntary membership, but
| by calling it "expansionist," Russia plays a trick where
| it evokes the literal sense of expand to transform NATO
| into the aggressor. It seems fairly plain to me that the
| real expansionists would be the ones who have literally,
| physically expanded into a neighboring country by
| annexing Crimea. The expansionists would be the ones who
| are currently occupying territory in three foreign
| nations against the will of those nations' governments.
|
| > and operationally, the continuous and repeated attacks
| on the civilian population of the Donbass over the past
| years and the dramatic increase in late February 2022.
|
| By third party estimates, the civillian casualties in the
| Russian invasion are about two to three orders of
| magnitude higher than the civilian casualties in Donbass
| prior to the invasion. This is like slaughtering an
| entire village because it contains a single murderer.
| There is absolutely zero ambiguity about where the moral
| high ground is here.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| >By third party estimates, the civillian casualties in
| the Russian invasion are about two to three orders of
| magnitude higher than the civilian casualties in Donbass
| prior to the invasion. This is like slaughtering an
| entire village because it contains a single murderer.
| There is absolutely zero ambiguity about where the moral
| high ground is here.
|
| This does not even include the fact that any civilian
| casualties in Donbass were either incidents when
| counterfiring to russian and separatist shelling, or
| russian provocations.
|
| We can even see this right now in the war: Russia just
| randomly shells apartment blocks with Grads, while UA
| only targets real military targets on Russian soil, like
| Belgorod fuel depots or Taganrog airfield. Russian
| propaganda doesn't even try to claim that, at least yet.
| lief79 wrote:
| Wasn't expecting the author to start with their time at
| Nato. It certainly doesn't match the western narrative,
| but seems far closer to the Russian narrative (explained
| cohesively).
|
| He seems to be claiming there wasn't weapons transfer to
| Donbass, etc when they were initially acting as break
| away republics. How does he explain MH17? I spent too
| much time looking at this.
| mcguire wrote:
| This is, of course, the Russian take on the war. The
| Ukrainian version is significantly different. (And given
| the whole genocide thing, I know which I lean towards. I
| mean really, NATO, the West, and the Ukrainian government
| is responsible for Russian war crimes? https://www.reuter
| s.com/resizer/i8u1Zr3pjvon_ZDTHHfs5b6IwlE=...)
| macanchex wrote:
| Jacques Baud is a former colonel of the General Staff,
| ex-member of the Swiss strategic intelligence, specialist
| on Eastern countries. He was trained in the American and
| British intelligence services. He has served as Policy
| Chief for United Nations Peace Operations.
|
| On Bucha: https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/04/if-the-
| pentagon-can-no...
| kcb wrote:
| Truly horrendous link. Your appeal to authority is
| nonsense, it doesn't take long to find someone with even
| more commas to dispute it.
|
| > Anyone who is still pushing more weapons into Ukraine
| or tells Kiev to prolong the war is putting more
| Ukrainian lives at risk for zero potential gain.
|
| Surely life under Russia will be blissful with no
| Ukrainians harmed.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| > on the political level, the Western refusal to
| implement the Minsk Agreements; and operationally, the
| continuous and repeated attacks on the civilian
| population of the Donbass over the past years and the
| dramatic increase in late February 2022.
|
| To think that Ukraine was shelling Donbass and
| "provoking" after what we seen in the last 50 days is
| truly a mental distortion.
| ffwszgf wrote:
| In some left-wing circles anti-Americanism and anti-
| imperialism are indistinguishable. People like Max Blumenthal
| are the perfect representatives of this ideology.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I don't know anything about max blumenthal so sure.
|
| But if you are american, those things pretty much _should_
| be the same. Anti-imperialism is not an abstract struggle,
| and for many around the world the US and its allies are a
| concrete enemy they 've come by honestly.
|
| If you live in the US, solidarity with those people means
| using whatever power you have internally to oppose the US's
| imperial actions.
|
| The US is not the _only_ imperialist force by any means.
| But particularly from inside one of these machines, it is
| hard to understand and act against other forms of
| imperialism without also assisting your own country 's
| imperial projects.
|
| Countries are adept at turning their own subversive and
| radical movements outward against their political enemies.
| An awareness of the mechanics of imperialism does I think
| lead to a "clean up your own house first" praxis and I
| don't think there's anything wrong with that.
| dash2 wrote:
| The US is currently helping Ukraine fight an invasion by
| a larger country whose soldiers have murdered and raped
| their way through its civilians. In this particular case,
| being anti-American is the exact opposite of being anti-
| imperialist. Either Ukraine gets weapons, or it doesn't.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Thankfully in this wonderful world you can both abhor and
| fight American imperialism and global stupidity AND also
| support America arming Ukraine to the teeth to fight off
| another imperial aggressor.
|
| They are not opposing takes. Someone trying to tell you
| they are is trying to sell you a fiction that just so
| happens to benefit Russia
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| I agree so much. I would love to see next Nuremberg with
| Putin and George Bush.
| fffff0pg4 wrote:
| What you say here makes sense but it is not at all what
| is being practiced by some of the "anti-imperialist"
| left. Max Blumenthal's definition of anti-imperialism
| begins and ends with America. In his worldview opposing
| the US and its interests uncritically is the duty of
| every leftist. If the US supports Ukraine you must oppose
| it. If the US accuses China of genocide you must support
| China. If fascists oppose the US government you must side
| with them too. You must support any and every so-called
| enemy of the US regardless of what they do or who they
| are (after all it's all lies from the mainstream media).
| I am not saying every political commentator should be
| obligated to report on the abuses of every global power
| lest they be called "hypocritical", but some leftists
| will actively defend atrocities as long as they are done
| in opposition to the US.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Yeah I see what you're saying. Again without conceding
| that I share this view of this person, since I haven't
| read his works.
|
| But while I don't think that position is _correct_ , I do
| think it's probably valuable to have some people take
| that stance. It's similar to the social value in having
| non-political conservatism that will resist all change no
| matter what. We'll change anyway, but having to fight for
| it a little will slow down the changes, hopefully dodge
| some of the worst consequences, maybe prevent some
| changes that shouldn't actually happen.
|
| The US _should_ be opposed. Not because we are inherently
| bad, but because our interests aren 't everyone's
| interests. An always-support, always-oppose, or case-by-
| case stance will each have different failure modes. I
| think we want a mix, as unpalatable as that can be
| sometimes.
| lief79 wrote:
| If that's interpreted as can do no wrong, than always
| support and always oppose are just putting on blinders. I
| can see it as a media persona, but the intellectual
| dishonesty required to actually believe that is scary.
|
| Apologists / accidents happen I can understand, but I
| wouldn't trust any individual pretending that they can do
| no wrong.
| johnny22 wrote:
| I totally understand where they are coming from and trend
| in that direction of thought, but I also have a brain. :)
|
| Nuance is important. It's just that younger lefty folks
| aren't used to having to use nuance on this particular
| topic.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| If the Russian invasion of Ukraine has taught me anything, it's
| that a) while overt Russian propaganda seems to largely fail in
| Europe, the more subtle suggestions are widespread b) most
| people have genuinely horribly bad defense takes c) there are
| somewhat more tankies than I expected
| cguess wrote:
| The number of tankies has been impressive. I'm not sure how
| anyone can look at Russia and think "yea, they made some good
| points," and I study misinformation professionally. It's not
| even on the believable scale.
| prepend wrote:
| > You also have people bringing up Yemen, Syria, Palestine, etc
| to emphasize the "white-supremacist"
|
| It's interesting that I've noticed many posts of "Ukrainian
| refugees were accepted, Syrian refugees weren't; therefore,
| racism" since the outbreak. I wish Instagram, Facebook, Twitter
| would release more research on ad spend by company and not
| activity.
|
| It's pretty cheap to buy these kind of ads and market toward
| people who signal boost such causes. So I'm assuming that
| Russia is doing that.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _So I'm assuming that Russia is doing that_
|
| I've learned there's a certain portion of the population that
| believes the Russians are behind almost everything.
| prepend wrote:
| Perhaps. The reason I hav the suspicion is because it seems
| like Russia benefits the most in this situation from have a
| narrative against Ukrainian refugees and conflating
| Ukraine's issues with Syria's issues.
|
| Logically, there are so many differences between the two
| populations it wouldn't make sense to actually make a
| racism claim (eg, Syrians were high percentage young male
| vs Ukrainian families; Syria over multiple years vs
| Ukrainians in weeks; 8M Syrians vs 1M Ukrainians; Syrians
| travel across multiple countries far away vs Ukrainians in
| neighboring countries; we're only weeks in for Ukraine vs
| years for Syria; etc etc).
|
| The two situations are very different so comparing the two
| and then saying that the reason is racism seems pretty
| silly. So I think "what's more likely, silliness or Russian
| bots?"
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| >Those videos of Ukrainians discriminating against people or
| color were signal boosted everywhere on Twitter. Same with the
| Azov Batallion which some people believe are the entire
| Ukrainian army.
|
| Maybe I'm old but I haven't seen any of these things. Where do
| you find all of these?
| edgyquant wrote:
| I haven't personally watched any but I did see them thrown
| around in thread about India-Russian relations (videos of
| Indians being discriminated against by Ukrainians.)
| recuter wrote:
| > Most younger people are quite skeptic of mainstream media so
| they don't trust the narrative CNN and Fox News are trying to
| sell them.With the elderly it's the opposite.
|
| That's a funny use of the word skeptical. I think you mean
| outright ignorant.
|
| That's how we get "Dear Mister President Vladimir Putin..."
| https://twitter.com/IAMannalynnemcc/status/14968775417720627...
|
| They simply don't care beyond an opportunity to self-
| aggrandize. We're over a month in, Ukraine is old news already.
|
| Before you call me an old fogey, I am younger than the woman in
| this video clip with 32 million views.
|
| These are dark times.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| > Finally Russia has, in my opinion, waged a fairly successful
| social media campaign to muddy the waters. Those videos of
| Ukrainians discriminating against people or color were signal
| boosted everywhere on Twitter. Same with the Azov Batallion
| which some people believe are the entire Ukrainian army. You
| also have people bringing up Yemen, Syria, Palestine, etc to
| emphasize the "white-supremacist" support of Ukraine receiving
| overwhelming attention.
|
| On the other side of things, on Reddit, nothing unfavorable
| about Ukraine is getting attention. You don't see any posts
| about Russia gaining territory, or Zelensky censoring media
| outlets favorable to opposition parties.
|
| And nowhere on reddit or in the media do I see a discussion of
| the pros and cons of a Ukrainian surrender. It's really hard to
| see how Ukraine will successfully fend off a country 10x its
| size. (If someone has an answer as to why that might be
| realistic, I'm open to hear it).
| pseudo0 wrote:
| > And nowhere on reddit or in the media do I see a discussion
| of the pros and cons of a Ukrainian surrender. It's really
| hard to see how Ukraine will successfully fend off a country
| 10x its size. (If someone has an answer as to why that might
| be realistic, I'm open to hear it).
|
| The status quo is far too advantageous for the pro-war
| segment of our national security establishment for that idea
| to get any traction. Currently we have a "moral" war for the
| first time since the Balkans, it's strengthening NATO, and
| Russia is being weakened at the expense of mere pocket change
| and outdated weapons. And from a PR perspective, the American
| public cares far less about Ukrainian casualties than dead
| American soldiers. Then there's the benefit of blaming Putin
| for inflation with "Putinflation" and advancing other goals
| like shutting down Nordstream 2 and selling LNG to Europe.
|
| I'm pro-Ukraine, but I can't help but notice how average
| Ukrainians are being screwed by this conflict, while US
| foreign policy hawks are breaking out the champagne.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "average Ukrainians are being screwed by this conflict"
| because Russia decided to attack them and crush their
| resistance.
|
| I feel sorry for the Ukrainians, having met a lot of
| refugees in Prague. But I don't believe that they would
| rather surrender and have "Russian peace". Some of them
| perhaps, but not the majority. They do not want to be yoked
| again.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Were "Russian peace" then means "comprehensive de-
| ukrainification and elimination of the intelligentsia to
| leave a braindead husk of a state behind", as publicly
| announced in Russia and partially implemented in occupied
| areas.
| einarfd wrote:
| > And nowhere on reddit or in the media do I see a discussion
| of the pros and cons of a Ukrainian surrender. It's really
| hard to see how Ukraine will successfully fend off a country
| 10x its size. (If someone has an answer as to why that might
| be realistic, I'm open to hear it).
|
| It's really hard to see that Ukraine by itself could defeat
| Russia and it definitely seems far fetched, even if the
| Russian army has shown itself more inept than expected.
|
| But that isn't what is happening either, and a Ukraine
| bankrolled and armed by the west. That is something else, and
| that combination might definitely be abel to defeat Russia.
| So the question is more, is the west or parts of it willing
| to spend enough and accept escalating tensions with nuclear
| armed Russia by doing that?
|
| If you look at what Zelensky is doing at the drumbeat of asks
| for more weapons is obvious that Ukraine is fully aware of
| this.
| fhood wrote:
| Assuming no direct western intervention, I think the
| crucial next steps for a Ukraine victory will center around
| whether NATO can transition from providing soviet surplus
| to modern western arms, and get Ukrainians the training
| required in time. F-16s or even 35s and modern air defenses
| could play a huge role in making russian territory gains
| largely impossible, but the operational training would be
| measured in multiple weeks at a minimum.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >It's really hard to see that Ukraine by itself could
| defeat Russia
|
| There are many paths but they are all long term "replace
| the Taliban with the Taliban" type ones that people don't
| wanna talk about.
| einarfd wrote:
| Fair enough, I was thinking more of a classic win by
| defeating the Russian army on the battlefield. But the
| kind of loss the USSR had in Afghanistan might be
| possible without much if any help from abroad.
| watwut wrote:
| The kind of victory Afghanistant had also means ending up
| with deeply authoritarian and violent society. It implies
| complete destruction of democratic civil society,
| unfortunately.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >The kind of victory Afghanistant had also means ending
| up with deeply authoritarian and violent society.
|
| The current Taliban are way, way more liberal than the
| 90s Taliban. They've embraced modern communication,
| dropped most of their Pashtun ethnic supremacy stuff and
| are a little less violent across the board. That's really
| a big change all things considered.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| Unless you're a woman.
| gunfighthacksaw wrote:
| > It's really hard to see how Ukraine will successfully
| fend off a country 10x its size
|
| Every Ukrainian defender kills 10 Russian occupiers?
|
| Obviously some will be less fortunate, and a select few
| will go down in history as extremely effective removers of
| Russian conscripts.
| cm2187 wrote:
| You should look at it from Putin's point of view.
| Escalating with the west is even less of an option.
| Militarily, I don't think he has any doubt about US, French
| and UK nuclear deterrence. Even if you take nukes off the
| table, if you look how poorly his troops are doing in
| Ukraine, imagine that against NATO, even without the US.
|
| He might "escalate to de-escalate", i.e. make a lot of
| noise about escalation to intimidate Biden (so far it
| worked), but it can only be bluff. Whichever metric you
| use, the ratio of power between Russia and Europe is much
| greater than Ukraine to Russia.
| fhood wrote:
| While I tend to agree, reading through the various
| nuclear close calls as far as I can tell, there were far
| more on the Russian side than the American one, and while
| American nuclear incidents tended to be headed off with
| everyone following orders and working within established
| systems, Russian ones usually involve one guy literally
| refusing an order. It's hard to know how accurate all of
| this is, but it does imply deterrent through
| incompetence. The concern is not limited to intentional
| nuclear strikes, every time Russian forces get put on
| alert the threat of an accident grows. Putin likely knows
| this, and NATO is also very wary of it.
| watwut wrote:
| You assume same value system on Putin side as you have
| and that is unlikely.
| blub wrote:
| What will the US, UK and France do if Russia uses a
| tactical nuke in Ukraine? Nuking Russia because they
| nuked Ukraine is... very unlikely.
| brimble wrote:
| A ton of countries would join NATO ASAP (if allowed in,
| and several would be) or rush to form new collective
| defense coalitions that include at least one other
| nuclear power, which in many cases would likely come with
| significant concessions to that nuclear power (i.e. China
| gains a _de facto_ , if smallish, empire overnight).
|
| Everyone refuses to trade with Russia until they're
| reduced to one of the most miserable countries on the
| planet. If their nuke program falls apart, several
| countries take some territory from them and no-one minds.
| Possibly they're reduced to _selling_ parts of the
| country (maybe on a lease-like arrangement, which isn 't
| unprecedented) in exchange for re-opening limited trade
| with countries that are willing, but see that they really
| have them over a barrel (China, again, is a likely
| beneficiary)
|
| Several countries start or re-prioritize nuclear
| programs. Turkey, Iran, South Korea, and maybe even
| Japan, all likely candidates. Maybe more.
|
| That's roughly what I'd expect the world to do about it,
| _if_ the result isn 't a spiral into outright nuclear
| war, or a swift and decisive coup in Russia. No, it's not
| good, but it's especially not good for Russia.
| cm2187 wrote:
| That's not what nuclear deterrence protects against. If
| he does that there will be other forms of escalation. A
| Iran/North Korean style set of economic sanctions
| possibly (I don't think India and China would support
| Putin anymore at that point). Possibly a direct
| confrontation over Ukraine (no fly zone or a no fly zone
| by proxy, giving the Ukrainians the missile defence
| sufficient to clear the sky). Etc.
| monkeydreams wrote:
| > You should look at it from Putin's point of view.
| Escalating with the west is even less of an option.
|
| I see this differently.
|
| My understanding of the Russian "heartland" narratives
| suggest Russia is dead if they cannot control Ukraine in
| the medium term. Their "multi polar" view suggests that
| they MUST be at the centre of an anti-US alliance
| extending across Asia, Europe and Africa.
|
| From these perspectives they HAVE to fight this war now.
| Even if they lose now, they feel they have to keep
| trying.
| watwut wrote:
| Russia has 3x times as many people as Ukraine, not 10x
| times. It has a lot more land, but I doubt it is 10x times
| more.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Russia has 3x times as many people as Ukraine, not 10x
| times. It has a lot more land, but I doubt it is 10x
| times more.
|
| It's actually almost 30x the land area (6.6M mi2 vs 233k
| mi2)
| watwut wrote:
| Ukraine is approximately 603,550 sq km, while Russia is
| approximately 17,098,242 sq km, making Russia 2,733%
| larger than Ukraine.
|
| The best effect of Russian admirers and propaganda alike
| is that people think it is bigger then it is and that
| everything Russian is better then it is. It is also
| country where huge amount of population does not have
| flushable toilet, have huge inequality and massive amount
| of internal issues.
|
| Russian main advantage is that it does not value human
| life and is OK with massive looses. And that it has zero
| ethical limits with regards to civilians. That is amount
| of greatness.
| ahahahahah wrote:
| This comment is really weird. It's written as though it's
| correcting an incorrect assumption in the parent. But
| it's literally confirming what the parent said.
|
| Parent: russia is almost 30x the size of ukraine
|
| This comment: what?! you're confused by russian
| propaganda! it's only 2733% larger than ukraine
|
| And then, even if you adjust to claim that you were
| trying to reinforce parent's point, that's not plausible
| either since parent was actually pointing out that
| people's belief that russia was 10x bigger was actually a
| large underestimate of its size.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Russia has a ton of land (with most of it being
| unproductive land in Siberia), but that won't help them
| to win the war.
|
| It is actually more of a problem than an asset, because
| they must guard very long shores and borders against
| unfriendly neighbors. And if they decide to redeploy a
| unit from Khabarovsk to Ukraine, it takes at least a week
| to move it by rail. Probably longer than that. Not
| exactly a recipe for flexibility.
| einarfd wrote:
| I didn't introduce the 10x figure. But if you look at
| GDP, 10x seems about right. GDP is often used to compare
| countries, and that the size, and quality of the army you
| can field is based on GDP of the country, seems somewhat
| reasonable.
| pasabagi wrote:
| The GDP doesn't really matter in this conflict, since the
| Ukraine is essentially getting all its weapons,
| intelligence and training for free.
|
| That and, a lot of the Russian military (the reserves)
| and their equipment (ships, subs, intercontinental
| bombers, nukes, etc) are not really going to help the
| Russians win the conflict, since they're either not
| useful, or politically impossible to use.
|
| I think if Putin can sell to the Russian people that this
| is a _war_ , not a _special military operation_ , and as
| such, they should call up the reserves, break the law
| about how those reserves are allowed to be used, etc,
| then they could probably win. Without that, I don't think
| it's that realistic: they're fighting against a totally
| mobilized country that's being flooded with high-tech
| weapons. Imagine afghanistan, if the taleban were armed
| for free by the western military-industrial complex. The
| US wouldn't be able to do it. Russia almost certainly
| won't be able either.
| ycombigator wrote:
| Russia has about 150M people. Ukraine has about 50M.
|
| If Ukraine refuse to cooperate with Russia and fight a
| guerrilla war, there is absolutely no way they can hold the
| whole country.
| lobocinza wrote:
| Russia is a paper bear, it makes up on quality with quantity
| but it's a vastly unpopulated country with an old population.
| Morale is low, equipment is old and in poor shape. Russia is
| an empire and have a large share of it's forces tied down to
| inner tensions and can't be employed. The gross of Russians
| soldiers are composed by ethnic and and poor soldiers thus
| some are more interested in stealing than fighting. Also
| Russian forces haven't been significantly employed in the
| last decades. It's no secret that poor equipped but combat
| experienced militia from Donbass/Lugansk are being more
| effective than better equipped and trained Russian forces.
| watwut wrote:
| > You don't see any posts about Russia gaining territory
|
| I have seen daily posts about Russia gaining territory in
| news. For weeks, it was daily report of Russian progression
| even with maps.
|
| And Russia is not 10x bigger.
|
| I have also seen more articles about nazi in Ukraine then
| nazi in Russia. In fact, Russian fascism and Putins
| rehabilitation of Stalin were oddly missing. For years, but
| also during this conflict.
|
| It was only when invasion started to look like genocide
| journalists started to look more at who Russia actually is.
| rgbrenner wrote:
| Not 10x. 146m vs 41m people... and a bigger percentage of
| Ukrainians are in the fight. Russia has only sent 200k troops
| to Ukraine.. ukraine has 500k active and reserve troops, not
| including civilians who take up arms.
| lostmsu wrote:
| I'd also bid that if Russia decided to get people from
| reserves, many would simply refuse to wage war against
| Ukraine.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| I/we also assumed that Russian soldiers wouldn't warcrime
| around like they used to in other countries because it's
| Ukraine, but alas.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| And the current weird fiction of "it is a special
| operation, not a war" prevents them from switching to war
| economy / law fully.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| Russian Population: 145.20m Ukrainian Population: 41.46m
|
| Morale: While the war is popular in Russia, that's mostly
| among older generation who won't be fighting in the war. On
| the other hand Ukraine is highly motivated to not become a
| part of Russia.
|
| Logistics: The Russian military logistics are terrible, their
| military was built to wage a defensive war next to Russian
| railroads. They don't have much practice projecting power.
|
| Kleptocracy: The Russian commanders have been systematically
| stealing all of the money Putin was pumping into the
| military.
|
| Training: Since 2014 the Ukrainian military has undergone a
| revolution building a modern NATO trained military, the
| Russian military just isn't as good.
|
| Command: The Russian military does a lot of top down decision
| making, this means they can't react to news quickly. There
| observe -> decide -> act cycle is so long they can't really
| hit moving targets.
|
| The only advantage Russia has is a larger population, and
| nuclear weapons. Every other advantage is to the Ukrainian's.
| Right now Russia has taken losses similar or worse than the
| absolutely worst his armies in the civil war. There are
| battalions where 80% of the soldiers are dead or wounded.
|
| A large portion of the Russian military goes home in June,
| and they're going to have a tough time replacing them when
| Ukraine is viewed as a meat grinder.
| cm2187 wrote:
| Depends on your definition of "fend off". Take back Crimea, I
| think not going to happen. Make it really hard for the
| Russians in Donbas, inflicting heavy losses, very achievable.
| Stopping the Russians from taking over the south, quite
| likely. The Russians taking over the whole country, that ship
| has sailed by now.
|
| I don't know many western countries that would tolerate to be
| invaded, having some territory taken off without fighting
| back bitterly. I mean this is the whole story of ww1.
|
| In the end it is up to the Ukrainians to decide how much pain
| they are willing to endure for their independence and
| freedom. But if they chose to fight, it's not our role to
| second guess their decision and it is our duty to help them
| (at least us Europeans - for US citizens, different story).
| johnny22 wrote:
| > And nowhere on reddit or in the media do I see a discussion
| of the pros and cons of a Ukrainian surrender.
|
| Isn't this up the ukranians themselves? I mean really.
|
| Maybe the Americans should have just given up on their
| revolution in order to save more lives. There is no way they
| could win against the might of the british empire.
| rayiner wrote:
| > Isn't this up the ukranians themselves? I mean really.
|
| Nope. The world needs Ukraine to be a buffer state. Sorry.
| Greatest good for the greatest number and whatnot.
| tenpies wrote:
| If I may, my impression is also that the younger generations
| don't "get" war. Why would I, ever shoot someone just like me
| because his/her/xyr government has forced them to point a rifle
| at me?
|
| They've been raised in a post-modernist neo-marxist environment
| that very clearly marks the Western order as evil. To them,
| there is no "good vs evil", because they are evil and the West
| has no redeeming factors.
|
| Why would you fight to defend that? Why fight to spread that?
|
| Add a keen awareness of the Elites (however you define them) as
| the sole beneficiaries or war. The conscript or recruit on the
| ground pays the price so some WEF-agenda shareholder gets to
| see a bigger dividend this quarter? Hard pass fam.
|
| Add in a general anxiety about everything: from talking to a
| stranger to the impeding collapse of life on Earth due to
| climate change within X years (where X is always a handful of
| years away), and war doesn't make sense. There are Bigger
| Issues than some lines on the map drawn by Evil White Men.
|
| Now obviously this is all a generalization, and all of it goes
| out the window the minute someone shoots at you, but it's going
| to be interesting to watch what tactics have to be used to get
| an unwilling generation in the metaphorical front lines.
| ajkjk wrote:
| I guess I'm part of that generation you're talking about, and
| it it really feels like only one of the things you listed
| matters:
|
| > Why would I, ever shoot someone just like me because
| his/her/xyr government has forced them to point a rifle at
| me?
|
| It's irrespective of the western order being evil or anything
| to do with climate change. Sure, there's a sense that the
| elites are the only beneficiaries of war, but even before
| that you'd have to explain why it's okay to shoot someone for
| someone else's _benefit_, even if it's our own. The very idea
| is absurd.
|
| I think most millennial sorts are on board with the idea of a
| "war to stop atrocity", but that's about it. Why would you
| hurt someone to get what you want? How medieval.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That works, right up to the point that it is your country
| that is invaded. Then all those theories go right out the
| window.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| That works only when nationalism is your worldview. It
| doesn't make sense to care about the country being
| invaded if country has no value to you.
| [deleted]
| jacquesm wrote:
| This is somewhat shortsighted. You can replace 'country'
| by 'place where you live' and then you can decide what
| you're going to do about it, let it all happen, don't
| care while your family and children are being murdered
| because it doesn't really matter to you but that's not
| how it works in practice. In practice people will defend
| the place that they live in from external aggression.
| gnramires wrote:
| I think in this case it's more than that... Russia (or at
| least Putin) is trying to impose a certain worldview
| that's very regressive: pro-oil, heavy censorship,
| against several human rights (including LGBT), autocratic
| regime. I think there's a lot of merit to resisting this
| regime, resisting being taken by force and turned into
| the opposite of what they want (which was to join more
| progressive European countries, from what I gather).
|
| It's all connected... if you let oil-hungry autocrats
| rule the world, climate change is completely out of the
| window. Also human rights and ideals we should all stand
| for.
|
| I do want peace as soon as possible. I believe a
| compromise might be necessary. I think Putin's worldview
| has been shown critically dated, so hopefully Russians
| can rise against this sort of government eventually. It's
| very difficult to rise up when your life is threatened by
| the regime though, but reason and truth tend to find
| their way through the cracks.
|
| ---
|
| I am specially moved because of the parallels to Nazi
| invasions. Doing nothing proved a grave mistake, not
| standing up for human rights, giving fascists the benefit
| of the doubt cost so many lives. I've said "never again"
| too. It's easy to fact-check the fascist lies in this
| case.
|
| I suggest any new generations read Anne Frank's diary if
| you can.
|
| ---
|
| Also: don't believe narratives of doom. There's no doom
| incoming immediately, not from nuclear war (it's been
| shown it would doom civilization at least), not from
| climate change (we're in a pathway for significant
| damage, but it will be decades until it reaches its
| consequences, and it`s certainly no doom[1]). Doom
| narratives and hopelessness can create inaction, which is
| not what we want. Hope is the most powerful weapon for
| change.
|
| [1] See Kurzgesagt on this:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxgMdjyw8uw
| pmontra wrote:
| It doesn't matter if you care about countries. When the
| place you live gets invaded a lot of the people you know
| die or worse.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| It does absolutely matter if you care about countries,
| because "country" does not have to be how you slice your
| world when asked "where do you live".
|
| You may have your family spread across the continent, on
| your island, or concentrated around a single town.
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| >> post-modernist neo-marxist
|
| What does that mean? It seems like a contradiction in terms.
| How could you have someone who rejects modernist ideology but
| promotes a modernist ideology?
| WaxProlix wrote:
| It's a common cliche from rightwing circles (initially I
| think the combination of the two was produced by Jordan
| Peterson). Not to be too mean, but you'll see a lot of the
| Ben Shapiro fan crowd snagging on to it because it sounds
| smart despite being mostly meaningless. It's a placeholder
| for terms like 'degeneracy' and 'cultural bolshevism' and
| other such social forces that might undermine the status
| quo.
|
| There's a bit more nuance if you want to try to take the
| term at face value. DDG renders this, which seems
| reasonable https://areomagazine.com/2022/04/11/is-
| postmodernism-neo-mar...
| coldpie wrote:
| I feel like your post has a hint of disapproval in it--or
| maybe I'm just inserting that--but I find it describes my
| feelings (US born 1988) perfectly accurately, yes.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| So you have no problem with Russia ultimately "winning" in
| Ukraine and then mass executing Ukrainians (like they did
| in Buscha and probably other towns) who don't want to be
| turned into Russian slaves and have their culture
| destroyed? You think NATO should roll over and let this
| happen when we can probably stop it by sending Ukraine
| weapons to fight back? Just don't care because it's "over
| there? I am just trying to understand this mindset.
| (Straddling millenial and gen-x age here)
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| There are few parts to this, but a lot of it comes down
| to non-interventionism and skepticism of the information
| provided. I can give a few thoughts that I hold to some
| degree.
|
| I don't have a personal problem with Russia "winning".
| How could it possibly be "my" problem. It isn't impacting
| me and it not my responsibility.
|
| I think that my country has a long history of
| intervention abroad, and it is nearly always shown to be
| negative and self interested in hindsight.
|
| In past interventions, most of the information presented
| to the public is lies and propaganda, so I have
| essentially no faith any any of the reporting on the
| current war.
|
| I think the US involvement in this war has resulted in
| escalated death and destruction, and prevented peaceful
| resolution.
|
| If it were up to me (as a non-interventionist), the US
| would have agreed to keep NATO out of Ukraine, and
| thereby avoided the deaths that occurred. If it were up
| to me, I would have also offered this in negotiation for
| Russia pulling out of Ukraine after the war started.
| coldpie wrote:
| When did I say any of that?
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Not wanting to kill 'the enemy', even when under fire, is not
| a millenial invention. It's basic human nature. See "On
| Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War
| and Society" for more.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| "If I may, my impression is also that the younger generations
| don't "get" war. Why would I, ever shoot someone just like me
| because his/her/xyr government has forced them to point a
| rifle at me?"
|
| I got that part...
| hi5eyes wrote:
| > it's going to be interesting to watch what tactics have to
| be used to get an unwilling generation in the metaphorical
| front lines.
|
| Biden's admin is already ..trying.. the "how do you do,
| fellow kids" approach
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/11/tik-
| tok...
| Gollapalli wrote:
| I get war (kind of... never fought one). But I don't get why
| this war is my war. It's a conflict between Russia and
| Ukraine. We have no sworn defense pact with Ukraine, except
| that if nuclear aggression arises from some other power, we
| defend them from such.
|
| Why do I care what the Russians and Ukrainians do? Now if the
| American world hegemony or whatever wishes to continue to
| exert control over Ukraine, fine. But, I have no
| stakeholdership in that, and it increasingly seems that I and
| people like me are quite disliked by said hegemony. If they
| want us to support their empire, maybe they ought to cut us
| in on a bit more of its spoils, and give us a bit more say in
| its aims.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| > We have no sworn defense pact with Ukraine, except that
| if nuclear aggression arises from some other power, we
| defend them from such.
|
| What document do you believe said that?
| secondcoming wrote:
| You're probably right, and it's strange to me that Russia's
| utter intolerance of anything LGBT is not a factor in people
| deciding who to support.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| It's a factor in Russia's favor for anti LGBT people. It
| isn't a factor for people who dismiss everything but class
| war as identity politics.
| Gollapalli wrote:
| Has it occurred to you that there are many Americans who view
| sodomy as immoral?
| conductr wrote:
| > don't trust the narrative CNN and Fox News are trying to sell
| them
|
| I've had a hard time with this one as for weeks it was "Russia
| is not advancing, yada yada" meanwhile the graphic they showed
| while saying this clearly showed a map with more occupied
| territory than the same map the day before and another city
| under siege which has deteriorated my trust where I was a
| skeptic before, I did at least think war reporting would be
| rather accurate. I really got the feeling they were trying to
| calm us down and getting those talking points from some unified
| source (the govt?) and worries me that this conflict does in
| fact have potential to get massively out of hand
| ghayes wrote:
| Maps of territory are a terrible way to show the state of the
| war. This article provides some color and might help
| underscore why the narrative could be correct even if the
| maps look otherwise:
| https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/07/russia-war-ukraine-
| maps...
| jltsiren wrote:
| The article you linked to disagrees: "Maps, after all,
| remain crucial for our understanding of conflicts. Even if
| they are abstractions, they remain immensely useful."
|
| Maps should not be treated as simple visualizations. They
| can (and should) contain plenty of information, and
| interpreting them properly often takes a lot of skill and
| effort.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| Maps of territory are a terrible way of showing ANY
| political conflict.
|
| It's the same as the maps of county-by-county US election
| results that show a sea of red that equate to a population
| smaller than LA county.
|
| People are the important unit in political conflicts and
| Russia is very much struggling to take any meaningfully
| populated area (See: Chernobyl, a place where sane humans
| refuse to go, being one of the first trophies)
| mcguire wrote:
| See https://purplestatesofamerica.org/ (Click on
| "Population".)
|
| And here's an interesting take:
| https://medium.com/matter/the-trouble-with-the-purple-
| electi...
| conductr wrote:
| I fully agree but it's my go to when my level of time
| investment is very low. First few weeks I was checking in
| maybe 5 minutes a day for the headlines, saw no real
| ground footage and only the maps and cities under siege.
| The next couple weeks I checked in less frequently but
| began seeing more imagery of the destruction/human toll.
| As of now, I haven't looked at any news on the topic this
| week at all.
| [deleted]
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _I 've had a hard time with this one as for weeks it was
| "Russia is not advancing, yada yada"_
|
| Same here. I consider myself a big consumer of news from a
| variety of sources, and it's hard to get nearly _any_
| perspective except "Ukraine is dominating the battlefield".
| It's strange times, but this is the information war.
| watwut wrote:
| The baseline expectation was Ukraine folding within 3-4
| days. They were doing much better then expected, Russian
| original plan folded entirely.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The baseline expectation was Ukraine folding within 3-4
| days
|
| I think the West expected better but not _lot_ better, it
| does seem that was about what Russia expected (possibly
| on bad political intelligence on how the population would
| respond to an invasion.)
| watwut wrote:
| To me, it seemed that west expected Ukraine to fold too.
| And the west also have circles that admire Russia quite a
| lot while Ukraine was not taken seriously until they
| started to be serious in battle field.
|
| You still have fawning over Russian this and that,
| culture, shock over their army being disorganized and
| corrupt or looting etc, despite them being like that
| always. While Ukraine was mostly non-existent.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > To me, it seemed that west expected Ukraine to fold too
|
| That was pretty explicitly stated by a number of
| officials, I just get the feeling that they thought the
| timeline would be longer than what the Russians were
| thinking, but probably in the 2-3 week window for the
| government, in any meaningful form, holding out, with the
| situation, at best being guerilla resistance after that.
| yucky wrote:
| >Russian original plan folded entirely.
|
| It's funny, I don't recall seeing any pro-Russian sources
| stating that the goal was to capture all of Ukraine. In
| fact, they've publicly stated their goals since the
| beginning, and annexing all of Ukraine was never listed.
| Where did this idea in the media come from, since it
| didn't come from Russia..?
| pseudalopex wrote:
| What you replied to said nothing about annexing all of
| Ukraine. Almost all evidence suggests Russia expected
| they would capture Kyiv and Ukraine would capitulate
| quickly.
| lobocinza wrote:
| Because a state-run news site accidentally published a
| victory article.
|
| "Ukraine has returned to Russia...It will be reorganized,
| re-established and returned to its natural state as part
| of the Russian world...[Russia, Belarus and Ukraine will
| now act] in geopolitical terms as a single whole,"
|
| https://www.newsweek.com/state-run-russian-news-site-
| acciden...
|
| Also if you take the time to notice what Putin is saying
| and doing you will realize that denazification =
| genocide. The goal was not to arrest Hitler's fans but to
| destroy Ukrainian nationality.
|
| https://snyder.substack.com/p/russias-genocide-handbook
|
| From Wikipedia.
|
| "Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people --
| usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or
| religious group -- in whole or in part."
| dash2 wrote:
| Have you considered the possibility that if everything says
| one thing, that's because it is true? Maybe the Russians
| genuinely haven't done very well.
|
| I think there are too many Cartesians sitting in front of
| their screens going "perhaps an evil demon is trying to
| fool me about everything!"
| pueblito wrote:
| I think there is a natural instinct to not believe things
| that are obviously propaganda, so when confronted by a
| party telling an obvious fantasy it's pretty important to
| get the other party's version, even if also nonsense and
| hope to suss out the truth.
| notahacker wrote:
| You don't have to look very hard for the other side's
| version though.
|
| Question is whether you think "Russia made a planned
| withdrawal from the north of the country after completing
| all the objectives of this military exercise which
| definitely isn't a war" is a more plausible description
| of the short-lived invasion of the north of the country
| than "Russia's advances have slowed down... Russia
| stopped advancing... Russia is retreating...". Both
| narratives agree that the facts on the ground are that
| Russian troops made large scale incursions into the north
| of Ukraine but aren't there any more.
|
| Yes, most Western media has sought to emphasize Russian
| casualties over Ukrainian ones and Ukrainian minor
| success over Russian ones, but it's not like Western
| media hasn't been free to predict Russia will have full
| control of Mariupol in a couple of days for over a month
| now and talk up the Russian convoy advancing on Kyiv
| which never made it there, or like the official Russian
| narrative isn't palpably absurd.
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| I mean, you don't fire large numbers of intelligence agents
| and generals in the middle of a war because you're winning.
|
| Propaganda is one thing, but right now every report we
| have, incoming from Russian state media, points in the
| direction of "Russia is getting their ass kicked".
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| The reporting on the war has been fairly consistent: that
| Russia initially captured a lot of territory in a rapid
| advance, but overextended themselves and bogged down. Now
| they're retreating from much of this territory and are trying
| to reinforce their forces in Donbas. That narrative seems to
| be well-supported by reporting, and it also perfectly
| explains what you observed. Don't think anyone is misleading
| you.
| dustymcp wrote:
| This is also what i have gathered, ive used mostly youtube
| and r/ukraine to get some views, i do realize they are
| highly skewed to ukranian side of the conflict, but i
| prefer it that way, the aggression is absolutely started by
| Russia so i have no sympathy for them.
| fhood wrote:
| Healthy skepticism is important, but I have so far been
| amazed at how much of the information circulated by the
| Ukrainian govt has ended up being independently
| validated. Much of what ends up on reddit is nonsense,
| but I have begun to trust the govt reports, as so far
| they seem to be less a distorted picture and more an up
| to date one.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| For me, what makes it believable are the casualty
| numbers. Ukraine claims Russia lost ~750 tanks. Oryx
| visually confirmed about 500. The 2/3 ratio of confirmed
| kills, only via OSINT is insane. That makes claims about
| lost aircraft - which is way harder to confirm - at least
| decently believable.
| lobocinza wrote:
| It's amazing that someone can be better informed by
| purely reading Ukrainian official propaganda than by
| reading independent news agencies like Reuters. The first
| has incentives to not lie as to not lose international
| support while the latter for the sake of being impartial
| while being unable to verify what's really going on has
| to take Russian propaganda (which is vastly
| misinformation) at face value.
| jrumbut wrote:
| > I did at least think war reporting would be rather
| accurate.
|
| I can't imagine why. There are massive disinformation
| campaigns and only a psychopath could be an impartial
| observer while watching two sides kill each other.
|
| The "fog of war" is hard to penetrate for anyone, from
| reporters to combatants.
| conductr wrote:
| Maybe accurate is the wrong word, but consistent based on
| the information available even if disinformation. I didn't
| expect the new to be the source of the disinformation in
| regards to war. It also seemed to me to take a very long
| time to get any real footage of what was going on, war
| correspondents and so on.
|
| I recall with the early days of Iraq and the Baghdad
| invasion that I felt like I was getting the full picture.
| Perhaps because it was US forces with journalists in tow.
| The reason we were there was highly questionable and
| suspicious but I felt like I was getting a rather accurate
| picture of what happened on the ground.
|
| I say all this but should also mention that my perception
| could also be significantly off. I am not a regular
| consumer of news and this just happens to be what I'd see
| when I decided to get a quick update on the situation.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I can't remember a time in my life when war reporting was
| accurate.
|
| I do find it interesting, though, that the media is willing
| to show the civilian casualties of this war, when there was a
| practical media blackout on the same type of reporting of the
| wars in Iraq or Afghanistan.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| There is a lot of OSINT now, given that the war theatre is
| located in a developed country with network coverage and a
| dozen million smartphones. From this point of view,
| accuracy is probably better than in previous wars. We
| didn't have much OSINT from Hindu Kush.
| einarfd wrote:
| That's not surprising at all. American forces had a very
| bad experience with reporters that reported damning stories
| about them in Vietnam. In Iraq and Afghanistan they took
| actions to make that kind of reporting hard, and the
| reporting they wanted easy. It wasn't even that secret and
| I'm fairly sure I at least saw some reporting on that they
| where doing this in Norwegian, and possibly British media.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| But fox news is telling them that it's okay for Russia to
| genocide Ukraine?
| yucky wrote:
| FOX News and CNN have been in complete lockstep from day one,
| with the exception of Tucker Carlson. Sean Hannity & Anderson
| Cooper are ideological twins at this point. The last time CNN
| and FOX News have been this much in agreement, it was when we
| decided that an invasion of Iraq was the right thing to do in
| order to get rid of WMD.
| lp0_on_fire wrote:
| Source for that?
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Tucker Carlson is the biggest talking head on Fox:
|
| https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1497035201196617733
|
| Carlson (on Fox to millions): "I think we should probably
| take the side of Russia, if we have to choose between
| Russia and Ukraine."
|
| (later) "And why shouldn't I root for Russia? Which I am."
| incomingpain wrote:
| 18-29 is 1993 or younger.
|
| They we born during the Bosnian and Kosovo wars. They were 7
| years old or younger when they briefly experienced no war in 2000
| and GWBush and 9/11 in 2001 they saw the Afghanistan war start
| and not end until only months ago. 20 years of war and a loss!
|
| They only know war. Can you imagine their war exhaustion? Can you
| imagine how much they don't care about a war happening on the
| otherside of the world that the usa aren't officially involved
| in?
|
| The USA is still officially involved in somali, yemen, and syria.
|
| These young americans are probably more concerned with those 3
| and you didn't even ask them? You don't need to ask. You know
| they'll universally say to stop being in all these wars.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_America:_World_Police
| pessimizer wrote:
| Important to mention that not only have we been at war their
| entire lives, but that they've been absolutely pointless wars
| of aggression that ended in a whimper for the US, and absolute
| devastation for the countries invaded. And as you said, _we
| lost all of them._
|
| Not only that, but we've been too ashamed to declare them. No
| one wants to take responsibility, just reap the profits. Young
| people are cynical about war because it wasn't inculcated into
| them as a religion like it was for Boomers. Young people are
| cynical about war because they look at it, see its products,
| and see its profiteers. They lack the poetry to breathlessly
| admire the beauty of our weapons.
| dwringer wrote:
| A lot has changed in the three weeks since they took their poll,
| I'd be very surprised if some of these numbers hold true today
| (for instance, this claims only 47% under 30 believe Russia has
| intentionally targeted civilians)
| NoOn3 wrote:
| I think there's no point for Russian forces intentionally
| target civilians.
| archagon wrote:
| There's "no point" in organized war atrocities, and yet they
| happen anyway.
|
| Which is to say there actually is a point: terror,
| demotivation, channeling the anger and frustration of your
| troops into a "soft" target, etc.
| asciimov wrote:
| Eh... without a breakout of their numbers it is hard to trust
| this poll.
|
| That said, I think its fair to say half of 18-29 year olds have
| no interest in geopolitics and 65+ people have been around long
| enough to have some opinion on it.
| peppustimbus wrote:
| dougmwne wrote:
| I am a pro Ukraine millennial. I also came of age during our
| middle east forever war and saw all the lies that went into
| supporting that boondoggle. The irony is not lost on me one bit.
| Goat herders yesterday, babuskas today. The great powers play
| their games and we pay.
| vippy wrote:
| PyWoody wrote:
| I'm in the same age group and mindset as you. In fact, none of
| [the] poll results tracks anything I've encountered since the
| war started. I do not know a single person who sympathizes with
| the Russian aggression.
|
| If the polling numbers are representative of larger groups
| outside of my social circles, then it is every disconcerting.
|
| > barely half of those under 30 said they care who wins...
|
| Yikes.
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