11 ms·
Fwiw, my Ukrainian friend DMed me two days ago saying he was tired of the media “fearmongering”. Then a few hours ago he sent “oh shit, war has started”. I thi
by sillysaurusx 5y ago
Fwiw, my Ukrainian friend DMed me two days ago saying he was tired of the media “fearmongering”. Then a few hours ago he sent “oh shit, war has started”.
I think people just genuinely didn’t think Putin would call everyone’s bluff and be willing to eat all the economic sanctions.
- bayesianbot 5y agoIt's surprisingly common take in these times. Climate change? Fearmongering. Covid? Who's going to be scared of the flu? And obviously Putin's danger is made up by media, at least until today. I don't think the accuracy rate for these predictions will be too good but plenty of people seem to think otherwise.
- Tainnor 5y agoThe West has mostly lived in peace and prosperity since 1945. It is hard to come to terms with the fact that this is not a natural state of events. I think this has led to a certain sort of hubris, that everything will turn out well and we don't have to make the hard decisions. But plagues and pandemics were a thing in the past. So were wars. And man-made ecological disasters.
- baq 5y agoweak men, hard times, etc.
- jacquesm 5y agoUkraine has not lived in peace and prosperity since 1945.
- Tainnor 5y agoHence, "mostly".
- Karrot_Kream 5y agoUkraine is not the West. Outside the West, everything has been business as usual.
- kodah 5y agoTo me, fearmongering is something specific. People fearmonger about climate change when they act like nothing can be done or that no action will be good enough. It's a form of nihilism. COVID, same deal - people who spent months trying to use shaming and guilting of people, at the expense of those who got sick who weren't being reckless/antivax/whatever are fearmongerers. Those who are just concerned and aren't acting as a mouthpiece - very different. Let's not do a 180 on the social acceptability of being an asshole; there are upper and lower bounds to be observed.
- tomp 5y agoClimate change is real as is COVID, but the "fearmongering" part is, that the people who are telling you to take it seriously (politicians, top 1%, celebrities) are not taking it seriously themselves (partying without masks, flying private jets to Davos, ...). Therefore, while climate change and COVID might be real, most of the proposed solutions are completely fake.
- noduerme 5y agoIn fairness, it's pretty nuts if you're just an ordinary person, to believe someone would be insane enough to invade your country for virtually no reason.
- chasd00 5y agoI try to think about this by putting myself in Putin's shoes but i keep drawing blanks. I only see downsides to the invasion and no upside from the perspective of Russia. I must be missing something huge that has a value > than the cost because the cost, in all terms, is very very high.
- aenis 5y agoOnce you have as much as Putin, have toadies listening to your every whim and reinforcing every paranoia -- its easy to just start doing stupid things. Small people do it all the time, at smaller scales, big despots go big. Thats why the most important thing is to keep term limits. Power increses expotentially with time in office.
- jldugger 5y agoThe cost to the Russian people is high, but the cost to Putin and his entourage is yet another toothless freeze on overseas assets (the ones they know about), some irrelevant protests in Moscow, and a hefty increase in oil prices.