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Aggressor nations have the privilege of lying to themselves on the consequences and reality of their wars. The defenders do not get the privilege to ignore tha

Aggressor nations have the privilege of lying to themselves on the consequences and reality of their wars. The defenders do not get the privilege to ignore that. Americans barely talked about Afghanistan. For 20 years, our internet was full of funny videos, stupid songs, and memes of Osama bin Laden. Sure we bombed civilians targets and committed war crimes too, but we had very smart lawyers that taught us clever words for why it was moral when we did it. And we nodded our heads in agreement and turned the channel to American Idol. Americans are well aware that technology enables us to live in our own artificially constructed reality. We spent the last 20 years building it.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
lambdasquirrel 5y ago
Well, lest we gaslight ourselves into what'd happened, the Putin Administration spent a lot of time hand-waving and saying that they weren't going to invade Ukraine. And then they did, and apparently expecting that they were going to be greeted as liberators. So there is no reason to trust them at all. (Maybe just like there was no reason to trust GWB's folks either.) From where I'm sitting, Biden's folks did no small part in subtlely goading the Russians into doing stupid things. But really, they just led Putin and Xi into their own worst excesses, much like how those have been doing to the U.S. in turn. The world is an ugly place, and it's up to us citizens to figure out what's going on. We are not served when the U.S. invades Afghanistan. How was that geopolitically smart, even in a realpolitik sense? Likewise the Russian people would be smart to realize just how much the public opinion in sympathetic countries (like Germany) has turned against them. When we buy into this Brave New World stuff, we are creating a worse situation for ourselves – and even more so for future generations. Most of all, we need to know ourselves, because these artificially constructed realities work against us when the algorithms know us better than we do.
asveikau 5y ago
On the other hand... I was really against the Iraq war and nobody ever threatened me with 15 years of jail for it. The architects of that conflict left when term limits were up. (Putin did not.) Don't get me wrong, Iraq was pointless. Afghanistan seemed to have a justification at the start but was mismanaged early on. In terms of culture, wide swaths of the population were brainwashed in a similar way to how we talk about Russia now, though with a little more vocal opposition. But what I can say is there is room in the American system for course correction.
- NoOn3 5y ago
  I don't really think if you will do peaceful express your opinion against war in Russia maybe with single protest you will get a real term in prison only a monetary fine and even this is not always the case.
  - ciceryadam 5y ago
    Russian police arrest demonstrator protesting with blank sign - https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/russia-protest-war-blank-sign-ve9882053 https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/russia-protest-war-bla...
    - NoOn3 5y ago
      I don't know all cases, but I know people with blank posters was detained and just had a preventive conversation with them and then they were released. And I think in most cases if you don't resist and don't fight with the police, and don't do something very dangerous, then no very serious punishments will be applied to you. Perhaps there are exceptional cases, but they need to be considered especially, perhaps there are special circumstances, . The Western press uses the same techniques as the Russian press often chooses only cases that are beneficial to them and exaggerates their number, so you need to carefully examine different cases and study sources from different sides if possible. I'm not saying that everything in Russia is perfectly democratic and free, I just want to show that everything is not as gloomy as the Western media want to show.
  - asveikau 5y ago
    This isn't much of a refutation of the point. Moreover, some specific individuals have been murdered for speaking about Putin. Anna Politkovskaja and Aleksandr Litvinenko were both murdered for questioning the official narratives on Chechnya.
    - NoOn3 5y ago
      In Chechnya In these times was real chaos and war. There were there a lot of actors who didn't obey anyone, so, of course, there were a lot of crimes. It took a lot of effort to establish the control of the authorities over what was happening. It's hard to clearly say that Anna Politkovskaha was on Putin's orders. Alexandr Litvinenko was different case. He was an defector and former officer not a peaceful human rights activist maybe I can believe it. But not all his statements and his writings has clearly proofs. For example Julian Assange faces the death penalty in the US. And some even claims that was attempts on him... Many developed countries of the world have a history of some strange crime cases and human rights violations. It seems in real world all is so complicated you even can't easy say that these crimes were not deliberately constructed by hostile agents. Only in case than you have very very accurate evidence sometimes only if you have personally seen them... I would like to live in a truly free and democratic country, but I doubt that such a country can exist in conditions when there are necessarily hostile and unfriendly among many other countries...

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

lambdasquirrel 5y ago

Well, lest we gaslight ourselves into what'd happened, the Putin Administration spent a lot of time hand-waving and saying that they weren't going to invade Ukraine. And then they did, and apparently expecting that they were going to be greeted as liberators. So there is no reason to trust them at all. (Maybe just like there was no reason to trust GWB's folks either.) From where I'm sitting, Biden's folks did no small part in subtlely goading the Russians into doing stupid things. But really, they just led Putin and Xi into their own worst excesses, much like how those have been doing to the U.S. in turn. The world is an ugly place, and it's up to us citizens to figure out what's going on. We are not served when the U.S. invades Afghanistan. How was that geopolitically smart, even in a realpolitik sense? Likewise the Russian people would be smart to realize just how much the public opinion in sympathetic countries (like Germany) has turned against them. When we buy into this Brave New World stuff, we are creating a worse situation for ourselves – and even more so for future generations. Most of all, we need to know ourselves, because these artificially constructed realities work against us when the algorithms know us better than we do.

asveikau 5y ago

On the other hand... I was really against the Iraq war and nobody ever threatened me with 15 years of jail for it. The architects of that conflict left when term limits were up. (Putin did not.) Don't get me wrong, Iraq was pointless. Afghanistan seemed to have a justification at the start but was mismanaged early on. In terms of culture, wide swaths of the population were brainwashed in a similar way to how we talk about Russia now, though with a little more vocal opposition. But what I can say is there is room in the American system for course correction.

NoOn3 5y ago
I don't really think if you will do peaceful express your opinion against war in Russia maybe with single protest you will get a real term in prison only a monetary fine and even this is not always the case.
- ciceryadam 5y ago
  Russian police arrest demonstrator protesting with blank sign - https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/russia-protest-war-blank-sign-ve9882053 https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/russia-protest-war-bla...
  - NoOn3 5y ago
    I don't know all cases, but I know people with blank posters was detained and just had a preventive conversation with them and then they were released. And I think in most cases if you don't resist and don't fight with the police, and don't do something very dangerous, then no very serious punishments will be applied to you. Perhaps there are exceptional cases, but they need to be considered especially, perhaps there are special circumstances, . The Western press uses the same techniques as the Russian press often chooses only cases that are beneficial to them and exaggerates their number, so you need to carefully examine different cases and study sources from different sides if possible. I'm not saying that everything in Russia is perfectly democratic and free, I just want to show that everything is not as gloomy as the Western media want to show.
- asveikau 5y ago
  This isn't much of a refutation of the point. Moreover, some specific individuals have been murdered for speaking about Putin. Anna Politkovskaja and Aleksandr Litvinenko were both murdered for questioning the official narratives on Chechnya.
  - NoOn3 5y ago
    In Chechnya In these times was real chaos and war. There were there a lot of actors who didn't obey anyone, so, of course, there were a lot of crimes. It took a lot of effort to establish the control of the authorities over what was happening. It's hard to clearly say that Anna Politkovskaha was on Putin's orders. Alexandr Litvinenko was different case. He was an defector and former officer not a peaceful human rights activist maybe I can believe it. But not all his statements and his writings has clearly proofs. For example Julian Assange faces the death penalty in the US. And some even claims that was attempts on him... Many developed countries of the world have a history of some strange crime cases and human rights violations. It seems in real world all is so complicated you even can't easy say that these crimes were not deliberately constructed by hostile agents. Only in case than you have very very accurate evidence sometimes only if you have personally seen them... I would like to live in a truly free and democratic country, but I doubt that such a country can exist in conditions when there are necessarily hostile and unfriendly among many other countries...