5 ms·
Something like 10% of US people I've talked to seemed to have a genuine belief that the Trump presidency was a campaign by a foreign enemy. So yes, free speech
by roenxi 3y ago
Something like 10% of US people I've talked to seemed to have a genuine belief that the Trump presidency was a campaign by a foreign enemy. So yes, free speech should be encouraged even then.
> During cold war US didn't freely allow any USSR propaganda either.
During WWII they rounded up the Japanese. During the cold war they nearly got everyone nuked at least twice. During the wars from 1990->2020 there have been patterns of lies in the justification. Just because something was done doesn't make it a good idea.
The cold war would have been safer and led to better outcomes if the US listened to the USSR, and vice versa, at the popular scale. We're still dealing with the fallout insane Russophobia that was engendered in the US halls of power. And had the US had been positioned to step in and help Russia after the fall of the Soviets instead of being caught by surprise mid-war we'd all be in much better shape today. They fumbled the collapse of the Soviet empire pretty badly because they hadn't managed to figure out what was going on on the ground. We're still fighting wars because the US never managed to sit down and make friends with the Russians. If the Saudis were an option, everyone is.
The upside of the honest speech is much bigger than whatever downside the propaganda has. The largely unproven and examined downside, I might add; I'm not drawing a case to mind where it was effective and crippling unless there was a superpower using it against someone much smaller.
- RandomLensman 3y agoHow would the US have had more access to people on the ground in the USSR? More spies in country? The reason people "fumbled" after the USSR disintegrated wasn't because the collapse came as a surprise but because the split between using functioning liberal (not in the US political meaning) legal systems outside of Russia for protection while internally in Russia profiting from the lack thereof - I don't think anyone had that split really in their minds when thinking about a new structure there - it was a new phenomenon. People saw what was happening but didn't understand it and the average person on the street there didn't either. Btw., Russia or the USSR made little friends in Europe throughout history, either. I think bold claims that US cold war posture was wrong need a lot more evidence.
- CafeRacer 3y agoyeah, russophobia... No one cared about russians until they started doing shit. Like personally, I don't hate russians because they're russians, I hate them for what they've done & keep doing. If russians would have put their money where their mouth is, lots of people would have immigrated there and not even listened to the rest of the world.
- mantas 3y agoIt's important to separate Duchy of Muscovy which is philosophical successor of Golden horde from Russians as in Kievan Rus and Ruthenian people who live(d) in western part of modern Russia.
- CafeRacer 3y agoWhy?
- mantas 3y agoTo make a separation between many tribes/states of Rus/Ruthenian/East slavic people and Muscovites. As in people who support war in Ukraine. Duchy of Moscow took over many other Rus states which were much closer to West/democracy/whatever you want to call them. While Muscovites themselves stuck to tactics they learned while being occupied by Golden horde. What happened in Bucha and elsewhere in Ukraine was the usual Muscovite tactics 500 years ago and it still is. Some things seem to never change.
- mantas 3y ago> We're still dealing with the fallout insane Russophobia that was engendered in the US halls of power. Living in a country that is at war with Duchy of Muscovy (AKA Russia) for the last 500 years... There's plenty of reasons keeping them at bay. Industrialisation of USSR by American capital was one of the grave mistakes that brought WWII. Please don't do that again.