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That was part of my point:
Your "Expert Russia Understanders" claim a thing and you believe them. The point isn't whether they're right or wrong on the object level, my point is that you trust them because they said a thing and you consider them to be an authority. If Russia's "Expert Ukraine Understanders" tell them that Ukraine is literally Nazis and evil and must be destroyed, and it is good that they be destroyed, a lot of the Russian citizens will believe them for the exact same reason.
Did you not mean genocide? Are you advocating we destroy their government and then back off with no further intervention to prevent them from doing it again? Or are you advocating that we destroy their government and then imperialistically foist a new government with our ideals upon them? How do you destroy them without being authoritarian/imperialistic/belligerent/orcish? How do you destroy them without doing to them literally what they're trying to do to Ukraine, for literally the same perceived reasons?
I'm not a moral relativist, I don't claim that all sides are actually equally justified and therefore stopping them from doing bad things would make us equally bad. Russia is actually in the wrong here. But, at least for the common citizens, they seem to be wrong because, on average, they're just as gullible as everyone else everywhere else in the world, and the main difference I see is that the government they blindly follow is worse than ours.
No, I don't believe them. I don't believe that Expert Russia Understanders understand anything, and I believe their 'understanding' is just a way to justify their preferred conclusion - Russia delenda est.
No, no. For the second time, I am not saying that Russians are orcish. Maybe you should write less and read more.
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