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I would say it is a result of hyper moralism, a view of history that reads francis fukuyama as a prophet and the dumbing down of politics. The way Russians are being treated is similar to how transphobes were treated during peak wokeness. They can't be acknowledged to have any legitimate concerns, they are motivated by evil and we all have to performatively show our disgust on social media. It becomes impossible to have a sane, rational and calm debate regarding topics when they go BLM 2020.
We can't have a debate regarding war aims, what the security architecture of Europe should look like, whether pax Americana is feasible in a world in which the US is 17% of global GDP or whether Ukraine in NATO even makes sense. Just like we couldn't have a calm, rational debate about what defund the police will actually look like. There is just people performatively screeching slogans.
This has some roots back to the Afghanistan war. We could never have a debate or calm discussion. It couldn't be treated like a normal war because we were fighting "terrorists" and that apparently justified anything. Nobody could explain a path to victory, just slogans. It is amazing that it took five months from 20 years of Afghanistan fiasco to the start of the next forever war. At least after Vietnam there was a long cool down period.
Also it took years for the true scale of lying and issues in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq to be revealed by whistle blowers. During those wars the media was far more critical than they are now. Sooner or later there will be a Daniel Ellsberg of Ukraine and most likely we will find out the lies and propaganda for this war were at least as spectacular as they were in the previous wars.
There’s no need for moralism when we’ve got tribalism.
The average Ukraine sympathizer sees something like this or this and turns into the staunchest of partisans. No philosophy required.
Honestly, after years of your doomsaying, I still don’t know what you expect to find out. There’s no real equivalent to “saddam has WMDs.” No real wargoal, seeing as we aren’t at war. No American casualties to cover up. So what’s the big reveal? What undermines the premise of “we’ll pay you not to give that guy what he wants?”
Most likely massive exaggerations of Russian incompetence, a massive downplaying of Ukrainian successes, huge depletions of western stockpiles, wild levels of corruption and a war based on slogans rather than reality. It will be hard to sell Russia is collapsing, Ukraine are uber mench as Ukraine is falling apart. They are way more loudly invested in this fiasco than some fiascos in the Middle East. It will be embarrassing when the charade falls apart.
Where exactly are you getting sold that narrative?
Looking at CNN or WaPo or the NYT, they aren’t selling a Russian collapse or obvious Ukrainian superiority. That’s a sucker’s bet. They’re playing the underdog angle where Ukraine is barely (but admirably!) holding out against the aggressor. Supporting Ukraine as an “ought” rather than an “is.”
I think you’re conflating the armchair generals on Twitter with the broader base of support. It’s like assuming that all Christians are about to deconvert because the Branch Davidians got a prophecy wrong.
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Thermostatically relevant moral cause offers avenue for posturing. Its proximate to "demand for racism outstripping supply" and thus every small incident needs to be emphasized as maximally as possible within the attention window before people stop caring.
No one (in general, not the poster specifically but I won't care either way) cared about Maidan or whateverfuck other than its relevance as an anti-CIA USA bad bulletpoint. The relevance of Russia in 2022 due to the invasion is probably the biggest shot of adrenaline to the Russian national psyche because they are now a feared invading monster in the eyes of the west, not a dying gas station surrounded by rotting tank graveyards. Unlike (most) transphobes, Russians revel in being treated as scary enemies of the west, because they correctly calculate that the west is not interested enough in ruining their comfy lives by pocketbook or nuclear hellfire. Playing up the big bad unstoppable enemy is great especially if the only cost is a bunch of Buryats and Dagestanis that you were hoping to get rid off anyways.
The specific tactical strategic macro historical whateverfuck navelgazing about immutable historical characteristics or other personal pet explanatory theories are just fitting a messy situation onto personal prior beliefs. Russia Ukraine offers a delicious discussion ground for Grand Theory on (military/history/racial character/jews) without consequence, because Ukraine and Russia are irrelevant just as Sudan is irrelevant. A choice is being made to pay attention, and a choice can be made to ignore. Can't do that for Israel because of retarded domestic US politics, can't ignore China because Altman needs to justify his ascension to AI Godhood.
Russia being irrelevant implies that the whole of Europe is irrelevant which .. I'm not decided on but is probably true. After all, it's China that matters now. The developed world is no longer just Europe + Northern America and Chinese outsize those two regions by a factor of 2 in workforce and probably more in other ways.
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I think it's more people just not really being able to handle getting live footage of any bad thing happening in the world without wanting to intervene and completely disregarding any sort of a cost-benefit analysis or nuanced view of human conflict. Ukraine and Palestine are both dragging out beyond any sane historical need since there's an overwhelming need to keep rehashing them in the court of public opinion.
If live footage of atrocities motivated anyone at all there would have been a scorched earth campaign to clease Brazil and Mexico of gangs, followed by seperatists in Ethiopia and Sudan. Funkytown remains one of the most gruesome videos out there of human suffering being gleefully meted out by enthusiastic participants fully aware of what they were doing, and there are countless amputated corpses scattered in the vast Brazillian forests where the flayings and murders were filmed specifically to be shared with the families of the deceased. Ukraine and Palestine are relevant for retarded domestic political reasons in any country that professes to care, and for that reason livestreamed mass murders in Sudan are just dismissrd as sandshit.
It’s funny you should mention that. I vaguely remember the bygone days when ISIS captured the attention of the Western media for a relatively short period of time, and the antics of the ISIS executioner ‘Jihadi John’ were getting plastered all over television and online news. There was one TV report after another, segments, outrage, basically just an insane amount of attention, at least for a short time and I was like…really?! Not even 50 or 100 miles away from some of these TV studios, Mexican cartels were torturing, beheading, dismembering and flaying their victims on camera like it was just another Tuesday, and still pretty much nobody in the West cared besides the regulars of a few gore websites. I get it that their victims weren’t white but the imbalance was still sort of crazy.
The unspoken gentlemans agreement of western inviolability actually does hold some weight: do whatever you want to your own people just dont attack whites. ISIS hung up dozens of men on meat hooks and then slit their throats so that their blood ran in rivers down the drain, but its Kayla whateverherface that captured global attention because some white do gooder didn't enjoy the normal aura protection they had during the hippie traip era. Mexican cartels just slaughter paisas in villages so urban fresas (white girls) don't even pay attention. Ukrainians and Russians and that entire warsaw pact area aren't thought as White, they're slavs doing slavshit, so they're unimportant.
Jihadi John and ISIS mistake was to openly declare war on the west and encourage actual action domestically to kill whites. If they stuck with killing Sunnis and Kurds they'd be dismissed as sandshit barbarians unimportant to the west. Kill your own and don't kill the westerner and no media will pay attention. This obviously means Taiwans only line of defense is encouraging as many whites to migrate there as possible, and so their courting of MAGA influencers is to raise the hostage value of white sexpats.
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