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Rage Fueled rant: What is with the intellectual bankruptcy on Ukraine?
I'm not talking about fog of war stuff, or always erroring towards one side... even the most stern eyed realist struggles with emotions infecting analysis...
I'm talking about respected, degree holding, prominent figures... who have built careers around the dispassion of their analysis, engaging openly in the worst, laziest, most childish, intellectual abuses when it comes to Ukraine.
I was listening to a commentator, i had followed for quite some time, and thought of as quite dispassionate (won't link him... he's dead to me) who just opened a video declaring that "The Ukraine conflict is one of the clearest examples of good vs. evil in the past century"
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set aside everything else... set aside your faction in the culture war, set aside what you think of the war...
Can you think of another war where this language would be tolerated from an allegedly dispassionate subject matter expert?
"The Second Libyan civil war (2014-2020) was the clearest example of good vs. evil in the 21st century", "The 2014 Gaza War was a matter of Good vs. Evil", "Gulf War 1 was really about Good vs. Evil", "the Falklands was a clear example of Good vs. Evil", "The Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia was entirely a matter of good vs. evil (though there you could make the case... they were fighting the Khmer Rouge)", "The US invasion of Grenada... really just a matter of good vs. evil", "The Sino-Indian war was really a matter of good vs. evil", "The bay of pigs invasion, when you get down to it, was about good vs. evil", "The French War in Algeria was a clear matter of Good vs. Evil", "The Spanish civil war was a true contest of good vs. evil", "The Irish war of Independence was really a conflict of Good vs. Evil"... WW1? Good vs. Evil. The Russo-Japanese war? Absolutely good vs. evil, had to stop the yellow menace. The Boer war? Entirely good vs. evil (though again there you could make the case... the British, Canadian, and Australian contingent invented the concentration camp in that war to deal with the Rebellious ethnic Dutch colonist...The Boer, the scum race of the Transvaal)
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If you heard any figures saying these were matters of "Good vs. Evil" you'd immediately discount them and probably think them some anti-intellectual freak. In my first year history course I received a D on an essay for an anachronistic, sides taking, argument 1/1000th as egregious. (I argued the attitude expressed by a Ming dynasty diplomat describing India could be interpreted as "Westward Orientalism")
This figure would be embarrassed describing any other war in such terms... hell I'd never even heard him use such language discussing the second world war...
And yet the 2022 Russo-Ukraine war... that's the war so egregious he'll throw intellectual impartiality to the wind in the name of sheer denunciation.
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It's not even the most egregious war currently being fought within 1000km of the Black sea. That infamy belongs either to the reignited Nagorno-Karabakh war where Azerbaijan and Turkey are trying to squelch the young democracy in Armenia, or the ongoing conflict in Syria where turkey is likewise trying to Squelch the increasingly autonomous Kurdistan and its various democratic movements ... We don't hear about these conflicts though, because Turkey is a NATO member and a keystone of Europe's treaties to keep migrants out.
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I could grasp this, though not respect it, if this figure was somehow tied up in the US establishment and had career opportunities riding on it... but he's well independent of that. Just likes the coolaid.
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This trend i also egregious if you consider the rhetoric around the Ukraine war... That its fought for democracy, that Putin is an Autocrat... that this is a war for freedom....
Such as the freedom to criticize your government? Do you? Nope, just criticizing the people the government and media tells me to criticize.
The applause signs around words apparently being more important than any meaning the words themselves might have.
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Was this what it was like in 2002-2003 when Afghanistan and Iraq were starting? Did every remotely public intellectual drop their standards this quickly? I remember the Anti-war movement being more prominent at the time... Was that only after the fact?
Or is the Anti-war movement silent because this is Putin and he's now coded pro-trump and Anti-gay... (yet somehow everyone else in central Eurasia isn't)
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Sorry if this is ranting... I actually respected this commentator and this combined with other things was just a remarkable intellectual slide... I feel dirty... like the time engaging with him left me dumber somehow, and now I have to go back through ideas I first heard from him and check for the rot.
As someone who generally enjoys your writing - please don’t fall into the trap of granting assent to Putin just because doing so runs contrary to the disingenuous mainstream narrative. He really is an enemy of freedom; almost a quintessential looter type out of Rand novels
If i were to describe the Ukraine war I describe it like the Iran-Iraq War... Two awful regimes you'd never want to live in grinding conscripts and people with no better prospects against each other. And also maybe Iran was a better place to live than Iraq during the time... low bar. (or maybe Iran just happens to be the only middle-eastern country with a movie industry so it seems better)
Ultimately I'd like them both to lose, and the cynical western backers drawing out the war to lose even harder....
Picture the map of the region rendered in stained glass... and then picture all the lines if you hit that stained glass repeatedly with a hammer... Those are what the borders should be. I wouldn't trust any of these people to govern a man 10 miles away let alone 400, and even then I'd want that local subject to be heavily armed.
Putin is awful... don't get me wrong. But Ukraine is literally executing civilians for continuing to live in occupied areas, has shelled civillians since 2014, has banned every rival political party, banned a free press, banned its population from leaving... Ukraine is basically North Korea at this point... and this is what our leaders hold up as their ideal and model of democracy for the rest of us.
Fuck that.
To quote Marylin Manson: "I wasn't born with enough middle fingers, I don't need to choose a side."
This doesn't harmonise with your complaints about the intellectual laziness of others. "Putin is literally Hitler" and "Zelensky is literally Kim Jong-un" are both intellectually lazy takes.
Not letting your citizens leave the country is a very VERY unique horror with very few precedents. And one I am very fucking sensitive to having just lived through the Canadian lockdowns.
It's not unique at all, it was standard fare for half of my parent's lifetime doe to them being born in People's Republic of Poland, a vassal state of the dearest USSR. The standard fare for getting a passport was to become an informer for the Służba Bezpieczeństwa (Security Service), spying on your family and friends. And that was during cold "wartime", not war-wartime. While I'm not much a fan of Zeleński, calling wartime conscription of males a very rate precedent show only one's narrow historical and geographical perspective.
And "Ukraine's government is corrupt, therefore their cities getting shelled and their people getting warcrimed in a manner typical to Red-- I mean Russian army is just business as usual in the region" is an embarassing non sequitur.
No for most of human history there was no effective means to enforce border controls and people could just leave if they wanted, except for totalitarian states for which literally any violence is justified to end their existence. It remains a horror to the average American that any soviet countries could have existed without the populace flaying the flesh from their tyrants in the night.
that a "democracy" equipped with the technology and surveillance tech to actually prevent its citizens from leaving, has chosen to restrict mass cross-sections of the country from exercising basic freedom of travel, and has done so that they might be imprisoned and fed into the war machine is a very unique fucking horror and one no westerner has EVER tolerated in a democracy.
At the height of the Vietnam War the US did not control americans leaving. That's how draft dodgers got to Canada, they just fucking drove. If the US had set up checkpoints on the other side of the road and started interrogating anyone trying to leave the country, there would have been armed insurrection and those guards would have been firebombed in their homes with their children inside.
The fact you treat a totalitarian country like Soviet Poland as an at all acceptable comparison as if its very existence wasn't an insult to the human race, says a whole lot about those willing to support the Zelensky regime.
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Live free or die. Any regime that gets remotely close to these restrictions demands endless armed insurrection until the populace is free of it or until no one is left alive within it.
In the post above, you write
which implies that you're a Leaf, so I don't see how stealing USA's hypothetical 60s valor, or speaking about "average American's" horror is of any use here. But more to the point: how come you're still alive, then? Why didn't you live up to your proclaimed ideals, why didn't you take up arms against Trudeau regime, or died trying?
The difference between Vietnam and Russia's 'special military operation' is that the latter is fought on Ukraine's home soil. I thought that this was obvious, but apparently it needs pointing out. No western country had a war on their turf since 1945. If they did, the just-so-stories about how their superior civil liberties flow flow their citizens' moral superiority would melt rather quickly.
Also, there's no such thing as "Soviet Poland", Poland (along with Czechoslovakia, etc.) was not a soviet republic, but a separate state. Authoritarian, not totalitarian, and you having two factual errors in one sentence makes me think that you're getting it wrong on purpose, although I fail to imagine what it might be.
But it the American soul is truly as pained by my country's predecessor's existence as you claim, I'm afraid they have mostly their former president to blame. FD Roosevelt mad a deal with Stalin, and so the iron curtain landed to the west of Poland, instead of to the east. I guess "live free" only goes so far, and sacrificing entire countries' freedom as a bargaining chip was acceptable to 40s Americans.
Also, while great men theory of history is probably wrong. Thousands of above-average men can make a dent, at least in the short term. As it happens, some 22000 of Poland's cream of the crop were murdered in the early stage of WWII, which made mounting a successful resistance to the Soviets rather difficult. And the culprit was... would you look at that, Russians! I mean, Soviets! But surely, my antipathy towards Russia must only be because of the Western propaganda.
First, LOL if you believe this as if the poles weren't 100% a conquered people and your administrative status mattered. Sure. And the East German stasi was ethically better than the pre-45 Stasi... absolutely a free republic.
Second FDR 100% deserved the gallows for destroying American freedom and bringing about the administrative state. Fascism in all but name. I reccommend reading Herbert Hoover's Hsitory of the second world war Freedom Betrayed
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Third, something big happened in Canada in response to the lockdowns, rebellions, blockades of the worlds busiest bridge, violent confrontations with the police, and occupation and encampment in -20 to -40... I neither confirm nor deny my involvement in any illegal activity. And BTW the truckers won. The government blinked, almost all restrictions were dropped across the board, and half the political spectrum of Canada is being purged of those who supported lockdowns.
Forth, English Canadians are a made up people. There is no cultural difference between us and the US. Its like Germany and Austria, but without even a significant history of cultural difference or conflict. Hell I've lived in apartments that looked into the US.
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Finally, I'm not some pro-Russia shill. You hate Russia? Good you probably should, as far as I can tell almost everyone in europe is 100% right to want almost everyone else in Europe dead. What I loath is the North American elite sending our money to support centuries old ethnic conflicts, treating violent authoritarian states as if they're some moral exemplars everyone over hear should admire, and risking an escalation to world war over a third world country and its conflict with its second world neighbor.
I want the US and Canada disentangled from Europe.
How would you feel if your government was sending billions of your dollars to prop up regimes in the South Pacific? How would you feel if you were edging closer to nuclear war over some bullshit conflict in West Africa? It does not concern us, we have no meaningful economic or geopolitical interest tied up in it, and there's no way the Ukrainian moral claims hold up to the slightest scrutiny compared to any other global conflict, especially on costs.
I don't really care whether Russia or Ukraine wins in the abstract, I care that my government is trying to get us further entangled in geopolitical conflicts that don't concern us and could end with nukes landing in our cities.
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Understandable, but it would also be understandable if this intensifies your passion on this issue beyond what is reasonable.
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Universal conscription is pretty common in small countries with bigger and more powerful neighbors. Finland, Israel, South Korea for examples that would generally be considered free countries. Russia too as it happens, though they have apparently loosened up on their terms of conscription.
Of those three Finland is the only one I'd possibly consider free or non-horrifying... and I suspect that's probably just my ignorance and it actually is horrifying in some way I haven't yet heard of, given it feels entitled to enslave its male population... and largely not even give them a vote on the matter since conscription begins at 18 and voting only occurs 1/4 years.
Most conscripts who've die in wars of "Democracy" die for a country they were never eligible to vote in.
This probably deserves its own thread to explore properly, since it's a tricky question. Technically it's true that it could be seen as a form of slavery. But on the other hand, if you aspire to live in a country with any political freedoms, don't you basically have to take some level of responsibility for physically defending it from hostile aggressors who would crush that freedom? Feels pretty abstract in a country like America, but not so much in places like the above where powerful and far more numerous adversaries are only a short distance away, could invade at any moment and crush any illusion of liberty you might have had.
Political freedom is not a function of the state but the individuals ability to commit violence against the state. Knights were free and serfs were slaves not because of some deriliction or philosopgical disposition of the king, but because the knights could rebel and offer violence to the king but the serfs could not even offer violence to the knights.
Likewise the North American colonists were able to gain so much more freedom than their European counterparts because they were armed and could murder government officials... Even Canada has had more rebellions in the past 200 years than Brittain.
Making oneself subservient, even in an armed role, to the state does nothing to gain one liberty Ask all those russian concripts who died with no political freedom under communism.
One does not gain freedom by fighting the state's enemies. One gains freedom by making the state your enemy
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If the government can unilaterally send you to die in the trenches then your freedom is already crushed
Likewise if a country cannot raise enough people who care about it enough to fight for it on their own volition, then perhaps it ceasing to exist as an independent entity is not such a bad thing
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Universal mobilization means you are now an element of the war machine, and leaving is desertion. It has happened everywhere at different times for different reasons, and exists as an option for all developed nations in the world as we speak.
A principled stand for freedom here is worthwhile, but probably only if your particular set of borders has a bunch of nukes/is part of a nuclear alliance.
Universal mobilization means you are now an element of the war machine, and leaving is desertion. It has happened everywhere at different times for different reasons, and exists as an option for all developed nations in the world as we speak.
I have written about concription several times on the motte... In every instance I've argued it demanded lethal violence against thos administering it. Up to ands including killing the volunteer members of the draft boards
If we are indulging in fantastical arrangements for society, I think we should all just get along, man.
The french revolution pulled the cork this particular bottle, and Napoleon smashed it and fired the remains into the sun. Until technology removes the need for mass participation of humans on the home front and the war front, any state that elects to leave this particular option on the table is tying it's hands for principles sake.
we can abandon chemical weapons because they don't really work on organized first tier militaries; we cam restrain ourselves from Nukes and Bio 'cause of MAD and escalation. You can't have a war without people, though.
I don't care if the hands are tied. I want free people to exist not states.
I'd rather A country be reduced to Afghanistan and lose a chunk of its territory and free people exist somewhere in the uncontrolled territory than no free people exist anywhere because the state propped up its own existence by enslaving them.
Yes this goes for WW2. Yes this goes for the civil war. I have not seen a single faction in a single war in any moment of human history where i thought their propping up their war efforts by resorting to litteral slavery was at all an improvement.
the 20 million who died fighting for the soviet union might have lived had they murdered their commissars and officers instead of being fed into the Soviet Unions horrific efforts at self preservation.
The worst enemy you have no matter what is the man who has you at gunpoint and is issuing orders... he is always the first person you need to kill. And if a nation and a people... even call themselves your people are standing behind him demanding your death, then they are your enemies too.
There is no one more sympathetic in WW2 than the soviet citizens who volunteered for the Nazis, or the German citizens who volunteered for the soviets or allies... They accurately assessed who their greater enemy was: Their own governments.
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