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How healthy and productive is it to adopt the mental framework that the world, along with all of its problems, is simply nature, and so is amoral and immutable, which means we should expend no energy trying to change it, and should instead focus on making sense of as much as we can while adapting to the reality as it is?
I consider myself psychologically even-keeled and don't doomscroll, but unless you actively try to avoid information, nasty stuff inevitably seeps through. For instance, I saw in the last 24 hours a surveillance video of someone carjacking a poor helpless woman at the gas station, and another who wrote that they know of a backyard puppy breeder who has four bitches constantly getting pregnant and living in filth just to cheaply breed and sell puppies for some absurd sum. I think the normal reaction is to feel a combination of anger and sadness. But rationally, that emotional response seems pointless. It's easy to point to greater suffering in quantity and magnitude in Ukraine or Niger, and I'm not sure what's the point of thinking about that either.
I realized that it would be much simpler to frame everything as nature and natural. Crying over a mouse being gobbled up by an owl seems as pointless as doing the same for a fly being caught by a Venus flytrap or a blueberry being decomposed by fungi. These things just happen. I'm not super familiar with zen or its equivalent. Is what I'm describing part of some ancient philosophy or religion?
At any rate, I plan to remind myself of this whenever I feel any emotion the next time I see a headline that some DA dropped charges against repeat criminals or some author pulled her novel because some nobody complained that she was culturally appropriating an oppressed minority group. Nothing to see here--it's all part of nature. Understand how it works, make sure you're not the mouse/fly/blueberry, and move on happily with your own life.
I notice that all your examples don't affect you. Just to be clear, would you tell yourself to act the same if you were the victim of those things?
The point is to do better. It is to insist that those with the power to affect change do better. I understand that you personally cannot alter the course of events in Ukraine. But an ocean is a trillion drops of water, an avalanche is a trillion snowflakes, and likewise, the world gets better with each successful individual act of doing better.
I'll go one step further. A great many things would improve if people didn't try to insist on some "nature" equivalent of the just world hypothesis. Humans have remarkable ability to not only learn morality, but to implement it in their own lives. The fact that some have a predisposition towards doing unjust things is not a defense, because if your urges to act immorally are so strong, then you have forsaken some claim of being a wholly reasonable person who is due the rights privileges given by default.
That article claimed Russia was openly waiting for Ukraine fatigue to set in but never provided any evidence to back this statement. Funnily enough the author of the article seems to be the disinformation Mary Poppins.
But why on Earth would «Russia» not wait for Ukraine fatigue to set in? I don't think some evidence like a document must be shown, it's just common sense and the burden of proof is on you. Pro-Z Russians I know are very explicitly banking on it, channelling Kremlin beliefs. And of course it's expected of them – the whole thing is revealed as senseless struggle the moment you accept that the US and by extension «the West» won't stop backing Ukraine. Which they won't of course: no matter how tired proles get, how many new current things they pivot to in the attention economy, they won't become pro-Russian (not with how Putin acts anyway; @Dean details a plausible rationale, but I think there's conscious reveling in depravity too, certain edgelording, Putin has an adolescent's sense of humor); and it will remain political suicide and betrayal of the premise of NATO to actually abandon Ukrainian cause.
The US, as a geopolitical entity, actually values the loyalty of all those peoples in Central Europe/Baltics who are (more than anyone else on the continent) directly interested in the suppression of Russian imperial agenda and aid Ukrainians as their fellow former subjects of the empire, as well as their current shield.
The US also cares directly about the diminution of Russia in the context of American grand strategy (where international economic isolation of China and denial of usable allies to China is the primary objective for the foreseeable future); victorious Russia is a substantially more valuable ally to China than one bogged down in trench warfare and suffering attacks on its capital, so it must not come to exist.
For these and other reasons, whatever fatique will be felt by the NATO camp, it won't be a big factor. But yes, Russians ignore these reasons and absolutely hope it will be, and this has been a consistent theme in the commentary for the whole duration of the war (except the first delusional week or so). This has been a common theme prior to the war, since 2014 at least – «Hohols will freeze to death without our gas» and so on (perfectly mirrored in that Gazprom middle finger to the EU); protracted resource throttling (or even just threatening it) in hopes of getting opposition to yield is a staple of Kremlin playbook, informed by the foundational belief that you can win by continuously imposing costs which translate into fatique and giving up. «These Gayropeans spoiled by their democracy are not tough, they can't endure remotely as much hardship [as our slaves]» is a very typical conviction both of authoritarians and of their powerless supporters and in Russia it has perhaps been developed into its ultimate form of a pervasive philosophical attitude to life. It's wrong about the other side, and it's mostly empty posturing with regard to one's own, these people aren't prepared for meaningful sacrifices, nor do they really care about the goal such as taking Ukraine, indeed most of them feel war fatique and would've given up if it were up them. But to the extent that they have something like strategy, all pro-war Russians from P. himself do the lowest Z conscript do pin their hopes on war fatigue in the West.
I’m not sure that it is sustainable. We’re spending billions a month on propping up the Ukrainian side. Given a lot of other needs at home, I don’t think you can keep doing that and still maintain power in a democracy. The public isn’t opposed to independence for Ukraine, but they’re also not nearly as engaged as they were a year ago. A year later I would expect even less interest. If some other crisis comes in, I would expect there’s going to be a formidable anti-war backlash.
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Never say never. Trump has openly said he would blackmail Ukraine into surrendering, and he currently has a runaway chance to be the RNom. There's no guarantee that would actually happen if he became president again since Trump is a waffle and if the people surrounding him (e.g. Kushner) or cable news pundits are all against it then he could soften his approach. But he could also very much... just do what he's saying he will, and the modern US political system centralizes an overwhelming amount of military power in the chief executive, so dissenting Dems + Repubs in Congress would have little recourse.
A critical reason this war is going to be a long one is because the question of "which side benefits from a drawn out war of attrition" is very unsettled.
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I'm not sure what you'd consider 'evidence,' but it is consistent plausible end-state motivations for most Russian strategic efforts since last summer. After it became apparent that Russian conventional offensives would be generally ineffective and disproportionately costly even as Putin demonstrated that mobilization waves would be a resort rather than a primary means of maintaining offensive mobility, there were three general dynamics for Russia: to keep trying to attack irregardless, to try and escape the conflict, or to adopt a defensive posture to conserve power and extend the clock. Putin has progressively tried to axe any viable Russian withdrawal route by various means to limit the political viability of such (the annexation of unoccupied territory, blowing up dams), and redirected offensive capabilities away from conventional targets towards things like the attacks on civilian power grids, which is classic economic transition that had the effect of running up the bill for western support, i.e. trying to strain western electrical industrial support and increasing the economic costs if Europe wanted to rebuild Ukraine after a war to incentive a shorter war.
The spring offensive aside- and that was at least conceptually supposed to be a more limited offensive to get territory that was part of the initial nominal casus belli- Russia has generally adopted the defensive posture to extend the clock, even as it has tried to continue its usual sort of IO efforts to fan anti-war efforts or actors and encourage divisions in the western coalition backing Ukraine. I'd personally consider that 'waiting for Ukraine fatigue to set in' a fair characterization, though it's a bit more proactive than that.
Of course, this is not 'evidence' as much as 'assessment,' based on things that are presumably open knowledge but not claiming any Russian internal document saying 'this is the goal,' a standard which would largely preclude evidence from being relevant.
Not sure how we would tell the difference between Russia hoping NATO will get tired and hoping that Ukraine will get tired -- the latter seems much more realistic. I'm pretty sure we will keep sending the Ukrainians bombs so long as they are prepared to keep shooting them at the Russians -- but at some point (one supposes) Ukrainians might tire of being blown to shit over the soil of various unimportant podunk farm towns where the action seems to be now taking place.
Selection of propaganda framings. Framing the conflict as being over unimportant podunk farm towns is the Russian-desired framing fit for westerners, not for Ukrainians, which is rather the point.
The Ukrainian support for the war is sky-high because the Ukrainians see this as an existential struggle that wouldn't end with a cease fire (because Russia could consolidate, regroup, and try yet another continuation war in what is already a series of continuation conflicts). If the Russians were trying to target Ukraine, they would focus on themes undermining this perception, and conceal, rather than amplify, narrative claims about how Ukraine was a fake country (that does not deserve to exist) and Nazis (for which total war and destruction is jusitfied) and properly russion (annexation). Anti-Ukrainian resolve IO would try to dissuade that Ukrainians in their power will be killed / kidnapped / tortured / moved as demographic pawns, and cast such allegations as ridiculous.
Instead, the state media and state-influenced media spheres practically revel in it, validating Ukrainian perceptions of Russian threat.
Framing the war as being a futile struggle over nothing important is a messaging theme for westerners providing Ukraine support. It is an entirely temporally-isolated narrative framing that focuses on ignoring what came before and what could come after, and stresses material value contrasts in the present tense (podunk farms vs billions in military/economic aid to continue fighting). This creates a maximally unfavorable framing for supporting the Ukrainians in terms of people providing things of value to them, which works in parallel with Russian efforts to use political proxies in Europe to act as 'peace activists' for pro-Russian settlements, signal boost or inflame opposition/dissident actors framing domestic complaints in terms of the war.
There were also the really unsubtle narrative campaigns regarding last year's energy cutoffs and Nord Stream Pipeline politics. Germany has long been the target of Russian information efforts. It failed, but not for lack of Russian trying.
Returning the previous post's point: at some point when beating their head against walls didn't work out, the Russians had to make a choice between cutting losses but also loosing gains, and playing for time in hopes they could end up keeping gains. They chose to play for time. The strategy to make that time turn to their favor is to change the conditions that enable the Ukrainians to resist against Russia's larger economic mass, which is to say the even larger Western economic mass. If Western mass can be disconected, then the conflict may go back to one Russia can 'win.'
Is it a probably stupid plan? Yes. But it's also very characteristic of Putin.
Who desires that framing seems to depend largely upon who's currently in possession of the podunk towns -- I certainly saw Bakhmut referred to this way in Western media as Russia was on the cusp of occupying it; ie. "Look how hard it has been for Russia to capture this one little town, they are so dumb/ineffectual/whatever". Now that Ukraine is making progress (?) on retaking it's bombed out husk it has suddenly been framed as a more important place. I have limited exposure to Russian/Ukrainian media, so IDK how it's framed to the people who are actually getting killed over it.
I believe it -- just that it seems not-unreasonable to think that this might change at some point before NATO tires of spending single digit percentages of its military budget on having other people kill Russians for them? "Ukraine is little puppy, we are big bear" seems like a pretty easy sell for the Russian leadership?
None of this is working, at all, though? "Current Thing" support for weapons delivery/profile flags seems strong as ever -- and even if it weren't there would be a long ways to go before public opinion stopped the Pentagon from doing as they please, no?
I mean it's probably the only plan -- full retreat would be the end of Putin I should think.
You're confusing propaganda narrative for assessment of value.
Bakhmut was referred to as strategically insignificant by non-Russian analysts because it's capture was (correctly) analyzed as not going to allow Russia the sort of breakthrough or impact to Ukrainian offenses to meaningfully change the strategic posture in a way to facilitate more effective follow-on Russian operations. Early in the war, Bakhmut falling was a pre-requisite for the Russians having a pincer attack that threatened the entire Ukrainian position in the Donetsk, one of the key territories in Russia's nominal casus belli for the administrative boundaries of the Donetsk separatists they claimed to be fighting for. As a pincer at a theater level, it would have allowed the Russians to deny the pocket access to artillery, given localized air superiority, and greatly diminished the ability of the Ukrainians to defend, as we saw earlier in the summer elsewhere during the grinding artillery offensive. After Kharkiv, the Russians lost both the territory and the logistics hubs required for any sort of pincer, negating the potential for overlapping artillery to keep out the Ukrainian artillery, greatly limiting the effectiveness of aviation, and so on. Without the second pincer to weaken the Ukrainian defenses by denying them safe space for artillery in the 'pocket', the advance from Kherson became the same general prospects as the advance into Kherson, which was not only massively wasteful in manpower, but the political consequences ended up resulting in a mutiny. Analysts didn't know the later would happen, but they were completely correct about the former, hence why it was a fight for a city and not what was beyond because the city became it's own target regardless of anything else.
By contrast, referring to the current offensive as over (non-specific, temporally isolated, inherently insignificant) podunk farms ignores that the podunk farms are simply where a defensive line is that- if broken, would radically reshape the viability of follow-on operations in war-altering ways. Namely, that the southern offensive threatened to reach the black sea, or at least put it into artillery range, thus cutting off land-based resupply of Crimea. Russia was highly dependent on the Crimean bridge to move forces and supply the Crimean peninsula, a logistics lift which was throttled by the bridge attacks but somewhat mitigated by the land corridor. Compromising that land corridor forces the Russians to be far more dependent on a far more limited supply chain itself still vulnerable to disruption, and by limiting that supply chain would enabled the Ukrainians to have future more favorable operations against the Russians in those undersupplied areas (i.e. by going from the sea and then west, towards the peninsula's opening).
The Ukrainians don't/didn't care where particularly the southern lines were breached, but no matter where it was, it would be through podunk farms. Framing the offensive as over podunk farms, as opposed to being over what the podunk farms are in the way towards, is a propaganda framing, not an analysis of what the target.
And yet, the Russians don't believe this (which I believe is correct), and are focusing their propaganda efforts at the west instead (which is reflected in the prevalence of themes and prioritization of efforts).
The question is not whether you think the Russians are doing the sensible thing. The war was not a sensible thing. The question is what the Russians are doing, and how we might know it.
'At all' is totalizing language that would be inherently wrong. There are anti-war / 'don't support the Ukrainians' movements, and there have been diplomatic flareups between the western coalition that Russia has signal-boosted and amplified.
It is not working enough at the moment, but that's why the Russians are playing for time in Ukraine while trying to shape the western information sphere via propaganda over time.
Hence why they are strategically playing to the defensive and buying time and going after the long-term viability of the Ukrainian government (which would collapse without Western aid).
The Russian wish-fantasy-strategy is that someone like Donald Trump comes into power on a wave of discontent (that the Russians help amplify), and once in power overrules the military / fundamentally breaks the alliance / does things that Russia would like.
It doesn't matter that even Donald Trump didn't do that when in office, that's just what the Russian hail mary is, and Putin is well into hail-mary territory.
Putin still has full control of the internal security forces, and the ability to shoot dissenters. He'll be paranoid and miserable, but it's not like he'll lose an election. Wagner's mutiny was worse for showing how little the military was able/willing to stop it, not for it's (in)ability to take over Moscow or a lack of government control of the internal security services. Moscow would have been bloody and embarrasing, but not the end of Putin for the same reason that the war itself isn't: Putin has made all his potential successors complicit, so that they would share his fate, so they have an interest in avoiding it.
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This is basically all arguments about Russian collusion/subversion in a nutshell.
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