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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   24757 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 25, 2023

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Right, I saw that part of the sentence but skipped past that part of the argument, I should have explicitly said why I was talking about the military of Ukraine. I think it is deeply silly to attribute Ukrainian military performance to the politics of the U.S. army because of U.S. intelligence passing them some information. Also, even if we were talking about the U.S. military, soldiers are more right-wing than the general public and belief in "non-binary gender identity" is far from consensus in the U.S. even outside the right.

To the extent talking about "the they/them army beating Russia!" is a real argument at all, it is a response to those who have said it weakens the U.S. army when it adopts policies such as lowering standards to let in more women and pandering to divisive left-wing political groups who are not particularly patriotic/nationalistic or likely to join the military. Those criticisms have essentially no relevance to the U.S. keeping a spy drone over international waters and passing some of its data to Ukraine. Meanwhile the actual Ukrainian army is not particularly left-wing, owes much of its success to the Ukrainian people being more patriotic/nationalistic than Russia expected, and by the way a surprisingly successful force in pushing that sense of anti-Russian patriotism was a militia of literal neo-Nazis who were subsequently successfully integrated into the mainstream army and political system. (Meanwhile the U.S. military brags about campaigns to root out supposed "right-wing extremism".)

Meanwhile the actual Ukrainian army is not particularly left-wing, owes much of its success to the Ukrainian people being more patriotic/nationalistic than Russia expected, and by the way a surprisingly successful force in pushing that sense of anti-Russian patriotism was a militia of literal neo-Nazis who were subsequently successfully integrated into the mainstream army and political system.

I agree. The Ukraine government is oddly successful at sending men to their death. You'd expect from all these street press gang videos that at least a few low-level officers would get shot by desperate soldiers, but they must be really good at compartimentalizing.

Perhaps the new recruits only get ammunition 5min before going to clear the minefield with their legs, or maybe they really get fired up by the patriotic speech at the camp?

I really wonder what I would do in such a situation, probably not much. It'd only take a couple guys to carry me into a van and after that it's probably game over?

And then there's all these men. Imagine being the guy shoving Ukrainian men into a van to send them to the trench. You didn't manage to escape and you have to keep doing it, and the more you do it, the longer the war lasts, the more likely you are to get sent as well. Then you end up in the minefield and all you can think about is 'if only I killed that commanding officer on day 1, how many men could I have saved?'.

I talked to a guy who was doing business importing sunflower oil from Ukraine, but he ran into personnel issues. He'd hire a Ukrainian man to pick up and deliver across the border but then they'd abandon the truck after crossing.

You'd expect from all these street press gang videos that at least a few low-level officers would get shot by desperate soldiers, but they must be really good at compartimentalizing.

...or that the street press gang videos being spread by pro-Russians as a form of propaganda are really not reflective of the situation at large.

Perhaps the videos were not reflective of the situation up to this point. Perhaps the Ukrainians who did not flee immediately as soon as orders were given by whoever is in charge of the West were really willing to die. Then they got their wishes and we have a lot more videos as impressment becomes more urgent. I suppose this is more recent development, here's an article from a month ago.

At the River Tisa, which acts as the border from southwestern Ukraine to Romania, guard patrols used to focus on catching tobacco smugglers but now collar fleeing draft dodgers. About 6,000 people have been detained trying to leave across that stretch, the border guards told Reuters. One of them, Dyma Cherevychenko, said at least 19 people had drowned trying to flee the country during the conflict.

The more striking act of resistance so far, a couple weeks old. A village councillor in western Ukraine has thrown grenades on to the floor of a council meeting, wounding 26 people, police say.

How did he get those grenades, and why is he the only one doing it?

My prediction for 2024: there will be few male Ukrainians ready to die for the Ukraine government, and the ones that do will be quite old.

It really is a marvel of media bubble. I wonder how many Ukrainians who died on the battlefield ever read a quote from the Americans who 'support' them.

“American support for Ukraine is not charity. It’s an investment in our own direct interests,” the top Senate Republican said. “Degrading Russia’s military power helps to deter our primary strategic adversary, China,” McConnell added.

This is what some of the Americans who in practice support TUD seem to believe:

The US won in Ukraine by the first week of the war. Everything since then is bleeding Russia for free without risking a single American serviceman’s life. The cost is minuscule - food stamps cost vastly more, as do countless other bullshit federal programs - and much of Russia’s most elite fighting capacity has been slaughtered and replaced with 80 IQ Central Asian peasant conscripts using WW1 trench tactics. Sure, Ukraine is destroyed, but they wanted to fight and, to paraphrase the immortal words of Lord Farquad, that’s a price we’re willing to pay.

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