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PaperclipPerfector  16d ago (text post)   30776 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 2, 2024

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There is no way such a rule would be backed by the Western countries unless they could get reassurance that it would never be applied against them in the court of public opinion. A quick search reveals USAID spent $63 billion in 2024, and this is not counting other allied financial moves like the EU's offer of more than 10% of Moldova's GDP as a loan to help the pro-EU candidate. (Imagine the pandemonium if Georgescu's campaign had a promise of a $35B loan from Russia attached to it if they leave NATO!) Then, there is the circumstance that Western culture is "Universal Culture". The West out-spends and out-memes its adversaries on its periphery regularly; losing one rare match is not a good reason to throw a tantrum and quit the game.

The EU financed and even gave weapons to the revolutionaries that overthrew the government of Ukraine in 2014, installing an EU-friendly government instead of the previous government, which was oriented towards Russia. That kicked off the current Ukraine situation.

There isn't even a veneer of fair play and there hasn't been in a long while. To be fair, I would not expect fair play from Putin. But the EU as an institution is converging towards the same kind of thing, in the name of "defending democracy" to boot. I don't like either, but I have to live in the EU and Putin is far away, so one of them I hate theoretically but the other one I by now hate viscerally.

One might have imagined that the Russian-advocated attempted self-coup the preceeded the culmination of Maidan (and, of course, the reversal of the EU association agreement that preceded the Maidan political crisis) might have had something more to do with kicking off the current Ukraine situation, but I am glad to see a non-American attribution for once.

I agree with you. So I'm not sure how things will be resolved.

Personally I never liked this game though. Win or lose the culture war is emotional hell on earth.

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