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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022

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"Of course Ukraine was not going to fall, the writing was on the wall."

None of this was obvious.

Dunno. Maybe I was just biased and happend to get lucky against the odds, but I believed from the start that things were not going to go well for the Russians and put it in writing as early as March 2nd:

[M]y prior is a conversation I had a few years ago with friend, a young Ukranian woman, about her participation in Euromaidan. The kind of determination and bravery that she described, in the face of harrowing, quasi-military oppression, was utterly astonishing to me. It made me incredibly thankful for having lived my life so far in peaceful countries—and it also made me sure that YOU DO NOT WANT TO MESS WITH THE UKRAINIANS.

Evidently the Ukrainians' grit and resolve wasn't obvious to most until the fighting actually started. Were most westerners typical-minding things? After all, if the UK got invaded I can only imagine that most of us would be trying to flee or at least keep our heads down and not get killed. But that's not what I expected the Ukrainians to do, and they didn't.