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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   33377 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 3, 2025

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I get that some people just hate Russia, but what exactly is the hawks’ plan?

This feels like a real straw man.

Now, I am sure that there are still some cold war hawks who might be described as "hating Russia", but even they might just see Russia as an opponent in a zero-or-negative-sum game. Europe generally was fine with Russia. What I am not fine with, however, are wars of conquest. From a utilitarian perspective, we should try to prevent these wars, and the best way to prevent them is to support the victims so that a quick blitz is turned into a humiliating defeat. When this is not available, turned them into years of a costly and embarrassing meat grinder -- while having lower utility -- also serves to dissuade further wars of conquest.

If Russia was brought to the point of having to evacuate Crimea & Novorossiya, it would mean an existential political crisis & possible state collapse, the consequences of which would be incalculable.

Geographic note: I just checked on a map, and it seems that the Kremlin is not actually located on Crimea, but in Moscow, which is a bit further away.

Remember when the US pulled out of Vietnam, and this lead to a total collapse of their country? Roving bands of former US marines would try pillage Canadian and Mexican border villages, Kansas declared itself an absolute monarchy, missile bases would just launch their ICBM payloads against whatever cities their commanders personally disliked most, Stalinists took over most communal councils and fought the class war using zoning?

Of course, nothing of that sort happened.

If Ukraine retakes Crimea, which seems very unlikely, then most of the probability mass is probably not on them slaughtering every last able-bodied man in Russia on their path there, followed by killing Putin as he personally tries to hold Crimea. Instead, the hypothetical path to victory would be for political pressure to mount on Putin as more and more Russian citizens are killed, finally resulting in Putin withdrawing. (Slightly more realistically, his forces would withdraw to Crimea and perhaps a tiny slice of what used to be Ukraine, and Ukraine would be persuaded to accept the new borders.)

Sure, a loss of the war -- especially after this much bloodshed -- would also be a political loss for Putin, and it is uncertain if he would survive it. But from what I can tell, the key stakeholders -- his oligarchs -- are in it for having a carefree life of embezzling money, not for Making Russia Great Again. Likely, they let him slaughter his troops because they have a good thing going and don't really care too much either way, not because they believe that it is instrumental that Russia controls Kiev.

Even if they decide to get rid of him, they would likely just put on of their numbers in charge. The probability that some doomsday cult running on a platform of nuclear Armageddon will end up in charge of Russia seems tiny indeed.

Remember when the US pulled out of Vietnam, and this lead to a total collapse of their country?

Ukraine is not Vietnam to Russia. They really, really care about what goes on in Ukraine and will expend vast efforts there, not least because there are a large number of Russians living in Ukraine. Most of the country speaks Russian. The commander in chief of the Ukrainian army, Syrski, is an ethnic Russian who was trained in Moscow Higher Military Command School, his whole family is Russian. This war is halfway between a civil war and an interstate war, despite what the media would like us to believe.

There are serious risks of nuclear use if the Ukrainians somehow threatened to seriously defeat the Russian army, which they have shown little sign of being capable of. The nominal Western strategy is to achieve this though, the 2023 counteroffensive was supposed to do this IIRC. Our strategy is incoherent, there is no clear path to victory.

Russian oligarchs are not profiting from this war. Oligarchs would like to trade with the West, party in the South of France or launder money offshore. Vlad in the armaments factory and textile mill is the one profiting from this war, Ivan living in the formerly-decrepit Urals industrial town that's now a booming part of the war economy is seeing his income rise. The political losers from this war are the English-fluent laptop class who've had many of their foreign assets and IT jobs frozen, many have fled Russia for Turkey or Argentina. The most pro-Western elements in Russia have been politically euthanized while the less-educated patriots are getting more prestige and wealth. Putin is relatively moderate by the standards of Russian leadership, Medvedev is constantly making radical hyperbolic threats and statements online. Other academics have called for a demonstration strike on Poland.

I foresee many nasty surprises waiting for us as this war progresses, it should not be considered in this casual way. It does have a material effect on all of us via energy prices if nothing else.

Ivan living in the formerly-decrepit Urals industrial town that's now a booming part of the war economy is seeing his income rise.

Ivan was drafted and is now dead.

Those who could fled the country, the final phase of the brain drain that Putin has been contributing to since the 90s, and entire towns of young men have been decimated thanks to this war.

If Ivan is dead, then who is making more shells and drones than the US or Europe?

The Russian draftees aren't the primary troops on the front they mostly do rear-area work. Russia has been pumping up soldier's wages looking for volunteers on the front. Ukraine is the side reliant on draftees to hold the line because they have more casualties and less manpower. Which is exactly what we'd expect in a war between a big country and a small country.

If Ivan is dead, then who is making more shells and drones than the US or Europe?

They make two types of drones: one is constructed with low-tech parts from Iran, the other are decoy drones made of plywood and foam. Both are cheap, easy to construct, and automated and thus require little manpower. Therefore, comparing drone output between Europe and Russia is pointless. US drone, and military, technology is vastly superior.

Those who could fled the country

"Laptop class" from big cities with passports and money, and large numbers of them since then returned, when they were less than welcomed in the West and their cash ran out. Thank NAFO types, well done.

Estimates vary widely as to how many people have returned, but it seems like as many as 50% of emigrants are still outside the country. This is a significant amount of people.

I’m sorry, but the discourse about Russia I’ve seen both online and IRL since the very early days of the war (and even some before the invasion began) has gone far past “supporting Ukraine for utilitarian reasons.” I frequent several subreddits dedicated to architecture and classical music, and any time a Russian building is posted — even if it was built hundreds of years before this war — or any time there’s discussion of the great Russian composers, there’s a very loud contingent of people either saying that Russia has no great culture, or else expressing disgust that anyone would post anything that paints any aspect of Russia in a good light.

Speaking of classical music, a year and a half ago I attended the San Diego Symphony’s annual Tchaikovsky Spectacular, which always concludes with the 1812 Overture. When I arrived, I was handed a program with an insert informing me that the orchestra had decided — and not informed its patrons until we arrived at the venue — to omit the 1812 Overture and to perform a music lesser-known (and inferior, although still good) piece by Tchaikovsky because “we feel that it is inappropriate to perform a piece of music that glorifies a Russian military victory, while there are Ukrainians dying every day defending their country from this indefensible invasion.” What the fuck does Tchaikovsky have to do with Putin’s invasion? The overture in question was written to celebrate Russia’s army repelling an invading army! It honors a battle that took place two centuries ago!

What, other than a jingoistic, atavistic, propagandistic hatred of Russia would motivate a decision like this? It’s disconnected from reality and causality. It doesn’t even attempt to provide a consequentialist or utilitarian reason why we have to disfavor aspects of historical Russian culture which were nigh-universally beloved before the current war began? It’s very clear that places like Reddit have decided that since the current fifth-generation warfare paradigm involves psyops, propaganda, and control of social-media messaging, it’s imperative to impose a blanket policy of negativity toward anything Russian or Russia-adjacent in order to aid (in whatever way possible, even if it has no basis in reality) Ukrainian morale and international standing. This goes way beyond just wanting to punish and degrade Russia’s military.

About a year ago I had to take Boney M's excellent Moskau off my playlist after a guy started shouting about Russia and how disgusting it was to support them.

It's a two-way minute hate.

Wait… “Moskau” is by Dschinghis Khan. “Rasputin” is by Boney M. Fake fan!!!

No! My precious seventies music cred! Oh what a woe!

I frequent several subreddits dedicated to architecture and classical music, and any time a Russian building is posted — even if it was built hundreds of years before this war — or any time there’s discussion of the great Russian composers, there’s a very loud contingent of people either saying that Russia has no great culture, or else expressing disgust that anyone would post anything that paints any aspect of Russia in a good light.

Show me post within the last month that fits this description.

Here’s one from less than two weeks ago, although at less now there are people pushing back on it, in a way that they wouldn’t have a year ago.

Yeah, it's basically what I expected: astroturfed post in which every heavily upvoted comment is pushing back against it and the original poster downvoted in every one of their comments. Of course there are Russia haters in these ostensibly non-political subreddits, but they're a minority, which is the opposite of what your comment implied.

I said that there is a very loud contingent, not that they represent a majority. (And to be clear, they were much louder and more active a year ago than they are now.)

Your link is broken.

That's a nooreddit link. Remove the "old." part, which may have been automatically added by the site the same way it used to auto-convert Twitter to nitter.

/images/17415759880784261.webp

It works fine for me…

I cannot get the link to work. I'm expecting something formatted like

https://old.reddit.com/r/ArchitecturalRevival/comments/1j7iko2/old_louisville_kentucky_a_leafy_1870s/

I'm seeing

https://old.reddit.com/r/ArchitecturalRevival/s/2Ax2KXHCWr

which takes me to a submission page. Guessing that the "s" is for submission, I hand edit the "s" to "comments"

https://old.reddit.com/r/ArchitecturalRevival/comments/2Ax2KXHCWr

but that just gets me "PAGE NOT FOUND"

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