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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   18374 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025

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Honestly the best thing Putin could do is accept it. Ukraine will never accept it, so it is a safe bet.

This actually creates an interesting dilemma. Say neither Putin nor Ukraine want Trump's deal (-100, -100). If both refuse the deal, Trump might halfheartedly continue to support Ukraine so can continue to butcher each other (-50, -50). If only Ukraine refuses, Trump withdraws all support from Ukraine (R: +100, U: -200). If only Russia refuses, Trump will increase aid to Ukraine out of spite (R: -200, U: +100).

This is isomorphic to the prisoner's dilemma, except that "cooperate" is "refuse Trump's deal" and "defect" is "accept Trump's deal".

I am not sure that I buy that a deal can be made so terrible that both sides would prefer to slaughter each other instead -- sure, there are parts where the US wins (at the expense of the other parties), but given how negative-sum that war is, there should be the possibility of a zero-sum deal which is preferable to both sides. Of course, it also helps to negotiate with both sides (as well as other stakeholders like EU) to see what precisely they want instead of just announcing a your peace plan and demanding that everyone accepts it.

What would their alternative be? Ukraine is being pressured along the entire front. They haven't had a proper attack since August, in which they claimed an equivalent of less than 1% of the land they have lost while attack an area that the Russians barely were defending. Ukraine is facing a demographic crisis not seen since the collapse of Rome.

Ukrainian nationalists seem to be wildly detached from reality. They want a national socialist state financed by Keir starmer after their war has a miraculous turn around in which they go from being pressed back to smashing through the Russian lines and Russia collapsing. At some point they have to stop speaking in slogans and start focusing on what is practical. Their negotiating position isn't improving with time.

What would their alternative be?

Crybulling. Zelensky is master of that.

Wouldn't crybullying require that you're actually in a dominant position while pretending not to be?

No, just being able to manipulate authorities. Kindergartners learn it

Being in a dominant position follows from it, unless the authorities are powerless.

Or there can be a new teacher, but the bully still uses the same tricks that worked on the old one

Ukrainian nationalists can just maintain their position of maximum fuck Russia or bust. It's not a war of extermination, they can survive the dissolution of Ukraine as a state and it's probably going to feel better knowing they "fought to the last" rather than becoming a cucked rump state.

It's not a war of extermination, they can survive the dissolution of Ukraine as a state

It's not clear that Ukraine as a people can survive continued war. Their demographics were already terrible and tons of dead and fleeing reproductive-age people occurs to me as likely to be fatal. Then again the worst case scenario has already basically happened, so yeah, I guess they may as well ride the thing to zero. Sucks for the ones who wanted to live though.

Apart from Ukraine being conquered by Russia and forcibly assimilated, what would "Ukraine as a people to survive" mean here? Even if their population levels are drastically reduced, well, there are nations half the size of Ukrainians surviving as a people, even triple or quarter the size of Ukrainians. The Paraguayans were able to survive the War of the Triple Alliance. It would mean huge amounts of death, to be sure, but that's still different from national extinction.

Ukraine as a people definitely can't survive Russian victory - Putin has made clear that he considers Ukrainians to be misguided Russians who need to be forcibly shown which country they actually belong to, and is implementing this policy in Russian-controlled parts of Ukraine.

They did survive years under Russian Empire rulers of which had the same views as Putin. Also in Russian-controlled parts of Ukraine Ukrainian language is a second official one and you can choose to learn it in school.

Russian Empire was basically unable to utilize state power to anywhere close to the degree that a modernized state could, though it was starting to make up the difference already in the years before the Bolshevik Revolution.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the Russian-controlled parts of Ukraine heavily ethnically Russian, and weren't the Ukrainians pursuing a similar policy of forcible assimilation? (I may well be wrong.)

Ukraine has often been part of Russia and their distinctiveness has always seemed to me tenuous at best. FWIW I developed this opinion over a decade ago after spending some time with Ukrainians in the US who were very insistent that they're totally different from Russians and gave me several examples which left me entirely unconvinced. Basically everything came down to regional vocabulary differences. That's not a matrioshka doll, it's a $ukrainian_word_for_exact_same_thing! Based on my mostly-uninformed assessment, Ukrainian can't really be called a dialect of Russian but they have like 2/3 overlap and from a cultural standpoint they're nearly indistinguishable. Easy for an outsider to think, I suppose.

I agree, which of course gives the Russians the right to claim their territory and then ethnically cleanse them. The Americans and British don't even speak different languages, so obviously the UK should ethnically cleanse the US as well.

Who has any right to land? Either you can defend it or someone else will have it. There's only 'is' here, no 'ought'.

Casual encounters and visits to England and Ireland might also leave one convinced that they are basically the same nationality on the basis of not only language but also surface aspects (left side of the road, two faucets, crap insulation etc.), and yet... (or England and US/Australia/Canada/whatever.)

Well, yes -- part of Ireland is already the UK and if the rest were to unite with the UK I wouldn't be losing sleep over the erasure of the Irish as a people. Scotland already did, and it's still there. Wales too. Sure they'd like to be independent but that's clearly a want, not a need.

Do you make any distinctions between Germany, Austria, the 17 Germanophone Swiss cantons, the Alto Adige, etc.?

Sure; such things can be subdivided fractally. But if I heard all those people were henceforth to be under a single government I wouldn't be thinking "Oh no the unique Austrian culture will now be subsumed into Greater Mitteleuropa!" It would make a lot of sense for them to share a government IMO.

Though, the Swiss have a long history of self-government which is unlike anything to be found in Ukraine, so I doubt they'd be much interested. Else they'd be in the EU.

Ukrainians pursuing a similar policy of forcible assimilation

That started because of the 2022 war, when people chose to stop speaking Russian because the Russian army was shelling them and then the government started e.g. removing Pushkin statues.

Ethnic data's difficult because terms like native language actually mean ancestral language, so people will e.g. claim to be natives of a language they don't speak. Of course, you also get wild 20% swings in different censuses as identities are relatively meaningless. A rather small amount of Easterners claimed to be ethnically Russian, but used Russian in all situations. N.b. I was a staunch "Ukrainian isn't a "real" identity" type (but very supportive of its independence, because many Ruses would lead to many courts and renaissance, like in Italy and Germany's golden ages. The languages are very close, effectively a few hundred unique roots and different 1:1 changes in the realization of others. Anyway, I never felt a need to use Ukrainian and never encountered it in day to day life.

That started because of the 2022 war

No, it started after the 2014 invasion of Crimea. As far back as 2019, the Council of Europe's "Commission for Democracy through Law" issued a scathing report on Ukraine's oppression of the Russian language.

The Commission notes that the State Language Law submitted to its examination in the present opinion also fails to strike a fair balance between the legitimate aim of strengthening and promoting the Ukrainian language and sufficiently safeguarding minorities’ linguistic rights. On the contrary, the State Language Law extends to other areas the differential treatment that the Commission considered in its 2017 opinion as very problematic from the perspective of non-discrimination. Furthermore, the Commission notes that the State Language Law includes several provisions which impose limitations on the freedom of expression and the freedom of association as enshrined in the ECHR. While limitations to these freedoms may serve legitimate aims, the Commission recalls that all limitations must be proportionate. The Commission in the present opinion has found that several articles of the State Language Law require further clarification in order to be proportionate to the legitimate aim.

Article 25 allows publishing of print media in two or more language versions, one of which must be Ukrainian, provided that all language versions are identical in size, format and substance and are issued on the same day. Exception is made only for media issued in Crimean Tatar or other indigenous languages, and those issued in English or other official EU languages (which do not need a translation into Ukrainian). The Law requires that the print media in Ukrainian constitute no less than 50% of selection in each print media distribution point. These rules will apply to national and regional media in two and a half years from the Law’s entry into force and to the local media in five years (Section IX, point 1).

In addition to the very problematic differential treatment provided for in this Article (see supra §44), these provisions raise the question whether the high administrative and financial burden they impose on editors of mass media will not “cause substantial disruption and could have a chilling effect” (see supra §88) on publishing in minority languages, and if so, whether this limitation of the freedom both to impart and to receive information can be considered to be necessary – i.e. also proportionate – in a democratic society.

In view of crucial importance of the freedom of the press in a democratic society, the Commission recommends that the legislator repeal this requirement.

Article 25 allows publishing of print media in two or more language versions, one of which must be Ukrainian, provided that all language versions are identical in size, format and substance and are issued on the same day.

Doesn't Canada have similar laws regarding English and French?

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