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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   26925 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 25, 2023

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I’m not sure they were ever taking Ukraine seriously. The minute the Russians crossed the border, it was treated like a kids’ story. Ukraine good, NATO good. Russia bad. Ukraine will win, Russia is pathetic and weak. Made up stories of heroism. And of course boycotting and deplatforming and renaming anything Russian. Cancel the Russian opera singer, if you can’t ban Russian athletes, make them compete under a different flag, and of course shame anyone who doesn’t use the proper names (Kyiv, Ukraine (no the), Chicken Kyiv, The Russian Invasion of Ukraine) or companies that don’t leave Russia within the first ten minutes. Anyone who questions the narrative is either a Russian Troll or fooled by one.

Now a lot of the above, worryingly, sounds a lot like what was going on in WW1. We at least in America, saw the war as a chance for glory, we cheerfully shit on the Germans and renamed Sauerkraut to Liberty Cabbage. And eventually we found out just how bad war can be.

Have you read this article? https://www.ecosophia.net/notes-on-stormtrooper-syndrome/

I think you'd find it interesting given some of the points you've made above.

I would like to chalk this up to the foolish youth of American nations who haven't yet tired of the millennias of ruin warfare can bring.

But the truth is probably more grim. I recently watched They shall not grow old which is ostensibly about the British youths in WW1, and they too had a cheerful glee about them to start with, despite being part of a culture that has seen its fair share of horror at that point (if not of the industrial kind).

Maybe people are just eternally naïve about such things. There are seemingly endless examples of bloody conflicts that everyone was strongly convinced would be over by Christmas. The power of delusion is strong, and maybe it has to be to muster the will to defend oneself in the first place.

It's about exposure to reality and control of narrative. These proxy wars will continue to happen, even "real" "wars" will continue to happen. New soldiers are born every day, and they will be continuously fed into the meat grinder, until the mass of the populace gets exposed to the harsh reality of war, it will never end. This war needs to happen on US ground, everyone must feel the pain viscerally, personally for it to be real. When people die somewhere else, it's an abstract thing. It doesn't really register to the common person. If it does it will be swept away by some other personal problem or the news cycle will shift and some other bullshit will fill their attention.

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