How Odd Is Putin's Russia?

[Aupmanyav]

What other amazing opinions do you have on things you know nothing about?

If I do not know about something, I do not debate it.
I do have some amazing opinions like impossibility of existence of God, soul, heaven, hell, rebirth, resurrection, judgment.
I believe that there is no difference between existence and non-existence and that the universe arose out of nothing.

 

[Tomef]

If I do not know about something, I do not debate it.

You seem to have bought into your own hype a little too much.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

NATO has expanded and encircled Russia.

1. every nato expansion was on request by the nations that joined.
2. you might want to look up what "encircled" means

That is why Russia attacked Ukraine.

lol, no it isn't. Ukraine isn't even part of NATO (yet).

Now Ukraine is trying to push back Russia at the instigation and help from NATO.

Utterly false. Not at the instigation at all. And help not just from NATO either, but individual countries - some / many of which happen to be part of NATO.
And this is at the request of Ukraine. They are begging for help. Nobody is telling them to "push back".

That is a foolish enterprise. That is not going to succeed. Ukraine will suffer more losses.

Ukraine's choice.

NATO is sitting pretty. The war can end only through dialogue.

Dialogue requires that both sides are willing to talk in good faith.
As it stands, last time this was tried, Russia literally poisoned the negotiators from the other side, including one of their own who was there at the request of Ukraine.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

They are reaping the results of wrong selections.

"wrong" selections?
You mean, they should elect Russian muppets instead?

Who are you to tell them what they want for their country? Who is Russia to tell them what they want for their country?

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

I cannot blame Russia alone. The real cause of the war is NATO. Ukraine was foolish to wish joining NATO.

How is NATO at fault here? How are they the cause of the war?

Has this wish protected them?

If it wasn't for all the international help they are getting, they would have been overrun and destroyed by now.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

That was too late. They should have talked to Russia before electing a fool like Poroshenko and should have known their limits.

"too late"?
But today it isn't "too late"? Make up your mind.

And "their limits"?
Why are you insisting that a sovereign nation must bow down to the will of a neighbor?

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

If you encircle a lion or tiger, then it is going to attack someone. NATO wanted that and Ukraine proved to be the sheep.

Stop spreading these lies.

NATO "wanted" nothing. It's Ukraine (and the other eastern ex-soviet countries) that wanted to join.

Ask yourself why.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

There cannot be peace without addressing Putin's concerns.

A better way of saying that would be "there cannot be peace with Putin".
Again: peace requires both sides to be able to talk in good faith. Putin and his cohorts of Russian elites have shown themselves to be of very bad faith and dishonest partners. They can not be trusted. The consistently do the opposite of what they claim they will do. And they are unscrupulous about mounting false flag attacks and murder their own. Since the Ukrainian invasion, how many Russian elites have "fallen" off of balconies by now? Where is the opposition? All of them are poisoned, in jail or hiding out somewhere abroad.

These are not people you can have peace talks with in good faith.

NATO can continue the fight at the expense of Ukraine.

It's the other way round. Ukraine is fighting. And they are begging NATO for help.
If it was up to Ukraine, NATO would have boots on the ground and enforced no-fly zones.

You really need to stop pretending as if any of this is on NATO's behalf or request.
If anything, NATO was very reluctant to get involved. They aren't even sending 1/100th of what Ukraine is begging them.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

That's the key thing that I've noticed. The end result is a weakened and depleted Russia, along with a severely devastated Ukraine. Russia will end up having to turn to China, while Ukraine will become dependent upon the West. Neither Ukraine nor Russia are benefiting from them killing each other like this.

And Ukraine will definitely not benefit from simply rolling over and die.

 

[Stevicus]

It’s not really the same thing. Of course there are lies everywhere, the degree and nature of them is different. Does anyone claim ‘there is no crime in the USA. There cannot be crime because it is an ideal society’? If a politician were to claim that, would they be taken seriously? What if your neighbour said that guy is nuts, then at 2am some group of cops kicks in his door and you don’t see him again. Then your boss starts saying things like ‘isn’t it amazing that there is no crime here in the USA’ in meetings. Someone laughs, and is fired, and you don’t see them again either. Some politician you thought was close to the other nut appears on TV confessing to all kinds of bizarre crimes. You notice everyone you know is drinking more. Eventually you find yourself nodding in agreement when you hear things like ‘there’s no crime in the USA’ or ‘we produced …’ (an insanely exaggerated quantity of whatever it is you make). At some point you kind of start to believe it, but your brain can’t deal with that, so you just kind of cut off and try not to be involved, but you find that you have to parrot the same kind of crap yourself if you want to get anywhere. You hear that the Vietnam war was a glorious victory, and that the Vietnamese are filled with gratitude for the benevolent actions of your government. That Nixon was the victim of a vicious plot by evil foreign agents, who have all been ‘disappeared’.

I could go on. But you can look into it yourself. There’s no comparison with the ‘normal’ lying everyone, not just politicians, engages in. Neither are the consequence of not believing the lies, not actively pretending to believe them, anything like the same. Politicians lied over the 2nd Iraq war - would you risk prison or execution for pointing that out? In that kind of environment, people’s brains gradually change. Thinking becomes a survival thing.

Are you referring to things that you personally witnessed in Romania? I understand that Ceausescu's regime was even more extreme and atrocious than most of the other Eastern European states, including the Soviet Union itself. If you don't think Americans can understand the processes you're describing here, then maybe you don't know enough about America.

When I visited the Soviet Union in the 1980s, I saw no indication that anyone thought it was any kind of paradise. Gorbachev was pushing for more openness, and people on the street were frank and honest about their criticisms of the system. There had been an ongoing thaw since Stalin's death to the point where their society was totally different by the time of Gorbachev.

 

[Tomef]

There had been an ongoing thaw since Stalin's death to the point where their society was totally different by the time of Gorbachev.

True, to some extent, especially from the 80s on (when there was less to eat). Nostalgia kicked in in the 90s though, and those old ways of thinking are still there.

There’s just a level at which people can be fooled, even when they are fully aware they are being fooled, and not just accept it but embrace it like a return to the womb that is particular to the post Soviet world, at least in comparison to most of the rest of Europe. Maybe there’s something similar in the US. Do you think it would be possible to get the general public to embrace a movie about the Vietnam war that painted it as a heroic and victorious humanitarian endeavour? That might answer the question. I’ve only been to the US once, and it was a bit strange. I did get the sense that the stereotype ‘Americans don’t get irony’ might have some truth to it.

 

[Tomef]

Are you referring to things that you personally witnessed in Romania?

About lying do you mean? No, the claim of there being no crime was a Soviet Russian thing. When crime was allowed to be officially recognised, it was as part of a diagnosis of a psychiatric disorder, as in no sane person in the perfect society would commit a crime, hence this person who did must be insane. Kruschev blew up that thinking a bit, but for most Russians Kruschev is the fool and Stalin the hero.

 

[Tomef]

Are you referring to things that you personally witnessed in Romania? I understand that Ceausescu's regime was even more extreme and atrocious than most of the other Eastern European states, including the Soviet Union itself. If you don't think Americans can understand the processes you're describing here, then maybe you don't know enough about America.

If you mean the ‘terror’ then no, I wasn’t alive at the time, but the arrest, torture, imprisonment and murder of millions for literally no reason at all in Soviet Russia is well-documented. Complainers, journalists, political opponents are still routinely intimidated, jailed, exiled, beaten up, murdered etc, albeit in smaller numbers.

 

[Stevicus]

A system is just a thing that happens when people act. Corruption ballooned in the USSR because it was based on multiple levels of patronage from the start. People with any real intellectual capacity were used up, executed, driven mad, or excluded from ‘the system’ - the networks of patronage - early on. No petty ‘boss’ who thinks his word is law wants someone smarter than they are around. From the bottom to the top all relationships were based on favours, the parroting and acceptance of lies that could change from one day to the next, and the need to keep whoever was above you happy. Corruption is a normal part of those kind of arrangements. Some people, like Putin, of limited intellectual capacity, actually bought into it all, really believed it was good and the collective West was some hellhole of exploitation and drug addiction.

People accept what happens around them as normal. There is a lot of writing about this sort of thing, but not in all history books. It depends what you are reading.

The same thing persists in Russia - a couple of years ago, North Korean was the butt of all kinds of ridicule on the ‘patriotic’ TV shows. China was viewed with suspicion. Now NK is a glorious defender of truth and justice, an advanced, modern society (‘look how wide the roads are’ is an actual quote from some dumbass propaganda show. People are fully expected to nod and show appreciation (people do this even in their own homes), and China is everyone’s friend. This sort of thing is so normal in Russia it barely registers. Imagine if everyone you know started talking about how great and honest Trump is tomorrow, and when you questioned it they just gave you blank looks and carried on as if you just didn’t ‘get’ it. If you actually think in that kind of society you soon find yourself on the fringes of it, if not actively being persecuted by the ‘believers’. Look how fast Russia went from relatively normal to a guy being locked up because his daughter drew a picture of Russian aircraft bombing civilians, and school and university students shopping anyone among them who criticises the war.

I can see the same process in internet echo chambers and even in the various tactics used in debating in the public and semi-public sphere. It's the tactics of rhetoric which can be seen and identified everywhere. We can see it in TV commercials and in the language of snake oil salesmen. Political language is manipulative, and news stories only really carry half-truths. We have our own portion of lies of omission and things we're not supposed to talk about or point out.

I chuckled a bit at your use of the phrase "China is everyone's friend," as that was the refrain constantly heard in the U.S. during the late 1980s and 90s and into the current century. But not so much in recent years.

I think one thing that bolsters Putin's support among the masses is that he is seen as a defender of Russia against a hostile West - which isn't too far from the truth. He may lie about everything else, but that's one thing he doesn't have to lie about. And that's the one thing that keeps in power above all else.

 

[Aupmanyav]

@TagliatelliMonster, these are my views. Ukraine, Russia, NATO and its friends, India or any other person is welcome to differ with them. This is in reply to your six comments today.

 

[Tomef]

people on the street were frank and honest about their criticisms of the system.

That window opened for a while, but it’s been pretty much slammed shut again now.

 

[Tomef]

I can see the same process in internet echo chambers and even in the various tactics used in debating in the public and semi-public sphere. It's the tactics of rhetoric which can be seen and identified everywhere. We can see it in TV commercials and in the language of snake oil salesmen. Political language is manipulative, and news stories only really carry half-truths. We have our own portion of lies of omission and things we're not supposed to talk about or point out.

I chuckled a bit at your use of the phrase "China is everyone's friend," as that was the refrain constantly heard in the U.S. during the late 1980s and 90s and into the current century. But not so much in recent years.

I think one thing that bolsters Putin's support among the masses is that he is seen as a defender of Russia against a hostile West - which isn't too far from the truth. He may lie about everything else, but that's one thing he doesn't have to lie about. And that's the one thing that keeps in power above all else.

I think Putin is more of an enemy to Russia than the West. He has driven the best people out of the country, or had them killed or jailed. He could have used his position to develop an educated middle class, but those are precisely the kind of people he doesn’t want around - people who think, learn, and understand reality. A Russia capable of exerting itself diplomatically would be better for the world. The West bent over backwards to accommodate Russia through the 90s, but Putin feels ‘disrespected’. There isn’t any way he could feel otherwise, he is who he is. Invite some impossible character to your home and treat him with respect, sooner or later you are going to have to deal with his impossible behaviour and expectations, and then he’ll scream at you and blame you for whatever he does next.

 

[Tomef]

I can see the same process in internet echo chambers and even in the various tactics used in debating in the public and semi-public sphere. It's the tactics of rhetoric which can be seen and identified everywhere. We can see it in TV commercials and in the language of snake oil salesmen. Political language is manipulative, and news stories only really carry half-truths. We have our own portion of lies of omission and things we're not supposed to talk about or point out.

It’s a beast of a different nature. These are relative questions, not do people lie or not. The range of behaviours, opinions and even thoughts that are permissible without some kind of extreme sanction is much narrower in Russia than in the US, however you look at it.

 

[Stevicus]

Another more everyday example - I was talking with a telecoms engineer here years ago. She studied at one of the best universities in the country, during the communist period, but struggled to find a decent job after graduation. The best jobs went to the kids of party affiliated types who barely turned up at classes. So those people, totally incompetent, would end up running the show. That kind of thing was typical across all Soviet-affiliated states. For her, it was just normal, not something she would have thought to bring up if I didn’t ask about it.

Well, that just seems like an extremely foolish way to run things. It sounds like the aristocratic, monarchistic systems that Europeans lived under for centuries. Living as another country's vassal would definitely suck, too.

 

[Stevicus]

And Ukraine will definitely not benefit from simply rolling over and die.

No, but they can benefit from living in peace as opposed to dying in a war they can't win.