I was thinking about this yesterday. Liberals believe that the land where that war is fought is Ukrainian land, right? And for sure, they should know something about how terrible the effects of depleted uranium and cluster munitions are, on civilians, long after the fighting is over? (Though I vaguely remember an article from the BBC or similar media outlet saying depleted uranium is actually not that bad, because of course that’s the line these ghouls push.) So, even in the fantasy world where liberals’ dream of Ukraine winning this war and taking back all the territory succeeds, the people of the country that liberals claim to support so much would STILL suffer from all the effects of those munitions.
Basically all I have seen from liberals on the matter is “But it’s important that Ukraine wins!! We have no other kinds of weapons to send!”. If the latter sentence is true, that’s just an admission of defeat coming soon. If it’s not true, they’re just making the land unlivable for the sake of a temporary strategic advantage. Truly, western liberals, are willing to fight this conflict until their proxy country is entirely destroyed. All while sitting in the comfort of their own home, treating this war as just more entertainment for themselves, knowing it’s not them blown to pieces by cluster munitions.
they should know something about how terrible the effects of depleted uranium and cluster munitions are,
I think in many cases, they don’t. Alternatively, they are so far removed from the conflict that it’s just a competition they need to “win”. I doubt the cost of human life is something that they even really comprehend.
I think it is as simple as “The movie ends when the bad guys are defeated.” Movies don’t show the horrible aftermath of a war, they just show a “victory” so they don’t actually have any analysis of this, because they don’t really think about it at all. I think it ties into the “war as entertainment” thing you mentioned.
There’s a reason so much of the propaganda around this war talks about Harry Potters, Voldemorts and Darth Vaders. It’s because they are trying to fictionalise reality so their audience disassociates from the actual damage. The US has had a hard time selling ongoing conflicts to the public since Vietnam, as most people are horrified by death and destruction. But by making it “like the movies” it makes people disconnect, it makes them treat losses like the random extras in a movie, so no matter how much lasting suffering the war causes it doesn’t matter, because it never matters in the movies.
DU ammo is not as bad as the post makes out, or indeed, nowhere near a nuclear escalation the way Russia was saying. DU is almost entirely U-238, which has a half-life of 4.4 billion years and who’s decay mode is only alpha particles that do not penetrate human skin. It is still highly toxic as a heavy metal and will kill you if you ingest it (heavy metal poisoning). Alpha particles are still dangerous when ingested and thus beneath your skin already, but heavy metal poisoning would probably get you first. I think it is doubtful that the amount of DU ammunition is even remotely large enough to seriously cause ecological damage, as it is so dilute from the large geographical area. Other chemical releases from warfare are also very bad, but again, dilute enough in this case (e.g. not ridiculous like Vietnam and Laos) that the ecological damage is limited.
Radioactive materials are more dangerous when the half-life is shorter, because a short half-life means they release more particles and decay faster. This is part of why Iodine-131 is such a concern, because beta particles do penetrate human skin, and it is highly radioactive with a half-life of just over 8 days. It also gets absorbed easily by your thyroid, which is part of the reason why potassium iodide is added to salt as it prevents this absorption. Obviously gamma radiation and X-rays are still much worse, because they are very difficult to stop and will go right through you, but U-238 is never going to generate those on its own.
I am also a comrade, but I don’t think that DU rounds in Ukraine is such a big deal. If you have any evidence to the contrary I’d love to hear it.
Tell that to the Iraqi children born with birth defects because of the DU rounds left there by the US 30 years ago. The worry isn’t “It will make the whole country uninhabitable” but “It will cause additional cancers and birth defects in the population living there.”
I agree with this.
Liberals are probably gonna mistake this for an actual conservative meme but idc 🤷♀️
Why are the conservatives supporting Russia again anyways?
Seems like an accidental occurrence of the stupid horseshoe theory IRL
It’s basically three things: first you have just banal contrarianism, second, an incorrect view of Russia as this dream conservative society with a macho strongman leader - a view which they hold because they too, like the liberals, believe the propaganda about Russia, except where for liberals it’s meant to demonize Russia it has the opposite effect on conservatives (this is also why you will sometimes see certain conservatives praise the DPRK because they believe it is the “totalitarian monarchy” the liberals like to paint it as) - and third, the simple fact that conservatives, being who they are, simply would prefer the US focus all its efforts on China instead of a “white christian” (also an incorrect description of Russia which is ethnically and religiously diverse) country.
It’s honestly hilarious when you realize liberals simultaneously think Russia is still literally the USSR (so communist, aka the bad guys!) but also fascist or at least far right wing (those explaining why American conservatives like the Russians (in the liberal’s mind)). Remember Putin and Trump are, to US libs, and that brainpoison spills over to the world (sorry), best buds, in cahoots, modern Hitler and Mussolini. But when confronted with the history of Ukraine back to WWII until the day before Putin invaded where everyone knew and acknowledged they had HEAVY white supremacist/Nazi shit going on* well they can’t explain why two right wing countries are fighting in simplistic “good liberal nation vs the evil bad commie-fascist country!” I don’t really know where I was going with this besides being entertained by the denial of reality in Ukraine, the history of NATO, the reality that Russia is in no fucking way the USSR (they keep proposing this idea of THE USSR IS REUNITING! Treating the Soviet Union as if it were some sort empire held together by the tyrannical evil Russian orcs (which is of course exactly how the weirdo right wingers think of it)). Just absolutely zero historical knowledge, even basic levels, and/or contortions to make the US somehow good or make NATO good and justified in its existence. No one on any politically viable side in the US (R and Ds) is even considering a proper anti-war stance. They won’t even consider admitting policies of the US for the past 100 years towards the USSR and then the Russian Federation, especially the last 3 decades, led directly to Russia being how it is with Putin in charge.
I don’t know an apt comparison, but the US is like a person who lives their entire life stealing and murdering people and when anyone along the way calls out their shit they get offended with “how dare you! I’m the good guy!” Maybe something like the mafia but on the world scale. They break the windows and threaten the owners and anyone steps out of line or questions why they get to take shit all the time they get their knees busted or killed. Just a giant criminal racket held up and enforced by scumbags and then romanticized by those same scumbags and their beneficiaries.
*that became forbidden speech when Putin crossed the border of course. Much like talking about how right wing the Cuban-Americans are in Miami and how that MIGHT color their outlook on the Cuban revolution/Castro/Che, etc. Talking about the politics of a group from some nation has been turned into “racism” even though last time I checked Cuba is multi-racial, multi-ethnic, including a shitload of white people. I’m ranting now about how fucking stupid libs are and I only partly apologize
Their brains are basically hard wired to form basic contradictions and accept them unquestioningly as fact.
I would say the US is more like an abusive partner “You really think I’m the bad guy?! Don’t you know how badly some other people would treat you? You should count yourself lucky that I’m so nice! I only beat you when you deserve it!”
I think US conservatives have a lot of ideological agreements with Russian society. Their views on women, traditional values, etc. Russia is even building a little village to invite US conservatives to move there. I think it’s a recent post 2000~ phenomenon that they are aligning ideologically on the culture war stuff. So US conservatives don’t see why they should attack and destroy a nation they see defending their values, like pro-religion and anti-lgbt views, and since Russia isn’t “communist” anymore, they don’t see many reasons to not like them now.
Fair enough. Thanks for the responses.
I wonder how Russia went from the USSR to conservative so fast
I suspect it might be how destructive conservatism became so muscular in the West too.
You have a massive economic disruption. With the USSR/Russia there were obvious inflection points like 1991, but even in the West it’s easy to say that for many people, forward motion has ceased. It’s hard for many people to say “I’m better off today than my father was in 1975”. Leadership has no effective tools to deal with this crisis. You can’t just give the point the economy in directions that would yield dividends for the proliterat anymore-- Russia simply doesn’t have the financial resources to do so, and in flailing Western powers, it’s all captured by the Capital-Protestant Work Ethic-Industrial Complex mindset where just because you’re more productive than ever doesn’t mean that means you deserve to be better off.
So what can you offer? Culture war wins. Pick some minority groups, blame them for the “mainstream” group’s malaise, and persecute them. If you can whip up enough of a stink with your population, they’ll take it as a substitute for actual material progress, but without any risk to actual entrenched wealth. Notice how all the modern “pogrom against queer communities” and “battle against woke” stuff costs virtually nothing to capital. Nobody has to pay an extra dime/kopeck in taxes, no business has to be reined in.
In some cases, you can even use it to further emaciate the state-- look how nobody is talking about “American public schools are underfunded and flailing” anymore because they’re too busy arguing about the Critical Race Theory that’s not actually being taught, making it even easier to plunder their budgets.
They needed some means of preventing people restoring socialism, giving as much power and media presence to the far right as they possibly could was the quickest, easiest and most cost-effective way.
my guess is that the capitalists who are against the proxy war want to focus on China instead of Russia, although at this point they must have realized that the sanctions have massively strengthened the Russia-China relationship
I think one thing that often gets passed is that Trump was the brokest of clocks and would sometimes pay lip service that things that the citizens actually want, like avoiding participating directly in new wars. Not that it was ever applied consistently, but it was a legitimate campaign thing both in 2016 and 2020 where civilian republicans claimed that Clinton and Biden wanted WW3 and since Trump’s campaign was also extremely contradictory he got to play both warmonger and pacifist to his followers.
You can even see how some traditionally anti-war “centrists” like Tulsi Gabbard have gone full Republican after the Ukraine war and how older Republicans have changed from Bush era “we need to bring freedom to their souls from their bodies” to “genocide in america first”. The other explanations are valid too, but it is also a genuine concern of a portion of Republican voters and since the Democrats can’t keep their cluster munitions in their pants it’s a free win for Republicans.
The weapons marketing campaign isn’t going the way that their donors had expected.
Okay yes, but still fuuuuuck Ben Shapiro.
Goes without saying. I don’t like that douchebag.
