| CaptainExplosion said: Well it's hard to feel bad for Russians these days when it's been Russians who are causing all that shit in the Ukraine. Yes I'm aware there are good people who are from Russia, one of whom was Steven Spielberg's late grandfather Fievel (that's who the protagonist of An American Tail was named after). |
I feel terrible for my former co-workers who came from Russia to work in The Netherlands. No doubt they still have family in Russia which they are now effectively cut off from while being shunned by people around them. Then you have all the parents who have their kids send abroad to commit war crimes, mostly against their will or under false pretense / propaganda. Ugly times all around.
I mean there were times when American friends of mine rather traveled with a Canadian flag on their travel cases when the USA was having its illegal war in Iraq. That was still semi justifiable to get rid of Saddam. A Russian accent is a lot harder to hide and there is nothing justifiable about this situation.
Now who is going to get rid of Putin. I hope their will be an uprising, yet the propaganda seems too strong. It feels too much like the old "Ich habe ess nicht gewusst" the attitude of a lot of Germans after the Second World War. Control the media, control the people. Still as true as ever.
The world wide web is not up to state control / manipulation. Too much disinformation and too many echo chambers. I always had the naive hope that wide access to information would prevent situations like these. Yet that hope was already dashed with the pandemic, if not global warming before that. I'm currently at a loss on how this repeating cycle can ever be broken.
Essay Pro