Ukraine-Russia Megathread 3

Being told this is fairly reliable for info on the situation in Ukraine. let me know if it isn't. https://liveuamap.com/

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finally decided to create an account here after lurking for well over a year and originally posting on r/cth years ago
i’ve been listening to my very liberal family talk about what’s going on and i love them but their liberal brain worms are just so maddening. “someone should just assassinate putin” “putin is trying to recreate the ussr” “how can ukraine be run by nazis when their president is jewish?? stupid putin” “putin is doing this because he’s a narcissist and a dictator” “this basically means that china is free to do the same to taiwan if they wanted nothing’s stopping them” and “ukraine and russia are like a toxic, abusive relationship where russia won’t let ukraine see other people (NATO) after they broke up (collapse of USSR)” are just a few examples of the takes i’ve heard from them today. now they’re going on about russian cyber attacks (“they did it in 2016 for our election!” lol), at least they’re anti-american intervention in this case. i’ve dropped a few things here and there about the azov battalion being nazis and about how the U.S. meddling to get Yeltsin elected and the 2014 U.S backed Ukranian coup were key to what’s happening now unfolding, but just to give them tid bits of information i’m far too exhausted to effort post irl and argue with them about how NATO is actually in the wrong here.
but yeah about all of that seems to be the average, american liberal consensus on the subject right now based off what i’ve been hearing
- i made the mistake of listening to some AP and BBC news at work today and i TOTALLY understand where they are getting those :brainworms: from
  
  oh yeah definitely they’ve had msbnc on and i heard a lot of those talking points said by the pundits
- how can ukraine be run by nazis when their president is jewish
  how can hitler be the leader of the Nazi movement if no blonde blue eye aryan wtf
  
  How can United States be racist if President Obama black
- Immense empathy with you on this. Here’s the lib discourse I’m seeing in my circles, basically verbatim:
  Lib 1 (who says happy birthday to Gorbachev every year): one sad outcome of all this is that it’s gonna be pretty hard to convince countries to give up their nukes .
  Lib 2 (who has the flag in their profile pic): I agree, and I feel like NATO was too eager in its eastward expansions.
  Lib 3 (who also has the flag in their pic): no. Go read the Minsk agreement. This is nowhere NATO’s fault. Why are you parroting Putin’s talking point?
  Oh btw, these are college professors with fucking phds in either humanities or social sciences.
  :yea:
  
  Yeah, you can't spend that much time in Liberal institutions and not end up insufferably Liberal. They defunded or muzzled all the cool departments and professors.
  
  About to file my PhD comrade, and I know that feel. The Marxist thinkers at my institution have no praxis. When covid hit they basically told me and other grad students nearing the end to go fuck ourselves. The union got extra TA quarters so myself and other colleagues didn't need to throw ourselves on the mercy of the market and lose insurance, but the Marxists in the department didn't do shit.
  
  So they were going to stop giving TA quarters, which is functionally the same thing. University policy has limits, my friend and I were going to hit them in spring, and they were like "well, you're fucked". The department definitely didn't have my back, and it's not like these Marxists were agitating.
  My diss was fairly close to done in spring 2020 (I was planning to file in summer), but I sat on it until now since I didn't want to lose my insurance.
  Again, the union fought and got the change in policy. Admin and the department gave no shits.
  
  That's the way I feel about it. Currently just going to join the other underclass of adjuncts at my uni (also unionized) and continue sending out job letters as things pop up.
  Honestly though I think your things sound more horrifying, since it's just another institutional fail in the face of covid. There's something especially gross about the personal vendetta you describe.
  :jesus-cleanse: required in academia for sure.
  
  :rat-salute:
  It's infuriating how "higher education" can be so stifling. What are they so afraid of? I thought this was the marketplace of ideas? :agony-limitless:
  
  I was taught valuable theory by people who never really believed in it, and were surprised to find that I took it seriously.
  This is how I ended up being a socialist. People kept telling me to be nice to people and I took them a little too seriously.
  
  I'm so lucky one of my first upper division courses was by who I assume looking back was a Marxist lol. Took a little longer than it should have but that course eventually forced the brain worms out, even if it took over a year after I took it for me to connect the dots.
  
  :agony-4horsemen:
- When the main stream fed only one narrative, that is what happen
- This is your brain on liberalism’s great man theory. Regardless of who is in power, putin or navalny this situation would happen regardless

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