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Comment by malka | Hacker News Reader

We are at war.

> You are no better than the FSB itself then.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

To be honest I find the notion of "We" here to be rather dubious. Russia and Ukraine are at war, and while us private citizens of the broader English-speaking world can condemn one side, and support the other, pushing others towards the belief that this is somehow a total war and that every action is justifiable seems patently false.

Russia has been pushing far right, and attempt to disrupt politics in my country for years.

They have gotten Schroder on their payroll so he would sabotage german and Europe energy.

Now, they have been threatening western Europe with nukes.

Yes, we are clearly at war with Russia.

Words mean something. We are not at war with Russia.

malka is probalby using "we" as an exclusive first person plural pronoun. In English, "we" doesn't always include "you".

I don't mean any offense, but I think it's somewhat fascinating that the idea of total war seems assumed by both your comment and the original post. Even if the US and Russia were at war, the notion that private citizens were not just involved, but obligated to contribute seems to be a remnant of the world wars. What's interesting to me is that this notion seems to have disappeared, since to my knowledge there wasn't such an expectation with Vietnam and Korea (though maybe we can argue that the witch hunt for communists was something of a continuation).

Maybe it's due to the positioning of Russia as an existential threat? It just reminds me of the whole freedom fries vs french fries thing and the idea that there isn't a separation between geopolitics and domestic politics.

I live in Europe, I am french to be more precise. I feel Russia as an existential threat right now.

Right, and I'm not saying you're wrong for feeling that way, nor am I saying that Russia isn't an existential threat. But, at the risk of over-intellectualizing the situation, I think it's worth noting that for some reason, this Ukraine-Russia conflict has brought out feelings that citizens should be prepared to fight for their country.

This, at least from an American perspective, seems to be a sentiment that comes and goes, but has only appeared in very few cases in our past. I cannot speak for the French in this case, but in general I think it's worth pointing out because you'd expect military conflicts to be resolved between militaries and their respective states - this social contract being something of the foundational idea to Western politics.

Thinking that this is just between Russia and Ukraine is such a common mistake. Ukraine is the latest move in a larger chess game (remember Transnistria, Georgia, Bellarus?) where the end goal of Russian is a new world order. Instead of the current order based on western values and laws, Russia wants the so called "uni-polar world" to change such that it has it's own sphere of influence. That sphere would consist of weak countries subjected either politically, economically or militarily. It sees those as buffer states... and there are never enough of those.

Who is "we" here ?

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