Americans’ views on the war reveal a striking generational divide | Hacker News Reader

Americans’ views on the war reveal a striking generational divide

economist.com

143 pointsptr532 comments

Most younger people are quite skeptic of mainstream media so they don’t trust the narrative CNN and Fox News are trying to sell them.With the elderly it’s the opposite.

Further, most of the elderly lived at a time when the USSR was the clear and obvious enemy of “freedom”, so it’s not hard to fathom Russia being back into its usual shenanigans.

Gen Z is also more diverse and broadly anti-American (or “anti-imperialist”) so they’re less willing to blindly support US foreign policy and feel less connected to European conflicts than previous generations.

Finally Russia has, in my opinion, waged a fairly successful social media campaign to muddy the waters. Those videos of Ukrainians discriminating against people or color were signal boosted everywhere on Twitter. Same with the Azov Batallion which some people believe are the entire Ukrainian army. You also have people bringing up Yemen, Syria, Palestine, etc to emphasize the “white-supremacist” support of Ukraine receiving overwhelming attention.

Gen Z has thus mostly understood this conflict through the propaganda wars that play out in social media and thus have conflicting and/or “both-sides” takes.

> Finally Russia has, in my opinion, waged a fairly successful social media campaign to muddy the waters. Those videos of Ukrainians discriminating against people or color were signal boosted everywhere on Twitter. Same with the Azov Batallion which some people believe are the entire Ukrainian army. You also have people bringing up Yemen, Syria, Palestine, etc to emphasize the “white-supremacist” support of Ukraine receiving overwhelming attention.

On the other side of things, on Reddit, nothing unfavorable about Ukraine is getting attention. You don't see any posts about Russia gaining territory, or Zelensky censoring media outlets favorable to opposition parties.

And nowhere on reddit or in the media do I see a discussion of the pros and cons of a Ukrainian surrender. It's really hard to see how Ukraine will successfully fend off a country 10x its size. (If someone has an answer as to why that might be realistic, I'm open to hear it).

> And nowhere on reddit or in the media do I see a discussion of the pros and cons of a Ukrainian surrender. It's really hard to see how Ukraine will successfully fend off a country 10x its size. (If someone has an answer as to why that might be realistic, I'm open to hear it).

It's really hard to see that Ukraine by itself could defeat Russia and it definitely seems far fetched, even if the Russian army has shown itself more inept than expected.

But that isn't what is happening either, and a Ukraine bankrolled and armed by the west. That is something else, and that combination might definitely be abel to defeat Russia. So the question is more, is the west or parts of it willing to spend enough and accept escalating tensions with nuclear armed Russia by doing that?

If you look at what Zelensky is doing at the drumbeat of asks for more weapons is obvious that Ukraine is fully aware of this.

Assuming no direct western intervention, I think the crucial next steps for a Ukraine victory will center around whether NATO can transition from providing soviet surplus to modern western arms, and get Ukrainians the training required in time. F-16s or even 35s and modern air defenses could play a huge role in making russian territory gains largely impossible, but the operational training would be measured in multiple weeks at a minimum.

Russia has 3x times as many people as Ukraine, not 10x times. It has a lot more land, but I doubt it is 10x times more.

You should look at it from Putin's point of view. Escalating with the west is even less of an option. Militarily, I don't think he has any doubt about US, French and UK nuclear deterrence. Even if you take nukes off the table, if you look how poorly his troops are doing in Ukraine, imagine that against NATO, even without the US.

He might "escalate to de-escalate", i.e. make a lot of noise about escalation to intimidate Biden (so far it worked), but it can only be bluff. Whichever metric you use, the ratio of power between Russia and Europe is much greater than Ukraine to Russia.

>It's really hard to see that Ukraine by itself could defeat Russia

There are many paths but they are all long term "replace the Taliban with the Taliban" type ones that people don't wanna talk about.

> It's really hard to see how Ukraine will successfully fend off a country 10x its size

Every Ukrainian defender kills 10 Russian occupiers?

Obviously some will be less fortunate, and a select few will go down in history as extremely effective removers of Russian conscripts.

Depends on your definition of "fend off". Take back Crimea, I think not going to happen. Make it really hard for the Russians in Donbas, inflicting heavy losses, very achievable. Stopping the Russians from taking over the south, quite likely. The Russians taking over the whole country, that ship has sailed by now.

I don't know many western countries that would tolerate to be invaded, having some territory taken off without fighting back bitterly. I mean this is the whole story of ww1.

In the end it is up to the Ukrainians to decide how much pain they are willing to endure for their independence and freedom. But if they chose to fight, it's not our role to second guess their decision and it is our duty to help them (at least us Europeans - for US citizens, different story).

Russia is a paper bear, it makes up on quality with quantity but it's a vastly unpopulated country with an old population. Morale is low, equipment is old and in poor shape. Russia is an empire and have a large share of it's forces tied down to inner tensions and can't be employed. The gross of Russians soldiers are composed by ethnic and and poor soldiers thus some are more interested in stealing than fighting. Also Russian forces haven't been significantly employed in the last decades. It's no secret that poor equipped but combat experienced militia from Donbass/Lugansk are being more effective than better equipped and trained Russian forces.

This whole situation reminds me of the Spanish-American war. At the time Spain was thought to be a great world power, but in reality their ships were old and in disrepair, so much that a rag tag group of Americans defeated them in a few months. The whole Spanish empire collapsed afterwards.

> And nowhere on reddit or in the media do I see a discussion of the pros and cons of a Ukrainian surrender.

Isn't this up the ukranians themselves? I mean really.

Maybe the Americans should have just given up on their revolution in order to save more lives. There is no way they could win against the might of the british empire.

> Isn't this up the ukranians themselves? I mean really.

Nope. The world needs Ukraine to be a buffer state. Sorry. Greatest good for the greatest number and whatnot.

Not 10x. 146m vs 41m people… and a bigger percentage of Ukrainians are in the fight. Russia has only sent 200k troops to Ukraine.. ukraine has 500k active and reserve troops, not including civilians who take up arms.

I'd also bid that if Russia decided to get people from reserves, many would simply refuse to wage war against Ukraine.

And the current weird fiction of "it is a special operation, not a war" prevents them from switching to war economy / law fully.

Russia has about 150M people. Ukraine has about 50M.

If Ukraine refuse to cooperate with Russia and fight a guerrilla war, there is absolutely no way they can hold the whole country.

Russian Population: 145.20m Ukrainian Population: 41.46m

Morale: While the war is popular in Russia, that's mostly among older generation who won't be fighting in the war. On the other hand Ukraine is highly motivated to not become a part of Russia.

Logistics: The Russian military logistics are terrible, their military was built to wage a defensive war next to Russian railroads. They don't have much practice projecting power.

Kleptocracy: The Russian commanders have been systematically stealing all of the money Putin was pumping into the military.

Training: Since 2014 the Ukrainian military has undergone a revolution building a modern NATO trained military, the Russian military just isn't as good.

Command: The Russian military does a lot of top down decision making, this means they can't react to news quickly. There observe -> decide -> act cycle is so long they can't really hit moving targets.

The only advantage Russia has is a larger population, and nuclear weapons. Every other advantage is to the Ukrainian's. Right now Russia has taken losses similar or worse than the absolutely worst his armies in the civil war. There are battalions where 80% of the soldiers are dead or wounded.

A large portion of the Russian military goes home in June, and they're going to have a tough time replacing them when Ukraine is viewed as a meat grinder.

What happens in June?

The status quo is far too advantageous for the pro-war segment of our national security establishment for that idea to get any traction. Currently we have a "moral" war for the first time since the Balkans, it's strengthening NATO, and Russia is being weakened at the expense of mere pocket change and outdated weapons. And from a PR perspective, the American public cares far less about Ukrainian casualties than dead American soldiers. Then there's the benefit of blaming Putin for inflation with "Putinflation" and advancing other goals like shutting down Nordstream 2 and selling LNG to Europe.

I'm pro-Ukraine, but I can't help but notice how average Ukrainians are being screwed by this conflict, while US foreign policy hawks are breaking out the champagne.

"average Ukrainians are being screwed by this conflict" because Russia decided to attack them and crush their resistance.

I feel sorry for the Ukrainians, having met a lot of refugees in Prague. But I don't believe that they would rather surrender and have "Russian peace". Some of them perhaps, but not the majority. They do not want to be yoked again.

> You don't see any posts about Russia gaining territory

I have seen daily posts about Russia gaining territory in news. For weeks, it was daily report of Russian progression even with maps.

And Russia is not 10x bigger.

I have also seen more articles about nazi in Ukraine then nazi in Russia. In fact, Russian fascism and Putins rehabilitation of Stalin were oddly missing. For years, but also during this conflict.

It was only when invasion started to look like genocide journalists started to look more at who Russia actually is.

> It's really hard to see how Ukraine will successfully fend off a country 10x its size. (If someone has an answer as to why that might be realistic, I'm open to hear it).

Firstly, the size of a country doesn't immediately matter, it's more about the size of the army. E.g. China 50 years ago was bigger than the US, but couldn't "win" in a war with the US.

Having said that, wars are a political tool. For the most part, wars aren't about fighting until you "kill everyone" or anything like that. They are fought to achieve certain goals, and end when one side decides its goals aren't worth the price of the fight.

This is true in all situations - even in a war of conquest. Ukraine will put up a huge fight, because the goal is to stop themselves from being conquered. But there could come a point where they decide to surrender, because the death toll will be too high (or because the leadership is captured and threatened, or because the army is too fatigued to continue fighting and surrenders without the leadership, etc).

Likewise, it's possible that Russia decides to stop the fighting. This could be because they decide it's weakening the army too much (too many soldiers dying and munitions being used up). Or it could be because internal public opinion is too heavily against the war. It could even be for reasons that are only internally visible, like that Putin starts feeling that his position is threatened because of the war.

All Ukraine has to do is to keep up their resistance long enough for the war to not be worth continuing from Russia's side. Or for the rest of the world to decide to help more than they are, which is why Zelensky's main goal is to keep the front-and-center in the West's consciousness. How long that is (if it's even possible) nobody knows.

> It's really hard to see how Ukraine will successfully fend off a country 10x its size.

Do what the Taliban did in Afghanistan to defeat US.

Or perhaps an even closer match, do what the Taliban did in Afghanistan to defeat the Soviet Union. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Afghan_War

>Zelensky censoring media outlets favorable to opposition parties.

No different than what Britain did to pro-German media and parties during WW2.

> don’t trust the narrative CNN and Fox News are trying to sell them

I've had a hard time with this one as for weeks it was "Russia is not advancing, yada yada" meanwhile the graphic they showed while saying this clearly showed a map with more occupied territory than the same map the day before and another city under siege which has deteriorated my trust where I was a skeptic before, I did at least think war reporting would be rather accurate. I really got the feeling they were trying to calm us down and getting those talking points from some unified source (the govt?) and worries me that this conflict does in fact have potential to get massively out of hand

The reporting on the war has been fairly consistent: that Russia initially captured a lot of territory in a rapid advance, but overextended themselves and bogged down. Now they're retreating from much of this territory and are trying to reinforce their forces in Donbas. That narrative seems to be well-supported by reporting, and it also perfectly explains what you observed. Don't think anyone is misleading you.

This is also what i have gathered, ive used mostly youtube and r/ukraine to get some views, i do realize they are highly skewed to ukranian side of the conflict, but i prefer it that way, the aggression is absolutely started by Russia so i have no sympathy for them.

>I've had a hard time with this one as for weeks it was "Russia is not advancing, yada yada"

Same here. I consider myself a big consumer of news from a variety of sources, and it's hard to get nearly any perspective except "Ukraine is dominating the battlefield". It's strange times, but this is the information war.

Have you considered the possibility that if everything says one thing, that's because it is true? Maybe the Russians genuinely haven't done very well.

I think there are too many Cartesians sitting in front of their screens going "perhaps an evil demon is trying to fool me about everything!"

I mean, you don't fire large numbers of intelligence agents and generals in the middle of a war because you're winning.

Propaganda is one thing, but right now every report we have, incoming from Russian state media, points in the direction of "Russia is getting their ass kicked".

The baseline expectation was Ukraine folding within 3-4 days. They were doing much better then expected, Russian original plan folded entirely.

Maps of territory are a terrible way to show the state of the war. This article provides some color and might help underscore why the narrative could be correct even if the maps look otherwise: https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/07/russia-war-ukraine-maps...

Maps of territory are a terrible way of showing ANY political conflict.

It's the same as the maps of county-by-county US election results that show a sea of red that equate to a population smaller than LA county.

People are the important unit in political conflicts and Russia is very much struggling to take any meaningfully populated area (See: Chernobyl, a place where sane humans refuse to go, being one of the first trophies)

The article you linked to disagrees: "Maps, after all, remain crucial for our understanding of conflicts. Even if they are abstractions, they remain immensely useful."

Maps should not be treated as simple visualizations. They can (and should) contain plenty of information, and interpreting them properly often takes a lot of skill and effort.

I can't remember a time in my life when war reporting was accurate.

I do find it interesting, though, that the media is willing to show the civilian casualties of this war, when there was a practical media blackout on the same type of reporting of the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan.

That's not surprising at all. American forces had a very bad experience with reporters that reported damning stories about them in Vietnam. In Iraq and Afghanistan they took actions to make that kind of reporting hard, and the reporting they wanted easy. It wasn't even that secret and I'm fairly sure I at least saw some reporting on that they where doing this in Norwegian, and possibly British media.

There is a lot of OSINT now, given that the war theatre is located in a developed country with network coverage and a dozen million smartphones. From this point of view, accuracy is probably better than in previous wars. We didn't have much OSINT from Hindu Kush.

For what it’s worth the Institute for the Study of War has been putting out excellent, unbiased analysis about the war since day one.

https://understandingwar.org/

> I did at least think war reporting would be rather accurate.

I can't imagine why. There are massive disinformation campaigns and only a psychopath could be an impartial observer while watching two sides kill each other.

The "fog of war" is hard to penetrate for anyone, from reporters to combatants.

Maybe accurate is the wrong word, but consistent based on the information available even if disinformation. I didn't expect the new to be the source of the disinformation in regards to war. It also seemed to me to take a very long time to get any real footage of what was going on, war correspondents and so on.

I recall with the early days of Iraq and the Baghdad invasion that I felt like I was getting the full picture. Perhaps because it was US forces with journalists in tow. The reason we were there was highly questionable and suspicious but I felt like I was getting a rather accurate picture of what happened on the ground.

I say all this but should also mention that my perception could also be significantly off. I am not a regular consumer of news and this just happens to be what I'd see when I decided to get a quick update on the situation.

If the Russian invasion of Ukraine has taught me anything, it's that a) while overt Russian propaganda seems to largely fail in Europe, the more subtle suggestions are widespread b) most people have genuinely horribly bad defense takes c) there are somewhat more tankies than I expected

The number of tankies has been impressive. I'm not sure how anyone can look at Russia and think "yea, they made some good points," and I study misinformation professionally. It's not even on the believable scale.

> Gen Z is also more diverse and broadly anti-American (or “anti-imperialist”) [...] and feel less connected to European conflicts than previous generations. [...] Those videos of Ukrainians discriminating against people or color were signal boosted everywhere on Twitter. [...] You also have people bringing up Yemen, Syria, Palestine, etc to emphasize the “white-supremacist” support of Ukraine receiving overwhelming attention.

I've noticed this too, and I need to make a point:

In the long run, this will be a serious security threat to Europe.

In this, Europe took almost completely the wrong lessons regarding America's role in NATO. Yes a stronger NATO is good. Yes, stronger ties to America are necessary to counter Russia.

But now is not the time to abandon strategic autonomy. Just the opposite. Macron is right, just as DeGaulle before him was right. Yes, Europe should ally with the United States, but it also must begin to stand on its own two feet.

Why? Because the next American generations don't give a shit about Europe. In a very deep way, Europeans have not absorbed the social earthquakes that have hit the United States. In younger American minds, Europe doesn't matter. Ukraine doesn't matter.

Europe should maintain its alliances, but it also needs to plan for a future in which it depends only on itself for its defense. It needs to do this seriously and as though its life depends on it.

>In this, Europe took almost completely the wrong lessons regarding America's role in NATO.

I think you misinterpret what Europe is doing, because it's mostly doing exactly what you propose. Hell, even Germany seriously plans to overhaul it's dismal army.

It seems likely that "gen z" americans have few clues about what historic and present day russia is, and generally about the land mass between Poland and Korea.

They are just now waking up from two years of debating whether not wearing masks was a hate crime.

Maybe in their minds, the conditions on the opposite side of the world just seem too brutal to belong in the same reality. It looks and sounds too crazy to be real, so they can't decide if it's fake.

I was a high school student during the collapse of the SU and even before that had a bit of a fascination on Russia. When I went to college (~1992), I took a Russian Politics class because I wanted to understand the collapse and what was going to happen. at the end of the course the teacher asked if we thought that Russia was on its way to becoming a western democracy and we all nodded. He said "you learned NOTHING! Nothing has changed in Russia except a slightly newer generation is in power. Their leadership and government are still corrupt and are handing over the russian state assets to oligarchs who share little with the people of russia. By the way, keep your eyes on these guys Khodorkovky (the oligarch) and Zhirinovsky (the ultra-nationalist) as they represent two directions that Russia could go."

I don't recall putin or medvedev ever being mentioned in that class, but it's clear that's the time that mattered to them, defining their worldview.

>"you learned NOTHING! Nothing has changed in Russia except a slightly newer generation is in power.

Words of Wisdom. It is the same with China as well. On the surface your might think things are moving in the direction to whatever you viewed or desire, western democracy in this case. But as your professor stated. Nothing has changed.

Btw, Zhirinovsky just died; The Economist has an obituary in the current issue.

https://www.economist.com/obituary/2022/04/16/vladimir-zhiri...

Or, maybe, they grew up talking to people from all over the world and have a far better understanding than boomers raised on television

Neither is correct. Gen Z, like all young generations, is idealistic, anti-status quo, and thinks their experiences and perspectives are completely unique and novel. As they get older they will transition, hopefully retaining some of their more progressive and forward thinking values, which will become imbedded in society and so the cycle will continue.

Former university lecturer here. In my experience, gen Z have ZERO understanding of history or geopolitics. I'm serious, they just don't know what happened before their lifetime and cannot hold a coherent conversation about historical events or the geopolitical realities which flow from them. So no, this is not true.

> Or, maybe, they grew up talking to people from all over the world and have a far better understanding than boomers raised on television

I would argue precisely the opposite.

Support in tech for Ukraine is quite high because most people have worked with Ukranian programmers, generally find them to be decent human beings like all human beings, and seeing posts/pictures from someone you know in the midst of being attacked upsets you.

Most Americans working non-tech jobs, even the supposedly worldly younger-than-Boomers, have never had contact with somebody outside American borders. Tech can expand your world. Tech can also simply provide a safe bubble that never disturbs your delicate sensibilities.

>Those videos of Ukrainians discriminating against people or color were signal boosted everywhere on Twitter. Same with the Azov Batallion which some people believe are the entire Ukrainian army.

Maybe I'm old but I haven't seen any of these things. Where do you find all of these?

[1]

> It is not uncommon for Ukrainians to refer to African-Americans as “[N-Word]”. Volunteers of color may be called 'a monkey' or may see children’s games with Blackface. Being aware of the history of dehumanization for people of African descent may help inform where this comes from; it does not justify it. It will be at your discretion to determine the intent.

[2]

> "Problems arise when young foreigners are prioritised over women and children of Ukrainian citizenship who are trying to get on the same trains."

> "Maybe we will put all foreigners in some other place so they won’t be visible and there won’t be conflict with Ukrainians trying to flee in the same direction. This is something that has to be taken care of and we will be doing it."

[3]

> Ukrainian servicemen help evacuate civilians near Irpin, #Ukraine. Three civilians were killed as Russian mortar rounds landed, striking a route used by civilians fleeing southeast toward #Kyiv.

trooper in the front sporting a Black Sun patch

[4]

source for the other comment

----

[1] https://www.peacecorps.gov/ukraine/preparing-to-volunteer/di...

[2] https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.independent.co.uk%...

[3] https://twitter.com/GettyImagesNews/status/15004917028801536...

[4] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-60552271

Regarding 1, note that there were African students studying in Ukraine before this conflict so its not clear if this is a widespread issue.

I haven’t personally watched any but I did see them thrown around in thread about India-Russian relations (videos of Indians being discriminated against by Ukrainians.)

As a younger millennial on the left, I am routinely frustrated by "anti-imperialist" attitudes (especially among my generation, and younger). I think "anti-imperialist" is one of the least useful labels for a political worldview in contemporary politics.

Prior to the invasion, there was rampant criticism of NATO, and calls for its dissolution, on left-wing media, as an instrument of American imperialism, despite the fact that Russia has a history of aggression against post-Soviet states (e.g. Georgia) in the 21st century. With the outbreak of the war (outside of east Ukraine), some have walked back the more extreme aspects of those statements (as NATO's potential usefulness has been illustrated), but American imperialism via NATO is still discussed in the same breath as Russian imperialism via a military invasion and territorial annexation.

The truth is we have very little choice in our great powers or global hegemonies, and I will always take the NATO brand of "imperialism" (e.g. where countries literally ask for American military bases to ward against actual aggression) over the Russian brand. Should we be skeptical of NATO? Of course, as we should with all power structures, especially when they engage in actual violence; but to not have a nuanced discussion about what actual imperialism looks like in the 21st century, and to simply be blanket "anti-imperialist," is juvenile, and I'd argue probably detrimental to those that actually feel its real world effects.

At least it should be easy to understand why though. If you've never seen it used for good in your own eyes, then it's easy to stick with that take.

>Prior to the invasion, there was rampant criticism of NATO, and calls for its dissolution, on left-wing media

Can you provide examples? I have not seen this, and as dissolution of NATO or otherwise weakening NATO was a goal of the previous administration, I am confused at this claim.

You've vastly oversimplified the politics of the American left and right, which are themselves varied. Just because Trump criticized NATO member states and potentially weakened NATO with his rhetoric, does not mean it was ever actual policy of the mainstream Republican Party, or really even the Trump administration, to dissolve NATO. In fact, Trump himself now claims that, if not for him, there would be no NATO [1]. Trump is a president that ran on no clear platform (e.g. his 2020 presidential campaign did not even publish one) or real coherent policy.

With that in mind, here is an article from 2018 in Jacobin, a left-wing magazine, saying that, regardless of Trump's comments, NATO's continued existence remains a valid question [2]; in fact, the Democratic Socialists of America (the primary progressive/socialist/labor party in the US) has calls for the US to immediately withdraw from NATO as part of its stated policy, even after the Russian invasion of western Ukraine [3]. These are among the most well stated positions regarding NATO skepticism on the American left, but similar opinions were expressed throughout left-wing independent media in the months leading up to the invasion (and earlier).

1. https://abcnews.go.com/US/trump-seeks-rewrite-role-bolsterin...

2. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/07/nato-donald-trump-putin-c...

3. https://www.dsausa.org/statements/on-russias-invasion-of-ukr...

If you spend some time on Twitter and Reddit before the war you will see it everywhere.

> despite the fact that Russia has a history of aggression against post-Soviet states (e.g. Georgia) in the 21st century.

The aggression against georgia was due to NATO. Just like the current aggression against ukraine. NATO's existence is a threat to world peace just like the soviet union was. Any sane person would be for the elimination of NATO.

> and I will always take the NATO brand of "imperialism"

Yeah because syria, libya, etc are doing so great. NATO's imperialism has murdered far more people than russia's. Even in europe - yugoslavia.

> (e.g. where countries literally ask for American military bases to ward against actual aggression) over the Russian brand.

There are ukrainians who asked russia to protect them too...

> The aggression against georgia was due to NATO. Just like the current aggression against ukraine. NATO's existence is a threat to world peace just like the soviet union was. Any sane person would be for the elimination of NATO.

A complete inversion of reality. Post-soviet states want to be part of NATO because they are afraid of Russian agression, and Russia is afraid of those states joining NATO, because that means it cannot agress against them. Hence, Russia starting border conflicts in countries that wish to join NATO in order to secure Russia's ability for further aggression later.

If you don't mind me asking, do you think the invention of the nuclear bomb was a mistake, and the world would be better off if nukes wouldn't have existed (1945-)?

You've listed:

> Gen Z is also more diverse and broadly anti-American (or “anti-imperialist”)

as a factor contributing to not supporting US and ending up supporting Russia, one of the most imperialistic nations out there. The irony :(

If I may, my impression is also that the younger generations don't "get" war. Why would I, ever shoot someone just like me because his/her/xyr government has forced them to point a rifle at me?

They've been raised in a post-modernist neo-marxist environment that very clearly marks the Western order as evil. To them, there is no "good vs evil", because they are evil and the West has no redeeming factors.

Why would you fight to defend that? Why fight to spread that?

Add a keen awareness of the Elites (however you define them) as the sole beneficiaries or war. The conscript or recruit on the ground pays the price so some WEF-agenda shareholder gets to see a bigger dividend this quarter? Hard pass fam.

Add in a general anxiety about everything: from talking to a stranger to the impeding collapse of life on Earth due to climate change within X years (where X is always a handful of years away), and war doesn't make sense. There are Bigger Issues than some lines on the map drawn by Evil White Men.

Now obviously this is all a generalization, and all of it goes out the window the minute someone shoots at you, but it's going to be interesting to watch what tactics have to be used to get an unwilling generation in the metaphorical front lines.

I guess I'm part of that generation you're talking about, and it it really feels like only one of the things you listed matters:

> Why would I, ever shoot someone just like me because his/her/xyr government has forced them to point a rifle at me?

It's irrespective of the western order being evil or anything to do with climate change. Sure, there's a sense that the elites are the only beneficiaries of war, but even before that you'd have to explain why it's okay to shoot someone for someone else's _benefit_, even if it's our own. The very idea is absurd.

I think most millennial sorts are on board with the idea of a "war to stop atrocity", but that's about it. Why would you hurt someone to get what you want? How medieval.

That works, right up to the point that it is your country that is invaded. Then all those theories go right out the window.

This attitude dissolves when the opposing army comes to your city. It's kill or be killed, and there are many people who do not share your pacifism. How detached from reality must you be to write this comment and the ones following? Frankly I'm surprised such genes have survived in the pool this long; your beliefs are dysgenic and suicidal. When the enemy comes, or they 'just' seize your farms, you fight or you die.

Not wanting to kill 'the enemy', even when under fire, is not a millenial invention. It's basic human nature. See "On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society" for more.

I feel like your post has a hint of disapproval in it--or maybe I'm just inserting that--but I find it describes my feelings (US born 1988) perfectly accurately, yes.

So you have no problem with Russia ultimately "winning" in Ukraine and then mass executing Ukrainians (like they did in Buscha and probably other towns) who don't want to be turned into Russian slaves and have their culture destroyed? You think NATO should roll over and let this happen when we can probably stop it by sending Ukraine weapons to fight back? Just don't care because it's "over there? I am just trying to understand this mindset. (Straddling millenial and gen-x age here)

I get war (kind of… never fought one). But I don’t get why this war is my war. It’s a conflict between Russia and Ukraine. We have no sworn defense pact with Ukraine, except that if nuclear aggression arises from some other power, we defend them from such.

Why do I care what the Russians and Ukrainians do? Now if the American world hegemony or whatever wishes to continue to exert control over Ukraine, fine. But, I have no stakeholdership in that, and it increasingly seems that I and people like me are quite disliked by said hegemony. If they want us to support their empire, maybe they ought to cut us in on a bit more of its spoils, and give us a bit more say in its aims.

> We have no sworn defense pact with Ukraine, except that if nuclear aggression arises from some other power, we defend them from such.

What document do you believe said that?

You are correct in some immediate sense but this war is a bit different because it is actually revealing what using nukes or threatening to use nukes means in the context of war of conquest/genocide in 21st century. If the US completely abandoned Ukraine day one, then Russia would attack a NATO country next cause they would feel the nuclear threat is too much for the US to handle.

"If I may, my impression is also that the younger generations don't "get" war. Why would I, ever shoot someone just like me because his/her/xyr government has forced them to point a rifle at me?"

I got that part...

>> post-modernist neo-marxist

What does that mean? It seems like a contradiction in terms. How could you have someone who rejects modernist ideology but promotes a modernist ideology?

It's a common cliché from rightwing circles (initially I think the combination of the two was produced by Jordan Peterson). Not to be too mean, but you'll see a lot of the Ben Shapiro fan crowd snagging on to it because it sounds smart despite being mostly meaningless. It's a placeholder for terms like 'degeneracy' and 'cultural bolshevism' and other such social forces that might undermine the status quo.

There's a bit more nuance if you want to try to take the term at face value. DDG renders this, which seems reasonable https://areomagazine.com/2022/04/11/is-postmodernism-neo-mar...

It is. The ideology that's referring to which is popular amongst politically active young people is frankly a mess. In particular there's a gaping hole in their post-modernism where they just completely fail to apply any of its tools to their own ideological beliefs or power structures, instead using it to prop up their vaguely Marxist and not so vaguely anti-Western ideology.

Anyone who ever actually read Foucault would instantly realize he wasn't a Marxist because he thought it failed to sufficiently describe why the way we produce truth and knowledge shift historically, which more often than not tends to only be explainable as 'progress' after the fact.

> it's going to be interesting to watch what tactics have to be used to get an unwilling generation in the metaphorical front lines.

Biden's admin is already ..trying.. the "how do you do, fellow kids" approach

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/11/tik-tok...

> Most younger people are quite skeptic of mainstream media so they don’t trust the narrative CNN and Fox News are trying to sell them.With the elderly it’s the opposite.

That's a funny use of the word skeptical. I think you mean outright ignorant.

That's how we get "Dear Mister President Vladimir Putin…" https://twitter.com/IAMannalynnemcc/status/14968775417720627...

They simply don't care beyond an opportunity to self-aggrandize. We're over a month in, Ukraine is old news already.

Before you call me an old fogey, I am younger than the woman in this video clip with 32 million views.

These are dark times.

> You also have people bringing up Yemen, Syria, Palestine, etc to emphasize the “white-supremacist” support of Ukraine receiving overwhelming attention.

This one really annoys me. Yes, people care more about people who look like them, and certainly those who are closer and where war is less common. Same reason predominantly Muslim diasporas in the west care about Palestine a lot

> where war is less common.

This particular refrain is one that's worth examining from the lens you're dismissing. Under what frame is "war less common" in Europe (or even "East Europe")? An extremely narrow one at best, IMO. A large proportion of pro-Ukrainian propaganda also outright contradicts this notion by referencing historical acts of Russian aggression.

There's a big difference between acts of aggression and war. With the exception of a Ukraine in 2014 and a week or two in 2008 in Georgia, most Europeans have to go back to the 90s for any conventional war. True, in Eastern Europe and the balkans things have been less peaceful but even so they've been living in times of almost no war.

I do concede that this is the least relevant point though, the similarity one is much more significant.

> Same reason predominantly Muslim diasporas in the west care about Palestine a lot

I don't think that's true. It's true the Muslims I know care about Palestine. But, for example, nobody cares about Uyghurs, who are Muslim. I don't know any Bangladeshis that care about the Rohingya, even though they're at least closely related to Bangladeshis (and "look" the same and speak a closely related language). My impression, being part of this "diaspora," is that the common support for Palestine is more about shared animosity against Israel. This animosity is partly just anti-Jewish, but also partly anti-Anglo-meddling, insofar as Britain was instrumental in enabling Jewish repatriation of Israel, and the United States continues to support Israel.

Absolutely false. We Muslims care about our brothers and sisters wherever they are, and regardless of their ethnicity or race. There are tons of material and videos online about prayers and donations and campaigns made in support of them. E.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=941duulDzOs

Maybe it's different there, but in the UK which has a significant Muslim population, concern for Palestine, Yemen and Syria (and even the Uyghurs to a lesser extent) is common. The Rohingyas also had support in the UK, which again has a lot of Bangladeshis.

I don't think this is a modern phenomenon. Certainly it was the younger generation that was against the war in Vietnam. It would be interesting to see polls from the Korean War and World War I. My guess is that we'd see a similar split between young and older generations.

> You also have people bringing up Yemen, Syria, Palestine, etc to emphasize the “white-supremacist”

It’s interesting that I’ve noticed many posts of “Ukrainian refugees were accepted, Syrian refugees weren’t; therefore, racism” since the outbreak. I wish Instagram, Facebook, Twitter would release more research on ad spend by company and not activity.

It’s pretty cheap to buy these kind of ads and market toward people who signal boost such causes. So I’m assuming that Russia is doing that.

>So I’m assuming that Russia is doing that

I've learned there's a certain portion of the population that believes the Russians are behind almost everything.

Perhaps. The reason I hav the suspicion is because it seems like Russia benefits the most in this situation from have a narrative against Ukrainian refugees and conflating Ukraine’s issues with Syria’s issues.

Logically, there are so many differences between the two populations it wouldn’t make sense to actually make a racism claim (eg, Syrians were high percentage young male vs Ukrainian families; Syria over multiple years vs Ukrainians in weeks; 8M Syrians vs 1M Ukrainians; Syrians travel across multiple countries far away vs Ukrainians in neighboring countries; we’re only weeks in for Ukraine vs years for Syria; etc etc).

The two situations are very different so comparing the two and then saying that the reason is racism seems pretty silly. So I think “what’s more likely, silliness or Russian bots?”

You're probably right, and it's strange to me that Russia's utter intolerance of anything LGBT is not a factor in people deciding who to support.

It's a factor in Russia's favor for anti LGBT people. It isn't a factor for people who dismiss everything but class war as identity politics.

Has it occurred to you that there are many Americans who view sodomy as immoral?

>Gen Z is also more diverse and broadly anti-American (or “anti-imperialist”)

An irony, considering that Russian imperialism is the one that actually performs land grabs and ethnic cleansing without even trying to cover it up.

Just as more than one thing can be bad, you can be against imperialism, stand with oppressed peoples and deeply question the official American story.

Agreed that you don't have to accept the official American story.

You can not be "anti-imperialist" and tolerate this war, however. This is a war of Russian imperialism.

American imperialism is bad, I agree with that. But Russian imperialism is also bad. As was British imperialism.

If you're an anti-imperialism, you must be against the Russian invasion.

It's 2022. Fire up TikTok, start liking videos, and choose whatever narrative you want. Everything you don't like is crisis acting and media bias? Sure! Digital reality is becoming schizophrenic.

It's like the opposite of '1984', and yet somehow the same.

The US was in Iraq and Afghanistan accidentally bombing schools, hospitals, and wedding parties for the entirety of Gen Z's lives.

How is it ironic? It’s like, “Gen Z hates assault… An irony, considering that murder is even more violent.”

In some left-wing circles anti-Americanism and anti-imperialism are indistinguishable. People like Max Blumenthal are the perfect representatives of this ideology.

I don't know anything about max blumenthal so sure.

But if you are american, those things pretty much should be the same. Anti-imperialism is not an abstract struggle, and for many around the world the US and its allies are a concrete enemy they've come by honestly.

If you live in the US, solidarity with those people means using whatever power you have internally to oppose the US's imperial actions.

The US is not the only imperialist force by any means. But particularly from inside one of these machines, it is hard to understand and act against other forms of imperialism without also assisting your own country's imperial projects.

Countries are adept at turning their own subversive and radical movements outward against their political enemies. An awareness of the mechanics of imperialism does I think lead to a "clean up your own house first" praxis and I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

It's because kids are effed by the media. They have been fed a whole bunch of lies and propaganda one way or another in order to get them to support or denounce some cause or other so they don't know what to believe. So they throw their hands up and give up and "let them sort it out"

The media and establishment want it both ways. in the '80s imperialism was BAD. Now, rebranded as globalism, this imperialism is good, but that one over there by them is BAD! and so on it goes.

Can't blame them after the Iraq war and everyone getting on a bandwagon of lies including the left, right and center with the exception of Libertarians.

> so they don't know what to believe. So they throw their hands up and give up and "let them sort it out"

This is a result of a common propaganda attack by a party that wants to cover up the truth: seed multiple competing story lines through varying outlets to create a sense of confusion. That way, when the truth is reported, people will react to it like it's just 1 more among the many competing stories.

Russia in particular has been running this play both domestically and abroad. It's a formidable approach, and defense against it is difficult.

> Can't blame them after the Iraq war and everyone getting on a bandwagon of lies including the left, right and center with the exception of Libertarians.

This is only true if your conception of 'the left' is just American liberals. Plenty of people and groups on the left were against the invasions from the get-go.

> Can't blame them after the Iraq war and everyone getting on a bandwagon of lies including the left, right and center with the exception of Libertarians.

The Left (including most of the center-left Democratic faction in Congress) was against the Iraq War, the more dominant Democratic center-right faction was for it (or, at least, against not giving the President the authority to wage it conditionally, which some of them will distinguish by suggesting that the required determinations made by the President under that authority were in bad faith, but that was pretty predictable...)

">Gen Z is also more diverse and broadly anti-American (or “anti-imperialist”) An irony, considering that Russian imperialism is the one that actually performs land grabs and ethnic cleansing without even trying to cover it up."

you should learn about this thing called the 2003 invasion of Iraq, then the Vietnam war, etc.

At least Russia actually declares war when it places another country within its empire's sights. The USA just acts like it owns the entire american continent and the means to its imperialistic ends range from cultural exportation and massive economic leverage to literally teaching dictators how torture and repress dissidents. Look up School of the Americas for an example.

you know they cant call it a war on russian tv right?

> Gen Z is also more diverse and broadly anti-American (or “anti-imperialist”) so they’re less willing to blindly support US foreign policy and feel less connected to European conflicts than previous generations.

I don't think it's accurate to say they're "broadly anti-American" because they're "more diverse." The increased diversity in the younger generation is due to Hispanic and Asian immigrants and their kids.[1] First and second generation immigrants are equally or more patriotic than native born Americans, and are significantly less likely to say they are “ashamed” of any aspect of America: https://www.cato.org/publications/immigration-research-polic....

All else being equal, immigration-driven population change is driving down "anti-American" sentiment. Indeed, the only political group where a majority say they’re “ashamed to be American,” progressives, is also amongst the whitest: https://hiddentribes.us/profiles.

I think what you see amongst immigrants is a less ideological view of foreign policy. They have often seen first hand that American has done a lot of harmful things abroad. At the same time, they compartmentalize that because they don't view foreign policy in terms of "good and evil." They may also feel less ownership of America's role and status as world "lawgiver."

I also think immigrants are more cynical than Americans. I'd describe my dad and myself as "pro America," but neither of us care about Ukraine. (And frankly I see no connection between being pro-American and supporting Ukraine.) As immigrants from Bangladesh we don't have idealistic notions about sovereignty and human rights. “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” (It drives my Daughter of the American Revolution wife nuts when we say "some countries' fate is to be a buffer state.")

And of course "immigrants" are not homogenous but rather from a wide range of different countries that have various idiosyncratic positions on foreign policy. Some of the most rabidly patriotic people I know are kids of Vietnamese immigrants. Meanwhile in India and Bangladesh, there is a historical affinity with Russia from the Soviet times.

[1] The Black population share was 11% in 1960 and 12% in 2010, and is projected to rise to 13% in 2050. https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/files/2012/11/117.jpg. The white population share will decrease from 85% to 47%, with almost all of the delta due to Hispanics, and to a lesser extent Asians.

But fox news is telling them that it's okay for Russia to genocide Ukraine?

FOX News and CNN have been in complete lockstep from day one, with the exception of Tucker Carlson. Sean Hannity & Anderson Cooper are ideological twins at this point. The last time CNN and FOX News have been this much in agreement, it was when we decided that an invasion of Iraq was the right thing to do in order to get rid of WMD.

Source for that?

Tucker Carlson is the biggest talking head on Fox:

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1497035201196617733

Carlson (on Fox to millions): "I think we should probably take the side of Russia, if we have to choose between Russia and Ukraine."

(later) "And why shouldn't I root for Russia? Which I am."

I appreciate the other threads here on this. My viewpoint may be a minority, but I fought in a war and live with the aftermath so I think my perspective might be of some value. I'm going to try to be careful with my wording but please realize this is a bit emotional even a decade later.

I fought in Afghanistan. Real authoritarians with a very real tyrannical streak that's comparable to cartels, with tactics to boot. I watched the Obama administration lie about how well the war was going. We were getting reports of Marines being shot in the back by their counterparts continually. We were finding posts abandoned. Our bases were getting attacked while understaffed, our patrols were minimized, and our ROE was changed such that we had to be shot at directly to return fire. I watched national rhetoric coalesce on "they signed up for these injuries" when veterans needed help the most, culminating in people comitting suicide outside of hospitals.

I will never for those reasons support sending another soul down range.

Don't compare your experiences with Ukraine. They fight a very different war, on their own territory (often their own cities). They literally defending their families, no less.

> Don't compare your experiences with Ukraine.

Why would you tell someone not to compare two things just because those things are different? What would be the point of making comparisons at all if everything was the same? You would already know the result.

Good point. I meant "those are different, so your (their) experiences don't apply there".

The circumstances are not that different. The people of Afghanistan (by the time I arrived) were trying to defend their homes and communities from Taliban incursion that the US had partially reinvigorated by overthrowing their government (in that it made them worse, not that we created them which is common misinterpretation). The history of Afghanistan puts this kind of stuff pretty plain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Enduring_Freedom#The...

I do understand there is a wide knowledge gap that HN visitors have about Afghanistan, but please try to understand better.

> They literally defending their families, no less.

So the Taliban were not defending their families?

No, he's saying Americans should not be committed to fight for Ukraine.

But there's one quirk to the story: US has signed up for it on December 5, 1994: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit...

Too bad that document was very high-level, without specific procedures, timelines and liabilities listed in case of a breach. But nevertheless, it's a very real and legal grounding for fighting for Ukraine.

> I will never for those reasons support sending another soul down range.

Even if Poland or a NATO ally gets attacked?

I don't think anyone major is proposing sending troops to Ukraine, so this discussion is sorta irrelevant for the current conflict, but it seems like this line of reasoning would necessitate pulling out of NATO as well.

That's the trouble with relying on a democracy to be the big muscle in your defense pact.

This is quite sad that your reasons for lack of support of the wars are that you (an invader) had a bad time there, not that you were part of the force destabilising and destroying another country

People sign up for the military often with good intentions, yet they don't often get to choose what the military then does with them. You're seemingly assigning responsibility for an entire invasion to a foot soldier.

I didn't intend to put a blame of invasion on a single soldier. But I do put blame on a soldier, that he came to another country to kill people there for no good reason. There is a choice

This is a crucial and under-represented perspective. I don't necessarily agree with the conclusion, but it is hard to ignore the inherent callousness of arguing over a conflict that will have no direct impact on me or my family.

Thank you for your service.

The difference is, Afghanistan was of negligible importance in comparison. Stakes here are different. Just listen to Putin and take his words literally, because he means them.

Either way, Ukraine needs weapons and bullets. They don’t need more soldiers.

This comment is weird. Who cares about the stakes? Dead people are dead people. Unless you want to get into a "realist realpolitiks" analysis, which coincidentally can also be used to justify the russian war of aggression. I've seen this take pretty often and to me it boils down to "ukraine is in europe and ukrainians are europeans so it's different and it makes this war so much worse" which to me sounds extremely... problematic?

Like the hundreds of thousands of deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan still make those wars and the Civil wars they caused much much more destructive than what's happening in ukraine. It's not a competition, for sure, but it's important to keep that in mind before dismissing or downplaying the consequences of American policy and the enthusiastic support for those wars of the American public .

> ukraine is in europe and ukrainians are europeans so it's different and it makes this war so much worse" which to me sounds extremely... problematic?

It sounds more practical than problematic to me. Afghanistan is 10 times farther away from Western Europe than Ukraine is. If Europe didn't feel a lot more threatened by Russia, they would be insane.

I agree, from a national policy perspective. But on an individual level, which I think was the scope of the discussion, I still don't think that it's okay to value ukrainian lives more than middle eastern/Muslim lives.

A generous interpretation of your parent comment is that, "because of the stakes, the government will take it far more seriously" and, e.g., stand with our soldiers.

> Dead people are dead people.

Reality does not work like that, unfortunately western lives have more value than non western lives.

I can't tell if this comment is satire, I sincerely hope it is.

I’m not from the US. I’m from Eastern Europe. Our grandparents survived the Red Army liberation from Nazi Germany. The Russians were much worse. This is an existential war for not only Ukraine, but whole eastern NATO flank. Putin more or less denies agency of all our countries.

I feel like you are ignoring a major issue with Ukraine. Its a corrupt country. After Russia it is consistently ranked as the most corrupt country in Europe. https://www.google.com/search?q=most+corrupt+countries+in+eu...

How do we even know any of our aid is being used successfully? I have no problem giving aid that is used to fight a proxy war with Russia. I have a huge issue giving aid to a country whose politicians are trying to make money for themselves. Kolomoisky, who is one of Zelensky's main backers, was indicted in the US for bank fraud. He is also in the panama papers. The politicians in Ukraine are corrupt, not as corrupt as old putin imo, but still corrupt.

Now they are saying they need 7 billion dollar a month? I would be okay with this if everything was tracked and open for all to see. Buts it not. For all we know they are going to take 6 billion for themselves.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-14/ukraine-u...

I think, regardless of the value of the point you're trying to make, saying this in this context is callous at best. The comment you're responding to was careful and vulnerable, and if you read between the lines even a tiny bit there is pain there.

We all know what happened in afghanistan right?. Anyone who spent significant time there witnessed horrific suffering. Watched friends come back completely different or not at all.

"Negligible importance" to who? Not to the people who died there, or killed and have to carry that with them forever, or who didn't when they think they should have and have to carry that. Have a little compassion come on.

However one can't simply say everything is Afghanistan. I never supported the war there. We had to many other ways to hit Bin Laden. However I completely support the war in Europe. This war of aggression is just the start if we just roll over for Putin. He won't stop at Ukraine, it will just be a pit stop to Poland and the Baltic states and who knows what after that. Ukraine doesn't stand a chance if we don't send them weapons, food, material, and intelligence reports. I also don't think my opinion is invalid just because I didn't serve on a battlefront. I pay taxes and vote so I get a voice too.

>He won't stop at Ukraine, it will just be a pit stop to Poland and the Baltic states and who knows what after that.

I find it hard to believe this narrative when the US and Ukraine has refused to negotiate on the terms that Russia offered to prevent, and then later stop the war. The rationale given is that Russia was not sincere, but I think we should have tried. From my perspective in the US, a NATO demilitarized Ukraine would have been a win-win for both countries.

Sorry we, as a society, failed our soldiers so badly. It's trite to say but thanks for serving. You'll carry those scars to the grave.

That said, what does this have to do with the article, which is talking about generational sympathies with either Russia or Ukraine? Is there a serious push to get US troops involved, a move which would surely spark WWIII? We're not talking about sending souls down range. Putin already did that. He is sending Russian souls down range and forcing Ukrainian souls down range.

>That said, what does this have to do with the article, which is talking about generational sympathies with either Russia or Ukraine.

The relevance is as an example of the broken trust people that grew up during Iraq and Afghanistan have in the narrative that we are the good guys in foreign policy. After being repeatedly sold a bag of Lies, many look for how we could be tricked into thinking we are the the good guys yet again.

This skepticism and openness to alternative narratives is at the center of the generational divide

The skeptics are primed to ask in what ways the US is complicit in brining about this war, and it what ways it stands to benefit. The dangerous part is that a long track record of lies and self interested foreign wars adds a lot of weight to otherwise less credible narratives regarding Ukraine.

Wow I'm an old man.

With the youth I'd say this generation is more affected by any other by the sheer noise of modern media. It's also one of the first where there was less emphasis on indoctrinating people towards the government's view on the cold war, the first to grow up with a government that lied to them about a significant non-cold war war (Iraq), and the first that actually has the means to cheaply find other views on things.

So maybe it's not so strange that young people think this way.

I mostly blame the Iraq war. Yes, the west has done a lot of bad things in the past. But in recent memory Iraq stands out as where we blew any pretense of moral superiority. (It does happen now and again, but the Cold War is a really good excuse for a LOT of bad things). People would have seen this and seen that whatever our governments say, you gotta take it with a grain of salt.

Adding to this, young Americans have never seen anything gained from war. The war in Afghanistan lasted 2 decades and cost trillions of dollars, yet we have next to nothing to show for it.

It made stock prices go up so a bunch of retirees could live comfortably and also made several presidents look presidential while they heartfelt condolences over flag-draped caskets.

Add Libyan intervention (2011) as well - that put the country into 9 years of civil war (is it still peaceful there? IDK). Though this one is combined mess of NATO.

When is the last time America has seen benefit from going to war? The 50s with a stalemate in Korea?

Arguably the first Gulf War. The US successfully protected it's economic interest and expanded its military establishment in the region.

And liberated the Kuwaiti people from scud missiles, invasion, and occupation from a brutal Saddam regime? That's a pretty important benefit to miss, but maybe you're just limiting it to benefits for a US citizen. (of which selfless ones would consider it a benefit)

People who don't go to war always gained from war. Lots of jobs. The post-WWII afterglow is when we defined our middle-class mythologies. The good old days.

The US had 419K deaths from WWII. That's like half as much as covid thus far. Americans like to go to war because they sacrifice nothing. It's a game.

One problem with all these reviews is that we can’t see the counter factual. That said I agree Iraq war was likely a very bad thing for our country and certainly is responsible for much of our internal strife right now.

>I mostly blame the Iraq war.

The Iraq war is mostly to blame in the recent past, but only because our attacks on Libya, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere haven't received the media coverage they warranted. We utterly destroyed Libya, which was the most prosperous country in Africa, in 2014. Today Libyans are being sold there in open-air slave markets. How many Americans know this? Our troops are occupying Syria illegally, right now. Where is the outrage?

According to Gallup, the proportion of Americans who trust mass media a "great deal" or a "fair amount" dropped 10 percentage points during the Iraq war, and then never fully recovered.

Of course, broken down by political party shows Democrats have restored their trust in mass media just fine, especially since Trump...

[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/355526/americans-trust-media-di...

Yes there is a solid 30% of america that is Trump america (and probably was before Trump even came on the scene and made them bolder). They don't trust the government (but gladly accept donations from the government), don't trust mainstream media, largely support alt-right news like Fox and OAN, tend towards white supremacy, fear "the other" and base most decisions around that fear, and will always vote Republican.

> and will always vote Republican

I'm not sure I would go that far. I can easily imagine a situation where the Republican party pulls out all the stops and ensures Trump doesn't win the nomination, only for Trump to run on the MAGA party ticket. I would expect him to easily get 10% of the vote.

We didn't get any democrats who really dared test this on the left in 2020, as even Bernie (the strongest cult of personality on the left, for comparison) fell in line behind Biden.

That is to say, strong personalities, more than institutions, seem to carry the most power. Perhaps this has always been true? How much of mass media's historical confidence was due solely to Walter Kronkite?

Obviously I don't actually know whats going on over there, but I find it hard to believe that the Russian military as a whole is "deliberately targeting civilians".

From the first estimate I found searching the web:

On April 10:

> Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) recorded 4,232 civilian casualties in the country: 1,793 killed and 2,439 injured.

<2000 civilian deaths in a full-scale invasion of a country with ~44 million citizens seems FAR too low to declare that targeting civilians is a goal. Mariupol is currently fighting to the bitter end, despite being surrounded for weeks and even bisected by Russian forces. This is a city that had a population of >400k at the start of the war.

If the goal was really to kill everybody in sight, the Russians would've just carpet bombed their targets day 1 and killed hundreds of thousands. It seems like everyone has forgotten what war is. There's no "humanitarian" way to commit war. It's always awful and always creates unintended death.

Again, not an expert here nor do I believe any statistics to be 100% accurate.

"deliberately targeting civilians" is not the same as "going out to murder everyone". Obviously, Russia could just nuke Ukraine. They haven't done that. However, they have verifiably used cluster munitions in cities; abducted, raped and murdered civilians in areas they control; bombed hospitals; shot and shelled civilians trying to flee; and so forth.

All of this is very much what they have form for in Syria. Is it not getting reported in the US? It is in Europe.

> OHCHR believes that the actual figures are considerably higher, as the receipt of information from some locations where intense hostilities have been going on has been delayed and many reports are still pending corroboration. This concerns, for example, Mariupol and Volnovakha (Donetsk region), Izium (Kharkiv region), Popasna (Luhansk region), and Borodianka (Kyiv region), where there are allegations of numerous civilian casualties. These figures are being further corroborated and are not included in the above statistics.

Give a 20 year-old Russian conscript a gun and drop him in a warzone. Anyone not wearing a Russian flag is now a potential threat because he's in hostile territory. Then, at some point, the young man gets tired of all the potential threats and just starts eliminating them. At that point, Russian military as a whole is quite culpable.

But if you're going to make up a story, why not make up a different one? A nicer one where this person who doesn't exist isn't guilty of doing the thing that didn't happen, and the entire country of Russia wasn't to blame.

The OSCE published a report yesterday: https://www.osce.org/odihr/515868

Some quotes:

“The Mission is not able to conclude whether the Russian attack on Ukraine per se may qualify as a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population. It however holds that some patterns of violent acts violating IHRL, which have been repeatedly documented in the course of the conflict, such as targeted killing, enforced disappearance or abductions of civilians, including journalists and local officials, are likely to meet this qualification. Any single violent act of this type, committed as part of such an attack and with the knowledge of it, would then constitute a crime against humanity.”

“It is not conceivable that so many civilians would have been killed and injured and so many civilian objects, including houses, hospitals, cultural property, schools, multi-story residential buildings, administrative buildings, penitentiary institutions, police stations, water stations and electricity systems would have been damaged or destroyed if Russia had respected its IHL obligations in terms of distinction, proportionality and precautions in conducting hostilities in Ukraine.”

Why do you find that hard to believe? Targeting civilians doesn't mean wiping out the population. And if there wasn't such a large body of prior evidence I might be tempted to agree that some of what we are seeing is isolated, or simple incompetence. But it now seems undeniable that Russia is intentionally targeting civilian infrastructure. And although that may have been effective in Syria, I have no idea what they hope to accomplish with it in Ukraine.

how can you read what they did in Bucha (raping, torturing, execution style murders in the street) and say you don't think they're targetting civilians. That was a warning from Putin to Ukrainians about what happens if you fight back and don't surrender 100%

You deliberately omitted the part saying "OHCHR believes that the actual figures are considerably higher".

Most of the civilian deaths are still under rubles or in mass graves like Bucha. Many of them are also in areas still controlled by Russia.

The graphic is important I think. It's not a binary. While the younger generation showed more support for Russia, most of the difference between the generations was due to the younger generation giving an "unsure" answer.

Excellent point. If the younger generation were not more often "unsure" about a foreign policy question, that would mean either:

1) they have spent a lot of time studying foreign policy questions (unlikely with any generation when young), or

2) they just accept whatever their elders tell them

56% of young people supporting Ukraine, is a result we would consider a crushing victory for either party in modern presidential elections, and that's when there's a lot fewer "unsure". There is a generational difference, sure, but it's a lot less dramatic than most of the posts here are suggesting.

18-29 is 1993 or younger.

They we born during the Bosnian and Kosovo wars. They were 7 years old or younger when they briefly experienced no war in 2000 and GWBush and 9/11 in 2001 they saw the Afghanistan war start and not end until only months ago. 20 years of war and a loss!

They only know war. Can you imagine their war exhaustion? Can you imagine how much they don't care about a war happening on the otherside of the world that the usa aren't officially involved in?

The USA is still officially involved in somali, yemen, and syria.

These young americans are probably more concerned with those 3 and you didn't even ask them? You don't need to ask. You know they'll universally say to stop being in all these wars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_America:_World_Police

Sidenote as someone who's a member of Gen Z -- I... didn't grow up knowing nearly anything about the USA's wars of aggression other than that we were fighting someone in the middle east. I knew there was fighting, but I didn't (and honestly still don't) understand what for. It was never explained to me and I never thought about it enough to go looking.

Not trying to disprove your point, just sharing my own anecdotal experience.

>Sidenote as someone who's a member of Gen Z -- I... didn't grow up knowing nearly anything about the USA's wars of aggression other than that we were fighting someone in the middle east. I knew there was fighting, but I didn't (and honestly still don't) understand what for. It was never explained to me and I never thought about it enough to go looking.

I know many Chinese Nationals and even people from Hong Kong and none of them know about Tiananmen Square. I bet you heard of Tiananmen Square massacre. I bet you didn't know that the Chinese military killed all those people at Tiananmen over capitalism.

Brief history: Terrorists attacked New York City and destroyed the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. This was huge and it completely shocked the whole country. It really felt like a sucker punch.

A bunch of laws were implemented in the US to take away people's freedoms in exchange for security. For example this is when the TSA was created and you have to pose for a nude selfie to get into an airport, and if God forbid you have change in your pocket, you're wearing a metal belt buckle, or there's just a random scanner blip, a government employee will give you a search that would get any private business sued out of existence for sexual harassment. Also banks were required to ask a lot more intrusive questions to their customers, responses to potential terrorism and criminal penalties for terrorism related stuff were increased, all kinds of electronic government spying was increased -- sometimes illegally (including the stuff Snowden eventually revealed).

Soon after the attacks, the Al Qaeda terrorist group based in Afghanistan was determined to be responsible. The President told the government of Afghanistan to hand over Osama bin Laden, the leader of the terrorist group. The government of Afghanistan, called the Taliban, refused. The Taliban are religious fundamentalists; besides being responsible for the September 11 attacks, they're mainly famous for destroying irreplaceable historical temples over 1000 year old. So the US invaded and got rid of the Taliban government. After the invasion, the US briefly set up an occupation government, but then set up free and fair elections. Unfortunately the Afghans elected a corrupt and ineffective government, who ended up stealing most of the money the US put into rebuilding the country.

It took the US a really long time to capture Osama bin Laden. Even after bin Laden was captured, the Afghan government still didn't get its feet, it was constantly unstable, corrupt, untrusted by the people and reliant on US military backing. So the US military decided to stay until they could be sure Afgahnistan was stable collapse as soon as it left. Unfortunately Afghanistan never got that stable.

The Taliban fought with tactics like roadside bombs, car bombs, and child suicide bombers. Which led to a lot of psychological wear and tear on the US soldiers; a number of returning soldiers had mental issues or committed suicide. For example if a car looks like it's not going to stop for a checkpoint, or a child is running up to a group of soldiers, the soldiers have to assume it's a bomb and shoot to protect themselves, but 9 times out of 10 it was just an innocent civilian.

Eventually Trump decided to rip the band-aid by negotiating an exit date with the Taliban, to actually occur during Biden's first term, so Biden could be blamed if it went poorly. Which it did; the Taliban, being terrorists, ignored the peace agreement and attacked. The Afghan army quickly collapsed and the elected Afghan president disgracefully fled the country in the middle of dinner.

Now the Taliban are in charge. The Taliban won't quit with religious extremism like shooting women and girls if they don't want to wear a burka, or try to get an education beyond fourth grade.

The people of Afghanistan are starving because the Afghan economy completely collapsed because foreign companies don't want to work or invest in Afghanistan due to the violence and religious fundamentalism of the Taliban regime. We tried our best to help during our years in Afghanistan. The Afghan people responded by electing a corrupt government, stealing the money that was supposed to help them, running away instead of fighting, and supporting the Taliban despite their barbarity and terrorism. The Afghan people are starving, which is sad, but it's not our problem any more. The Taliban wanted to be in charge; now they're in charge, and this is their problem now.

Calling the US war in Afghanistan a war of aggression is absurd. Afghanistan sent in terrorists to hijack planes in a suicide attack that successfully destroyed two skyscrapers and killed thousands of random civilians. Another hijacked plane flew into the Pentagon, which was also severely damaged. September 11, 2001 was an act of war, pure and simple.

A bunch of really weird stuff came out of the war. For example, Osama bin Laden's been dead for a decade, we're out of Afghanistan, and nobody's launched a successful major terrorist attack on the US since 2001. But for some reason, no politician of either party is willing to even bring up the possibility of disbanding the TSA, rolling back the 2001 era regulations, and giving us our freedom back. This is kind of a sore subject with me.

There's also the story of Guantanamo Bay. For some weird reason, even though the US and Cuba hate each other, the US owns a tiny part of Cuba and has a military base there. Since it's owned by the US government and not on US soil, some terrorists were sent there. The US court system ruled that they're somehow outside the reach of US law and the Constitution there, and the US government is legally allowed to use torture and detain people indefinitely without charges there. A lot of people (in my view, correctly) claim the government shouldn't legally be allowed to do that, and even if it's somehow legal, it's still morally wrong and unethical to do it. And even if the government did it anyway in the past, in the present/future they should stop, close the prison, and either charge or release the prisoners. US intelligence claims the detainees are bad, bad people who would launch September 11 style attacks, but due to the exigencies of war they can't get enough evidence to convict them with normal legal procedure. Obama promised to close Guantanamo Bay but he didn't, and AFAIK there are still prisoners there to this day.

Iraq is a different story, but this post is already long and ranty enough.

Important to mention that not only have we been at war their entire lives, but that they've been absolutely pointless wars of aggression that ended in a whimper for the US, and absolute devastation for the countries invaded. And as you said, we lost all of them.

Not only that, but we've been too ashamed to declare them. No one wants to take responsibility, just reap the profits. Young people are cynical about war because it wasn't inculcated into them as a religion like it was for Boomers. Young people are cynical about war because they look at it, see its products, and see its profiteers. They lack the poetry to breathlessly admire the beauty of our weapons.

Another possible explanation is that younger people tend to rely more on far right or far left media, which tends to be much more pro-Russia than mainstream media (sometimes organically, sometimes through paid sponsorship like https://twitter.com/bamnecessary/status/1499162014895296516).

Hasan Piker for example, the #1 politics streamer on Twitch, is quite far left and is much more pro-Russia than say CNN.

>>far right or far left media, which tends to be much more pro-Russia than mainstream media

I wouldn't say pro Russian but anti-war. This kind of framing reminds me of GW Bush's "you're either with us or with the terrorists" accusation against people who opposed invading Iraq.

Also "far right or far left media" would be more accurately characterized as non-corporate non-MSM journalism. For reasons that aren't entirely clear, the MSM literally promotes every US war and foreign intervention no matter the cost or predictable disastrous consequences. It's as if they have become engulfed in the military industrial complex.

I'm not so sure that's true. The logic of both left and right people I've talked to is something like: Western elites are terrible, Ukraine colluded with those elites/is their puppet (wanted to join Nato/EU/etc), Russia is opposed to Western elites, and is therefore a positive force. I've talked to many people of both political persuasions and they try to minimize Russian wrongdoing and emphasize Western provocation (poking the bear).

Of course, they have different reasons for disliking western elites, but their arguments end up remarkably similar.

Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor was spurred by America oil embargo on Japan, and 9/11 was spurred by American meddling in the middle east. None of those statements should be necessarily seen as minimizing or justifying those subsequent acts. There is nuance in the world, nothing happens in a vacuum.

> Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor was spurred by America oil embargo on Japan

...and the embargo on Japan was due to it's continuing invasion of China...

As I said: "they try to minimize Russian/Japanese/Islamist wrongdoing and emphasize Western provocation"

I don't think the far right or far left media is more "anti-war" than the mainstream media.

After all, the NYT is also publishing opeds about how the US shouldn't institute a no-fly zone: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/25/opinion/no-fly-zone-ukrai...

Anti-war is the mainstream opinion in the US from pretty much top to bottom.

When I talk about something being pro-Russia or not I am referring to stuff like Hasan saying that Russia's annexation of Crimea was ethical, Nick Fuente's literal cheering for Putin, etc.

Anti-war might not even be entirely the right word, but it's possible that a more "anti-imperialist" sentiment is growing. Sort of along the lines of the old "world police" critique. A lot of these people are probably both sympathetic to Ukraine, but also not in favor of some countries extending their military and financial influence far beyond their borders.

I think Hillary Clinton said in an interview, something along the lines that Russia should be prepared for the West to turn Ukraine into another Afghanistan. Seems like a pretty harsh way to view the people that are supposed to be supported.

That isn't "anti-imperialism", that's just good old fashioned isolationism.

True "anti-imperialism" seems like it would imply some duty to stop imperialism done by non US actors.

Hillary Clinton, like other neocons, thinks it would be great if Ukraine turned into another Afghanistan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLANOdsNhPg

There are people out there who are weirdly pro-russia. Oliver Stone was gassing Putin up for years, defending his actions such as his anti-gay legislation. The Putin documentary he created was nothing short of a hagiography.

The ostensible reasons would be he wants to stick it to America or that he likes the attention his contrarian opinions give him (which is much less in our transgressive age). Maybe some people naturally gravitate to authoritarians. One interesting fact though is that his son worked at RT.

It’s all deeply weird to me. I try to grapple with it intellectually but it’s beyond my comprehension. If you are someone who truly believes America is irredeemable, why wouldn’t you esteem more peace loving nations over countries with overt expansionist intentions?

Oliver Stone has blood on his hands with that documentary.

People cite it as a source of ultimate truth, yet it's lost on them that Putin is far too clever to appear in something he doesn't fully control.

> For reasons that aren't entirely clear, the MSM literally promotes every US war and foreign intervention no matter the cost or predictable disastrous consequences.

It's almost like the CIA and NSA might use their unregulated surveillance to get leverage over the media.

I wouldn't go so far as saying it's blackmail, but when you read in the paper "official familiar with the matter say", it really should read "CIA/NSA asked us to tell you". It's hard to bite the hand that feeds you.

I agree. The younger respondents tend to consume media that's not only more politically diverse, but often a little more nuanced than many of the mainstream outlets. Less black-and-white thinking is bound to lead to opinions that aren't so easily reflected in a "Yes, No, Unsure" poll.

> Hasan Piker for example, the #1 politics streamer on Twitch, is quite far left and is much more pro-Russia than say CNN.

I don't think Hasan is even remotely pro-Russia. What makes you say that?

Hasan talks on his show about how he thinks Russia was right to annex Crimea: https://clips.twitch.tv/ElegantTemperedApplePicoMause-VCY99f...

I don't think this particular clip shows a strong support for the Russian Federation in general. He seems to be saying that a majority of the people of Crimea want to be a part of Russia, having been more tied to Russia proper historically than any independent Ukraine, and they were able to make that switch without much violence.

It completely ignores the context (which you would see in more mainstream sources) for why most people see that annexation as unethical.

In particular, the lack of a "status quo" option for Crimea (the referendum only had two options, go independent or join Russia) and the lack of international observers (OSCE observers currently in the Crimea were asked to leave by the Russian authorities in the area) made the whole thing iffy from the get go.

And that's not even getting into the fraud allegations ...

He glosses over the fact that native Ukrainians in those regions were displaced in the 1930s during the Holodomor and replaced with Russian settlers. That might explain why Russian sentiment in those regions is high.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor#Aftermath_and_immedi...

He does not say "Russia was right", he said the annexation was justifiable and clearly not justifiable as in "right" but as in "defensible".

Saying he is "pro-Russia" is a big claim, because you're saying their position on Russia's action are overwhelmingly one of agreement. In that clip he appears to call Russia's actions defensible (which is not the same as agreement) on the Crimea issue, while being unclear but likely opposed on the Donbas issue.

Also given that many people are capable of more nuance than blindly supporting or opposing a country on every issue, you might as well be calling them a simpleton.

But he also used his stream to raise $200k for Ukranian relief efforts.

I mean his is the quintessential “both-sides” take that pushes (younger) people to be “unsure” about who they support, no?

Russia is bad, but so is Ukraine and NATO, too. Russia is bad but Ukraine does have a Nazi problem. People like him are probably the greatest contributors to the large amount of Gen Z who are unsure as to who they support.

> younger people tend to rely more on far right or far left media

Anecdotally, this is the opposite of my experience

IIUC, the poll's questions used the term "Russia", which implicitly lumps together the following groups:

- the Russian government

- the Russian military leadership

- Russian career soldiers

- Russian conscripts

- regular Russian citizens

If I were taking the survey, my answer to all 3 questions would depend on those distinctions.

Yep. I am observing this interesting gap in political correctness for a long time now. When Russians are concerned nobody (in my perception) is using a politically correct formulas (formulae?) like "a Putin-paid disinformation campaign", usually it's "a Russian disinformation campaign". Since all gaps in political correctness are (in my humble perception) deliberate, I've always wondered why it exists.

Saying that anything bad that Russia is doing is Putin's fault is very reductive.

Anything? Ok, let’s look at a couple of examples.

1. Stealing and publishing DNC correspondence. A team of security experts, doing a magnificently fast work named exactly two culprits: a) Russian military intelligence, b) Russian political intelligence. Both these entities are directly under Putin’s control. Still it was “Russian interference in elections”, not “Putin’s interference in elections”. The latter is both correct and politically correct, and in no way reductive. Why not use it?

2. Placing Facebook ads during the election campaign. The official indictment named Prigozhin’s media company (forgot its name) as a culprit. Prigozhin is the closest buddy of Putin. So blaming Putin was not reductive in this case. Still, “Russian meddling” was used, not “Putin’s”. Any idea why?

It also makes people pretend like understanding the conflict is just a matter of doing amateur psychology with the image they get of Putin through the television as a James Bond-style bad guy.

Every time some plain old person tells me what Putin thinks or what Putin wants or what Putin can't stand, I have to leave or change the subject. The way they talk about the Ukraine conflict has no actual physical references. It's like they're telling fairy stories about an evil wizard.

A lot has changed in the three weeks since they took their poll, I'd be very surprised if some of these numbers hold true today (for instance, this claims only 47% under 30 believe Russia has intentionally targeted civilians)

I think there's no point for Russian forces intentionally target civilians.

There's "no point" in organized war atrocities, and yet they happen anyway.

Which is to say there actually is a point: terror, demotivation, channeling the anger and frustration of your troops into a "soft" target, etc.

I am a pro Ukraine millennial. I also came of age during our middle east forever war and saw all the lies that went into supporting that boondoggle. The irony is not lost on me one bit. Goat herders yesterday, babuskas today. The great powers play their games and we pay.

I'm in the same age group and mindset as you. In fact, none of [the] poll results tracks anything I've encountered since the war started. I do not know a single person who sympathizes with the Russian aggression.

If the polling numbers are representative of larger groups outside of my social circles, then it is every disconcerting.

> barely half of those under 30 said they care who wins...

Yikes.

Young person here: aren't you the dolts who lied to us about Afghanistan and Iraq, then just got chased out with your tails between your legs?

Why should we believe a single thing you have to say about going to war?

Generally my mentality. This is a European war in Europe's back yard. CNN and Fox (with the exception of Carlson) are in lockstep, Google's demonetizing content that's dismissive of, or opposed to Ukraine.

Ukraine is the victim here, not the aggressor. I hope they win, I doubt they will.

But domestically, the rhetoric around the war has infuriated me.

A redneck shows up to a domestic political rally with his tacky Confederate flag, and everyone involved is a bigot, a fascist, or a potential domestic terrorist.

A country constitutionally bans same sex relationships, turns trans refugees fleeing the conflict away at the border because they're 'actually' men, supports the efforts of a pseudo-autonomous militia whose ~10k soldiers walk around wearing sonnenrads, and its only a tiny minority that we should overlook. Facebook even made an exception for their policy on supporting them.

I'm fine with nuance. It's important. But why is it only a thing when it means we might get to spill American blood in a police action for someone else's benefit?

I'm still disgusted that the US tolerated afghan allies who indulged in bacha bazi. Now people on my facebook feed and in the news who spent the last six years hyperventilating about neonazis and demanding restrictions on speech to stop them are telling me that supporting ethnonationalist militias is the price of democracy in Europe.

The EU is rich. This is their neighborhood. I've heard plenty of lectures from EU nationals that the US needs to stop enforcing its will on the rest of the world. If they want US arms in Ukraine, buy them from us.

I don't want American boots on the ground, and I'm leery of providing military aid with tax money that could be better used serving the people who paid it for a war that likely won't end in a win.

Some questions:

1) Who do you think started this violence? Did Ukraine invade Russia or did Russia invade Ukraine?

2) Who do you pull for when one person attacks another? The bully or the victim?

To me, these two questions and their answers determine my sympathies. You were lied to about Iraq and you are right to mistrust the US government, but the world media is not the US government. If you see reports from multiple news sources about mass graves and such, you should believe them.

>Who do you think started this violence? Did Ukraine invade Russia or did Russia invade Ukraine?

Who cares? Not our fight.

>Who do you pull for when one person attacks another? The bully or the victim?

Such infantile moralizing displays a profound case of arrested development in the moral faculties. Geopolitics is not a marvel movie.

Not our fight? Have you heard of Chamberlain?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeasement

yeah the problem is that these are obviously the wrong questions. You behave like a doctor treating the symptoms rather than the root cause. Why not ask "_why_ did Russia invade Ukraine?" The answer is that nobody wants to deal with the inconvenient truth that the US contributed heavily to the inflamed tensions.

You present a false dichotomy. I can have sympathies for Ukraine and distrust the US at the same time. Not viewing Russia as a cartoon villain is far more realistic than what the Western media is pushing.

PDF of cited poll: https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/l8ynsbxwgl/econTabReport.pdf

Cited figures from Table-14, on (PDF/printed)-page-55.

Looks like they polled 4 age-groups: 18-29; 30-44; 45-64; and 65+. The results for 30-44 were pretty close to those for 18-29, and the results for 45-64 were pretty close to those for 65+. In fact, if we combine the two younger groups and two older groups, such that it's 18-44 vs. 45+, then the reported-results really don't change much.

Tangentially, it's really weird for news-articles to not link their sources.

This should be pinned.

I think one of the big reasons is that this generation came of age during the Iraq War.

They saw how the whole media and US military and intelligence community could push a story that was designed to inflame people and push for war.

And we saw the huge cost of that.

Fool me once…

Yea but it would also be a mistake to just assume that this is the case yet again, especially given that the United States has adamantly refused to put troops in Ukraine and has sought diplomatic solutions from the start. The US government has really pushed against inflaming the US population toward war. If recognizing atrocities, however, pushes people toward war than there isn't much you can do about that besides continue to do what the US has done which is not get into the war.

I went to Iraq. The war was probably misguided (although there is still a democratically elected government in Iraq... so... idk) - Ukraine is quite unlike Iraq and if this generation (which I think includes me?) is drawing comparisons than it's because of a lack of thought and education around world events.

Fool me once... shame on... shame on you. You fool me you can't get fooled again!

Precisely. We don't trust the government or the media at all anymore, and we aren't willing to go fight the elite's war for them.

This is sort of the Chomsky syndrome: Assuming that government A is always lying, and that therefore the opposite claim by government B has to be right.

Younger people are so far removed from actual war that they have the luxury of being ambivalent about it. It's become easy to believe that war is simply a thing of the past and Americans won't ever experience it again. Ukraine is just pictures on a screen, nobody is going to drive tanks into America or fire missiles at our hospitals.

Anecdotal counterexample (I'm Gen Z) -- Ukraine is pictures on a screen, and that's what brought my attention to it! I want Ukraine to win the war and I think what Russia is doing is extremely wrong and heinous, and I also wouldn't have become nearly as invested in the conflict were it not for the fact that this is the first major war to be broadcast on social media. I've seen video clips that made me angry, sad, and horrified, and have catalyzed me to make a firm stance on the issue instead of being ambivalent.

Also anecdotally, every other person I know in my age group is also very pro-Ukraine and not ambivalent, perhaps as suggested by one of the other comments the poll is outdated?

Gen Z kid here; my friend group largely doesn't care in the slightest about the war in Ukraine. We think what's happening is wrong, but we don't see the point in doing anything ourselves. The Middle East was bombed for decades while no one had the spine to really do anything about it. We didn't even have the virtue signalers that you see online today. Why should we care when it happens to Europe?

This is all without mentioning the fact that the war exposed a lot of the biases we knew were present in the media- how many reporters just straight up admitted that they care more because the people dying are white this time?

As someone else on this post said, Europe is a rich peninsula with enough money and manpower to handle Russia by itself. If they want American help, they can buy American weapons. America has committed enough war crimes over the past few decades. We don't need to expand that list and further risk the future of this country, which is already looking bleak.

Which war did you fight in?

Desert Storm. You?

I didn’t. But I had to check that you weren’t talking out of your rear. It was a damn condescending comment. “Young people don’t agree with the established foreign policy position, it must mean they’re weak,” kinda thing.

I mean the greatest generation didn’t support ww2. Hell, the Americans of the early 1900’s didn’t support ww1. Both times presidents were elected on the promise of keeping America out of war. Could you attribute that to being “detached from war”? They fought when they were called to do so. And until congress votes for war, I’m going to keep on saying that supporting Ukraine is a poor decision and outside the interests of America. I’m a zillenial for context.

Spoke with a young person who had an interesting take: He says he sympathizes with Russians because he feels like they're also getting dragged into pointless wars by their government. (memories of Iraq and Afghanistan)

I agree! I'm Gen Z and I sympathize with the "good Russians" because I know a few. I've talked to people living in Russia right now who are furious with Putin for the awful evil things he's doing. I want Ukraine to win the war, but I don't think the Russian people are evil, I think Putin is evil. I'd wager that many pro-war Russians are victims of propaganda and lies and would change their minds if they had access to verifiable sources of truth, but they don't.

Putin is horrible though and I want him and his cronies to be punished to the fullest extent of international law for their crimes against humanity.

I wonder whether 18-29 year olds have more pressing problems to care about and are therefore more apathetic?

College debt and housing costs are killing the 30+ crowd.

I'm vouching for this comment, because it's an entirely reasonable thought that crippling debt and housing costs lead to apathy (graphs 3 "Do you care who wins?"). I do not believe it leads to supporting Russia, though.

Yeah, I wish these polls would also ask "null-hypothesis"-questions (for a lack of a better word). Like "Do you care about the war in Ukraine?" and then get more specific.

Just as Russia is complex, so is Ukraine. The blame-throwing game can go on for quite some time by cherry-picking memes.

I hope the war ends soon.

Young people are the Cheng Xin of this world. In the past, we did not know the lies that the mainstream media was attempting to broadcast as part of large scale population unification and pacification. Without control of that process, lots of these lies are now visible and faith has deteriorated in public sources of information.

It's like how everyone knows the NIAID is useless today. Unfortunately, another casualty of all this is truth. This is the problem with lying for what you think is the greater good. At some point, the fact that you lied ruins the future entirely and poisons the info well. If even the guys we chose to help us are going to bullshit us, we must live in a world of perpetual information mistrust.

This, plus, it's worth remembering that 16% of people have an IQ less than 85.

TBH I don't really know how to take this.

I am 31 so my age group is not represented at all by this graph. I am curious why they left out 30 to 64.

At least within my friend group (which I don't think any are younger than 29... not that I really talk about age often) we are universally against the invasion of Ukraine and want them to survive.

I don't feel like even at my age that I have experience or other events that are impacting my opinion. I also don't get most of my news from major news organizations.

So I am very curious why this is the case.

I picked up this comment from a HN user in another thread but it got no traction, seeing Germany drag it's feet on sending arms and Zelensky's recent comments about blood money I think it's especially relevant... "seeing as we're heading into spring, seeing Germany has quite a wealthy economy and QOL, that many if not most workers get 5 weeks of holiday, the chip shortage is leading to slowdowns in the automotive industry etc... why doesn't the government just go cold turkey, give people a month or 2 free holidays while drastically reducing public lighting, telling businesses to stop heating their premises at night etc etc... I mean we had a dress rehearsal 2 years ago with the onset of Covid, this would be better ,for a good cause, probably give a boost to domestic spending and send a f...U to the rest of the world saying we too can think outside of the box :-)"

I know it may seem naive, but how so?

"If we just...."

Young Americans, in general, do not understand or internalize national security or great power competition; and instead project high ideals and generosity to countries whose _leadership_ does not share the same view of their nation or the world. With Russia, using OP example, there was & probably remains the very serious risk of food & energy dominance by Russia at the expense of democratic nations - none of whom can make the transition to so-called green tech in-time to avoid that outcome. There remains the risk of a Sino-Russian alliance that would result in a very different world from today's somewhat free & open societies. I could go on at length, but will sum it up by saying the world doesn't work the way we wish it would, and we have to face reality head-on and not wish it away.

This is a very condescending view of Young Americans. I think any analysis that does not start with an economic analysis of Americans today vs Americans 40 years ago is bound to end up on these soft attributes of "ideals and generosity".

It's abundantly clear for any Young American, that there is no upside to war. If American maintains her dominance, then they are still suffering under a gerontocracy and growing wealth inequality. What person would risk nuclear war for the privilege to struggle to pay rent every month? Likewise, the risk of a Sino-Russian alliance only effects those who stand to extract rent from "democratic" countries (in the form of foreign ownership). If capital is increasingly owned by a small few, why should Young Americans care if their oligarchs are American or Chinese?

I think most Young Americans don't have the luxury of wondering about power competition especially since so many of them don't have a stake in the game. It's hard to convince people the effects of what Russian oil dominance will have where they deal with much more pressing survival issues that are a lot closer to them.

> If capital is increasingly owned by a small few, why should Young Americans care if their oligarchs are American or Chinese?

Here's why:

- Rule of law, including health, safety & environment.

- Minority rights.

- Free-ish speech.

- Mostly equal application of law.

Could say more, but you get the point.

> I think most Young Americans don't have the luxury of wondering about power competition

Precisely the opposite. Americans have the luxury of not worrying about great power competition. Eastern Europeans, for example, do not have this luxury. You think that great power competition does not affect you, but you are very wrong about that. You just think so because you are a citizen of the most powerful great power.

>It's abundantly clear for any Young American, that there is no upside to war.

I would argue there is plenty of upside to war, otherwise countries wouldn't wage it. Compare the US economy in 1939 vs 1949 for a clear example.

This is very true. I think for young people it's very difficult to appreciate that we live on the knife's edge of peace. Peace is not the natural human condition, and vast numbers of people are ready and willing to commit incredible violence and atrocities in the name of their tribe. Absolutely nothing about human nature has changed since the uncountable wars we have fought since our very first moments as a species. Peace exists only in the liminal space between great violence and terrible powers.

Disagree. I'm in the 'young' bracket here but researching geopolitics/military is something of a hobby for me.

I'm not arguing that the young are all like me, but rather that I applaud my generation for being skeptical, at least from an intervention POV. I still side strongly with Ukraine but this is a complex issue and rolling the tanks against a country with less GDP than NY does not make the world inherently safer. The older generations, on the other hand, were raised in the context of Russia being a world power while at this time they've revealed themselves to be objectively not.

However, a Sino-Russian alliance would be an absolute nightmare scenario and direct military involvement would give China a possible excuse to back Russia. As long as they remain neutral-ish then it's safe to let this play out, particularly given how things are going so far.

Now, the area that concerns me is how many are openly supporting Russia. Skepticism is great but I don't think there's any reason to voice support for Russia at this time.

>We live on the knife's edge of peace

Peace for who? America just formally ended a 20 year long war, with very little to show for it. Someone who is 18 today, has only known America in a time of war. How can you call this peace? (I know how, it's because you only talk about peace as peace for western nations.) Anyone would immediately be skeptical to the thought that we should immediately enter another war several thousand miles away.

It's only when majority white western christians are being blown up that we are at the "knife's edge of peace". What is it called when it's muslims in the middle east or northern africa being blown up? I'm not convinced America needs to be proactive in an engagement with Russia to hold up what you consider "the knife's edge of peace".

Peace is the natural human condition in small groups. As the groups increase in size so does competition, insecurity and conflicts of interest. Its this dynamic that gives rise to conflating our own peaceful orbits with tribal or state rivalry; and conversely its often an abused imbalance of our interpersonal relationships that gives rise to individual leaders with power compulsivity.

> knife's edge of peace

This phrasing reminded me of a comment I favorited a while ago, so I went through my favorited comments and found it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5847789

"It took thousands of years of human civilisation before we got relatively benign governments. Power structures are not inherently benign; they must constantly be pressured to prevent malignant people using them to leverage their actions. A non-authoritarian government is an historical anomaly. It's a ball balanced on top of a hill, pushed there by the deaths of millions, and kept there by the vigilance of those who care.

Please start caring."

Edge of peace. I like that phrase. I may end up borrowing it.

I think overall I agree with your post. We truly do suck as a species. The past few decades were a massive aberration in our history ( and even that relatively peaceful -- for a westerner -- period saw some horrifying conflicts that just did not make the front pages ).

I do not wish for another major conflict. No sane person does. We should do what we can to prevent it.

Still, I personally see one on the horizon. Best I can do is talk to my social circle, but even that seems futile. The actual decisions about matters like these happen way outside those.

The people who came of age after the internet but before it was censored into something safe enough to sell ads on are far more aware of how nasty things can be than the people before and since.

If anyone is gonna set out on a path of "real violence" it's likely going to be a subgroup of millennials.

Edit: the above only applies to the US

> I think for young people it's very difficult to appreciate that we live on the knife's edge of peace.

That doesn't seem like thought that supports the position of the old, as characterized here, who are encouraging the escalation of a war against a nuclear power with a ruined economy.

I blame the generational gap on that particular US generation who has lived through major wars but never had to worry about war on their own territory, who have gone through wars where only an extreme minority have had to participate (and that being privileged enough to be in college or to have an important job was enough to get you out of participation), and who have been hammered by propaganda their entire lives that the final battle would be the commies vs the bootstrappers.

Half of them are praying that this will be the end of the world, like God said it would be.

They supported every war except Vietnam, because Vietnam was the only war they were in danger of participating in. Those wars didn't affect them badly at all, in fact the wars helped the economy because everybody got jobs creating expensive things that would be burned (in the occupied homes of Iraqi families.)

I would call them a reflection of Russian nationalist aggression, but they're really not, because Russians have known suffering from war. Russians have pretty good excuses not to want NATO weapons, missile defense systems, and troops stationed on their border. Americans are afraid of their vital fluids being corrupted by the demonic Russians and their sole goal of creating discord by spreading propaganda that the issues that everybody who isn't an old wealthy retired homeowner is concerned about aren't something that should be completely ignored.

Young people generally see them as insane chickenhawks that are useless domestically and hyperaggressive internationally, and rightfully so.

Maybe when life’s good it’s easy to ignore what one’s government is misspending on the military.

But when job security’s low, education costs a fortune and the social safety net barely exists, asking why one’s government is sending billions in help to a country at the other end of the world is not at all a crazy question.

Now that’s the US, but I’m in the EU and I’m still deeply disappointed at how much money the EU is spending on helping everyone except EU citizens. It’s unacceptable to spend money at such scale when we have areas which are dirt-poor in Europe and many children are severely materially and socially deprived.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

Rather than a "fault" of young Americans I would just point out that they have never experienced a significant militaristic national security threat nor witnessed a great power competition, and old-fashioned tanks-and-bombs conquest has been rare from the first & second world countries for their entire lives.

This is a "fault" of almost everyone living in Europe and USA at the moment. Europe for a while neglected military spending because the great evil Soviet Union was gone. In the USA we got to the mode where Russia isn't exactly our friend but they are contained to their vast land and nobody cares. Our focus too was on the Middle East.

But now, I am not really old enough to know what it was like living under the threat from Russia, but I am old enough to know from 1 generation of separation family and friends what it was like. And 2 generations was WWII. So Russian aggression has me worried.

Now Gen Z is another generation forward. I have found that Gen Z as a whole seems to be more empathetic, and very anti violence. The thought of someone coming in and flattening your neighborhood is the last thing they would think of. The things they more empathize with at the moment are the issues in the USA with social justice. And seeing Russian minorities in Ukraine persecuted from Russian sources resonates with them more than the narrative from the USA that Russia is an imperialistic country. They are also deeply skeptical of that narrative from our government as reflections on the USA's own history in the middle east, and central/South America

The last 70 years of (relative) peace are the exception, not the norm. Remaining ambivalent when a great power makes it clear they are intent on upsetting the balance on which peace hangs is clearly a "fault". It doesn't matter if that fault is the result of ignorance of history, it's still a problem.

This is an example of the quip 'Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.'

The younger generations have grown up in a bubble. The Soviet empire was no more. They were probably too young to remember or not even alive for 9/11. The modern wars the US was involved in could mostly be ignored. The economy was, for the most part, booming and full of distracting consumer goods and excess capacity leading to a full table of innovative goods and services.

I'm a late gen X. My wife is a late millennial. I try to relate to her how the world used to be when I was young(less wealth, less choices, more uncertainty) but until you've lived it you can't understand it.

I think this is an extremely ungenerous take. I think more objectively young Americans simply have different ideological preferences than older Americans.

The cold war mentality, talk of "free and open" societies is in itself deeply ideological, not "facing reality head on". It's the wish to remake or maintain the world in America's image. If anything I think young Americans are the less ideological group here. They see America's domestic issues, international overreach, they have less of a preference for liberalism in the broad sense of the term, and they demand a foreign policy that is more focused on America's domestic interests in the face of a changing, more multipolar world.

the general opinion of younger Americans seems much more aligned with realist schools of foreign policy than with the moralistic, idealistic mentality of older generations.

There are levels of grey to open (e.g. free speech, expression, democracy) vs closed (e.g. prison for political speech, totalitarianism), but the US and EU are a world apart from Russia or China. I recommend speaking to someone (who isn't state sponsored as many Tiktok & Youtube influencers are) from that country to understand. Do not think that you will not be shot by a conscripted soldier who wants your stuff to take back to his impoverished family or that if you are it will make the world a better more "equal" place. Many Russians are afraid of the return of soldiers from this war (special operation?), because each time before it has led to more violence.

Having your pronoun misused by a teacher in school isn't right, but it is fundamentally different type of oppression from working in a prison camp in Siberia or Xinjiang.

Realist as determined by some social media bubble, some of which are engineered by foreign intelligence agencies, sure.

This is a matter of ideology? You're saying the principles of young people in the US say it's OK to invade another country that did not attack first? Or because they found some news sources saying Putin is justified?

I guess I just don't see any sense in that argument. Do kids today not think for themselves? Have they no principles of their own?

Wow. Today is definitely the right time to reinstate the US military draft.

If nothing else, the prospect of yourself dying in the mud of a distant foreign land should motivate US kids to finally give a damn about power-crazed politicians killing multitudes of human beings for... whatever platitude manages to get a million retweets.

An important aspect to understand is that "democratic nations" fighting together for their ideals is fiction created for the purpose of propaganda and of manufacturung consent. Countries fight for their interests, not for ideals.

> none of whom can make the transition to so-called green tech in-time to avoid that outcome

The Germans brought it upon themselves with their anti-nuclear views.

Those seem an odd selection of questions, which made me immediately suspect they asked many other questions then skipped over them to generate a story.

Similar to how pharma companies have to pre-register research questions, do these polls have to publish their full methodology somewhere?

I was anti-military and anti-gun ownership, until I happened to be in Ukraine at the time of attack, and until I happened to be in Belarus at a time of dictatorship.

PS: although I think organization and coordination is thousands times more important than weapons.

Eh... without a breakout of their numbers it is hard to trust this poll.

That said, I think its fair to say half of 18-29 year olds have no interest in geopolitics and 65+ people have been around long enough to have some opinion on it.

The difference isn't that many more are supporting Russia. The difference is that many more don't have clear-cut sympathy for any side.

I personally are much more sympathetic to Ukraine on different principles than most, but I definitely understand why many are not willing to trust the main media line on this. We went from hearing about how Ukraine was a deeply corrupt country, barely a democracy, to immediately hearing about how they are only being attacked because of how democratic and amazing it is and that Putin is scared Russians will want to live like Ukrainians. Media started glossing over Nazi imagery on the very pictures of soldiers they spread, not even mentioning it. There were many more narrative flips that I won't get into as a matter of time.

Because of this, people that are less informed or that have a more traditional understanding of the morality of conflict will naturally get skeptical and decide that they don't want to sympathize with anyone.

> We went from hearing about how Ukraine was a deeply corrupt country, barely a democracy, to immediately hearing about how they are only being attacked because of how democratic and amazing it is and that Putin is scared Russians will want to live like Ukrainians.

Can't forget the regime change—excuse me, anti-corruption protests—in 2014 directly after the old regime chose economic partnership with Putin over closer integration with the EU. Much of the civil conflict within Ukraine, which Putin ostensibly invaded to pacify (remember, lying to justify a war isn't a US-only skill), is due to their residents/leadership not recognizing the results of the 2014 governmental changes.

>Media started glossing over Nazi imagery on the very pictures of soldiers they spread, not even mentioning it.

I think they genuinely didn't know what it was. Even on r/ukraine, they were promoting those picture at the beginning. It doesn't look like any of the more common nazi symbols and and it doesn't have any text on it that you can google.

It was quite interesting to see journalists using those pictures in their articles talking about how there was no nazi problem in Ukraine.

The title is backwards. There is a striking generational divide, and it extends into views of war.

Insightful episode of South Park on this recently...

pay walled

https://archive.ph/btVtx

never loads, for me

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bypass-paywal...

Turning off Javascript on the Economist website also shows the full article. I'm using uBlock for this. Besides the paywalls, I find that turning off JS improves the user experience on the vast majority of news sites.

A lot of sites will just break without JS. I just tried with my ublock origin and cnn.com with javascript disabled, and only the site map on the footer loads.

It's strangely appropriate that someone would need to tear down that wall to let everyone read about this particular generational divide.

The first time I've appreciated a paywall.

I visit some fringe political forums once in a blue moon just to take a pulse. I was surprised to see a sizable pro-Putin sentiment which is basically a result of the whole “Russia Russia Russia” thing.

Boy who cried wolf is a real thing.

I check out some of these forums too occasionally, out of morbid curiosity.

Within the last decade or so, many of various unrelated political fringes have sort of loosely joined forces together and organized, but instead of being organized in service of a goal, it’s just in service of vague contrariness for the sake of contrariness.

These various groups, no matter how far apart ideologically they are, have sort of all coalesced on “If the ‘Mainstream’ is for it, we are against it, even if we can’t articulate why!”

>“If the ‘Mainstream’ is for it, we are against it, even if we can’t articulate why!”

This argument has worked out just fine. The mainstream is generally against me.

> a result of the whole “Russia Russia Russia” thing.

Can you explain who the "boy" was and how they "cried wolf"? Did you read the Senate Intelligence report? PBS: Senate panel finds Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election [1].

"The nearly 1,000-page report, the fifth and final one from the Republican-led Senate intelligence committee on the Russia investigation, details how Russia launched an aggressive effort to interfere in the election on Trump’s behalf. It says the Trump campaign chairman had regular contact with a Russian intelligence officer and says other Trump associates were eager to exploit the Kremlin’s aid, particularly by maximizing the impact of the disclosure of Democratic emails hacked by Russian intelligence officers."

[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/senate-panel-finds-rus...

That second quote you gave is just really slanted. The right framing here is Trump is not a smart man. Sure, his folks talked to Russian operatives. That's for two reasons:

1. They're stupid and easy to manipulate.

2. They urgently wanted negative stories to publish about Hillary.

Yes, Russia was trying to influence our election. But, no, Trump isn't some clever Manchurian Candidate taking over our country on behalf of another country.

The right framing here is that famous SNL sketch about Reagan from the 80s, where Reagan acts like a bumbler but then when the doors close suddenly becomes some kind of genius mob figure. That skit was funny, because the "mob boss" version of Reagan was obviously just not true. Same thing for Trump.

Turning to American media. Sure, they can dig up stuff about Trump's behavior with Russia. Along the same lines, there are tons of stories across decades painting the Clintons as pretty terrible people.

The difference here, and this is important, is that outlets like CNN do have a massive bias in favor of Democratic candidates. That's where the "Russia Russia Russia" narrative by Trump supporters is actually right. Mainstream media's treatment of events like the Russia story, Jan 6, BLM protests, etc. is absolutely biased. That's where the suspicion comes from.

The solution is for mainstream journalists to reduce their bias. Easy places to start:

* Tell the truth about the relative propensity of a white versus black suspect to be shot by police.

* Investigate political candidates in an evenhanded way, and be as honest as possible about errors on stories like Hunter Biden's laptop.

The boy was the media and left wing politicians for about 1-2 years straight. The supposed wolf was something like a puppy was seen in one of Trumps cars once and it looked Russian, according to XYZ political enemies of Trump.

The headline is very revealing of the incredibly slanted way the Ukraine war has been covered in "Western" media.

When I read the headline, I immediately thought to myself, "which war?", until I saw the article was from the Economist and I knew they were referring to Ukraine. Just the use the term "the war" implicitly implies that Russia's invasion of Ukraine is the only war (or at least the only war worth mentioning by "western media") raging. In fact, there are numerous wars raging right now. As a US citizen and close observer of our foreign policy and actions around the world, I have been floored by the hypocrisy and double standards in the coverage of the Ukraine war (despite hypocrisy and double standards being the norm). This is not an endorsement of Russia's illegal war of aggression against Ukraine but an indictment of "western media" and "western" governments in general.

For example, we (the United States), illegally invaded Syria a decade ago. A war of aggression just as illegal under international law as Russia's invasion of Ukraine. There were no indignant outcries on NBC or CNN or by any of the pundits who are today absurdly crying about the "disruption of the post world war 2 order". Our troops are illegally occupying Syria, today. Over 350,000 people have died there since the war started a decade ago. We bombed (and continue to bomb) civilian infrastructure with absolutely no military value in Syria. How can politicians and pundits (not to mention my fellow citizens) cry about the depravity and the crimes of Russians when our own country is engaged in the same crimes, right now, today? Many will exclaim this is "whataboutism" to explain away their cognitive dissonance. But it's about universal standards, credibility, and hypocrisy. If we condemn Russia for their illegal war while at the same time prosecuting illegal wars of our own, we expose ourselves at liars and hypocrites who don't oppose illegal war, just Russia. It is quite sickening when our so-called leaders stand up and give sanctimonious speeches about defending "democracy and human rights" while prosecuting our own illegal wars and propping up the most vicious dictatorships in the world, from Saudi Arabia to Egypt, where democracy and human rights are completely absent.

Again, this is not a defense of Russia's illegal war, although it will be taken as such by people consumed by the blanket propaganda saturating our society. This is a defense of universal standards, truth, morality and objective reality. If we want to be able to credibly condemn the wrongdoing of others and claim the moral authority to mete out justice, then we need to lead by example and actually earn the moral authority that we falsely claim.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/20/us/airstrike-us-isis-dam....

Boomers were brainwashed with cold war propaganda all their lives and don't see Russians as people. Even millenials were exposed to the same propaganda as kids.

Younger Americans are more balanced so far... and newer propaganda is not as effective to anyone other than the laziest... because anyone interested can look for the information from other points of views just as easily because of democratization of media and information.

My views on this invasion have NOTHING to do on my feelings on the Russian people.

I feel for them, I really do. It sucks that they have to deal with the sanctions and the type of government they have.

But I feel more for the people that are being killed and raped. The country that is being invaded for no logical reason.

Russia started this, they had no reason to start this War.

"Younger Americans are more balanced"

It doesn't have much to do with laziness. It has to do with your ability to filter and discern what is going on, your ability to hold multiple and opposing ideas in your head at once, etc etc.

Laziness is one factor.

> Boomers were brainwashed with cold war propaganda all their lives and don't see Russians as people. Even millenials were exposed to the same propaganda as kids.

What...? We absolutely do see Russians as people. We also see this as a unilateral war of aggression created by a corrupt autocrat which has resulted in the unjustifiable murder, rape, and destruction of Ukrainian people.

> Younger Americans are more balanced so far... and newer propaganda is not as effective to anyone other than the laziest... because anyone interested can look for the information from other points of views just as easily because of democratization of media and information.

I'd love to see what information justifies the rape of 25 women in a basement [1]. Or the widespread destruction of civilian areas, rampant rape and murder.

1. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61071243

> I'd love to see what information justifies the rape of 25 women in a basement [1]. Or the widespread destruction of civilian areas, rampant rape and murder.

Any modern war is an information war more than anything... and I mean everything from the first world war.

You linking to a BBC website is very interesting because they were the first successful mass propaganda machine distributed all around the world via radio.

Even more intersting bit what the BBC doesn't report. The same things have happened in every war where the western forces and allies have been involved, and the real information only comes out, if ever, after it becomes irrelevant. If it comes out while it is relevant, we know exactly what happens to those who are responsible... look at Manning and Assange.

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