Comment by pfannkuchen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pfannkuchen | Hacker News Reader

In international land conflicts I always like to imagine it as the following scenario: you get a letter in the mail telling you that you’re going to be forcibly relocated to country X.

But what about your friends and family, you might say. Will you still be able to see them? You would surely fight to not be isolated from them. Well, good news, they’re being relocated as well.

What about your home, your possessions? You would surely fight to not lose them. You’re in luck, also relocated.

But the land will be different, the weather. Good news, the land and weather are also being relocated.

But what about the government, whom you love dearly and would miss terribly. Sorry to say, the government is the only thing not being relocated.

So, will you pick up a gun and risk death, even near certain death in some cases, to stop yourself having the same life, except for the government? Really? Is the other government really that different from yours?

That being said in this case the notion of USA invading Canada is ridiculous and won’t happen. It’s just reality TV guy pushing the deal landscape wider so he can get the modest-by-comparison thing he actually wants. He has a whole book that talks about how he does this. It’s weird how people still take him seriously when he does this.

I’m not sure the people in Eastern Ukraine who have been “relocated” to Russia agree with your idea of “nothing changes except for the government”. I don’t think the people across Europe and Asia during World War II would agree either.

Your new government does not and cannot trust you. You pledged allegiance to your old country. Are you still secretly fighting for it? Or have you pledged allegiance to your new country? Does that mean anything when you betrayed your old country to whom you had pledged allegiance too? You’re a potential enemy and your new government will act accordingly.

Well I am talking about before a military conflict erupts. I’m talking about what is in the interest of the people, when they are looking at a potential military conflict.

In the case of Ukraine, being peacefully “relocated” to Russia seems much better than what is happening now. Before the war the reputation of the Ukrainian government was not much different from the reputation of the Russian government. If it were me as a Ukrainian in that situation I would not be in favor of fighting.

Now Poles “relocating” to Germany without any conflict seems like it would not have ended well for them. Poles at that time violently resisting made sense. Refusing a land bridge agreement to avoid the need for violence, perhaps not, but resisting occupation, sure. But that is because the two governments at that time actually were very different, one being extremely ethno-centric. This does not really apply to America or Russia. If the Ukrainians were born in Russia nobody would notice, they are well within the ethnic cloud of the Russian state. Same with Canadians in America.

I don’t think allegiance to a nation means much these days. If anyone can move anywhere and not assimilate, who even really cares at that point? Should Canadians accept the human makeup of their nation changing quickly and drastically, no problem, but getting a different government is the end of the world? Doesn’t really make sense to me. Does make sense why governments put out propaganda to rile people up, though, since it is clearly in the interest of the government to resist in all such cases.

My mother hosted and taught French to half a dozen eastern refugees over 20 years, from Chechnya, Georgia, Kazakhstan and a few Tatars from Russia. Russia is very ethnocentric. Not Nazi level ethnocentric, but what you would expect from a person from an empire from the last 19th century.

> Well I am talking about before a military conflict erupts. I’m talking about what is in the interest of the people, when they are looking at a potential military conflict.

When you’re looking at a potential military conflict, you’re looking at a hostile foreign government that’s openly threatening you. What reasons do you have to believe that they will be friendly and that life will go on as usual after you have surrendered?

The foreign government cares about your land, resources, industry, strategic location, etc. They do not care about you, the people. Otherwise they would encourage you to move to them.

> In the case of Ukraine, being peacefully “relocated” to Russia seems much better than what is happening now.

Would it be better though? The Ukrainian government was/is far from perfect. But it’s the government they chose, it’s not an authoritarian one (it tried to be which led to the Maidan protests). They chose to be an independent country and in control of their own destiny. They don’t want to subject themselves to an authoritarian foreign government and they consider that to be in their best interest.

> What reasons do you have to believe that they will be friendly

Why wouldn’t they be? Like in the case of Ukraine/Russia there is no large ethnic or cultural divide, and in America we don’t believe in that kind of thing mattering anyway, right?

The Russians have no reason for animosity towards the Ukrainian people as far as I can tell. Unlike, say, the Ottomans invading Europe. And especially if they signed a deal through negotiation prior to any violence.

I am not an expert in the area of Ukrainian/Russian history, so I base my position on all the arguments I have seen others make across the full spectrum, and I have seen zero people arguing from any such basis aside from vague allusions to nationalism. Like what makes the Ukrainians different from any of the bazillion other smaller groups that used to exist before they got smooshed into Russia? Is it rational to risk everything to not end up like them? Is where you ended up that much better? And anyway it’s not personal, your government has just gotten too friendly with the Americans, comrade. Etc. I don’t see any other argument for what is happening other than blind obedience to a government that is probably not being totally honest to the people about its motives (just think about how many times that happened during the world wars, that we concretely know about).

So much that is either wildly naive, or willfully disinforming, here.

> In the case of Ukraine, being peacefully “relocated” to Russia seems much better than what is happening now.

Provably false: People are risking their lives to avoid that.

No one outside of Russia (except perhaps you and Trump) ever believed Russia wouldn't pursue cultural genocide.

> Before the war the reputation of the Ukrainian government was not much different from the reputation of the Russian government.

What has the international reputation of a government got to do with... anything? "Oh well, no one can tell us apart from Russia, so we might as well sell our children and be sent to work camps voluntarily."

Also, that was dead wrong.

  What if the new government also imply that you have to change our religion? What if the new government does not believe in "free enterprise" and will TELL you which company you will work for. What if the new government change the sports teams you like? What if the new government change the language you speak. 

  See for the example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alsace#Timeline  . Notice how the official language suddenly changes when a new "government" from a different nation take over. Are you so sure that the French Canadians will not have a problem with suddenly English potentially been the official language?

You say government like it's some abstraction. The government being replaced is the one you and your fellow citizens elected. The new is run by a senile pedophile. Suddenly it's not so abstract anymore.

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