Originally Posted by Itse
Well, you can think whatever you like.
I don't see anything hypocritical about a stance where I think there is no excuse to go take part in a genocide, even passively. (And yes, I also quite consistently s*it on people who don't even make an effort to boycott China. It's really not nearly as hard as people make it out to be.)
No, I have no empathy towards a group of men that by and large are healthy, young enough and quite capable of putting up a fight. Not when the continuation of this war risks a nuclear war, it risks me and mine and everyone I know dying because a nation of little s*its across the border can't get their act together.
And here's the thing too; thousands of Russians DO fight. Student girls in Moscow do go out and risk get beaten by thugs because Russian men will not stand up for themselves. Mothers and grandmothers have been blocking recruitment cars with their bodies in Siberia, because men are too afraid to do it. In Dagestan, large groups of people ARE protesting, genuinely fighting back. Some people have been burning recruitment offices. (Here's a Russian telegram "joke for you": "You can get 10 years for draft dodging and 7 years from putting up an anti-war poster, but arson is only 5 years. Choose wisely".)
The vast majority of the people who protest don't get hurt, don't get arrested, don't even get caught, because the Russian security forces really aren't anything special, and they're overstretched, and most of them aren't insane thugs.
It's very, very far from impossible to resist. It's just that Russians choose not to, and thus they keep dragging this out. Yes, hundreds could die if the police opened fired on a large public protest... but hundreds are already dying every damned day because there are no protests, so what kind of a choice is that? Tens of thousands of Russians are dead in Ukraine because Russians are too afraid of getting killed in Moscow.
Only Russians can end this, and until they do this, people keep dying, simple as that.
No, I don't want anyone to die, I'm glad that Pointman made it out because I don't generally speaking want anyone to die or get hurt. Pointman didn't pick up a gun and go to the front. He didn't even pretend to go to the front. He chose to run. Yes, that's an option he had because he's better off than many others, and while it's not the best possible choice, it's not an evil choice. I'm okay with people choosing to be not-evil. Even if they do it primarily to save themselves. I don't much care for the motivation, I care about the action.
And yes it's unfair that it's harder for poor people to make that not-evil choice, but just because other's have it easier than you is not an excuse to take part in evil.
There is no non-evil way to participate in the draft. There is no option where nobody dies.
Even if you just participate in being part of the group that gets sent to the front to be slaughtered but hoping to surrender, you're still participating in that group getting sent to slaughter. You're playing along in a charade which will kill tens of thousands of people more. It's not a non-evil choice. You can hope that maybe you will make out of it, maybe you get to surrender, but you're still playing along in the slaughter.
So no, I don't have empathy for the poor men who go out there to with the goal of saving their own ass.
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