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Originally Posted by PepsiFree
Saying you’ve overestimated the severity and long-term implications of this incident is not the same as saying it’s “no big deal.” By framing it the way you did, you created a vast chasm of severity between your interpretation and “no big deal.”
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While no one has directly said it's no big deal, but the overall vibe of this thread has been to downplay as much as possible the severity of what happened yesterday.
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Even suggesting it is on a tier right below residential schools is completely absurd. It’s not an “atrocity” at all, it’s an embarrassment, but one that will ultimately have minimal impact on Russia’s war on Ukraine. Giving Russia something they can use is almost meaningless, given their habit of already using anything and everything and outright lying. Do you honestly believe that after a year and a half Russian people are going to think “omg, Putin was right all along!” because of this incident? That’s a severe stretch.
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Based on everything I've been seeing, reading, and hearing since 2014, it's clear to me that the Russian propaganda machine is corroding the western world from the inside out. It's largely why Trump won in 2016 and is poised to make a return to the WH soon.
And that's the part you completely seemed to miss here. I'm not concerned about Putin using this as propaganda to fool the Russian people... I'm concerned about Putin using this to hoodwink more and more people
within NATO countries to see Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian government as people who can't be trusted and therefore aren't deserving of arms & materiel from allied countries. And all indications are that Ukraine needs support from its allies to continue to be steadfast for quite some time in order to stand a realistic chance of winning this war. Russia winning this war and taking all of Ukraine for itself would be disastrous for the world, and I don't think I need to explain why.
When you look at the US, multiple polls seem to indicate that Trump has a very strong chance at retaking the WH just over 13 months from now. And there's the worry - more and more people might think that Ukraine is not deserving of any more help from the west, and voting for Trump is the only way to stop the US from spending more on helping Ukraine.
Anyways, it's pretty clear to me that if Trump wins in 2024, that will be the beginning of the end of the era of modern liberal democracies. With zero world superpowers as democracies left in the world, it's only a matter of time before the remaining democracies lose their ability to determine their own fates and will succumb to a world completely taken over by fascism and rabid right-wing ideology.
The world is at pivotal moment right now, and it's of vital importance that the wrong path not be taken.