The Matrix

Historian Timothy Snyder has what I believe is the correct understanding of uncle Vlad ' s Russia. It ' s not a very long read and it ' s worth reading the whole thing, but the basic idea is that Russians live in a manufactured reality. There ' s not point sacrificing part of Ukraine to give him an " off ramp " because he ' ll do whatever he wants, and if he doesn ' t work, he ' ll just lie to the Russian people about it, and they ' ll accept it. Here ' s a pull quote: Some observers of the Russo-Ukrainian war seem to think that its greatest danger is that Ukraine will win, or win too quickly, and that this will be uncomfortable for Putin, and that we should care. This is a deeply perverse way of seeing things.  Putin has chosen to fight a war of aggression and destruction in Ukraine.  Wherever Russia controls Ukrainian territory, Russians commit genocidal crimes against citizens of Ukraine, including mass rape, mass killing, and mass deportation.  A democracy is defending itself against an autocracy, and the fate of democracies hangs in the balance. . . . Yet there is an even more basic problem with this reasoning, which arises from a false understanding of how power in Russia works. The Russian media and political system is designed to keep Putin in power regardless of what happens in the outside world.  Russian politics takes place within a closed information environment which Putin himself designed and which Putin himself runs.  He does ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs