Readit NewsWhen I was younger and moved to a new (foreign) city, The first thing I did was to create a "picnic" for people coming from my country. No agenda, no nothing, let's just hang out and have some wine, cheese and chat while sitting on the grass. You'd be surprised how successful this was, and some of them keep running regularly without me for over a decade now.
The EU and US were an unassailable bastion of freedom, peace, and prosperity, with arguably the most solid political foundations in history in democracy, and the most solid alliance in history in NATO.
How do you defeat such a place? You turn up the heat, to describe it very generally. It means, n a sense, radicalizing the population, a classic solution to Russia's problem. That's what terrorists do: How do you cause the US to shoot itself in the foot: terrorize people into thinking they are unsafe and overreacting (even though 9/11 affected on small area of one city).
One way they turn up the heat is to spread ethnic hatred, social distrust, embrace of violence, and abandonment of those things that prevent those maladies: universal human rights, democracy, rule of law, etc.
You can see it in this thread: People rooting for warfare, abandonment of the rule of law, etc. - all by some minor, cost-effective actions, like cutting a cable.
The expensive action and infinitely more consequential action - the invasion of Ukraine - remarkably doesn't create the same outrage. That outrage would trigger the obviously best solution: Guaranteeing unlimited material and political support for Ukraine until they win the war.
That is, it's remarkable if you don't appreciate information dominance, especially with social media companies either abandoning all responsibility or openly aiding the radicalization. Russia can create radicalization directly too.
Agreed it's what they're doing but this looks more like "turning everyone against you". And you want your enemies to underestimate you (like Song or Kievan Rus' underestimated the Mongols) but the world doesn't underestimate Russia. Maybe it could have but WW2 and appeasement are still too fresh in memory.
This really bothered me when I was in social situations with college students who would alternate between bragging about how much they spent on DoorDash and complaining about how they’re always struggling with money.
It was only a handful of people out of a larger group of mostly rational students, but it drove me crazy.
I sometimes even get the feeling that altruism is seen as a weakness these days.