Comments by "Jim Luebke" (@jimluebke3869) on "Russian invasion of Ukraine: Can Putin get away with murder? | Stephen Kotkin and Lex Fridman" video.

  1. "The sacrifices the Ukrainians are making" Right, Kotkin is willing to fight to the last Ukrainian, isn't he.
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  2.  @TheLouisisawesome  He's clearly volunteering to fight for Ukraine in "the information war". You're probably right that he doesn't have any influence on the outcome, though. The only thing he's doing here is urging Americans to uncritically believe propaganda. We need to seek good information elsewhere, because without good information you can't make good decisions.
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  3. "They're crushing in the information war" Which means we can't take anything they say seriously, regarding whether they're winning the actual war. The fall of Mariupol was not a good sign.
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  4. "This is real reality TV" Or it could be the sort of reality TV that flatters the preconceptions of the viewer. That's the problem, dealing with what you know is not true. You can't trust it.
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  5.  @Dizle81  I'd really like to know where Kotkin is getting his information from, other than the Ukrainian TV production team he admires so much.
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  6.  @Dizle81  That's fair. We can go to him for information about Stalin. Although, didn't Stalin have a great propaganda team behind him, too?
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  7. "The idea that the West is in decline is empirically false" a) The jury is still out, on that b) Is Russia part of "the West"? c) War is one of the most profound causes of decline (the two World Wars utterly wrecked Europe). Long wars, particularly. If the conflict in Ukraine drags on, or drags on and drags more people in, that could finish Europe completely.
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  8. "After he hit 90-something percent, they didn't do any more polling" Is that because the numbers started to slip?
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  9. It's interesting to note that "the information war" is being waged against US. Ukraine is winning... hooray?
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  10. "And the nation is behind him" ... According to whom? All regions of the nation?
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  11. "We don't invest in infrastructure or education, because when we try, the money is stolen" Usually by people doing "diversity training", or creating a luxury "experience" for the underachieving children of the rich. Wait, are you talking about the East, or the West?
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  12.  @TheLouisisawesome  I don't think I've actually heard anything from the Russian side. I wouldn't trust that either, obviously. But, we're clearly being lied to by the Ukrainian side. I'm also starting to hear people hemming and hawing about how "every side commits atrocities in a war." Translating this from "information war" to English, that means that "Ukrainians are committing atrocities". This does not fill me with confidence that the Ukrainians are the "good guys". The only objective, rational position I can see here, is the only way to limit the loss of Ukrainian lives is to end the war. We've already sunk enough ships to demonstrate what would happen if China launched an invasion of Taiwan. (Also known as "Operation Fish Food", to honor the life ambitions of the brave Chinese soldiers and sailors who would take part). The economic sanctions we've put on Russia would be crippling to China. We've established deterrence in more than one way. At this point, (if the Ukrainian narrative is to be believed) we're risking weakening Russia to the point that they might not be able to resist Chinese aggression in their Far East. Russia, augmented by Russian-speakers in Crimea and DonBas, doesn't worry me very much strategically. All of Eastern Europe in flames, worries me more. Nuclear holocaust seems unlikely, but even a small probability of such a dire outcome has to figure in to our calculations, and that small chance grows with each passing day. What seems like the biggest probability coming out of a long war here, though, is the opening for resource-hungry China to conquer everything from Vladivostok to Yekaterinburg. THAT would spell strategic disaster for the West. China would become THE dominant power on the planet. That new power disparity would render any diplomatic pledge from the US entirely meaningless, and the result of any Eastern European border dispute, irrelevant.
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  13.  @dim._.  Are the Azov fighters off the table now?
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  14.  @dim._.  Are there any other similar groups in Ukraine?
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