Eastern orthodoxy/various sects of the church has staged mounting protests against Putin, criticising his authoritarian manner.
If this continues, I could see a crackdown occuring within the near future.
For the most part, the troubles mosques and churches (besides jehovas, missionaries or evangelicals) have to deal with emmanate from political corruption and beaurocratic obstacles.
Question
Do russians buy into state funded propaganda… or are they aware of dynamically opposed secular narratives?
Perhaps some fall for it but all I see is a guy who has said some pro-Christian things and practices Orthodoxy. I have no way of knowing it he’s faking it for a front or if he’s an atheist. Which made me think he will not clamp down on Orthodoxy in Russia.
Do you speak Russian? I don’t, nor do I know Russian history in detail, and I have no Russian ancestry. I also don’t know everything that goes on behind the closed doors of Russian politicians. So I’m well aware I might not be getting accurate information on everything, especially from American media.
Uhh… how to explain this to an American? Christianity in a theological “love thy neighbor and obey these commandments” context does not exist in Russian culture. They don’t give a shit about religious stuff (Russia has mindboggling abortion and domestic violence rates), all the cross waiving and incense burning is simply a ritual to steel soldiers before battle (here’s an orthodox priest blessing a nuclear missile) without any attempt to address the intricacies of the human condition.
So it makes sense for atheist Chekists to occasionally wave crosses around and proclaim their “religion” which doesn’t mean the same to them as it does to you.
The Russian Orthodox Church proclaimed an actual admiral a saint:
Really? So just fuck all the Ukrainians, huh? They deserve it? Why? What evil have they done?
Loser is as loser does. The problem is, his weakness and loserdom takes the all of us with him. And while he and his cronies do just fine, we get squeezed even more. The US dollar won’t be worth an ass-wipe by the time we done 3 more years of his truly historic presidency. If there is a country left.
“orange man bad” I find it very strange how covid was used to such great effect. When the government is trying to scare the shit out of you, while implementing the policies that remove your rights, you should be afraid, of them, not for the reasons they say.
Shocking
I cannot speak for russians, but for the eastern block they don’t buy state media, at all. Too much experience with the likes of “Pravda”. They are however, very, very trusting of western media, to their detriment, because they have no access to natural language alternatives. In the 20th century, western media was the Eastern Bloc’s lifeline to the rest of the world. Things like Radio Free Europe was the hope of the oppressed. They unfortunately have failed to realized that most of the media apparatus available to them in their language is an extension of American media which has merged with state actors, who have everybody’s worst interests at heart.
Projection at its finest. The one thing I have learned over the past 5 years is that anything labelled as “Russian disinformation” is likely to be the truth. You can only cry ‘wolf’ so many times before you get eaten.
And she’s not completely wrong, though it’s only part of the very complicated situation.
This should make ins happy.
What a clusterfuck. I am not so easy as to say, ‘let the Russians have it’, but I am a bit war weary. Still licking my wounds from the whole Afghanistan debacle, which, more than likely, was the impetus, for Russian aggression. If you are a dictator of sorts and you want something and the only thing stopping you is a rival that cannot get out of it’s own way, what do you do? Should Russia be doing this? Absolutely not. Should they be stopped? Depends on Europe. But Europe doesn’t seem too terribly interested, save for Germany who has nothing resembling an army. The Swiss have more of an army.
Why should we get involved? That’s a more difficult question, while Ukraine really has no specific interest to us, we don’t want tyrannical governments trotting all over helplessly corrupt, weak states. But this was completely preventable. Our foreign policy blunders pretty much made this inevitable.
For instance, the whole Nord Stream 2 thing was a debacle. ‘Let’s lift sanctions on it so we can then use it as leverage later?’ Like or hate Russia, they are not toddlers, that shit isn’t going to work. And we shoved them right into the cuddly arms of China. Our sanctions don’t mean shit to them, they just looked to the east.
The whole sale destruction of American energy independence, with the stroke of a pen is another disaster that could have easily been avoided.
The narrative has went from ‘oil is evil’ to ‘oil is the most important thing ever’.
I sure like the way our eloquent VP insinuated her “Look guys” speech, that “we all have to sacrifice” a little for our “principals”. The manipulation of language was so epic. Who was the “we” in that statement? Well, it’s not going to be her and it’s not going to be biden. It means American citizens have to get poorer for the sanctity and security of a country we cannot actually protect in a war we are all but certain to lose. I hope I am wrong, but I am not seeing any upside here.
Meanwhile, the criticism of protecting Ukraine’s borders while ours is wide open is just. It’s probably the most just criticism of all, because the hypocrisy is so rich.
Putin is a bad guy. But the Russians seem to like him, so there is nothing I can do about that. And this is the first war in my life time, where the aggressor hasn’t actually harmed us or our interests in any significant way. Afghanistan was obvious. Iraq suffers from the typical American short memory and both were enemies that the US military can easily dispose of with just a short dose of will might. Even Vietnam, though a little before my time, was somewhat well intentioned. This is completely different. And I cannot help, until evidence to the contrary exists in any significant way, that the personal corrupt dealings between biden Inc. and the Ukrainian energy sector is playing an outsized war.
There is a possibility of war where both sides are wrong. I think we are seeing that play out in real time.
Welp, buckle up people (in the US). This isn’t just going to be just a far away war, our land may very well be in the crosshairs. China is now making serious overtures about Taiwan…
As predicted, this is going to get very ugly, very fast.
They got the war they wanted so badly.
Say a little prayer for the people of Ukraine. God help them.
It’s an extremely rosy description of who a Chekists is. I suggest watching Death of Stalin from Armando Ianucci to understand the kind of people they are - they haven’t changed in seventy years.
All of this was depressingly predictable. But hey, whether you’re Farage, Tulsi or Renzi, the message was clear, if you’re complaining about nonexistent “NATO expansion”, there’s money in it for you.
Now that’s out of the way, considering I have several times heard in the past few days “we must stand up to the authoritarianism of Vladimir Putin,” can you or anyone tell me what this supposedly horrible authoritarianism does to the average Russians quality of life?
He uses treats of violence to get parliamentary members to change the constitution. He last did this in 2020. After this everything else kinda just is.
It’s a total police state. But legally. No civil liberties to speak of. Detainment with out process, kangaroo courts with judges brought off or under threat.
It’s pretty shit. For the people it’s poverty. I’ve worked with guys that lived in Russia. By all accounts it’s a constant struggle.
In what sense? The relatively high technological level of population control means that you’re probably safe if you keep your mouth shut both IRL and on social media, but the problem is that there’s an unpredictability factor at play as well. Boundaries of what’s acceptable and what’s not are intentionally blurred and occasionally examples are made even for the dumbest things.
There are also other examples - a drunk, coked up kid rear ends your car with his SUV, injuring your kids and plays the “do you know who I am” card asking, no ordering you not to call the cops. Maybe his uncle really is a Chekist and then you’re the one that’s going away for a few years?
Or a PE teacher sexually molests a bunch of tweens in a private school and the parents alert the authorities. The PE teacher used to wrestle on the same team with a medium rank Chekist in his university days and not only nothing happens to him but the social services try to take the molested kids away from their parents.
These are both real life examples, btw.
Or your house, employment or family is simply at the wrong place in the wrong time. Agan, it’s the seeming randomness that exacerbates the authoritarianism.
