Yes, it does. Just as it did matter that some Germans stood up against the Nazis, some Israelis protesting against the treatment of Palestinians, and not all Americans owned slaves.
It’s important to keep in mind that no society is entirely antagonistic, that there’s actual humans on the other side of the fence.
The Americans could stop it, by throwing Ukraine under the bus.
I think most Americans oppose that, but I'm genuinely not certain. Arguably, that is what we just voted for, and I'm a bit surprised we haven't already done it.
Certainly not. Throwing Ukraine under the bus would open the door for Latvia Estonia Lithuania to be subjugated next, followed by Moldova then Romania. Once a war economy is started, there are many reasons and interests at play that make it very hard to stop.
Lol, yes, it matters. That haven't done anything yet. Governments are subject to coups all the time[1] (and thanks to Trumpalumpa ding dong, the US presidency is no exception)
Behind a paywall, otherwise would have read. However, I do appreciate the approach to poll how the masses actually feel about what decisions their overlords are implementing. I feel like the former is as important, if not more so than the latter - every story/ongoing coverage involving war/major international moves and events should cover both perspectives continuously IMO.
How does the Chinese populous actually feel about the prospect of having to lose loved ones in a seemingly imminent invasion of Taiwan? How does the Taiwanese populous feel about that prospect and the US/allies coming to their aid. How does the US populous feel about the prospect of defending Taiwan (do the even understand the issues at stake)?
Why do I have to search for answers to these questions so regularly instead of reading about it in the very article reporting the event in the first place?
I am reasonably certain that (a) there will not be an invasion of Taiwan, but (b) feinting at it is fairly popular in China.
The Americans feel queasy about it, which is what makes it so popular in China. An actual war would be less popular, but as long as there is uncertainty about it, they get the benefit. The US has been doing "strategic ambiguity" about Taiwan as well, for decades, and this is the logical continuation.
Being a workshop for the world has been a good gig for China, throwing it away for Taiwan looks risky. On the other hand, having it as an ongoing issue to motivate nationalism is priceless.
The technique they used is a focus group rather than polling. Rather than asking a large number a long list of specific questions they interview a smaller number of people in detail, which can reveal things that polling misses.
The VICOM-SPUTNIK poll is, in a certain sense, a very high quality poll which polls 1600 people every day with a large panel of questions, there isn't anything probability-based in the US that comes close to how often it runs:
Trouble is you can't trust that people will give honest answers in a society like that; there are special methods that have been done on a small scale in places like China [1] (and also in the US to suss out "do people not give honest answers about Trump"/) where you might have a list like
How many of the following have you done in the last?
(a) attended a Falun Gong exercise group
(b) gone jogging
(c) visited a Buddhist temple
(d) ate mushrooms
...
and give half the people a list with (a) in it and give the other half a list without it and compare the sums; you lose a little statistical power but not much. I don't know about it being done for Putin's approval rating though.
Fair enough. So, the bottom line is that that type of journalism is much harder than just reporting what you can see through a camera lens or reported on state media.
I am always impressed by those embedded journalists. I mean, talk about guts.
> The massage therapist, a war supporter, was happy to talk. She gave an interesting description of her media consumption. “On the Internet,” she explained, there are so many fakes: “You have to figure out that this is a fake, this is not a fake.” Whereas with the news on TV, “you watch it for the day and you’re done. No problem.” As for the war, it was hard for the massage therapist to say who started it and why.
> “But we started it,” Marina said.
> “Who’s we?” said the massage therapist.
> “Well, I mean, Putin started it,” Marina said.
> The invocation of Putin seemed to set the massage therapist off. She lost her temper and threatened Marina, saying that she would “call someone” who would come to straighten out Marina on the subject of Putin and the war.
That one anecdote pretty much sums up the article in my opinion. A combination of opinions derived from a media silo (one that’s especially difficult to get out of because most Russian language media is, of course, produced in Russia and subject to Kremlin regulations), reluctance to question established beliefs, cult of personality/hero worship around Putin, and fear of government reprisal.
> Having been the one in the room most reluctant to talk about politics, Lyuda now couldn’t stop. It turned out that she had a draft-aged son. She desperately wanted to prevent him from going to the front. But, when asked if the war should end and whether Russia should withdraw its troops, she suddenly changed her perspective. She said that she’d been watching all the media channels and knew for certain that the United States, not Russia, was the one killing civilians in Ukraine.
Some interesting anecdotes in the article and they do all hit home. Media-literacy isn’t a Russia-specific problem.
No, it's not a Russia specific problem, but Russia's issues are exacerbated because it doesn't have the same English literacy level of Western Europe and there is also not a robust Russian language media presence outside of Russia to serve as a counterbalance.
Contrast with Mandarin, where there are robust media systems in both the PRC and Taiwan. There is an alternative media source for those with the will to seek it out, and even if only a few people seek it out, that information diffuses.
This is why Russia doesn’t feel the need to censor the internet as aggressively as China or North Korea - language acts as a natural information barrier.
Russians are fed up with the current government and recognize that its leaders not only profit from the war but also from exploiting and selling out the country.
For example, former President Medvedev owns vineyards in Tuscany. The spokesperson Peskov’s daughter, Liza, owns penthouses in Paris with views of the Champs-Élysées. Many officials have moved their wealth abroad, including to the United States. A former mayor of Khabarovsk, a key city near the Chinese border, left Russia, purchased multiple properties in California, and is frequently spotted at a well-known banya in San Francisco.
The list goes on.
Ordinary citizens see this happening and are increasingly determined to avoid mandatory military drafts—just as it’s currently happening in Ukraine.
For Aida, the experience of Buryatia was powerful in another way. Her parents are war supporters. The past three years have tested her bond with them, though when we spoke recently, over Zoom, she was home for a visit. Spending time with the friendly women sewing camouflage netting for Russian snipers made her think more deeply, she said, about the nature of evil. “I very often see people whose views are horrible, whose views make me want to throw up, and I don’t understand how a person can talk that way or think that way. But they turn out to be absolutely ordinary people,” she said. What to do with this observation is something she’s still pondering.
Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher R. Browning examines the same phenomenon. He follows the war record of a police battalion made up of middle-aged, working-class men from Hamburg. They murdered men, women and children in occupied Poland. They were not young fanatics who had been raised and brainwashed under Nazism, nor were they forced to take part in the murders. Those who wished to opt out were allowed to do so, and some were even promoted after stepping away. Despite this, only 12 out of ~500 men refused to participate in the mass murders of innocent people. Browning concludes that peer pressure can turn "ordinary" people into a highly efficient killing machine, and that the small number of dissenters can be safely ignored, because they have little impact on the overall outcome.
22 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 55.5 ms ] threadIt’s important to keep in mind that no society is entirely antagonistic, that there’s actual humans on the other side of the fence.
I think most Americans oppose that, but I'm genuinely not certain. Arguably, that is what we just voted for, and I'm a bit surprised we haven't already done it.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coups_and_coup_attempt...
How does the Chinese populous actually feel about the prospect of having to lose loved ones in a seemingly imminent invasion of Taiwan? How does the Taiwanese populous feel about that prospect and the US/allies coming to their aid. How does the US populous feel about the prospect of defending Taiwan (do the even understand the issues at stake)?
Why do I have to search for answers to these questions so regularly instead of reading about it in the very article reporting the event in the first place?
The Americans feel queasy about it, which is what makes it so popular in China. An actual war would be less popular, but as long as there is uncertainty about it, they get the benefit. The US has been doing "strategic ambiguity" about Taiwan as well, for decades, and this is the logical continuation.
The VICOM-SPUTNIK poll is, in a certain sense, a very high quality poll which polls 1600 people every day with a large panel of questions, there isn't anything probability-based in the US that comes close to how often it runs:
https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/ipoll/study/31121192
Trouble is you can't trust that people will give honest answers in a society like that; there are special methods that have been done on a small scale in places like China [1] (and also in the US to suss out "do people not give honest answers about Trump"/) where you might have a list like
and give half the people a list with (a) in it and give the other half a list without it and compare the sums; you lose a little statistical power but not much. I don't know about it being done for Putin's approval rating though.[1] for the other China: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20531680241234833?i...
I am always impressed by those embedded journalists. I mean, talk about guts.
> “But we started it,” Marina said.
> “Who’s we?” said the massage therapist.
> “Well, I mean, Putin started it,” Marina said.
> The invocation of Putin seemed to set the massage therapist off. She lost her temper and threatened Marina, saying that she would “call someone” who would come to straighten out Marina on the subject of Putin and the war.
That one anecdote pretty much sums up the article in my opinion. A combination of opinions derived from a media silo (one that’s especially difficult to get out of because most Russian language media is, of course, produced in Russia and subject to Kremlin regulations), reluctance to question established beliefs, cult of personality/hero worship around Putin, and fear of government reprisal.
Some interesting anecdotes in the article and they do all hit home. Media-literacy isn’t a Russia-specific problem.
Contrast with Mandarin, where there are robust media systems in both the PRC and Taiwan. There is an alternative media source for those with the will to seek it out, and even if only a few people seek it out, that information diffuses.
This is why Russia doesn’t feel the need to censor the internet as aggressively as China or North Korea - language acts as a natural information barrier.
For example, former President Medvedev owns vineyards in Tuscany. The spokesperson Peskov’s daughter, Liza, owns penthouses in Paris with views of the Champs-Élysées. Many officials have moved their wealth abroad, including to the United States. A former mayor of Khabarovsk, a key city near the Chinese border, left Russia, purchased multiple properties in California, and is frequently spotted at a well-known banya in San Francisco.
The list goes on.
Ordinary citizens see this happening and are increasingly determined to avoid mandatory military drafts—just as it’s currently happening in Ukraine.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062303023