Was the January 6th insurrection a form of 'legitimate political expression'?
The Ukrainian revolution wasn't 'simply' a CIA coup, but it was a CIA backed coup. The coup came about because after Yanukovych on his lukewarm-to-russia platform, the Ukrainian public started aligning towards the EU, particularly west Ukraine of ethnic Ukrainians, and Yanukovych bowed to Russian pressure to refuse to sign the agreement with the EU. It sparked protests from those pro-EU folks. And they made up a significant chunk of the country's population, maybe a majority. But it was a divisive issue in Ukraine and had plenty in opposition. And those who supported the EU rioted and overthrew the government in an insurrection. The CIA moved in and micromanaged the fallout to install their own puppet government, replacing Russian oligarchs with western oligarchs.
Its beyond question that this was the result of insurrection and people overthrowing their lawfully elected leader. The people of Crimea and Lutanks and Yanuovych's home Donestk were all disenfranchised when the candidate they had voted for was thrown out of office by a revolution instead of an election. And we know the CIA played a role, I don't think we can say how much. Would the revolution have hit critical mass without the west nudging it on? Did they instigate it with astroturfed media? Or were they just opportunists who seized an opening that existed without them. I don't know, I don't think anyone who isn't in top leadership of the CIA/state department can say that, I doubt Trump knows more than I do.
At any rate, talking about the moral equivalent of invading a neighbor, but we can't really just call Ukraine a legitimate democracy. If Trump had been reinstalled for a second term by a coup instead of an election, would we pretend that it was a legitimatized popular uprising by the will of the common people? Only half the country supported either of them.


Now in terms of our self-interest: This is the debate we should have. I don't see anyone else discussing it. America just jumped blindly into countering Russia and trying to inflame the Ukrainian war like we did with Syria. And when it comes to responding with strength or weakness- Biden already chose weakness. We are in this situation because Biden made the conscious and vocal decision to allow Russia to invade Ukraine unchecked. We could have projected strength and challenged and threatened Russia, but we didn't. Instead we have taken this bastardized half-measure. Not willing to risk our own blood and treasure, not willing to stop the invasion, but willing to throw us into a dangerous standoff with a nuclear Russia and willing to pour fuel on the fire of a humanitarian crisis and drive a wedge into international relations that's dividing the other world powers against the west.

Our self-interest shouldn't be gauged by such blind metrics as "We are team america world police". Putin fancies himself playing the great game of geopolitics, and as a dictator has full power to do it. America is bogged down in political rancor and has no strong commander-in-chief to match him. What's in our interest has to be rationally calculated, even if that's a cynical decision about when not to intervene, when to let the wrongs of the world go unchecked, and which people we can't save. Putin has routinely leveraged conflicts to his benefit and the west's detriment like the Syrian war, opting to let it fester intentionally when he could have swept in. America has routinely inflamed conflicts to our own detriment in a series of colossal miscalculations piling up one after another. And this conflict in Ukraine is ripe fruit for comparison to every failure we've had in the past 30 years.
The Ukrainian government isn't going to win. We aren't going to stop Russia from taking over. Russia is still far less of a threat to us both militarily and in sphere of influence than China. Its a war over a territory that Russia has held for most modern history, and was only in our sphere for 8 years. They aren't NATO, we don't have a stake in this fight. Putin has been in power for decades, he's not Hitler seeking to take over the world, and if he was, Biden's choice to preemptively cede Ukraine to him was like an incredibly worse form of appeasement. We chose "complete weakness" before Putin even invaded. We told him he could.

We could have opposed Putin and stopped this invasion. We could have allowed it and minimized harm. We could have appeased Putin by organizing a diplomatic and political betrayal of Ukraine to hand control to a Russian friendly regime. Instead we chose the military betrayal of Ukraine, leaving them helpless. And now that decision was made- maybe a reasonable decision and in our interests- we're still going to throw away any advantage we had from it and provoke Russia with this dumb half measure of escalating tensions with Russia to their cold war maximum and trying to turn Ukraine into blasted hellscape. As I said a few times, its not just "not in our interests", its definitely not in the interests of the Ukrainian people. So much for all that world police self righteousness. Russia taking over Ukraine doesn't have to involve an Afghanistan-style bloody occupation that kills tens or hundreds of thousands

also, cocks

tldr

It's actually pretty worthwhile.



Our country doesn't currently exist within the realm of reality where you operate based on concrete plans and choices leading to concrete results.

Our country exists inside a word minefield in which you take the path of least risk and resistance in order to saunter through the vague notions of moral superiority that currently permeate the culture.

Meanwhile people in Russia or China that even mention the word racism are sent to the Gulag. Maybe they should be?

No Goom wall of text has ever been worthwhile.

There is a ton of bias though. "Yanukovych on his lukewarm-to-russia platform" is a massive understatement. Yanukovych, whose campaign managers were Paul Manafort and Robert Gates, two very dirty criminals, was making Ukraine a puppet to Russia and a client state like Belarus. People don't want to lose their rights to have elections etc and that is where it is going. They remember gulags and breadlines and don't want that again.

Goom substitutes good analysis for long analysis. People will just assume he's right because he's long-winded, even a basic inspection reveals (almost) every fact cited is wrong or intentionally misleading. See above.

This post was edited by NetflixAdaptationWidow on Feb 26 2022 10:59pm

Or maybe reality is complicated and events spanning twenty years can't always be summarized by simple summaries the way I tend to do.

Yanukovych was the lawfully elected president and enacting policies he views as being in the best interests of Ukraine. I said even at the time years ago that its simply a rational cynical choice. Russia is more willing to act in Ukraine, the west is not willing. Even if a Ukrainian would prefer the ideals of the west to that of Russia, its not a pragmatic choice to throw your country's future in with western powers that won't lift a finger to help you when Russia reclaims their sphere of influence. They were never given a choice between becoming a full NATO democracy EU member state versus becoming a Russian vassal state. Even when they briefly aligned with the US, we just replaced the oligarchs pilfering their national resources with profiteers from the CIA and state department, literally Joe Biden's crackhead son lmao. Put yourself into the shoes of someone like Yanukovych, with Russia putting pressure on you and demanding you go against a populist pro-EU movement and reject the EU accord. Yanukovych knew that Germany had betrayed them to Putin and was going to remove their transit leverage by building a pipeline around Ukraine. He knew that NATO wouldn't defend them. He knew the west was corrupt and cynical like Russia, just less vested in his country.
Here we are and its coming true with a vengeance. What's the west's great benevolent message for Ukrainians? They can have our thoughts and prayers while we tell them to draft child soldiers to throw molotov cocktails at T90s in the name of 'democracy'. Hypocritical self righteous destruction. Another shipment of America's number one export to the conflict zones of the world.