The Ukrainian War vs The War Against a Virus

[Chuck Naill]

I have been impressed with how the world has responded to the senseless war Russia is waging against Ukraine yet puzzled how difficult it has been to get the world to come together against a virus. Thoughts?

[Bold2013]

There must be more to this war then we know or understand.

[Chip]

One can't wage war against a virus. It's a bad metaphor, like the War on Drugs.

[Chuck Naill]

Perhaps a war against a virus in which 900k people have perished in the US makes you numb to those dying in a war in Ukraine. .

[Chip]

You don't even pretend to address my point. I'm not playing.

Go pick your daily fight with dneal.

[Chuck Naill]

I could care less about your point dumb ass

[Chip]

RE: AIDS and Its Metaphors by Susan Sontag (1989).

Sontag defines metaphors as "giving the thing a name that belongs to something else", and notes that they have been used throughout history to discuss the body, illness, and health.

When it was discovered that illnesses were caused by pathogens, the associated metaphors took on a military flair, and military metaphors have since come to dominate the way we talk about medical situations. There are "immunological defenses" and "aggressive" medicine, and the "efforts to reduce mortality from a given disease are called a fight... a war". Sontag claims that these military terms are a factor in the stigmatizing of certain illnesses and those who are suffering from them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS_and_Its_Metaphors

[Chuck Naill]

Brooks discusses what happens when people are humiliated. He suggests right now Putin has generated a narrative in which Russia has been humiliated. He blames America and the West. "They are always against us".

Brooks also draws from a narrative his colleague wrote around the Summer of 2020 that said if Biden were to win over Trump voters, he would need to address the humiliation felt by people they saw as the elites. Not wearing a mask or getting a vaccine was one way these humiliated people could react.

If humiliation is as I think it might be for both the Ukrainian War as well as the war that was waged to combat both the virus and those who rebelled against the science and scientists, it might help us understand better how these two events are related. Just as Putin blames the West and in the US Fauci became the scape goat, humiliation may be the cause.

"I’ve seen firsthand the power of humiliation in foreign policy: Vladimir Putin’s macho act after Russia’s humiliation at losing the Cold War; Iraqi Sunnis who felt humiliated by a U.S. invasion force that pushed them out of Iraq’s army and government, stripping them of rank and status; Israeli Sephardic Jews who felt humiliated by Ashkenazi Jewish elites, something Bibi Netanyahu has long manipulated; Palestinians feeling humiliated at Israeli checkpoints; Muslim youth in Europe feeling humiliated by the Christian majority; and China questing to become the world’s dominant power, after what Chinese themselves call their “century of humiliation” at the hands of foreign powers.

When George Floyd was being held down by three policemen, one with a knee on his neck, as he pleaded for his mother and onlookers filmed on their phones, he was not just being restrained — he was being humiliated. Resistance to the daily humiliations of racism has fueled the Black civil rights movement from its inception to Black Lives Matter.

In a much talked-about new book, “The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?” Harvard political philosopher Michael Sandel (disclosure: he is a close friend) says “the politics of humiliation” is also at the heart of Trump’s appeal.

“Trump was elected by tapping a wellspring of anxieties, frustrations and legitimate grievances to which the mainstream parties had no compelling answer,” Sandel notes. These grievances “are not only economic but also moral and cultural; they are not only about wages and jobs but also about social esteem.”

Unless Biden finds a way to speak to the sense of humiliation felt by many working-class voters, Sandel warns, even Trump’s failure to deal with the pandemic may not be enough to turn these voters against him. The reason? “Resentment borne of humiliation is the most potent political sentiment of all,” Sandel explains."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/08/opinion/biden-trump-humiliation.html

[manoeuver]

if nothing else I've learned that propaganda works so well not because people can't identify it, but because they fucking love it.

[dneal]

if nothing else I've learned that propaganda works so well not because people can't identify it, but because they fucking love it.

Kool-aide is tasty, apparently.

[Chuck Naill]

Western nations are praising Biden. Shows what can occur with the right folks in power. 👍👍

[Chuck Naill]

Glad I voted and for the adult. 👍👍

[Chuck Naill]

Yet, to be true to the tread, the same folks who didn’t vote, or for the adult, are the same that decided to stand up for their rights, damn who got hurt in the process, and make enemies of the scientists, recall the Fauci bashing? Are they the humiliated ones choosing pseudo strength because they hate the people who hate Trump more than they like Trump?

[Chuck Naill]

Has Putin done for the development of non fossil fuel what Covid-19 did not the development of mRNA vaccines?

[manoeuver]

why do you choose this venue to talk to yourself.

[Chip]

To underline the negative effect of the war metaphor, the whole War on Drugs mindset is why there are white "warrior cops" equipped with military hardware carrying out search-and-destroy missions (no-knock warrants) against black people who they view as a threat to their civilization (sic). Not a big leap from there to aggressive tactics against protestors, who are seen as the enemy. Republican politicians, from Trump on down, have said as much.

Trump tried to apply the same war metaphor to COVID (the Chinese virus), but when the enemy is invisible, spread by your own people (unvaccinated believers), it doesn't fit.

[Chuck Naill]

Too bad things didn’t turn out the way you had hoped. Well, not really.

[Chuck Naill]

Another comparison are the conspiracies from Tucker Carlson. Just as he broadcast vaccine and COVID-19 conspiracies, he is now crafting one about "bloweapons" and repeating Russian propaganda. Maybe he can find a way to blame Fauci for chemical weapons development. Maybe it is time for some here to change channels.

[Chuck Naill]

Sharing false information is what Putin is doing. He even said "fake news". This was true as healthcare workers were watching thousands die because they believed misleading information. We are in a battle for the mind.

If you are inclined toward scripture, the Apostle Paul wrote:
"Though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh [in other words, we don’t fight with armor, we don’t fight with politics, we don’t fight with money, we don’t fight with all the humanistic ways]. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ."

Having read posts here, it is obvious what folks listen to. Reading is good as long as the writer lets you decide. It is your brain. Use it wisely.

[Chuck Naill]

And while Ukraine fights for freedom, Texas and Florida are focused on Transgendered and Gay rights. This is an example of why Conservatives are not classically liberal. In case someone needed another example.

[Chuck Naill]

Another writer understands my topic. Maureen Dowd says,
"Zelensky and the Ukrainians chose to stand for something, and to be. They are united as a democracy in a way America has not been for a long time, as we have become more and more riven over politics, with burning questions of reality and artifice; with the destructive partisanship of masks and Covid; and with the corrosive effect of our culture of greed, selfishness and billionaires."

[Chuck Naill]

Not one person's death is justified because another person wants their way. Just like Putin should suffer the consequences of the deaths he is causing, and Trump the deaths he caused on January 6, 2020, no person is better or more important than another, especially Putin and Trump.

[Chuck Naill]

One thing the war has accomplished is to have made Donald Trump not relevant. I heard a speech he gave over the weekend, same old, same old, while Biden is leading the NATO nations in an exemplary manner, or as well and anyone could, while being relevant.

There is a phrase Trumpians use to disparage Biden. It's called "going Biden". I think going Biden is a good thing.

Sadly Tom Brady has decided to come back for another year and decided to announce it during this war. Talk about not being relevant!!

[Chuck Naill]

I think I am guilty of the politics of inevitability thinking that over time, if people had good science, they would agree to cooperate, wear a mask, and get vaccinated. It is because my values are not the same as other's values. I've been living a myth.

This is a recent Esra Kline discussion with Timothy Snyder:
"Because the politics of inevitability assures you that whatever the good things are, they’re being brought about automatically by some invisible hand, right? The market is like Mom. You know, it’s going to take care of you with that invisible hand. And you don’t have to think about what the values might be, what you actually desire. You lose the habit, right? You never perform the mental gymnastics of stretching to figure out what a better world might actually be because you think you’re on track to that better world no matter what happens.

So it’s not just that you don’t recognize that somebody else’s values are different from your own. You’ve forgotten completely that there is such a thing as values, that they might be plural, they might be different, they might be contested. And so you find yourself, as you say, in this kind of binary where I’m rational and the other guy’s irrational.

But actually, your notion of rationality is completely meaningless. It’s just means-ends rationality. But you can’t even really define what the ends are, your own ends. And you’ve lost the habit of asking what another end might be like.

So in the case of Mr. Putin, it’s, in my view anyway, absolutely the case that he doesn’t care about the things that we think people ought to care about. You know, he doesn’t care about the Russian economy. I don’t think he even cares about Russian interests, perhaps not even the survival of the Russian state.

But he does care about other things. And he’s been very clear about those things. He cares about how he’s going to be remembered after he’s dead. He cares about an image of an eternal Russia. He cares about these things which are out of our normal field of view. But that doesn’t make them either rational or irrational. It just means that they are different values."

And, I found out Putin is worth 100 billion.....