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It’s Time to End Magical Thinking About Russia’s Defeat

Essay | It’s Time to End Magical Thinking About Russia’s Defeat

https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/its-time-to-end-magical-thinking-about-russias-defeat-f6d0b8de

Putin has withstood the West’s best efforts to reverse his invasion of Ukraine, and his hold on power is firm. The U.S. and its allies need a new strategy: containment.

Essay | It’s Time to End Magical Thinking About Russia’s Defeat

The US and Europe admit that they're been believing in their own propaganda about Russia and Putin.

41 comments

Madison420

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It's a war of attrition and Russia is losing. Insurgency inside of a major nation is a pretty good sign there will be civil war sooner rather than later.

SoccerGod

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Yes Russia is losing hahahahahaha

European union is losing, in fact, they already lost.

Sorry if that's too dense for your mind (more guns safer!!)

Madison420

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That's neat, very wrong and very dumb but ... Neat I guess.

Ukraine isn't part of the eu dumb dumb.

Something is dense but it seems to be you.

SoccerGod

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Chill btw, did you drink too much today?

Madison420

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I havent drank in 15 years homie, try again.

SoccerGod

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Ok, what about crack? Lol

Madison420

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We can go down a list of imagined reasons why everyone thinks you're argument sucks but we can't all be high or dumb or whatever it is you decide makes you feel better.

SoccerGod

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Sorry I only read well structured and written English. Bye

SoccerGod

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Nice English bro. If you're not drunk you're not very smart 🤓

Not sure which situation is worse

Madison420

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It wasn't an incorrect sentence I just used accepted slang, though you should look into punctuation if you're going to be tedious about correct use of the English language.

SoccerGod

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You still don't get it lol

Madison420

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sure, what an amazing well read well and evidenced argument.... wait no its the opposite of that.

Narrrz

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give daddy's tablet back and stop skipping school.
your older self will thank you for it.

muntedcrocodile

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Ok lets hypotheicaly assume u are a selfish bastard who doesnt care about putin invading and killing innocent people. What do u think ukraine will do when we stop sending them weapons A: roll over and submit to putin. B: blow up russias gas pipelines doubling YOUR bills. C: utilise those old soviet scientists and nuclear power plants to develop nukes and possible end human civilisation. We dont know but i can almost garantee its not option A.

random_character_a

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Why does WSJ suddenly sound like Russian government sponsored media?

Witchfire

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Take one guess. This is straight up propaganda

scarabic

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It’s an opinion essay. Why do people not understand that news organizations publish these, and that they don’t all represent the views of the paper? They will even publish multiple conflicting opinions. This has been a part of news for decades if not over a century. Why do people still not understand this?

Marsupial

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Because they choose to publish it?

Who wrote it doesn’t bloody matter.

scarabic

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I guess you just can’t imagine anything other than pushing one’s own agenda. The concept that a news organization might want to publish in depth, well articulated opinions from a spectrum of different perspectives is just unthinkable in this polarized age of “my narrative or nothing.”

Marsupial

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I can imagine them pushing their own agenda. It’s exactly what they’re doing pushing this propaganda.

Now let’s get to the real issue, why don’t think a newspaper isn’t responsible for what it publishes? Do you think they can wash it away by using a non-hired writer?

scarabic

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you just can’t imagine anything other than pushing one’s own agenda.

I can imagine them pushing their own agenda

DOH! That’s what I just said.

Oh my lord. I’ve already explained above how opinion sections work, twice. Newspapers provide space for opinion pieces across different perspectives. I’ve actually been in a newsroom and seen the discussions. But you shouldn’t need that to understand an open shared space in a newspaper. Like I said, I guess it’s just over your head. Words on paper! Paper come from WSJ!

scarabic

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I’ve been waiting and hoping for Russia to fail in their war and more than that: collapse. There are a thousand YT videos about how this is inevitable and imminent. This has been the case for a long time now. It keeps not happening. I’m willing to at least read an opinion piece from someone saying that maybe it never will and we should think that possibility through instead of continuing to hope for a watershed moment to deliver all our dreams.

random_character_a

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Collapse on Russian government is a fantasy. They don't have a huge war and spy machine just for external threats, so they are not new to this game and a lot of powerful Russians have been "dropping out of windows". Russia is not that unified. It's a huge country with large number of various ethnicities and many of those don't feel very Russian. They just want to be left alone. Reality of Russias loses is startin to be weight on their shoulders and their war has been a failure and embarrassment for a long time now. Russias collapse wouldn't even be a very favorable outcome. World would just have a one more violent shithole where people kill each other and massacre the innocent.

BartsBigBugBag

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Because you’ve been ingesting so much propaganda that you assume anything that veers from their narrative must be from your perceived enemy.

ubermeisters

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Permanently Deleted

not_that_guy05

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Toppling a democratic elected government somewhere in South America?

ubermeisters

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Permanently Deleted

SoccerGod

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r/Murica

FuglyDuck

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The problem, is that anyone who will replace him is going to be worse. Or at least, as bad as he is.

What we should do, is run a psyops campaign to get him to get into it with China.

salvador

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Haven't you just demonstrated that the problem is in you rather than in Putin or Russia?

FuglyDuck

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why? cuz I cracked an admittedly bad joke? the bit about psyops was meant to be read with tongue-in-cheek irony.

Or are you saying that, because the people who hold power, and the lines of succession in russia are all universally awful, that's somehow... my fault? or that I'm the problem?

lets look at the people that would replace Putin, and some of their comments.

Dmitry Medvedev.
Sergey Kirinyenko, aka the guy that got Putin his start (by appointing him to head the FSB,)
Nikolai Patrushev, the security chief whose saying it's the west's fault if they use WMDs.

Hmmm. yeah. all three are hard liners and ardent supporters of Putin who are just as personally invested in the war in Ukraine as Putty-bear is.

salvador

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US and EU can't stand it when a russian present, or any other one, acts in the interests of his country and its people rather than in the interests of US and EU. That's why they have a problem with Putin, Maduro, Lula da Silva, Modi, Erdogan, Orban, Osad....you name it.

FuglyDuck

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You’re, not entirely wrong, I suppose. (In part though, because it’s against our interests. We’re all pots and kettles.)

Just out of curiosity, are you saying that Putin invading Ukraine is… okay? That we shouldn’t be helping out Ukraine? Or shouldn’t condem the invasion?

Are you saying that genocide of the Ukrainingn people isn’t something that ought to be condemned? The rape, the murder, the forced relocation of civilians, the rampant destruction of farmland and industry, the insane amount of mining lending most land uninhabitable? The flat out destruction of most cities in the war zone?

muntedcrocodile

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Doesnt matter if his replacement is just as bad or worse his replacement can go mission success all the nazis are dead time to go home. Putin cant pull out hes already too far deep

FuglyDuck

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The people who’d replace him are in just as deeply. That’s the issue. They could do as you suggest they might, but they won’t.

salvador

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In other words, you, or US/Europe, don't like it when a russian president acts according the interests of Russia and Russians. And why would you?

scarabic

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Wow they found a picture of Putin apparently smiling. I recall hearing a deepfake expert say that Putin was still hard to deepfake because there wasn’t enough footage of him out there with any variety of facial expressions, especially any smiling.

Deestan

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Bumped into a paywall. What do they mean by "containment"? Conceding land?

DolphinMath

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https://github.com/qnoum/bypass-paywalls-chrome-clean-magnolia1234

ToastedPlanet

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My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Go home and get a nice quiet sleep.

The only people engaging in magical thinking are the people who use the phrase as a defense mechanism in their articles. How long the Russo-Ukrainian war lasts is irrelevant as Russia will never stop until it runs out of countries to conquer or collapses. We are better off if Russia collapses into its constituent entities.

salvador

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Yes. Soon it'll be Russia everywhere. And you'll be a slave and in prison. You'll be clearning Putin's shoes from dawn to dawn, looking into his eyes from bottom up. I'll be creating videos of you, uploading them onto Youtube on daily basis. Aren't you ok with this? It sounds awesome to me.

ToastedPlanet

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What? Did you write this article? I can't tell if you're kidding and agreeing with me or seriously mad and being sarcastic.

Putin's not going to stop with Ukraine. His expressed ideology is to conquer Europe. It's effectively manifest destiny for Russia, but all of Europe instead of the western US.

Kraut does a good job of covering this in his video, but it is kind of long. The point is, you don't have to take it from me.

I don't see why he would stop with Europe either. There are plenty of Middle Eastern countries that are close by that he can conquer too. Not to mention if Trump is reelected, the US is likely to pull out of NATO and become Russia's biggest ally.

https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/politics/2023/10/24/trump-reportedly-open-to-pulling-u-s--out-of-nato

It's incredibly important for Russia to be defeated in Ukraine. The Ukrainians are going to be treated like second class citizens under Russia, or simply killed. And Russia is going to run out of non-NATO members to invade and all of us are going to be fighting this war next.

If you need evidence that Russia doesn't treat minorities well, take a look at this article.

Russia is well known for sending minorities to the meat grinder first.

PipedLinkBot

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Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

Kraut does a good job of covering this in his video, but it is kind of long. The point is, you don't have to take it from me.

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salvador

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Putin's shoes, man..... from dawn til dawn..... from sunrise til sunrise ... every day! You'll like it.

ToastedPlanet

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No.