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Killertainment [1]

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Date: 2023-05-13

When does it cross the line from supporting the "good guys" to Killertainment

I was watching a YouTube channel, Mercado Media, the past few days. The screen shot above is part of the guy’s intro to his channel which is a bunch of Ukrainian war scenes set to Heavy Metal music with an haunting female chorus behind it saying things like “tears and blood, torn apart, wel-come-to-U-kraaaaine.”

I am 100% in support of the Ukraine war and US participation in supporting it till the end of whatever Ukraine decides the end should be. The YouTuber seems like a good guy, knowledgeable, has personal military experience to draw on commentary etc. Seems to be running the channel by conviction to support the war etc.

So taking that as a given the intro he has and the little clip at 8 min he shows making fun of the chaotic situation in Bakmut still unnerved me. I mean we are not talking about a rock and roll concert here, and were creating humor out of people being massacred. Even if we are talking about Russians being massacred, Russians are amazing people, most of their army is conscripted and don’t seem to want to be there as evident in their running away so fast. Over a million Russians left the country to avoid the war, some are even actively sabotaging it, there is a clear lack of popular support outside the Russian media-sphere.

I’m not trying to side-step the brutality of the war or Russian invaders raping and torturing Ukrainians. Brutalized people commit brutal acts. There have been numerous documentations of the Russian people being brutalized by their own government, by their own army commanders, by their own local army conscripts and soldier hazing. However, Ukrainians have every right to villainize Russians in my mind because Russia is doing it to them and attacked them destroying cities, murdering thousands.

I studied in both Russia and Ukraine. This was back at the turn of the millennium. There seemed to me to be two types of Russians when it came to politics. One just basically gave up and said the government will always be corrupt, sure they are awful but what can you do, we get by, and we live our lives for each other and our community of friends we depend on to survive. The other group was more radicalized and actually trying to participate in government, which after the Soviet collapsed was in shambles. Then there were just criminals and Russian mob people who ruled the streets taking advantage of the chaos. It seems to me that Putin used the radicalized political types to legitimize the mob types and make them all work for him. The other 80% who had given up let them, with obvious results. I think the US is not in the same situation but even so has shown we are not immune to such an arrangement ourselves if our own people allow it and give up on government or rule of law…

Ukraine was in an economic depression at the time with huge inflation. I remember their money “kupons” looking like monopoly money meeting a chemistry professor who was working in a coal mine because that was one of the only paying jobs back then as it was critical for the economy, teachers and professors were missing paychecks and had to find other work. Ukrainians did not have an easy time separating from the Soviet Union. They have EARNED their independence in more than one way since they became a sovereign nation.

Ukrainian money on top, a Russian bill below. And our Fed freaks out about a little inflation… The total worth of above bills at the time was like $10 if that.

In 2010 my wife and I had decided to start a family and it wasn’t working out for us, so we decided to adopt. I had studied in Russia and learned some of the language so we decided to adopt from there. It was literally only a few months after we got our son home that Russia stopped letting US citizens adopt from Russia because of… politics. I know Putin doesn’t give a shit about kids because he denied untold Russian orphans safe loving homes from adoptive families because it didn’t look good to Russian nationalists who were ashamed their own policies and economic priorities failed to care for these kids.

All that is to say I love Russians, my son is one. I hate Putin and his fascist nationalists followers. I respect and love Ukrainians, they have to fight for their survival and we should be ever thankful that their sacrifice may bring down Putin’s regime and cascade into the defeat of fascists re-emerging across the globe.

Perhaps it is this that causes me to cringe when I see people using creative powers of song and humor to highlight, celebrate, or dehumanize the death and destruction of war. Even if I’m on the side of the ones doing it. I get propaganda. Russians are not the only ones using it. It has a purpose, to unify and focus people’s attention. But manipulating people on such a level seems to remove them from the reality that we are still dealing with death, with human beings, and unspeakable tragedy.

My son was born and raised in an orphanage in Bryansk, a region which borders Ukraine. Where would he be today if he was not here? Russian orphans are not known for an easy transition into adulthood often are malnourished and have no skills or health issues when they are of legal age. Would he be in the military? Would he have been in prison and joined Wagner god forbid? Or maybe he would have found another family, maybe they would have migrated out of Russia to avoid the draft. I don’t know, but when I see Russians being blown apart by Ukrainian missiles and grenades part of me is satisfied, even excited that they are making the progress they need to, and using this great drone technology we can watch it like a spectator sport. However, there is an itch I can’t scratch in the back of my brain that wonders what the stories are of the people dying to music and cheer emojis from a chat room across the other side of the world…

Are we better than this?

Do the ends justify the means here?

Slava Ukraine, may we never have fight a war like they are. Thank God for Biden helping keep fascists at bay and my son home.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/5/13/2169140/-Killertainment

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