I thought it was insane that the Russians were letting enlisted soldiers take their phones into the field, much less use them. Officers transmitting orders and war planning over enemy-owned communications networks is flat-out criminal malpractice of the art of the soldier. Absolutely mind-blowing.
Sorry if this has been posted before, but I think it makes an awful lot of sense:
We should simultaneously condemn Putin’s criminal war of aggression and be careful not to slip into arrogant insanity ourselves. Wars bring out the worst in all sides, and creating a world without war will require the United States to be self-critical rather than self-righteous.
www.currentaffairs.org
This is a fantastic synopsis of much of what should be on the table in the discussion, but that never makes it into the narrative Western media pushes in its eternal search for clicks. The problem is that Hearst, Pulitzer et al cracked the circulation code, and wrote the modern media playbook in the process. The giants of tabloid/yellow journalism lasered in on manipulating people's emotions to get them to pick up copy at newsstands, driving up their advertising revenue in the process.
Radio and television introduced barriers to entry in media controlled by the United States government, which in turn demanded a little public service in return for the provision of government largesse. This was far from perfect, but led to much more nuanced and educated coverage across media, at least in this country. If you don't believe me, pull up the front page of a
New York Times from decades past, as well as one from today, and compare. It is night and day.
As the Internet and the fall of the equal time doctrine led to a dramatic decrease in the barriers to entry into U.S. news media markets, there was a proliferation in media strategies. It turns out that when profit is the sole objective, clicks/views are the currency of the realm and content is both constantly in demand and cheap to produce, malign actors willing to pander to emotional needs without regard for societal consequences tend to win the war for influence to everyone else's detriment. The article is nailed on about some of the problems that the death of nuance produces.
Thought it was a bit of a curate's egg, in that it was good in parts, but lots was fundamentally Putin appeasement.
Could not disagree more strongly. The article focuses on the actions that the United States, its media and its people have taken for decades that helped lead us to this moment. It's contributory negligence rather than strict liability in this case, but the overall point is that if we don't want to see these things happen then we need to make some changes to how we conduct foreign policy. That, in turn, requires elevating the discussion to the non-partisan, pragmatic level that foreign affairs used to be conducted at, while at the same time recognizing our own hypocrisies and historical blind spots. It demands that the reader recognize that international affairs are not conducted in a vacuum, and that today's actions often have side effects that become tomorrow's problems.
www.dw.com
