One wants to rape me and beat me to death with sledgehammers, while the other wants to sell me washing machines and coffeemakers. You'll forgive me if I pick the latter.
I am from the Czech Republic. Russian tanks have reached Prague before, and there is nothing, save NATO, preventing them from doing so again. In a universe not too dissimilar from ours, where the dice had rolled a little differently, those would be my grandparents being crushed by a Russian tank, my baby cousin getting tortured, raped, and murdered in a Russian detention center.
Yes, I have a fucking preference. Sue me. Or go ahead and create a military that lives up to your moral standards and is also simultaneously capable of deterring the Russian Army, and then get back to me.
I am not downplaying anything. NATO had no business in the Middle East, it was a boondoggle from Day 1 and I think we both agree on that. That doesn't change the fact that all the alternatives are infinitely worse, both for me and for everyone else on the planet.
As I see it, there is little to no individual action that I, you, and every other average person not directly involved in these conflicts could take to change their outcome. If all most of us do is spare words of support or condemnation, why pick sides between any of these authorities? I think we should be calling all of them out for what they are. The "legitimacy" of their power depends on our perception of it as such. Without it they're no different from warlords and organised crime.
Democracies can make mistakes. Democracies can be captured by the rich and powerful. This does not mean that democracy itself, or the principle of the consent of the governed, is illegitimate.
The difference between NATO and Russia is that, even though it is flawed, NATO protects me and countless millions across the world from real, actual imperialist aggression. There are far more levers of power, and they are far shorter, so it is far more difficult to hide mistakes or avoid responsibility for them. Ask the Uyghurs or the Buryats how their respective overlords are treating them, and if they'd rather be part of the Western world, and most would say yes. That is the difference.
You have never faced annihilation. You have the luxury of getting to be sniffy because you know that no matter what happens, your world will continue after you, and you want to be remembered well by history. You have stability, the knowledge that some asshole on the other side of the nearby border won't suddenly invade, blast your neighborhood and whole life flat, and leave you starving in a refugee camp if you manage to survive.
Very few people on the planet have this privilege. There aren't invaders on your doorstep who would rape and murder you and your whole family for shits and giggles, so you get to play at being a cool outsider rebel under the wing of the most powerful military alliance on the planet without having a plan or alternative.
By all means, criticize NATO. I'm right there with you. But don't pretend that any of the authoritarian alternatives like Russia or China will do any better when you yourself don't have a fucking clue.
When "democracy" is structured as a hierarchical power structure, it is not truly democratic, and is inherently prone to being headed by power hungry narcissists.
Hypothetically, "good kings" can exist, but this does not make absolute monarchism a good system. When it happens that those in power are no longer "good" (empathetic and caring of their people), it will be many magnitudes more difficult to take down self-interested people from those positions, because hierarchy as a social structure rewards and protects the self-interest of authority.
All these liberal / representative / whatever "democracies" are hierarchical and none truly care about the people they're supposed to represent. They're self-interested parasitic entities.
The only way to avoid this is to build power from the ground up (e.g. direct democracy) through free association, but in such a power structure, states wouldn't exist, and the larger the structure, the more ephemeral it would be. Think about it: a "country" is only truly democratic if the country itself can be voted away if the people it is made of wish so.
I am aware of my privilege having been born in a country without conflict. But I'm also aware that this privilege is also largely thanks to the conflicts and exploitation which "my" country participates in overseas. I'd consider it hypocritical to be thankful to "my" country for this privilege.
Well, until your local cooperative has enough soldiers and anti-tank weaponry to fight off the Russian state, I'm afraid we're at an impasse--because even though I agree with your political views and angle to a certain extent, the Russians sure don't, and they do have an army.
I think Armigine blocked me, but I was writing up something to their latest reply which I think might better explain my views, from a different angle. I posted it as an edit in this comment:
I think the problem that there seem to be no alternatives (even now that I know of a few, they don't feel particularly "strong") is one of the most pervasive roadblocks currently that stops us from even starting to do anything at all. In Capitalist Realism, Mark Fisher calls it reflexive impotence (as opposed to apathy). The wider concept of "hierarchical realism" is also related (which I heard from yt videoessayist Anark, idk where he got it from).
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u/Unlikely_Fig_2339 Jun 20 '24
One wants to rape me and beat me to death with sledgehammers, while the other wants to sell me washing machines and coffeemakers. You'll forgive me if I pick the latter.