About news sources
One of the main dangers of the modern world is echo chambers in which people constantly find information to back their beliefs and prejudices without listening to the other side. President Vladimir Putin, who pretty much refuses to go online and relies on information from his entourage, is a glaring example of this horrible approach to processing and analyzing information. His thinking is effectively paranoid and he thinks Russia is being encircled. He uses this paranoid ideation to justify a blatant aggression against a sovereign nation which may result in severe casualties among innocent people who actually want to live.
But look at what’s been going on in America with extreme rhetoric on both the Republican and Democrat side and sometimes name calling. Yes, Trump got elected in 2016 and there is a reason for that. If the Democrats just mock the people who voted for him without addressing their concerns that is abhorrent and means they are stuck in their little echo chambers with constant confirmation that “this primitive rednecks are just stupid” even though there is a huge problem with income inequality and distrust of the elites in the US. Equally as abhorrant and unfitting for a political leader is Trump’s blatantly narcissistic behavior which his supporters fail to recognize blindly following their “infallible” leader and stuck in their own echo chambers.
I call on everyone to verify sources and stop blindly following the agenda of media organizations and political leaders-whether it be pro-Trump Fox News, anti-Trump MSNBC, CNN, and other news organizations. Cross reference your sources. Remember, conflicts between ordinary people let people in power stay in power longer and profit.
When the Ukrainian crowd overthrew the corrupt President Yanukovuch in 2014, there were indeed disgusting ultra-nationalistic voices that demoted the status of the Russian language in Ukraine which I believe was a horrible mistake as there are people on eastern Ukraine who prefer to speak Russian, just like there are so many Spanish speakers in the US (with state-level agencies often offering services in that language). Because of acting President Turchynov’s and Prime Minister Yatsenyuk’s disrespect for the rights of Russian speakers, President Putin used that a justification to blatantly violate international law (specifically the 1997 Budapest Treaty) to annex Crimea, where the majority of the population did indeed want to be with Russia but voted in an internationally unrecognized referendum.
In effect, in an attempt to prevent the expansion of NATO, which as a US taxpayer I do not welcome, Putin alienated his neighbors and pushed them to want to join NATO for their own defense. It’s abominable how the US conducted its global policeman policy throughout the world after the Cold War, which frequently resulted in civilian deaths and the destabilization of entire regions. Now Putin is doing just the same with his imperialist mindset and dismissal of the boundaries of modern Ukraine as Lenin’s folly (reminder: Russia is legally the successor to the USSR and NOT the Russian Republic overthrown by the Bolsheviks in 1917).
So the moral of the story is to get out of your comfort zone and listen to news sources you do not agree with. It may create cause cognitive dissonance which, as a survivor of a pretty fucked up divorce between my parents I have been dealing with my whole life, but at least you will not be misled and emotionally manipulated by the likes of Putin, Cheney , Trump, and simply those who claim to serve their constituents but actually serve their sponsors.
But look at what’s been going on in America with extreme rhetoric on both the Republican and Democrat side and sometimes name calling. Yes, Trump got elected in 2016 and there is a reason for that. If the Democrats just mock the people who voted for him without addressing their concerns that is abhorrent and means they are stuck in their little echo chambers with constant confirmation that “this primitive rednecks are just stupid” even though there is a huge problem with income inequality and distrust of the elites in the US. Equally as abhorrant and unfitting for a political leader is Trump’s blatantly narcissistic behavior which his supporters fail to recognize blindly following their “infallible” leader and stuck in their own echo chambers.
I call on everyone to verify sources and stop blindly following the agenda of media organizations and political leaders-whether it be pro-Trump Fox News, anti-Trump MSNBC, CNN, and other news organizations. Cross reference your sources. Remember, conflicts between ordinary people let people in power stay in power longer and profit.
When the Ukrainian crowd overthrew the corrupt President Yanukovuch in 2014, there were indeed disgusting ultra-nationalistic voices that demoted the status of the Russian language in Ukraine which I believe was a horrible mistake as there are people on eastern Ukraine who prefer to speak Russian, just like there are so many Spanish speakers in the US (with state-level agencies often offering services in that language). Because of acting President Turchynov’s and Prime Minister Yatsenyuk’s disrespect for the rights of Russian speakers, President Putin used that a justification to blatantly violate international law (specifically the 1997 Budapest Treaty) to annex Crimea, where the majority of the population did indeed want to be with Russia but voted in an internationally unrecognized referendum.
In effect, in an attempt to prevent the expansion of NATO, which as a US taxpayer I do not welcome, Putin alienated his neighbors and pushed them to want to join NATO for their own defense. It’s abominable how the US conducted its global policeman policy throughout the world after the Cold War, which frequently resulted in civilian deaths and the destabilization of entire regions. Now Putin is doing just the same with his imperialist mindset and dismissal of the boundaries of modern Ukraine as Lenin’s folly (reminder: Russia is legally the successor to the USSR and NOT the Russian Republic overthrown by the Bolsheviks in 1917).
So the moral of the story is to get out of your comfort zone and listen to news sources you do not agree with. It may create cause cognitive dissonance which, as a survivor of a pretty fucked up divorce between my parents I have been dealing with my whole life, but at least you will not be misled and emotionally manipulated by the likes of Putin, Cheney , Trump, and simply those who claim to serve their constituents but actually serve their sponsors.