Originally Posted by Jampie
Well for starters, the Ukrainian chief intelligence officer, who presumably has access to intelligence that you and I don’t, seems to believe Navalny wasn’t murdered, and that the Russians are being straight up honest injuns! How do we reconcile that?
Second, even if every single one of the people mentioned in this thread were assassinated at the behest of powerful politicians and oligarchs, what are our principles and how do apply them consistently? Do we demand the dismantling of all political establishments? Do we give a pass to all of them? Something in between?
The underlying assumption in this thread, and correct me if I’m wrong, is that Putin ordered a hit on Navalny. And as such, Putin is an evil man at the head of an evil regime, and that good people everywhere, including our own politicians, ought to do everything in our power (overt and covert) to stop him and dismantle his evil regime. Given the fact that Russia’s political establishment is at least on par, if not even more hard core in their thinking than Putin, and moreover that the population is brainwashed and/or scared into thinking this is all either untrue or outright acceptable/desirable, the most logical means of suppressing this evilness is to break Russia into a series of significantly weakened banana republics, sanctioned up the wazoo, so that they are incapable of unleashing and spreading their evil ways on the world.
Ok, if that’s at least semi-accurate… do we apply this logic with consistency to our own murderous and despotic regimes, and the brainwashed populations they not only preside over, but who are likewise either in denial or in acceptance. Do we take to the streets and tear down our own regimes? Do we seek out and actively support independently minded politicians who recognize our systems for what it is, and struggle with all their hearts to change it? Ought we to collude with some foreign powers who (either overtly or covertly want to bring about our regime changes), national breakups, and international isolation of ourselves in some quasi ritual of self flagellation?
Or do we perhaps accept that these events happen, recognize that they are symptomatic that all of our systems, including our own, are a really far cry from the cute catch phrases we typically apply to ourselves (“decency”, “freedom”, “democracy”, “rules based order”, “human rights”, etc).
Only then can we begin to have a serious analysis and prescription of situation.
I would even go even waaaay out on a limb and guess that Navalny himself was likely already very much part of this intercontinental tug of war in which opposing powers ‘benevolently’ (lol) try to impose their “human rights”, “democracy” and “decency” on the other, simply they can keep their own populations under thumb. On the other hand, our other friend probably took exception to Boeing making crappy planes that suck people out the doors. But I don’t know, maybe he had an axe to grind against Boeing. But what do I know? I’m just a naive Putin apologist.
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