I was thinking about this yesterday. Liberals believe that the land where that war is fought is Ukrainian land, right? And for sure, they should know something about how terrible the effects of depleted uranium and cluster munitions are, on civilians, long after the fighting is over? (Though I vaguely remember an article from the BBC or similar media outlet saying depleted uranium is actually not that bad, because of course that’s the line these ghouls push.) So, even in the fantasy world where liberals’ dream of Ukraine winning this war and taking back all the territory succeeds, the people of the country that liberals claim to support so much would STILL suffer from all the effects of those munitions.
Basically all I have seen from liberals on the matter is “But it’s important that Ukraine wins!! We have no other kinds of weapons to send!”. If the latter sentence is true, that’s just an admission of defeat coming soon. If it’s not true, they’re just making the land unlivable for the sake of a temporary strategic advantage. Truly, western liberals, are willing to fight this conflict until their proxy country is entirely destroyed. All while sitting in the comfort of their own home, treating this war as just more entertainment for themselves, knowing it’s not them blown to pieces by cluster munitions.
DU ammo is not as bad as the post makes out, or indeed, nowhere near a nuclear escalation the way Russia was saying. DU is almost entirely U-238, which has a half-life of 4.4 billion years and who’s decay mode is only alpha particles that do not penetrate human skin. It is still highly toxic as a heavy metal and will kill you if you ingest it (heavy metal poisoning). Alpha particles are still dangerous when ingested and thus beneath your skin already, but heavy metal poisoning would probably get you first. I think it is doubtful that the amount of DU ammunition is even remotely large enough to seriously cause ecological damage, as it is so dilute from the large geographical area. Other chemical releases from warfare are also very bad, but again, dilute enough in this case (e.g. not ridiculous like Vietnam and Laos) that the ecological damage is limited.
Radioactive materials are more dangerous when the half-life is shorter, because a short half-life means they release more particles and decay faster. This is part of why Iodine-131 is such a concern, because beta particles do penetrate human skin, and it is highly radioactive with a half-life of just over 8 days. It also gets absorbed easily by your thyroid, which is part of the reason why potassium iodide is added to salt as it prevents this absorption. Obviously gamma radiation and X-rays are still much worse, because they are very difficult to stop and will go right through you, but U-238 is never going to generate those on its own.
I am also a comrade, but I don’t think that DU rounds in Ukraine is such a big deal. If you have any evidence to the contrary I’d love to hear it.
Tell that to the Iraqi children born with birth defects because of the DU rounds left there by the US 30 years ago. The worry isn’t “It will make the whole country uninhabitable” but “It will cause additional cancers and birth defects in the population living there.”
Liberals are probably gonna mistake this for an actual conservative meme but idc 🤷♀️
Why are the conservatives supporting Russia again anyways?
Seems like an accidental occurrence of the stupid horseshoe theory IRL
I think one thing that often gets passed is that Trump was the brokest of clocks and would sometimes pay lip service that things that the citizens actually want, like avoiding participating directly in new wars. Not that it was ever applied consistently, but it was a legitimate campaign thing both in 2016 and 2020 where civilian republicans claimed that Clinton and Biden wanted WW3 and since Trump’s campaign was also extremely contradictory he got to play both warmonger and pacifist to his followers.
You can even see how some traditionally anti-war “centrists” like Tulsi Gabbard have gone full Republican after the Ukraine war and how older Republicans have changed from Bush era “we need to bring freedom to their souls from their bodies” to “genocide in america first”. The other explanations are valid too, but it is also a genuine concern of a portion of Republican voters and since the Democrats can’t keep their cluster munitions in their pants it’s a free win for Republicans.
I think US conservatives have a lot of ideological agreements with Russian society. Their views on women, traditional values, etc. Russia is even building a little village to invite US conservatives to move there. I think it’s a recent post 2000~ phenomenon that they are aligning ideologically on the culture war stuff. So US conservatives don’t see why they should attack and destroy a nation they see defending their values, like pro-religion and anti-lgbt views, and since Russia isn’t “communist” anymore, they don’t see many reasons to not like them now.
Fair enough. Thanks for the responses.
I wonder how Russia went from the USSR to conservative so fast
I suspect it might be how destructive conservatism became so muscular in the West too.
You have a massive economic disruption. With the USSR/Russia there were obvious inflection points like 1991, but even in the West it’s easy to say that for many people, forward motion has ceased. It’s hard for many people to say “I’m better off today than my father was in 1975”. Leadership has no effective tools to deal with this crisis. You can’t just give the point the economy in directions that would yield dividends for the proliterat anymore-- Russia simply doesn’t have the financial resources to do so, and in flailing Western powers, it’s all captured by the Capital-Protestant Work Ethic-Industrial Complex mindset where just because you’re more productive than ever doesn’t mean that means you deserve to be better off.
So what can you offer? Culture war wins. Pick some minority groups, blame them for the “mainstream” group’s malaise, and persecute them. If you can whip up enough of a stink with your population, they’ll take it as a substitute for actual material progress, but without any risk to actual entrenched wealth. Notice how all the modern “pogrom against queer communities” and “battle against woke” stuff costs virtually nothing to capital. Nobody has to pay an extra dime/kopeck in taxes, no business has to be reined in.
In some cases, you can even use it to further emaciate the state-- look how nobody is talking about “American public schools are underfunded and flailing” anymore because they’re too busy arguing about the Critical Race Theory that’s not actually being taught, making it even easier to plunder their budgets.
Okay yes, but still fuuuuuck Ben Shapiro.
Goes without saying. I don’t like that douchebag.
