Ukraine Always Get What You Want

Must be nice to live in a world where anything bad that happens is fake.

The Far Right Wants You to Think Ukraine’s War Is Staged: ‘It Is Clearly a Psyop’

 

I've heard people question how much we should get involved, question the money we're spending, question the Biden administration's motivations and competence on the issue.
That's the first time I've ever seen someone remotely suggest in any way, shape or form that the war itself is not real.
Maybe I need to find a better quality of tin foil hat.

 

The cynicism is totally unjustified.

 

It's been my experience that cynicism is almost always justified, especially when it comes to politics. In this war, especially, there are hard questions about those things I mentioned that are worth asking.
But in this case, I think you mistake cynicism for sarcasm. I guess they quoted some tweets in that story, but I've been following this war almost since the beginning and this is the first story I've ever seen where someone is suggesting that it's some massive hoax. Anyone seriously suggesting that is either insanely stupid or has severe mental issues, considering the amount of footage and reporting that has been done on this since day one.

 

Considering there are actually Holocaust deniers, I vote for insanely stupid.

 

I really don’t see much difference between either of them.

 

Is they question about if it’s a money laundering scheme for the Bidens a legit question?

 

It's probably a mix of stupid and deranged.

But it does actually bring up a valid point about the dangers of deepfakes and good-looking propaganda. As AI programs like ChatGPT and the like get better and better, stuff like this will become much more prevalent. I heard a radio talk show the other day that played a deepfake clip of Joe Biden talking about reinstating the draft beginning later this year, punctuated by a bit of very pro-Ukraine sentiments. It was a video, and they talked about how you could tell it was a fake by watching it because some details were off, but listening to it on the radio — especially if you weren't paying very close attention — it wouldn't be hard to believe it.
As we go further down that road, it's going to become easier for some people to fall for stupid conspiracy theories like the idea that the well-documented invasion of a major European country is a hoax involving millions of people.

 

I think there are legitimate questions about where exactly the $75 billion we've sent or pledged is going, and whose beak is getting wet.
We're spending a lot of money in a big damn hurry, and there doesn't seem to be anyone saying we should pump the brakes just a bit. If you can show me one time in U.S. history where that scenario ends well I'll give you a digital nickel. Some very close accounting and oversight would be nice.

But that's just one practical concern about the way the Biden administration is approaching this. The depletion of our own military stockpile and strategic oil reserve when our own involvement in a major war could be imminent is another. The hamfisted way we seem to be simultaneously antagonizing China while pushing ever-harder to break Russia — and alienating a couple of other strategic allies like Saudi Arabia and India in the process — is still another.
The lack of any apparent plan for an endgame on our end is also very troublesome. We only seem to be escalating things toward a point of no return.

I think — I would hope — we can still ask those questions and address those things in an apolitical manner.

 

And why should anybody have to worry, or think, that everything may be fake?

This is the insanity, and the danger, of all this.

 

The rationale I’ve heard from dipshits like that about this, the election, Covid, Sandy Hook, 9-11, everything, “We know the government has lied to you in the past and the media has lied to you in the past so why wouldn’t they lie about these things?”
Then some shit about Operation Northwoods. You’d think the fact that that thing never got off the ground would prove the government is either incapable or above that sort of thing.

 

The real insanity and danger comes when some bad actor is able to do a convincing deepfake on an issue of consequence. Say, a Russian agency putting one out where "Biden" is saying we're sending troops to Ukraine and will use nuclear weapons to defend them. Or the one I mentioned about the draft coming out right before an election and swinging the result before it's discovered that it's fake.