Many thanks to everyone who donated yesterday! The military and the volunteers who are helping them already got significant contributions . One reaction:
"We have got $1200 within 2 hrs, are shocked and already buying headsets, uniform parts etc. We are thankful unlimitedly"
This help is more important than many presume. Much of the Ukrainian armed forces are essentially the citizen levy, like the territorial defence. For example Borden Markovskyi used to work as a recruitment lead in a software company before the war started linkedin.com/in/bohdan-mark…
You can read his account with google translate. Much of the territorial defence is decentralised acting as the guerrilla troops. They know what equipment/clothes/medicine they need much better than the central command does. You can donate them directly
There's another reason for direct private donations. Many exaggerate how easy it is for Ukraine to get a material support from the Western governments. Consider this misleading statement about the "largely unimpeded support" from the yesterday's article warontherocks.com/2022/05/would-…
The argument about Ukraine getting the "largely unimpeded materiel support from the West" is misleading, whether intentionally or unintentionally. In fact, this war demonstrated that there is no "West". There are various Western governments with very different policies and agenda
Consider Europe. While the United Kingdom provided quick and well-targeted material support for the Ukrainian armed forces, Germany largely sabotaged it and is still sabotaging, breaking its own promises. See the article: welt.de/politik/auslan…
The argument about the supposed United West, providing massive and unimpeded support to Ukraine is wrong because no such West exists in reality. It's cheap propaganda. The war revealed the inner divisions within the West that had previously remained invisible for the public
The private donations to the Ukrainian armed forces are necessary largely because *some* Western governments are not really willing to help. They are not even willing to fulfil their own promises made earlier. That's why individual citizens have to step up
Once again thanks a lot to everyone who donated to the links I posted yesterday (all collected and verified by @sumlenny). In the future I am planning to post more of such threads to collect more help for the armed forces and for the volunteers
PS here's a yesterday's thread with the links for donations
Many are trying to explain his success with some accidental factors such as his “personal charisma”, Cuomo's weakness etc
Still, I think there may be some fundamental factors here. A longue durée shift, and a very profound one
1. Public outrage does not work anymore
If you look at Zohran, he is calm, constructive, and rarely raises his voice. I think one thing that Mamdani - but almost no one else in the American political space is getting - is that the public is getting tired of the outrage
Outrage, anger, righteous indignation have all been the primary drivers of American politics for quite a while
For a while, this tactics worked
Indeed, when everyone around is polite, and soft (and insincere), freaking out was a smart thing to do. It could help you get noticed
People don’t really understand causal links. We pretend we do (“X results in Y”). But we actually don’t. Most explanations (= descriptions of causal structures) are fake.
There may be no connection between X and Y at all. The cause is just misattributed.
Or, perhaps, X does indeed result in Y. but only under a certain (and unknown!) set of conditions that remains totally and utterly opaque to us. So, X->Y is only a part of the equation
And so on
I like to think of a hypothetical Stone Age farmer who started farming, and it worked amazingly, and his entire community adopted his lifestyle, and many generations followed it and prospered and multiplied, until all suddenly wiped out in a new ice age
1. Normative Islamophobia that used to define the public discourse being the most acceptable form of racial & ethnic bigotry in the West, is receding. It is not so much dying as rather - failing to replicate. It is not that the old people change their views as that the young do not absorb their prejudice any longer.
In fact, I incline to think it has been failing to replicate for a while, it is just that we have not been paying attention
Again, the change of vibe does not happen at once. The Muslim scare may still find (some) audience among the more rigid elderly, who are not going to change their views. But for the youth, it is starting to sound as archaic as the Catholic scare of know nothings
Out of date
2. What is particularly interesting regarding Mamdani's victory, is his support base. It would not be much of an exaggeration to say that its core is comprised of the young (and predominantly white) middle classes, with a nearly equal representation of men and women
What does Musk vs Trump affair teach us about the general patterns of human history? Well, first of all it shows that the ancient historians were right. They grasped something about nature of politics that our contemporaries simply can’t.
Let me give you an example. The Arab conquest of Spain
According to a popular medieval/early modern interpretation, its primary cause was the lust of Visigoth king Roderic. Aroused by the beautiful daughter of his vassal and ally, count Julian, he took advantage of her
Disgruntled, humiliated Julian allied himself with the Arabs and opens them the gates of Spain.
Entire kingdom lost, all because the head of state caused a personal injury to someone important.
One thing you need to understand about wars is that very few engage into the long, protracted warfare on purpose. Almost every war of attrition was planned and designed as a short victorious blitzkrieg
And then everything went wrong
Consider the Russian war in Ukraine. It was not planned as a war. It was not thought of as a war. It was planned as a (swift!) regime change allowing to score a few points in the Russian domestic politics. And then everything went wrong
It would not be an exaggeration to say that planning a short victorious war optimised for the purposes of domestic politics is how you *usually* end up in a deadlock. That is the most common scenario of how it happens, practically speaking
Global politics are usually framed in terms of kindergarten discourse (“good guys” vs “bad guys”) with an implication that you must provide “good guys” with boundless and unconditional support
BUT
Unconditional support is extremely corrupting, and turns the best of the best into the really nasty guys, and relatively fast
Part of the reason is that neither “bad” nor “good” guys are in fact homogenous, and present a spectrum of opinions and personalities. Which means that all of your designated “good guys” include a fair share of really, really nasty guys, almost by definition.
Purely good movements do not really exist
That is a major reason why limitless, unconditional, unquestioning support causes such a profound corrupting effect upon the very best movement. First, because that movement is not all
that purely good as you imagine (neither movement is),