293. An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West (3)
2 (21m 55s):
Well, it depends on the nation, doesn't it? I mean, I think the Japanese have their conception of the nation, which is pretty, there's not a lot of inclusion going on, then I'm a big fan of Japan and, and their culture. You know, one of the things that was, it was, I dunno if you've been to Japan, but it's such a shock going to Japan as a westerner because you feel like a complete barbarian and, and it's an entirely appropriate feeling, you know? And so I sort of understand, you know, people talk, oh, the Japanese think they're superior to everybody. Well, they are. Why wouldn't they? You know, but, but, but they think of a nation very much in ethnic terms. And there are many countries around the world that, that think about it in that way too equally, there are more Imperial countries or countries that have a history of imperialism, like Britain, like the United States, like Russia, by the way, which have a much more inclusive vision, ironically, even Russia, which is a deeply racist country.
2 (22m 50s):
Of course there is no because it's an empire and not a country. There's a sort of feeling that, well, you know, we may not be ethnically Russian, but we're all part of the, the Russian idea, the Russian nation. And so in the UK, it seems to me the way I think about it first and foremost is it's not about your skin color or your ethnicity. What it's about is do you speak the language and do you buy into the values and do you live in this society and are you willing to make yourself part of this society? That's the beauty to me of the American structure, particularly the melting pot idea. Whereas look, you, you, you may be of whatever descent that you are and your wife, as of whatever descent that she is.
2 (23m 31s):
And if I ever come and live in America, I'll be of the dissent that I am. And we are, you know, African American, even though I hate that term personally, but you know, German American or Irish American or Italian American, we're all American. That's the way I think about it. And so that's, to me, the way that we should all be thinking about it in the societies that are, multi-ethnic like the ones that you and I live in. And it's likewise in Britain, you know, the, the, the idea that you are only British, if you were born here and you can trace your lineage back to William, the conqueror seems to me a bit silly, I think in, in a society that particularly these descended from a large Imperial nation, what should determine whether you're British or not is first and foremost, are you willing to speak the, the, the English language and make yourself part of this society and subscribe to its core tenants and values?
2 (24m 20s):
And I believe that's the case in America too, at least what in its sort of idealistic conception.
1 (24m 25s):
I think this, this idea underlies some of what's behind the war in Ukraine, you know, to what extent are Ukrainians part of the west, or are they Russian? Is it this dun bass region? They, they really are Russian and they wanna be part of Russia or is that a bunch of bullshit we're getting from Putins, you know, PR people or, you know, and I don't know what to make of that because I only connect access the, you know, Western media. How do you think about that in terms of this kind of nationalism idea? Is there an argument to be made that some of those Ukrainians should be in Russia? Well,
2 (24m 60s):
Well of there are, I have members of my own family in, in Russia and in Ukraine and I have family members who, who are in Ukraine, who are Russian speakers, who, who are not ethnic Ukrainians, by the way, most of them support Ukraine's position and Ukraine's defense and this after being invaded. But there are people undoubtedly in Ukraine, a small minority of people who were there. You, you gotta understand. It's like if, if the, if the United States was to, to split in two, let's say there would be a lot of Iowans who happen to be living in Texas at the time of the split. I'm not sure that would necessarily entitle Iowa to invade Texas, even if that's geographically possible.
2 (25m 41s):
My American geographies, not, not particularly good, so probably not geographically possible, but you see what I'm saying. There were people who were left over in Ukraine because the Soviet union was a country that mixed and Ukraine has a long and complicated history. But the idea that, that this invasion is predicated on, which is that Russian speakers in Eastern Ukraine and Don bass were oppressed or discriminated against is complete garbage. My most of my family, pretty in fact, all of my family and I have people in the north and the south and the east and the west of Ukraine, they're all Russian speakers and overwhelmingly supported.
2 (26m 25s):
Ukraine started learning Ukraine and ironically to the point where they will deliberately speak their terrible Ukrainian to be, to show their allegiance to the country, even though they're actually naturally Russian speakers, there were. And by the way, there are people who were more pro Russian before they saw what Russia is doing. Doing. I had an interesting conversation with a very close friend of mine who was very pro Russian. And when I called him up on the day on of the invasion, I said, how, how are things going? And he said, everything is going as it should. Well, doesn't think that way, three months later, or six months later at all, let me tell you so, but of course the Russian version of this story is very much this because, you know, they, they, the, shall I go, the, the Russian defense minister was speaking to his generals earlier this month.
2 (27m 17s):
And he basically said, yeah, we're rebuilding this. The USSR and everything will be fine. The speech that Vladimir Putin gave on the night before the invasion had, there was nothing, there was almost nothing about this fake genocide and the Don bass or whatever. It was all about. How, how basically Ukraine had been unfairly split off from the Russian empire and later the Soviet union and things had been given to, to Ukraine that didn't belong to it. And so on and so forth. And Russian soldiers bled for this land. And now it's been given away to these people. So it's, it's the Imperial project is very much upon us. It's, it's the idea of rebuilding the empire and all of this other bullshit that you keep hearing from these supposed dissident voices in the west, who are just clearly, you see, this is what people don't understand.
2 (28m 6s):
All you have to do is watch Russian television for about five minutes in cuz you, you need to speak Russian for this and have access to it, to understand where all these brilliant dissidents in the west are getting there incredibly insightful information from they just rehashing the same thing. And there is a, I haven't talked about this in public, but there's a very interesting like RT to Western dissident, dissident like pipeline, which I've observed in action almost like live it's fascinating. So a few months ago there was a missile strike on a railroad hub in Don BAAs, in Eastern Ukraine in which a number of civilians were killed by Taika UU, the Russian missile.
2 (28m 50s):
And within a few seconds of this being published, I saw that Russian propaganda channels were putting this out. And then within a few more seconds, I saw that there's, there's this guy who I won't even bother naming, cause I don't wanna give him any attention, but this guy. So he was a pickup artist who then moved to Huff in Ukraine, in Northern Ukraine. And he was doing his brilliant pickup artistry there, tricking women into sleeping with him or whatever, teaching other guys to do that. And then suddenly he became an expert on Russian Ukrainian, military politics. And several days before the invasion, he said that nobody in their right mind thinks that Russia would invade.
2 (29m 33s):
And of course the next day Russia invaded. But anyway, when this massage strike happened within a few minutes, he, he posted on Twitter and on his telegram channel that this missile is not in Russia's arsenal. Now, I don't know how a pickup artist familiarizes himself with Russia's missile arsenal, but he somehow did. Despite the fact that Russia, the Russian defense, YouTube defense force, YouTube channel had a, a video of them firing this missile out, still live on the YouTube channel, right? So this guy is clearly getting his information from somewhere. He's not himself deciding whether Russia has this missile or not, and he's not doing any fact checking.
2 (30m 15s):
He just takes what RT post or whatever post puts it in the Western domain and feeds it to people who are so disillusioned. And by the way, rightly so with Western mainstream media that they're lapping this stuff up. So this is what people I don't think understand particularly well about what's happening in Russian Ukraine at the moment, there's two wars going on. There's the kinetic war on the ground. And then there's the propaganda war that is being waged very effectively and very aggressively against gullible people here in the west in order to persuade them that this is yet another issue in which the mainstream media is lying. And unfortunately, it's, it's quite difficult to argue against because the mainstream media has been lying on many, many important issues over recent years.
1 (30m 56s):
In other words, the Russian people themselves probably think this is a good idea. This is normal. Ukraine does belong part of our country and so on because they're only getting that perspective.
2 (31m 7s):
Yeah.
1 (31m 7s):
Let me give you an example of this. I,
2 (31m 9s):
Well, the, the Russian perspective.
1 (31m 11s):
Yeah. So, well, when I was in Moscow, sorry, Michael, I saw that there's a huge world war II museum. And I love all that world war II stuff. And I go to all the museums I can. So, and I went there and the first thing I noticed is it's not a world war II museum. It's the great patriotic war museum, right? And from their perspective, you know, world war II is not at all what we think it is. They think of it. They pretty much singlehandedly stop the Nazis themselves. And when you look at the number of deaths, casualties, and deaths, you know, they have this huge room with this giant ceiling, with these crystal beads hanging down, each bead is like 10,000 deaths or whatever. And each string of beads is like a hundred thousand people that died.
1 (31m 51s):
And the entire ceiling is filled with these things, with lights, lighting them up, it's really quite dramatic. What was it like 27 million died. Russians died in, in the second world war versus America. Was it even half a million casualties in, in the UK, even less. So I, I kind of see from their perspective, yeah. That that's a very different view of history than what we have in the west. And, and therefore, I, you know, try to
2 (32m 16s):
Not Acura though. It's not accurate though, Michael, because look, the Soviet, my great-grandfather died defending the Soviet union along with many others. And, and the heroism of all the people who helped stop Nazim is UN beyond question. But you have to understand this sort of counting the dead is sort of like measuring the outcome of an NFL game by who, which side got the most concussions. That's not really how you do it. Right? The, the, the Nazis were defeated by the combined forces of three gray empires. I'm a big world war II buffer, as you're about to tell the British empire, the American empire and the Soviet empire, these three forces together combined and worked very, very hard and, and lost a lot to, to stop the Nazis.
