#expressing fear
A few mostly self-centered comments about this week’s major world crisis: I’ve always been weak at world history and understanding most foreign affairs and don’t have enough background to really issue a judgment on Russia’s attack on Ukraine and what other countries (like the US) should do about it. I do find the idea of a country invading another country in general to be stomach-twisting and feel horrible for the Ukrainian people (and have known many Russians and a few Ukrainians over the years so this doesn’t feel as remote to me as some world events have). Everything I’ve known of Putin has given me the impression of him as a power-mongering and malicious person.
I can’t help but notice that pretty much all of the voices I hear from the Left (so, almost all the voices I hear) around me are denouncing this attack and professing total support for Ukraine in pretty absolute terms. All this said, I’ve long learned to distrust the notion that anything could be quite so black and white and wonder how much of this is the kneejerk tendency from the Left to side with whichever party is smaller and weaker. Or is this really morally equivalent to Nazi Germany invading other countries after all? I don’t know.
What I do know is that I only have so much tolerance for people on the internet around me going on about a possible World War III – I notice the same urge-to-freak-out reaction in myself as in January 2021(andother times around summer 2020) when people sounded like they were preparing for a civil war. Back then I was like 70% sure this was an exaggerated panic, but 70% wasn’t good enough for me to not feel like I was going to start to panic myself and I had to learn to limit how much of the social side of the internet I was consuming. With this being a non-US affair, I have much less certainty in my ability to assess whether comments about WWIII are an overreaction or not. But I might have to start limiting my internet activity again (the fact that I happen to have a ton of personal/professional stress at the moment doesn’t help).
(Also, what’s up with that meme I’m seeing about letting Gen Zers help you through this because they grew up preparing for nuclear war and something about cold pop tarts in foil… the part about their generation being the one that spent the most time preparing for nuclear war has to be tongue-in-cheek, right? I don’t even know anymore.)
