Some More News - SMN: War Is Bad

Episode Date: April 6, 2022

Hi. In today's episode, we discuss Ukraine, Russia, the war between Russia and Ukraine, other wars, why war is bad, why nuclear war is worse, and maybe no more wars? We now have a MERCH STORE! Check it out here: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/somemorenews Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/some-more-news/id1364825229 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ebqegozpFt9hY2WJ7TDiA?si=5keGjCe5SxejFN1XkQlZ3w&dl_branch=1 Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/even-more-news Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/somemorenews Athletic Greens will give you an immune-supporting FREE 1 year supply of Vitamin D AND 5 free travel packs with your first purchase if you visit http://athleticgreens.com/morenews today. When you purchase a 3-month Babbel subscription, you'll get an additional 3 months for FREE. That's 6 months, for the price of 3! Just go to http://BABBEL.com and use promo code MORENEWS. That's B-A-B-B-E-L dot com, code MORENEWS. Babbel—Language for life. Go to http://magicspoon.com/MORENEWS to grab a variety pack and try it today! And be sure to use our promo code MORENEWS at checkout to save five dollars off your order! Follow us on social media! Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomeMoreNews Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SomeMoreNews/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SomeMoreNews/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@somemorenews Source List: https://docs.google.com/document/d/12fO_yfI2ccJhjDY7hTlFr_XnZz9OF-v4ldjrrGdiBkk/edit?usp=sharingSupport the show!: http://patreon.com.com/somemorenewsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hello! And here's some news. War! The Republic is crumbling under attacks by the ruthless Sith Lord Count Dooku. There are heroes on both sides. Evil is everywhere. In a stunning move, the fiendish droid leader,

General Grievous, has swept in... This seems... Okay, yeah, so everything I just said was wrong. Except for the first part. But everything else, no. Not sure where that other stuff came from. There's just no way to know where that stuff came from. All right, we're gonna try again.

War! It's bad. And a bummer. But we have to talk about war today. Not that one. That's the Ethiopian Civil War. No, we have to talk about the war. Yeah, one. That's the Ethiopian civil war. No, we have to talk about the war. Yeah, that's not that one either.

Nope, that's also not it. No, no. I mean, that one's a given. Christ, we did? Like recently? Okay, I'm sorry. I have to put a stop to this because we could highly unfortunately keep doing this bit.

Today, of course, we're going to be talking about the Russian military's invasion of Ukraine. And you know, it's gonna be grim. If I could do an hour about Will Smith, Cobra Striking Chris Rock, I would, but I can't. Or more specifically, don't want to. So the background and details behind this Russian invasion are widely reported, but just to make sure

we're all oriented before we dig in and bury ourselves in news, here is the super short version. For years, Russian President Vladimir Putin has taken an aggressive position against Ukraine, pretty much ever since the 2014 ouster of then Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who enraged his populace when he suddenly backed out

of a planned free trade agreement with the European Union. After that, Putin annexed Crimea, a peninsula in the Black Sea, attached to Southern Ukraine, and made frequent comments suggesting that Ukraine should be way more influenced by Russia than by the West. After all, Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union for nearly 70 years,

so Putin's been generally sore for the last few decades about his waning influence on a former republic that appeared to be westernizing. He was triggered by it. Most Ukrainians have been pretty consistent in wanting to remain an independent country and have long been wary of Putin's intentions, even though there are pro-Russian pockets

in the eastern portion of the country, known as the Donbass, which have been partially controlled by separatists for some time. Then in late February, after surrounding Ukraine with Russian troops, Putin said he was carrying out a special military operation. Now here in the US,

we're very used to playful euphemisms about special operations for enduring freedom, where we send Liberty projectiles into civilian prone areas in order to create Patriot ignitions. So it was immediately clear what was actually happening. He can call it a touring puppet show if he wants, but it's an invasion, and this invasion has been brutal.

It's involved relentless missile assaults on heavily populated areas and resulted in an unknown thousands of deaths among the Ukrainian military, Russian military, and Ukrainian civilians. The invasion started six weeks ago, and this is our first video about it. And that is intentional.

Putting aside the element that what we do takes time to research and write and shoot and edit and pray to our blood god for a bountiful view harvest, the immediate carnage of war is so despairing and unnecessary and gut-wrenching that there's often not much more to say at the outset other than war is terrible, war is awful, war is punishing and cruel and ruins lives and ends lives.

And there's no reasonable justification for starting one. I don't think that's controversial to say and we might as well make it the title of the episode. War Bad. That's right, war. War bad. That's right, war... Bad, not a fan of war. Boo, war! Maybe we can find a more complex point to land on,

but for now, I think that's a fair statement. Anyway, commenting on the war, trying to make sense of it, and putting forth possible solutions brings with it some problems. Because Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a situation none of us can do anything about on the individual level. We can donate to humanitarian efforts, sure, and we of course should, but we're otherwise stuck

hoping for whatever outcome is going to result in the least amount of destruction, displacement, and death. The only thing we're really left to do is comment, release a meme, change our profile picture to a Ukrainian flag, Twitter mute the name Sean Penn, post a statement, say something. And for the first time in what seemed like a while, at the very start of the invasion,

there wasn't even a lot of fighting among America's political parties. The absence of a clear division between what the left and right thought about the issue led to some fun short-circuiting amongst several grifters who had no obvious way to politicize the issue. For example, the up-and-coming dipshit J.D. Vance initially took this bold stance on the issue. I don't, I gotta be honest with you, I don't really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another. I do care about the fact that in my community right now, the leading cause of death among 18 to 45 year olds is Mexican fentanyl that's coming across the southern border.

I'm sick of Joe Biden focusing on the border of a country I don't care about while he lets the border of his own country become a total war zone. The Republican candidate for the Senate election in Ohio would go on to double down on this Ukraine shrew crane policy, weirdly using it as a way to talk about Mexican fentanyl up until one of his fellow GOP opponents played the masterful move of actually saying something about the country and releasing a statement of support on Twitter. This prompted Vance to realize

that he was actually supposed to have an educated or any opinion on foreign policy, to which he quickly did a 180 and put out a statement of his own, highlighting how much he totally definitely cares about the people of Ukraine. Much like his opponent, his statement perfectly manages to be drenched in partisan spittle

as Vance credits the strength of Donald Trump's presidency as I guess the reason Putin didn't invade earlier. Donald Trump being a man that Vance initially called reprehensible and wrote an entire op-ed about him being bad until furiously backpedaling the moment he ran for Senate because JD Vance is basically just a mid-tier succession character.

And while we're on the subject, if you're wondering if Trump also had no fucking clue what stance to take on Ukraine, the answer is yes. I said, this is genius. Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine, of Ukraine. Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that's wonderful. So Putin is now saying it's independent, a large section of Ukraine. I said, how smart is that? And he's going to go in and be a peacekeeper. That's the strongest peace force. We could use that on our southern border.

That's the strongest peace force I've ever seen. There were more army tanks than I've ever seen. They're going to keep peace all right. Well, my reaction is it's so sad because this would have never happened. If we had the Trump administration, there was no chance that this would happen. And I know him well. And this was not something that was going to happen at all. Oh, Putin, you savvy genius,

doing a horrible, no good peacekeeping that's still very bad, but also something we should do at our own border with our peace tanks. That's our Trump, the guy who had an entire impeachment for withholding aid to Ukraine. The guy who just last week publicly asked Putin

to use this war with America to release dirt on Biden in order to help his party. Just doing a little casual treason, I guess. What an absolute treasure, no notes. But these aren't the only two sweaty wads that had absolutely no business weighing in on this war, which is why within the span of like 24 hours, we saw people suggesting that it was caused by

dark psychic forces, that everyone should just chill out and enjoy the apocalypse vibes, that the conflict can only be understood in terms of Star Wars characters, or Marvel characters, or in terms of a superhero you yourself play on TV, or that the war was caused by US inclusion initiatives, or trans people, or trans people, or trans people, or that you think it was somehow caused by trans people.

It was both pretty fucking embarrassing and extremely typical for social media. And I guess that brings us to perhaps a more honed in premise for this video that we would call We Need to Talk About How We Talk About War. would call, We Need to Talk About How We Talk About War. Our society has adapted, especially online, to favor knee-jerk reactions that fit into our already existing discourse. Russia's invasion of Ukraine,

setting off unknown geopolitical forces that could shape the next several decades of foreign policy decisions, might, just might, not be about vibes or fandom or Mexico or whatever bullshit culture war thing you are trying to fight today. Hell, a cringy poem about how Vladimir Putin probably wasn't loved enough as a kid

is among the least of our problems, especially with the amount of confusion and misinformation that became rampant in the days after the invasion. For example, this Ukrainian tank that racked up millions of views on TikTok is from 2014. This guy singing Endless Love is not Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. And that Ukrainian girl confronting a Russian soldier

was actually a 12 year old Palestinian girl confronting an Israeli soldier a decade ago. And once that was revealed, it magically ceased to be powerful or shareable, I guess. Funny how that works. And more on that later. One of the most shared stories in the early part of the war concerned the so-called Ghost of Kyiv,

an ace Ukrainian fighter pilot who supposedly shot down at least half a dozen Russian planes within a few days of the start of the invasion. The widely shared video, however, was fake, created in the video game digital combat simulator world. And there's been no confirmation that any single fighter pilot exists. In the days that followed,

a number of other posts popped up purporting to reveal the Ghost of Kyiv's identity, or at least suggesting that he really did exist. The Ukrainian military hasn't confirmed the pilot's existence, though they certainly haven't shied away from using the mysterious character to promote a narrative. What makes the Ghost of Kyiv story so interesting

is that it's not just made up out of nowhere. Ukrainian pilots and anti-aircraft defenses have shot down plenty of Russian jets, and there may very well be one individual responsible for a huge chunk of those. Like many of the other sick memes of the war's first week, this wasn't a nefarious piece of misinformation, but rather emerged out of half-truths and potential truths

and then morphed into effective propaganda, turning a disturbing situation where people are literally shooting each other out of the sky, war stuff, into a simpler, more cohesive narrative with a single hero fighting evildoers. And of course, we want this to be true. It's been admirable to watch the spirit

of the Ukrainian people in resisting what Putin likely thought would be a cakewalk through easy street just at the corner of Child's Play Avenue. You know the one across from the park, which Putin thought this would be a walkthrough. Like taking territory from a baby. And while yes, the Russian forces are the aggressors here

and we should hope for nothing less than their immediate retreat from a sovereign nation, we should be wary of social media's ability to warp the narrative into a David versus Goliath or a David versus aliens or David versus Kevin Spacey or David versus Kevin Spacey or a David versus aliens or David versus humans via aliens storyline that can vilify a huge group of people

with those classic David allegories. Especially when a big chunk of the aggressor's military may not want to be fighting at all. And a huge portion of the Russian population has been fed so much bullshit that they don't even know what the reality of what's happening is. But that's just what we do these days. We take all the world's complex events

and jam them through our collective and often Western focused good versus evil culture. So yeah, of course the following video exists. Yeesh. Also, oof, plus a wowser or two. Even an... But I do get it. Who doesn't want to think of Zelensky as Captain America

and Vladimir Putin as Thanos? Probably Vladimir Putin, actually. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, certainly. But that's kind of it. And yet, this is an act of aggression from Russia that is killing thousands and displacing millions. The movie about time-traveling war gods fighting a space cult can't possibly reflect

any reasonable opinion about it, through no fault of its own. It's not why they wrote that scene. And the truth is that war is simply too complex and life-shattering and overwhelming to be reasonably boiled down into snappy tweets and reactionary memes, which you can argue is all that social media is really good for.

War isn't viral content, but that's all it can be when reduced to Twitter's level. So we can't look for solutions on a platform that was in no way designed to provide them. That's like asking a swarm of bees for stock tips. Add to this the feeling of shared helplessness that comes with witnessing atrocities half a planet away in the same breath that you're seeing a viral clip

of Anne Hathaway on the Kelly Clarkson show, and you get to an uncomfortable place where everyone feels strongly compelled to post through it, even though we're not the people going through it, and the it is a fucking war. Boy, we need to keep talking about this whole war dilly, but I would be remiss if I didn't kick it over to an awkward ad break first. So enjoy these tonally inconsistent ads for various products, and then we'll get back to it.

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And missionary can be hot too, you perverts. What are we talking about? Who am I? We're talking about the mummification of war. You know, really groping the bottom of the barrel to feel the contours of those lumpy dregs. How far down does the barrel go? Do you really have to ask? Look, Russia is now being canceled, right?

It goes very far. Yes, Russia is being canceled or de-platformed and it's US influence canceled culture that's responsible for major US companies like McDonald's being triggered and suspending operations in Russia. You know, the treatment of Vladimir Putin really reminds me of the dunking on of Slobodan Milosevic or the total ratioing of Bashar al-Assad.

Though it's worth inspecting what punishments have been inflicted on Putin and Russia and seeing if it actually counts as what the right wing or the 20 or so op-eds a week would consider cancellation. Primarily, Putin, Russian banks, and Russian billionaires have been hit with sanctions. Many of their foreign held assets have been frozen

and some are subject to travel bans outside of Russia. Though notably for the travel bans, Vladimir Putin was spared. That's right, you might run into him at Disney World next month, or more likely that Wizarding World park, because we're living in just, it's just the glitchiest simulation imaginable.

Anyway, major companies in the Russian economy are further restricted from raising money through the US market, and the US is putting a hold on many tech exports to Russia like chips and computer parts. Of course, one could argue that the people being canceled the most are the Ukrainians who've been killed

or whose homes have been destroyed and who have been forced to flee the country or the people who used to get their wheat from Russia or Ukraine who will now suffer in what the UN says could be a global food crisis. Much like a lot of cancel culture claims, it sure seems like the person comparing themselves to JK Rowling is the one doing all

of the actual canceling. And by canceling, I once again mean murder. But also the restrictions that Putin has put on his population himself are certainly far more vast a cancellation than anything a millionaire turf wizard novelist has endured. Russia has officially blocked access to Instagram. The move is in response to Meta's decision to allow Facebook and Instagram users in some countries to call for violence against Russian soldiers and Vladimir Putin over the invasion of Ukraine. Social media companies have cracked down on hate speech in recent years, but the war has put pressure on Silicon Valley to publicly condemn Russia, but the war has put pressure on Silicon Valley to publicly condemn Russia,

ultimately creating what now some refer to as a, quote, new digital iron curtain. Russia blocked access to Facebook and Twitter in late February, and then cut off Instagram about a week later, which is disastrous if you're trying to get a discount on cosmetics by following your favorite Love Island stars,

Love Island UK, of course. Russia said it was mugging off Twitter and Facebook because the sites had banned state sponsored media. But it's pretty clear that the move was made to restrict the Russian people's access to information the government might not approve of. And look, while we would love to celebrate the revenue hit that Twitter and the company formerly known as Facebook

will take because of this, social media in Russia is also among the primary conduits by which Russians engage with the rest of the world. Russian influencers and media personalities in the hours before Instagram was cut off were asking their fans to follow them on Telegram of all places because it's a platform that can get users

real-time unfiltered reports from Russia and Ukraine and also an orca tank full of misinformation. But it's hard to blame Russians for seeking out information this way. The same day Facebook and Twitter were cut off, Putin signed a law allowing for 15-year prison sentences for anyone reporting information about the Russian armed forces

that Russia deemed to be false. A number of news organizations pulled staff from inside Russia over concerns that their reporters could be imprisoned for any reporting that makes the Russian military look bad. And pretty much all accurate reporting is going to make the Russian military look bad. And pretty much all accurate reporting is going to make the Russian military look bad right now, since they invaded and are blowing up a country

of 44 million people. And Putin himself is still using misinformation and half-truths to his advantage, and is even being aided by right-wing media in the US. But I wonder who could be doing that? In fact, the US.S. Embassy in Kiev has acknowledged joint American and Ukrainian research on other pathogens, such as hemorrhagic fever virus.

Apparently, there's a lot of this going on in Ukraine, funded by the United States. Did you know that? Why Ukraine? We don't know. We can only guess. Oh, grand. Except that we don't have to only guess,

like Turbo Shartzen is saying. We know that there are bio research labs in Ukraine and around the world being funded by the US and that many of these labs are doing research on pathogens. And while it is fair to ask questions about their safety and necessity, it is flat out propaganda to suggest without any evidence that the ones in Ukraine might be secretly developing

bio weapons to use in tandem with the US government. When again, there are labs all over the damn world that do this. But look, this segment is not about trumpet balling friends. We're not here to give him four Pinocchios or six George Costanzas or 12 Jim Carys in the first act of Liar Liar. But that claim that the US and Ukraine

are working jointly on bioweapons labs was rapidly amplified by him after it emerged in relative obscurity. It appears to have started with the since suspended Twitter account WarClandestine, who mused hours after the invasion started that Putin was likely targeting biolabs in Ukraine and tied this to the conspiracy theory

spread by the Russian disinformation apparatus that the US had bioengineered the novel coronavirus in a lab. That musing by literally some guy made its way around QAnon connected social media, then to InfoWars and ultimately to Tucker Carlson. And unfortunately, your eye holes and ear balls. A Kremlin memo from early March

and published by Mother Jones highlighted the bioweapons conspiracy theory featuring the same bullshit talking points highlighted by Tucker Carlson and encouraged state-friendly media outlets to frequently use segments from his show. That's what leads to clips like this, where Russian subtitles appear under Tucker

for broadcast on state-controlled media outlet RT. And I don't know, if a state-sponsored propaganda outlet, not just from Russia, but like anywhere, started using clips of this show to make its argument, especially if that country had just illegally invaded another country. I would take a look at what I was saying and why I might be politically aligned with anyone and doing propaganda for someone cluster bombing residential neighborhoods, a thing I would like to make clear right now that I am against. It's just seems like Tucker Carlson should, if he were an actual person

with feelings, want to walk into the ocean in immense shame, is my point. One of the big issues here is that Putin and his government have been pretty good at using disinformation to their advantage over the years, often utilizing social media to craft the narrative out of flat-out falsehoods, but also out of half-truths or contextless truths, a few quarter-truths in there as well, I'm sure.

Some of the propaganda is easy to spot and dismiss. For example, there's the Russian initiated rumors from the 1980s that the US invented AIDS, and of course the US did not invent AIDS, though they did the only slightly less damning thing of ignoring it and treating it like a big joke for years. There's also the far less successful story that originated on a Russian troll farm

that hundreds of thousands of black children were being kidnapped and their organs harvested. That assertion was roundly mocked online after appearing on Tumblr, but Russian troll accounts were much more successful once they realized that if you want Americans to believe a ridiculous conspiracy theory about Satan worshiping pedophiles,

kidnapping children and harvesting organs, it helps to make those children white. And to make the Satan worshiping pedophiles an entire political party. Then you'll get something out into the world that 16% of Americans still believe. So way to go, Russian trolls, you did it. We always believed in you.

There are also Russian efforts that serve only to confuse and make it so nobody's really sure what is real and what is fake. That's why Russia's Internet Research Agency and other troll farms encourage both protesters and counter protesters on the same issue in Facebook groups in the US. It's why they mock up supposed examples

of Ukraine war misinformation and then debunk it in fake fact checks. If you can't be sure that the trusted resource you're reading isn't really a source of Russian disinformation, how can you really make a judgment? Well, I can, of course. I have my own fact-checking system.

I ask one fact-checker what the other fact-checker would say if I asked him if he was telling the truth. It's very complicated, trust me, but it's worked so far. I've rescued like six babies this way. And then there are things that have an inkling, if you will, a smidge, a scooch, a Spotify artist royalty of truth behind it. Take Putin's argument that part of the reason

he's invading Ukraine is to de-Nazify it. What he's referring to is likely the Azov Battalion, a far-right neo-Nazi group that formed in Ukraine in May, 2014, after Russia invaded and annexed the Crimean Peninsula. This group sucks most, if not all, of the turds. They and other far-right extremists have been accused of attacking migrants

and ethnic minorities in Ukraine. And former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko praised the group for fighting against Russian-backed separatists, ultimately folding them into the Ukrainian National Guard. This is something Ukraine at the time definitely tried to downplay, leading to concerns that not confronting the issue

could bolster Russia's information campaign. Though perhaps a more pressing concern is that not confronting the issue could bolster the number of open neo-Nazis in your National Guard, but okay, whatever. Congress was consistently sending aid to the Ukrainian military since the annexation of Crimea and tried to remove funding that might make its way to the Azov Battalion.

But they lifted this ban following pressure from the Pentagon because the Pentagon loves arming, you know, whoever. So yeah, that's not great. Nobody's argued that it's great or good, in fact. In fact, you could call it bad. But saying that Ukraine requires denazification and thus justifies an invasion

that has already killed scores more people than this fringe group ever has is a real stretch. Especially when you got your own Nazi problem, there's only an estimated 900 people in the group and it doesn't hold any real influence in Ukrainian politics or over the Ukrainian people. Compare that to, you know, the amount of white supremacists in the US,

many of which are members of our own military and police force, perhaps even our actual government. We're stupid with Nazis over here. It's, dare I say, not good. But imagine if one day Mexico or Canada decided to invade the US and claim it's because of the Oath Keepers or some shit like that,

that would be whack and or bogus. But that little kernel of reality that there are neo-Nazis in Ukraine and those guys have fought against Russia in the past has been used as part of its information campaign. Now ironically successful on right-leaning social media to argue that it justifies the unjustifiable. But to be fair and balanced,

maybe it's all true and justifiable and the reason for the invasion. Let's check on the peace talks during which Russia dropped their denazification request. Oh, weird. All right, anyway, given how awful all of this is, the fact that I'm going to ask you to sit quietly and absorb the following ads is reasonable.

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That's good. I'm happy for you. But unfortunately, we need to keep talking about war. Spoilers, that's pretty much this entire episode. There's not going to be a puppet flopping around in this one. I'm sorry and or you are welcome. And while it's sadly typical to take another country's struggles and use them to talk about America, which we will be getting to later, for the moment, that's exactly what I need to do.

Because we're going to see consequences of Russia's actions everywhere. And so we should probably discuss what we're likely to expect here in the United States in terms of a reaction, regardless of how the war in Ukraine continues to develop. We are, after all, a global superpower. So whatever dipshit path we stumble on is going to affect most of the world. First of all, we're inevitably going to see a lot more defense spending because of course we are. There's literally no timeline in which we weren't going to see that happen. The 2022 budget that Joe Biden signed in March allocated a 5.6% increase for defense or $42 billion when he'd only requested a 1.8% increase.

Even before Russia's invasion, this boost was being casually referenced in the media as an absolute necessity to fight any potential future wars against China and Russia. War with China and Russia being two things the media would just hate. Post-invasion, we sold some swanky US-made F-35 fighter jets to Germany, which decided it had no choice

but to sharply increase its defense spending. And we're pushing other NATO countries to do the same. And while non-defense programs also increased by 6.7% in the budget, a lot of those programs are getting less funding than initially thought. This includes critical research projects at the National Institutes of Health.

And you know, I guess that would make sense if we'd fucking knocked it out of the park when it came to public health over the last two years, which we did not do that thing. But at least the downtrodden folks at Raytheon are finally getting a win. Also, as of writing this, the White House just announced their 2023 defense budget

of $813 billion, another 4% increase from this 2022 increase. Oh boy, maybe now we can afford the good drones with the leather seats for where the pilot won't be. We're also likely to see a lot more drilling. This is of course, thanks to the oil hungry drill baby drill rhetoric of the right wing socialist hippie Joe Biden.

Even though Russia's actions are only one of several reasons it was happening, the early weeks of the war corresponded with the highest gas prices seen in American history. It doesn't matter that the price of crude oil dropped in March and gas stations are just gouging us by not dropping their prices. The buck stops here, by which I mean over there on Biden's desk next to all the Prilosec,

which means that he is under increasing pressure to encourage oil companies to drill using the permits they already have and to open up new sites for drilling, even though the Bureau of Land Management already approved a shit ton of new permits in the first year of his presidency. And even though it won't do shit about gas prices over the short term. And like, I guess if we had also knocked it out of the park on that whole climate change thing, this would be fine.

But it turns out we did not do that thing either. And if this trend continues, we'll not only have to suffer high gas prices even when the price of oil goes down, but at least several more months of blazing hot takes like this. Since the invasion, oil prices have skyrocketed. Today, the average gas price in America

hit an all-time record high of over $4 per gallon. Okay, that stings, but a clean conscience is worth a buck or two. I'm willing to pay. It's important. It's important. I'm willing to pay $4 a gallon. Hell, I'll pay $15 a gallon because I drive a Tesla. Get it? Because he's rich and can afford it. But it's easy to shrug off clueless rich people. See, watch as I shrug.

It's less easy to give a pass to an entire political party that's asking people to sacrifice for the greater good, but not offering any financial assistance outside of a few state proposals. Yes, we'll all have to drive less if we're ever going to transition away from fossil fuels and shucks. Maybe better public transportation would help with that.

But high gas prices inevitably hit low-income Americans the hardest, who don't have the luxury of buying an electric car and are forced to drive in America's unfathomably sprawled out cities for groceries, school, and work. Not to mention our nation's struggling arsonists. What are they gonna use now?

Gunpowder? You know how heavy that shit is? Pretty heavy. Finally, in terms of American response, we're going to be dealing with a bunch of cultural Cold War garbage, largely taking the form of anti-Russian sentiment that doesn't really do anything.

Some of this is silly and largely harmless. If your neighborhood bar wants to call a Moscow mule a Kiev mule, okay, whatever. That drink almost certainly originated in the United States in the 1940s anyway, and Bradford, your pistachio bartender, can gleefully call it whatever he wants. But most of these anti-Russian actions

can be damaging and potentially violent. Not only are Russian owned or just Russian sounding businesses being boycotted, but some have been vandalized and their owners threatened. Many of the vandalized businesses, which include Russian restaurants and bakeries, are partially staffed by Ukrainian immigrants. Not that it would make a difference

if it was only Russian people working there, because again, they're not living in Russia. Living in Russia doesn't mean they deserve it either. They're not commanding the Russian armed forces and they did nothing to you. You're not John Wick defending your dead dog. You're just some dick pissing on the door of an Armenian deli.

John Dick, perfect wordplay. Or take the example of 20 year old Russian pianist, Alexander Malafeev. Orchestras across Canada canceled several of his scheduled performances, even after he publicly spoke out against the war. And even though he worried that doing so could endanger his family in Russia.

Malafeev has been a celebrated musician since he was a child and is already at his young age, considered one of the world's greatest pianists. The artistic director of the Vancouver Recital Society said she felt heartbroken by the decision to cancel the show but worried that Malafiev might face protestors or even violence if the performance went forward. Seems silly and perhaps we should reserve these things

for people who have done something wrong and not just someone who knows a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who starched Putin's pants in the 80s. Also, Russian people just like Americans and all humans have memories and people tend to remember how they were treated in times when sentiments lined up against them. Except for the French. They forgot all that Freedom Fries stuff right away.

Too loopy on cognac and le fromage, am I right? Too busy watching the acclaimed work of Alain Resnais and Francois Truffaut. Too busy with their Frenchie parental leave and universal healthcare, fucking jerks. Anyway, to show that being against the war need not be anti-Russian people, I'm going to enjoy a smooth glass of Smirnoff, even though it's distilled and bottled in Norwalk, Connecticut. Let's do this.

That's the stuff. Really quiets the mind pain, you know? And like, hey, maybe all this extra defense spending and anti-Russian stuff will be short-lived. How long did the previous Cold War last? Four and a half decades tops? It'll be 2067 in no time. Paint my insides, you sweet poison. But what's especially wild, at least to me,

isn't the individual stories of misguided anti-Russian events or the sanctions we're about to talk about, but rather that because we are a planet dominated by a handful of trillion dollar conglomerates, they have the power to put the screws to a country that America only wishes it had. PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, American Express,

Goldman Sachs, NASDAQ, and the New York Stock Exchange have all suspended business in Russia. Boeing, Microsoft, IBM, Starbucks, freaking McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and several others have followed suit. Netflix pulled its Russian service. Apple stopped selling products to Russia. And Russia-based Ikea, H& Pepsi, and several others have followed suit. Netflix pulled its Russian service. Apple stopped selling products to Russia.

And Russia-based Ikea, H&M, and Nike locations all closed. Even Ubisoft and EA Games suspended business. So now if you're in Russia, you won't get to play the really fun and good. It's still something. Basically, in addition to the US government targeting the Bank of Russia, virtually every financial institution in the world has just decided that Russia doesn't get to have money anymore. And they also don't get to have Big Macs or planes or telecommunications or mediocre video games or the internet, really. It's a devastating blow. And I guess I just need

to reflect on that for a moment and how like, isn't it wild that we can just shut down a country like it's a roller rink where someone got mugged with a bike lock and there doesn't have to be any official legal government decision to do it. It's just a thing that corporations can unilaterally choose to do and could do again at any point. And while in this case, Russia is definitely the aggressor, it's just kind of shocking to think about how much power corporations have over governments. And we should probably ask ourselves if that's like ultimately a good thing,

that these mostly American-centric companies can make sweeping global changes to kneecap other entire countries whose leaders don't agree with our values. And like, I don't even have an answer for this here. Maybe that's just the price of becoming a global community. But it still seems really goddamn wild to think about. And maybe we shouldn't have corporations that are so big

they can shut down a country. Similarly, we should really re-examine sanctions in general. In case you need a refresher, sanctions are penalties, often economic, that a single or collection of countries inflict on a single government. This is often done with embargoes or tariffs. It's one of the benefits of being part

of a global community. You can all come together and decide as a group that this Putin guy doesn't get to have any more dip for the rest of the party. And they are a way to punish an aggressor nation that is violating international law without starting a war or resorting to violence. Or at least that's how the West presents it

every time we throw sanctions at a country that steps out of line. But that's not really true, is it? Sanctions are indirect acts of violence inflicted on an entire population. Shutting off trade with a country could starve its people. And I'm pretty sure government enforced starvation is somewhere

under the same paragraph of war crimes for dummies as indiscriminate drone strikes and mandatory golden pistols for the dictator's many children. Another equally popular and equally terrible non-violent strategy is the idea of instituting a no-fly zone. According to recent polls, between about half and three quarters of Americans believe that the U.S. and NATO should establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine to prevent Russia from conducting any air operations, including bombardments of civilian targets. In fact, 27 leading experts signed an open letter to the White House imploring President Biden to establish a limited no-fly zone over some areas of Ukraine. The letter states in part, what we seek is the deployment of American and NATO aircraft, not in search of confrontation with Russia, but to avert and deter Russian bombardment

that would result in massive loss of Ukrainian lives. Now, this absolutely sounds like a reasonable idea on paper. Using US and NATO forces to patrol the skies rather than committing to an all-out war will prevent widespread loss of life and limit Russia to a ground invasion. A no-fly zone would also crush the competitive juggling scene, which may be controversial, but it has needed to happen for a while. The thing is, establishing a no-fly zone is a direct confrontation, and Putin has made it extremely clear that he is aware of this. Now we are hearing that a no-fly zone must be established over the territory of Ukraine.

It is impossible to do so over the territory of Ukraine itself. It is possible only from the territory of some neighboring countries. But any move in this direction will be viewed by us as a participation in the armed conflict. He's not wrong. Specifically about this. He's very wrong about a bunch of other stuff. But how do you think a no-fly zone is maintained? By politely asking encroaching aircraft

to land at the nearest convenient airstrip? No, they're enforced with violence. In order to maintain a no-fly zone over Ukraine, US and NATO forces would have to blast Russian planes right out of the goddamn sky like Cuba Gooding Jr. in Pearl Harbor. And hey, there's a segue for you. You know why Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. And hey, there's a segue for you.

You know why Japan attacked Pearl Harbor? Because the US had imposed sanctions that cut off Japan's oil supply. Japan was in the middle of an expensive war and they needed to get their airplane fuel from somewhere. So it was either lose World War II, a world war, or cripple the US fleet to allow them to seize oil rich targets in the Pacific.

Because sanctions, like no-fly zones zones are 100% an act of war. Japan sure thought so, enough to launch the most infamous attack in American military history. Sanctions and no fly zones are not that different from invading a country and laying siege to a granary. The point is to deny vital resources and cock up battlefield strategy. It's like letting the air out of Lightning McQueen's tires

before a big race. It doesn't seem like war because he didn't even notice you doing it, even though the tires are literally part of his body. So I guess that would be like someone draining all the blood out of your feet. But while it's not directly violent, it could cost him the race and potentially cause a crash

that will send him pinwheeling into the stands to mangle scores of innocent bystanders with his horrible metal corpse. So maybe the idea of putting Russia's back to the wall with crippling economic sanctions in a no-fly zone, which again, can only be enforced via military action, is an act of war too. And again, it sure seems like Putin sees it that way.

Even more tellingly, experts who are advocating for a no-fly zone in Ukraine are fully aware that it is effectively an act of war and that Russia will almost certainly view it as such. Retired US Air Force General and stone-faced gambler of fate, Philip Breedlove, explained that establishing a no-fly zone wouldn't just be about keeping planes out of the sky.

It would also include taking out any defense systems, such as artillery, that could fire into the no-fly zone, which would mean bombing into enemy territory. And according to General Breedlove, they all acknowledge that. Cool, man. Thank you for acknowledging. And while Pearl Harbor was a failure

in terms of accomplishing Japan's goals, Russia has something that 1940s Japan did not. A mountainous buttload of nukes, enough nukes to fill the ass of a mythological giant, like Shrek. Russia has several Shrek's ass loads of nukes. Despite sounding like a relatively clean-handed, long-distance solution to a formal declaration of war,

a no-fly zone risks pulling the US and NATO into a direct conflict with Russia. That would essentially start World War III, the ET2 of wars, the sequel we've been talking about for decades, but hasn't managed to come together yet. Even a limited no-fly zone would seriously increase the risk of nuclear escalation. So are we just not aware of that?

Or do we not care? Yup, you guessed it. It's the second thing. And the first thing. And just like ET2, there's like a fringe group of weirdos who are totally looking forward to World War III. And by fringe, I mean a bunch of United States politicians. It could mean that we participate and I would not rule that out. I would not rule out American troops on the ground. We don't, do you know, we don't rule out first use nuclear. Last December, Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker said the US shouldn't rule out first use nuclear strikes

and ground forces against Russia. He said this on TV. He went on TV and casually floated the idea of the United States launching a preemptive nuclear strike on Russia as though it were an equally plausible and reasonable course of action to sending ground troops. Perennial ghoul and professional tanning bed spokesman Anthony Scaramucci tweeted in early March that the U.S. should target Russian nuclear reactors, arguing that it's only a matter of time before Putin starts letting the nukes fly,

so we might as well get in there early. Like we're trying to beat Putin to the KitchenAid mixers on Black Friday. And the benefit of hitting a nuclear reactor means you get to drop a nuke without actually dropping a nuke. Clever backdoor way to commit a preemptive war crime, you leathery scamp. I can see why Trump liked you so much

for an extremely brief window of time. And speaking of which, who could forget all the times our previous commander in chief, that wet airbrushed body pillow of Michael Douglas, casually suggesting shooting nukes at absolutely everything, including a literal hurricane. Trump, like many armchair tough guys and politicians, his age was just rock hard for nukes.

He spent his administration doubling the US's arsenal of low yield nukes, pulling the US out of two treaties meant to monitor and limit nuclear proliferation. He also expanded the list of national threats that would justify a nuclear retaliation to include a major hacking event. Let me hit that a little harder. The United States officially gave itself permission to drop a fucking nuke in response to a cyber attack.

It's no surprise that this humanoid butter sculpture is now suggesting that America should commit false flag attacks against Russia by bombing them with planes disguised as Chinese aircraft. You know, just instigating a fun little war between two dictatorial superpowers with robust nuclear arsenals so we don't have to spend any of our own money on a war with no potential for profit. It is absolutely wild how many world-ending ideas are being loudly stated by political leaders. We have somehow normalized this idea of collective punishment so much that we had fairytale riddle keeper and alleged Senator Lindsey Graham publicly call for Putin's assassination on both Twitter and then national television. I hope he'll be taken out one way or the other. I don't care how they take him out. I don't care if we send him to the Hague and try him. I just want him to go. Yes, I'm on record. Hey, Lindsey, stop it. Hey! Lindsay! Stop it!

Government officials can't publicly muse about murdering world leaders. That has a massive geopolitical ripple effect, not the least of which being that now both Putin and the entire world think the U.S. might be planning on murdering Russia's president. True, he's a dick, and president in this context is just another

word for dictator for life, and frankly, he absolutely should not remain in power. But for a politician to say it aloud without any sort of plan is, it's super irresponsible. Like imagine if the president said something like that. Darn, that's not good. Like again, I don't disagree with Biden, but people tend to get a little nervous

when the United States casually suggests what sure sounds like a regime change. We sort of have a history with that, like a really, really, really, really, really, really long history with that. So maybe it's not good for a president to like, say it out loud as a fucking ad lib and then blame it on being Irish.

So why are so many people rock hard, just paralyzingly turgid for causing a nuclear war? In part, it's because there's a widespread belief in America that the US would not only survive nuclear war, but would be totally fine. Because the US has been more or less totally fine and free from the majority of the consequences of even traditional warfare,

pretty much since its inception. Back in February, Joy Behar lamented to her co-hosts on The View that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine was going to interrupt her plans to vacation in Italy. "'If the nukes start flying, "'it's going to interrupt more than a few European vacations "'and I don't mean viewings of the film European Vacation.'" I don't only mean that.

The point is, that's the level of consideration some American people generally have for global conflict and the threat of nuclear war. At best, it doesn't seem real to us because we never experienced the majority of the effects of war, because the US is an island far distant from the rest of the world's superpowers. We don't face the regular threat of invasion. We've never fought a modern war on our own soil.

There's barely been any wars fought in America except against ourselves and the British twice, but Cornwallis wasn't sitting on a nest of ICBM silos at Yorktown and the Brits didn't drop a nuke on the white house in the war of 1812. War is long, ugly, violent chaos that decimates the population and brings cities to ruin. The United States has simply never experienced that on a modern scale.

So we think things like no-fly zones and sanctions and drone strikes and bombing raids and casually suggesting nuclear conflict aren't a huge deal. Or perhaps these people are daring nuclear war because they do know what it means, but also think that America is somehow destined to come out on top. It's an idea called dispensationalism,

first popularized by evangelical writer and right-wing uber twerp, Hal Lindsey, and it's derived from the Bible. Basically, a nuclear war would wipe the slate clean for the whole planet and America would emerge victorious and in more or less the same condition, ready to reshape the world and lead it into a glorious future under the rule of King America.

That's batshit, like objectively guano. If that had come out of Skeletor's mouth, Beastman would have called an ambulance. And yet you could argue that the belief in a righteous Armageddon isn't at all fringe. And in fact, was shared by at least one modern president of the United States.

You can probably guess which one. So with all of that in mind, I sure think we need to take a moment and explain what a nuclear bomb actually does. Are we all ready? It's a brand new segment that we're calling Ednucation with Cody J. Wow, that was perfect, perfect segment title.

Okay, so here's what a nuclear bomb actually does, because it seems like entirely too many people need a refresher. The immediate detonation of a nuke creates a fireball of plasma one mile across that is hotter than the sun. You know the one. Anything caught within that fireball just vaporizes.

And I'm not being cheeky or hyperbolic. I mean, it literally actually vaporizes. People, buildings, trees, micro buses, bike messengers, pizza rats, groundhogs, hedgehogs, mustaches, overdue library books, promptly returned library books. Everything is just gone. The explosion creates a flash of light that generates a plasma wave that stretches out

for as far as eight miles from the blast, which is powerful enough to ignite everything it touches. So that means everything within about 200 square miles is now on fire in roughly one second. That's like an episode of Dragon Ball Z where everyone was drunk. Godzilla couldn't put up those numbers and not just because he doesn't exist.

Then a shockwave of wind stronger than any hurricane or tornado in recorded history flattens the area in the immediate vicinity of the blast. And although the shockwave weakens just a tiny bit as it expands outward, it's still strong enough to obliterate most houses and non-reinforced buildings for up to 175 square kilometers or nearly 70 miles. The mushroom cloud, where all so rock hard to see, is a plume of dust and ash that used to be the population of a city. And that mushroom cloud sucks in even more air and

debris like a vacuum, laying waste to anything left standing. And the casualties of this are arguably the lucky ones. The explosion isn't the sole point of a nuke. And while this humble news merchant apparently made the foolish fucking mistake of believing that was common knowledge, it evidently needs to be repeated for the cheap seats. You know, the ones occupied

by literal presidents and senators. A nuke's long game is fallout, basically to scorch the earth by poisoning an entire population center with radiation. The fallout risk is greatest during the first 48 hours after the explosion. Roughly half of the people exposed to radiation in the direct vicinity of the blast

will die of radiation poisoning. Those who don't die right away can linger for days or weeks, ultimately succumbing to either an obliterated immune system unable to fight infections or their digestive systems literally shutting down. Other survivors exposed to fallout are at an extremely high risk of developing cancer for the rest of their lives.

According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, more than 10,000 survivors of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been treated over the past 70 years, with most of the deaths in this group attributed to some form of cancer. Leukemia rates in the survivors who were exposed to radiation

were four to five times higher than the typical levels for the first 15 years after the bombs were dropped. It's important to note that the fallout in Japan was local, meaning it was confined to the blast zones. But we have spent the past 80 years supersizing these things like a fry cook on acid. Modern nuclear weapons have gotten exponentially more devastating

and launched radioactive dust into the stratosphere, which allows for global fallout. Then there's nuclear winter. Just 100 of the bombs, the size of the ones the US used to heroically murder generations of people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, would lower global temperatures enough to cause a mini ice age in which Manny, Sid,

and the charming rat beast are all drenched with bone cancer. The sudden extreme drop in temperature would trigger a global famine by destroying crops and destabilizing agriculture. Current nuclear bombs are over 50 times more powerful than the two dropped on Japan in 1945, which means it would only take two of those

to plunge the entire planet into nuclear winter. And even if the blast were smaller or less nuky, there's still the problem of fallout poisoning agriculture. In a 2017 interview with Live Science, provoked by the famous fire and fury rant then-President Trump hooted out of his Malapulgian windhole, co-director emeritus at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation, Michael May, said that in a place like Ukraine, which produces 10% of the world's wheat supply, Fallout could contaminate the crops and the soil,

passing delicious cancer onto any people or livestock who consume it, potentially for several years after the blast. This isn't classified information. We made an entire series of best-selling video games about this exact concept and literally called it Fallout. So anyway, that's what a nuke does. Currently, Russia has around 4,500 nuclear warheads,

along with 2,000 smaller tactical nuclear warheads. So maybe we should keep that in mind. Hope that helps. This has been Ed Nucation with Cody J. Ooh, yeah, dull it. Killed a bad brain, sweet juice. Okay, so to date, the United States is the only country in history to have used nuclear weapons

and Western mass media has been doing a bang up job of minimizing that fact for the past 80 years. The US heavily censored images of the devastation, so much so that the first uncensored photos showing the true human cost of the bombings didn't appear in Western media, specifically in Life Magazine, until 1952, seven years after the bombs were dropped.

If you took history in an American classroom, you were taught the bombs were a necessary evil, that they brought a swift end to what would have been a long and bloody war. That necessary evil justification continues to fuel the narrative around the bombings. But the Pacific War leading up to the bombings is rarely discussed. The U.S. was already routinely firebombing Japanese towns and cities, including one campaign that killed over 100,000 civilians in Tokyo within 48 hours. Also, Russia had just declared war on Japan, and there were even reports surfacing just a month before the nukes were dropped that Japan was mulling over a surrender. Hitler and Mussolini had both

been dead for months, and Germany had surrendered back in May. The Axis had already broken up, with no possibility of a reunion tour with its original lineup. The war was winding down, no matter what any of these monsters in the highest level of government may claim. Then, as now, America just really wanted to drop some fucking nukes,

and for the rest of the world to see them do it. Framing the bombings is the key to ending World War II, insisting that killing hundreds of thousands of civilians was justified because it might have saved untold lives, really just means it might have saved untold American and British lives. And we happily agreed with that version of events. 85% of America approved of the bombings in 1945. And I mean, they kind of had to approve, right? Otherwise, we'd have to realize that our country conducted one of the most unnecessary massacres known to humankind.

Not to say any massacre is necessary. Meanwhile, President Harry Truman claimed he was following a utilitarian approach when he decided to green light the attack. As in, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of anyone who isn't American. You know, that thing Spock said. Incidentally, Truman referred to the quote,

Japs as ruthless and fanatic savages in his personal diary, but I'm sure that had nothing to do with his decision. The atomic bomb dropped over Hiroshima killed 80,000 people instantly. The one over Nagasaki killed 40,000 people instantly. The two cities were chosen primarily because they were large urban centers that would maximize devastation. According to declassified documents, Hiroshima was selected in part because it was surrounded by hills that

would focus and increase the blast damage considerably. And on the morning of August 6th, 1945, the United States flew a plane into Hiroshima and dropped the most horrible weapon in human history directly on top of a hospital. That's not a joke. There's a memorial there now and everything. In fairness, it was supposed to hit a bridge, but the bomb drifted by 800 feet.

So we didn't mean to nuclear bomb a hospital. We meant a nuclear bomb immediately next to a hospital. This whole mentality, casually floating the idea of nuclear war as if it won't affect everyone, and the idea that no-fly zones and sanctions are somehow nonviolent war alternatives, all ties back to the modern world,

specifically mass media and American policymaking, framing every global conflict from a Western standpoint. The bombing of Hiroshima was justified because it saved Western lives. Sanctions and no-fly zones are nonviolent alternatives to war because they save Western lives. Lobbing a nuke at Russia or baiting Russia into a nuclear war with China are acceptable possibilities

because they won't affect Western lives. We don't wanna take anything off the table. Go ahead and leave nuclear war on there. Gotta keep our options open. After all, the greatest freedom of all is the freedom of a robust selection. That's why the founding fathers invented cable, you see. And that's the fundamental and horrifying problem

on display in the coverage of the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. Journalists around the world are framing the conflict entirely from a Western perspective. But this isn't a place, with all due respect, you know, like Iraq or Afghanistan that has seen conflict raging for decades. You know, this is a relatively civilized, relatively European, I have to choose those words carefully too, city where you wouldn't expect that or hope that it's going to happen. So it's partly human nature, but they are not in denial. And this is not a developing third world nation.

This is Europe. Just to put it bluntly, these are not refugees from Syria. These are refugees from neighboring Ukraine. I mean, that quite frankly is part of it. These are Christians, they're white, they're very similar to people. They are breathlessly dedicating hundreds of hours of coverage to Ukraine. Coverage that has been denied from conflicts like the decades old violence, devastation and apartheid

Israel has committed against Palestinians. Because endless war is to be expected in the Middle East. That's just what those brown folks do. Nothing to be done about that. And to be clear, I am barely exaggerating. Also to be clear, what is happening in Ukraine is horrible. But Palestinian civilians are regularly massacred by Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip,

and it rarely makes international news. Definitely nothing near the scope of the coverage of Ukraine but the media isn't just showing obvious bias towards Western predominantly white nations by their lack of coverage. Remember that video of that 12 year old Palestinian girl confronting an Israeli soldier? There are actually a bunch of examples

of social media users sharing videos of the violence and brutality in the Gaza Strip, some of it already several years old, and labeling them as footage from Ukraine. And they're horrified by the images, like they should be, but we're showing the rest of the world that we're incapable of caring about that violence unless it's being inflicted on predominantly white Europeans. The fact that we seem to be debating whether or not this is the first war with social media really speaks to how many recent conflicts

we have completely ignored. Because for the record, there have been several wars in the age of social media and Netflix. Back in 2011, real-time reporting on the ground during the Arab Spring unfolded on social media. The ongoing civil wars in Syria and Yemen have been unfolded on social media. The ongoing civil wars in Syria and Yemen have been heavily covered on social media for over a decade now.

Just because you didn't see it on your timeline doesn't mean it didn't happen. Those aren't TV shows you missed. They're major geopolitical conflicts that will shape history. America has been at war in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2000 and God damned three. We're not even remembering our own wars correctly,

which to be fair, America has a habit of doing. The needs of the many to watch Masked Singer without feeling sad. That, yeah, that's the one. Thanks again, Mr. Spock. This Western normative framing of global conflict allows the US and other Western world powers to continue viewing the world

as if war is something that only happens far away in blasted prehistoric landscapes full of literal cavemen. We are so disconnected by this viewpoint that within the first day of Russia's invasion, urgent reports about how the war would affect the stock market were popping up all over the internet, including pieces advising what investments would be smart to make during the conflict. And not on fringe crackpot websites, these things were getting published by all the major outlets.

Within the same timeframe, those major outlets were running hand-wringing pieces about what the potential spark that ignites World War III might mean for the future of cryptocurrency. what the potential spark that ignites World War III might mean for the future of cryptocurrency. Outlets like Time and NBC even framed the invasion of Ukraine as a turning point for crypto, a chance for crypto to finally prove its worth as more than just a money laundering service for criminals, now it could prove its worth as a money laundering service for desperate oligarchs looking to flip

their plummeting rubles. The point is, Western media has been programmed to immediately contextualize war according to the parameters of how much money can be lost or gained, or because that's the only consequence of war most Americans have ever experienced. It's literally a game to us. That's why we have jaunty emerald tycoons like Elon Musk challenging Vladimir Putin to a one-on-one fight on Twitter for the fate of Ukraine. It's embarrassing, and it's sad, and disappointing, and really, really dangerous for the entire planet, because it's yet another reason we think nukes are just another game piece on the board to defend Western lives, because those are the most important lives

on the globe, you see. This Western normative perspective allows people to sanitize their entire worldview from the realities of war. Wars never happen here, therefore they are not that bad. And if war happened here, my life would continue more or less as normal, is a catastrophic lie to believe.

But the US has used its considerable power and influence to nurture this lie for damn near a hundred years. So you can't say these sacks of hammers we keep allowing on television didn't come by their terrible opinions, honestly. It's easy to swallow a lie that gets quietly reinforced every single day by the biggest media conglomerates

in the history of the world. And it's made even easier when you were taught the lie in school. We need critical war theory now. There are so, so many wars and armed conflicts going on right now, like right now at the same time as the invasion of Ukraine. The United States is involved in a few of them too. But the West has historically minimized war so much, thanks to our unique and privileged position,

that we act like it's not even a big deal. It's just the cost of doing business as America. The needs of the many Americans outweigh the needs of literally whoever. It sounded so much better when Spock said it. Am I getting it right? I'm not saying the solution to the war in Ukraine is a reckoning with America's disturbing

and destructive history of downplaying its role in global conflicts. I'm not only saying that, but maybe we need to start treating every war the way we're treating Ukraine. All wars are bad, all of them, every single one. We need to dispense with the necessary evil way of thinking because it's created several generations

of ghoulish monsters who are more than happy to starve and nuke millions of people if it keeps the Bitcoin running on time. And these people are now effectively making decisions for the entire world. So I guess that's the actual overall premise of the video. Just that war is bad. Can we run that original title again?

War bad. Right, war bad. And like, what if we were anti-war? What if that was the focus of the immediate wave of reporting instead of pearl clutching over the stock market and how the victims of this crisis have Netflix and Twitter and look just like us.

What if we taught that in schools, that instead of a necessary evil, war was just evil and perpetuates evil on both sides? What if the news reinforced that idea every single night, not quietly, but loudly? What if they were concerned about our $9 trillion military budget over 10 years or pointed out how all of our military bases

in not our country can easily be perceived as perpetual acts of aggression? What if we all agreed like nuking people is off the table? What if we transferred our grotesque defense budget over to things like health and rescue, you know, actual defense. What if Elon Musk really did defeat Putin in a fight? Wouldn't that be fucking wild?

Get him in a gleaming emerald mech to do battle with Putin's Zangief Voltron? I would pay good crypto to see that. Anyway, that is our war episode. Sorry there wasn't like a puppet in it, but didn't seem appropriate. What's that? Some zany new plot twist.

No, nothing. Just a straightforward episode about war. Cool. Well, see ya. Hey, you listening here, you, okay? You like it and you subscribe to it. And you say, ah, comments are good and we got patreon.com slash some more news and we got uh podcast going to be more news and we got this this is a podcast if you want and we got warm bow merch warm! We got your merch! Store!

And... Um... War's bad. So, okay.