Tuesday 1 March 2022
It's the wrong word but –
Without wishing to belittle in any way the ghastly nature of the Ukraine conflict, if we stand back there is something nebulous but possibly significant floating above the smoke. The conflict has a faint but distinct aura of 20th century naff. No – naff is certainly not the right word to describe what is happening, but stand back and perhaps in a limited sense it is not wholly inappropriate.
What we see is an absurd, knuckle-dragging, throwback of an armed conflict. Something we should have left behind and risen above after the vile obscenities of two world wars plus other horrors such as Korea and Vietnam.
Yet what we see also throws a light back onto our supposedly progressive culture. It highlights how desperately feeble and thoroughly naff our culture has become with its endless stupidities. Climate change, gender politics, hate laws, censorship and ludicrous economic fantasies, all of which should have been consigned to cultural history along with the naff political garbage. But we have lost sight of naff politics.
The conflict is obviously horrible in a desperately serious way, but oddly enough it is horribly naff too.
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5 comments:
Yes, it is a throwback, and a faintly ridiculous one. I guess we have grown used to sanitised American footage of warfare involving drones and weapons that actually work. Now we have lorries and tanks running out of fuel, dull conscripted boys who don't know why they are fighting, and close-up footage of the aftermath of explosions with all the dirt and chaos. Perhaps we are not used to this because the cameras were not there, and the Americans just gave us the slick footage. Would they have taken a whack at a massive TV mast and left it standing?
Hopefully, at least some of the impression is due to the Russians just being rubbish. We'll find out soon enough, I guess.
One cannot believe or trust the media about what's happening. As nearly everybody has a camera-phone these days, the lack of pictures of all the Russian tanks supposedly blown up, or planes downed, suggest a massive propaganda exercise is underway. Surely, if the reports of the Russians being bogged down, or losing skirmishes, were true, then pictures would emerge.
I guess it's a case of 'wait and see', but I'm not convinced by the current Western media's output.
Sam - much of the more recent American footage looked like computer games - missiles and bombs striking with incredible accuracy.
Ed - wait and see is my take on it too. It would be foolish to trust the media much beyond the bare fact that a conflict is still going on.
You appear to have lost sight of the fact that, despite social trends, humans still have the same proclivities.
Tammly - I don't think we do have the same proclivities apart from the basics. They are to some extent malleable.
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