ElReg's interview: https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/17/ruby_ukraine_zverok/
HN post for that:
Kharkiv Rubyist during the war: We are still here
21–30 of 106 posts
Re: Kharkiv Rubyist during the war: We are still here
#22Like every other day, I was shopping this morning at my local bakery in Warsaw, Poland. As I was packing my purchases, a woman next in line after me ordered coffee in Ukrainian. (We have it lucky. Polish and Ukrainian are mutually intelligible to some extent, which enables basic communication even without knowing each other's languages.) I said, to no one in particular, "Do widzenia, слава Україні" as I was leaving.…
He roughly said “See you, glory to Ukraine” and she replied “Glory to the Heroes!!”
Be safe!!
Re: Kharkiv Rubyist during the war: We are still here
#23> There is a rumor that Putin had recently made a personal order to damage as much of Kharkiv as possible, to retaliate for breaking the hope of being “pro-Russian.” And however absurd it might sound, I am close to believing it because there seems to be no other point in doing what they do now. I have the same impression, just old bitter fart and shadow of a man he once was, entrenched in his untouchable position, th…
How do you remove Russia’s permanent veto right if they have the permanent right to veto that?
Re: Kharkiv Rubyist during the war: We are still here
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Visions that were not shed decades ago as we falsely believed. Who is "we" exactly...? Because the GWB presidency was very much an embodiment of such a vision, and it was only stopped by a literal hurricane.
It's interesting to me to hear you say that. I would say that about Trump but not GWB in hindsight. At that time I was of the opinion you share and I remember feeling that GWB was essentially everything that was bad in the world… but in hindsight I realize how narrowly scoped my vision was and the spectrum is so much bigger and in fact I now believe it's important to be willing to find common ground with conservative…
Too many people have let their vision become consumed by the fact that Trump was an insufferable asshole. A nuanced discussion can be had about his time in office and his actual actions, without giving undue weight to the shit that comes out of the man's mouth. Just as an example of something most democrats would applaud, he signed an executive order to keep federal unemployment assistance flowing, while congress was happy to keep bickering and holding millions of Americans hostage. I'm not trying to break down the man's presidency here, but I would say that this provided more good to the average American, in a time of great need, than anything any recent president had done.
I do feel compelled to mention the following in regard to the comparison with Bush. The man, Cheney's puppet as he was, started an illegal war that killed a few hundred thousand people. Using the intelligence apparatus to manipulate Congress and the American people, in my view, is much worse than anything Trump had done. Same with enabling the domestic spying apparatus with the Patriot Act. If that's not undermining our institutions, I don't know what is.
I guess I should preempt the obvious counter argument about Trump's allegation that the election was stolen. The Democrats did the same exact thing with Russiagate. Both in terms of the accusation and pursuing it through legal channels, all based on fictional evidence to boot.
We should not allow us to miss the bigger picture while falling for the manufacrured distraction of "my party vs their party." But rather look to understand the special interests that are amplifying our division, and benefitting from it.
Re: Kharkiv Rubyist during the war: We are still here
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's interesting to me to hear you say that. I would say that about Trump but not GWB in hindsight. At that time I was of the opinion you share and I remember feeling that GWB was essentially everything that was bad in the world… but in hindsight I realize how narrowly scoped my vision was and the spectrum is so much bigger and in fact I now believe it's important to be willing to find common ground with conservative…
As someone probably of similar age to you, my views on GWB have definitely changed as I've aged. When I was younger, I actively protested, saw his presidency as the antithesis of my values, etc. At my current age, I believe more that there is no pure "good" in the world. What is good in one way, is by definition tinged with evil in others. And that pursuing one good requires doing (or at least allowing) some evil. An…
It seems to me more like Arendt's banality of evil is mostly at work (in many cases, anyway. There are certainly some people on this planet who I would say are truly evil but they are relatively uncommon): https://aeon.co/ideas/what-did-hannah-arendt-really-mean-by-...
Re: Kharkiv Rubyist during the war: We are still here
#26It is amazing how this inspiring willingness to fight for the bare essentials that the West has for so long forgotten the need to be ready to be fight for has transformed the West and given it meaning again. Reminds me of Leo Strauss, a philosopher often cited by the neoconservatives and therefore of course dismissed by most of us but I think there's more nuance in his understanding of the world and this feels to me…
No post body was provided.
Re: Kharkiv Rubyist during the war: We are still here
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's interesting to me to hear you say that. I would say that about Trump but not GWB in hindsight. At that time I was of the opinion you share and I remember feeling that GWB was essentially everything that was bad in the world… but in hindsight I realize how narrowly scoped my vision was and the spectrum is so much bigger and in fact I now believe it's important to be willing to find common ground with conservative…
As someone probably of similar age to you, my views on GWB have definitely changed as I've aged. When I was younger, I actively protested, saw his presidency as the antithesis of my values, etc. At my current age, I believe more that there is no pure "good" in the world. What is good in one way, is by definition tinged with evil in others. And that pursuing one good requires doing (or at least allowing) some evil. An…
My own views sort of shifted but not in the same way. I was 17 when the War in Iraq started. My view at the time was of very skeptical support; having lived through the 90s I had an engrained view that the world needed to use force to help prevent ethnic cleansing. We didn't intervene early enough or strongly enough in Rwanda, and that particularly bothered me. After the beginning of the war, I pretty quickly became anti-war when it became increasingly clear to me that the pretexts (WMD, Saddam is going to attack the Kurds again) were not justified. I would say by about mid-2004 I was pretty comfortably anti-war. When Bush called for the "surge" I was definitely all the way against the War in Iraq.
Today if you asked me what I thought about it, I would say Iraq was the worst and least justified misadventure America embarked on that had some ostensible humanitarian pretext. So I guess my position would be that I still wish we could prevent genocide, but I'm increasingly convinced it's difficult to tell justified reason from pretext in time to intervene, either as a country or as as individuals trying to hold our leaders to account. I guess I would say is that Bush struck me as a person who embodied the way in which misguided motivations could lead to terrible results.
But with Trump, there was no misgivings. He had terrible motivations. His view on the use of force was two fold: (1) I don't give a fuck about any other country, why should I? (2) We're number one and I'll blow you up with my bombs.
I think it's tempting for many to look at his isolationism as a repudiation of Clinton-Bush-Obama era, but it was a repudiation only of the duty to care about others. His frequent verbal escalations and tactical willingness to disregard collateral damage (in Iraq/Syria), as well as his weird outbursts like threatening to use tactical nuclear weapons, and his constant constant constant remarks expressing praise and respect for violent autocrats justified by admiration of their will to power make it clear that he was just as willing to use force, just as militaristic, just for somehow even worse reasons. I am very thankfully that none of the bubbling tensions ever came to a true head under him.
Re: Kharkiv Rubyist during the war: We are still here
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's interesting to me to hear you say that. I would say that about Trump but not GWB in hindsight. At that time I was of the opinion you share and I remember feeling that GWB was essentially everything that was bad in the world… but in hindsight I realize how narrowly scoped my vision was and the spectrum is so much bigger and in fact I now believe it's important to be willing to find common ground with conservative…
As someone probably of similar age to you, my views on GWB have definitely changed as I've aged. When I was younger, I actively protested, saw his presidency as the antithesis of my values, etc. At my current age, I believe more that there is no pure "good" in the world. What is good in one way, is by definition tinged with evil in others. And that pursuing one good requires doing (or at least allowing) some evil. An…
> Shipping weapons to Ukraine to defend its sovereign territory is also a good. But it creates evil by escalating battlefield lethality and depending on the service (and often sacrifice) of brave Ukrainians.
Shipping those weapons does not create evil. The evil (Russian military aggression) is already there, the evil is responding to the weapons with escalation in an attempt to overwhelm to prevent defeat.
The proof is in not shipping the weapons: subjugation, slavery, for the Ukrainian people (quite possibly for generations to come). It can mean the complete wiping out of their culture, in the style of Tibet.
The weapons draw out a more dramatic response from the attacking evil, they do not create more evil; and they - ideally - prevent an even greater evil, which is the enslavement of the Ukrainian people if the war effort is lost. All the weapons do is pull some of the future suffering forward in time (you suffer more now, so your people hopefully suffer dramatically less later), however the trade, the potential upside, is obviously the possibility to achieve freedom and vanquish the aggressor. The aggressor creates all of the evil, all of the suffering, they're solely morally responsible for it. The weapons make a positive possible, the lack of said weapons guarantee only darkness. Putin's conquest effort isn't going to be stopped by peaceful protest (some authoritarians might bend for that under some circumstances, he won't).
The point is, the evil is already there. If you leave it alone (don't challenge it), you'll suffer more over a longer period of time. If you challenge it, you may suffer more short-term, however that challenge isn't creating any additional evil, it's creating the potential for good for the people of Ukraine. The suffering and evil can't be avoided, the only choice is whether you want to try to defeat it, or roll over and hand yourself over to its long-term chains.
Re: Kharkiv Rubyist during the war: We are still here
#29"(...) returned to Kharkiv to do something useful for the city. With no military experience and even no driving license, I do things on a very small scale" The sense of due duty to your community beyond your family and your own life. I am not really sure I would have the courage to do that. To Zverok: respect and good luck. To the rest: support Ukraine.
I think I would.
I wouldn't fight for my country in an offensive war, it's an arbitrary construct that means little to me to but I would fight for my family, my friends and the people around me in a defensive war.
This is what shines through when you see things about the Ukraine in the news, these people are fighting for everything - it's about the maximum level of motivation that a people could have.
Re: Kharkiv Rubyist during the war: We are still here
#30"(...) returned to Kharkiv to do something useful for the city. With no military experience and even no driving license, I do things on a very small scale" The sense of due duty to your community beyond your family and your own life. I am not really sure I would have the courage to do that. To Zverok: respect and good luck. To the rest: support Ukraine.
You may be shocked what you're capable of when everything is on the line. Don't count yourself out until you (very hopefully never) are in the same situation.