This comic is kinda old already, but still stays relevant.
this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2026
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Lots of people gave a shit. That's the whole reason we had quarantine for over a year.
I don't think it's unfair to say that the Russian government's hard fascist turn in the 90s, and it's decades of corrosive white nationalist domestic politics, has fucked with the heads of many of it's residents in a way the squishy libs in Europe and the US aren't able to conceptualize.
That's not a "calipers" situation. It's the end result of Shock Doctrine economics and attendant toxic culture war politics. And it's not contained to Russia by any means. You see this shit across Eastern Europe and the Middle East. As common in Riyadh and Cairo as Moscow and St. Petersburg.
But it does help to answer the question "Why do Russians seem to have an appetite for endless war that Euros/Americans lack?"
I was pretty close to agreeing with you until we hit the final text
Claiming europeans and americans do not have a massive appetite for war is just ridiculous. Thats why I talk about orientalism and calipers. Its pretty clear there's a good amount of othering going on here, as well as just pure old-fashioned nationalism.
Neither have a draft. Neither have a majority population that actually supports these overseas conflicts. These aren't popular conflicts by any measure.
That hasn't always been the case. Americans were gungho about invading Afghanistan after 9/11. And Iraq had majority support in its opening months. But Libya? Syria? Iran? None of these ever did. They provoked popular backlash the day the first shots were fired.
The Russian media having done a better job of manufacturing consent has nothing to do with their skull size. Again, this is the sort of thing Americans used to be good at. Now they blaze ahead without the pretext of public consent, because the US democratic system has become morbund.
Russian state actors do appear significantly more concerned with "winning hearts and minds" than their Western peers. They invest more in propaganda and social controls.
It also helps that this is a border war and not some conflict happening on the other end of the planet. Russians don't need to read about Ukrainian attacks on Russian soil in the media, they can see it in their own backyards. This isn't twenty years of "Ukraine is just six months away from an Atom Bomb" Thomas Friedman scare stories. This direct conflict amps up the nationalist urgency, in the same way US attacks into Iran and Yemen ignited a firestorm of militarism fueled by newfound nationalist sentiment.
The Russian government and the US government are not mirrors of one another.
Having to have a draft seems like it is an argument against a massive appetite for war, not for it.
Iraq wasn't just "the opening months" lmao. Whats up with this revisionist bullshit? The democrats ran their campaign in 2004 on "the war is good, we can do it better."
Yeah such popular backlash they reelected the guy who did it. You know what actually got backlash? Withdrawing from Afghanistan.
Sure, but that's not what you've been saying. I don't know if the Russian mainstream media is better at manufacturing consent than the US or the rest of Europe, which you conveniently left out. Everyone in Europe is Gung-ho about Ukrainians fighting to the last man, despite the war being overwhelmingly in popular in Ukraine (they also have a draft, quite a brutal one at that, and a draft is a sign you cant get the needed troops). Listen to how you and most other users talk about Russia, like some alternative universe Mordor. People are frothing at the mouth at the thought of killing Russians. Whenever a civilian center is bombed in Russia then the main takeaway is joy and a "serves them right"-attitude. That's what an appetite for war looks like. Yet you will read this and think "well that's different, we're at war with Russia and they're so evil and they started it." You will be blind to the fact that there is an immense appetite for war. Not to mention all the other ones people just don't give a shit about.
Europe and the US is completely fine with interfering in African nations and pursuing brinksmanship with China.
And its not like the war in Russia didnt meet protests from day one. Weird thing to point out as a difference (especially with regards to Syria and Libya, which had people clamoring to invaded or "do more" than establish a no-fly zone".
Completely vibes-based statement. Europe is under immense surveillance and many member states seek even more tools to do so. "They invest more in propaganda and social controls" is such a vague statement and one I cannot help but doubt after seeing your revisionist ideas about the development of wars and popular sentiment.
Many European nations crack down hard on anti-israel protests. You get arrested in Denmark for positive comments on facebook stories about Israel getting bombed. Had this happened in Russia you would use it to opine like some armchair ethnologist about Russians propensity for authoritarianism, but because it happens elsewhere it is ignored.
This is what I mean by calipers, othering and orientalism. What is occurring (and worrying) in Europe and the US is treated as an after-thought, while the very same things happening in Russia is an indictment of some central characteristic of the russian people. We create these massive stories, like you did here, often with revisionist history and vibes, in order to create a picture of an enemy that is easy to despise or pity, while we at the same time claim they're the ones to be propagandised, and we are somehow just well-informed citizens. Even though we will make nonsense statements like "the invasion in Libya was opposed from the very start, while the Russians supported the invasion in Ukraine" or "the Russians have invested much more into social control" while the arrest of protesters is a regular occurrence in Europe and the US.
Not what I said, and youre correct, the Russian government is competent and less prone to creating a slave-labour force of prisoners.