OK, here's an example: A couple of months ago they were tossing around the idea of "retaking Crimea". I believe that any effort to do that should be based on a best effort assessment of the will of the people living there, because those are the people who will be getting artillery shells in their livingroom in exchange for it. Based on my own experience with expats from there and Donbas, who still have family in the area, those people are happy being Russian again. Show me on CNN or NPR where their voices and perspectives are being shared.

Again, this is just an example, not my personal agenda. What I want to point out is that we've normalized that there are a handful of forbidden topics that you will get punched for if you approach them with anything but a pre-formed opinion that matches the status quo.

Edit: And just as a turn of the screw, I'm going to say that the COVID vaccines are pretty shit compared to ones like smallpox, polio, and rabies vaccines, which actually (and sometimes retroactively) prevent you from getting the disease you were vaccinated against. Oh heck, I'm not allowed to say that thing that we all know. I mean if you take a high level view of it, they take the edge off the problem, but they still kind of suck.

> those people are happy being Russian again. Show me on CNN or NPR where their voices and perspectives are being shared.

Here we go, as requested:

https://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/16/world/europe/ukraine-cris...

> One voter, Grigory Illarionovich, told CNN, “I’m for restoring Crimea to Russia. Returning what Khrushchev took away.”

> Another voter in Perevalnoye, Viktor Savchenko, said he would never vote for the government in Kiev. “I want us to join Russia, and live like Russians, with all their rights,” he said.

> Victoria Khudyakova said she also had voted to join Russia, which she sees as being “spiritually close” to Crimea. “For me, Russia is an opportunity for our Crimea to develop, to bloom. And I believe that it will be so,” she said.

[...]

> CNN analyst and Russian journalist Vladimir Pozner similarly stressed that Sunday’s vote was in no way staged. “When you look at the celebrations, you can’t doubt that these people really are very happy,” he said.

https://www.npr.org/2018/03/06/591266939/how-people-in-crime...

> DEMID KUPAYEV: (Through interpreter) I witnessed how babushkas came up and said, thank God the time has come for Crimea to return to its historic homeland.

> KIM: Kupayev says international sanctions have made finding work in commercial shipping harder. But like many Crimeans, he calls economic hardship the acceptable price of joining Russia.

Yep, 2014 and 2018. Meanwhile, for the second one, if you scroll down to the "More Stories from NPR" section:

- Two dead, 23 wounded in a Russian strike on a Ukrainian medical clinic

- Ukraine secured military aid, including advanced fighter jets, at the G-7 summit

- Zelenskyy arrives at G-7 summit in Japan as leaders ramp up pressure on Russia

- Russia attacked the hometown of Ukraine's Eurovision band just before its performance

Fair and balanced reporting, right there. The first and last bullet points aren't at all the bald-faced examples of atrocity propaganda that we've just accepted as part of our daily feed.

Next, they're going to be raping nuns on tables[1] and throwing babies out of their incubators[2].

[1] http://www.telelib.com/authors/O/OrwellGeorge/prose/ComeingU...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony#:~:text=In%2....

OK, I think that's a valid consideration. I don't think you'll get much pushback for prioritizing the will of the people, and their disinterest in living in a war zone. I have not read anything on NPR or CNN calling for the expansion of war in the Baltics. But they run opinion pieces too, just like most other media outlets.

I was expecting something controversial. :)

The counterargument of course is that the region was annexed by aggression, which is dangerous to legitimize. Letting the bullies win is a recipe for creating more and bigger bullies.

But sometimes there are no good answers. I don't know any trustworthy sources of information from that area (only expats and news reporting which are all various degrees of clueless and biased).

Avoiding inflicting war on a reluctant people sounds right. Restoring national sovereignty to a conquered people also sounds right. Impeding the spread of territorial aggression and natural resource theft also sounds right.

Personal opinion, pragmatic I think: You can't retake Crimea without obliterating Russia. You can't obliterate Russia without horrifying consequences. Don't retake Crimea, but draw a very clear and public line, and allow no concessions regarding the next Crimea (Ukraine). This turns out to be very close to the foreign policy of most of the world.

Ah, like the red lines drawn up for Assad in Syria.

And Crimea is strategic. Look at a map. Without it, the Ukraine and its ports are always under threat from the whims of Russia.

It’s probably true that you can’t crush Russia without serious consequences. Unfortunately, you can’t let it win territory without very serious consequences either.

This follows its own tragic logic now and you (we) can’t wish for a nice solution that has no consequences down the line. Letting Russia off the hook is a terrible precedent.

I agree completely.

We were asleep when Russia took Crimea, and unprepared to react with anything more than stern words. We were not ready for Putin. He obviously saw the opportunity, took the risk, and he won.

It would be tragic to return to a world where aggressive expansionism is the norm.

But fighting back through Crimea would be tragic also. And it's not clear we would have the support of the locals. That's courting disaster even before you contemplate that the opposing leader is mercurial and nuclear.

My opinion is that we have to take the L on Crimea, but make it clear that the world is not sleeping any more, and that Ukraine is not next on the menu.

Syria is an important example. US bluster doesn't carry much weight in the world these days.

But the situation in Ukraine is very different. It astonishes me that there's political disagreement on Russia's aggression toward neighbors, but if we fail Ukraine it will be squarely the fault of one group of people, and it will be incredibly damaging to US interests in the world.

I don’t think a long fight through Crimea has to be necessary at all. The Russian troops cab withdraw over the bridge to Russia when it’s apparent they will otherwise be trapped.

Leaving Crimea to Russia is not just appeasement, it’s strategically unsound.

The Ukrainians can also dam the river to Crimea again and continually attack Russian supply lines to Crimea. Russia will be in a tight spot if the water supply to Crimea stops and the bridge explodes.

This is a more recent article that offers a more nuanced perspective, even down to the title:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/15/why-crimea-is-...

(The Guardian is pretty much pro-Ukraine, pro-war in general.)

To your edit:

I'm not an immunologist or anything close to it, but I think we'd all agree that a better COVID vaccine would be better. This is obviously not controversial.

The COVID vaccines we have were measurably better than not having a COVID vaccine, and people had worse health outcomes if they believed (acted) otherwise.

Some narratives allow nuance and some do not. Public health communication is a very problematic place for nuance, and the natural nuance of science was weaponized to serve an agenda, so avoiding nuance became a pragmatic approach to achieving good things under emergency circumstances.

If you felt cancelled for holding out for the nuanced truth, I can sympathize with that feeling. I can also sympathize with those who believed that focusing on the nuance would kill people though!

Anything other than “trust the science” was eviscerated during the pandemic, as if “trust” had anything to do with science.

I’m hoping at this point we can agree that the efficacy and function of the available vaccines was overstated and the pressure campaign to take it may have been some of the most intense propaganda inflicted on a western nation in recent memory.

Trust is a social phenomenon. The pandemic was a huge social upheaval.

The best information available was being provided by epidemiologists and doctors and statisticians and researchers. It was messy and contradictory and confusing sometimes, especially in the beginning. Like science.

Other information was being provided by politicians and radio hosts and religious figures and somebody's uncle. It was speculative and invented and delusional and manipulated and dishonest sometimes, according to the whims of famous personalities and media outlets. Like gossip.

Given those options, "trust the science" is a pretty reasonable message.

Not "trust the science to have all the answers immediately and with complete accuracy and no amendments", because that is not science.

More like "trust the science over the gossip".

But I take your point. People don't understand science, so it's very easy for them to feel betrayed when science does its usual messy science things.

And of course there were stochastic parrots on either side.

That said, the "trust the science" parrots had better health outcomes than the "impeach fauci" parrots. This seems unlikely to be a coincidence -- and as a blunt social influence tool, it's reasonable to conclude that "trust the science" was the better choice of intense propaganda, if not as persuasive as we all would have liked.

I follow the Ukraine & Crimea goings on. I've now got two twitter accounts, one for pro Ukraine, one for pro Russia. Post something anti one on the wrong account and you soon get blocked etc. It's very polarised as you might expect in a war.

It's hard to find balanced discussion on something like the status of Crimea. Which is complicated - as you say the locals are largely Russian. Then again Russia signed an agreement recognising it as Ukrainian, then invaded and used it as a base to launch war on the rest of Ukraine which they show every intention of repeating if they can.