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Liz's avatar

Hi Claire - I agree with so much of what you have written here, but especially about Ukraine. I have girlfriends from Lithuania and Romania and while they live in the US they are definitely concerned about what could happen should Ukraine fall. They both lived through the end of communism as small kids and while they have some memories, their parents stories are enough to keep them alert and on edge.

My biggest beef is with the general American public's lack of interest in what's happening outside their own borders (save the Southern Border which is currently a whole other can of worms). This isn't new. But it's getting worse. As you point out a lot of it is the disconnection between generations and education about what happened in the past. But another big player is social media/internet and how it has shortened many peoples' attention spans and introduced a lot of unnecessary fluff (don't get me wrong - I love a good meme and am obsessed with using GIF's in my everyday text chats :) ) that serves to dull the mind and distract from other more important matters. Some people don't even care to know about other English speaking countries, let alone non-English speaking ones! This lack of interest can also be partially tied to the various giant media outlets who over the course the last 25 years have been gradually reducing the size and scope of their foreign correspondent desks and budgets. I have heard this repeated by both Clarissa Ward @ CNN and Christina Lamb at The London Times (both fabulous female conflict reporters). This serves to undermine the promotion of international news and foreign affairs to the detriment of everyone.

Lastly - in my tiny social media corner of the WWW, I am finding more and more of my real-life friends and other people I follow online are posting obsessively about the war in Gaza. It is almost like the conflict is brand new and no one has ever heard of it before. Constant 'Strike for Gaza days' and always trying to connect it to every other thing that is happening on the planet. To read your point about the war in Ukraine having more of an impact on the US and it's allies than the current conflict in the Middle East made me think that maybe I am not going crazy and that my feelings might actually have some validity. I don't understand the obsession. I think I have mentioned this before but my main guess is that the ME conflict plays into the current Far Left ideology of Opressor vs Oppressed and especially using race as a way to magnify that lens. This would explain why they have no interest in Ukraine (white person invades another white person) or somewhere like Sudan - fighting between Arabs and local Sudanese tribes doesn't track when they're both 'of colour' even if the RSF is consistently carrying out genocide against locals. I am probably Center - slightly left or right depending on the issue. I never say anything to my friends (also some are clients and I don't want to burn those bridges) but I truly cannot understand why they care so much (and I mean SO much) about Palestine but could care less about Ukraine, Sudan, or even Myanmar where the same things are happening. I

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sotoportego's avatar

Despite the awful and exponentially dangerous consequences of nuclear proliferation, when we see what Ukraine got for giving up its nuclear arsenal for empty American and British assurances, how can anyone possibly chastise South Koreans who aren't willing to stake their country and their lives on American promises? Truly, in the larger frame, it's part and parcel of the distrust among allies that Putin is counting on, and it's sending us to a dark place we are unwilling to contemplate, much less address. Nevertheless, South Korean fears are not difficult to understand.

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