- #1
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I just need to get this off of my chest.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a complete and utter waste of lives, driven by Putin’s rampant paranoia and sense of lost prestige and pride. He and the Kremlin will justify this by blaming NATO and the US, but listening to Putin’s addresses before the invasion, it’s clear that his primary motivation is the subjugation Ukraine and stopping its drift away from Russian influence. Actual concerns about NATO/US are a distant second. Rather than diversifying his economy and political reforms to try to strengthen ties, he chose military aggression. It’s a blatant attack on a sovereign nation, and a sizable part of the Russian troops probably don’t even buy into the Kremlin’s arguments.
Russia is a country of enormous potential. They produced some of the finest scientists, engineers, composers, artists, etc. And Putin is squandering all of that and engages in a pointless exercise of human cruelty. He is a fascist dictator content with reducing towns and cities to rubble and killing indiscriminately, as long as he can claim to rule over that rubble and look “strong”.
Now, I'm currently a US Marine. I'm watching these indiscriminate attacks unfold in front of my eyes with utter disgust. If it weren't for Putin's nuclear weapons, I'd want to go in, crush his army, and put an end to this atrocity. All the unnecessary bloodshed, all the innocent lives lost. The scientists, mathematicians, artists, and everyday people who must side aside their craft and lives to defend their homeland, many dying in the process.
Frankly, I feel emotionally exhausted; to see a modern fascist dictator waging a war of aggression in the 21st century. Even though this is occurring thousands of miles away, it pains me that there isn't more that we can do, because of Putin's nuclear threats. On a slightly more personal side, while I was at TBS, two international student officers were from the Ukrainian Armed Forces and were just a few classes behind mine.
To be clear, I'm not going to excuse the foreign policy blunders of the US in the Middle East; certainly we invaded Iraq for spurious reasons, and our occupation was riddled with errors. But Putin's war to impose his authoritarian will on a democratic neighbor is evil. Now, "evil" is somewhat of a simplistic word, but I struggle to find a more nuanced alternative. And it pains me that defending Ukraine is a fight that's worth fighting for, and yet for all of our unparalleled military might, we're unable to do more due to Putin's nuclear weapons.
There's a monologue by astronomer and physicist Carl Sagan touches me deeply. It's called the Pale Blue Dot, and it's a reference to a picture that the Voyager 1 probe took of our Earth as it speed past Saturn.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a complete and utter waste of lives, driven by Putin’s rampant paranoia and sense of lost prestige and pride. He and the Kremlin will justify this by blaming NATO and the US, but listening to Putin’s addresses before the invasion, it’s clear that his primary motivation is the subjugation Ukraine and stopping its drift away from Russian influence. Actual concerns about NATO/US are a distant second. Rather than diversifying his economy and political reforms to try to strengthen ties, he chose military aggression. It’s a blatant attack on a sovereign nation, and a sizable part of the Russian troops probably don’t even buy into the Kremlin’s arguments.
Russia is a country of enormous potential. They produced some of the finest scientists, engineers, composers, artists, etc. And Putin is squandering all of that and engages in a pointless exercise of human cruelty. He is a fascist dictator content with reducing towns and cities to rubble and killing indiscriminately, as long as he can claim to rule over that rubble and look “strong”.
Now, I'm currently a US Marine. I'm watching these indiscriminate attacks unfold in front of my eyes with utter disgust. If it weren't for Putin's nuclear weapons, I'd want to go in, crush his army, and put an end to this atrocity. All the unnecessary bloodshed, all the innocent lives lost. The scientists, mathematicians, artists, and everyday people who must side aside their craft and lives to defend their homeland, many dying in the process.
Frankly, I feel emotionally exhausted; to see a modern fascist dictator waging a war of aggression in the 21st century. Even though this is occurring thousands of miles away, it pains me that there isn't more that we can do, because of Putin's nuclear threats. On a slightly more personal side, while I was at TBS, two international student officers were from the Ukrainian Armed Forces and were just a few classes behind mine.
To be clear, I'm not going to excuse the foreign policy blunders of the US in the Middle East; certainly we invaded Iraq for spurious reasons, and our occupation was riddled with errors. But Putin's war to impose his authoritarian will on a democratic neighbor is evil. Now, "evil" is somewhat of a simplistic word, but I struggle to find a more nuanced alternative. And it pains me that defending Ukraine is a fight that's worth fighting for, and yet for all of our unparalleled military might, we're unable to do more due to Putin's nuclear weapons.
There's a monologue by astronomer and physicist Carl Sagan touches me deeply. It's called the Pale Blue Dot, and it's a reference to a picture that the Voyager 1 probe took of our Earth as it speed past Saturn.
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
