The Ukrainian War: Which Side Are You On?

the prospect of war in ukraine in the year 2022 by which we mean an escalation of a war that has been ongoing since the year 2014. the prospect of a new or expanded war in ukraine is interesting for one reason and one reason only and that is democracy inasmuch as this war can be construed to be about democracy inasmuch as the people who support the ukrainian side can think of themselves as supporting democracy against dictatorship against tyranny etc to that extent you've got a war that is at least interesting i just mentioned it's very hard to be motivated to read primary sources from political history when you're looking at a continent you're looking at an epoch you're looking at a century you're looking at a millennium in which there is absolutely no democracy at all you know i've worked on politics and history of india southeast asia china but even england you go back far enough you're reading primary source documents about political history in india and at times there's just democracy is not even thought of it's just 100 pure top-down theocratic monarchy and it's really of a very little interest okay the problem with ukraine is that it really is not a simple cut and dried case of the pro-democratic forces lined up against the anti-democratic ones and that's that's why i'm taking the time to make this video now i could throw a whole bunch of disclaimers here you will note in the description of this video i have a shout out to my rival and political enemy hassan [ __ ] i think you know i don't hate haseon but i mean obviously we're in different parts of the food chain literally and figuratively you know let me just say that i have nothing in common politically uh i have a shout out to jimmy dore there are a lot of people on the left who uh for untranslatable reasons support vladimir putin vladimir putin has this very strange status on the left i would say similar to venezuela where people make excuses for and support venezuela without really knowing why without really knowing what without knowing what it is they're concealing or what it is they're revealing i remember only ever dealing with one of these people face to face once and i was horrified i was not prepared for it at all i met a guy who was a vegan activist face to face and he basically came out of the closet to me he admitted and started talking to me about the extent to which he wasn't he idolized and supported vladimir putin and russia present-day russia not communist russia but russia as it is today and that he he regarded russia and putin as doing something positive in challenging and opposing american imperialism american democracy is mystifying it's difficult to understand it's difficult to relate to but that is a significant voice on the left now you tell me why isn't it a voice on the right why aren't conservatives pro-putin why aren't the right wing you can right now deal with a lot of reasons why would be the right wing and not the left-wing supporting putin including religion i.e christianity in this case including supporting christianity against islam supporting christianity against uh atheism including homophobia right putin has a very carefully defined position where he's he's not homophobic but he is opposed to homosexuality he's a he's anti-gay but he's not quite going all the way to homophobia yeah i'm not saying this to vindicate him i'm i'm pro-gay rights i'm a very pro-homosexual person without being homosexual myself i don't sympathize i'm just pointing out in a parallel universe in a science fiction universe in some other universe it's easy to imagine it would be the right wing in america or the right wing in england that sees vladimir putin as a positive symbol of the kind of society they won't have i mean who the hell thinks of russia as it exists today russia today so to speak so it's the name of a famous youtube channel about russia today who thinks of russia today as leftist or left-wing or socialist it's it's a truly horrendous example of of corrupt capitalism crony capitalism um you know with that being said russia does still have some claim to being democratic and that's significant to the the topic of this video so look understandably since joe biden came into office we have been told again and again by the mainstream press that uh the possibility of russia invading ukraine is in the future and apparently possibly is today february 22nd 2022 apparently it's been declared today war has been declared today in effect according to the joe biden administration's version of reality there was absolutely no retrospect there is no hint of remorse or reflection looking back to the obama administration and the fact that vladimir putin already did invade ukraine already did annex large parts of ukraine back when obama was in power not not trump i mean trump there were some small scuffles but really the red-hot bullets were flying the really decisive period was the obama administration hmm of all the people who might have memories of what happened during the obama administration who might have regrets who might have a critical perspective now in looking back at what obama did right in order bob durham joe biden he's the most valuable witness to that history imaginable nobody could know more about what obama did right and what obama did wrong than joe biden apparently we're we're not going to hear it so no the the propaganda narrative presented by the american press and i would note you know i listen to news from japan i listen to news from france once in a while i get news from germany uh the other nations of europe are not comfortable with the joe biden narrative you know i wouldn't say the japanese are opposing it but there's sort of some trepidation about buying into the current propaganda narrative but the propaganda narrative is that this is a new sudden problem of russia invading ukraine not that this is an invasion that took back took place back in the year 2014 that it's been ongoing and that in reality the people of crimea and the people of a significant portion of the land mass of uh donetsk and luhansk eastern ukraine that these people have been living under russian dominion for actually a long period of time now no retrospect even no looking back to the obama administration you never once here in the mainstream press under the administration reflections on say the last 200 years of ukrainian history you never get reflections on well what percentage of the people in the east of ukraine or in the south of ukraine or in crimea specifically what percentage those people consider themselves ethnically russian what percentage of them speak russian as their first language their primary language or their own language what percentage of them if you had democracy if they had a choice what percentage of them would prefer to be a province of russia rather than a province of ukraine and there's a third option here what percentage of them would prefer to have a small independent country like belarus like former yugoslav republic some some countries in europe are really tiny you know there's no minimum size vatican city you know europe is full of uh small principalities like this you know what percentage of them would prefer maybe to actually have an independent country whether that be crimea diness luhansk or the three of them together as one country you know then it wouldn't be that small crimea alone is is not that small there is no capacity to reflect on these things now why because that erodes the narrative that this is a very simple confrontation between pro-democracy and anti-democracy forces there are a lot of really important wars to be fought in the world that genuinely are about pro-democracy and anti-democracy forces that are really clear-cut you got north korea and you got south korea which side are you on i'm on the pro-democracy side and that makes me pro-american imperialism very clear-cut for me there's no ethical ambiguity there whatsoever how about taiwan versus communist china i kind of i dislike taiwan i really you know you guys may not know me like that i'm really not biased in paper of taiwan in many many ways i don't sound weird i personally could have a better quality of life living in communist china than living in taiwan and i would know i've tried i've lived in both there are a lot of ways in which i appreciate the accomplishments of the government of china someone who's lived there and studied it i can say good things about china i could say bad things with one but if you're talking about democracy you know i'm 100 on the side of taiwan zero percent of the side of china it's a very clear struggle for and against democracy now again the other one me maybe you heard of this maybe you're back when the newspapers were admitting it was a pro for some reason we don't talk about hong kong anymore i wonder why i wonder why no one is asking joe biden what he wants to do about hong kong i wonder why i wonder why that's none of the front page newspaper i wonder why cuba is not on the front page joe biden just doesn't have any interest in democracy in cuba again completely one-sided when it comes to cuba i support american imperialism i support american democracy i oppose dictatorship i oppose common completely simple completely counter what was that country where people were dying in the streets fighting for democracy uh what was it yeah myanmar remember that uh uh uh how many pages deep do i have to go in this newspaper to find something about myanmar and what your pilot's gonna do ah for some reason we only care about ukraine in 2022 this is the only example of pro and anti-democracy that that matters um you know when you think about when you think about central asia when you think about the great chess board of the world is it um um afghanistan uzbekistan tajikistan you know what hmm actually when you really start to think of it there are more and more places where you are looking at a completely stark struggle for the future of democracy where it's very one-sided and where america's role can be and should be to clearly fight for democracy and against dictatorship another one is basically i mean turkey in 2022 in any of the countries in north africa that turkey is extending its tendrils into extending its influence oh yeah remember that island that used to be part of greece and is now a separate nation kupros what if whatever happened to them you know yeah whatever happened to the tiny island of cyprus if the united nations cares so much about these things oh i decided i wasn't going to let this degenerate into a rant about the united nations but but for some reason nobody blames the united nations billions of dollars are wasted on this peace preserving institution the united nations isn't this exactly what the united nations is supposed to resolve it's exactly what the united united nations is supposed to avoid nobody i mean seriously the last time i looked at the united nations own youtube channel wasn't that long ago couple weeks ago they were getting fewer views per video than i do like they were getting so few views per video and you can ask yourself when was the last time you even saw those united nations plenary sessions being quoted on the mainstream music a clip of it being it's very rare normally when something really funny happens or really crazy happens the north koreans showed at somebody like something really ridiculous happens but let me tell you something every day the u.n is covering the claims and counter claims like on a minute scale uh on this day a particular village in donetsk russian soldiers crossed the border and then the russians say oh those weren't our soldiers those were mercenaries who aren't in our employ you know you get these real details hashed out and you know so-called human rights reports and all these things so look in my opinion if you haven't heard this before prepare to be shocked i believe the u.n should be abolished entirely at a minimum countries like the united states and canada should quit the u.n and kick it off there so i don't refuse to be a part of it in any way but not only is the u.n failing to make these things better it actually makes them worse but mysteriously just nobody talks about this nobody's like nobody's like well don't worry it's in good hands the united nations is going to solve the problem nobody says that about ukraine nobody says that about myanmar nobody says about hong kong nobody says that and one of the examples the un has been deeply involved in for decades no one says that about the turkish occupation of half of the island of cyprus nobody expects that so what do we expect of of the united nations okay so look um ukraine is interesting because it leads us to question the future of democracy and it leads us to questions specifically and narrowly the significance of fighting wars for democracy now just in the last couple of years since the year 2014 ukraine has tried to represent itself as a profoundly committed pro-democratic nation that is facing off against its tyrannical larger neighbor that russia is this you know horrifying overbearing tyrannical anti-democratic nation whereas ukraine is a pro-democratic nation therefore won't you please support ukraine you have to have a bit of a long memory to realize that before the year 2014 and even during part of the year 2014 ukraine was really in the same situation that belarus is today ukraine was one of the most despised most corrupt uh you know russian puppet states i mean their relationship to russia was very much of of mastered a servant now okay you know get into the details get into the weeds yes there was some ukrainian nationalism yes certainly there was some turmoil within ukraine about to what extent they were going to lean towards the west or lean towards the east but you know it is just not the case that ukraine was one of our closest allies or one of the nearest and dearest countries to western europe let alone the united states of america there wasn't any great warmth of feeling on the other side now this does not excuse what barack obama did and look there's another point here why should it be barack obama's problem well what the [ __ ] did you think germany was going to do about it what the [ __ ] do you think france was going to do about it i mean this is the reality that we're living do you think angela merkel was going to roll up her sleeves and say not on my watch i'm not going to let another crimean war happen and angela merkel was going to go out and call for a corps of volunteers and go from town to town in southern germany and say sign up your sons and daughters fight and die for the motherland do you think angela merkel was going to ring the bell of war and say this is it this is a time to take a stand for democracy or even at a lower level than democracy this is a time to take a stand for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of ukraine i'm going to address that in just a moment because i do think it's significant that those concepts of sovereignty and the inviolability of territorial integrity they're they are not merely separable from democracy they're quite separate from democracy and sometimes the two are even antithetical to one another you have to deal with what matters more democracy or an abstract notion of territorial integrity and sovereignty that the territory's drawn on a map and no one's allowed to change that not even if you have a referendum and 95 percent of people say they don't like where the borders are they want to change it right like borders are supposed to be a tool used by human beings kind of not the other way around i i grew up in canada you know what is the future of quebec what is the future of canada and what you know it's just ridiculous to me to pretend that territorial sovereignty is something that exists for millennia or even many centuries without being amended or renegotiated especially when you have democracy when you have people being being able to to vote on it so and so anyway uh ukraine in the year 2014 did not have the status that it has now and it's it's a carefully contrived status created through propaganda messaging and you know genuinely created through the the political actions of the politic the leaders of ukraine and all sorts of ukrainian people so in the last couple of years they have stuck out their necks and they have fought and died in the name of democracy and they have made themselves into martyrs for democracy but not too long ago back in 2014 it would be just as ludicrous to talk about ukraine this way as it would be to talk about poland this way or even worse places like belarus you know it's like well what is you telling me belarus represents democracy i mean does does belarus have more or less democracy than communist china like on a scale of one to ten how democratic yeah this it was really a hopeless despised corruptocracy that nobody wanted to support does this excuse the decisions made by barack obama no but it explains it i just related to you how ridiculous it would be to imagine angela merkel going from town to town and ringing the bell for war and recruiting people and saying hey now is the time to be a hero now's the time to stand up and fight and die for the future of europe's eastern frontier but if not angela merkel who was supposed to do it barack obama was kind of tired of ringing his bell he had a war in afghanistan he had a war in iraq he had a war it's hard to define geographically against isis the islamic state and the levant whatever you want to call it you know he had war in syria he had multiple wars in north africa he was involved in you know including but not limited to libya the war against boko haram so on and so forth and as i recall you guys can correct me if i'm wrong if i'm slightly off on the timeline here i believe he had already declared his so-called pivot to asia now sorry if i'm wrong i should look up the date when he first declared that if he hadn't declared it he was in the phase of wanting to declare it because he had that plan in mind before he went public with it now very briefly about barack obama's pivot to asia you could say one of two things either one it was a plan for a fundamental change in american foreign policy that never happened or two it was a plan for amer change in american foreign policy that did happen but it happened when joe biden was elected in joe biden's first week in office or first couple months in office that it was the change that that was to change obama vision that time we don't know uh biden himself is not coming out and saying that his foreign policy decisions the same ones obama wanted to do but for some reason just completely failed to implement so that's you know but at any rate obama was certainly thinking about shifting to a posture of treating china as america's main enemy and not these miscellaneous wars i've just mentioned obama failed to do that we don't know why why did obama never follow through with the uh so-called pivot to asia which really can be glossed as the the pivot to being anti-china now this raises other interesting questions that we don't need to get into in depth here on this video if china is your enemy do you really want russia to also be your enemy you know wouldn't wouldn't you prefer to do what donald trump tried to do totally incompetently don't get me wrong donald trump was an idiot but donald trump tried to embrace russia while making an enemy of china wouldn't that be profitable do you really want russia and iran and china to be your enemies simultaneously and we can keep going here it's a long list right well you know what obama did about ukraine in plain english jack [ __ ] so obama let it happen should we blame obama more than we blame uh you know the leader of france the leader of germany the leader of england the you know anyone the leader of switzerland you know for real no one no one expects the swiss to pick up the bag you know there are a lot of other countries here that are just geographically culturally and economically closer to ukraine and i think it does just reflect the overall contempt everyone had for ukraine when the euro maidan protests began um nobody felt that ukraine was their friend nobody felt they wanted to stand up and fight and die for the future of ukraine so now we get back into the question democracy here's the problem some percentage of people in kiev keith how do we want to pronounce it some percentage of people in the capital city of ukraine are willing to fight and die for the future of donetsk luhansk crimea to to maintain in this sense it's territorial integrity i don't know what percentage that is i don't know and some percentage of people in the capital city are willing to admit look the vast majority of the residents of crimea do not want to be a part of ukraine they either want to be a separate country a small separate country like belarus et cetera estonia compare it to the size of estonia you know or they want to be a province of russia russia did hold a referendum that everyone says was illegitimate and phony and staged the referendum showed 95 of the population of uh crimea wanted to be part of russia and ukraine well talk to experts i even look at interviews with experts nobody believes the number 95 what do you think the real number is is it 75 it's a very high percentage in re talk to anyone involved in this and also kind of pay attention to the propaganda messaging this is strangely not dealt with and avoided a significant percentage of just being a real deal i have never heard anyone doubt that the majority of the residents of crimea do not want to be part of ukraine they instead want to be part of russia or be a separate country entirely but that would be in a very close dependent relationship with russia that no doubt the vast majority of the residents they want that what percentage of the people in donetsk what percentage of the people in luhans feel the same way now what i hear in the mainstream press and what i hear directly from national leaders you know not just america england the leader of ukraine himself what i hear is an attempt to make this an argument about the inviability of territorial claims and sovereignty that you know well [Music] if anyone tries to change the border of any country if anyone tries to take one country and put it into two parts or three parts that that is a crime against humanity and has to be opposed and they don't even mention the possibility what if 85 percent of the population want that what if it's 95 what if it's 75 so in canada this is normal we have to deal with this in the united states of america if you've ever been to texas there are texans who will tell you all the time we used to be a separate country texan texas was not always part of the united states of america and we can be again texans really hold it in their back pocket that if they ever dislike american politics enough they can secede they can become a separate kind of medium-sized country texans see it that way i'm not joking and um you know yeah territorial inviolability and sovereignty george w bush didn't have a whole lot of imagination um how do you think the war in afghanistan would have gone if it had been divided into about four countries after it was conquered by the united states about about four you can get into it could be three could be five but you know afghanistan has several different languages in several different ethnically distinct regions really really afghanistan could have split into a couple of different countries and there was certainly an argument that the american foreign afghanistan would have gone better with the attempts at creating democracy in afghanistan would have gone better i mean one of the prerequisites of democracy especially encountered with a low level of literacy a low level of education can you understand the language the politicians are speaking can you actually read the same newspaper or if you're illiterate have someone else read out your life do you have one radio service it's a tough guy so you know this pretense that it's just unthinkable that anything on the map is going to be withdrawn going to be redrawn um you know now especially in the case of ukraine if you guys don't know the term i do see your comments coming in but guys if you have a second hit the thumbs up button helps more people see the video helps more people see the video while i'm recording also helps them discover it uh later but i do see your comments coming in thanks sir thanks for being here um look i used to live in laos uh tiny country in southeast asia just north of cambodia just west of uh vietnam i used to live in laos and when i first got there i felt that this was a tiny poverty-stricken nation where the people were so tough that they had resisted being conquered by thailand they had resisted being conquered by france which to some extent they were conquered by but it's long story you know and they had resisted being conquered by the japanese again the capital city was conquered by the japanese long story japanese army was there and did occupied but anyway you know this is this long history of resistance leading up to this surreal war with the united states of america where the poorest people in the world were fighting the richest people in the world jungle the jungle caves they gave think wow these are these poor you know just backward illiterate people but they fought so hard for their independence they sought fought so hard to have you know sovereignty self-determination and this this to have this territory this little piece of land you know obviously i felt nothing could be worse than to kind of say oh this country has no no reason to exist at all like this should just be another province of thailand you know like in a weird sense like i've done the reading i've done a lot of historical research you know it hurt me now i was learning lotion at that time i did get quite far in my ability to speak read and write lotion and then i could speak thai well enough this is the point i'm getting to you'd learn to kind of switch just a few words and get by and tie and thai people would be able to tell they'd normally think you were married to a lotion woman it's like oh you're speaking thai but like your accent and a few words here and there give away that really the language you know is lotion um you know i encountered people in laos who had the down-to-earth attitude look there's no reason for this country to exist there's just no reason for us to be a separate independent country this is ridiculous like we're locking ourselves into poverty and as it happens an anti-democratic horrible communist dictatorial regime this is also true of laos but like that there is really no reason why laos shouldn't have the same status than thailand that chiang mai has been talent any of the culturally and linguistically distinct units within thailand and you know again at first it's just kind of shocking to me you learn the language more and more and you start to realize the extent to which the ocean is a dialect of thai or thai is a dialect of lotion i've given you the word the term swadesh list you can get the swadish list for thai and laotian swedish it's just a type of vocabulary list and it's used to evaluate how different languages are or how similar they are whether this is scientific or not is another question anthropologists like to use this particular list of words okay so look at the swatish list for thai the swatish list for lotion consistently transcribed into the same phonetic notation you know so that it's not just the style of writing that's deceiving yourself words are these are almost the same language now no matter how much suffering there has been in history up to this point no matter how many wars they've fought how much they've suffered and died okay so now it's year 2022 do you want to fight and die for the future of the lotion language do you want to fight a war do you want to fight and struggle and die for the minuscule difference between the laotian language and the thai language now we have another kind of problem here because laos is anti-democratic and the question becomes do you want to fight and die for this horrible dictatorial anti-democratic regime just to prevent this country from being absorbed into a more democratic one becoming a province of a country where they would have elections they would have freedom of speech they would have some of these benefits thailand thailand has political problems okay it's not paradise you know it does but when you're comparing it to a communist dictatorship like laos you know now this is not even getting into the economic aspect obviously look back at the last 50 years there is no way to exaggerate how much better off the people of laos would be their quality of life their economic position their level of education they would be so much better off today in every way if 50 years ago they had become a province of talent if 100 years ago they become worse there is no debate about that none right so you know the the unthinkable starts to become thinkable why does canada exist why does quebec exist you know and what are the real disadvantages of canadian independence you know what are the real disadvantages of chemical independence i used to live in scotland when i was a kid uh about 12 13 years old i think i think i turned 13 while i was in scotland um it was there for more than a year you know i went there for whatever reason with this assumption that all scottish people wanted to fight and die to make scotland an independent country again it was very hard for me to accept that no the majority of scottish people not the vast majority but the majority know they preferred to be subordinate to london england that there were things that mattered more than independents they didn't particularly want to have their own country and have their own army and have their own money have their own currency they were fine just having their own soccer team just having their own football team because they'd say there you know they were fine you know having this limited symbolic kind of independence and and being a part of a larger unit so if you don't know in the years since then the year since i was in scotland they have had a lot of polling but also outright referendums they've had democratic votes they've had plebiscites to ask the question of what percentage of people want to be a separate country anyway and a whole lot of people say they'd rather be able to ride a train continuously between you know london and and glasgow so that is the reality of the world we live in all right it's just ridiculous to pretend that uh sovereignty uh uh territorial integrity that these are permanent inviolable non-negotiable concepts [Music] i'm going to come back to the swadesh list i defy you take a swaddash list of the russian language this is a list of vocabulary put it next to the swatish list for ukrainian all right ukrainian and russian are different languages but they are so similar you could be excused for saying ukrainian is a dialect of russian or russian is a dialect of ukrainian the difference between the thai language and the lotion language same same um do you want to fight and die for ukrainian nationalism not just you would you sign up to fight that army because of the abstract idea of ukrainian nationals and not ukrainian nationalism for people in the capital city kiev or kiev not to defend parts of ukraine where perhaps the majority of people want to continue being this independent country ukraine but to impose ukrainian nationalism over crimea an area where we are all absolutely certain the majority of people do not want to be part of ukraine currently this is not a problem in canada but it could be in future it could be for quebec and it could be for some of our first nations people you could have a territorial area where the indigenous people say look they really don't want to do this canadian thing anymore they want to be a separate country i know we can roll tanks we can go conquer them and force them to be part of our country but if you believe in democracy and it's a question of how much like how local does democracy get what if there are some indigenous people in canada and they would prefer to be a small country like uh andorra and dora has a tiny country they say look it would mean so much to us we're really committed to this we really even if it locks us into poverty and we have all these disadvantages we'd rather be a tiny country like andorra than be part of this canada thing anymore well do you respect that how does you know if the only justification for war in ukraine now is that it is pro-democracy we all need to think much more profoundly and seriously about what being pro-democracy really means so yeah uh someone's asking if i'm still cooking this thing behind me or if it's going to burn great question right and see that flatbreads [Laughter] oh so do you want to give me lucas a regular commentator says quote what i found interesting is that nobody talks about the last five years yeah yeah yeah yeah well i think earlier on i mentioned that it's just very suspicious that we don't want to discuss this in a retrospective framework of going back to the obama administration it's always in forever narrowed down to this very phony very short-term uh set of reflections okay now look guys um great question from the audience quote when's the last time you had caffeine yeah thanks do you think i look higher do you think i look low i should do i should do a caffeine update video this is true uh yeah i have not had coffee in many days i had a small amount of chocolate today uh truth be told so chocolate does contain caffeine but i am i am off caffeine at the moment thank you for asking my life is in many ways a long-term struggle against caffeine but you know sometimes to try to get my try to jolt my sleep cycle back on schedule or for other reasons especially if i've been sick even just the common cold i like to use caffeine to compensate so good hard-hitting questions from the audience um you know war for democracy right in myanmar you have a very straightforward situation where the majority of the people want democracy and are saying wouldn't you please conquer us so we can have it this has its own moral quandaries has some real serious moral problems conquering a people in the name of democracy when they do want democracy i i'm just being real with you what percentage of cuba want democracy i don't know you know like i could i could hear i is it 30 is it 80 some percentage of people in cuba want democracy do they want it enough to stand up and fight and die do they want it enough to be passively conquered by the american army if the american people are willing to fight and die on their behalf right you know it's uh it's it's very tough sorry so do you do you want to give me says quote speaking from a country with four official languages in my opinion compromises are essential so this is switzerland definitely romance was artificially created as a compromise between values so you have standardized form of the the romance language um yeah in reality switzerland that's like six official languages you know i know there's more than one account if you look at the number of languages that are taught in schools and supported by the government as official languages it's it's more than four six or seven but yeah switzerland is very big on on language education and look let's be real i am not idealistic enough to say that afghanistan can be switzerland i'm just not you know like like the fact that that's possible in switzerland doesn't mean it's possible in afghanistan and you know i don't it's so easy to preach virtue to the yugoslavians right well yugoslavia couldn't do it yugoslavia couldn't be a switzerland in that sense it couldn't be like switzerland and i i just think it's unreasonable to to take switzerland i mean switzerland is a positive example in many many ways but to take that and then look at the rest of the world and say well why can't you guys all reorganize ourselves into swiss republics uh that is asking a lot it's certainly asking a lot of of afghanistan um anyway look to just kind of close the circle there it's one thing to talk about conquering myanmar with the hypothesis or the assumption that the people of myanmar would like to be conquered would like to be a democracy and would accept uh conquest as the price of becoming a democracy all right well right now what percentage of the people of crimea want the americans to bomb them if you could do a poll without any russian interference you know i mean if you could do a real you know you could have a magical perfect poll you know where nobody feels any pressure and no you know where people are really ask their sincere opinion to think about it and they know the answer is going to have real world consequences you know i think there are some people in north korea who would say in a poll yes they wish the americans would conquer north korea to end this dictatorship some is it 10 is it 50 there are some people in north korea who would say look this regime is so terrible i wish the americans would conquer us so we could just reunify with south korea some okay uh there are probably some people in cuba who feel that way how many people really right now in russian occupied crimea how many of them would support an american invasion an american conquest of crimea if you had polling if you had a referendum i think everyone in this audience knows and everyone who works for the cia knows and everyone with any shred of expertise knows the answer is very close to zero there are almost zero people there will be a few dissidents to a few people who feel that vladimir putin's regime is so terrible that it's worth a nuclear war to get rid of putin there are but there will be more people certainly in the crimea certainly in donetsk and luhans there will be people who feel that they are russian that their language is russian that their long-term future is being a part of russia not ukraine and they probably feel that the dictatorship of putin electoral dictatorship is like the strongman government of putin the corrupt quasi-democratic government of putin as bad as it is it will prove to be evanescent sooner or later putin will retire sooner or later he will die of old age and then without any revolution we hope without any civil war russia will be able to progress toward being a country that is more like belgium it's just going to be more of a western democratic style country that the the norms that the hope is that after putin dies or after putin retires that they will not go further down the slippery slope to becoming like north korea or uh becoming like some of the central asian republics some of these horrible dictatorships that instead once putin has finished his you know memorable career as the dictator of russia that russia will you know have a government much more like france germany belgium uh those normal standards so that's a different kind of sacrifice right that would be people in ukraine and people in sorry people in donetsk people in luhansk people in uh the crimea who are willing to endure a number of years or maybe a number of decades do you think putin has 20 years left really is it 10 years is it just five see it's not that many years it's not like you're enduring stalinism it's not that long they say well we can tolerate being conquered and occupied by putin imagining that a better regime you know is is going to replace him and from a completely uh cynical perspective you know um i i think that is the basis for donald trump's style optimism about russia donald trump style attempts to embrace russia is that russia is very different from north korea russia is very different from iran russia is different from pakistan russia is different from you know the current government of afghanistan you know the taliban and so on russia is very different from isis that there isn't really any fundamental basis for the enmity russia is a country that could be and should be our ally could be and should be our friend but uh just due to this one tin pot dictator just due to vladimir putin temporarily it isn't and is it reckless optimism to think that without a nuclear war without a civil war without a revolution putin can be replaced and russia can return to some of the norms of western democracy so let's let's really get into this caffeine thing i didn't have coffee today i didn't have coffee yesterday day before yesterday did i have coffee i think maybe was the day before that i think this might be my fourth day with no caffeine so you still are you're still here scare bear i answered your quest but yeah i do i do periodically struggle with uh with quitting caffeine and um you know it's a struggle is a struggle worth having i was talking to one of my neighbors the other day i won't say who but just someone else who lives in this apartment building i think he's younger than me i think he's like 10 years younger than me you know you know i'm thinking about he was just chatting with me in the hall and you know i do struggle with physical fitness i struggle with doing 200 push-ups a day and i struggle with quitting caffeine and i i honestly i cannot say i struggle with sobriety i've been sober for so long it's easy that's not a struggle for me at all i can't say i struggle with a vegan diet and i've been vegan for so long it's not a struggle at all you know but you know i'd rather have those struggles than than not have them and i wish i could say when i meet guys my own age normally i'm meeting guys 10 years younger than me who look like they're 10 years older than me and they're they're losing all those same struggles i think it's fair to say just just the last couple weeks i've struggled with video games you know i hadn't played video games in a long time i got into uh as i made a video talking about i got into buying video games for the 3ds before it closes it's not where this one is video game platform and it's going out of business the store is being shut down it's like okay are there any games i want to buy before this is gone forever i got into really questioning you know which version of pac-man do i want to know not even that i want to play pac-man today but that at some point in the future and you feel that coming into your life and kind of taking up more space in your head and your emotional range and on the other hand you have things to deal with that are really heartbreaking and hard to deal with my divorce talking to a lawyer but when i'm going to see my daughter where i'm living where i'm going to move to what i'm going to do with my own studies in my own career and the final steps in finishing the first book i've written first book for adults no more manifestos i have been doing that including clicking on the website so when you're making the book some of it's really boring formatting stuff um you know dealing with the book is stressful and then i started writing another book if you guys support my video and i started writing a new book and you know feeling the simplicity and childlike wonder of video games coming back in your life which again really has been part of my life i was joking with melissa about this at one point um uh you know melissa bought me a pac-man game it's not worth describing but it was a self-contained what's called a plug-and-play pac-man game and you know i did thank her and i guess look it's thoughtful i know you bought this for me but i refused it i said look you know do you still have the receipt i really think you should return this because i'm not gonna use it that's true at that time i didn't even play i didn't even play pac-man and um when melissa and i first got together the only game i played was space invaders the original space invaders and i do i recently i bought a copy of space invaders if i ever want to play i haven't been playing it and played over five minutes but i do own space in america again these kinds of very very simple games you can just play for five minutes here and there you know reporting off but i said i said melissa look it's so ironic you you actually bought me as a gift that that pac-man and i i told you to return it i was again i was nice about it i didn't say oh how could you possibly you know here we are like four years later three years later it's many years later and if i you know if i had that you know i'd really uh i'd really love it like oh wow great at least i have this you know what flip back then so yeah yeah cause i've been going through that lately but anyway yeah you know it's um you know i'm saying this stuff out loud too because i've had a lot of fan mail lately just just be honest fan mail isn't uh equally distributed over there sometimes within a couple days i've gotten familiar with people who really admire me and they don't see the way in which my life is a struggle and they don't see the way in which my life is a failure so i really think it's important that i take the time to come out and say look guys this is a struggle to feel like this is hard not to be self-pitying not even to complain but um i think part of the reality of uh performance art is that the performer makes the performance seem easy you know i'm coming on here and i'm joking about this uh this is the first video i've ever done about ukraine i don't think the other maybe it's been mentioned very briefly in passing uh but you know how many hours of reading have i done about ukraine between 2014 and present and even how many hours have i spent just talking to melissa just talking to my girlfriend about i mean you know sir but if you actually tried to add it up i mean like i say to people like add up the number of hours you're spending playing video games like if you actually had a tally now in that sense you know a lot goes into it and what you see is this very casual and joyous thing and you don't maybe perceive you know this is someone who struggles to not drink caffeine the reason being what i like about coffee is it lets me get a lot of work done that's what's appealing it's not that it makes me happy you're like okay i can drink caffeine and then put 110 of my energy into this that's what's appealing about it especially if you've had a bad night's sleep or you've had a cold you've been sick something like that you're ill-rested it's very appealing if somebody wants to wants to get things done to say look i struggle with that and i struggle with the fact i keep saying to people again and again look i have no employment i have no hope of employment all of my hopes for education have come to an end you know so i don't have to rehearse it here but there were a series of university programs and college programs i was looking at trying to get into and now all of them are over i kind of have this brief distraction and buckling down and finishing writing the book but then after i'm finished writing the book or these two books plural you know there's this kind of chasm of what am i going to do with my life and if you keep watching the youtube channel you'll you'll get to see that okay a couple more uh questions here wicked energy who's a regular viewer uh shout out to wicked energy i hope that's not the name of a of a caffeine-filled drink that i'm endorsing i hope i think that's just this guy's username sounds like it could be a could be an energy drink says uh quote isil can you comment on if you think nato is is over expanding oh okay so sir the question is is is nato gonna expand further you know basically what's the future of of nato look um in reality the united states and turkey are enemies this whole thing with russia has been a distraction from the extent to which the united states and turkey today are enemies so the most likely thing that will happen with nato in the future is that it will shrink it can't shrink legally so what it will probably do is overnight you'll have a you'll have a meeting and uh the members will be brought together and you know nato will be dissolved and then they'll form a new a new uh agency to replace it a new military alliance to replace it so you have two huge problems right now one is turkey and the other is india so today in 2022 under joe biden nato makes no sense at all nato is a nonsensical what's the word nato is a vestige of a bygone political era if nato made sense when jfk was president it barely made sense and kind of good luck trying to reason through how nato got to the membership list it has today the status of turkey nato but obviously the real alliance that america needs to be a part of and set in stone is an alliance that includes india and taiwan and japan and that excludes turkey so i wondered if you know during his first hundred days in office or something if biden was going to make a move of that kind but apparently not or apparently not yet now look um so that's the big game for nato right if you're going to dissolve nato and start a new agency a new security agency a new treaty a new a new military alliance is it in america's interest to be arming small powerless eastern european countries against russia not really you know what is in america's interest in central asia including afghanistan but not limited to afghanistan what is america's policy on mongolia mongolia if you don't know has an enormous border with russia and on the other side has an enormous border with china mongolia is a crucial strategic ally and you triangulate to mongolia and japan you know the army base in in okinawa you know uh there were very very serious decisions to be made there with serious long-term implications but you know nato as it exists today with turkey at the center of it um it is a vestige of a of a bygone era so i i can't see any other future for nato other than it being dissolved and quite possibly on the same day ceremonially you have you know america has a meeting with the countries that they want to be a part of the new agency to replace nato and they all sign a declaration or sign a document um and then in some ways it carries on so yeah anyway great some so just couple more comments and i'll wrap it up sleepyhead says quote i struggle with depression you look so happy and your girlfriend as well that is because i love life you know and you know i'm just being real with you i think i'd be happy in prison i think i'd be happy in the army you know if i could join the army i'm too old you know i think i'd be happy uh working a very humble job in an amazon warehouse which may be coming next tune in for season three of a balaccio where i'm working on an amazon warehouse you know my future there is no possibility of me getting good or high-paying employment i may have very very humble hard jobs in the future but you know i am i look happy because i am happy and that's because i'm leading a meaningful life all the time and put it this way even if i'm not leading a meaningful life i'm struggling to lead a meaningful life all the time and that struggle is is worth having and that struggle it makes you happy you know even when your life is terrible even when your life is miserable even when you want to break down crying because you don't know when you're going to see your daughter you know and you're only getting bad news from your lawyer and you're only getting bad news from the different government agencies you're trying to do paperwork with you know sure i mean there are a lot of things about that are very obviously tragic and if you go back and look um season three will be the wage slave arc well said well said the return to the workplace foreign totally totally and i can come on wearing my mcdonald's uniform i look that'll be great for me that'll be a fun form of content to do you know yeah come in and talk about what life is like at mcdonald's do some real kind of dark dark humor about that i can i can see that that coming for sure um yeah anyway sorry but you know that that's that's a struggle worth worth having and um you know i i think you guys get the message if you watch my videos lately in large part i'm out here trying to encourage people to embrace that struggle rather than embrace distractions from the struggle or do not you know and uh face up to what's making you unhappy and and so on and so forth sure uh so a couple more specific questions here question uh what do you do about russia or slash putin especially financially since not militarily and what's what does putin do next so look guys i i kind of thought about saying this before um it's it's very different when you're in a position of power versus a position of powerlessness so i'm not going to digress into a lecture on this although i could thumbs up if you want a lecture on it give the video a thumbs up anyway you've been watching for 57 minutes give it a thumbs up when we talk about veganism vegan politics animal rights what do you want to say ethics ecology global warming any of those issues 99 of what i'm saying is from the position of powerless people trying to change the world it's it's really kind of stupid and self-indulgent to sit here and say oh what would i do if i were the president of the united states about ecology about animal rights about you know the golden rule now we can have that conversation but it's the two are so far removed right so just just making the disclaimer most of what i talk about is from the perspective of an isolated intellectual a powerless person trying to change the world in some way and that's why i do ask questions you'll notice in the middle of this discourse by ukraine i asked you to think would you sign up to fight in this war would you be willing to fight for the future of ukraine and you know would you be willing to fight for the future of laos in a war between laos and thailand just because of the abstract concept of territorial sovereignty right self-determination these are these are questions worth thinking through because it situates you in that historical period in that struggle you know um where there's something your own life is at risk ultimately but at least at least a few years your life arrests a lot a lot of misery and discomfort and hard work but that is again thinking of you as a powerless person it's very very different if we were to talk about this in terms of what you would do if you were if you had been in donald trump's position during that period of time i have to say i think it would be very tempting for the united states for canada for england to say look we fundamentally embrace russia 110 to say that they support russia in its conquest of syria that's what happened guys in case you didn't notice uh that just admit that actually it's kind of politically convenient for the rest of the world to just allow russia to militarily stabilize some parts of africa some parts of the middle east and that actually that's kind of in the interest of of western businesses they're not really our enemies because russia also massacres members of isis they also suppress you know muslim jihadist extremist insurgency and so on and to say look fundamentally north korea is our enemy and china is our enemy and cuba is our enemy but really not russia like really this is kind of stupid guys and to embrace russia 110 and say look we're going to start a whole new chapter of history in russian relations donald trump kind of hinted at that possibility but never really went all the way with it you could say he wimped out but you could you could totally uh you know again whether you think of that as idealistic or cynical and you could say look you know the temperament of just one man should not decide the fate of nations if vladimir putin is not our type of guy uh but you know the russian people really are our type of we have no problem with the russians you know as the people they're really not our enemies there's no reason to escalate this conflict and it certainly i mean just point out if you were in a position of power you could 100 embrace russia you cannot embrace turkey it's impossible you cannot embrace iran it's impossible you know iran is really your enemy whether you like it or not i mean what you're going to do about iran that's tough what you're gonna do about turkey that's tough this is really really difficult stuff what are you gonna do about libya you know but the whole thing with russia um there really is a glasnost approach that's possible here unfortunately one history has been left totally in the hands of the american president as they say angela merkel wasn't going to do [ __ ] what you know angela merkel isn't going to make she didn't do anything neither is macron now you know emmanuel macron prime minister france none of these other people are actually going to take any initiative so it rests entirely on the president united states well look who the president the united states has been george w bush barack obama donald trump and now you know so yeah from the level of elite politics and the level of of being in power that's possibility but from the perspective of powerless people which is what i mostly talk about of course we should be 100 opposed to vladimir putin and we should support democracy we should support democracy and oppose any kind of tyranny any kind of non-democratic government whether that is in myanmar whether that is in communist china or whether that is in russia nice talking to you guys when you look back at the last five years of your life what have you done for democracy really ask yourself that question you know i'm gonna let's get a little bit more personal when you look at your own father and the last 50 years of his life what has he ever done for democracy look at your husband look at your wife whatever you got boyfriend girlfriend in the last five years what have you ever done for democracy and now look ahead to the next five years and don't tell me but really think about it really think in the next five years what are you going to do for democracy whether that is in switzerland germany ukraine myanmar hong kong taiwan or in one state or another within the united states of america