In grad school I had a roommate who was from Russia. When her brother hit the age to join the Russian military she could not stop bawling. I didn't understand why until I read Putin's Russia by Anna Politkovskaya - ThreadSky

kendrawrites.com • 14 days ago

In grad school I had a roommate who was from Russia. When her brother hit the age to join the Russian military she could not stop bawling.

I didn't understand why until I read Putin's Russia by Anna Politkovskaya

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sparksandsteel.bsky.social•13 days ago

Are you under the impression the Tyson executives were behaving outside the bounds of normal C-suite behavior?

kendrawrites.com•13 days ago

Why are you like this?

sparksandsteel.bsky.social•13 days ago

Genuinely curious?

It’s a gift.

kendrawrites.com•14 days ago

I was especially confused because a family member was joining the US Army at roughly the same time. It was during the forever wars so we were, you know, concerned. But not like this.

Online discourse is very black or white but I've read a lot of US history. Nothing fucked me up like Putin's Russia

kendrawrites.com•14 days ago

LIke I've been working on this side project tracking how much bombs were used during the civil rights protests of the 1950s and 60s.

For fun.

For curiosity.

kendrawrites.com•14 days ago

And none of that fucks me up as much as Putin's Russia.

And I've been thinking a lot about why. And the reason is a lot of the horrors chronicles in it are like side quests. They're what happens in a tolitarian state that strips away hope for the future and the value of human life.

kendrawrites.com•14 days ago

Those mother fuckers setting dynamite in the 1960s were racist as fuck but they were angry. They CARED.

The closest US example I can think of to what's chronicled in Putin's Russia is those Tyson executives taking bets on how many workers would get covid rather than shut down the plant.

kendrawrites.com•14 days ago

Just indifference to human life and absolute certainty you won't be held accountable if you're caught

mrsdewinter.bsky.social•14 days ago

My friend @betsyphillips.bsky.social wrote about three bombings in Nashville. The book is called "Dynamite Nashville."

corynwolk.bsky.social•14 days ago

I read Dorceta Taylor's Toxic Communities recently, and I had had no idea just how freely and on what scale white people used bombs to keep Black people from living in white neighborhoods. It was practically the go-to solution! Not just "Bombingham" but all over the country!

kendrawrites.com•14 days ago

What started this weird project was reading a civil rights history book and every third page casually dropped a dynamite reference and i was like uhm what

corynwolk.bsky.social•14 days ago

That's how this book is! She plainly describes the historical race x residential location forces by era and city/region, and the result is "so then white residents bombed their house" over and over. It almost became comical except that it obviously isn't funny at all.

shanelewin.bsky.social•14 days ago

Added to my reading list.

kendrawrites.com•14 days ago

It's a book I've read exactly once. Will likely never reread. And yet lives on in my mind constantly.

larelli.bsky.social•14 days ago

The extreme -I mean I was going to say bullying but is so much more- the brutal tortuous predation on the young military recruits is a horrifying thing to read about

kendrawrites.com•14 days ago

Like...i knew dudes at West Point. I went to a big ROTC college. I spent time at Fort Bragg like... I'm not in anyway saying I'm a military expert. The US military has many problems but not like this

larelli.bsky.social•14 days ago

From what I read about the conscripts and the military culture is that it is an abusive culture that enshrines that abuse as necessary and then the perpetrators and the victims both fall towards alcohol to dim the memory of abuse endured

larelli.bsky.social•14 days ago

And all of that cycle is underpinned by an infrastructure of fraud and corruption by every single person involved

riseupwoman.bsky.social•13 days ago

on a tangent note,
military service being one of few alternatives to jumbo stud loans is the USA's version of mandatory conscription.
Rich kids free to learn and discover themselves at a crucial age,
while modest income and BIPOC seeking economic stability/mobility are sucked into the MIC

kendrawrites.com•13 days ago

Yeah I have thoughts....I will say though... the respect for people who have served in this country does lead people who volunteer who would not sign up in other countries if they could easily avoid it because the military is villified.

lbigisland.bsky.social•14 days ago

Isn’t this the reason psychopaths like Hegseth, Gabbard, Patel and Ratcliff have power over the transparency and accountability of the military and intelligence agencies? Not a scintilla of morals or decency amongst all of them. The influence on the culture their “leadership” will have is terrifying

temporaryhermit.bsky.social•14 days ago

Some time ago I realized how closely Russia and my native Germany are historically connected.
So I read up on Russian history a bit and found that it was permanent tragedy. Yet people live, somehow.
Like so many, I had hope when Gorbachev took over, but....

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