Ask A Genius 734: Russians Dead at War
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2022/04/05
[Recording Start]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Is the Russo-Ukrainian War costing the Russians a lot?
Rick Rosner: Yeah. Between the Russians lying about everything and just the uncertainty of war, we don’t know how many Russians have died in this. Estimates as of last week were at least 10,000 Russian troops out of 150000 to 200000, seven of the 20 generals running the campaign. Russian generals are said to have been killed the economic sanctity, of course in terms of just raw damage and probably deaths it’s cost Ukrainians more because they’re having entire cities destroyed and just in the last few days there’s increasing evidence of mass murders by Russians in cities. And the Ukrainians just took back the city of Bucha and found hundreds of people murdered hands tied behind their back shot in the back of the head; all men between ages 16 and 50 in that town just murdered. And I think once if they drive the Russians, if once they take back more cities, some people are expecting to find evidence of these murders in all the cities they managed to take back from the Russians.
But this is stuff you can get from any newscast right now. It’s the worst Butchery in Europe since World War II and since we’re Eurocentric there have been I’m sure worse slaughters. Mao slaughtered or led tens of millions of his people from the late ‘40s into the ‘70s maybe later than that. Some people estimate 50 million Chinese killed under Mao. All the various genocides across Africa but we don’t hear as much about that stuff because our media especially in America looks at Western First World countries; and in that arena, the European arena. It’s just it’s the most senseless slaughter since World War II. One possibly helpful thing well, it’s not necessarily helpful; Putin’s popularity in Russia is 83% which is twice Biden’s approval in the U.S which speaks to the power of propaganda and probably fear.
Some people may know what’s going on maybe a lot of Russians probably don’t so that 83% approval might be largely real based on Russians just being fed bullshit but in America at least it’s making a lot of people less tolerant of and more aware of Russian propaganda that we’ve been getting fire hosed with since at least 2016. A lot is still getting through but the atrocities done by the Russians shown on the news all the time put people who are still functioning as Russian mouthpieces like Tucker Carlson in Sharp Contrast; it’s harder for them to hide their bullshit. Before Putin did this people were able to get away with saying Russia is not so bad including Trump and a lot of people on Fox News. And that’s becoming less possible. A lot of people on the far right are still doing it but it’s becoming harder to do.
[Recording End]
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