Honestly, as pessimistic as I am, I think that it’s representative of the sorta default position of the vast majority of humanity when you strip away all the politicking and propagandisement and partisanship.
If you like philosophy then this is basically what Rawls put forward in his veil of ignorance. If you take the average lib in the US who doesn’t have any horse in the race, it’s extremely easy to align with the oppressed over the oppressor and to take a position of demanding justice.
Like, if you wrote a sci-fi or fantasy novel that was basically a blow-by-blow account of the lead up to the October Revolution and what followed it in the proceeding 75 or so years except in a different settings using different names, you’re going to find that the overwhelming majority of people are going to take a pro-soviet position without realising it.
Unfortunately the closer you get to what I guess I’d refer to as “internal” politics, in the sense that it’s internal to the political order of the nation although not necessarily internal in the sense that it is inwardly-focused (think how the Vietnam War was very much central to US politics when it was happening and so it defined a lot of US internal politics at the time, or the first Gulf War and the relative importance that Kuwait had at that time where these days Kuwait or Vietnam have since receded from being centre-stage) then the more partisan the issue becomes and the greater the efforts to propagandise the issue and so on, meaning that the average person is going to be more likely to align to the State Department line the more a particular issue is central to the internal politics of the day.
Of course this relies upon a degree of “objectivity” in relation to the info that a person has; most Americans would (or at least would have) agreed that Maduro stole the Venezuelan presidency from Guaido and they might even tell you that Guaido had a right to assume leadership of Venezuela under the constitution, although they’d never be able to explain that under the constitution that provision only allows for him to assume that role if a president has not already been sworn in by the supreme court (which had already happened with Maduro during the manufactured crisis caused by the National Assembly obstructionism) nor that under that provision Guaido would only have been able to assume a temporary role of benchwarmer/caretaker in the executive seat with which to maintain stability of the government while his primary task was to ensure that a general election is held within… idk, I can’t remember exactly but it is like 90 days, or something along those lines, and I cbf digging up the particular article in question in the Venezuelan constitution right now because nobody really cares that much and that includes me.
Obviously Guaido, upon claiming that he was the leader of Venezuela, had a constitutionally-defined ticking clock from the day he made the claim over the presidency to call for a general election in Venezuela which never happened because it was nothing more than a shitty attempt at a soft coup but nobody in the US has ever fucking read the Venezuelan constitution so they’re only going to be as good as the information they receive or, less likely, actually seek out. No investigation, no right to speak and all that.
Like, if you wrote a sci-fi or fantasy novel that was basically a blow-by-blow account of the lead up to the October Revolution and what followed it in the proceeding 75 or so years except in a different settings using different names, you’re going to find that the overwhelming majority of people are going to take a pro-soviet position without realising it.
I mean George Lucas did this with Star Wars and the Viet Cong. He said so himself. And aside from the empire did nothing wrong weirdos (which are mostly ironic, I hope), the majority of the people support the Rebels.
Honestly, as pessimistic as I am, I think that it’s representative of the sorta default position of the vast majority of humanity when you strip away all the politicking and propagandisement and partisanship.
If you like philosophy then this is basically what Rawls put forward in his veil of ignorance. If you take the average lib in the US who doesn’t have any horse in the race, it’s extremely easy to align with the oppressed over the oppressor and to take a position of demanding justice.
Like, if you wrote a sci-fi or fantasy novel that was basically a blow-by-blow account of the lead up to the October Revolution and what followed it in the proceeding 75 or so years except in a different settings using different names, you’re going to find that the overwhelming majority of people are going to take a pro-soviet position without realising it.
Unfortunately the closer you get to what I guess I’d refer to as “internal” politics, in the sense that it’s internal to the political order of the nation although not necessarily internal in the sense that it is inwardly-focused (think how the Vietnam War was very much central to US politics when it was happening and so it defined a lot of US internal politics at the time, or the first Gulf War and the relative importance that Kuwait had at that time where these days Kuwait or Vietnam have since receded from being centre-stage) then the more partisan the issue becomes and the greater the efforts to propagandise the issue and so on, meaning that the average person is going to be more likely to align to the State Department line the more a particular issue is central to the internal politics of the day.
Of course this relies upon a degree of “objectivity” in relation to the info that a person has; most Americans would (or at least would have) agreed that Maduro stole the Venezuelan presidency from Guaido and they might even tell you that Guaido had a right to assume leadership of Venezuela under the constitution, although they’d never be able to explain that under the constitution that provision only allows for him to assume that role if a president has not already been sworn in by the supreme court (which had already happened with Maduro during the manufactured crisis caused by the National Assembly obstructionism) nor that under that provision Guaido would only have been able to assume a temporary role of benchwarmer/caretaker in the executive seat with which to maintain stability of the government while his primary task was to ensure that a general election is held within… idk, I can’t remember exactly but it is like 90 days, or something along those lines, and I cbf digging up the particular article in question in the Venezuelan constitution right now because nobody really cares that much and that includes me.
Obviously Guaido, upon claiming that he was the leader of Venezuela, had a constitutionally-defined ticking clock from the day he made the claim over the presidency to call for a general election in Venezuela which never happened because it was nothing more than a shitty attempt at a soft coup but nobody in the US has ever fucking read the Venezuelan constitution so they’re only going to be as good as the information they receive or, less likely, actually seek out. No investigation, no right to speak and all that.
Brb going to write this book
I mean George Lucas did this with Star Wars and the Viet Cong. He said so himself. And aside from the empire did nothing wrong weirdos (which are mostly ironic, I hope), the majority of the people support the Rebels.
Please do. I’m not even kidding.