Orwell would have had a field day with the Ukraine invasion

There are many surreal aspects of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, from the vivid images of destruction and death and pain to the reports of Ukrainians getting into heated arguments with their parents living in Russia over the very existence of the war.

I don't hear George Orwell's classic dystopian novel 1984 cited much in current coverage, which is its own puzzle. You may recall "newspeak," propagandistic language that is characterized by twisted euphemisms and inverted language enforced by Big Brother. 

Newspeak eliminated certain words or recast certain words with unorthodox meanings (e.g., uncold instead of warm and ungood instead of bad) or the creation of words for political purposes (e.g., goodthink, meaning “orthodoxy” or “to think in an orthodox manner”). The most blatant example of this is a law hurriedly passed by the Russian national legislature that mandates 15 years in prison for merely stating or publishing the word "war" to characterize their "special military operation."

Up is down, and war is peace in this alternative reality.

I am having a tough time imagining an entire nation being fooled by never-ending "fake news," and perhaps Putin's attempts to create a false narrative about "driving out Nazis" will fizzle and even backfire. After all, the Internet is intricate and interwoven into almost every aspect of modern life, even in Russia. There are very smart people who are devising clever ways to get around almost any attempts to block contacts and sharing of information.

This is one of those good news/bad news situations, perhaps, with the same truths about the difficulty of blocking information on the web applying to both truth and lies. They all get through and no one seems to have found a way to sort everything out. And regular folks have almost no hope of living in a society -- no matter where in the world -- where everyone is working from one set of accepted facts.

I have read a number of posts by pundits suggesting that we not punish Russian citizens as a whole for the actions of Putin's regime, and I can see their reasoning. Most people are quite busy just making enough money to keep things going and most people are just trying to get through the day before dropping off to sleep, exhausted. 

You really can't blame the vast majority of Russians for accepting whatever the available media tells them. Options are hard to find and most carry some risk of punishment. They don't even have the relative luxury of being able to choose between a radical network like FOX News and a mainstream platform like CBS. For Russians, it's all propaganda, all the time.

It occurs to me that many Americans find themselves in a similar situation to their Russian counterparts. There is certainly more choice of media in the U.S., but our tribalism has sent much of the country into opposed and entrenched channels and platforms. At the heart of American dysfunction is the fact that our media (and our personal choices) don't seem to inhabit the same reality as one another.

I can't imagine the courage of the young woman who interrupted the most-watched news show in Russia yesterday by holding up a poster calling for the end of the war behind the news reader. She knew she would be hauled away and possibly "disappeared," yet she felt compelling to share the truth. Her actions are unlikely to become common since the authorities can't afford to yield, but millions of viewers must have at least wondered what was going on.

Here's the thing about creating an alternate universe, like the one most FOX News pundits have developed. When reality intrudes, people still try to find ways around facts, still strive to find some sly angle to defend themselves and rationalize their actions and beliefs.

Putin is just a more dangerous version of Trump, an unrestrained egoist unable to conceive of defeat and or even making a mistake. Trump never deviates from his whining about the 2020 election and Putin won't be changing his tune about some fantasy Nazi government plotting to send trained birds loaded with biological weapons into the motherland.

To back down or, worse, to admit wrong, is the end for politicians who maintain power only through manipulation.

But most FOX News viewers are quite satisfied with what they see every evening from the network blowhards. I wonder if most Russians would bother to turn to some rough equivalent of MSNBC if such a network would magically appear on their TVs and phones.

One thing must be true for Russians, at least, and that is that they cannot simply be blind to the sudden disappearance of nearly every Western business, from McDonalds to Levi-Straus, and the blocking of social media platforms that they are just as addicted to as the rest of the world.

But many Americans continue to believe that vaccines will harm them and that no pandemic really happened.

As Buffalo Springfield once sang, "There's something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear."

Some things never change.