Putting the "Mess" in Message

​I tend to find it interesting when a news show has a journalist from overseas who gives a contrary opinion from that perspective to what he hear reported in the U.S.  It doesn’t mean the person is correct -- on occasion I sense they they’re trying to be a bit contrarian or emphasize the “You have a parochial view” thing -- but they often give a perspective that’s smart and doesn’t get considered over here.

A couple days ago, MSNBC had a journalist on from overseas and I can’t tell you who he was because I couldn’t take it more than about 15 seconds.  He seemed to toss both those concepts in the mixing bowl, and we got a major serving of big-time “I’m going to be a contrarian” blended with “You Americans are so parochial and missing the real story.  To be clear, that doesn’t mean he was wrong – he could have been spot-on correct, but I heard enough of his reasoning in those 15 seconds to thing that even if he was correct, he himself was missing a much larger picture, one the size of the Grand Canyon to a mouse.  And further, what I did hear was so far off the beaten track that it didn’t give me much confidence he’d be able to get back on the road safely.

Basically what he was saying was that contrary to what everything here seems to think, Putin was actually winning the information war.  Because what people in the West miss is that who Putin is talking to is not the people in the West at all, but those who live in the small countries where…

Well, that’s where he lost me, and I clicked off.

As I said, for the sake of argument, let’s say he was correct, and that was Putin was really trying to do was get his message across to…whoever, let’s say all these small countries.  And it had to be small countries because all the big countries and medium-range are pretty much united against him.  And massive, but non-committed countries like China and India aren’t rushing to the aid of Putin and His Message.

So, it’s a pretty pyrrhic victory if you win over the messaging in Nomanlandistan and lose it to everyone else surrounding you.

And even, for the sake of argument, if he includes winning the messaging in Russia, that’s a deeply empty victory when your country has had its economic system crushed, the stock market closed, much of the world’s companies pulling their business out of your country, the people can’t credit cards, and the ruble is worth a penny.  But we won the messaging!!

(That said, from most accounts, Russia has about a 60% approval for the war.  To put this in perspective, when the Writers Guild has had a vote to go on strike, unless they were able to get at least 85% support – and ideally 90% -- they wouldn’t strike.  And that was just for picketing movie studies while getting doughnuts and bagels when you got your “Unfair” sign.  So, a mere 60% support for a war that is crushing your country and making it a pariah to the world may be a majority, but – there is only much that messaging can do, and nah, that isn’t it.)

But let’s say this guy is right.  And let’s say Russia is winning the messaging with all the whoever he is talking about – and the only reason I say “the whoever” is because I’m really having a hard time figuring out who it is.  Perhaps some small satellite countries in Europe, a few Third World countries in Africa, a dictatorship in Asia, a country or two in South America, all of whom no doubt are glued to the war in Ukraine half a world away for most.  And let’s even forget the few countries who were in the middle undecided between democracy and authoritarianism where Russia has lost the human-decency war crimes messaging.  So that, overall, Russia is ahead in messaging in whatever places the guy was talking about.

When you gotten yourself isolated from most of the world, with sanctions piling on you, no easy way to even leave your country because there may be no airlines you can fly out on, and no airspace for you even if there were available planes, and social media has been blocked and cut you off from the world, and more sanctions are coming, and thousands of your young men are coming back in body bags, and as I said, your economic system is destroyed – I would suggest that even if you won the messaging with whatever countries they are, and even if the messaging in the West doesn’t matter one single spit in the eye, and even if you end up subjugating Ukraine, you have nonetheless lost a far, far, far, far, far, far bigger war.  And an otherworldly more devastating one.

And that's bending over so far backwards that you can touch your ankles with your forehead and accepting all he was likely to say, whatever it would be, for the sake of argument.

And that said, I would suggest, too, that even without hearing everything the guy was saying that those who Putin is talking to are not the people in the West at all, but the ones who live in the small countries where… -- no, Putin is not winning the messaging war.  Not in the West, the East, in Africa, South America and Antarctica. 

And going even a step further, as for Putin supposedly winning the messaging war...this supposes that he is even fighting The Messaging War!  In fact, what we do know from a great many experts who have either studied Putin or spoken with him directly is that what Putin has long been obsessed about for decades is overrunning Ukraine and bringing it back into Russia.  That's his goal.  Not winning the messaging anywhere.  

For that matter, he's even lost the messaging war in Mar-a-Lago because all that Putin’s greatest supporter who lives there can defend him with is to say windmills don’t work.

Which is even a worse defense than it seems because they actually do.