Comment by HNisCIS
10 hours ago
Disbelief and normalcy are a hell of a drug. Unless someone fully expects something terrible to happen and they are deliberately trying to find out when it'll happen, most people will happily ignore all of the signs until it's too late.
Just look at the lead up to the Ukraine invasion, the US intelligence services were practically screaming from the rooftops that it was happening. Russians were obviously stacking up on two borders. Meanwhile, reporters were on the street asking people how they felt about the oncoming invasion and they all said some variation of "they've been threatening that forever, it's all talk, it won't happen".
> Meanwhile, reporters were on the street asking people how they felt about the oncoming invasion and they all said some variation of "they've been threatening that forever, it's all talk, it won't happen".
The Ukrainian government took the approach of not starting a full on panic. They thought maybe there was still some chance of stopping it. And not knowing 100% the day and time meant stopping the economy, people fleeing and such. It could even play into the hands of the enemy as they could react and postpone as well.
Some have criticized the government for that tactic science. Some might say they should have listened to the US intelligence instead, but that presumes people should trust the US intelligence more than their own government.
Well, one problem is that the US intelligence services might have a credibility problem with the general public.
This was in the Before Times when we were mostly being helpful up them