In 2024, it's completely rational to be a paranoid conspiracy theorist. Because this time, the Russians are really behind all of it.
Only blaming Russia for all of it is just another way they win this propaganda/hybrid warfare, you don't take seriously the grievances of the "other side" because you feel it's all just fueled by Russia. It isn't, those grievances and problems are real, they've just been amplified and twisted, and by getting worn down of how much vitriol is spewed from whatever is the "other side" to you it works. It makes you emotionally tired and wanting to fight back by spewing your own vitriol, there's no more conversation, only stupid discourse, the division only grows from there.
There's also a prisoner's dilemma aspect where trying to be the de-escalating party just makes you lose.
Do you not also think the West understands how Russian society works and how it can be broken?
I find it interesting how we're ignorant of our own propaganda activities in other countries. For example, in the UK we have a dedicated army unit [1] that:
> uses social media such as Twitter and Facebook to influence populations and behaviour [which is] involved in manipulation of the media including using fake online profiles
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/77th_Brigade_(United_Kingdom)#...
Authoritarian societies and dictatorships are much harder to influence, let alone break, because they're glued together by fear and the media in them aren't reporting freely. The West also has barely any influence on North Korea. Russia is also well-guarded against foreign influencing campaigns. There is no equivalence between Western countries and dictatorships in that respect.
No Western countries has attack and annexed a country within idk 60 years?
Maybe not completely annexed, but we did attack and occupy Afghanistan and Iraq.
The USA is far and away the greatest propaganda engine the world has ever seen, and it hasn't been close since the cold war was raging. We push out our ideologies and force the normalization of American culture onto half of the world. Looking at a globe it's actually harder to find a nation that isn't a client state than is.
The lumbering, outdated regional power that is the current Russian state wishes they could wield propaganda a quarter as well as America.