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The Politics Thread
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So apparently there is a reason this “ambushed by a cake” defense makes sense to the people who came up with it…
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Trump’s probably cursing the fact that Twitter permanently banned him.
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DeSantis could be worse than Trump because he’s not nearly the incompetent egotistic fool that Trump is. I fully believe he would attempt a coup, but he could actually succeed. Dude’s definitely a wannabe authoritarian. Just like a whole lot of the GOP nowadays.
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A version of the Gray report is out and a fat bastard is spinning so fast he looks like a blur to get himself out of deep shit.
Problem is, even with all the restraints on it, the picture the report paints is that 10 Downing Street has less discipline around booze than first year university students during freshers week.
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It’s a shitshow and the performance today in parliament is pretty desperate.
Thankfully it looks like there are quite a few tories who are sick of it now too.
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Well this is outstanding pic.twitter.com/Rhct4e4aEY
— Sanjeev Kohli (@govindajeggy) February 1, 2022
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Looks like Johnson has upped his game and is now deploying a Dead Lion strategy.
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There is an exterminator who sprays our offices about once a month. He used to be a business partner to former Republican Representative Tom Delay. He is die hard Republican. We get along and will tease each other about the other’s politics.
He was by yesterday and made a comment about finding Biden a retirement home. I said Trump needs to go to one as well. He tried to say how bad a job Biden is doing. My response was at least he didn’t try to steal an election. I then said, “You know Trump is a traitor, right?”
He paused for a moment. A long moment. He then looked at me and said with a very pained smile, “He’s my man. I can’t say anything bad about him.” He then walked away.
That got him. He knows exactly who Trump is. This exterminator is a veteran and fought against tyranny. He is proud of his service. The pain he tried to hide was real. He knows he has sold his soul to Trump but for whatever reason, he won’t let him go.
I relay this information as just a snapshot of a Trump supporter.
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There is an exterminator who sprays our offices about once a month. He used to be a business partner to former Republican Representative Tom Delay. He is die hard Republican. We get along and will tease each other about the other’s politics.
He was by yesterday and made a comment about finding Biden a retirement home. I said Trump needs to go to one as well. He tried to say how bad a job Biden is doing. My response was at least he didn’t try to steal an election. I then said, “You know Trump is a traitor, right?”
He paused for a moment. A long moment. He then looked at me and said with a very pained smile, “He’s my man. I can’t say anything bad about him.” He then walked away.
That got him. He knows exactly who Trump is. This exterminator is a veteran and fought against tyranny. He is proud of his service. The pain he tried to hide was real. He knows he has sold his soul to Trump but for whatever reason, he won’t let him go.
I relay this information as just a snapshot of a Trump supporter.
Good on you for seeing the humanity in him and not shutting him out.
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RNC votes to censure Cheney, Kinzinger for investigating Capitol riot
How dare they not drink the Kool-Aid?
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Declaring the Jan 6 riot “Legitimate Political Discourse” is some third reich shit. Actual literal fascists, the GOP.
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Legitimate: in accordance with recognized or accepted standards or principles
Political: involving or characteristic of politics or parties or politicians
Discourse: formal and orderly and usually extended expression of thought on a subjectYeah, if the RNC declares that the January 6 assaults are “legitimate political discourse”, the RNC is a bunch of fucked up neo-Nazis.
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War is politics with violence.
Politics is war without violence.
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Yeah, the GOP is definitely just the fascism party now. Not even trying to hide it. They’re part of a cult led by one of the most obnoxious, insufferable, least charismatic people I’ve ever seen and they just keep going deeper down the rabbit hole.
And the most unbelievable part? The Dems are so inept that they’re actually going to lose to the party of fascism.
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Also, with a lot of modern military technology, murder is often reduced to operating a set of controls a long distance away from the target with a number of command controls and rules of engagement that reduces the personal accountability of the operator.
Yeah not seeing the enemy’s face makes killing easier.
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And in other “Republicans not drinking Trump’s Kool-Aid” news:
Republicans back Pence rebuke of Trump on overturning 2020 election
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Let’s see how many people who profess to hate Cancel Culture are cool with this:
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Al Jazeera News was a very good channel that covered global news with a fair hand, but unfortunately it didn’t survive long in the US due to being ignorantly associated with radical extremists who want to destroy American democratic values.
Ironically, OAN is also associated with radical extremists who want to destroy American democratic values.
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Al Jazeera News was a very good channel that covered global news with a fair hand, but unfortunately it didn’t survive long in the US due to being ignorantly associated with radical extremists who want to destroy American democratic values.
Ironically, OAN is also associated with radical extremists who want to destroy American democratic values.
I can’t qwhite figure out what the difference is.
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Thankfully, Al Jazeera has survived in the UK. It’s quite nice to get a detached, less UK-centric perspective on things. The Listening Post, which focuses on stories about the media, is particularly good.
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Al Jazeera is very good overall but their Arabic language channel does promote extremism sometimes. They had a show featuring Yusuf Al-Qaradawi who is a raging anti-semite, he thought Hitler was sent by God to put Jews in their place.
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Yes there is a difference between the Arabic and English stations.
The English channel actually has a bunch of ex BBC news staff on it and at least half the content is broadcast out of London.
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Though it can be criticized by the West for providing media access to what we see as extremists, it also gets a lot of heat from Muslim leaders and governments in the Middle East for being too balanced as well.
Yeah it’s interesting, I don’t think it anywhere near the terrorist promoting outlet that it’s often painted to be but as Arjan says it does give airings to views the western media would not.
I got the Arabic channel in my cable package here and sometime maybe around 2005 there was a story that a new Bin Laden message had been released. CNN was wall to wall coverage of it and what it may contain. As usual the tape had been delivered to Al Jazeera – I switched over briefly to see what they were saying about it and they’d moved on and were doing a story about the Indian cricket team.
I think many imagine it’s an Al Qaeda news channel with extremists frothing at the mouth all day but it is a lot more mundane and conventional than that.
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The English channel actually has a bunch of ex BBC news staff on it
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Not to be confused with the various former and current BBC News journalists that should get in the sea, of course.
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From AOC:
I have to say she has a point and isn’t wrong imho.
The former POTUS loved Putin and the way the North Koreans saluted the leader. He wants to emulate them.
Putin came into office, slowly changed things to his favor and never left after all these years.
I get the feeling after looking at the overall plan to seize key swing voting states and suppressing minority votes, counting only their votes… If you know who comes back, do you think he will allow a chance to be voted out again? It may mean permanent power for the GOP.
Then again, was the US ever a real legitimate democracy? That is debatable.
I hear people being optimistic believing in the people and that true democratic values will still prevail. But they still have to take action against this sneaky coup, and the filibuster just prevented the Voting Act. Sigh…
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Voting to limit your voting rights is entirely legitimate.
but it is not your limits that are being affected by these laws.
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There should be a distinction here. Too much emphasis is placed on democracy when it is simply a procedural approach to decision making. Democracy is NOT a synonym for liberty or freedom. Democratic approaches to government in our case applies primarily to elections – though honestly it is voting with dollars that decides who can stand for election, and then there is one step removed toward governing as the the representatives that we vote for then use democratic procedures to enact rules.
The rights you have or freedoms you enjoy were not granted by a vote but are considered outside government action. That’s why the “bill of rights” is all about what the government cannot do. The rights existed before the constitution was written and are assumed to remain in perpetuity. So even if a democratic American government voted to limit any of those rights, it would not be valid, and at the heart of it, it would invite violent revolution as it did in the foundation of the government.
However the one thing in this case is that since voting is a procedural element of government, the government does get to set the rules so one could vote to limit voting access or voting rights democratically. However, that doesn’t give the government any legitimacy to limit civil rights. It cannot touch those and if it tries, it loses legitimacy. It’s legitimacy is not in our democracy but in the protection of our freedoms and the rights outside government influence.
In practice though, most people don’t really care about their freedoms in any existential sense and democracy is more about fostering consent. Not so much “you voted for it” but “you had the chance to vote” though none of us really vote on the actual actions of our government. Most of us don’t want to be completely free, but we don’t want to be oppressed or uncomfortable. There are innumerable restrictions on freedom even for the wealthiest people in our society but the oppression on certain groups down the economic levels is insupportable and no amount of democratic voting will alleviate that.
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Well, voting to limit somebody else’s voting rights is entirely legitimate too. I mean, it’s not morally right, but if the majority vote for it then that’s an entirely valid example of democracy in action and you can’t really complain that democracy isn’t working.
But we have a problem here where the majority isn’t voting for these things. Gerrymandering has allowed the minority to take a larger share in state and congressional races than is actually representative of the voting population. Add to that that the Senate is also skewed to give smaller states a disproportionate voice in congress and that the electoral college does the same thing, along with the nonsense that is the Supreme Court, the filibuster and things like Citizens United, and the US is in a position where there is basically tyranny of the minority right now. Despite Dems having won 7 of the last 8 popular votes for president, they’ve only won the election 5 times and somehow the Supreme Court is 6-3 in conservative favor because the system allowed the GOP Senate to hijack seats even though they represent states where the population is 40 million smaller than the population of the states democrats represent.
Don’t get me wrong, a lot of voters have been conditioned to vote against their self interest for one reason or another. They make dumb choices. It’s just not really accurate to say the majority of Americans are voting for these things.
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Not disagreeing with you, but gerrymandering was put in place by elected officials. Somewhere down the line, people voted in favour of gerrymandering. (Or more likely, didn’t explicitly consider gerrymandering, but still by choice voted for the kind of assholes who would do it, which still makes the voters culpable.)
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but still by choice voted for the kind of assholes who would do it, which still makes the voters culpable
I don’t think that makes the voters culpable. Politicians may promise everything that’s good and holy and then turn around and do awful things.
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but still by choice voted for the kind of assholes who would do it, which still makes the voters culpable
I don’t think that makes the voters culpable. Politicians may promise everything that’s good and holy and then turn around and do awful things.
But in the real world, how often does a politician make an about-face after election that genuinely surprises people?
Brexit is obviously a nightmare of mammoth proportions. “But… but… Boris promised it would be sunlit uplands!” Yes, and if you do even 5 minutes’ research into his past you will notice that Johnson lies about everything and only cares about one thing: himself.
Poor areas of the UK are forecast to get even poorer over the coming years. “But… but… Boris promised he would level up the country and help us all if we voted for him!” Yes, see answer above, and also when has any Conservative government helped your part of the country, like, ever? You cannot be surprised by this, UK, voters, you could have predicted awful things would happen.
It’s not difficult to look at history and work out which politicians are likely to do awful things. And we still vote for them.
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One thing about the US is that pretty much all emphasis is put on federal elections while state and local elections get largely overlooked. It’s a huge problem because that’s actually where things like gerrymandering actually take place. And the lack of focus on these elections is the fault of multiple areas. The media, for one, rarely gives much time to them nor do they explain the importance of them and schools do a piss poor job of really educating on the importance of elections on all levels. I went to a highly rated public high school and we did have to take a government class senior year. A perfect time for such a class. But the focus really should have been on the impact state, local and federal officials have on shaping policy and elections. I don’t remember hearing about gerrymandering or the importance of the census once, for example. And it shouldn’t be that way. The first place I got any marginally in depth introduction to gerrymandering was on the freaking Daily Show…
So while I certainly agree voters hold some level of culpability, we do have at least one party that’s spent decades undermining trust in government and elections to instill a sense of apathy, while working to dismantle education, leaving voters to fend for themselves, and gerrymandering the shit out of districts to make it harder to vote them out. It’s just a huge mess.
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Where are all the concerned Americans chanting “Lock him up!”?
National Archives confirms Trump took classified documents when he left White House
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Not disagreeing with you, but gerrymandering was put in place by elected officials. Somewhere down the line, people voted in favour of gerrymandering. (Or more likely, didn’t explicitly consider gerrymandering, but still by choice voted for the kind of assholes who would do it, which still makes the voters culpable.)
Honestly, though, unfair voting is more the norm historically rather than a new innovation. After reconstruction, the Democrats in the South immediately put in place voting restrictions that made it impossible for poor and black people to vote or made their votes irrelevant. Naturally, even before the Civil War, vote rigging was common and a lot of the problem in the US South was that plantation owners controlled the votes of their slaves as well so Planters had much more political influence than southerners who did not own slaves.
The fight against gerrymandering is more recent as consolidation of party power over politics is a natural inclination from the beginning of democratic governments. Every party will try and often just will get away with it while at the same time criticizing opponents when they do the same in other parts of the country. It’s so much a part of the political background that it might well be the will of the people.
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Israel makes a lot of money from offshoots of their defence spending, which is almost entirely provided by the USA. They lead the world in CCTV, call recording etc which they sell back as commercial products. It’s very clever but essentially a more subtle manifestation of the military-industrial complex. I’ve sat through several demos of call recording equipment from salesmen from Tel Aviv that have trigger words and even emotion sensers that we had no use for.
Is that’s what’s funnelling money into Dutch universities? I have no idea. It’s an area that is almost always vague, maybe by design, criticism of the Israeli government is often framed as anti-Semitism even if many Jews living there agree. However criticism of Israel also does frequently fall into anti-Semitism.
It occupies a unique area really because being Jewish can be a racial, religious or national identity depending on the point of view or context of a particular argument.
British comedian David Baddiel is very interesting on the subject, he’s an atheist Jew, who says quite rightly it can’t just be a religion as he’d have been sent to death camps under the Nazis regardless of what he believed. Jews are often simultaneously useless but also really clever and ruling the world in the same narrative. They can be white or not white depending on the argument you want to make.
Where I don’t necessarily disagree but maybe digress from him is he feels as a British Jew he doesn’t give a toss about Israel, which is fair but I do think a lot of the criticism aimed at left wing ‘ant-Semitism’ attacks fell 50/50 on the side of legitimate criticism of the Israeli state. The line is most obviously crossed when the term used is Jewish rather than Israeli but many for me did not cross that line.
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New Covid strategy for England:
“Son, you’re on your own.”
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I find there is very little genuine criticism of Israel that is anti-Semitic. People certainly use that criticism to add credence to their own anti-Semitic views, but that does not make the criticism less valid.
I’m not sure how it is elsewhere, but in Europe accusations of anti-Semitism have become an ad hominem fallacy rather than a genuine argument. We never get any discussion of what makes something anti-Semitic. It’s just blindly thrown at anyone who is critical of Israel or of western support for Israel. To my mind, that itself is anti-Semitic as it conflates the nation, and more specifically the government, of Israel with the Jewish race in general. It strips non-Israeli Jews of their identity and would label Jews who are critical of Israel as being anti-Semitic themselves.
Oh, if only [redacted] was still here, I’d cancel tonights game and make popcorn.
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I’m not sure how it is elsewhere, but in Europe accusations of anti-Semitism have become an ad hominem fallacy rather than a genuine argument.
Well there is some anti-semitism. In Amsterdam it is getting difficult for the Jewish community, with people threatened, businesses vandalized, etc. But I agree many accusations of anti-semitism are more criticism of Israel.
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Well according to this, antisemitic inicdents in 2020 were less than in 2019 so I guess that is good news.
CIDI-Antisemitism-Monitor-2020-summary.pdf
I was personally shocked by a Dutch youtube channel that had a lot of subscribers and which seems associated with a right wing political party here, which spread stories that the US is “ZOG” (zionist occupied government) and said that Israel was behind 911. I do regard that as anti-semitic.
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As is traditional in Europe, we don’t really care about the genuine discrimination against Jewish people.
Obviously, though, in the Arab nations, especially in regard to Israel, anti-Semitism is pretty common to almost mainstream levels. In regard to Europe, it may depend on where you live. I had Polish neighbors who were very nice, kind and helpful people. We got to talking about movies and they knew all about many Polish directors. I mentioned Polanski and their response was “he’s not Polish. He’s a Jew.”
Now, there are many reasons to dislike Polanski, but being a Jew is not a valid one.
I know a few Polish Americans and they certainly aren’t anti-Semitic, but that’s not so true of their parents and grandparents. As far as Eastern Europe, anti-semitism is on the rise as is nationalism and an economic recession will likely exacerbate that trend as it always historically has. Not many people are bringing that up in regard to the consequences of economic sanctions on Russia.
Israeli Jews are going to be particularly sensitive to this due to their precarious position surrounded by hostile neighbors. There are valid reasons to oppose Israel’s politics, but I often find the people I know that are most violently opposed to Israel also tend to hold some very troubling opinions about Jewish bankers running the world.
Ironically, and depressingly, some ultraconservative groups are very pro-Israel as they are more opposed to the Arab immigrants in their countries and this is a way to politically hurt them. So you have Neo-Nazis supporting Jews because they hate Arabs. It’s maddening.
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Yeah looks like a full invasion in Ukraine. Western “diplomacy” didn’t do a very good job.
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I don’t think anyone is surprised that diplomacy failed. It was pretty clear from the onset that Putin had decided to invade Ukraine from the jump. But, of course, everyone needed to attempt to talk him out of it and hope he would see reason. Even if they knew that was unlikely.
We’re in a pretty scary place right now, though. A nuclear power has just declared war on a European country unprovoked and has essentially threatened nuclear war if anyone tries to interfere. The only way out of this would seem to be if other people inside the Kremlin aren’t down with this and stage a damn coup. And good luck with that.
Meanwhile, we’ve got Trump over here praising Putin for his moves. And who could have ever really imagined a former president of the US praising a Russian dictator, and former KGB agent, for starting an unprovoked war in Europe that could have devastating impacts around the globe? Let alone that he’d be cheered on by 30% of the US. If history books are ever allowed to be written about this time period, I swear it’ll read like some really bad dystopian fanfiction.
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It is a scary time. Though it may just be that it’s always been a scary time. The international rules work in the favor of the United States and our allies so when we bomb and invade countries or overthrow regimes it is technically legitimate. So maybe we’re just getting the same feeling people who aren’t in the club get when this stuff happens in the Middle East, Africa or South America.
historically, this seems more akin to when the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia than when Germany invaded Poland. More like the old NATO vs Warsaw Pact contests and the major players Putin and Biden are Cold War political veterans that both obviously share that mindset.
still, I feel a lot of sympathy for the Ukrainians and Russians too that wake up with warfare outside and inside their homes. Nevertheless, that’s pretty much been true somewhere in the world our entire lives. Nuclear War has always been a possibility too even after the Soviet Union collapsed.
again, though, the isolation of Russia from Western Europe seems to be a consistent aim of the United States and managing this conflict seems like it is in the US interest more than resolving it.
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Meanwhile, we’ve got Trump over here praising Putin for his moves. And who could have ever really imagined a former president of the US praising a Russian dictator, and former KGB agent, for starting an unprovoked war in Europe that could have devastating impacts around the globe?
US to impose sanctions on Putin following Ukraine invasion
Wouldn’t be getting this headline if Trump was still in office.
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You think the US would react any less rashly and violently if China or Russia tried to set up shop in Mexico or Canada? Fuck no!!! They’d go even more apeshit than usual. There’s no good guys and bad guys here, they’re all fuckin’ evil assholes. And like always, the lowly people are the ones to suffer and die. What’s new, really?
Cuba, Bay of Pigs, Missile Crisis, Nicaragua and lately Venezuela. Venezuela’s leader pledges military cooperation with Russia | AP News
The “good guys” are the people in these nations facing devastation and chaos and their leaders that actually face the same risks due to the games of the superpowers.
I do wonder if Putin is willing to face an Afghan-like resistance (or even European style WW2 type of resistance) for an extended occupation of a hostile region. In this case, economic sanctions would be a deterrent, wouldn’t it? Ukraine would become the Ireland or Northern Ireland of the Russian Empire only Ukrainian militants don’t need to take a boat to get to Moscow.
They’d need money to maintain that sort of occupation and it would be a continuous drain on their military. The endgame for Russia may be to negotiate a peace with Western Ukrainian neutrality and Eastern “Donbas” regions incorporated into the Russian Federation. Again, though, that would essentially create an “IRA” or “Basque” type of resistance likely to have plenty of support from Russia’s enemies.
Even if Russia gets everything it wants from military action, will they really want what they get?
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We’re in a pretty scary place right now, though. A nuclear power has just declared war on a European country unprovoked and has essentially threatened nuclear war if anyone tries to interfere. The only way out of this would seem to be if other people inside the Kremlin aren’t down with this and stage a damn coup. And good luck with that.
Or if the US and their NATO buddies stopped trying to encroach on Russia and reached a neutrality agreement for the Ukrainian territory…
You think the US would react any less rashly and violently if China or Russia tried to set up shop in Mexico or Canada? Fuck no!!! They’d go even more apeshit than usual.
There’s no good guys and bad guys here, they’re all fuckin’ evil assholes. And like always, the lowly people are the ones to suffer and die. What’s new, really?
I mean, the NATO stuff certainly didn’t help, but Putin has been pretty clear that he wants to return Russia to the old USSR days. I have a feeling he’d use any excuse possible to justify an invasion of Ukraine. As evidenced by his attempts to make up some bs excuse this time. This is a dude, after all, who sanctioned cheating at the damn Paralympics. He’s pretty clearly obsessed with image and winning by any means necessary.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the US are good guys here. We’ve done plenty of terrible shit in our history and continue some pretty terrible shit today. Basically look at any law Florida and Texas pass these days and you’ll see the darkness in the US is very front and center. Even presidents I liked were way too eager to drone strike to distract from whatever. And we just had a president who very clearly wished he was Putin but was too damn incompetent to make it happen. Really I just feel badly for the Ukrainian people.
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Thankfully someone is finally taking decisive steps to sort out the Ukraine situation.
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It does seem possible that Putin may not have been sure that he would invade and it seems even more likely that the majority of the Russian soldiers did not believe they would actually be fighting in Ukraine. Unlike Crimea or Georgia, the Russian media was not pushing the propaganda to prepare their population for an invasion, and we’re seeing the anti-war protests – also in Belarus – as a result.
It is possible Putin actually thought the US and EU would concede something and then sent in an army that thought it was just there for show and not really prepared to face actual resistance. Especially since they should have expected more support from the pro-Russian Ukrainians which apparently are not actually as large a contingent in the nation as Russia claims.
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It does seem possible that Putin may not have been sure that he would invade and it seems even more likely that the majority of the Russian soldiers did not believe they would actually be fighting in Ukraine. Unlike Crimea or Georgia, the Russian media was not pushing the propaganda to prepare their population for an invasion, and we’re seeing the anti-war protests – also in Belarus – as a result.
It is possible Putin actually thought the US and EU would concede something and then sent in an army that thought it was just there for show and not really prepared to face actual resistance. Especially since they should have expected more support from the pro-Russian Ukrainians which apparently are not actually as large a contingent in the nation as Russia claims.
I’ve seen some stories where the captured Russian soldiers are around 19 and not understanding why they’re there fighting. A Ukrainian general is letting the captured soldiers call their families.
This whole thing is just coming off half-assed. It feels like Putin truly didn’t expect the world to call his bluff. Now he’s had to go through with it. He has to to save face. He probably thought the Great Russian War Machine (c) would have the whole thing done in a day. Resistance would be weak and it would be easy. Well, that didn’t happen. His nuclear alert also feels like he’s screaming “seriously, take me seriously” like a scorned lover, especially since the world isn’t getting involved militarily. And not only is Russia getting hit with sanctions, but so are Putin and his cronies. They’re probably hurting his cronies a lot more than him so I would imagine they’re all in his face.
Putin’s action just come across as “weird flex but ok”. I think this may end costing him everything.
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I think a year of military service is mandatory for young Russian men, so I imagine the majority are barely trained young conscripts who would not have gone if not forced to.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_Russia
personally, two years in prison or one year in the Russian Army is a tough choice. Neither sounds worse than the other.
It is so apparently misguided, I do wonder if Putin simply misjudged the level of Western commitment or if there is some domestic or personal interest this is covering up.
as far as the US and Europe and all the rest of the world, after fucking Covid, I think this is actually forging more unity and we’re all a bit tougher in gereral. This gives us an external target for all the frustration of the past two years.
America: I am so pissing tired of this shit!
Europe: So am I!
America: I tell ya, after this, nobody better start any…
Russia: Fuck all y’all!
America/Europe: All right… it’s on, motherfucker.
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It probably also didn’t help that Russia was humiliated during the Olympics with the whole figure skating fiasco. It reinforced the message that they’re cheaters and they can’t be trusted.
This whole Ukrainian thing is just odd. I think this was Putin flexing and thinking everyone was going to bend the knee to appease him. He’d come out of it looking like a boss. I figure he would keep doing this every few years.
Instead, the world went, “You do you, but you’re an asshole and we’re going to freeze the credit cards of you and your buddies. Peace out, mother fucker.” At that point, he’s like, “Fuuuuuuuuuuuck. I got to go ahead so I don’t look like a pussy.”
With the sanctions, I’m sure his bros are like, “DUDE! WHAT. THE. FUCK. Our cards are getting declined everywhere!” His own countrymen are PIIIIIIIIIISSSED. And to top it all off, the Ukrainians, being led by a former standup comic, are fighting like coked-up stray cats.
The optics don’t favor Putin, regardless of the outcome. He doesn’t come out of this looking strong. Everything is making him look weak.
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I mean, the NATO stuff certainly didn’t help, but Putin has been pretty clear that he wants to return Russia to the old USSR days. I have a feeling he’d use any excuse possible to justify an invasion of Ukraine.
Yes, Georgia and Chechnya were not being courted by NATO.
I am worried about Putin’s state of mind though, this whole thing seems foolhardy and I’m not sure if Ukrainian resistance highlighting weaknesses in Russia’s power won’t drive him to escalate.
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Russia is not carpet bombing Kiev
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Couple that with Zelensky saying he wants to get nuclear weapons a while back, and I am not surprised why Putin is doing what he is doing.
If my aggressive neighbor, known for randomly entering apartments that aren’t his, had a gun he kept testing out his backyard I would definitely want to get a gun of my own.
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