March 2022 – Joe's Political Blog

Opinion: Chris Wallace’s stark admission about Tucker Carlson shames Fox News

Written by Greg Sargent and published in the Washington Post 3/28/22

When Chris Wallace resigned from Fox News last December, media observers correctly diagnosed the move’s real meaning: This stripped away one of the last fig leaves disguising Fox’s increasing role as a propaganda operation on Donald Trump’s behalf.

Now Wallace has shared new details about his reason for leaving Fox, and the revelations sharpen this point considerably. It turns out Wallace quit in part because of Fox host Tucker Carlson’s depiction of the Jan. 6 insurrection attempt as a “false flag” operation, creating a situation Wallace describes as “unsustainable.”

We should be clear on what this means. Wallace seems to have decided he could no longer credibly practice journalism on Fox in part because, increasingly, the only acceptable narrative at Fox about Trump’s effort to overturn U.S. democracy to remain in power illegitimately is one that falsifies it entirely.

Wallace’s new comments came in an interview with the New York Times. Wallace declared that he “no longer felt comfortable with the programming at Fox.” In that regard, the key revelation concerns Wallace’s conclusion about the meaning of Carlson’s dominance:

He confirmed reports that he was so alarmed by Mr. Carlson’s documentary “Patriot Purge” — which falsely suggested the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was a “false flag” operation intended to demonize conservatives — that he complained directly to Fox News management.

“Before, I found it was an environment in which I could do my job and feel good about my involvement at Fox,” Mr. Wallace said of his time at the network. “And since November of 2020, that just became unsustainable, increasingly unsustainable as time went on.”

That is a stark admission: Carlson’s wholesale rewriting of Jan. 6 is a key reason Wallace decided his continued presence at Fox was unsustainable. This seems to confirm the suspicion of some media critics — such as Eric Boehlert and Dan Froomkin — that Wallace had decided Fox was becoming fundamentally irredeemable as a news organization.

But the key to this, I submit, is not simply that Wallace grew alienated by the network’s Jan. 6 propaganda. It’s also that Wallace decided his own journalistic treatment of Jan. 6 could no longer credibly emanate from Fox’s platform.Default Mono Sans Mono Serif Sans Serif Comic Fancy Small CapsDefault X-Small Small Medium Large X-Large XX-LargeDefault Outline Dark Outline Light Outline Dark Bold Outline Light Bold Shadow Dark Shadow Light Shadow Dark Bold Shadow Light BoldDefault Black Silver Gray White Maroon Red Purple Fuchsia Green Lime Olive Yellow Navy Blue Teal Aqua OrangeDefault 100% 75% 50% 25% 0%Default Black Silver Gray White Maroon Red Purple Fuchsia Green Lime Olive Yellow Navy Blue Teal Aqua OrangeDefault 100% 75% 50% 25% 0%

Chris Wallace signs off ‘Fox News Sunday’ for a the last time

“Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace made a final farewell at the end of the show on Dec. 12. Wallace is leaving the Fox News network “for a new adventure.” (Video: Fox News, Photo: Fox News)

Opinion: Behind Tucker Carlson and J.D. Vance, a revolt against the GOP unfolds

Indeed, to appreciate this moment, we should remember that some of Wallace’s highest-profile recent moments concerned his efforts to cross-examine Republican lawmakers about their role in covering up the insurrection attempt.

As you’ll recall, Wallace mercilessly grilled House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) about Jan. 6 last April, pressing McCarthy to detail the phone call in which McCarthy screamed at Trump to call off the rioters. When McCarthy responded by hemming and hawing that Trump did issue a video appeal, Wallace denounced that as “weak.”

In so doing, Wallace put his finger on the beating heart of the GOP coverup for Trump. He pressed the top House Republican on his whitewashing of extraordinarily corrupt malfeasance: Trump allowed the violence to unfold, potentially as a weapon to disrupt the conclusion of the election in Congress and the peaceful transfer of power, to disastrous and deadly effect.

Wallace also grilled another House GOP leader — Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana — over his support for that vile Texas lawsuit aiming to invalidate millions of votes against Trump. Banks defended this, absurdly claiming there are still “serious concerns” about the voting.

In short, Wallace has tried to hold Republicans accountable for feeding Trump’s lies about the election’s outcome, validation that likely helped inspire the Jan. 6 violence, and for helping cover up Trump’s seeming relishing of the violence as a potential tool to carry out his coup.

This is the sort of journalistic conduct that doesn’t have a future home at Fox, apparently: The Republican coverup for Trump must not be scrutinized. That’s what Wallace’s actions seem to suggest, even as Carlson’s propagandizing about Jan. 6 is seen as a smashing ratings success.

By the way, this isn’t confined to Wallace: As CNN media reporters Brian Stelter and Oliver Darcy point out, other Fox sources have voiced similar dissatisfaction about Fox’s propagandizing for Trump, a dynamic that grew worse after Trump’s loss.

Opinion: A Fox News reporter’s schooling of Sean Hannity veers into dark territory

Nicole Hemmer, the author of an excellent history of conservative media, notes the larger context: After Jan. 6, Fox appears to have felt serious pressure from more extreme right-wing news sources, such as Newsmax, which offered even more egregious whitewashing of the insurrection.

“Fox News has to compete with those other right-wing sources,” Hemmer told me. She added that when Fox got “too far out to the left, like when they acknowledged Joe Biden won the 2020 election, they found their audience was beginning to revolt.”

In the weeks after the 2020 election, Hemmer noted, right-wing protests that attacked the “liberal media” for its coverage of the election’s aftermath also attacked Fox. As Hemmer put it, a key driver of Fox’s support for Carlson’s Jan. 6 propaganda is the network’s need to “shore up and continue to do maintenance on its reputation with MAGA people.”

What that says about Fox as a journalistic organization is bad enough. What it says about Fox’s low opinion of its audience’s incapacity for exposure to the truth might be even worse.

The End of the Nation-State

The nation-state experiment has become empires in disguise

Written by by Mike Meyer ~ Honolulu ~and published in Medium.com March 26, 2022

Talk about a handicap. Our species is struggling under the massive weight of unacknowledged failure. The denied awareness that almost all of our preeminent Western systems are failing haunts and deforms us.

We hide that failure under the individual daily and weekly disasters that are the bread and butter of our deformed media empires. These disasters are normal, so there is no need to be too concerned. We have become very good at ignoring the signs of our demise.

No matter how bad the individual disasters, all generated directly or indirectly by our systemic failures, we are never more than three minutes away from the artificial world of Capitalist Realism. So the irony of American commercials for trucks endlessly repeating between images of war and desperate immigrants never registers.

We impulse buy in the face of imminent disasters. But which set of images are actual.

Even the constant American mass killings resulting from a population told they must have assault weapons because murder is entertainment is no threat. They will be interrupted by commercials for the good life. That is reality.

Endless horror inundates us, but we’ve learned that these are individual events with no more significant meaning. Stupidity is the standard, and any logical connection between destructive attitudes and terrible events is only a product of conspiracies.

Freedom has become only the right to hate anything different than what our favorite talking heads repeat. But there is no logic, and the only continuity is stupidity and hatred. You need to listen carefully as the message may change.

We must admit the systemic failures pulling us into an apocalyptic collapse. Why must we suppress our fear of nuclear war by insane tyrants attempting brutal conquest? Why must we accept that this is just something that happens?

Destruction of the planet is not something that just happens. It can so easily be considered just another story, which means that there is no way to stop it. Our self-destruction is already being accepted, with a significant portion of the population working to achieve it.

Systemic failure is becoming endemic as if that is something that can be lived with even as we die. Failing systems are cancer that we will not survive.

Unless we aggressively force the removal of failing systems, we will lose all hope. There are so many that feel helpless, but that is the propaganda from our failing systems. That is the inertia of dysfunctional systems that protect those directly supported by those systems.

We need to fix the problems and eliminate the failing systems before it is too late. Unfortunately, removing the despots will not work as there are too many of them, from big to small. Most are limited only by the size of the country they have taken over. But with enough brutality and willingness to kill people for their benefit, they can build large missiles and buy nuclear weapons.

Kim Jong-un of North Korea is usually ignored, except by the Japanese because he keeps shooting missiles in their direction, but could manage to start a nuclear war all by himself.

Putin was always dangerous and a significant threat to the existing world order with his intense destabilization attacks on the US and Great Britain. But Russia has been relegated to third world status for almost thirty years.

That Putin could place a ‘useful fool’ in the White House for one term is a direct cause of the Ukraine war and our current planetary threat. Our most extensive failed system is the 18th-century concept of the nation-state.

Nation-states cause every problem currently threatening us with an apocalypse. Whatever its pretense, nation-state governments are oligarchic, autocratic, failing, or all three. Whatever value they once had is now gone.

Things do not stay the same. We should know that by now. Despite the demented portion of our population that wants to revert to the past, we know we must manage change, or we will not survive.

Functional governments are, effectively, local, i.e., metropolitan governments: the larger the national government, the more dangerous and less functional. No large nation-state is considered anything other than a failure by its population.

The Ranking Of The Best Governments In The World

Country Legatum Index Government Ranking
Switzerland 1, New Zealand 2, Denmark 3, Sweden 4, Finland 5, Luxembourg 6, Canada 7, Norway 8, United Kingdom 9, Australia 10.

Note that no large countries with large populations are in the top ten. Both Canada and Australia are geographically large but relatively sparsely populated. The US ranks 10th in government and wealth, but this was before the Trump disaster and America’s steep decline.

China ranks 3rd economically but is very low in government and wellbeing.

We cannot afford to carry this weight of dysfunctionality anymore. It is killing us.

We must call the nation-state experiment a failure.

Cities work. Towns and villages work. Global alliances work for trade and economies of scale. Nation-states bring insanity.

We can argue that the evolution of the nation-states brought rights and standards to regional populations except when they didn’t. As a representative nation-state concept replacing monarchies and early republics, the great American Experiment was the peak but has not worked out.

The critical need for universal rights must be completely separate from any national political system that will only undercut those rights. Instead, we have the rudimentary infrastructure in the International Court of Justice, International Criminal Court, or International Commission of Jurists.

In many cases in existence for decades, nation-states regularly ignore these courts unless massive military power is brought down on them. Eliminate the nation-states and the tribal laws used politically to brutalize and exploit people commonly enacted in the more backward parts of the United States and other neofascist or theocratic nations.

Large regional nations built on empires of conquest are human failures. But unfortunately, the cost of ethnic minority oppression and mass exploitation for a small elite is universal in the 21st century for all regional nations.

China, built on twenty-five hundred years of empire, is the most successful but only by heavily modifying socialist and capitalist economics. Nevertheless, by maintaining, at least, the principle of the commons and shared ownership as a priority, it is steadily beating the elitist capitalist nations. But that is achieved with great suffering among minorities and the routine planetary destruction that is killing us all.

The sudden rush to conquest by Russia attempting to restore its regional empire in the face of the collapsing American empire shows the bankruptcy of the nation-state system. Instead, the squabbling of the national rulers is solely focused on maintaining their power and massive wealth, with even lip service to representative governmental forms no longer required.

Biden’s strident defense of democratic states in his NATO speech sounds almost as false as Putin’s use of nazism in justifying the Russian conquest of Ukraine. The best that we can achieve under the failed nation-state system is the lesser evil, but that is no longer good enough.

Biden’s minders immediately ‘walked back’ his statement that Putin cannot remain in power. A dangerous precedent will be set if oppression and military conquest are reasons to remove a ruler from power.

The result of this doubletalk for everyone else is suffering, death, and the growing fear of nuclear war for no meaningful purpose except the greed of the oligarchic elite.

Opinion: The case for hopeful realism

Young green plant seedling grow from old tree stump.

Written by E.J Dione and published in the Washington Post 3/13/2022

It’s time for hopeful realism about what government can achieve in 2022 and beyond.

Putting this disposition to work is essential to dialing down the political divisions that have torn the country apart, beginning with the rise of the tea party in the Obama years and even more toxically by the Trump movement. It also happens to be the only approach that gives Democrats a fighting chance to hold their majorities in the House and Senate this fall.

Hopeful realism is both “centrist” and “progressive,” yet also neither. It would push aside abstract debates about whether programs were too radical or insufficiently bold, too big or not big enough. The focus instead should be on what can be done, now, to deal with problems that moderates and liberals alike see as urgent.

Three developments undergird the case for this approach, which increasingly defines thinking in the White House and among congressional Democrats.

By making the stakes of politics so high, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has reminded us of how puny and recklessly trivial our nation’s debate has become. It is wholly unequal to the threats facing democracy, world order and freedom.

Second, the scuttling of President Biden’s Build Back Better program requires a return to the drawing board. The plan was always more practical in its aspirations than it got credit for. But Democrats allowed (and Republicans encouraged) a debate that focused relentlessly on how big the program should be rather than what it would do.

Now, the question for all wings of the Democratic Party is what useful measures from Build Back Better can be salvaged — on battling climate change, cutting prescription-drug costs, caring for and educating children, making taxes fairer. It is, by the way, more moderate Democrats from swing districts who have the biggest need to get something done. They want to go home to their constituents with achievements to talk about.

The third factor is the one most easily overlooked: passage last week of a $1.5 trillion bill to fund the government for the rest of the year that included a $46 billion increase in nondefense spending and a $42 billion increase in military spending.

Follow E.J. Dionne Jr.‘s opinionsFollow

True, Congress passing a budget should not be a big deal. This is what normal government looks like. But we have not had normal government for a long time.

Catherine Rampell: The GOP’s ‘money for me but not for thee’ approach to Biden spending initiatives

With all the big numbers that were thrown around in the Build Back Better debate (as well as the enormous expenditures that kept the economy from collapsing during the height of the covid-19 pandemic), you might also say that these sums don’t seem, well, transformational.

But as Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (D-Conn.), chair of the House Appropriations Committee, noted in an interview, the year-to-year work of Congress involves major public investments in many issues addressed by Build Back Better and the new budget reflects a “paradigm shift” in domestic spending.

A lot of work got done in this bill. For starters: a reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act; $1 billion for Biden’s priority of financing research into cures for diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer’s; substantial new money for maternal and child health programs; a major increase in Pell grants to help lower-income students pay for higher education; and a down payment on spending to fight climate change.

In his State of the Union message, Biden also highlighted the urgency of efforts to grapple with the opioid crisis, and on Thursday, Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) hailed the nearly $1 billion in grants in the budget under the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA).

E.J. Dionne Jr.: Biden soars abroad while he rebuilds at home

This underscores that “bipartisan” does not automatically mean “lacking substance.” Portman has long championed the CARA program, along with Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), while Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Ann Kuster (D-N.H.) have pushed for expanded access to opioid treatment in correctional facilities.

We need to take bipartisan wins where we can find them. On drug addiction, it’s urgent to act in inner cities and rural areas alike.

Skeptics might see hopeful realism as a form of retrenchment, and in some ways it is. It means accepting that narrow majorities, particularly in the Senate, could not sustain the level of change that many of us thought they could.

‘Dopesick’ author Beth Macy: More than 1 million have died in the overdose crisis, but still the response is scandalously inadequate

But it’s still possible to make this a year of step-by-step progress and to show that government has the capacity to function effectively — and, maybe, with a little less rancor.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) summed up the imperative this way: “We have to get done what we can get done with the votes we have,” he told me, “and that would be a big step forward.”

That’s hopeful realism.

Prepare for the Ultimate Military Collapse

Stalingrad Version 2.0

Written by Shankar Narayan and published in Medium.com 3/15/2022

Battle for Stalingrad: Photo by Wikipedia, Text by Author

The first time I heard Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has garrisoned in Kyiv, I thought he was bluffing the Russians.

Why would he stay in the one place where Russians would be forced to come? Why would he allow himself to be surrounded by enemies in all directions without a means of escape?

And then it dawned on me: Only a leader who stays in frontlines can inspire his country to fight against an army led by a ruthless dictator.

There is historical evidence:

Vasily Ivanovich Chuikov, the Soviet military commander who led the 62nd Army during the Battle of Stalingrad in the Second World War.

“After two years of decisive victories over France, Poland and others, Hitler and the German High Command were confident that the Soviet Union would fall within six weeks”. But Chuikov had other ideas. To inspire his troops, he “kept his headquarters in the city, less than 200 meters from the German front line”.

For more than five months, the Soviet 62nd Army, brought the Nazis’ sixth division to “a standstill on the banks of the Volga, always outnumbered by factors of up to 15 to one”.

Chuikov wrote the manual on urban warfare.

The Germans, used to fighting from a distance, didn’t know how to win the war of attrition in an urban setting. They reduced Stalingrad to rubble, but this only helped the Soviets mobilize against them.

The Soviets first stalled the German march. Then they kept squeezing the Nazis until they were worn out.

“Stalingrad marked the shift of initiative to the Red Army on the Eastern Front. There were no more decisive victories for the Wehrmacht in the east. Despite the importance of the battles of Moscow, Kursk, and Operation Bagration, it was Stalingrad that would be immortalized around the world as the turning of the tide for the Allies in World War II.”

Today, the roles are completely reversed. Russia is seeking swift victory with superior airpower, better equipment, and strength in numbers. Ukraine is defending its cities, forcing Russians into close combat, gaining time, and hoping to drain the Russians of strength.

The Nazis lost because of Stalingrad.
Putin is going to lose because of Kyiv.
Russians will never take full control of Kyiv. Ever.

The Russian government is dumber than we thought

Just like the Nazis underestimated the Soviets during the second world war, the Russian military planners completely underestimated Ukraine’s resolve to fight.

Andrei Fedorov, former deputy Russian foreign minister, told Al Jazeera that President Vladimir Putin’s initial order was to “complete the military operation with a victory by March 2”.

The Russians had no plan whatsoever for a lengthy war.

In 2008, the Russians took just four days to take control of the situation in Georgia. They won the limited war because they had limited objectives. They wanted to break Georgia into three pieces. Two small regions for them. One big piece for Georgia.

“Russia used separatist violence as a convenient pretext to launch a full-scale multidomain invasion to annex territory.” Russians won because they had a clear understanding of what they wanted to do in Georgia and they laid the groundwork required to support their objective.

Military experts are still struggling to understand Russia’s objective in Ukraine. Are they trying to take the whole country or just a few cities, eliminate the Ukrainian leadership, or break the country into multiple pieces?

Russia’s highly centralized command structure, where all decisions are made by a small group of people including President Putin, is not helping Russian troops on the ground.

Ukrainians are smarter than we thought

The Ukrainians have one objective: Defend their territory.

To do that they only have to hold the cities, engage the enemy in urban warfare, stall them for time, deplete their resources and starve them out.

The Russian army is not equipped for urban warfare. Similar to the Nazis, they can reduce Kyiv to rubble. But the Nazis never managed to control the rubble. They lost everything in Stalingrad.

The United States took four weeks to enter Kabul in 2001 and three weeks to take Baghdad in 2003. The war in Ukraine has entered the fourth week. And yet, the Russians are still fighting in the suburbs of Kyiv.

Maj. Gen. Dmitry Marchenko, commander of Ukraine’s military forces in Mykolaiv, said that the Ukrainian strategy was to break morale through an unrelenting pounding of Russian positions. But there is another critical factor.
“We are defending our homes, our women, our families,” he said. “We don’t need their world. We don’t need their language. Let them build their own country and die in it and create whatever dictatorship they want there. We’re going to live like free people.”

Can Russia control Ukraine?

This still remains the biggest hole in Putin’s strategy. How are they going to control the second-largest country in Europe, which covers 603,700 square kilometers and is home to 40 million people?

More than three million Ukrainians have fled the country. That still leaves 37 million people to be taken care of, along with 146 million Russians.

The Russian economy was worth $1.71 trillion in 2021. The sanctions will forcefully reduce the size of the economy and the cash flowing into Russia.

Putin will not be in a position to handle his own countrymen, let alone feeding additional 37 million humans.

What will be the cost of the War?

In the first two weeks of the war, Russia lost 5,000 to 6000 soldiers, an equivalent of 400 lives per day.

Every day, Putin is losing an enormous amount of resources. If the war turns into months, Russia will not struggle to replace those resources, it will reach a point where it cannot replace them.

This explains why Putin may have asked China for military equipment and tried to recruit Syrian mercenaries. The first one will help him shore up fast depleting equipment, the second one will help him hide the loss of human resources.

It is possible for Russia to run out of weapons and ammunition very soon. We have no idea about their depletion rate. Ukraine has no need to worry about depletion, as the allies will keep supplying and they have millions ready to fight for the country.

The United States spent more than $8 trillion for its twin wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Did they win?

Nope.

After the initial conflict, America only played a holding role in Afghanistan, a country with nearly the same population as Ukraine. Despite the bill and change of objectives, America was neither able to control the country, nor it was able to create an environment conducive to democracy.

The war in Afghanistan cost America $300 million every day. Russia does not have that kind of money. Neither does it have that kind of military.

Russia gets drained. Ukraine gets filled

There is a global stampede to help Ukraine. From humanitarian aid to hosting refugees to supplying arms and equipment, the world is rallying behind Ukraine.

The number of countries that expressed solidarity with Russia: Two. (Belarus and Syria)

As global money gets funneled towards Ukraine, there is a coordinated effort to drain money from the Russian government.

Ukraine has to defend itself. Russia has to occupy

Every additional day Russia fights Ukrainians, the Russian government will get one step closer to defeat.

To win, Ukraine must hold at least one city, they are looking good to hold multiple cities.
To win, Russia must win the people of Ukraine. (Ain’t gonna happen)

There were many locals who supported American forces in Afghanistan. The number of Afghans who wanted to flee the country when the US announced their withdrawal is evidence of local support.

In spite of the support, America miserably failed in Afghanistan, because they tried to manage it forever.

Within three weeks, Putin has turned every Ukrainian against Russia. Ukraine will always remain hostile to Russia. Forever.

The port city of Mykolaiv is being shelled by Russian forces every day. Bodies are piled at the morgue. But residents refuse to succumb. — NYT, March 15

“Kherson, in southern Ukraine, was the first major city to fall to Russian forces after the start of the invasion on Feb. 24. Although Kremlin officials had predicted that the Ukrainian people would welcome their “liberation” by Russian troops, the people of Kherson have been defiant, regularly gathering in the city’s central square to protest the Russian presence even when Russian troops fire in the air to disperse them”.

If this is what Ukrainians think, how is Mr. Putin going to convince them otherwise? He can’t. He has to fearmonger. The more he invokes fear, the stronger will be the defiance.

190,000 troops to control a country with more than 37 million people.
1 Russian soldier for 195 Ukrainians.

As you can see from the image attached above, the Russian troops are advancing with an eye on their back. The ground troops must remain connected to their supply depots, preferably inside Russia.

As Russian forces spread out across the country, it will become increasingly difficult to supply the army.

Morale is key to winning the war

It is evident in the last three weeks that Ukraine has all the morale it needs to dig in. The same cannot be said about the Russian military.

For years, Putin told his countrymen that Ukrainians are Russians.

When Russian commanders ask their troops to bring down a hospital or kill a fleeing civilian, the soldiers will have one question — Why are they killing their own people?

They will kill. Because soldiers cannot defy orders. But during those crunch moments, when it becomes life and death, Russian troops will try to escape the fight they do not want, while Ukrainian troops will dig in.

Why Putin will struggle to back off

The same reason why Hitler refused to back off Stalingrad.

When days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months, Hitler knew he is not going to win Stalingrad. He could have cut his losses short and regrouped elsewhere. Good commanders know when to fight and when not to fight. Megalomaniacs don’t.

They rule with fear. They cannot afford to lose.

Hitler fought an ideological war. That it was only in his mind is another matter altogether. But he kept pouring resources into an unwinnable war, only to lose everything he had.

The Nazis never recovered from the mistake of committing their future to the battle of Stalingrad. Putin will never recover from the mistake of committing his future to the battle for Ukraine.

Putin has already lost the war. His off-ramp would be to ask for a small piece of Ukraine, declare victory and run back. I doubt he will have the courage to make such a decision. He will only make his loss as huge as possible.

The case for hopeful realism

Written by E.J Dionne, Jr. and published in the Washington Post 3/6/2022

The U.S. Capitol in November 2021. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

It’s time for hopeful realism about what government can achieve in 2022 and beyond.

Three developments undergird the case for this approach, which increasingly defines thinking in the White House and among congressional Democrats.

True, Congress passing a budget should not be a big deal. This is what normal government looks like. But we have not had normal government for a long time.

We need to take bipartisan wins where we can find them. On drug addiction, it’s urgent to act in inner cities and rural areas alike.

But it’s still possible to make this a year of step-by-step progress and to show that government has the capacity to function effectively — and, maybe, with a little less rancor.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) summed up the imperative this way: “We have to get done what we can get done with the votes we have,” he told me, “and that would be a big step forward.”

That’s hopeful realism talking.

Women Will Save Democracy

And that’s why threats against them have soared

Written by Joel Ombry and published in Medium.c0m 3/8/2022

Clockwise from upper left: Gretchen Whitmer, Stacey Abrams, Michele Wu, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Source: wikimedia.org. CC Licenses CC BY 3.0, BY-SA 2.0 , PDM 1.0 , cropped and compiled by author.

America and the world face great challenges, and women are stepping up.

The past decade has seen a rise in the number and effectiveness of women political leaders, both in and out of government. Research is growing that shows women perform better in leadership roles than men. The 117th U.S. Congress has a record number of women representatives.

Other examples of women’s growing influence in politics:

In his recent State of the Union address, President Biden was framed by Vice President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The #2 and #3 most powerful leaders in the U.S. government are women.
Democratic activist Stacey Abrams is believed largely responsible for voter registration and mobilization efforts in Georgia that secured a Democratic presidential win, and Senate majority, in 2020.
Moms Demand Action has enjoyed success in lobbying for gun safety legislation and other reforms in several U.S. states.
Internationally, more nations are electing women leaders, who are proving themselves in crises — like Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand, widely praised for her handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

With rising influence comes more criticism, but something is different

Facing criticism is part of politics right? It’s a dynamic as old as the republic. Free speech — the bedrock of our democracy — enables citizens to speak their minds to those in power. However, when does free speech end and threats begin? When does criticism become harassment? And most importantly, why have threats against women leaders, in particular, increased in recent years?

First, let’s look at data reported by the Associated Press (AP) to try to separate fact from belief.

“Researchers for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue measured online abuse of congressional candidates in the 2020 election, including direct or indirect threats and promoting violence or demeaning a person based on identity such as race or gender. They found female Democrats received 10 times more abusive comments on Facebook than their male peers, while Republican women received twice as many as their male counterparts.” (Bold emphasis mine)

“A State and Local Government Review survey of mayors in communities with over 30,000 residents found 79% of mayors reported being a victim of harassment, threats or other psychological abuse, and 13% reported instances of physical violence. Gender was the biggest predictor of whether mayors would be victims, with female mayors more than twice as likely as male mayors to face psychological abuse, and nearly three times as likely to experience physical violence.” (Bold emphasis mine)

Research shows not only are women targeted more than men; the nature of the criticism is also different. Criticism of male politicians typically uses more general language, while female politicians receive more personal attacks using gendered language. Threats often focus on physical appearance and can include sexual violence and imagery.

Women’s traditional cultural roles help and hurt

Women’s traditional roles as nurturers, and perceived qualities of being more relational and empathetic may contribute to their success in politics. However, traditional roles may also work against them. Political and social scientists describe a concept called gender role theory which suggests that attributes of politicians such as ambition and assertiveness are “coded male.” Women who pursue elected office are perceived as violating traditional norms. The backlash against this perceived violation may be driving some of the threatening behavior.

Rutgers University Professor, Mona Lena Krook, who authored a 2020 book on global violence against women in politics, captures the sentiment:

“It’s like ‘Who does she think she is trying to tell us what to do?’…There is a sense they’re trying to delegitimize her because they don’t feel like she has the right, that she’s allowed to be there because she’s a woman … I think they take it very personally.”

It’s important to note, in our polarized times, that threats against women leaders occur on both sides of the aisle and are unacceptable no matter who is targeted. I suspect it’s more prevalent on the right as more traditional gender roles and greater xenophobia are features of the extreme right. Threats against women leaders are even more likely if they are also from a racial, ethnic or religious minority group.

Summary

The vitriol suffered by our female leaders, both in the U.S. and elsewhere, reflects misogynistic and xenophobic threads in our society going back decades. What’s new is the rapid acceleration of this violent rhetoric caused by the rising influence of women, social media and the lowering of standards of acceptable political discourse by extremist politicians and media figures.

We need to make reversing the threats against women leaders an urgent priority— right now. Some steps that might help:

Social media crackdown — Like COVID disinformation control efforts, greater emphasis should be placed on threatening behavior on social media (against all genders). One simple change, that seems obvious, would be to force social media account holders to use their true names.
Report threatening behavior on social media platforms.
Hold elected officials accountable not only for their own behavior, but to strengthen laws against threats and violence towards women.

Perhaps it’s appropriate that I’m writing this on International Women’s Day. It’s a time to celebrate women in the many roles they play in our lives and society. However, it’s also a time to have a clear-eyed focus on the continued threats against women in political leadership and fight against them. The continued positive influence of women in our politics depends on it.

Rick Scott’s 11 Point Plan to Rescue America

I read it so you wouldn’t have to. Here’s my report.

Written by Caren White and published in Medium.com 2/23/2022

Leave it to Beaver circa 1960 courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

So while Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is busy releasing his plans for his anticipated Republican House majority after the midterms, over in the Senate, Rick Scott (R-Fla.), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial committee, has come up with an 11 point plan for his anticipated Republican Senate majority after the midterms.

It’s a doozy. Sort of Leave it to Beaver meets the culture wars. You can read it for yourself here.

If you don’t want to read it, I’m providing a summary of it here. Along with my inimitable commentary.

Warning. Sarcasm ahead.

The format is as follows: Title of numbered point, Scott’s summary of the numbered point, then my summary of the details of the point.

Think this is long? The original runs 30 pages.

Education — “We will inspire patriotism and stop teaching the revisionist history of the radical left; our kids will learn about the wisdom of the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the founding fathers. Public schools will focus on the 3 R’s, not indoctrinate children with critical race theory or any other political ideology.”

Yup, you guessed it. This is the anti-CRT point. And the “get rid of the Department of Education” point.

He also wants to get rid of tenure for teachers. I know quite a few teachers. The best way to piss-off teachers and teacher unions is to threaten to eliminate tenure.

Bring it on, educators. This guy needs to go to the principle’s office for a good paddling.

2. Color Blind Equality —“Government will never again ask American citizens to disclose their race, ethnicity, or skin color on any government forms. We are going to eliminate racial politics in America. No government policy will be based on race. People ‘will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.’ We are all made in the image of God; to judge a person on the color of their epidermis is immoral”.

I didn’t even have to look at the details. It’s screamingly obvious that this is the anti-Affirmative Action point.

Colleges and Universities who use Affirmative Action in their admissions will lose federal funding and their tax-exempt status.

He even drags the military into it forbidding any diversity training, CRT indoctrination or “any woke ideological indoctrination that divides our troops.”

I think that he should call point 2 “White Men Rule America.”

3. Safety and Crime — “The soft-on-crime days of coddling criminal behavior will end. We will re-fund and respect the police because, they, not the criminals, are the good guys.” We will enforce our laws, all of them, and increase penalties for theft and violent crime. “We will clean up our cities and stop pretending that crime is OK. We have zero tolerance for “mostly peaceful protests” that attack police officers, loot businesses, and burn down our cities.”

This is the anti-BLM point giving police free rein to enforce the law. It strengthens qualified immunity to protect the police from us. Then there’s that little matter of the mandatory sentences.

And don’t forget the Second Amendment which he promises will be defended “at all costs.”

Let’s call this one the “Arm the police and White people to defend against the Black and brown people” point.

4. Immigration — “We will secure our border, finish building the wall, and name it after President Donald Trump. Nations have borders. We should give that a try. President Trump’s plan to build a wall was right. We welcome those who want to join us in building the American dream, immigrants who want to be Americans, not change America. We are a stronger nation because we are a nation of immigrants, but immigration without assimilation makes us weaker. Politicians from both parties talk big about border security and do nothing. We are done with that.”

I don’t have to tell you that this is the anti-immigrant point, do I? No welfare for illegal immigrants and no federal dollars for sanctuary cities.

And no “cultural segregation.” Melting pot only. Is this a thinly veiled attempt at making English the official language of the US?

No more multi-lingual signs? No more “press one for English, para Espanol oprima dos?”

Last time I checked, unless you are Native American, you are an immigrant. Some of us came legally. Some of us came illegally. But none of us really belong here.

5. Growth/Economy — “We will grow America’s economy, starve Washington’s economy, and stop Socialism. Socialism is un-American and always leads to poverty and oppression. We will stop it. We will shrink the federal government, reduce the government workforce by 25% in 5 years, sell government buildings and assets, and get rid of the old, slow, closed, top-down, government-run-everything system we have today.”

Republicans just love to shrink the government. Make the states do everything. But without federal funding.

Balance the budget.

Is it just me or is the last time the budget balanced, a Democrat sat in the Oval Office?

Just sayin’.

And make everybody pay taxes, including the ones at the bottom of the income scale who currently pay nothing and therefore have no “skin in the game.”

Everybody? Good, let’s start with the billionaires and big corporations.

6. Government Reform and Debt — “We will eliminate all federal programs that can be done locally, and enact term limits for federal bureaucrats and Congress. Many government agencies should be either moved out of Washington or shuttered entirely. Yesterday’s old government is fundamentally incompatible with the digital era. The permanent ruling class in Washington is bankrupting us with inflation and debt, so they must be removed. For you to have more, Washington must have less.”

He wants term limits! 12 years in Congress and you are out. So I checked. This is his first term in the Senate. He was elected in 2018. Wait until he’s been in DC for a while with all the perks. He’ll be singing a different tune.

Simplify the tax code. Cut IRS funding and workforce by 50%

Wait, doesn’t this contradict point #5 where he wants more people to pay taxes which will necessitate more IRS employees to process the returns and audit the cheats?

7. Fair Fraud-Free Elections — “We will protect the integrity of American Democracy and stop left-wing efforts to rig elections. Today’s Democrat Party is trying to rig elections and pack the courts because they have given up on Democracy. They don’t believe they can win based on their ideas, so they want to game the system and legalize voter fraud to stay in power. In true Orwellian fashion, Democrats refer to their election rigging plans as “voting rights”. We won’t allow the radical left to destroy our democracy by institutionalizing dishonesty and fraud.”

Wow, talk about projection. Substitute “Republican” for “Democrat” in the above and you have the perfect description of how elections work today.

In-person voting only, no ballot boxes, no votes counted that arrive after the polls close.

It’s Trump’s dream election scenario.

8. Family — “The nuclear family is crucial to civilization, it is God’s design for humanity, and it must be protected and celebrated. To say otherwise is to deny science. The fanatical left seeks to devalue and redefine the traditional family, as they undermine parents and attempt to replace them with government programs. We will not allow Socialism to place the needs of the state ahead of the family.”

Everyone has to be married. No one can get abortions. Faith-based adoption agencies are best.

I’m humming the Leave it to Beaver theme.

Scott is 70 years old. He is longing for his childhood back in the 50s.

If I had my way, he wouldn’t even be in the Senate because of mandatory retirement ages that I would like to see enacted for Congress, the president and SCOTUS.

9. Gender, Life, Science — “Men and women are biologically different, ‘male and female He created them.’ Modern technology has confirmed that abortion takes a human life. Facts are facts, the earth is round, the sun is hot, there are two genders, and abortion stops a beating heart. To say otherwise is to deny science.”

This is the “no transgender people in women’s sports” point.

No transitioning before 18. There are only two genders according to science.

And no “biological males” on women’s sports teams.

This is what happens when you elect old people to office.

Rick, sweetie, they have updated the textbooks since you were in school. Science now recognizes that there is no clear demarcation between male and female. Some people fall in between.

10. Religious Liberty and Big Tech — “Americans will be free to welcome God into all aspects of our lives, and we will stop all government efforts to deny our religious freedom and freedom of speech. The Democrat Party and their Big Tech allies are not merely secular; they have virtually created a new religion of wokeness that is increasingly hostile toward people of faith, particularly Christians and Jews. They are determined to drive all mention of God out of public view. We will not be silenced, canceled, or told what words to use by the politically correct crowd.”

This is the “Christians shouldn’t be forced to bake wedding cakes for same sex weddings” point.

It has the usual litany of complaints about Christians having to adhere to the same laws as the rest of us outside of the privacy of their homes and churches.

Interestingly enough, there’s a paragraph condemning Section 230 which allows internet companies to ban users who post objectionable content.

Trump tried to get rid of it. Now he is trying to use it to ban users from his new social networking site who post anything critical of him or the site.

Not so interesting is the veiled threat of using the Second Amendment to enforce the First Amendment.

I’m not impressed. Cowards hide behind guns.

11. America First — “We are Americans, not globalists. America will be dependent on NO other country. We will conduct no trade that takes away jobs or displaces American workers. Countries who oppose us at the UN will get zero financial help from us. We will be energy-independent and build supply chains that never rely on our adversaries. We will only help countries that are willing to defend themselves, like Israel.”

This is real 50s shit. Monroe Doctrine. America as the world’s police. Keeping our sphere of influence in our hemisphere. Keeping everyone else out.

Somebody please tell Scott that the Cold War is over.

Then educate him about economics. In today’s interconnected world, it is impossible to build supply chains that don’t include any other countries. Raw materials sometimes have to come from other countries because they are not found here.

I think Scott’s 11 point plan should be mandatory reading for all voters before they vote in the midterms. They should know exactly what they are voting for.

And then read it again in 2024 cuz Scott has been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate and this document would make a great platform.

Trump Followers Committing Treason

Written by Martin Edic and published in Medium.com 2/24/2022

I’m not talking about Trump. He is a future nobody, a shame point in our history. But reading about the horrific war in Ukraine this morning, and the maniac behind it, is awful enough. But the Trumpies have come out in favor of Putin, a psychopathic dictator.

This sounds like blatant treason to me. Not only treason against our country and its ideals, but treason against everything that makes us human. It is likely that thousands will die or be imprisoned by the actions of Russia today and Trump, Fox, Newsmax, and the entire far right complex in America will be complicit.

I need to point out that even this early, Putin has made threats that imply he is willing to use nuclear weapons, weapons whose effects are incomprehensible to most people living today. They literally hold the potential to destroy civilization as we know it.

And Trump and his guys think this is ‘savvy’.

The last three years have been tough. As a news junkie, I’ve seen incomprehensible events become near normal. But waking up this morning to a full scale war in Ukraine has been particularly painful. I live in a mid-size city (Rochester, NY) that has a Ukrainian population estimated at 20,000. I grew up with many whose parents had come here to escape the spector of Communist oppression.

And now they watch loved ones in their home country facing death and destruction.

After the past six years I think we need a reality check, and Putin has provided a big one. A war like those we have not seen since 1945.

I grew up during the Cold War when the Soviets and the US were on constant alert against nuclear war. It is hard to describe how much this shadowed our lives. It was always out there: the end of the world.

Putin is a product of those times, a time bomb designed by the KGB long ago to detonate at some future time.

And Trump and his followers were also designed to tear our country apart when the time bomb went off. Designed by and supported by the Putin disinformation apparatus.

It all sounds very Marvel comic universe, doesn’t it? Except for the reality on the ground in Ukraine right now, with a full scale invasion with modern weapons, an invasion unlike any that anyone living has seen.

It is the product of insanity on a grand scale. A delusional leader with absolute power who is willing to kill thousands to support his delusions.

And we have Trump supporters lauding his efforts.

To my mind they are no longer humans. Humans have compassion and horror. Humans understand consequences. Humans try to improve daily lives.

Humans do not support unjustified war, death, and destruction.

This entire situation is unimaginable, but as a student of history it has a familiarity. When Hitler was starting WWII there were Americans who supported him.

Things did not work out well for them. We cannot forget or forgive treason and supporting Putin is treason against humanity.

If you somehow write this off as a foreign war that is meaningless to Americans, you are living in a delusion. Go and fill your gas tank in the next few days. Check your retirement account. You’re going to be in for a shock, because oil prices are skyrocketing and the markets are in a free fall.

The notion that Vladimir Putin is in any way reasonable is wrong in every way imaginable. For Republican pundits and politicians to pretend otherwise is shameful. And, to my mind, a betrayal of everything this country stands for.

I, for one, will not forget. And neither should any of us.

Ukraine Lays Bare How the Party of Reagan Became the Party of Trump

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, left, and President Donald Trump arrive for a group photo at the G20 Summit in Osaka, Japan, in 2019.(BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

Written by Susan Mulligan and published in US News 2/25/2022

In Cold War America, it was easy to win the parlor game of Spot the Republican. It was the foreign policy hawk slamming Russian aggression, calling for the United States to stand up to dictators, maybe wearing a “Better Dead than Red” button for good measure. Or it was the suited lawmaker calling for lower taxes and less government intervention in people’s lives.

The 2022 midterms would seem to offer the perfect issues for a GOP already poised to make big gains this fall. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine provides a platform for the get-tough-on-autocrats crowd, a chance for them to opine on the importance of protecting democracy and keeping American shores safe from foreign aggressors. President Joe Biden’s push for higher taxes on people making more than $400,000 yearly offers an opportunity for an anti-tax campaign message. High inflation gives the GOP an opening to reach out to working class and lower-income Americans whose meager pocketbooks are being pinched.

Instead, the GOP remade by former President Donald Trump has been acting nothing like its former self. Once a party that hailed as its biggest hero Ronald Reagan, who battled the Soviet empire and won, the GOP has focused its attention on matters involving race and culture.

That’s partly due to Trump and partly due to changing demographics that have increasingly defined both parties, with Republicans largely white and Democrats more people of color, says Marjorie Hershey, author of the book “Party Politics in America.”

“It isn’t that unusual for a party to be probing month by month, election by election, to see what works and what doesn’t,” says Hershey, professor emeritus at the Indiana University Bloomington. Now, she says, it’s a “status anxiety message” that is resonating with white voters who are seeing their worlds change with shifting demographics.

“The Republicans have discovered, especially since Donald Trump, that there is a market for this politically,” Hershey says. “The pandemic has had an impact on this, too – when people get anxious, they tend to express fear and anxiety more readily.”

A week that might have had Republicans invoking the rhetoric of Reagan instead was full of GOPers hewing to the Trump playbook.

Trump – notably impeached in 2019 on charges he threatened Ukraine for his own political advantage – openly praised Putin days before the Russian leader invaded his sovereign neighbor, calling Putin a “genius” for declaring separatist regions of Ukraine to be independent. Other GOPers made similar remarks about the former KGB agent.

“I consider him an elegantly sophisticated counterpart and one who is not reckless but has always done the math,” Trump’s former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, said in a Feb. 18 interview with the Center for the National Interest. Pompeo – a potential 2024 GOP candidate for president – also called Putin “very savvy” and “very shrewd.”That fascination – even respect – for dictators is “all about keeping and maintaining power at all costs,” says Ellen Fitzpatrick, a University of New Hampshire history professor. “His followers are echoing this. There’s a general ignorance of the history of the Cold War” among those lauding Putin for his strength and resolve, she adds.

The new GOP is also exploiting the worries of working class Americans who see a changing country, wonder what their place is in an increasingly diverse America, and fear their economic situations will suffer, Fitzgerald says.

The GOP answer for those working-class Americans wrestling with higher gas and grocery bills? Pay more taxes. A strategy document by the National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Sen. Rick Scott of Florida says that “All Americans should pay some income tax to have skin in the game.” Many low-income Americans do not make enough money to have a federal income tax liability.

At the Conservative Political Action Conference, which opened in Orlando on Thursday, the talk – and the agenda – was all about the culture wars: electing conservatives to school boards and mounting anti-“woke” campaigns, for example. One panel was titled “Are You Ready to be Called a Racist: The Courage to Run for Office.”

Little was said Thursday about the possibility of the biggest armed conflict in Europe since the Second World War. Americans should “call what’s happening on the southern border an invasion,” as opposed to fretting about “cities we can’t pronounce, places that most Americans can’t find on a map,” Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk told conference goers.
Fellow conservative activists were aligned. Candace Owens, a right-wing talk show host and author, urged her millions of Twitter followers to read the transcript of Putin’s widely derided remarks this week, when he suggested Ukraine was not a real country.

“As I’ve said for months – NATO (under direction from the United States) is violating previous agreements and expanding eastward. WE are at fault,” Owens tweeted.

J.D. Vance, a GOP candidate for Senate from Ohio, said in a recent podcast interview with former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon: “I don’t really care what happens in Ukraine one way or another.” When retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey criticized Vance on Twitter as a “shameful person” whose comments are “those of a stooge for Russian aggression,” Vance shot back.

“Oh, by the way, how much do you stand to gain financially from a war with Russia, Barry?” Vance tweeted.

In Washington, GOP lawmakers had harsh words about the Russian invasion – and many of them were not so much for Putin as for Biden.

“This is what weakness on the world stage looks like,” the House GOP tweeted Tuesday with a photo of Biden walking away from the podium after delivering a speech announcing sanctions against Russia, and more to come if Putin indeed escalated the invasion.

“Biden’s weakness, both in general and his surrender on Nord Stream 2, undeniably facilitated Putin’s invasion of Ukraine,” Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas Republican, tweeted midday Thursday, as the White House and its allies mobilized to respond to Putin’s threat to Europe.

An exception to the blame-Biden crowd was Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, who laid into Putin for invading a sovereign nation “without justification, without provocation and without honor.”

“Putin’s impunity predictably follows our tepid response to his previous horrors in Georgia and Crimea, our naive efforts at a one-sided ‘reset,’ and the shortsightedness of ‘America First.’ The ‘80s called’ and we didn’t answer,” Romney said in a statement. The later part of his criticism appeared to be aimed at Trump and his foreign policy views.

Romney, notably, was the only Republican in 2020 to vote to convict Trump after the former president’s first impeachment. The charges were that Trump threatened to withhold military aid to a vulnerable Ukraine unless its leader helped dig up dirt on Biden’s family.

Ukraine is Redefining America’s Interests

If this conflict is a new cold war, it’s one that the autocracies have been pursuing energetically and the democracies have been loath to accept.

Low key photography of grungy old Soviet Union and United States of America flags. USSR, CCCP, USA.

Written by George Packer and published by the Atlantic 2/28/2022

About the author: George Packer is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal, Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century, The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, and The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq.

In the short six months between the fall of Kabul and the invasion of Ukraine, the triumph of one idea was eclipsed by the appearance of another. The wars that followed 9/11 ended for Americans on August 31, 2021. They ended with relief and bitterness and the sense that the United States would now have to learn restraint—that we lacked the ability, the will, and the means to involve ourselves in the affairs of other countries. Pax Americana was over, and so was the 20 Years’ War, and now it was time to turn inward and address our own considerable problems. After all, who were we, with our political rot, our social conflicts, and our COVID disaster, to act as a leader of anything to anyone?

This view was widespread across the political firmament. The progressive version leaned pacifist, the reactionary version was nationalist, and in the center a new “realism”—a hungover awareness of limits—prevailed. This realism reminded bruised, exhausted Americans that our national interests should be narrowly defined, and that other great powers, including Russia, have interests of their own that need to be respected.

The Biden administration embraced this realism before America had finished withdrawing from Afghanistan. It seemed to believe that the U.S. would leave nothing behind there except the debris of two decades of failure—and so it neglected to ensure that the Afghans who’d allied themselves with the American project in their country would have any kind of future anywhere. The relatively open, outward-looking society that had grown up during the American war among younger Afghans in the cities, with its lively press and civic activism and new freedoms for women and girls, was abandoned with barely a second thought.

The failure in Kabul showed that the new realists didn’t understand what our national interests actually were. It took Vladimir Putin to explain them.

Read our ongoing coverage of the Russian invasion in Ukraine

In giving the order to invade Ukraine, Putin made nonsense of a raft of apologists who had, until the last hour, continued to believe that Russia could be satisfied with concessions, that it was acting out of “legitimate security concerns.” Putin didn’t start this war because of NATO expansion, or American imperialism, or Western weakness, or the defense of Christian civilization, or any other cause that directs blame away from the perpetrator. In 2014, Ukrainians staged what they called a “Revolution of Dignity” in Kyiv, and they’ve been struggling ever since to create a decent country, ruled by laws and not by thieves, free of Russia’s grip. That country was so intolerable to Putin that he decided to destroy it.

Month: March 2022