I'm sleeping like a baby, too. Every two hours, I wake up, screaming. ~Colin Powell, on hearing that George W. Bush was sleeping well on the eve of the US invasion of Iraq....
If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. ~Ronald Reagan
I saw this earlier tonight.
In Ukraine, with the threat of Russian invasion all but certain at this point, even the very old are preparing, and training to fight.
Think about that for a second, think about what that must mean to these people.
I have no doubt that Grandmother will get her share if it comes to that, I do not doubt that one bit. Generally speaking, when you're dealing with an old person, it's a good rule of thumb to remember there's probably a reason they got to be old.
And I for one would not want to be a Russian soldier walking into this situation. MOUT (Military Operations in Urban Terrain) is a terrible mission in the best of cases...but to be in a situation where damned near anybody could be a Tango...I mean, are you fucking kidding me? I would not want to be that guy, but I'll tell you something else. I have no sympathy for the damned Russians on that score. None. Zero.
War sucks, period, that's all there is to it.
But, As far as I'm concerned it should suck all the more when you're the people starting it, when you've refused to do anything about the leaders who put you in this mess, you deserve what you're going to get...and you deserve to get it good and hard.
Wars happen when nations believe life is cheap. And yes, we do bear some of the blame for allowing things to get to this point. After all, we elected Donald Trump, who spent so much of his time groveling before Vladimir Putin when the truth is there was no logical reason for him to do so.
I really don't think we'd be in this situation if Hillary Clinton had won in 2016, I just don't.
At least we're helping the Ukrainians. I hope it won't come to a fight, but If it comes, we need to stand up and do what has to be done. When even the very old people in Ukraine are preparing to fight, can we really do any less?
Of course, the problem with that is that there's a not-small percentage of Americans who want to do absolutely nothing but continue to prosecute vain culture wars and revel in their own perversities.
The people of places like Ukraine don't exist to them, except as targets for death or exploitation.
And if we've learned anything lately, it should be that this is what the modern right-wing is all about, that and abject, slobbering worship of Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and of authoritarian states like North Korea and Russia.
And the longer this goes on, the more these fucking people...these mediocre far-right white men in particular...keep talking, the more right-wing bullshit they spew...the more I grow convinced that they want a government that will keep everyone else down simply so they can practice their perversions and talk foolishness while being protected from correction or reprisal. That's all there is to it. I mean, who even thinks about some of this shit?Meanwhile, while American "Conservatives" embrace deranged, perverse culture war fantasies, the Russian ones are getting ready for a war. I saw this video I took this snip from earlier today. That's a Hind (Mi-24/35) the main type of Russian/Soviet helicopter gunship, and the camera in the original video pans over to reveal a bunch of Hips (Mi-8/17) transport helicopters and a few others I couldn't see clear enough to ID, some of them with their engines running.
While American conservatives...so often, supposedly the most militant among us...think up shit to beat off to...the enemy is preparing, the Ukrainians are too, and so are we and so is NATO.
But...and I'm deadly serious about this...the time will come when these people and their politics will constitute an anti-American, anti-EU, and yes, anti-Western fifth column intent on serving Vladimir Putin and Russian imperialist plots and literally fighting against their own countries, their own governments, and trying to burn down civilization itself.
And they'll blame it on Black people, or LGBT people, or liberals or whatever, but I don't buy that shit. I mean, I get that these people are shitty little haters, but the truth is if those things weren't there to hate, they would just find some other excuse.
This afternoon I interacted with several people, all of them apparently British...who just couldn't stop slobbering all over all things Russian, talking about how great Russia was, how bad the Belarusian Opposition and the Ukrainians are...essentially arguing that "They're the fascists" because the flag the Belarusian opposition uses was used by Nazi sympathizers during World War II...and not thinking that hey, right or wrong maybe these people just want to have something that defines them in opposition to Russia...you know, the country that dominated the Soviet Union which held them and their ancestors in bondage for 70 years? In all seriousness these fucking idiots simply did not understand the idea that other people should have the right to define themselves, without being bothered about it.
And that is, ever and always, the root of the problem. For these far-right people and their idiotic far-left enablers, it really IS all about them, at least in their minds.
You don't have to like it, or agree with it, but it's not your country and if you don't like how those people are conducting themselves, don't go there. So long as they're not harming anybody it should be none of your goddamned business.
I will never understand why any American or British person would choose to be loyal to a person like Vladimir Putin or accept fealty to a country like Russia...call me old fashioned but I just don't fucking get it, and I never will.
And I absolutely will never understand these people's tendency to believe in obviously cockamamie conspiracy theories in order to justify whatever political bullshit they want to believe. There comes a point when your woo woo shit is going to smack hard into the wall of reality and then not ever go anywhere again.
Nor do I care to even try.
And if you don't understand why, I don't care to try and explain it to you.
But conspiracy theories aren't about truth, they're about excuses, half-measures and self-importance...all things that are lies, if you really think about it.
And I'll tell you what, I've stood and watched enough big jets with smoky engines take off and land that all I'm going to do when I see some fool say "Jet fuel isn't real" is laugh at them. The J57 engines of the older-model B-52G Stratofortress bombers and KC-135 tankers injected water into the fuel mix for greater performance on takeoff, which is a handy thing when you have to possibly get an aircraft off the ground every 12 1/2 seconds.
It's messy, smoky and bad for the environment, but that was the state of technology at the time.
And was jet fuel some kind of a hoax by the Climate Change people then...when "Global Warming" as it was known at the time was still regarded as a more distant threat?
Again, it simply comes down to the fact that you either believe in freedom, human rights, worker's rights and things like personal choice and public good...or you don't. If you believe in these things only for yourself and/or think that the oppression of others is your right, well, then freedom ain't what you believe in.
At this point, day in and day out, American conservatives sound less like Americans and more like the Vichy French scumbags who couldn't
wait to surrender to the Nazis and then tell them where the Jews were hiding.
Because it's not about America to them, anything and everything is nothing more than an exercise in trying to get one over on their political rivals, be those real or imagined. Oh, and literally everything is either conspiracy or an exercise in shitty political theory or whatever passes for "religion" at the moment.
I mean, all things considered, that sounds pretty "Communist" in terms of actual behavior (rather than economic or political theory) to me.
So I suppose it's no wonder that these motherfuckers love them some Vladimir Putin and embrace his stripped-down Neo-Communism that's been shorn of anything that helps the common man but keeps all the repression.
Now I don't know who needs to hear this, but we as a species can't really live with that.
When everything is in bad faith, and nothing is real except a deep-seated hatred for the existence of other human beings...well, we can't live with that, can we? You cannot reason with people who don't think you have a right to exist, it's just that simple.
And you sure as hell cannot have any form of real peace with such people. Peace is based not just on a lack of conflict but on respect and tolerance and understanding.
Peace is not just a lack of war, but a commitment to preventing war from happening.
That, however, requires good faith or at least pragmatism and common interests on both sides.
But sometimes you can't negotiate, sometimes it is all you can do, to prevent a determined enemy from attacking you, most often by making the cost too high.
In peaceful terms this is the reason for why the European Union was created and why all those economies are integrated. In more militant fashion, it's also why during the Cold War, the basis for all this stuff grew up under the aegis of NATO and European defense backed by the might of the United States Armed Forces. One does directly complement the other...and hell, if we can help the Ukrainians get ready and help them deter a Russian attack, that would be a great thing. Then bring them into the EU and NATO and maybe we won't have to do this again.
But that would be the best case scenario.
I don't mean to suggest that I think war is inevitable. Until shots have been fired, it isn't.
But I grimly accept that it's more likely we'll have to fight to restore the peace than it isn't. At best, we will have to act more forcefully to deter war than we have...and we do not have much time to do that.
The hour is late, choose now.
Either you believe in freedom or you don't.
Either you're standing up against the fall of night or you're not.
There is no middle ground. We either stand up for freedom and truth or we fall before authoritarianism and conspiracy theory and let it eat our brains until we don't know which way is up.
The "Conservative" idea of freedom is little more than base escapism and an excuse for bad behavior, for mob rule, and the glorification of the very few.
But it only looks easy, the costs to the individual...at least, the individual who is not already wealthy...are extremely high.
Freedom requires awareness, civic engagement, education, and ultimately doing a lot of hard shit.
But it's better than the alternative.
I can't believe people really think this is a legitimate choice, and it disgusts me that so many people would choose slavery if only so they can be a better class of slaves than some of the other slaves.
Welcome to hell.
To those neighbors and allies who share our freedom, we will strengthen our historic ties and assure them of our support and firm commitment. We will match loyalty with loyalty. We will strive for mutually beneficial relations. We will not use our friendship to impose on their sovereignty, for our own sovereignty is not for sale. As for the enemies of freedom, those who are potential adversaries, they will be reminded that peace is the highest aspiration of the American people. We will negotiate for it, sacrifice for it; we will not surrender for it, now or ever. Our forbearance should never be misunderstood. Our reluctance for conflict should not be misjudged as a failure of will. When action is required to preserve our national security, we will act. We will maintain sufficient strength to prevail if need be, knowing that if we do so we have the best chance of never having to use that strength. Above all, we must realize that no arsenal or no weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today's world do not have. It is a weapon that we as Americans do have. Let that be understood by those who practice terrorism and prey upon their neighbors. ~Ronald Reagan, First inaugural address.
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