What Is It Good For? (We Are Spirits, Not Animals, Three.)

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead. In peace there's nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility: But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger; Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, Disguise fair nature with hard-favored rage; Then lend the eye a terrible aspect; Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow overwhelm it As fearfully as doth a galled rock Overhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swilled with the wild and wasteful ocean. Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide, Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit To his full height. On, on, you noblest English.
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!
Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
Have in these parts from morn till even fought
And sheathed their swords for lack of argument:
Dishonor not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you called fathers did beget you.
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to war. And you, good yeoman,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture; let us swear
That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not;
For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'

~William Shakespeare, Henry V.

Here we go.

Three generations of peace in most of Europe, a generation since the conflicts in Bosnia and Kosovo.

Less than six months after the endless shit-show in Afghanistan came to a crashing end.

And I give it less than a month before we're back at it again. Russian atrocity or belligerence against NATO member-states...or an aggressive defensive strategy by the Baltic States or the Poles will see to that. Article V, yo.

What gives with this tangent, you ask?

Today, Vladimir Putin signed documents recognizing the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics, small breakaway states in Ukraine.

Within hours he had also ordered Russian troops into those areas, and sanctions both against individual people are Russia itself are already being implemented or are expected to be implemented tomorrow.

It won't be enough. For that shit to have mattered, it should have been done in 2014.

It's almost certain that there will be fighting in Eastern Ukraine again, but with the Russians openly involved this time, likely with the full weight of air and naval support now, and they will go after Ukrainian civilians, and it's going to come down to a fight. It always does, eventually.

The Ukrainian Army is experienced, smart and tough, they've been at this for 8 years now. But they're going to need help, that should go without saying.

But of course the problem with that is, if it "goes without saying" long enough, somebody who needs to hear it said might not.

Thing is, everybody always expected that post-Cold War "New World Order" would be invulnerable because of capitalism and money...and then it wasn't even a year after George H.W. Bush coined the term and there we were with Yugoslavia falling apart and UN peacekeepers and no fly zones and shit and that's how I eventually got to see that misbegotten little corner of the world.

And after Dayton, and endless shitty peacekeeping deployments for some of us, everybody went right back to making money and stopped worrying about it. Until Kosovo boiled over a couple years later.

Oops.

A couple more years, the world's attention shifted to Afghanistan, then Iraq, lather-rinse-repeat. America wasn't at war, the United States Marine Corps was at war. America was at the mall.

Likewise, Libya, then Syria. America turned inward and none of that mattered so much as whatever Stupid Republican Tricks were then ongoing.

So naturally, here we are. 

Because Trump enabled this motherfucker, because he'd rather bro it up with some dictator who he thought he wanted to be than do his motherfucking job.

Then of course COVID-19 hit, in every possible way the cruelty and eugenics became the damn point and the Republicans decided they wanted to live in a world that was basically the Killing Fields of Khmer Rouge Cambodia, but with a mall.

So then, Trump lost.

I said for a long time, that once he lost, Trump was going to be replaced. The mythos, if not the spell itself, was broken. The Unbeatable Foe was, in the end, nothing but a fat old man tilting at windmills.

So Republicans went and found themselves somebody worse. I never thought it'd be Vladimir Fucking Putin. If nothing else I figured these jingoistic, nativist assholes would demand their new idol be an American.

Of course, I was wrong, because I figured this hole had to have a bottom somewhere.

Because ethnic hatred, fascism, nationalism, religious extremism and violent racism are a hell of a drug for a lot of people and there's always some asshole looks at the situation and figures well sure, there's this huge boom in trade and wealth but I'm not getting enough of it to suit my tastes...or they have some other bullshit political goals or just want to watch the world burn and honestly in Putin's case I think it very much is something like that.

And now, thanks to the Trump years we have all this shit brewing up right here in our own country, too.

So now, we're going to have to fight for it, again.

Call me crazy, or jaded, or maybe just somebody who was there in the Brave New World of the 1990's but I think we're in for a long, long haul of airstrikes, cyber-warfare, information warfare, negotiations, no fly zones, sanctions, counter-sanctions, and finally, peacekeeping and finding out that the Russians are shitty soldiers who like to shoot women and children but who don't want to fight when they're faced with a real enemy. So they'll just stand there, half in the bag and reeking of moonshine and jet fuel and swear at you, while you on the other hand have orders not to fire unless fired upon.  

Yes, you're damned right I think this shit is going to be Bosnia on steroids with a large side order of drunken rage and dementia. I saw Putin's speech today. There's something fucking wrong with that dude.

Except the difference is, now we get to add a whole new level of nuclear bluff, threat, and counter-threat to the whole goddamn mess. Imagine if Bill Clinton and Slobodan Milosevic had each had their finger on that button.

Or leaders like Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic actually backed by a Russian autocrat instead of ignored unto death by Boris Yeltsin. (In other words, the underlying plot of several 1990's movies and novels.)

And then try and tell me Bosnia wouldn't have been worse by an order of magnitude had that been the case.

Do I think Republicans have the balls, or even the emotional maturity or mental fortitude, to effectively deal with even ten...hell, one...percent of that shit? Hell no, I do not. These are people who lost their goddamn minds over Black Lives Matter, the George Floyd protests, and lately, peaceful or political opposition in any format whatever.

I think if these fools are ever faced with an actual war they will beat out the Iraq Army's land speed record for surrendering to the enemy that was set during Desert Storm. 

They would love to turn America itself into a Bosnia-like quagmire...or into the mess that Ukraine was for a long time. 

But I think if these fools try it, they will end up dependent on the Russians for everything, up to and including fighting their battles for them. 

In a divided America where Democrats and Republicans glare at each other with guns drawn over some walled-off Inner American Border...the Republican side wouldn't so much be like Cuba but an even more heavily-subsidized East Germany or Donetsk People's Republic...and one where the Russians not only make all the decisions, but do all the really hard shit while people like Jabba The Gingrich are cruising the cocktail circuit trying to find their fourth wife because the last one got sick or something.

Come on, in a post full of moldy 1990's references you know I had to get a dig on Newt Gingrich in there somewhere. I was a Republican in the 1990's and I hated that fucker.

He was a better-educated Lauren Boebert, a more elegant Marjorie Taylor Greene, for a more civilized age.

And I cannot say this enough, but believe it or not there was a time when somebody like Kyle Rittenhouse would have got his ass whupped by the first actual adult to whom he suggested that he should be driven to another state, to defend property that was not his in a place he did not live, from people who meant him no harm, and do it all with an illegally-purchased weapon.

And there was a time when Comrade Tucker here would have never worked again after an irate public demanded he be fired for supporting a goddamned KGB agent in any public capacity whatever, if he wasn't tarred and feathered on the way home. I mean, seriously. Jesus Christ, what the fuck is wrong with these goddamned people?

If Republicans like Russia so goddamned fucking much, why don't they just go live there and become active in that country's politics?

Of course, the answer here is that Russia wouldn't have them.

But I'll tell you what Russia wants from them, especially what with everybody thinking sanctions are some kind of an answer here.

Russia will want These Fucking People to break off a piece of America, someplace like South Florida so that the oligarchs can have their nice cushy little access point to The West once the Armored Cavalry Regiments and the Marines show up and we're not only helping defend what's left of Ukraine but manning defensive lines from the Arctic Circle to the Georgian border...and as I said, likely some sort of Inner-American Border as well.

Because the Berlin Wall of the 21st Century will probably have to be in Alabama or some shit.

And when things settle back down a little but the guns are still out and the walls go back up, Vlad is still gonna want that complimentary membership at Mar-A-Lago and if there's one thing that'll make all these old KGB fuckers that Putin surrounds himself with mad, it'll be denial of any level of Capitalist luxuries and wealth.

So they'll need people like Donald Trump, Greg Abbott, Ron DeSantis and Tucker Carlson...to make sure they can still set themselves up with a source somewhere.

If it sounds like I have absolutely nothing but bottomless contempt for these fucking people it's because I do. I used to be a Republican. 

As with Communism, for a hell of a lot of these fuckers it was ever and always, bullshit.

And I'm goddamned tired of it.

All too often, wars don't affect or even matter to the people who start them.

But for the rest of us, it's fight or submit.

 Meanwhile every shady Bush-Era Ghoul, rusty old Cold Warrior, Defense Contractor and Never-Trump Republican out there is positively salivating over the profits to be had from the fact that the rest of us gonna have to defend ourselves. And I say "fuck that." But we can't settle up until this current business is done.

So of course they will drag it out for as long as possible.

How many people are going to have to die before we as a people...before humanity as a species...tell these fucking people to go pound sand?

That's all.

The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it's a simple answer after all. You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." There is a point beyond which they must not advance. This is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said that "the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits — not animals." And he said, "There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty. ~Ronald Reagan

Part Two.

(War, huh) Yeah!
(What is it good for?) Absolutely nothing, uhuh
(War, huh) Yeah!
(What is it good for?) Absolutely nothing
Say it again, y'all!
(War, huh) Lookout!
(What is it good for?) Absolutely nothing
Listen to me, awwwww!

War I despise
'Cause it means destruction of innocent lives
War means tears to thousands of mothers' eyes
When their sons go out to fight and lose their lives
~Edwin Starr, War