All In The Valley Of Death (Pearls Before Swine, Two.)

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!” he said.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Someone had blundered.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred. ~Alfred Lord Tennyson, Charge of the Light Brigade.

...

The wind whispers of fear and hate. The war has killed love. And those that confess to the Angkar are punished, and no one dare ask where they go. Here, only the silent survive. ~Dith Pran, The Killing Fields

Apparently, since I wrote my last post, there's a very good chance that Russia could be falling into civil war...in just the last few hours, goddamn.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred. ~Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Charge of the Light Brigade

Okay, so basically, the worst people in the world, in the worst country in the world, are fighting?

Can't really say that's a good thing. Possible civil war in a nuclear-armed country seems like a really bad idea. Remember, their nukes are pointed at us. If some maniac like the fucking Wagner guy ends up in charge, that's going to be bad.

I mean, I can't really complain if Putin goes down. I hate that motherfucker.

But at the same time it's very likely that anybody who replaces him could be even worse, in fact, would probably have to be, just to restore "Order."

Think the Empire from Star Wars.

That's one thing Reagan did right, calling Russia the "Evil Empire."

Deterrence, "Peace Through Strength" was a solid strategy for dealing with that shit.

Here's the thing, though:

And this is important:

If somebody other than Putin takes over, and then turns out to be a worse son of a bitch than he was, but makes a few people's lives a little better and/or (especially) scares the bejesus out of the West, there's a hell of a lot of Russians who'll love him for it.

There's a decent number of Russians yet who continue to revere Josef Stalin, and Putin basically reactivated Old Joe's personality cult. Think about that for a second, these are not decent or nice people. 

Stalin killed close to as many people as Hitler did and they still love the son of a bitch!

The Russians had a boatload of chances to choose democracy, to do better, to be free. They simply didn't. I get that Russia was a soup sandwich in the 1990's. I was deployed to Latvia when I was in the Air Force. I talked to plenty of Russians who, one way or another, ended up supporting UN, US and NATO forces in places like Bosnia, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia.

Some of them wanted to be free. A hell of a lot of them missed the Soviet Union.

Flashed all their sabers bare,
Flashed as they turned in air
Sabering the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wondered.

Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right through the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reeled from the sabre stroke
Shattered and sundered.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred. ~Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Charge of the Light Brigade

Official corruption in the Russian government, organized crime on a massive scale, the usual Chicago Boys type "Libertarian" American "Business" people, and Evangelical Christians flooded the zone with shit and...well, I'd like to say they made this mess, but the truth is all they really did was kept the same old mess going and prevented something better (or at least different) from turning up. Putin's rise and his replacing Boris Yeltsin was not even seriously contested.

And maybe it's just me, but I rather suspect this is going to be more of the same, and shit appears to be spiraling out of control.

There's fire in the sky near Moscow.

Like, goddamn.

That's messed up, like somebody blew up the whole POL farm or some shit.

The thing to remember here is that a lot of the people in power in this situation are the people who were the fucking bad guys during the fall of the goddamned Soviet Union.

These are the dudes trying to get Prigozhin and Wagner to stand down.

And I can't imagine that any of those motherfuckers really want to see Putin's re-Sovietization of Russia go down the tubes either. 

If the Russian Army...even in its war-attritted, reduced-at-home state, fights, Wagner is fucked. They simply don't have the manpower to take on a national army on that scale...that said the main question is if the Russian loyalist forces can get that army in the way of the Wagnerites or not.

 That is, in fact, probably the question.

And my gut and what I know of Russian logistics and transport says that answer is probably "No."

More to the point any rapid response forces like airborne troops that might meet this threat head on already have fallen victim to Saint Javelin and Sultan Bayraktar and have apparently not been replaced. 

From Stettin on the Baltic to Varna on the Black Sea, the regimes planted by totalitarianism have had more than thirty years to establish their legitimacy. But none — not one regime — has yet been able to risk free elections. Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root....If history teaches anything, it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly....Our military strength is a prerequisite to peace, but let it be clear we maintain this strength in the hope it will never be used, for the ultimate determinant in the struggle that's now going on in the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve, the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated. ~Ronald Reagan

So it'll come down most likely to whatever's directly in the way, and whatever's garrisoned in Moscow. That's probably bad.

And if you're thinking we can count on any kind of rational response to this mess from our own "Republicans" you have another thing coming.

Everything is a goddamn conspiracy, apparently including this. 

Motherfucker, no, not everything is about you and whatever stupid political bullshit you think you have going on.

People who try and make their opposition seem like some kind of all-powerful gods...and every damn thing about themselves...are just trying to find ways to rationalize whatever fucked up shit they want to do.

Joe Biden didn't have anything to do with this, nor did the CIA.

This is...Russians being Russians.

It's like when the white tiger locked its jaws on the guy's head and effectively ended that famous Las Vegas show. Sometimes people are just not better than this, mate.

And remember, this shit is what Republicans think they want to be.

Don't buy anything these motherfuckers are selling.

Just my thoughts on the current crisis, and I'd strongly suggest one hell of a lot of us need to pull our heads out of our asses if we're going to deal with this shit properly.

We're in for some chop.

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We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev...Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

~Ronald Reagan

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Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you. ~Matthew 7:6