And here we are. This is one of those hinge points in history, a moment people remember other events in the context of “before” and “after” that moment
America is a Great Country and has been a significant historical experiment ever since its creation almost 200 years ago. During WWII our country demonstrated the capacity to stand up to significant global dangers, that, if we had left it to others in the global community, would have, perhaps, changed all our lives beyond repair. However, since then the US and its citizens have squandered almost all its goodwill and power to be a global exemplary model for responsible, compassionate and visionary behavior by allowing the US tax payers to fund a perpetual war machine that has created a terrible, inhuman and unproductive collection of countries and regions across the globe. No one has benefited from America's almost 100 year long wars on foreign soil. Except, perhaps, stockholders owning stocks in companies supplying the Military-Industrial Complex that President Eisenhower warned us against. And, last, but certainly not least, it has bankrupted America and destroyed our Faith in ourselves and our country. As an Independent voter I pray for a 3rd Party in the US to offer us a real choice from the perpetual wars that both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party has supported year after year. Perhaps they can call it CommonSenseUSA. Well written and timely article, and the inclusion of Donne's poem is a smart way of showing that artists often act as 'the canary in the coal mine."
I fear that oligarchs will co-opt any political party over time as they have done. They totally own the GQP and many in the Democratic Party. We need to get money out of politics so politicians listen to voters, not legaized bribers.
Yes, a war against one is a war against all, and, sorry to say, we are substantially responsible for this one.
What?!, many will ask -- how so?!!
All we have to do to realize this is to put ourselves in the other fellow's shoes, as Bernie Sanders, God bless him for this, said recently.
How did we react when Russia pushed hard into our long-declared sphere of influence in the Americas by installing nuclear missiles in Cuba? -- which for us was a matter of vital strategic interest?
'nuff said?
If not, then to be more specific, how could we have expected Russia to allow what they see as our encroachment into their sphere of influence -- which for them is a matter of vital strategic interest?
Moreover, speaking of vital interests, compare the casualties: how many people did we lose in the Cuban missile crisis?, and how many millions did they lose in the huge invasions from Western Europe by France and Germany?
How then could we have failed to recognize the truth of Russia's clearly stated security concerns, addressed them at the table, and thereby protected the people of Ukraine from invasion?
Our own wiser leaders warned us about this very thing decades ago.
The point is that it should be up to neither Russia, the US, nor NATO to decide another nation's sovereignty or fate. Ukrainians should have the opportunity to decide for themselves whether or not to join the Western security alliance. And the majority of their people after the Soviet Union collapse, notwithstanding the separatists, have already made their decision: They broke away from Russia for good and someday hope to join NATO; fck Putin!
How we think things should be is often not how they actually can be right now. So IMO the point is that we need to do our best to deal with things as they actually are -- and it seems to me that what great powers regard as in or not in their vital strategic interest gives us the best gauge we have of how they're going to react when push comes to shove.
Oh, great, "manifest destiny." Let the Ukrainians become like the pariah Palestinians and the pariah Native Americans. Surely poor threatened Putin will have a nice Gaza or res. for them.
Daphne, re "manifest destiny", a term used to justify imperial expansion(!), where do you see it or anything like it asserted or even implied in what I've posted here?
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
“Long” reflects the space; “bend” is the time to travel it. The laws of physics state that, relative to a fixed point, the progression of local time slows down radically the faster the speed or the closer to a gravitational field that severely bends time and space, such as a black hole.
Might we apply time dilation to the moral universe as well? Bloodthirsty autocrats like Putin and shameless acolytes like Trump are the black holes, bending the arc of immorality toward injustice. Their surrounding galaxies of lesser bodies are growing ever larger and more influential. No longer is it within the realm of a mere possibility that someone with the moral fiber of mush could become President of the United States, the land of the brave and foolhardy.
Trump made it a fact. So did Bush Junior/Darth Cheney. Throw in Bush Senior, Reagan, and Nixon for their senseless and bloody international blunders colluding with the forces of evil. Who’s next, Fucker Carlson, the radical right’s guiding light? Sure, Democrats share the blame; but mostly, they’ve been trying to preserve civilization and end idiotic wars of choice, not start them. And Putin’s black hole has been lurking there all along, drawing ever closer.
As everything collides, seemingly all at once, can the weight of justice resist both Trump and Putin? The two opposing arcs are long and curving in opposite directions, but sometimes entangling with cataclysmic results. Keeping with the metaphor, Putin and his Retrumplican stooges have reached their event horizon and there’s no turning back.
The greatest unknown of this tragicomical dance playing out somewhere in warped time and space will be which force is stronger, energy or gravity, good or evil? Is our ultimate fate swirling in the balance open-minded or closed? It’s the oldest drama since the Big Bang. 💥 Unknown energy indicates an ever-expanding universe where there's not enough dark matter to collapse everything back in on itself, which, metaphorically, offers some hope, I suppose, for the long-term in our otherwise bleak picture. However, with life-killing climate destruction also looming on the event horizon, does Mother Earth have the TIME to squander while drunk monkeys with loaded guns fly the starship straight into a black hole?
This morning as you summarized the valuable natural resources in Ukraine, it clarified for me the reasons for the conflict in Ukraine.
It's a battle between two groups of oligarchs for which one gets to expliot and profit from those resources. The "legalized mass murder" and destruction are collateral damage of greed. #UkraineConflict
The oligarchs no longer run Russia; they opted to put someone into office they thought they could control. Silly them! Now he has stolen enough money to control THEM. He owns every one of them plus the army, the cyber systems, cyber-spies, and the spy-spies. He kills people that defy him, including oligarchs.
Putin is popular, especially in rural areas, even after he has robbed the whole country blind. How can they believe in him? I don't know, maybe you could ask a Trump supporter. I see the Russian protestors in the cities are getting arrested, bless their hearts. All males must serve, so I feel sorry for any military people that hate him.
You can wax poetic all you want, but this is about basic sanity. The rest of the world has enough sane intelligent people to expose these psychopaths for what they are and what they do. I'm thinking "the turning" is being brought to you by the internet, millions of media sources, and a camera in every pocket.
Putin is an aging, paranoid, psychopath. That is his ONLY game. He is not brilliant, and he is not playing "chess" or a long game. Who will rid us of this menace to the world?
Every action, of intent or otherwise, catalyzes a spherical wave form undulating outward, landing upon distant shores of both literal and figurative boundaries. This rape of life - celebrated and perpetrated by the incessantly wretched within our species - will eventually come home to a nation infatuated by some mythological theater of violence. The abundance of useful idiots who are criminally ignorant to the realities of war is not a surprising condition. In a society that has long reaped treasure through pillaging and terrorizing other nations and peoples, it should come as no shock that we will most likely find ourselves on the receiving end in due time. Most of us know nothing of wholesale pandemonium.
I do not wish this on my fellow humans.
To the rapists of our decency, our innocence, our desire for peace and a progressive culture, I offer this metaphor:
When dealing with the destructive nature of fire, we the humans do not contain it in a box and allow it to continue burning - we snuff it out. This day exists, but I do not know when...
Cheney should never have gone with Blackwater to Azerbaijan hoping to build a Pipeline to The Caspian Sea. No Armour Humvees to make Iraq a Christian Country was dumb, Trump making a Deal with The Taliban for Afghanistan was dumber and now, once again as with Viet Nam, The Americans are underestimating The Enemy. All they had to do was ask Whelen what Gorbachev had told him about Putin All you had to do was 'connect the dots'
Another "hinge point in history" it is... Another 4th-Turning Crisis manifested by a Russian unprovoked attack on Ukraine. As William Strauss & Neil Howe put it in their 1997 book "The Fourth Turning" : "Somewhere before the year 2025, America will pass through a great gate in history, commensurate with the American Revolution, the Civil War, and the twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World War II." (p.6). Like clockwork, every roughly 80 years since the War of the Roses in England (1485) when a commoner deposed the King of England there has been a 4th-Turning Crisis in the form of a deadly, life-changing war. One might ask: "What on Earth is going on here?" How can such devastating crises manifest so far apart in time & place...and yet so regularly? A big clue is to be found in the War of the Roses: The tradition of monarchies was long a part of European history by the middle of the 15th century, but a commoner, Henry Tudor, defeated & killed King Richard III of England. This broke the well-established social more known as the divine right of kings--a Human creation justifying its authoritarian social hierarchy. Henry Tudor challenged that tradition....and broke it....thus expanding the consciousness of people all over the world that one is not necessarily locked into one's position in society by birth. In short, this was a major milestone on the socio-political human evolutionary road that eventually saw the overthrow of many European monarchies as people rose up and demanded greater recognition and say in their governance. Three centuries later the first modern experiment of a "democracy" was established in America via the Revolutionary War with England. And very significantly, in each of the six 4th-Turning Crises, the victor has each time been on the side of the egalitarians and not the authoritarians. In our crazy, dichotomous universe it seems to take a BIG BAD DUDE--and I use the word "DUDE" pur- posely--to stir up the mild, peace-loving people to finally rise up and fight off the dictatorial DUDE. Again, like clockwork--80 years + 2.5 months since the USA was drawn into WWII on Dec. 7, 1941--another dictatorial leader (Vladimir Putin) has attacked a peaceful, democracy (Ukraine)....and it's up to the rest of the world to decide which side it wishes to be on....and then hopefully muster enough strength to tip the balance once more toward a more egalitarian future.
OK, digging deep into what I used to know: wasn't Tudor dancing-master to the former queen, (Ann of Cleves?) and married her, so he was able to claim kingship as husband to the queen? In other words, he promoted himself into the "established social more," far from vanquishing it.
My Google research says that Henry Tudor had only a very weak link to the English monarchy before he fought & killed King Richard III (the last English king to die on a battlefield) in 1485. In 1486 Henry Tudor married Elizabeth of York, the eldest daughter of former King Edward IV--thus establishing / fortifying his claim to the monarchy. Henry Tudor...aka King Edward VII...reigned from 1485 to 1509...by putting a strong, protective guard around himself ! As in all instances where the overthrowers of monarchs become the new rulers, they don't "vanquish" monarchy....they just become the new head of it...eh? The American Revolutionary War changed that pattern....yeh? We established a democracy in place of the British monarchy.
Thanks, Deepspace ! Yes, it's too bad we humans have to learn the lessons for a better future the slow, painful way--but that appears what it's taken to bring us from a band of hominids swinging in the trees to where we are today....yeh? This has been our evolutionary path of consciousness thus far....but as the previous 6 mass extinction events prove to us, there are no guarantees....eh? I didn't want to sound too alarmist, but I will share with you what Howe & Strauss outlined as the possible outcomes of this current 4th Turning. 1st: "The next 4th Turning could mark the end of man....an omnicidal Armageddon, destroying everything, leaving nothing." Or 2nd: "The 4th Turning could mark the end of modernity...terrible but not final." Or 3rd: The 4th Turning could spare modernity but mark the end of our nation [USA]....our political constitution, popular culture, & moral standing in the world. 4th Turnings are critical thresholds for national survival." ... "Or the 4th Turning could simply mark the end of the Millennial Saeculum. Mankind, modernity, & America would all persevere...[and] be reborn...in a new mood, a new mood, a new High, and a new Saeculum." (pp. 300- 301) Looks like it's really up to us hominids....still.....yeh? Best o' Luck to us !
Thanks Thom! Great assessment as usual. Unfortunately, we have another bully raging on the horizon and we have not yet reached the point of recognizing what we must do to address the bully. We continue to to take half steps hoping it will go away and leave us alone without really taking a stand. Half steps in commitments of support of those facing the bully, half steps in sanctions of the bully, half steps to deal with bullying insurrectionists. We have laws supposedly to deal with a bully but can’t seem to bring ourselves to use them and so the bullies take over. Poets can remind us of the consequences but only if we listen. I’m 2016 our corporate politicians robbed us of the opportunity for a significant change and we got Trump, in 2020 they did it again and here we are watching the bully push and shove there way into a weaker country. When will we learn that a bully only goes away when you beat them into submission, take away their toys, and destroy them.
I am flashing back on the fate of "Billy" in The Year of Living Dangerously. He knows that his gesture of defiance and truth is fleeting and futile, yet gives his life. The question is how, how can we stand up to the madness, when so many are willing to "follow orders?" Established international law and treaties seem to be failing Ukraine. Thom seems to say, it is America's job to defend Ukraine, technicalities be damned. But we peons know so little. Maybe there is a "credible" fear that Putin really has gone mad enough to use nukes. God bless Joe Biden.
Our mercenary foreign policy eventually would come home to roost, both in the form of the January 6th insurrection and in the form of confrontations between superpowers. If we were not playing biggest bully in the sandbox, which now sees "progressives" backing Biden's tough guy foreign policy antics. The moments I remember before this are Biden and the Democrats going all out to massacre hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians for no apparent cause (apart from Cheney's oil interests and Bush's political capital), both parties embracing the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, Biden leaving in a haphazard fashion that would have you and Democrats tearing their hair out if Trump did it, then Biden stealing the Afghanistan peoples' money from their banking system and offering it to 9/11 victims. I see President Obama aiding Saudi Arabia in a genocide in Yemen, Biden promising to end "offensive" assistance and then essentially going about business as usual with our ally MBS. I see Biden and the Democrats and progressive media ignoring the annexation of Palestine by Israel and the daily human rights violations and atrocities imparted upon the Palestinian people. I see a lot Thom. So when it comes to Putin and Ukraine, if we had a China/Russia military coalition at our southern border we would be doing a lot worse than Putin is doing right now. That is not an excuse for Putin's aggression, but it is a realistic context rather than the selective outrage that you and the Democrats show to support a rudderless president whose poll numbers are sagging. This is a tragic moment in that respective political parties seem to rally when white people are menaced by the enemy we wish to demonize at the time, yet our concern for the wholesale slaughter of black and brown people at our leaders' hands is all but forgotten and forgiven. Putin is a madman to be sure, but I fear all the profound quotes and references and eulogies for the Ukrainian people are propaganda in themselves looking towards the next election cycle. I just haven't seen or heard such waxing prophetic about the people we kill on regular basis around the globe. The window has turned into a mirror that nobody apparently wants to look into because...well...Putin.
Yes, that IS an excuse for Putin's aggression. And connecting a lot of largely unrelated dots scattered higgledy-piggledy across the table doesn't obscure the direct and substantial culpability of Trump and his REPUBLICAN "basket of deplorables" (Hillary called it right.), liars, and traitors in Congress who have and are encouraging Russian aggression.
Of course, it's all the fault of Biden and the Democrats -- a fine dissertation in keeping with dead-enders' constantly-updating conspiracy theories and packs of lies straight out of the six-year Trump odyssey of fake presidency, the result of straight-up Russian propaganda that hopelessly divided America and weakened the US in the eyes of Putin. Bravo!
Let's count the ways: colluding with foreign powers to cheat US elections; blackmailing and bribing the struggling fledging democracy of Ukraine by withholding aid at a critical time of need, plastering a wide grin on Putin's normally stoic countenance; breaking important treaties left and right with allies and foes alike; massively weakening NATO materially and intellectually; praising the world's bad guys effusively; slandering the good guys relentlessly; and even inciting an unprecedented bloody insurrection against the seat of our own democracy, for fck sake! Well, that's all just fine, great foreign policy! Is there any bottom low enough?
Well you keep on your Putin-centered phobia and perhaps we will have some of those "beautiful" missiles Brian Williams of CBS alluded to when Trump bombed Syria for no apparent reason headed our way. Quoting Hillary Clinton, one of the most despicable of all warhawks, from her bizarre enthusiasm for the Iraq War to her cheery bombing of Libya to her record weapons sales to terrorist nations as Secretary of State while The Clinton Foundation received millions from these same countries, shows a shallowness and American Exceptionalism worthy of the Republicans. Which is what Democrats have largely turned into to support a president who says "we'll see what happens in a month" with sanctions while Ukraine is blown to bits. Perhaps someone needs to start thinking outside of the box in regards to these conflicts in lieu of the standard-issue bluster against the "bad guy" and the propping up of the "good guy." And if you think the death and inhumanity we spread and support around the world has nothing to do with a buildup to World War III and the violence and inequality here at home then perhaps you should read this: https://www.vox.com/2016/4/27/11497942/america-bad-allies
I don't think of you as anything -- not to value-judge other people in their essence, only expressed ideas, which are fair game.
Bothsidesism, whataboutism, harkening to past biases, gross misrepresentations, and other logical fallacies to muddy the waters (like an episode on Fux News) doesn't address the central argument of today's reality: As messy as it it is, the Democratic Party is the only hope in the time left to effect real progressive change. But it requires motivated human beings to get inside and do the hard work.
A parliamentary-type system that gives equal weight to a wider array of parties would better represent the people, offering more checks and balances against moneyed interests. Yes, under our system we got close with Bernie as an independent running within the establishment, but who was treated most unfairly, the victim of ruthless infighting.
The machinery of a party is only as good as the people running it. We can certainly do better. But at this stage of our own crumbling democracy, third parties have virtually no chance of growing, gaining power, and effecting real change. Sometimes, "thinking outside the box" only serves to dissipate the precious energy needed to win the larger war of progressive principles.
In these upcoming elections with the world on fire both literally and figuratively, anyone not casting their vote for Democratic candidates up and down the ticket, from city council to POTUS, is not seeing the bigger picture of humanity's plight.
OK then perhaps you could acknowledge that the Obama administration ousted a democratically elected president because he sided with Russia rather than the EU for economic stability which could have provoked Putin just a bit. To address a malady the proper diagnosis must be made, and a large part of this diagnosis is, per usual, our meddling in other country's democracies. Of course it is now up to Democrats to defend American Empire and our profit-motivated meddling and focus all their energy on the evils of Putin. I'll guarantee if a Russian coalition financed and staffed demonstrations to remove Joe Biden here in the US you wouldn't be condemning the US response. Here is a great reference detailing everything you and Thom and corporate media appear to be forgetting, that is not a knock on you of course: https://fair.org/home/in-ukraine-no-one-hears-that-there-is-a-diplomatic-solution/
Viktor Yanukovych was a hopelessly corrupt and increasingly isolated Russian stooge who enriched himself at Ukraine's expense and was viscerally hated by the majority of his own people, who rose up and chased his autocratic ass out of the country. Did we help them? No doubt about it. Did we make mistakes? Absolutely. Hypocrites? Yup.
One of the biggest blunders was not allowing Ukraine to join NATO when they had the chance. Then, Putin would not have attacked. That analysis is widely shared in our intelligence community. NATO exists solely because of Russia's aggressive policies of empire-building using force. NATO is a good alliance that should be celebrated, as it was meant as a deterrent to war. Putin is the problem, not the Western security alliance.
All sides fcked over Ukraine -- especially the US during Herr Drumpf's fake presidency of horrors. There's plenty of blame to go around, but most of it lands at the feet of Putin no matter how many analyses slice and dice the historical events leading up to where we are now. The article at FAIR provides important information but is offering no new insights not realized by those paying attention -- just one more piece of the puzzle to add to the mix of thousands. It is far from comprehensive. Bottom line: the past is unchangeable and the future is unwritten, so all the world can do is learn from the mistakes and hopefully deal with the new realities of today more intelligently going forward.
And Putin's unprovoked attack cannot stand. If so, what's to stop China from "annexing" Taiwan? Or any other ambitious tyrant with an army who decides on a whim to "expand" their "sphere of influence." We can't pussy-foot around him with halfway sanctions. He's an international pariah and needs to be completely isolated from any civilized accommodation, just like North Korea. Seize all the oligarchs' wealth, which largely resides outside of their country -- all their real estate, all their banking, all their investment accounts, and shut down all their money-laundering machines. Don't buy his gas and begin a massive push to wean the world off fossil-fuel energy. Don't worry about the Russian people; they're used to suffering under his dictatorship. But really, they also need to rise up in full-scale revolt and throw off the yoke authoritarianism, just as the brave Ukrainians did in 2014, as the American people did in 2020, and hopefully will follow through this November, again in 2024, and every election thereafter.
America is a Great Country and has been a significant historical experiment ever since its creation almost 200 years ago. During WWII our country demonstrated the capacity to stand up to significant global dangers, that, if we had left it to others in the global community, would have, perhaps, changed all our lives beyond repair. However, since then the US and its citizens have squandered almost all its goodwill and power to be a global exemplary model for responsible, compassionate and visionary behavior by allowing the US tax payers to fund a perpetual war machine that has created a terrible, inhuman and unproductive collection of countries and regions across the globe. No one has benefited from America's almost 100 year long wars on foreign soil. Except, perhaps, stockholders owning stocks in companies supplying the Military-Industrial Complex that President Eisenhower warned us against. And, last, but certainly not least, it has bankrupted America and destroyed our Faith in ourselves and our country. As an Independent voter I pray for a 3rd Party in the US to offer us a real choice from the perpetual wars that both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party has supported year after year. Perhaps they can call it CommonSenseUSA. Well written and timely article, and the inclusion of Donne's poem is a smart way of showing that artists often act as 'the canary in the coal mine."
I fear that oligarchs will co-opt any political party over time as they have done. They totally own the GQP and many in the Democratic Party. We need to get money out of politics so politicians listen to voters, not legaized bribers.
Yes, a war against one is a war against all, and, sorry to say, we are substantially responsible for this one.
What?!, many will ask -- how so?!!
All we have to do to realize this is to put ourselves in the other fellow's shoes, as Bernie Sanders, God bless him for this, said recently.
How did we react when Russia pushed hard into our long-declared sphere of influence in the Americas by installing nuclear missiles in Cuba? -- which for us was a matter of vital strategic interest?
'nuff said?
If not, then to be more specific, how could we have expected Russia to allow what they see as our encroachment into their sphere of influence -- which for them is a matter of vital strategic interest?
Moreover, speaking of vital interests, compare the casualties: how many people did we lose in the Cuban missile crisis?, and how many millions did they lose in the huge invasions from Western Europe by France and Germany?
How then could we have failed to recognize the truth of Russia's clearly stated security concerns, addressed them at the table, and thereby protected the people of Ukraine from invasion?
Our own wiser leaders warned us about this very thing decades ago.
The point is that it should be up to neither Russia, the US, nor NATO to decide another nation's sovereignty or fate. Ukrainians should have the opportunity to decide for themselves whether or not to join the Western security alliance. And the majority of their people after the Soviet Union collapse, notwithstanding the separatists, have already made their decision: They broke away from Russia for good and someday hope to join NATO; fck Putin!
How we think things should be is often not how they actually can be right now. So IMO the point is that we need to do our best to deal with things as they actually are -- and it seems to me that what great powers regard as in or not in their vital strategic interest gives us the best gauge we have of how they're going to react when push comes to shove.
Oh, great, "manifest destiny." Let the Ukrainians become like the pariah Palestinians and the pariah Native Americans. Surely poor threatened Putin will have a nice Gaza or res. for them.
Daphne, re "manifest destiny", a term used to justify imperial expansion(!), where do you see it or anything like it asserted or even implied in what I've posted here?
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
“Long” reflects the space; “bend” is the time to travel it. The laws of physics state that, relative to a fixed point, the progression of local time slows down radically the faster the speed or the closer to a gravitational field that severely bends time and space, such as a black hole.
Might we apply time dilation to the moral universe as well? Bloodthirsty autocrats like Putin and shameless acolytes like Trump are the black holes, bending the arc of immorality toward injustice. Their surrounding galaxies of lesser bodies are growing ever larger and more influential. No longer is it within the realm of a mere possibility that someone with the moral fiber of mush could become President of the United States, the land of the brave and foolhardy.
Trump made it a fact. So did Bush Junior/Darth Cheney. Throw in Bush Senior, Reagan, and Nixon for their senseless and bloody international blunders colluding with the forces of evil. Who’s next, Fucker Carlson, the radical right’s guiding light? Sure, Democrats share the blame; but mostly, they’ve been trying to preserve civilization and end idiotic wars of choice, not start them. And Putin’s black hole has been lurking there all along, drawing ever closer.
As everything collides, seemingly all at once, can the weight of justice resist both Trump and Putin? The two opposing arcs are long and curving in opposite directions, but sometimes entangling with cataclysmic results. Keeping with the metaphor, Putin and his Retrumplican stooges have reached their event horizon and there’s no turning back.
The greatest unknown of this tragicomical dance playing out somewhere in warped time and space will be which force is stronger, energy or gravity, good or evil? Is our ultimate fate swirling in the balance open-minded or closed? It’s the oldest drama since the Big Bang. 💥 Unknown energy indicates an ever-expanding universe where there's not enough dark matter to collapse everything back in on itself, which, metaphorically, offers some hope, I suppose, for the long-term in our otherwise bleak picture. However, with life-killing climate destruction also looming on the event horizon, does Mother Earth have the TIME to squander while drunk monkeys with loaded guns fly the starship straight into a black hole?
I say again, oligarchs ARE the problem.
This morning as you summarized the valuable natural resources in Ukraine, it clarified for me the reasons for the conflict in Ukraine.
It's a battle between two groups of oligarchs for which one gets to expliot and profit from those resources. The "legalized mass murder" and destruction are collateral damage of greed. #UkraineConflict
The oligarchs no longer run Russia; they opted to put someone into office they thought they could control. Silly them! Now he has stolen enough money to control THEM. He owns every one of them plus the army, the cyber systems, cyber-spies, and the spy-spies. He kills people that defy him, including oligarchs.
Putin is popular, especially in rural areas, even after he has robbed the whole country blind. How can they believe in him? I don't know, maybe you could ask a Trump supporter. I see the Russian protestors in the cities are getting arrested, bless their hearts. All males must serve, so I feel sorry for any military people that hate him.
You can wax poetic all you want, but this is about basic sanity. The rest of the world has enough sane intelligent people to expose these psychopaths for what they are and what they do. I'm thinking "the turning" is being brought to you by the internet, millions of media sources, and a camera in every pocket.
Putin is an aging, paranoid, psychopath. That is his ONLY game. He is not brilliant, and he is not playing "chess" or a long game. Who will rid us of this menace to the world?
A war against one is a war against all...
I'll pledge that.
Every action, of intent or otherwise, catalyzes a spherical wave form undulating outward, landing upon distant shores of both literal and figurative boundaries. This rape of life - celebrated and perpetrated by the incessantly wretched within our species - will eventually come home to a nation infatuated by some mythological theater of violence. The abundance of useful idiots who are criminally ignorant to the realities of war is not a surprising condition. In a society that has long reaped treasure through pillaging and terrorizing other nations and peoples, it should come as no shock that we will most likely find ourselves on the receiving end in due time. Most of us know nothing of wholesale pandemonium.
I do not wish this on my fellow humans.
To the rapists of our decency, our innocence, our desire for peace and a progressive culture, I offer this metaphor:
When dealing with the destructive nature of fire, we the humans do not contain it in a box and allow it to continue burning - we snuff it out. This day exists, but I do not know when...
Cheney should never have gone with Blackwater to Azerbaijan hoping to build a Pipeline to The Caspian Sea. No Armour Humvees to make Iraq a Christian Country was dumb, Trump making a Deal with The Taliban for Afghanistan was dumber and now, once again as with Viet Nam, The Americans are underestimating The Enemy. All they had to do was ask Whelen what Gorbachev had told him about Putin All you had to do was 'connect the dots'
Another "hinge point in history" it is... Another 4th-Turning Crisis manifested by a Russian unprovoked attack on Ukraine. As William Strauss & Neil Howe put it in their 1997 book "The Fourth Turning" : "Somewhere before the year 2025, America will pass through a great gate in history, commensurate with the American Revolution, the Civil War, and the twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World War II." (p.6). Like clockwork, every roughly 80 years since the War of the Roses in England (1485) when a commoner deposed the King of England there has been a 4th-Turning Crisis in the form of a deadly, life-changing war. One might ask: "What on Earth is going on here?" How can such devastating crises manifest so far apart in time & place...and yet so regularly? A big clue is to be found in the War of the Roses: The tradition of monarchies was long a part of European history by the middle of the 15th century, but a commoner, Henry Tudor, defeated & killed King Richard III of England. This broke the well-established social more known as the divine right of kings--a Human creation justifying its authoritarian social hierarchy. Henry Tudor challenged that tradition....and broke it....thus expanding the consciousness of people all over the world that one is not necessarily locked into one's position in society by birth. In short, this was a major milestone on the socio-political human evolutionary road that eventually saw the overthrow of many European monarchies as people rose up and demanded greater recognition and say in their governance. Three centuries later the first modern experiment of a "democracy" was established in America via the Revolutionary War with England. And very significantly, in each of the six 4th-Turning Crises, the victor has each time been on the side of the egalitarians and not the authoritarians. In our crazy, dichotomous universe it seems to take a BIG BAD DUDE--and I use the word "DUDE" pur- posely--to stir up the mild, peace-loving people to finally rise up and fight off the dictatorial DUDE. Again, like clockwork--80 years + 2.5 months since the USA was drawn into WWII on Dec. 7, 1941--another dictatorial leader (Vladimir Putin) has attacked a peaceful, democracy (Ukraine)....and it's up to the rest of the world to decide which side it wishes to be on....and then hopefully muster enough strength to tip the balance once more toward a more egalitarian future.
OK, digging deep into what I used to know: wasn't Tudor dancing-master to the former queen, (Ann of Cleves?) and married her, so he was able to claim kingship as husband to the queen? In other words, he promoted himself into the "established social more," far from vanquishing it.
My Google research says that Henry Tudor had only a very weak link to the English monarchy before he fought & killed King Richard III (the last English king to die on a battlefield) in 1485. In 1486 Henry Tudor married Elizabeth of York, the eldest daughter of former King Edward IV--thus establishing / fortifying his claim to the monarchy. Henry Tudor...aka King Edward VII...reigned from 1485 to 1509...by putting a strong, protective guard around himself ! As in all instances where the overthrowers of monarchs become the new rulers, they don't "vanquish" monarchy....they just become the new head of it...eh? The American Revolutionary War changed that pattern....yeh? We established a democracy in place of the British monarchy.
Wonder if I got the 'dancing master" part right! never mind.....
Great summary of the Hunchback King! Hope springs eternal. It's too bad humans have to learn the lessons for a better future the slow, painful way.
Thanks, Deepspace ! Yes, it's too bad we humans have to learn the lessons for a better future the slow, painful way--but that appears what it's taken to bring us from a band of hominids swinging in the trees to where we are today....yeh? This has been our evolutionary path of consciousness thus far....but as the previous 6 mass extinction events prove to us, there are no guarantees....eh? I didn't want to sound too alarmist, but I will share with you what Howe & Strauss outlined as the possible outcomes of this current 4th Turning. 1st: "The next 4th Turning could mark the end of man....an omnicidal Armageddon, destroying everything, leaving nothing." Or 2nd: "The 4th Turning could mark the end of modernity...terrible but not final." Or 3rd: The 4th Turning could spare modernity but mark the end of our nation [USA]....our political constitution, popular culture, & moral standing in the world. 4th Turnings are critical thresholds for national survival." ... "Or the 4th Turning could simply mark the end of the Millennial Saeculum. Mankind, modernity, & America would all persevere...[and] be reborn...in a new mood, a new mood, a new High, and a new Saeculum." (pp. 300- 301) Looks like it's really up to us hominids....still.....yeh? Best o' Luck to us !
“It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” - Yogi Berra
Slaintѐ! 🍻
Thanks Thom! Great assessment as usual. Unfortunately, we have another bully raging on the horizon and we have not yet reached the point of recognizing what we must do to address the bully. We continue to to take half steps hoping it will go away and leave us alone without really taking a stand. Half steps in commitments of support of those facing the bully, half steps in sanctions of the bully, half steps to deal with bullying insurrectionists. We have laws supposedly to deal with a bully but can’t seem to bring ourselves to use them and so the bullies take over. Poets can remind us of the consequences but only if we listen. I’m 2016 our corporate politicians robbed us of the opportunity for a significant change and we got Trump, in 2020 they did it again and here we are watching the bully push and shove there way into a weaker country. When will we learn that a bully only goes away when you beat them into submission, take away their toys, and destroy them.
I am flashing back on the fate of "Billy" in The Year of Living Dangerously. He knows that his gesture of defiance and truth is fleeting and futile, yet gives his life. The question is how, how can we stand up to the madness, when so many are willing to "follow orders?" Established international law and treaties seem to be failing Ukraine. Thom seems to say, it is America's job to defend Ukraine, technicalities be damned. But we peons know so little. Maybe there is a "credible" fear that Putin really has gone mad enough to use nukes. God bless Joe Biden.
Our mercenary foreign policy eventually would come home to roost, both in the form of the January 6th insurrection and in the form of confrontations between superpowers. If we were not playing biggest bully in the sandbox, which now sees "progressives" backing Biden's tough guy foreign policy antics. The moments I remember before this are Biden and the Democrats going all out to massacre hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians for no apparent cause (apart from Cheney's oil interests and Bush's political capital), both parties embracing the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, Biden leaving in a haphazard fashion that would have you and Democrats tearing their hair out if Trump did it, then Biden stealing the Afghanistan peoples' money from their banking system and offering it to 9/11 victims. I see President Obama aiding Saudi Arabia in a genocide in Yemen, Biden promising to end "offensive" assistance and then essentially going about business as usual with our ally MBS. I see Biden and the Democrats and progressive media ignoring the annexation of Palestine by Israel and the daily human rights violations and atrocities imparted upon the Palestinian people. I see a lot Thom. So when it comes to Putin and Ukraine, if we had a China/Russia military coalition at our southern border we would be doing a lot worse than Putin is doing right now. That is not an excuse for Putin's aggression, but it is a realistic context rather than the selective outrage that you and the Democrats show to support a rudderless president whose poll numbers are sagging. This is a tragic moment in that respective political parties seem to rally when white people are menaced by the enemy we wish to demonize at the time, yet our concern for the wholesale slaughter of black and brown people at our leaders' hands is all but forgotten and forgiven. Putin is a madman to be sure, but I fear all the profound quotes and references and eulogies for the Ukrainian people are propaganda in themselves looking towards the next election cycle. I just haven't seen or heard such waxing prophetic about the people we kill on regular basis around the globe. The window has turned into a mirror that nobody apparently wants to look into because...well...Putin.
Yes, that IS an excuse for Putin's aggression. And connecting a lot of largely unrelated dots scattered higgledy-piggledy across the table doesn't obscure the direct and substantial culpability of Trump and his REPUBLICAN "basket of deplorables" (Hillary called it right.), liars, and traitors in Congress who have and are encouraging Russian aggression.
Of course, it's all the fault of Biden and the Democrats -- a fine dissertation in keeping with dead-enders' constantly-updating conspiracy theories and packs of lies straight out of the six-year Trump odyssey of fake presidency, the result of straight-up Russian propaganda that hopelessly divided America and weakened the US in the eyes of Putin. Bravo!
Let's count the ways: colluding with foreign powers to cheat US elections; blackmailing and bribing the struggling fledging democracy of Ukraine by withholding aid at a critical time of need, plastering a wide grin on Putin's normally stoic countenance; breaking important treaties left and right with allies and foes alike; massively weakening NATO materially and intellectually; praising the world's bad guys effusively; slandering the good guys relentlessly; and even inciting an unprecedented bloody insurrection against the seat of our own democracy, for fck sake! Well, that's all just fine, great foreign policy! Is there any bottom low enough?
And just in case you think me anti- Thom Hartmann the title of this piece is precisely my point.
Well you keep on your Putin-centered phobia and perhaps we will have some of those "beautiful" missiles Brian Williams of CBS alluded to when Trump bombed Syria for no apparent reason headed our way. Quoting Hillary Clinton, one of the most despicable of all warhawks, from her bizarre enthusiasm for the Iraq War to her cheery bombing of Libya to her record weapons sales to terrorist nations as Secretary of State while The Clinton Foundation received millions from these same countries, shows a shallowness and American Exceptionalism worthy of the Republicans. Which is what Democrats have largely turned into to support a president who says "we'll see what happens in a month" with sanctions while Ukraine is blown to bits. Perhaps someone needs to start thinking outside of the box in regards to these conflicts in lieu of the standard-issue bluster against the "bad guy" and the propping up of the "good guy." And if you think the death and inhumanity we spread and support around the world has nothing to do with a buildup to World War III and the violence and inequality here at home then perhaps you should read this: https://www.vox.com/2016/4/27/11497942/america-bad-allies
I don't think of you as anything -- not to value-judge other people in their essence, only expressed ideas, which are fair game.
Bothsidesism, whataboutism, harkening to past biases, gross misrepresentations, and other logical fallacies to muddy the waters (like an episode on Fux News) doesn't address the central argument of today's reality: As messy as it it is, the Democratic Party is the only hope in the time left to effect real progressive change. But it requires motivated human beings to get inside and do the hard work.
A parliamentary-type system that gives equal weight to a wider array of parties would better represent the people, offering more checks and balances against moneyed interests. Yes, under our system we got close with Bernie as an independent running within the establishment, but who was treated most unfairly, the victim of ruthless infighting.
The machinery of a party is only as good as the people running it. We can certainly do better. But at this stage of our own crumbling democracy, third parties have virtually no chance of growing, gaining power, and effecting real change. Sometimes, "thinking outside the box" only serves to dissipate the precious energy needed to win the larger war of progressive principles.
In these upcoming elections with the world on fire both literally and figuratively, anyone not casting their vote for Democratic candidates up and down the ticket, from city council to POTUS, is not seeing the bigger picture of humanity's plight.
OK then perhaps you could acknowledge that the Obama administration ousted a democratically elected president because he sided with Russia rather than the EU for economic stability which could have provoked Putin just a bit. To address a malady the proper diagnosis must be made, and a large part of this diagnosis is, per usual, our meddling in other country's democracies. Of course it is now up to Democrats to defend American Empire and our profit-motivated meddling and focus all their energy on the evils of Putin. I'll guarantee if a Russian coalition financed and staffed demonstrations to remove Joe Biden here in the US you wouldn't be condemning the US response. Here is a great reference detailing everything you and Thom and corporate media appear to be forgetting, that is not a knock on you of course: https://fair.org/home/in-ukraine-no-one-hears-that-there-is-a-diplomatic-solution/
Viktor Yanukovych was a hopelessly corrupt and increasingly isolated Russian stooge who enriched himself at Ukraine's expense and was viscerally hated by the majority of his own people, who rose up and chased his autocratic ass out of the country. Did we help them? No doubt about it. Did we make mistakes? Absolutely. Hypocrites? Yup.
One of the biggest blunders was not allowing Ukraine to join NATO when they had the chance. Then, Putin would not have attacked. That analysis is widely shared in our intelligence community. NATO exists solely because of Russia's aggressive policies of empire-building using force. NATO is a good alliance that should be celebrated, as it was meant as a deterrent to war. Putin is the problem, not the Western security alliance.
All sides fcked over Ukraine -- especially the US during Herr Drumpf's fake presidency of horrors. There's plenty of blame to go around, but most of it lands at the feet of Putin no matter how many analyses slice and dice the historical events leading up to where we are now. The article at FAIR provides important information but is offering no new insights not realized by those paying attention -- just one more piece of the puzzle to add to the mix of thousands. It is far from comprehensive. Bottom line: the past is unchangeable and the future is unwritten, so all the world can do is learn from the mistakes and hopefully deal with the new realities of today more intelligently going forward.
And Putin's unprovoked attack cannot stand. If so, what's to stop China from "annexing" Taiwan? Or any other ambitious tyrant with an army who decides on a whim to "expand" their "sphere of influence." We can't pussy-foot around him with halfway sanctions. He's an international pariah and needs to be completely isolated from any civilized accommodation, just like North Korea. Seize all the oligarchs' wealth, which largely resides outside of their country -- all their real estate, all their banking, all their investment accounts, and shut down all their money-laundering machines. Don't buy his gas and begin a massive push to wean the world off fossil-fuel energy. Don't worry about the Russian people; they're used to suffering under his dictatorship. But really, they also need to rise up in full-scale revolt and throw off the yoke authoritarianism, just as the brave Ukrainians did in 2014, as the American people did in 2020, and hopefully will follow through this November, again in 2024, and every election thereafter.
Great read! Thank you!