The above YouTube video pretty much lays out what’s going on with Ukraine and Russia right now. The only difference in opinion between his hot take and mine is he seems to assume a war is a lot more likely than I do. I’m still on the seeing’s believing fence. I’ve been through this too many times to think Putin is going to risk it all.
But I do agree that the conditions are right for a major or “open” war to happen in Ukraine at any moment. And I agree with him that what Putin’s war aims end up being will depend a lot on the initial reaction of Ukrainian forces. If they do really well, then Russia will back off. If Ukrainians do really poorly, then Russians might make a drive for Kiev.
Yet, as I keep saying, if Putin is too successfully, he’s going to open Pandora’s box. If the central Ukrainian government collapses, there is no telling where things could go. If Ukraine has a fascist government hell bent on taking back all the territory lost to the Russians, then that’s a whole different ball game.
We’re not there yet. A lot would have to go wrong for everyone. I’m still mulling the situation. I haven’t made up my mind yet as to what is going to happen.
These lyrics are really good, at least relative to my ability. And I could see with a proper producer they could be turned into either a pop rock ballad or a pretty good modern day pop rock country ballad. Anyway, I know nothing about music, but I have a broken ankle and so you get this. Baring My Soul lyrics by Shelt Garner @sheltgarner please give credit if you produce or perform
broke my ankle running your way sorry to say you won’t be my nurse now I’m cursed with pain in both my body and soul
bearing my heart bearing my soul ’cause I’m got a broken heart hoping you’ll heal it at least that’s a start bearing my heart bearing my heart
you said I lied (I did, maybe a little) so I rushed your way to explain the truth in the darkness of the night I fell into the drain what a fright
bearing my heart bearing my soul ’cause I’m got a broken heart hoping you’ll heal it at least that’s a start bearing my heart bearing my heart
(bridge) you told me I belonged in the drain with the pain I had caused us both but you don’t believe that not one bit you know we’re met to be not down the drain with the shit
bearing my heart bearing my soul ’cause I’m got a broken heart hoping you’ll heal it at least that’s a start bearing my heart bearing my heart
Any discussion of the rise and rise of Trump has to be done in the context of America’s receding empire. Unlike ’30s German, America isn’t aggrieved, we’re just struck with a severe bout of existential malaise. In a sense, 9/11 marked the beginning of the end of America’s empire because we were to find ourselves in Mesopotamia and Afghanistan before it was over with.
By 2016, a huge segment of the American electorate was growing tired with empire — and with the liberal-progressive social changes of Obama’s second term — and the time was ripe for an autocrat.
And everyone assumed it would be ding-dong Trump who would ascend to power, turn the United States into an autocracy and that would be that. But ultimately, Trump was just an empty suit. He did have one specific autocratic ability, despite his laziness: once you got into his personality death cult, there was no going back.
But this leads to the question, why?
The answer on an individual basis for the whole clusterfuck can be found in the personal instance of Dr. Ronny “Feel Good” Jackson. All he had to do is lie and say Trump was not over 300 lbs, and therefore obese, and he would find himself with a nice, cushy — an safe — Republican seat in Texas delegation to Congress.
Just take that amount of power that Jackson got for selling his soul and expanded upon the broader US government, and you have a recipe for a seriously fucked up situation. By the time Trump got impeached the first time, the US government was totally off the rails. It was being run like TrumpOrg, which is, not very well. Everything was ad hoc and a lot of idiots who otherwise would never have any direct link to power were meeting with POTUS on a pretty regular basis.
So, in a sense, there was a direct link between Trump’s management style and him getting impeached the first time. When it began to sink in with people who knew better that Trump was treating the US government like TrumpOrg, he got impeached. He got impeached the second time because he his failings as an autocrat were put on display when he put all his chips on Mike Pence “doing the right thing,” (at least relative to Trump.)
This was all happening in the context of a derogation of democratic norms, institutions and beliefs within the broader society. So, next time, I think Trump is going to win fair and square (-ish) and the autocracy will be established quite peacefully.
But there is always a chance that, lulz, we have a civil war.
First, let me be clear, I’m only even continuing to talk about this because I’m smarting over being so wrong over 2020. It seemed a political absolute in the fall of 2019 that Trump was going to win re-election through hook or through crook. When he didn’t I was in shock and struggled to figure out how I could have possibly gotten things so wrong.
But I’m being too hard on myself — no one could have predicted that a combination of Trump being a lazy idiot, the COVID19 pandemic and Biden being a lucky, good candidate would happen all in quick succession.
As such, I scramble for what could make me look like a fool again. What could possibly stop Trump and MAGA from wining in 2022 and 2024 outright because autocracy is popular? Well, it seems as though at the moment, Trump’s love of Russia might be it.
It could be that both Putin miscalculates and Trump miscalculates and not only does any war between Russia and Ukraine escalate, but the war lingers and captures the imagination of American public such that two factions would be established.
Trump’s pro-Russia MAGA faction and everyone else.
But a LOT would have to go wrong for both Trump and Putin for things to get that bad. More likely, everything will be very muddled and, lulz, the United States will become an autocracy as predicted on schedule.
At the moment, I about as big a nobody as it is possible for someone to be on this lovely green planet of ours. This may change at some point, but that’s my lot in life at the moment. So, when someone goes out of their way to hide behind the Internet Archive to look at this blog, it makes me sit up and take notice.
Now, the obvious answer could be noting all that interesting, but rather a close relative with enough Internet acumen to use the service. But I have a hyper-aggressive personality, so the first thing I think when I see that in my Webstats is someone famous or powerful is curious about me.
Whenever someone is obviously doing due diligence on me, I struggle to understand how to process such a thing. My life is so meaningless at the moment that the idea that someone wouldn’t want me to know they were looking at me is interesting enough make may day.
So I’m both flattered that someone would take the trouble to hide who they were and unnerved that someone would take the trouble to hide who they were. It’s probably nothing all that interesting. It’s probably, like I said, a relative who came to see me for Thanksgiving poking around to get a better sense of their weird relative.
I really am of that little interest to the outside world at the moment. There have been a few interesting national reporters who have poked around this blog over the years — or at, least, I suspected, but they all eventually ghosted me once they saw what a kook I am.
The big miscalculation everyone made about Trump in 2016 was he was an autocrat. Everyone — on both sides — thought Trump was going to be a real, honest-to-God autocrat. In fact, I came to tell who would listen to me that Trump was going to “not lose” the 2020 election because “autocrats never lose.”
Well, surprise, both sides were wrong.
All Trump turned out to be was an empty suit. And dumb and lazy one at that. So, he was all talk. This led both the people who voted for him and the people who opposed him to make huge misjudgments about what to expect from Trump going forward.
This tendency for Trump to be a lazy idiot that came out in full force around January 6th. He knew what he wanted — to stay in power via a coup — but he was just too lazy and stupid to pull it off. So, virtually anyone else in his position could have stolen the 2020 election in broad day light and gotten away with it.
But he was too much of an addled lazy fool to put even the most barest of work necessary to do it.
Anyway, now I think we’re doing it again with Trump. Now, everyone is freaking out about how Trump is going to steal the 2024 election via Bannon’s “administrative coup.” Meanwhile, everyone on the Right is gearing up to steal the 2022 and 2024 elections in a pretty brazen manner.
Everything I see, however, indicates that this is all going to be a lulz. Autocracy is so popular in the United States at the moment that we’re an autocracy without an autocracy.
For all the hard work on both sides, in the end, Trump is likely to win fair and square. Then, of course, the huge battle will be on who will play Putin to his Yelstin. And about a dozen would be American Putins within the Republican Party know that right now and there’s a huge amount of political bloodlust within the different Republicans who want the chance to grow both amazingly powerful and wealthy like Putin.
And all I’m saying is, in the end, our transition to autocracy will likely to be peaceful and something of a dud. But as I keep writing, it ain’t happened yet. There is, I guess, a greater than zero chance of a civil war
We’re too far out, however, for me to know for sure one way or another. I definitely am leaning in favor of the United States simply slipping peacefully into autocracy.
If we actually did have a civil war, then you have WW3 on your hands and a “Great Reset” not seen since the end of WW2.
I’ve grown fascinated with the dynamic at work now between Putin, Ukraine and Trump. The reason is — ostensibly, it would make no sense for Putin to wait until AFTER Trump was out of office to invade Ukraine in a big way. In fact, one might say that leans into the Republican narrative Trump’s love of Russia is just a big “hoax” given this fact.
Then Trump opened his big mouth about where he stands on Ukraine and it all made a lot more sense to me.
Trump being in office in the United States — unless it was after a Constitutional Convention that made him a true autocrat — babbling about how great Putin was in the middle of a war between Ukraine and Russia would prove that the TrumpRussia scandal was real. That it wasn’t a hoax.
What’s more, Putin also has to deal with the possibility that there would be a Republican Civil War between a pro-Trump, pro-Russia faction and a anti-Russia faction. This, in turn, would potentially be a political bodyblow to the Russia-loving MAGA movement for at least an election cycle.
As such, it would make a lot of sense for Putin — if he’s going to do it — to make his move on Ukraine sooner rather than later. The reason — if Putin is going to attack Ukraine, it may be doing so under the assumption that he’s going to do something of a smash and grab operation.
The whole war would be so brief that by the time the 2022 and 2024 American elections rolled around, it would be like the Russo-Ukrainian Winter War was a long, long time ago.
But, as of the moment, it appears as though Putin may not even attack Ukraine in the first place. We’ll see.
I’m going through my “Rear Window” phase where everything is a lot more complicated because, well, lulz, I broke my right ankle. My life is a mess at the moment. Even the most basic of things are extremely difficult or impossible without someone giving me some help.
So, I found myself stuck in front of my TV, forced to watch Netflix’s “Red Notice.” I was mildly curious about watching it before, but now I was nearly forced to watch it.
Red Notice / The Internet
Within seconds in to the movie, I knew was going to be bad. Or, more specifically, it was cheap. I think the movie itself had a budge of $200 million but it definitely seems as though all that money was put in to the casting of the three leads.
The Rock, Gal Gadot and Ryan Reynolds were all very pretty to look at and did a great job of acting in the context of the movie they were expected to be in. But otherwise, the movie felt cheap. It felt like a b-movie that took the Captain America growth serum.
At its heart Red Notice was a b movie.
It wasn’t a bad movie, it was just a b-movie that had outgrown itself.
Anyway, the whole thing began to grate on my nerves to the point that I got my caretaker of the moment to allow me to grab the remote and stop watching it.
Now, before I begin, let me be clear that Republicans are on track to win in 2022 and 2024 and accomplish their final consolidation of white minority rule. So, even with the scenario I’m about to lay out, it’s doubtful American democracy survives.
But, if noting else, the context of its death might be different. As such, keep in the back of your mind the cold hard facts that through voter suppression, gerrymandering and Bannon’s administrative coup on the local level we’re an autocracy without an autocrat.
Another thing – Putin has yet to do any sort of invasion of Ukraine. It’s possible this is all a bluff. It’s possible that we’re all overthinking this and the United States will slip peacefully into autocracy, without a hitch.
Having said all that, let’s begin.
It appears as though either Putin is going into any war with Ukraine with modest, limited war aims or he believes that no matter what, any war he starts will be wrapped up early enough that by the time 2024 rolls around the Republican Party will go back to its monolithic personality death cult swirling around Donald Trump.
The Republican Party may face unprecedented division between itself and Donald Trump if there is a war between Russia and Ukraine, because Trump is such a fucking Putin toady that he buck 60 years of Republican political tradition and support the Russians against the Ukrainians.
A lot would depend, of course, on how bad any war between Russia and Ukraine became as well as if the war captured the popular domestic imagination. If the war got really bad and graphic images of the death and destruction of the war between Russia and Ukraine got so bad that Americans picked the Ukrainian side and Trump STILL sided with the Russians…well, Republicans might, finally, have a window opportunity to excise Trump, if not MAGA, from their body politic.
But it’s one of those things that is impossible to predict. There are just too many different variables. And, you know, of course, that Trump is so craven that he specifically for near-term political expediency, he might switch gears, only to go back to slobbing Putin’s knob the moment he was safely in the White House again.
Anyway, the point is — the moment any major war starts in Ukraine, we may all have to take a deep breath and reevaluate what might happen politically in the United States on a domestic basis because of it.
The more I think about it, the more I realize that Putin’s relationship to Trump is not nearly as easy to figure out as any objective observer might want. We know that Putin wanted Trump to win in 2016. And we know that Putin probably early on made a political calculation that it would be dumb to invade, say, Ukraine in Trump’s first term given what a suck up Trump would be to Russia if it happened.
And, yet, when we turn to the present day, we encounter a conundrum.
It’s very possible that by definition, if Putin invades Ukraine in some sort of “general war” that he would severely damage the Republican Party by splitting it into the Pro-Russia MAGA faction and the more traditional anti-Russian faction. Depending on how bloody the war became, you could even see Trump finally getting a worthy primary opponent, one who would run specifically on being tough on the Russians who were destroying eastern Ukraine.
Which makes one wonder — why?
Why risk destroying the political career of one of the biggest geopolitical patsies in modern history when you could just sit back, wait for Trump to win re-election in 2024, get his Constitutional Convention and THEN strike Ukraine. Putin is a very patient man, he could very well do that and get everything he ever wanted with Ukraine and more.
So, there are a lot of contradictions in Putin and Trump’s relationship that don’t make any sense because we don’t know all that’s going on. But the case could be made, I guess, that something like this is going on — Trump was a combination Manchurian Candidate, Manhattan Project and very, very lucky asymmetrical political attack against the United States.
Even though Trump was a Russian toady and the most powerful man in the world in the palm of Putin’s hand for four years, now that he’s out of office, Putin sees a big chunk of Eastern Ukraine being something he craves so much that he’s willing to destroy the Operation Trump to obtain it.
Putin has made the geopolitical decision to strike now, even though doing so would be a make or break event for the Republican Party for at least one political cycle. And, yet, maybe I’m not giving Putin enough credit.
Maybe Putin is going into his winter war against Ukraine knowing that he intends to wrap it up by spring. If that’s the case, then by fall 2022, everything will be back to where it was. Trump will be the most powerful man in the Republican Party and Putin’s toady.
Meanwhile, Putin will control a huge swath of Ukraine.
But, at the same time, Putin is potentially making a pretty huge miscalculation. If Russia’s involvement in Ukraine lingers long enough to really catch the attention of the domestic American imagination then….things could get interesting for all involved.
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