Russia’s all in. The leaders of the western “democracies” are looking at their hand and wondering if the other guy has a better one. And the rest of us are trying to figure out how we will end up paying for the loss. Because we lose every which way it goes.
No matter what happens, we’re going to be paying for $10 a gallon gasoline and $10 a gallon heating oil. Forget about expensive restaurants and vintage wines. We’re going to have to get used to eating peanut butter sandwiches for dinner and mending our old clothes. Everything that used to seemed normal will become extravagances. We’ll be counting the pennies and sweating the dollars that we don’t have.
Since we’re the ones footing the bill, we might as well enjoy the show. Russia is going to force Ukraine to stay in its orbit. The West is going to banish Russia from their financial and economic systems. This will be followed by Russia withholding oil and gas and other commodities like fertilizer from Europe and the US. This round of tit for tat lockouts and boycotts will lead to huge dislocations in supply and demand of critical materials like wheat and corn. I guess we’ll get to see Joe Biden’s approval numbers reach single digits in the months running up to the November midterms. I guess if it got bad enough it’s theoretically possible that the incoming congress could impeach and convict Dementia Joe of mopery and dopery and boot him and his mentally fragile vice president out of office and make a Republican president. That might be fun to follow on tv.
But I’m not sure if anyone will want the job by then. I think Americans are going to be extremely displeased with the way things will be going for the next couple of years. Dopey Joe has screwed things up royally and it won’t be easy to fix it. And that’s assuming that we don’t get into a nuclear war with Russia. I’m not sure what the geniuses in the think tanks feel are the odds of this happening. But based on nothing but what I’ve read about the start of World War One and my gut instinct I’m guessing that the odds of a shooting war breaking out is 50/50.
But nuclear war isn’t something I worry about anymore. We’ve put a drooling idiot in charge of the nuclear arsenal and General Milley in charge of our trans-army so we’ve already chosen to leave our survival up to the toss of a coin. All I’m interested in at this point is how the American public reacts to all this going on. Even ten years ago half of these problems would have guaranteed an administration would be voted out of office. If it turns out that’s not the case this time then this country has truly been fundamentally changed for the worse.
So let the poker game proceed. Bluffing and raising the stakes are the order of the day. Well, lying is Joe’s forte. The problem is he does it so consistently that everyone assumes that every word out of his mouth is a lie. The only problem for Joe is Putin probably doesn’t bluff.