Swapping Territory

Girl Boss Anchor – I’m here in Anchorage Alaska with my former colleague David Books.  Hello David.

David Books – Hello Girl Boss Anchor.

Girl Boss Anchor – David how were you able to get time off from Red Lobster for this remote assignment?

David Books – I’m supposed to be taste testing a large batch of King Crab legs that’s being shipped to us.

Girl Boss Anchor – How plebian.

David Books – Up yours, lady.

Girl Boss Anchor – Moving right along.  We’re here to provide commentary on the historic meeting between President Donald Trump and President Vladimir Putin as they make a vain attempt to broker a peace in Ukraine.

David Books – Well, shouldn’t you at least pretend that you want this to succeed?

Girl Boss Anchor – If you insist David.  And look Trump and Putin are walking out of the conference room smiling and laughing.  Something must be up.  Let’s listen to their statement.

Donald Trump – As President of the United States; a very great country, I am happy to announce that we have negotiated a fair and equitable solution to the Ukraine war.  And just as I said it required some territory swapping.  Right Vladimir?

Vladimir Putin – You said it, Droog!

Donald Trump – I will be in contact with President Zelensky of Ukraine and let him know that Ukraine will not have to cede any land for peace.  But it will be necessary to allow any Russian or even Ukrainian citizens who want to leave Ukraine to report to a relocation center for processing.

Girl Boss Anchor – Mr. President, are you saying that Russian speaking Ukrainians will be migrated to Russia for resettlement?

Donald Trump – Well, technically yes.  But only because these new territories will become part of Russia.

Girl Boss Anchor – What does that mean?

Donald Trump – The Ukrainian thing has been folded into a larger land deal.  You know how I enjoy real estate deals.  Well, sometimes if you combine several deals together the combination is greater than the sum of its parts.

Girl Boss Anchor – But what other deals are there?

Donald Trump – Well, you’ve probably heard that Western Canada is getting ready to vote on seceding from Canada.  That’s British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.  And you know how I’m interested in picking up Greenland.  And you know how miserable the West Coast; California, Oregon and Washington are.  And the Northeast is just as miserable living under my presidency.  So, I’ve brokered a tentative deal.  Russia gets Alaska, the West Coast and British Columbia.  We get Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Greenland and Canada get the Northeast.  As far as I can see it’s win/win/win.

Vladimir Putin – Da!  Santa Barbara much nicer than Crimea, bah!

Donald Trump – See everybody’s happy.

David Books – What are you talking about?  That’s insane.  That would require a constitutional amendment to allow the ceding of US territory.  The Canadians will never agree to it and the Russians are our existential foes that threaten us with nuclear annihilation at the drop of a hat.  And the West Coast will never stand for Russian autocracy.

Donald Trump – Yeah, well, I made a few calls and everybody’s on board.  We can dot the i’s and cross the t’s later but shouldn’t you be down on the dock tasting crab legs Booksie?

David Books – You’ll never get away with this.  Putin is a war criminal and no one will do business with him if he tries something like this.

Donald Trump – Well I wouldn’t get him mad at you if I were you.  After all you’ll be buying Russian King Crabs from him very soon.

Vladimir Putin – Da, Booksie.  Try to keep it friendly comrade.  You wouldn’t want to see a price hike, now, would you?

David Books – I really have to take up drinking.

Girl Boss Anchor – And there you have it viewers.  Donald Trump has used insane Solomonic horse trading to recast the world we live in and apparently my choice is move to flyover country or become a Canadian, bleh.

David Books – Hey shut up!  I’m Canadian!

Girl Boss Anchor – Well viewers, good night and have an anti-depressed tomorrow.

What Have We Got to Lose?

This week Donald Trump has a meeting in Alaska with Vladimir Putin.  I find this intriguing.  And not because I believe they are on the cusp of agreeing to the end of the Ukraine war.  Far from it.  Ukraine and Russia are killing each other there at an industrial scale and there does not seem to be an end in sight.  So that doesn’t seem to be on the agenda.

And maybe that’s the point.  I think both men are getting together despite knowing that no peace deal is currently possible.  So why are they getting together?  I’m not really sure of the answer but maybe it’s because they both know they are in a sort of unique position.  I think that maybe both of them want to find a way out of this nightmare and maybe they figure if they meet up without those in their orbits who want to keep the war going forever, that maybe they can figure something out that would satisfy both sides.

I know that Trump doesn’t want any part of this war but the neo-cons are very powerful in the Congress and even to some extent in his administration.  As for Putin, he’s in a million dead Russians so he can’t just walk away.  And even if he could there are a lot of Russians in Ukraine and he’s carving out a homeland for them.

But all and still, there may be a way to move this thing forward so that the killing stops.  And maybe that’s why both of them are there.  Trump’s whole persona is “the art of the deal.”  He probably figures it couldn’t hurt to talk to the other head honcho.  It’s not as if he’s afraid the other guy will talk him into a bad deal.  So how could it hurt?

Of course, if the two of them walk away accomplishing absolutely nothing and can’t even come up with some story about how these are the “first steps toward peace” then it will look like a loss for Trump.  And Trump must know this.  So, he must think there is something to be gained that outweighs that risk.  And that’s what intrigues me.  Could both of them be there for entirely the right reasons?  Could these two supremely egotistical and cynical men be getting together because they want to change the trajectory of the world?  Because if you think about it, they’re the only two men on this planet who have the authority and clout to actually do it.  Between the two of them, they control about 90% of the nuclear weapons on the planet and between the two of them they control some enormous amount of the resources (both natural and financial) of the planet.  Now certainly, both of them are constrained by the political systems they exist in.  Believe it or not Putin is considered a moderate in his regime structure and Trump has to deal with the military-industrial complex that is still insanely powerful.

But they still are the chief executive officers of two very, very powerful entities.  And imagine if the reason they are going to meet is to try and untangle the conflagration that Biden and the neo-cons has allowed to engulf us.  Maybe they can find a path.  Or maybe it’s hopeless.  But I give them both credit for trying.  What have we got to lose?

The Putin Interview

I’ve previously read a transcript of Putin’s apologia for the Ukrainian war so I’m relatively familiar with his thesis.  Now without a doubt he frames it all to put Russia in the most sympathetic light and there are obvious chapters where he is painting some actions, like Stalin’s collaboration with Hitler over Poland, in a false light.  But I guess there are plenty of chapters of American history where one man’s patriotic battle is another man’s shameful massacre.

But what he does successfully demonstrate is that Kiev was the original home of the Rus, or as we call it now the Russian nation.  And that Ukraine has been an integral part of Russia for longer than the United States has been a nation.  And although countries do split and become separate nations the Ukraine contains millions of people who have always considered themselves Russians and who were disenfranchised by the government in Kiev when the anti-Russian coup took over in 2014.

It’s also clear that Putin believes that the history of Russia and the West since the fall of the Soviet Union is dotted with promises that were made by the West and broken whenever it was convenient.  And I have read many American accounts that confirm the specific assurances that the West gave to the Soviets and the Russians and their eventual abandonment.

With respect to what Putin wanted to say I think he succeeded in speaking his mind.  But from a communications perspective there are definite weaknesses in this event.  First of all, the interview was translated from Russian by an interpreter.  Secondly, the speech was two hours long.  In the third place, the first half hour was a Russian history lesson beginning around the year 800 AD and extending down to 1992 before it even began to touch on the relevant causes of the present war.

I mean I found it fascinating but I’m a weirdo who loves ancient history and was impressed how he wove in the ethnographic origins of the people currently inhabiting the various areas of Ukraine.  So, the propaganda value of Putin’s explanation of the origins of the war won’t reach the folks on TikTok with three second attention spans.

But one thing it did do was demonstrate to anyone with a brain that Vladimir Putin is a highly intelligent individual who believes that he has taken the only reasonable course available to him to defend his people from attack by the West.

Parenthetically, I was evaluating the style and substance of the words and ideas that Putin used; both the history lesson which is clearly something that he has worked over previously and his extemporaneous answers to some of the interrupting questions that Tucker Carlson asked along the way.

One of the interrupting questions in particular elicited a very interesting response.  When Carlson asked Putin whether the fracturing of the monopolar world, we lived under during the American hegemony meant that the two hemispheres would diverge, Putin amusingly noted that the human brain has two hemispheres that have separate functions but that unless they work together the mind becomes severely dysfunctional.  This struck me to be the response of a very lively intellect.

In general, I got the impression of a man who is a realist that has seen some of the worst disasters befall his country.  But at the same time, he appears to be an optimist about the future.  It’s an interesting combination.

I don’t completely discount the possibility that the whole performance was a cynical charade disguising an evil monster whose real intent is to conquer the world.  But I wouldn’t pick that as the more likely choice.  I think what we saw was pretty close to who Putin is.

And as leaders go, he’s a lot more interesting and formidable than someone like Joe Biden or Justin Trudeau.  I suspect that Putin will be remembered as being an important leader whereas Biden will be declared a disaster in American leadership.

Another thing that I noted is how strange Tucker Carlson looks while listening to interviews.  His expression is extremely strained.  But I give him full marks for setting up this discussion.  I hope he sets up a permanent news and opinion service.  I’d happily pay a reasonable fee to follow it.  Kudos Tucker.

Is Tucker Carlson Going to Interview Vladimir Putin?

Now that’s an interesting idea.  Next thing you know he’ll have a debate between Putin and Biden on his show.  Now that would be fun.

An Observation on Leadership

Right now Vladimir Putin is battling against internal and external foes that beggar the imagination.  He has a war on his flank, NATO arming and training his enemy, the Western world strangling off commerce and trade and a mad general in revolt at his doorstep.

And yet when he speaks to his nation he sounds like this.

By comparison we’ve had Biden, Trump, Obama, Bush and Clinton as our leaders over the last thirty years.  We are led by men who in at least one case can’t even articulate a complete sentence off a teleprompter.  Even Clinton, who was glib, could never inspire his country.

Putin is not our leader.  Russia is not our country.  But if honesty matters at all, it’s necessary to admit that we are led by, at best, mediocrities and in some cases fools.  I don’t envy the Russians their situation.  It is beyond dire.  It’s catastrophic.  And come to think of it, I’m not so sanguine about our own prospects.  Pushing a desperate man to the brink who controls an enormous arsenal of nuclear ICBMs is not exactly rational.  We could be hearing some very bad news at any time.

But to finish my thought.  I wish we had a leader that was half as eloquent, even half as rational.  We don’t need a Caesar or a Napoleon.  We could use a Pericles but I’d settle for a Washington.  Instead we’ve got Joe Biden.

Cold Thoughts

The weather has turned cold.  There was some sun today but temperatures were in the fifties.  We got out for a walk and there was enough to do around the house but for some reason I couldn’t get a handle on anything interesting in the news.  I guess things will have to percolate for a while.

I watched an old John Barrymore movie called Counsellor at Law.  It was really pretty good.  I hadn’t seen it for a few years and I even forgot the ending.  It had all the stock characters for a movie taking place in 1930s Manhattan.  And it occurred to me that the despised European immigrants that were the downtrodden denizens of the criminal courts in this movie have moved three generations later to the position of despised oppressors of the new downtrodden.

But the funny part is they did this without ever being rich or powerful in between.  Our parents and grandparents struggled to become good Americans in the hope that their descendants would get to live in the working and middle classes by following the rules and believing in the civic nationalism that said that a man was judged by his deeds and not his pedigree.

And now we are told that all that was a mistake.  Everything they did and we believed in was wrong.  All that talk about freedoms and inalienable rights was just a dodge.  It turns out that the Communists and the Fascists were right.  Power comes from the barrel of a gun.  We have no more right to freedom and happiness here than we did back in the old country where some patron or mafioso decided who got to work and who got to starve.  In fact, at least back in the old country there was some sense of loyalty even toward the peasants by those in charge.

So, we’re all expendable now.  Just a bunch of spare parts that are no longer needed in the new American economy.  A giant game of musical chairs where they turn off the music and there’s no place left for you.  It seems to me this explains why the Latinos are starting to gravitate toward the Republican party.  They’re basically the new version of the southern Europeans of a hundred years ago.  They came here expecting to work their way up and now they’re seeing the same dead end.  And they’re figuring out that the Democrats aren’t the party that helps families.  They’re the party of trans-gender indoctrination for their kids and of working women with no time for raising families.

I was reading Putin’s speech about the absorption of the Donbass regions into Russia.  It was very long and had a lot about Russian history and the fall of the Soviet Union.  But there was also a lot about the West.

I’ve copied some sections that I found interesting:

“In fact, they spit on the natural right of billions of people, most of humanity, to freedom and justice, to determine their own future on their own. Now they have completely moved to a radical denial of moral norms, religion, and family.

Let’s answer some very simple questions for ourselves. I now want to return to what I said, I want to address all the citizens of the country – not only to those colleagues who are in the hall – to all the citizens of Russia: do we want to have, here, in our country, in Russia, instead of mom and dad there was “parent number one”, “number two”, “number three” – are they completely crazy already there? Do we really want perversions that lead to degradation and extinction to be imposed on children in our schools from the primary grades? To be drummed into them that there are supposedly other genders besides women and men, and to be offered a sex change operation? Do we want all this for our country and our children? For us, all this is unacceptable, we have a different, our own future.

I repeat, the dictatorship of the Western elites is directed against all societies, including the peoples of the Western countries themselves. This is a challenge for everyone. Such a complete denial of man, the overthrow of faith and traditional values, the suppression of freedom acquires the features of a “reverse religion” – outright Satanism. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus Christ, denouncing the false prophets, says: By their fruits you will know them. And these poisonous fruits are already obvious to people – not only in our country, in all countries, including for many people and in the West itself.

The world has entered a period of revolutionary transformations, they are of a fundamental nature. New development centers are being formed, they represent the majority – the majority! – of the world community and are ready not only to declare their interests, but also to protect them, and see multipolarity as an opportunity to strengthen their sovereignty, which means to gain true freedom, a historical perspective, their right to independent, creative, original development, to a harmonious process.

All over the world, including in Europe and the United States, as I said, we have many like-minded people, and we feel, we see their support. A liberation, anti-colonial movement against unipolar hegemony is already developing within the most diverse countries and societies. His subjectivity will only grow. It is this force that will determine the future geopolitical reality.”

Now I have no illusions about Vladimir Putin.  He is a cold-blooded killer.  He will use whatever means he needs to achieve his goals.  He was the architect of the Second Chechen War, a brutal conflict.  He is a Russian partisan.  He has no love for America.  And yet most of what I copied above from his speech is demonstrably true.  Our government is erasing normalcy from our society and substituting a sick twisted anti-human creed.  The family is denigrated and mocked.  Freedom is being erased as a hate crime.  Prosperity for most people is being outlawed.  Even Vlad the Impaler can point to us and name our sins.  They’re that mortally clear.

It’s a cold, kind of bleak day, but I found illumination in an old black and white movie and the words of a modern-day autocrat.  The United States has abandoned the principles that made it great.  It has broken faith with the people who fought for it and believed in it.  It remains to be seen if it can be prodded back on the high road again.  But at least I found a little clarity.

Unexpected Consequences of Irresponsible Actions

Returning to the subject of yesterday’s post, I was considering what kind of effects might be caused by a country sabotaging the valuable infrastructure of a country with which it was not in a state of war.  What immediately came to mind was reciprocation.  Currently a new pipeline is going into operation from Norway to Poland.  Would it surprise anyone if that pipeline were sabotaged?  Now maybe this isn’t something the Russians would want to do.  Maybe they have other fish to fry with the Poles.  But it seems to me that the US has moved into entirely new territory with the bombing of the pipelines and they should expect the Russians to respond in kind.

Now, maybe this is all according to plan.  Maybe the people running our foreign policy (and domestic policy) are looking for a response.  As I said yesterday, this may be a tail wagging the dog operation they’re running and they need a Russian reaction to provide a distraction from the economy during the mid-term elections.  If that’s the case they may be hoping for something soon and drastic.  If nothing happens then probably the CIA will be disappointed.  I’m sure they want acknowledgement for their wanton destruction.  Maybe a commendation.

But here’s the thing.  This is a different level of provocation than even the military aid we’ve given the Ukraine.  Even with the targeting information and advanced artillery we’ve provided to the Ukrainians the actual attacks have been through proxies.  The sabotaging of the pipelines was done by United States directly.  It was a non-military target and it was completely unrelated to the Ukraine conflict.  It will be answered.

Really the only question is when.  Supposedly the Russians are pretty savvy about injecting their actions into the politics of their adversaries.  After all, hacked by Putin is a byword of Democrat party fear.  What they might do is wait for the mid-term elections to conclude and then once the Democrats have been trounced and can’t benefit from the distraction, I imagine some kind of revenge might occur.  What it might be is hard to know.  I have no knowledge of the relative vulnerabilities of different sections of US infrastructure.

The most likely thing would be an underwater pipeline.  That is what’s known as poetic justice.  But it could be anything.  It might not be sabotage.  It could be a data dump based on some kind of espionage that would be especially embarrassing to the Biden government.  It could be a terror attack coordinated with a Mexican drug cartel.  After all the southern border is essentially wide open.  It could be almost anything.

But the point is the Biden administration has gone out of its way to slap Russia in the face.  Chances are there will be a response and chances are it will be an escalation.  My only hope is that innocent Americans aren’t hurt or killed in the process.  But this is what happens when the foreign policy of a superpower is put in the hands of Yale and Harvard goofballs.  Maybe in 2024 we can rejoin the community of responsible nations again.  Until then just pray it all doesn’t go nuclear.

 

Update

Nostradumbass has suggested a couple of theme songs for the current situation

 

 

ZMan Has a Very Interesting Essay on the Past and Future of Russia

Over at Taki’s Magazine the ZMan opines on the past, present and future of Russia as a society on the fringes of Europe.  He looks at the historical pattern whereby Russia attempted to adopt western culture and ways to advance into the modern world.  But he shows that this has always been at odds with Russians’ own nature.

Now he brings us to Russia’s recent conference in St. Petersburg where Vladimir Putin announced that Russia is going its own way and no longer needs the West as its tutor or leader.

If you’re interested in the changing world around us this might be a good read.