Ukraine v Russia

 

(5 minute read)

Good versus Evil

            Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky set the example from the very beginning of the Russian invasion when he turned down a ride out of the country and asked for ammunition.  Putin sent assassination teams to eliminate President Zelensky to bring about a regime change and they failed. Repeatedly.  Ukrainians rose up and resisted, right along with their armed forces.  They resisted, resisted and then resisted some more.  Then they started attacking and taking back their country. 

They will prevail.

            It’s clear in the struggle between Ukraine and Russia that Ukraine is standing their ground for the best of humanity.  The stakes are incredibly high and not just for Ukraine but for the rest of us as fascism yet again rises up around the world including the United States.  There aren’t enough outstanding adjectives to describe what Ukrainians are doing so I’m just going to go with heroic.  It is David versus Goliath and once again David, Ukraine, is winning.

            Will the Trump Republican Putin wing make their move against Ukraine after the midterms?  I think that they will.  Even now they are supporting Putin by voting no to aid for Ukraine.  Keep in mind that their glorious leader, Trump (not Putin) did nothing when President to have his idol Putin leave Crimea or other territories that Russia had already invaded.  Before Trump it was Obama that left Putin unchallenged in Ukraine. 

President Biden did something.

Now Trump says on his Lie Social network:

“U.S. ‘Leadership’ should remain ‘cool, calm, and dry’ on the SABOTAGE of the Nord Stream Pipelines. This is a big event that should not entail a big solution, at least not yet. The Russia/Ukraine catastrophe should NEVER have happened, and would definitely not have happened if I were President. [Ed., LIE]

Do not make matters worse with the pipeline blowup. Be strategic, be smart (brilliant!), get a negotiated deal done NOW. Both sides need and want it. The entire World is at stake. I will head up group???.”[i]

Tough talk for a man that avoided his own military service. Based upon what Trump didn’t do when he was President he could be expected to “negotiate” for Ukraine to give more territory to his idol Putin and undermine NATO at the same time if possible. 

Trump did NOTHING to get Russia out of Crimea.

Rushists

            Ukrainians are fighting against evil personified.  President Zelensky and the Ukrainian people are a beacon of hope for freedom loving people everywhere.  The name Rushists comes from Ukrainians.  It combines the words Russian and fascism to describe the invaders of their land. Russians are the new Nazis. They also call them orcs. We have seen the evil that seems representative of the Russian army in all of the videos of war crimes that they have and are perpetrating on a daily basis.

            They are rapists, thieves, murders, torturers and of innocent men, women and children.  They slaughter innocents and do what they do best.  Destroy.  They destroy everything.  Homes. Entire cities.  People.  They are starving and torturing prisoners of war.  They abandon their own wounded or kill them.  They are depraved in their actions.  According to intercepted calls their families back home encourage their depravity.

Putin is an evil contagion.

War $

            War, what is it good for?[ii]  Unlike what the song says war is good for making big bucks.  One group that will be supportive of Ukraine in the United States is the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) that President Eisenhower talked about.[iii]  Given how ineffective and badly the Russians have done with their own equipment and how well Ukraine has done with the western equipment provided that they are transitioning to use to defeat the Russian invaders the MIC of western weapons can expect a lot of orders in the future.  Tens of billions will be spent just replenishing stocks.  Former Soviet bloc countries are unloading their Russian equipment to Ukraine.  In part because they’re trained how to use it already.  However, Ukrainians had demonstrated how resourceful they can be in learning how to use new equipment and use it effectively. 

They are an incredible people.

Terrible price

            Ukrainians have and are paying a terrible price in their struggle to keep their freedom and stay out from under the yoke of Russian oppression.  Millions displaced from their homes.  Families ripped apart.  Infrastructure destroyed.  Cities destroyed.  Citizens taken to Russia against their will.  The death toll won’t be fully known and understood until the war is over.  Tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians wounded and that will have lasting disabilities.  Their economy is destroyed. 

Yet they fight on.

Fox Pravda supporting Russia.

            According to Russian propagandist Tucker Carlson, or Такер Карлсон his name in Russian, the war in Ukraine is the fault of the United States and NATO.[iv]  Carlson is popular on Russian television.  The sleazebag also claimed with absolutely no evidence whatsoever that the United States probably sabotaged the Nord Stream pipeline.[v]  This is one of the reasons why Fox Pravda is so popular with conservative Trump Republicans.  It goes along with their constant drum beat that our government is bad.

            The right-wing white Christian Nationalist Trump Republicans couldn’t blame our country fast enough in this conflict.  Carlson is an excellent representative of their cause.  There’s a deep state running things.  Our institutions are to blame.  Our teachers are to blame.  Our government is to blame.  The FBI is evil.  The CIA is behind it all.  It’s the immigrants.  It’s the mongrels.  We have rejected their Jesus.  It’s this nation’s fault that Russia invaded Ukraine.  The Ukrainians are to blame.  It’s our fault that Russia is threatening nuclear war. 

Fuck these people.

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[i] https://news.yahoo.com/trump-volunteers-help-negotiate-deal-220136496.html

[ii] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01-2pNCZiNk

[iii] https://www.c-span.org/video/?15026-1/president-dwight-eisenhower-farewell-address

[iv] https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-carlson-point-ukraine-war-regime-change-russia

[v] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/29/russia-nord-stream-tucker-carlson-fox-news/

Three ways

            “It was zero threat. Right from the start, it was zero threat.”

            So, according to Republicans, the 1/6 insurrection was just a normal day of tourism at the Capitol yet Democrat Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is responsible for the “tragedy!”

            So nothing happened and it’s a tragedy. Well, that doesn’t sound right.

And yet.

On the one hand

            Loser Ex-President Donald Trump says in defending the Capitol insurrections:

“It was zero threat. Right from the start, it was zero threat. Some of them went in and they’re, they’re hugging and kissing the police and the guards. You know, they had great relationships. A lot of the people were waved in and then they walked in and they walked out.”

            So we have the Loser Ex-President acknowledging that the seditionists were in fact his supporters.

            Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA):

"It was not an insurrection...if you didn't know the TV footage was a video from January the 6th you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit."

On the other hand

            This is also what the majority of Republicans believe.

            Republican Rep. (State) Mark Baisley:

“It does not make any sense to me that Trump patriots would storm the U.S. Capitol to interrupt a Congressional challenge to the Electoral College results,” Baisley wrote. “The violent and arrogant actions of this attack (scaling walls, breaking windows) matches the signature of Antifa rioters. I hope that many arrests are made and identities of the sponsors revealed.”

Their were and they were.

Meanwhile the third way

            Democrats want to investigate the Capitol insurrection that took place on 1/6. Seems like patriotic citizens should want that to happen. It should be at least as concerning to all of us as Benghazi was to Republicans. Their Special Committee held 33 hearings and spent at least 7 million dollars investigating Benghazi. It seems like an attempted coup of our nation should be at least as interesting to them. But it isn’t. They would rather investigate black people and find them guilty.

Trails end

            The problem for Republicans is that they have a better than real good idea where the investigation is going to end up. The problem is that the majority of Republicans on the inside (Congress) were attempting a soft coup while Trump supporters on the outside were attempting a hard coup. They are only less guilty of being violent. They are just as guilty of being like their seditious racist brethren that are being charged for their crimes.

There are Bigly fish to fry.

Lunacy

Ka-ching!

            Ultimately it all costs money. What are the costs of the pandemic? Republican leadership professes to understand money. Exactly who is paying for the lunacy of the anti-vaxxers? The easy answer is—society does (we do).

No need

            In reference to vaccines I keep reading comments where people say “Do your research!” Admittedly I did a lot of research in the beginning way back when the pandemic first hit.

            One of the best responses that I read in regards to the ‘do your research’ comment was and I’m paraphrasing: “Don’t need to!” They pointed out that by now thousands of scientists from a variety of disciplines and a few billion dollars have been spent on doing just that. Research. Not just any scientists either but the tops in their respective fields. Respected, truthful, professional, honest people who care about humanity and saving lives.

That’s good enough for me.

Tune change

            Now since it’s mostly the unvaccinated (predominantly Trump supporters) who are getting Covid-19, the Republican leadership and right wing media have decided to say that people should get vaccinated after all. When it was seniors in nursing homes and minorities being impacted the most they were okay with no masking and getting everybody back to work. Now it’s their base being hospitalized and dying.

ON THE FLY

            We’re watching in real time Republicans rewriting history. The election was rigged. News is fake. The insurrectionists were loving patriots. The pandemic isn’t real. Science is wrong. Masks don’t work. The vaccines are dangerous. Immigrants are evil. Muslims are bad. Rich people are the bulwarks of society. Poor people are lazy. (All 40 million of them.) They (Republicans) are the real victims. Up is down. The sky is not blue.

 And on and on.

            Every day throughout his entire Presidency Trump played the victim card. His entire Presidency. Now he’s playing the ex-President victim card. He will forever be the perpetual victim. That makes his supporters suffering victims as well. They are in an abusive relationship with Trump and they can’t leave their abuser.

They are drawn to him.

$ And resources

            I have watched a couple of videos lately where the hospitalized anti-vaxxers who survived professed that if they had it to do over they still wouldn’t have got the vaccine and still won’t get the vaccine (after all, they survived!). Then there’s also the ‘if it’s my time to die—it’s my time crowd’. ‘It’s all a hoax’ also still has a huge following.

            At some point bean counters will figure up the total cost of the pandemic in dollars. There will be an average cost of hospitalizations due to Covid-19. (I’m just talking money here not the human toll. That’s incalculable.) At this point in the United States we’ve had several hundred thousand die needlessly. The ones dying now are the great unvaccinated.

Death before dishonor!

The Antis

            The antis (maskers and vaxxers) have cost society billions of dollars. It’s too early to tell if it’s tens of billions or hundreds of billions but I lean towards hundreds of billions. It takes a team of nurses, doctors, support staff and high tech equipment to treat Covid-19 patients in hospitals. That takes a lot of $$$$! Their “personal choice” is costing society in real dollars. Whether it’s insurance, the government, hospitals or individuals the costs are real. Ultimately it’s all the rest of us that pay for it.

The costs will be much higher than they needed to be, thanks to the antis.