On Ukraine and Democracy… With Historical Context and Notes!

  In the coming weeks, Russian troops will most likely invade Ukraine, completing the job that Vladimir Putin has been patiently waiting to finish since he annexed Crimea in 2014. Trump’s disdain for anything but personal gain allowed Russia and China to move forward with their own plans, and they’re not even pretending to see things with our myopic view of international affairs anymore.

When President Obama met Vladimir Putin, he reminded him of “the sorts of men who had once run the Chicago machine or Tammany Hall [a New York City political organisation] - tough, street-smart, unsentimental characters who knew what they knew, who never moved outside their narrow experiences, and who viewed patronage, bribery, shakedowns, fraud, and occasional violence as legitimate tools of the trade."

Trump, on Putin, said "I have no relationship with him other than he called me a genius.” and “He's not going to go into Ukraine, all right? You can mark it down. You can put it down. You can take it anywhere you want.” and like any good gangster, Putin knows when he’s got a good mark.

See, the problem with idiots who think they’re really, really smart is that they’re really, really easy to manipulate if you’re smarter than them. And Putin is much, much smarter than Trump.

Russia and China have both been patiently waiting for the end of the American century, and the pandemic seems to be nudging it closer than ever to that point. From their viewpoints, we’ve been hogging the spotlight and assuming we have the authority to dictate the rules while the rest of the world abides by them, and now they’re both not as willing to do that.

…so now we’re on the brink of sending 85,000 troops to Ukraine unless Putin does… what, exactly? He’s not going to back down, and that will make Biden look even weaker than ever.

The Republican Party, in their willingness to put petty bullshit over anything else, will idly stand by and use his failure as a campaign tool, because all they care about is “owning the libs.” We’ve been so busy with these delusional jerkoffs who don’t believe in democracy anymore to notice that China is cheering for Team MAGA.

We don’t need foreign agents or collusion to dismantle our democracy, but we do need each other to keep it strong.

I don’t know what the right thing to do is, but getting into a military conflict right now definitely seems like NOT the right thing.

Russia and China aren’t exactly friends, but they’re playing nice militarily and China isn’t even hiding the fact that they’ve built mock replicas of US Warships for target practice. The cyberattacks in Ukraine were most likely tests for future efforts, and those efforts may end up directed towards us or our dwindling number of allies.

We don’t need to live in fear, but this isn’t the era of “send the boys off to war” anymore, not the mention the fact that we just brought them all back home.

Now we’re in the era of “Oh shit, we just sent them all off to war, and for some reason all of our communication networks are down and our entire power grid has been hacked…”

If you’re still reading this ramble, I hope you have a great day. Everything will be fine. You’re awesome, and everyone loves you because of who you are as a human being. :)