I started this post prior to the commencement of the war
And several of the comments then related to it. Rather than toss them out, I'm going note them as quotes, FWIW.
Here they are.
On the eve of war?
This installment of this trailing thread finds us teetering on the brink of a war between Ukraine and Russia, which, depending upon how you count such things, would likely be the third such war in a little over 100 years. They're all over the same thing, Ukrainian independence. The Russians, in their heart of hearts, don't really think Ukrainians are a thing. The Ukrainians do.
Indeed, several years ago I met a Ukrainian American lawyer, who had the added minority distinction of being a female Jewish Ukrainian American lawyer, who had immigrated to the US as a small girl. Even though she was a Ukrainian, she told me that as a child she'd first become aware of Ukrainians, of which she was one, was on a bus with her family and some people from rural areas were on it, speaking Ukrainian. She thought it was just a weird accident, even though she herself spoke Ukrainian, and Russian. Indeed, I sat through a deposition in which she continually corrected a Russian interpreter's translation of her Ukrainian client's testimony.
Bloody
We should note here that all these prior wars between Ukraine and Russia have turned into bloodbaths. Indeed, the last one, which trailed into 1947, featured Ukrainian atrocities against non-Ukrainian populations within their borders.
The memories of that may be strong, as the Russians are claiming that's been occurring recently, which it has not, as part of their false flag operation to justify their probable upcoming invasion of Ukraine.
Eh?
I thought about starting a thread titled "Useful idiots", borrowing the phrase frequently but inaccurately attributed to Lenin. In fact, he never appears to have used the term.
I don't know if I would have actually have used it. The term "idiot" is pretty strong, and I don't think most of those whose views I find baffling are in fact idiots by a long measure. Indeed, I have no doubt many of them are much smarter than me, which doesn't necessarily credit their views here. At any rate, somethings are just bizarrely baffling.
First, , as an example, let's take Candace Owens.
STOP talking about Russia.
Send American troops to Canada to deal with the tyrannical reign of Justin Trudeau Castro.
He has fundamentally declared himself dictator and is waging war on innocent Canadian protesters and those who have supported them financially.
Candace's odd association of Justin Trudeau, whom I don't care for as a politician, with Vladimir Putin, who is a potentially unhinged autocratic monster armed with nuclear weapons, is, in fact, stupid.
She wasn't alone in making that association, however. Lauren Boebert stated:
But we also have neighbors to the north who need freedom and you need to be liberated and we need that right here at home.
Beobert came to that by way of praising the Ukrainian President and the Ukrainian decision to arm its civilian population, which I also think is praiseworthy. But the linking to Canada. . . ?
Back to Owens, for a moment, earlier this week she appeared to be fully on board with the ludicrous assertion that the US and Ukraine had been engaged in secret biological weapons production prior to the war. That's such a dumb assertion that it is pretty much impossible not to conclude that Owens is rooting for the Russians, something for which she's not alone on the far right. Congressman Madison Cawthrorn called Ukrainian President Zelinskyy a "thug" earlier this past week.
Most people regard Zelniskyy as a hero and he's certainly not a thug.
Owens and Cawthorn, but not Beobert here, are basically falling in line with Donald Trump. Since this crisis developed, I've continued to be amazed by common Republicans who somehow believe that if Donald Trump was President, Putin would never have ordered this invasion. And this in spite of what Trump keeps stating about Putin, which isn't exactly critical of him, to say the least.
To an outside observer, the relationship between Putin and Trump is so bizarre that it's logical to assume, as many do, that Putin has something, and something serious on Donald Trump. The question is, what is it?
Maybe it's nothing, of course, and Trump just likes Putin as Putin is a genuine dictator and Trump aspires to be one. But the relationship is undeniably odd.
Beyond that, Trump hardly had what anyone would call an aggressive foreign policy. He was always clear that he wanted an isolationist one in which the US basically ignored foreign wars if at all possible. Regarding Ukraine itself, while Republicans like to point out that his administration provided more military assistance to Ukraine than Obama's did, Obama had declared as far back as 2014 that if Russia invaded Ukraine there'd be serious consequences.
The Obama Administration was fearful, wrongly, of providing weapons to Ukraine out of a fear that it'd amount to a provocation to the Russians. But it wasn't Trump who wanted to change that. Trump's operatives went around him and forced him into it, against his will. This was very well known at the time. Sure, Trump's administration provided increased aid to Ukraine, but not because of Trump, but rather in spite of him.
And yet somehow some oddly believe that if Trump was President, Putin would have been cowering in the Kremlin.
For all we know, Putin may have reacted no differently whatsoever. If anything, however, a person has to suspect that Donald Trump would have been reminded about that tape, or that payment, or that deal, or something. Or maybe just his fawning admiration of a strongman would take him there.
Alternative realities
Since this crisis developed, I've continued to be amazed by common Republicans who somehow believe that if Donald Trump was President, Putin would never have ordered this invasion.
Seriously?
To an outside observer, the relationship between Putin and Trump is so bizarre that it's logical to assume, as many do, that Putin has something, and something serious on Donald Trump. The question is, what is it.
Maybe it's nothing, of course, and Trump just likes Putin as Putin is a genuine dictator and Trump aspires to be. But the relationship is undeniably odd.
Beyond that, Trump hardly had what anyone would call an aggressive foreign policy. He was always clear that he wanted an isolationist one in which the US basically ignored foreign wars if at all possible. Regarding Ukraine itself, while Republicans like to point out that his administration provided more military assistance to Ukraine than Obama's did, Obama had declared as far back as 2014 that if Russia invaded Ukraine there'd be serious consequences.
The Obama Administration was fearful, wrongly, of providing weapons to Ukraine out of a fear that it'd amount to a provocation to the Russians. But it wasn't Trump who wanted to change that. Trump's operatives went around him and forced him into it, against his will. This was very well known at the time. Sure, Trump's administration provided increased aid to Ukraine, but not because of Trump, but rather in spite of him.
And yet somehow some oddly believe that if Trump was President, Putin would have been cowering in the Kremlin.
For all we know, Putin may have reacted no differently whatsoever. If anything, however, a person has to suspect that Donald would have been reminded about that tape, or that payment, or that deal, or something.
And then there's Television Evangelist Pat Robertson, who came out of retirement to state:
People say that Putin’s out of his mind. Yes, maybe so. But at the same time, he’s being compelled by God. He went into the Ukraine but that wasn’t his goal. His goal was to move against Israel, ultimately.
Oh no, it isn't.
A person has to be careful here, as this is a religious topic, and it fits into a certain Apocalyptic worldview that is strongly represented in certain strains of Evangelism. While the Apostolic Churches have no defined interpretation of the text that this strain of Protestantism interprets this way, it tends to be the case that they view much of Revelation as pertaining to the era in which it is written, while also holding that some of it is yet to pass.
Back in the 70s, for those old enough to remember them, this strain of thought was very strong. The common assertion you'd hear from some quarters was that a big war in the Middle East was going to occur at any moment and that would feature the Battle of Armageddon, which would usher in in the Apocalypse. If you caught television in the early afternoon hours, as kids coming home from school did, that meant you were going to catch television ads for a book called The Late Great Planet Earth on this very topic.
Well, of course, like much human prognostication, the impending disaster didn't occur.
That apparently hasn't meant that those who were invested in the thesis have really given up on it, as this shows.
Ummm, nice weather we're having . . .
One of the interesting things about the war is that for those locally who have decided that Liz Cheney is a big traitor because she didn't stay on the Trump train following the insurrection are being reminded that she was off of it before then, and part of that was her insistence Russia was a menace while Republicans were saying it wasn't. She turned out to be right.
She was also right about Afghanistan, we'd note, which turns out to be another embarrassing thing for those who somehow feel that Donald Trump was right on foreign policy. On that one, Trump loyalist were pretty quick to claim that the withdrawal that Trump initiated woudln't have been the disaster it became when Biden carried it out, because. . . well because.
The Putin invaded Ukraine.
At first there were a lot of the odd claims that "well if Trump had been in office" but those have weakened in no small part because it's obvious baloney. Indeed, after this fawning expressions of admiration for Putin early on, he's been pretty quiet over the last few days, and for that matter the press has quit paying attention to him. Even a near air disaster he experienced has received next to no attention. Voices like Tucker Carlson, whom personally I don't think really believes a lot of what he says, haven't received much attention either after their initial attempts to backtrack seeming admiration of Putin.
More locally, however, a question directed to Harriet Hageman about her position simply resulted in a sidestep. She's was campaigning with Rand Paul in Cheyenne, which didn't receive that much press either, when the Ukraine question came up. She really can't. . . well actually she could, say "well, ol' Liz sure was right on that one".
Regrets
March 12, 2022
Adam Kinzinger tweeted yesterday:
Thread (and admission): 1) I want to be honest, in congress I have only a few votes that in hindset, I regret. My biggest regret was voting against the first impeachment of Donald Trump.
2) It’s important for political leaders to be transparent and admit regret when needed. The bottom line, Donald Trump withheld lethal aid to Ukraine so he could use it as leverage for his campaign. This is a shameful and illegal act, directly hurting the Ukraine defense today…
3) I wish i could go back in time and Vote for it, but I cannot. What we can do now is to ensure that this NEVER happens again, and that we all put the interests of our nation above our party. and others deserve our appreciation. Most Recent Prior Thread:
The danger of mental decline.
While he may not really look it, Vladimir Putin is an old man.
I've noted it here repeatedly, but people's mental health becomes increasingly dicey as they age. People quested Trump's mental health the entire time he was President, and not without some reason. People are doing that now with Biden. And a lot of the analysts who know something about Putin are stating that he's not right.
People continually point this out in regard to Biden, but seemingly him alone. The Supreme Court is old. Putin is old. Donald Trump is old.
All of which raises the question of why the legislature just passed a bill seeking to enact a change to the Wyoming constitution, pushing the retirement age of judges up to 75.
This lock grip of the boomers on things, I'd note, isn't something that the whole world is engaged in. Lots of European leaders are much younger.
Vesting so much of the world's power in the elderly is dangerous. We don't know, for example, what Putin's mental status is and there's no way to know. At his age, moreover, he may not really care how much he destroys if he figures the long term historical legacy in Russia will be to his liking, as he won't have to endure that much of the short term.
Unmoored
On all of this, it is seemingly very difficult for people to accept a swing in things when things were going their way. The absolute refusal of a minority of Americans to accept that they are in fact a minority, no matter how legitimate their positions or grievances, is part, I'm convinced, of what is giving rise to the section of the GOP that simply can't believe that they lost the election.
I think it was Chesterton, or perhaps Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, who observed that if one person is right, he's still right, if everyone else disagrees with him. Those in the minority who are convinced of their position, and I'm frequently in that position, should take comfort in that. What you don't get to do is to insist that everyone agrees with you and that if they don't, there's something nefarious going on.
None the less, we do that frequently. Our sports team didn't lose, the opponent cheated. You get the drift. Of course, most of the time people eventually concede a legitimate loss. But not always.
There's a lot of that which has gone on with the last election, with people seemingly ignoring that the last Republican President to have won the majority of the popular vote was Ronald Reagan. Trump lost the popular vote beyond a doubt twice, but to listen to some, you'd believe that simply isn't possible. People take comfort in their own views and own kind, which is easier to do than ever in the modern Internet age.
Added to that, things like this are easier to believe in troubled times, which we've been in for some time, and the fact that Trump won the elector vote in 2016, but some Democrats made noise about rejecting his legitimacy for that reason, even though the electoral college remains part of the system, unfortunately, didn't help. And all two or three Boomers who were somehow rabid Clinton fans felt cheated about that. But it goes far beyond that. The disenfranchised voters who voted for Trump in 2016, many of whom are former Democrats, convinced themselves that they are the majority of voters, even though they originally probably didn't even make up a majority of Republicans. Now with Trump having adopted the thesis that the election was stolen, for some reason that even now isn't really clear, those who are inclined to view things conspiratorially are, although again not always for the same reasons. Some, for example, are simply focused on COVID 19 election year voting changes, which they feel frustrated the normal process. Others, however, have adopted much more involved fantastical conspiracy theories. Impacting that are the many politicians who know the election wasn't stolen, but won't stay that as it isn't in their personal best interest.
I'm noting all of this for an introductory reason that doesn't actually have anything to do with the 2020 election.
I'm noting it due to Patrick Coffin.
Patrick Coffin was the long term host of the radio show Catholic Answers, and was really good in that role. Here a few years ago he left that position, and I wondered why at the time. It was announced that he was starting a "new project", but frankly, how many jobs are there of that type? Not many, I'd think.
As it happened, while I liked Coffin in that role, his replacement, Cy Kellett, is hands down much better. Kellett is humble, and coming from a Dorthy Day branch of Catholicism, he brings in a refreshing view.
Anyhow, Catholic Answers is highly orthodox in its views. That causes some liberal Catholics to be frustrated, but they've done a real service by giving voice to the orthodox. That doesn't make them politically conservative, however. For example, in a couple of instances during the last year various figures have referenced the the atomic bombing of Japan in 1945 as a monstrous evil, which is a position I agree with, but almost no American does, and which when that view is expressed, tends to be viewed as a politically liberal one.
Anyhow, when Coffin left he started his own podcast and website which, right away, was undoubtedly much further to the right in everything that Catholic Answers ever had been. I frankly wonder if Coffin was somewhat invited to leave now. Anyhow, I used to listen to his podcast for a while, which had some interesting guest, but after a point it clearly started to veer in a certain directly. The first time I really noticed it was when Dr. Taylor Marshall and somebody else were guest with the basic point being women shouldn't work. Later Cardinal Burke was on and Coffin kept trying to basically get him to cast doubt on the Francis Papacy, which Burke would not do. Later, and the last straw, was a podcast casting the COVID 19 pandemic as some sort of a conspiracy.
More recently Coffin released a pathetic podcast episode on seven reasons that Pope Emeritus Benedict is still the Pope. It's really pathetic. That caused Catholic Answers to respond, which they did charitably with a nice podcast that pretty much cut through what arguments Coffin had like a broad sword through butter. Even there, at one point, they came pretty close to calling one of Coffin's arguments unhinged, and they did accuse him, on another, of calumny in one of its slight, ancillary comments.
Anyhow, this is an interesting example of the same thing. From the beginning of Pope St. John Paul the Great's Papacy through Pope Benedict conservative and orthodox Catholics had Popes they really could like. Now they sort of don't, but that doesn't mean he isn't the Pope. Adjusting to reality is a moral duty in something like this, and certainly an existential duty otherwise.
It's all about the oil!
How many times have you heard that about various wars?
Afghanistan, we would note, is claimed to be the United States' longest war, and it has no oil at all. None.
And here, we're cutting off the import of oil.
It's almost like, well, it's not all about the oil.
We'll deal with this on some other post, but as we've noted lots of times, wars change everything. Not only is this war not about the oil. . . . it may be a big step towards the end of the oil age.
Speaking of using petroleum
Speaking of cluelessness, what on earth is the American trucker's convoy about?
Whatever it was supposed to be over, that moment passed. This for all the world has the feel of people who arrived at an event about a week late. "What, this isn't the Johansen wedding. . .where's the food?"
This was, of course, inspired by the Canadian Freedom Convoy. I had a post on that, but that was really distinctly different in the way it spilled over into other complaints. I'm not sympathetic with the event, but it came to be the focus of a lot of conservative Canadian discontent with a nation's politics that has become extremely liberal.
It really was a Canadian thing, none of which prevented confused right wing Americans from voicing their support on something that they don't really know anything about. Most Americans, I fear, couldn't pinpoint Edmonton on a map if their life depended on it.
Anyhow, the spectacle inspired a pretty pointless American truckers convoy, which is protesting. . . well who knows what it's protesting. In a column by a liberal columnist, one of the protesters, for example, noted that they didn't want to be "digitalized", which means this protest just seems to be, well, a protest without a point.
Or maybe it does have one, but not the one that they're voicing or that they even realize.
Long haul trucking in the United States doesn't really have a long history. Prior to the Second World War most long distance hauling of anything was by rail, not by truck. Rail itself dated only back to the second quarter of the 19th Century. Before that, for millennia, anything of substance moved by boat, and less bulky things moved by land at the speed of a draft animal. Indeed, for that reason, early in the nation's history projects to extend aquatic transportation, like the Erie Canal, were a big deal.
Rail was a radical alteration of the transportation system with a massive impact on the nation in all sorts of forgotten ways, including the pattern of settlement. Cities like Denver, Colorado became viable due to rail, without it, they'd be towns.
But through Federal subsidization of roads in the 20th Century, and particularly after World War Two, combined with advancements in automotive technology, long haul semi tractors with large trailers became a viable option in the mid 20th Century. By the 1950s, but not before then, they began to supplant rail. By the 1960s the process was well under way, while at the same time air travel and improved roads cut into rail passenger service as well, with railroads seeking to abandon that the latter.
Trucking as a profession was in fact glamorized. Even early on, Hollywood portrayed it that way, with such movies as They Drive By Night. Convoy, the Country & Western ballad, was one of only a collection of trucking songs that were on the airwaves in the 70s. At least two movies, once based on the Convoy song, portrayed trucking as glamorous in the same era.
Well, that's all largely passed. We're told now that there's a nationwide shortage of truck drivers, with the country being 80,000 drivers short.
All of the major automobile manufacturers are working on electric automobiles. That transformation will come much more rapidly there than in trucking. Automated trucks, without drivers, are being explored and exist on an experimental level now. But lurking in the back is the ultimate competition to the semi truck, the electric train.
Locomotives are already much, much, more efficient than trucks, and accordingly far, far more "green". The Burlington Northern in fact advertised that fact a few years back.
Predicting the future is always difficult, but I suspect that on a fairly significant level, the future of long distance transportation looks backwards. It's rail.
From one population crisis to another.
Twitter, the location of all brilliant insight, recently had this exchange before the war started..
It started with the British newspaper, surprisingly enough, The Telegraph.
Once a problem far in the future, the population crisis is arriving earlier than expected after the Covid baby bust.
Populations in countries including Japan are already in decline, while those in the likes of Spain and China are set to halve by 2100
To which some replied in both an indignant and misanthropic way, clinging to the pretty provable statistically invalid concept that nope, we're going to grow and grow until we all die, population wise. It's been known for a long time now that while immigration waves around the world are a genuine and ongoing crisis, the world is actually almost at the tipping point right now where populations are set to start declining. Indeed, in the Western world they already are, and they just reached the point in the United States where, but for massive immigration rates, they would be.
Well, some people who seem to really dislike people won't accept that and made that known.
To which somebody replied:
The problem isn't fewer people, the problem is no people! You can't reverse the downward trend. No Government to date has been able to do that; Not China, Japan, Sweden. At the current trend there will be extinct by the year 2400.
M'eh.
Extinct? Ain't going to happen.
Just a few years ago the headlines were we were going to procreate ourselves into extinction.
Now, apparently, we're going to abstain ourselves into extinction.
We're going to do neither.
I'd note that things have gotten to such an odd state that tehreare those who post, and aren't banned from Twitter for doing so, who hate mankind so much htey hope we go extinct for the "benefit" of everything else. As the only species that has a concept of a benefit, if we disappear that's a stupid nullity. If that seems anthropocentric, well it is.
Speaking of population, a headline:
Nick Cannon issues apology to the 5 mothers of his children
This on the occasion of the apparently unrestrained and amoral Cannon announcing that he's sired an eighth child with one Bre Tiesi.
Apparently, Nick is doing his part to keep the Playboy lifestyle alive and the population from crashing.
Wage cause and effect.
We recently noted on another post (maybe another Zeitgeist post), that Chuck Todd of Meet the Press sort of smugly maintained that a recently decreased immigration rate was causing inflation by removing immigrants who took certain jobs, seemingly not noticing that what this also means is that the high immigration rate was depressing the wage rate.
Apparently liberals everywhere make this same argument, as this item shows.
That from the British Adam Smith Society, which is a masterful example, we'd note, of British snark.
The point however, is exactly the same one we made here. By keeping immigration rates high, wages are depressed. If you keep immigration rates low, wages climb.
What seemingly isn't noticed is that what this also means is that, contrary to the widespread claims made for decades, Americans will take any job inside the US, as long as it pays a living or at least decent wage.
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