World: please celebrate for us! (But not Vlad.)

Many factors are at work in the drama that’s unfolding this week, and maybe the least important player is a whining toddler who will rant at at Joint Base Andrews, Wednesday morning, screaming for attention after running around the White House prying the letter “J” off keyboards and leaving doobies in the ventilation ducts. There will be worse.* And just-in-case, I’ve urged that Biden, Harris and Pelosi keep distant (social and precautionary) from each other, while offering us all words of hope that America is back, baby.

Three groups will matter a lot, now and for weeks to come: foreign friends, foreign and domestic enemies… and nerds. I’ll get to Vladimir Putin and his fear of renewed western skill, in a bit. but first, here’s a call for our friends around the world to celebrate for us.

== Dancing in the Streets ==

To our allies around the world and to all friends of freedom, enlightenment, science and progress -- please turn out, the Wednesday.  Our domestic, home-grown enemies of progress -- many of them dear neighbors lured into furious madness by Fox/Sinclair/Goebbels liars, far more than by that pathetic toddler -- have triggered immune response by our protective services, locking down the American Capital and other cities when Joe Biden takes the oath of office, even more than we're compelled by a Trump-amplified pandemic.  

As  a result, Americans won't be pouring into the streets to celebrate nearly as much as we want to. But YOU, our allies in wanting an enlightened, forward-looking, fact-seeing and decently-just world, YOU can celebrate for us!

We ask that you fill your most famous streets with flags and balloons and signs that congratulate not just Joe Biden but all of us, including you fellow members of the Great Enlightenment Experiment!  Oh, stay safely masked and distanced! But please, make a good show of welcoming America back.

Because we need encouragement, right now! It truly would help Joe & Kamala, a lot. And also because, well, a dynamic and forward-looking, scientific-creative and generous USA is still necessary, if we want a civilization worthy of the stars. 

Certainly our enemies think so, given how hard they have striven to bring us down. Which brings us to...

== I wouldn’t be in Vlad’s shoes ==

I hope I’m wrong. I pray that I am wrong. But given the nearly 100% perfect record of Trumpian Republicans betraying the West and giving the Kremlin everything is wants (offer me large wager stakes on that: I will own your house), tearing down our sciences and alliances, weakening US entrepreneurship, waging war against all fact-using professions and instigating civil war, I have to worry whether the quarter million men and women in our security and intel agencies are even ready to teach Vladimir Putin that it’s time to back off.

1. For four years the top political-appointee slots atop those agencies have been people of at-best questionable qualification or loyalty. I have no doubt that skilled professionals isolated/cauterized the worst of them. But it is quite possible that an evisceration or rot-from-above has plunged deep into the ranks of those whose skill and professionalism won the Cold War and the War on terror, while treasonous, Sinclair agitprop demoralized them with slanders like “deep state.”

2. Putin is desperately getting in final licks. Yesterday he pulled out of the Open Skies Treaty that Trump formally exited a couple of months ago.  I expected (and obviously so did Vlad) that Biden would rejoin almost instantly (along with the Paris Accords on climate) since the Open Skies Treaty VASTLY favored Europe and the West and Putin long chafed over allowing NATO planes to crisscross Russia. Giving Putin an excuse to quick-exit that treaty - and the Intermediate Forces Agreement and others - was among the countless favors performed for him by the Kremlin’s White House agent. 

ALAS, not a single news report (that I’ve seen) has looked at this matter of timing. But watch. Don’t be distracted by Trump’s sudden tsunami of pardons! Vlad will do as many last-minute sabotages as Trump, these last few days.

3. On the other hand, Vlad’s got to be nervous. Surely some corner of our ‘deep state’ has been un-suborned, preparing options to offer the new president. Ways to - in some measured degree - at least smack the relabeled (but almost identical in staff, goals and methods) Soviet KGB across the snoot and say “back off!”  Oh, how wonderful - for example - if the Russian people were suddenly to see how much of their nation is now owned by “ex” Soviet commissars, now relabeled as billionaire oligarch mafia dons.

Okay. Revenge doesn’t interest the mature… and we count on Joe to be mature and judicious. So I expect to be frustrated and angry at his levels of restraint! Because… well… I am not ‘mature.’

4. I’ve spoken relentlessly about what simply has to be the elephant in the room, in DC. What I expect will be revealed as a mountain of blackmail.  We all saw in the recent Borat movie how trivially easy it is to lure many males into kompromat traps, and Russian spy services are much more adept at it than Sacha Baron Cohen. They have been doing it since the 1800s.  Elsewhere I warn those newly arriving in DC to be wary! 

If I’m right, then no event would so dramatically reverse our current troubles than a tidal wave of light. Some of the most blatant examples, for whom there is no other conceivable explanation than blackmail - Graham, Cruz, Rubio, Collins and Anthony Kennedy - could at any moment turn their legacy from zero to hero, by helping turn the tables on their tormentors. But don’t expect that. At least not till Biden establishes a Truth & Reconciliation Commission.

5. Extending that more generally, Putin knows his edifice will collapse if the West gets good intel. It's hard to retaliate or deter the current wave of relentless Muscovite attacks when we are blind! Part of that blindness will be solved when our defenders are no longer hampered by the quislings who were appointed over them by a Putin-blackmailed shill. 

But that leaves out an even more significant factor. That HALF of our good intel during the Cold War came from defectors, who would regularly even the playing field by bringing over vast floods of information, counterbalancing excellent KGB spycraft and our disadvantages as an open society.

==The vital importance of the moral high ground ==

During the Cold War, defectors were attracted by three things. We offered:

1) Safety

2) Good prospects

3) The moral high ground.

I’ve tried to explain this - repeatedly - to large audiences at CIA, fer gosh sakes!** - how the patterns of FSB/Putin actions all fit an overall aim of demolishing western alliances (Trump accomplishment #1) plus systematically toppling all three pillars that brought us recurring waves of defectors from the USSR. 

To that end, 'botched' assassinations of Russian dissidents were actually perfectly executed, achieving terror in potential defectors. 

Above all, the Trumpian campaign to crush and despoil the US moral high ground has been Putin's greatest accomplishment….

…but that victory can be reversed if our friends around the world do that one thing - both for us and for themselves and the planet and their children and the future:

Celebrate for us! 

Show the world that you know Donald Trump was an aberration! That the confederate side of our recurring American fever is and always has been a minority of fervid lunacy and when the blue is back, we can resume being a scientific, progress-seeking, problem-solving, egalitarian beacon and partner in making a better world.

And the forces of evil, trying to re-impose 6000 years of wretched, failed rule-by-oligarchy will fade under waves of cleansing light.

——

*Rent the first episode of the Kiefer Sutherland TV series DESIGNATED SURVIVOR. 

** And yes I am regularly invited back.

A nasty little boy.

While tuning in to see the preening and posturing and howling in Tulsa, ask yourself: "What am I actually looking at?

Tom Nichols - author of The Death of Expertise (what I call the War on all Fact-Professions) - now zeroes in on the achilles heel of the entire Foxite cult: “Why do working-class white men—the most reliable component of Donald Trump’s base—support someone who is, by their own standards, the least masculine man ever to hold the modern presidency?”  … 

Nichols: “The question is not whether Trump fails to meet some archaic ideal of masculinity - say Marcus Aurelius or Omar Bradley. Rather, working-class white male voters don’t hold Trump to their own standards of masculinity - supporting a man who behaves more like a little boy.”

This article is devastatingly on-target, recalling the working class men Nichols grew up with, among whom “courage, honesty, respect, an economy of words, a bit of modesty, and a willingness to take responsibility are all virtues prized by… the stand-up guys, among whom I was raised. Yet, many of these same men expect none of those characteristics from Trump, who is a vain, cowardly, lying, vulgar, jabbering blowhard. …He wears bronzer, loves gold and gossip, is obsessed with his physical appearance, whines constantly, can't control his emotions, watches daytime television, enjoys parades and interior decorating, and used to sell perfume.”

“Put another way, as a question I have asked many of the men I know: Is Trump a man your father and grandfather would have respected?” 

(Nichols leaves out a manly trait that may be slightly less noble, but I call just as fundamental - a willingness to back up bold assertions with wager stakes - or at least to let factual refutation have consequences. Indeed, a desperate fear of specific refutation - e.g. via wagers - spans the entire Foxite cult.)

Nichols reaches a conclusion similar to mine. “Trump’s lack of masculinity is about maturity. He is not manly because he is not a man. He is a boy.” 

Nichols asserts that MAGAs are indulgent with him, as “working-class America’s dysfunctional son, and his supporters, male and female alike, have become the worried parent explaining what a good boy he is to terrorized teachers even while he continues to set fires in the hallway right outside.”

Do read the Nichols piece! Every paragraph is a knife into the gut of this madness and you should read enough times to memorize and use these weapons. Use them.

Mind you, it’s time to compare this to the other most-cogent diagnosis, offered by linguistic sociologist George Lakoff (author of Don't Think of An Elephant!), who gave us an underlying difference between how conservatives and liberals view government and leaders, in general. Liberals are said to seek a “nurturing parent” who will soothe the sick, uplift the oppressed and open doors of opportunity with encouragement. Conservatives seek a “Strong Father” who applies the back of his hand to enforce order, discipline and tradition. 

History shows the latter taking power nearly all the time, especially when there's an ambient level of fear... which was most of human history. Significantly, it explains why Strong Father worshippers don’t expect kindness, rationality, equality or even justice. They do admire blustering displays of macho.

At first Nichols and Lakoff seem opposite theories — whiney-vulnerable boy vs. Strong Father — in explaining the same displays of rude-crude-viciously self-centered rage. So let me offer a third metaphor that bridges them both, showing that both Lakoff and Nichols had it mostly right, just barely missing a core point.

By now you’ve all noticed it is futile to argue normally with members of the Foxite cult. MAGAs expect you to try facts and appeals to reason and logic and fairness… and every time you do that, you are feeding their contempt. You are supporting the real reason they like Trump.

In the face of every blaring sign that he is the very opposite of Lincoln or Jesus, they adore him because he enrages the people they hate most. Meaning you and me. And the war he wages - supported by Putin’s KGB, Saudi royals, Rupert Murdoch and inheritance brats - against every fact-using profession - is their lifelong campaign against nerds.

The overlap between Nichols and Lakoff is this. Donald Trump is a playground bully. The way his most-fervent supporters were, back in Junior High.  

Moreover, that points to the cure! We must do the one thing that worked back then. That thing should be obvious to many of you once-bullied nerds, and the rest of you can figure it out.

Just watch how they’ll turn on him, the very month that we stop farting around and decide to actually do that one thing. Showing how bullies lose.

== The Russians are coming... ==

Russian oligarchs have been ramping up their already generous donations to Republicans. “An example is Len Blavatnik, a dual U.S.-U.K. citizen now living in Russia again. With $20 billions he’s one of the largest donors to GOP political action committees in the 2015-16 election cycle… pumping $6.35 million into GOP political action committees, with millions of dollars going to top Republican leaders including Sens. Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham.”

“Two weeks after the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October 2016 that the Russian government had directed the effort to interfere in our electoral process, McConnell's PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings. The PAC took another $1 million from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings on March 30, 2017, just 10 days after former FBI Director James Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election.”

The Cold War never ended. Putin simply dropped all the Marxist surface rhetoric and communist symbols that had failed to sucker in the U.S. Rooseveltean left. Whereupon he spun on a dime, switching surface incantations to Czarist-orthodox ‘traditionalism’ and mafia oligarchy… and voila! The American right fell all over themselves to prostrate at Vlad’s feet.

Honestly, I cannot believe this is just about money or class or other whoredoms. Too many in the GOP and periphery have committed too many outright treasons for the explanation to be anything other than … blackmail. It’s the favorite KGB tactic, going back to its predecessor, the czarist Okrahna, and continuing into the neo-czarist FSB and IRA. And it’s easily envisioned when you consider what high fraction of high Republicans have been exposed as grotesque sexual predators and child molesters.

There’s a lot more to be found in another best-seller about a mobbed-up Russian asset linked to a kleptocracy and all of these dark and horrifying people–Trump and Mogilevich and Epstein and Kushner. The whole gang is in Hiding in Plain Sight, by Sarah Kendzior .  Here’s an audio interview (and transcript) in which she lays out how blatant are the Russian mob connections, not just with Trump but today’s entire GOP.

And yes, the foxite media claim to have similar mountains of evidence against the Clintons, Obama and Biden and many Democrats. There is only one difference between the two evidence piles.  

Almost every datum about Republican/Trumpist links to Putin and mobs and turpitude is true and overwhelmingly verifiable. After 25 years of “Clinton investigations” costing taxpayers half a billion dollars, we’ve learned that almost nothing on that pile is true, not even remotely. 

Sure that’s easy to claim! And so, we return to the one tactic that works… and it always works!  Demanding cash wagers over explicitly testable or falsifiable assertions. 

They always writhe and wriggle and squirm and divert! And when you push past all the smoke and demand they put-up and back their hot air with real, manly stakes?  They always… always… flee.

See how to do it in Polemical Judo.

== And finally more ammo ==

Trump golf visits and the $130 million they cost us, vs Obama’s golfings were mostly at Camp David or in DC, costing 1% as much. See Trump Golf Count. And yes, amid a pandemic. 

Evangelical reverend admits he paid 'Jane Roe' (the original ‘Roe v.Wade plaintiff) $450,000 - including handfuls of $100 bills - because she was a 'symbol anti-abortion movement could not afford to lose'. 

Okay, I am going to tune in to the rally, where Trump's desperate preening addiction flies against Putin's and Murdoch's desperately devious pragmatism. If things go very covid-badly, they may decide to find an exit strategy well before an election wrecks their tool against us, the Republican Party. And God bless the United States Secret Service.

At the heart of the matter... Ukraine, Rapture, and Walken's dazzling prophecy

And the drama continues. Let's set aside the news that Ken Starr and Alan Dershowitz will be Trump's defenders, nailing the coffin of those asserting that the Clinton impeachment "Starr Chamber" was anything but utterly biased... the sole whine that Republicans now hurl at any investigation of them. No, let's dial even deeper.

 At the heart of the impeachment imbroglio seems to be...“Trump’s animosity toward Ukraine.” 

One theme that runs through almost all of the accounts from witnesses who testified before House lawmakers is President Trump’s unyielding loathing of the former Soviet republic, which dates to his earliest days in the White House. “He just hated Ukraine,” one former White House official said.  Why? You might ask.  Well, for starters, Trump campaign manager - and now imprisoned felon - Paul Manafort was a mafia fixer for Viktor Yanukovich, Putin’s puppet Ukraine president, who was ousted by a popular revolution that – yes – got some support from Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and George Soros. 

To Vladimir Putin, this was a body blow, almost as bad as the fall of the USSR itself (which VP bemoans as the 'greatest tragedy of the 20th Century.') Don't take my word; actually read Putin's speeches on the matter. The 'stealing' of Ukraine from Russia's sphere of influence was an unforgivable act of war by the West, despite the Ukrainian people's will on the matter. It had to be avenged, first in the 2016 U.S. election, but then...

Of the countless services to his master that Trump pursued, one of the foremost was helping Vlad with this grudge.

== The Treason is Getting Utterly Explicit ==

“Russia has reinvented itself as a bastion of Christian values in a world beset by relativism and godlessness. As a result, conservative Christians gathering at the World Congress of Families are looking to Putin to protect Christianity from the West.”  

Yep. After 70 years spent futilely trying to suborn the U.S. left, which generally saw through all the faux-egalitarian Leninist crap, Putin and his fellow commissars and KGB agents just dropped all the hammer-sickle stuff and re-branded themselves as billionaire-Christian mafia-oligarchs. And that was all it took, in order to hypnotize the entire U.S. right. What a contrast.

"In western Europe, many people believe that the West is collapsing and all civilisation is threatened by Islam, by demography, and by democracy…What they try to pretend is that there is only one country where Western civilisation is well and alive and thriving, and that's Russia." … Once dismissed as fringe extremists by the political elite, the WCF now counts friends amongst the leaders and politicians swept to power by the populist wave in Europe and the U.S.

“Vice President Mike Pence and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson were originally scheduled to address the conference, but their names were removed from a list of speakers without explanation.”… "Among the members of the WCF is the Family Research Council, an anti-LGBT group with longstanding ties to Pence. "It is a geopolitical and ideological battleground," said Kreko, and remarked that the event was a message from "pro-Russian forces in Moldova that the U.S. conservative right and Russia together can save the world from this plague of liberalism and tolerance." reports Newsweek. 

Then there's Mike Pompeo, openly saying that he's biding time till the Rapture, when 99% of Americans will be consigned to living torment, then eternal damnation, followed by a permanent end to all democracy, diversity, ambition, discovery, curiosity, freedom... an end to all new generations of children... and an end to the United States of America. And yes, although that's not a direct quote, it is exactly what he means.

== It's fragging obvious ==

I doubt any pundit anywhere will take this interpretation. But I believe one reason that Trump intends to pardon - and even promote - soldiers convicted in military courts of war crimes is to drive a wedge between the U.S. military officer corps (USMOC) and the non-commissioned ranks. Putin-Murdoch-etc. know that the USMOC is the 3rd best-educated clade in American life. Moreover, the officers — while conservative in demeanor and behavior — remain deeply committed to science, fact-using and the rule of law, all of which are being warred-upon by the New Oligarchy. 

(Retired officers provide the largest group of new Democratic candidates who have been taking territory in purple and red districts.)

Indeed, the thing I fear most about a second Trump term is that interference in the promotion process will start to have major effects, as these deeply non-political men and women - devoted to the Constitution - are chivvied and harried beyond forbearance. But the scariest angle is how they will also have to start watching their own backs, if Trumpism sinks talons deeply into the non-commissioned ranks.

Doubt this? I know officers who report that the TVs in the noncom ready rooms are always… always… tuned to Fox News. Ponder that.

== Is Civil War pending? ==

I cannot urge you too strongly to read the linked article from The Atlantic's special issue on "Civil War." Here's a blip from How America Ends, by Yoni Appelbaum, who shows why the right is so desperate to cheat and grip power, in the face of demographic collapse:

 “A conservatism defined by ideas can hold its own against progressivism, winning converts to its principles and evolving with each generation. A conservatism defined by identity reduces the complex calculus of politics to a simple arithmetic question—and at some point, the numbers no longer add up.”

And: “When a group that has traditionally exercised power comes to believe that its eclipse is inevitable, and that the destruction of all it holds dear will follow, it will fight to preserve what it has—whatever the cost.”

Before you gloat over the apparent intention of the Republican Party to self-destruct at a gibbet of fanaticism, consider a sobering historical correlation and danger sign. The Fox/Putin systematic destruction of moderate conservatism has implications, as Appelbaum points out:

“In his recent study of the emergence of democracy in Western Europe, the political scientist Daniel Ziblatt zeroes in on a decisive factor distinguishing the states that achieved democratic stability from those that fell prey to authoritarian impulses.

“The key variable was not the strength or character of the political left, or of the forces pushing for greater democratization, so much as the viability of the center-right. A strong center-right party could wall off more extreme right-wing movements, shutting out the radicals who attacked the political system itself….  

“If groups that traditionally have enjoyed privileged positions see a future for themselves in a more democratic society, Ziblatt finds, they will accede to it. But if “conservative forces believe that electoral politics will permanently exclude them from government, they are more likely to reject democracy outright.””

This is just another reason to be ready with an olive branch to offer any and all ‘RASRs’ who are willing to renounce their movement’s fealty to mafia-oligarchy, and who will help re-establish the primacy of facts and fact professions. 

(And I have mentioned especially Utah Republicans. They will never be liberal Democrats, so don't ask it. But like Sen. Mike Lee and others, they are realizing that the version of conservatism offered by Putin, Fox and the MAGA inciters is not compatible with theirs. Most Red States and GOP pols and pundits have terrible record score vastly worse than blue ones. Will Utahns form the nucleus of a clean, honest, and fact-friendly conservatism? One can dream.)

Facts matter. And the talons of foreign despots must be taken off our institutions. All else is negotiable! But without those two things, we are forced to accept a bitter truth. That sane conservatives have turned a blind eye to their duty, to country, civilization and even conservatism. At which point, we’ll just have to save all of those things, ourselves.

And yes, Appelbaum covers a few of the points I make in POLEMICAL JUDO. How nice to be a wee bit less lonely.

== Looking back ==

Of all Christopher Walken schticks, it wasn't the infamous SNL "Cow Bells" scene that most rang true. It was playing the fervently anti-communist dad in Blast from the Past who, emerging from 30 years in a bomb shelter, asks his son (Brendan Fraser): "So we're supposed to believe that one day the Moscow Politburo guys just threw up their hands and said 'We surrender'?"

"That's about it, Dad."

Walken shakes his head and sighs: "You've got to hand it to them."

At the time, I (like everyone) thought this a cute little joke on dad's paranoia. Who knew it would turn out to be a terrifying prophecy! That many of the same conspiratorial commissars who schemed against us during the cold war would smoothly convert themselves (with help from Bushes) into billionaire "oligarchs" still using a virtually unchanged KGB, still seeking to destroy the West.

All of the Russoligarchs who Fox/Murdoch/Kochs now adore grew up reciting Leninist slogans and their leader called the fall of the USSR "history's greatest tragedy," yet we're to believe they all became freedom-lovers? Yes the leopard changed its spots, but its claws? Before, it was a criminal gang under a guise of elevating workers. Now, it's a gang - largely the same gang - openly bragging mafia-aristocratic rule. Big diff?

It is! Reiterating the point until some of you start spreading it: for seventy years, they tried using Marxist incantations to suborn the American Left, and almost entirely failed. But as soon as they dropped the hammer and sickle symbols and egalitarian slogans in favor of billionaire-mafia stuff, the U.S. Right falls all over itself, throwing themselves on their knees to betray America and cater to every Putin whim.

Shatter our alliances and sciences? Sure! Attack all the intel, FBI and military officers who fought the Cold War, dissing 500,000 of our finest as "deep state"? Whatever you say boss! Wreck any sense of fact or accountability and devastate our rule of law while making a mockery of U.S. justice by appointing pre-blackmailed shills as judges? Sure, anything the politburo commissars... I mean Godfather Putin... says.

Reminder. Watch this scene again, as Putin greets his co-owner of Fox News, MBS. And notice the puppet entering the room in the background. Then watch the grin as he greets his master, while other western leaders know what they are looking at. The winner of the new cold war, destroyer of NATO and puppetmaster for the American fall.

Oh, Christopher Walken had it right.

You've got to hand it to them.

== A roundup of worthwhile articles. ==

 1) How Ukraine has benefited from the recent attention and is shaping up not to fail, despite Putin's machinations. 

2) How Barr & Perry and so many other members of this cabal openly call Trump the anointed of God and are jabbering Book of Revelation stuff more openly than ever.

3) Russians have been quietly seeding political scandals in the West for decades. But their methods started working much better when they dropped the marxist surfaces and found different western allies. Read about how simple the method is, from Slate.

4) Professional trolls understand how to harness our biases (and hashtags) for their own purposes and how best to drive us to distrust our neighbors. This article shows how they often start by building rust with 'adorable' viral postings that have nothing to do with politics, from Rolling Stone.

What an era. "End of history" my shiny metal....

Putin and the Russian Economy

Earlier I spoke of the unbelievable adoration-of-Vladimir Putin that has swept the right-wing American press. Officially "grudging respect for a foe," it is nothing less than a worshipful personality cult.

Of what? Perhaps it is exaggeration to accuse VP of destroying the underlying Russian economy so that it relies solely on obsolete fossil fuels. But dating back before his time, we have seen that any trace of entrepreneurialism is pounced upon and gobbled up by oligarchs, backed by organized crime. This is the model of "strong" governance that Fox would have us emulate?

Again, I am not finger-pointing, but Russian men are drinking themselves to death and Russian women have stopped having babies with them. Intellectuals (especially women) are fleeing the country as fast as they can. Russia has to buy its aircraft carriers from France.  It has lost every spaceprobe it sent to Mars and has not innovated in space in decades. And there are harsh reasons for all of this that aren't necessarily Putin's fault...

... But one can't help being irritated by the opposite reflex, as Rupert Murdoch and the mad right fall all over themselves kvelling, proclaiming Putin as a genius and a macho, master chess player.  

Oh, sure, Hannity etc call him a foe!  But their paeans of respect and admiration aren't only meant to belittle Barack Obama.  

They are genuine genuflections toward the kind of leader they truly wish for.

== the latest example of fawning idolatry ==

Ah, but now the Orwellian Ministry of Truth is at it again: “Russian President Vladimir Putin was declared the world’s most powerful person for the third time in a row by Forbes magazine.”  ....   With this subliminal sub-text: “Raving-partisan Forbes declares itself loony and irrelevant!”

Setting aside the issue of Forbes being qualified to “declare” any such thing, except as a rant-opinion, here’s the justification:  “The items on Putin’s resume that catapulted him back to the number one position this year included his all-time high approval rating of his constituents of an astonishing 89 percent and his bid to rebuild Russian influence abroad by bombing Islamic State forces in Syria.”

Ooh, a dictator’s state machine declares him to be “popular!” And he’s dropped some bombs (ineffectually) in a desperate attempt to hold onto Russia’s Tartus base, its last vestige of empire west of Cam Ranh Bay? Well, yep that convinced me.  But do go on.

“The world’s most powerful man has seized Crimea and waged war-by-proxy in the Ukraine despite worldwide disapproval. However, he has proven all the more powerful in the process by showing that he can essentially do what he wants with almost reckless abandon due to his level of power.”

Ah, unmentioned is the death spiral of the Russian economy, the flight of almost every cent of movable capital from Moscow to London and New York real estate, “success” at re-invigorating and uniting the NATO alliance and… oh yes, loss of Ukraine from the Russian sphere of influence — the worst setback to Russian expansionist policy since Boris Godunov.

While shouting about small nibble-backs like Crimea and the Donbass, fools at Fox & Forbes attempt frantically to distract from the fact that now Ukraine will never-again be a puppet of Moscow. Ukrainians are swerving westward as fast as they can, clamoring to be part of Europe.  It's the big news, an event so vastly greater in significance than Crimea, that the inability of republicans to notice is prima facie proof of insanity.

Oh, but the Russians themselves have noticed! Russian viewers of Fox are appalled.

Nowadays, when you are bucking the commonly accepted narrative, you must repeat yourself till you are blue in the face.  So let me reiterate, as many times as it takes:

The Russians themselves are not as stupid as Fox commentators. They do not ignore the devastating setback in Ukraine. 

Russians -- including those who love Vladimir Putin -- deem the loss of Ukraine from their orbit to have been a hugely aggressive and successful assault on Russian interests by... get ready for it... Barack Obama. 

They see Obama as anything but the wimp he is portrayed in right wing American press.  They -- including Putin himself -- view Obama as the most aggressive, formidable and successful opponent they have faced, since Reagan.

== But in fact? ==

Look, I have found some real reasons to respect Vladimir Putin. Plus some others (sci fi what-if scenarios, mostly) to wonder if he's got a real plan. (Indeed, there is one plan of such bizarre cleverness -- I give it a 10% possibility -- that would make sense of all this and prove him to be a genius.)

 Moreover -- take note -- the “Russia-China alliance” is not to be sniffed at!

Only, once we have taken all of that into account, dig this. None of my reasons overlap at all with the nasty, treasonous paeans of Hannity and co.  Because Putin's "master chess player" surface moves have -- so far -- shown very little in the way of tangible results. 


Indeed, these pushy-aggressive nibble-backs, guarantee that Ukrainians will never ever again to allow a Russian-loving Yanukovich back into power, sealing their alliance with the West, forever. 

And it goes farther. Resumption of saber rattling bomber flights and submarine penetrations of fjords has driven both Sweden and Finland to seek closer ties to NATO. He has even managed to alienate Angela Merkel and the uber-pragmatist Germans and re-invigorated the NATO alliance, with all members pledging to up defense spending.

Yet he is portrayed as the master mover!  Well... he is so portrayed... by fools.

(This article shines a brief spotlight on VP's billionaire daughter.)

Again... there are ways that I am withholding judgement. I perceive a couple of what-if stories that would make him a player of historical substance, and they (sort-of) actually make sense! There may, indeed, be layers. Look into his fiercely intelligent eyes... there is definitely something going on.

But I reiterate.  None of it relates even glancingly to the Fox-Limbaugh-Beck cult of admiration for strongman saber-rattling.  They admired those traits in Bush-Cheney too, and we have been paying for that clade of macho dunces, whose outcomes have been 100% and without exception negative for the U.S.

No, it is not Vladimir Putin who comes across as maniacal, here. My arms are warily folded, watching him carefully, skeptically-fascinated. 

No, it is the worshippers of his cartoon image, here in the west, who are completely out of their cotton-pickin' minds..

Putin on the rips in Syria, Chinese troops in Africa, and #%$@! Spartans!

Here’s an epic example of the art of propaganda. An essay by Jackson Diehl in the Washington Post, in which he falls all over himself to gush admiration for the way Vladimir Putin has outmaneuvered the West in both Ukraine and in Syria “catching the Obama Administration flat-footed.”  

Diehl is joined by the entire panoply of right wing fools who gave us “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq, then proclaimed that we were actually there to spread democracy… and then shouted “squirrel!” to point elsewhere when that frenzied exercise in Nation Building didn’t work out so good. Now take this screech by Charles Krauthammer: Putin's Gambit, Obama's Puzzlement: in which he writes, “Kerry and Obama are serially surprised because they cannot fathom the hard men in the Kremlin.” 

And yes, I spoke of this a little while back, citing the declaration by Forbes Magazine that Vladimir Putin is the "most powerful person in the world." Actually read the Forbes drivel! But the flood of such ravings, from Diehl and others, proves that it is now a central right-wing catechism, meant to confirm that "Barack Obama is a wimp."  And therefore, by contagion, so are all democrats.

And hence, for all their sins -- having not one single example of good governance outcomes to point to, across the last two Republican administrations -- they get to sneer "at least we admire guys who are strong!"

But let’s see what their facts might be.  The West advised the Ukrainian government to grant some autonomy to the Donbass region, where ethnic Russians mostly live and would prefer separation. But that separation is now prevented.  (For now.) 

And even if the Donbass does eventually go to Moscow, like the Crimea, as the locals clearly want?

Such nibble-backs are signs of failure, not strength. Moscow is desperate to put a positive spin on the biggest loss from the Russian sphere of influence since Peter the Great – absolute loss of the Ukraine, which will never, ever, ever again allow a Muscovite puppet to hold power in Kiev.  

That is the big story, the huge story. The only part of the story with major geopolitical repercussions and long term effects.

And yet, the ability of Vladimir-idolators to ignore huge defeats, while touting their hero’s tactical-retreat “victories,” is simply stunning. 

To be clear - and repeating the point so that it can rise above the Fox/Forbes fantasy - the Russians themselves are not as stupid as Fox commentators. They do not ignore the devastating setback in Ukraine. 

They deem it to have been a hugely aggressive and successful assault on Russian interests by Barack Obama. They view Obama as anything but the wimp he is portrayed in right wing American press.  They see him as the most aggressive and successful opponent they have faced, since Reagan.

Or, as described on Slate by Fred Kaplan:  “The portrayal of Vladimir Putin as a grand chess master, shrewdly rebuilding the Russian empire through strength and wiles, is laughable. Syria is just one of two countries outside the former Soviet Union where Russia has a military base (the other being Vietnam, and its naval facility there, at Cam Ranh Bay, has shrunk considerably). His annexation of Crimea has proved a financial drain. His incursion into eastern Ukraine (where many ethnic Russians would welcome re-absorption into the Motherland) has stalled after a thin slice was taken at the cost of 3,000 soldiers. His plan for a Eurasian Economic Union, to counter the influence of the west’s European Union, has failed to materialize. His energy deal with China, designed to counter the west’s sanctions against Russian companies, has collapsed.”

I might add that no one seems to be talking about the elephant in the room… and I guarantee you heard about it here, first.  But watch. Just watch as Vladimir Putin gradually and glacially proceeds with his already-done deal to sell China something thy want and that declining Russia cannot keep.

Siberia.

== What’s the deal in Syria? ==

But let’s pull back from that scenario that seems like sci-fi (for now)... and return to today’s headlines. Although Kaplan is more lucid than Krauthammer or Diehl, he still misses the very tight limitations on Putin’s goals in Syria. Seriously? You’ve putting  - or Putin’g – us on, right? 

Russian moves in Syria are clearly aimed at bolstering the Assad regime’s hold on the coastal region where the dictator’s Alawite sect is centered and where Moscow has its only Mediterranean naval base. Moreover this has been a long time coming. Mr. Assad has spent years prepping the Lataika-Tartus coast and its mountain approaches to serve as a redoubt, a refuge for when his hold on Damascus becomes untenable. That coastal mini-state might be held, with Russian help, especially now that the Allawites have engaged in half a decade of ethnic cleansing, though only by surrendering most of the rest of Syria, leaving the West to deal with the Islamic State mess.

A mess that might be resolved by exactly such a partition of Syria! If the Europeans (who want to slow the flow of refugees) and Turkey, which wants an end to the mess, next door, make a deal with the Kurds to consolidate to the east, moving some Kurd populations away from the Turkish border… and Turkey establishes a Sunni safe zone in Aleppo and Iran fires the worst Hezbollites so that a Shiite zone near Lebanon and around Damascus…. Oh but we’re back to sci fi scenarios, again.  Sorry. It just makes more sense.

Though in fact, even my wildest arm-wavings are more realistic than the dismal, diametrically-opposite-to-true stuff you get from Fox.

                                                                                                                            

== International ==

Speaking to the UN, President Xi said that China plans to set up a United Nations permanent peacekeeping force of 8,000 troops and would provide $100 million to the African Union to create an immediate response unit capable of responding to emergencies. In addition to the peacekeeping pledge, Mr. Xi promised a $1 billion donation to the United Nations for a “peace and development fund.”  

This article explains many details and some background. Of course, they are also learning a lot about the logistics of moving lots of troops far and fast…. 

== Visions of Democracy ==

Turning to pop-historical culture... I am pleased to see this comic called Democracy, telling the difficult, tragic and triumphant tale of Athens and its experiment with moving away from pyramids of inherited privilege, toward (partially) respecting the rights and ingenuity of a new kind of being called “citizen.”  

These rebuttals matter to me, after my own eviscerations of the “300” series came online. I ripped Frank Miller’s grotesquely evil paean to Spartan “virtues” in an article that showed how vastly more effective the Athenians were in every field of life, including war.  But above all, how deceitful Miller and his colleagues were in their trumped up propaganda against democratic values.

There I called for a movie about the Athenian admiral Themistocles, who succeeded in every way that Leonidas failed... so imagine my mixed feelings when Director Zack Snyder delivered that very story! Only warped by Miller’s uniquely anti-truth and anti-democratic sentimentality. This, too, I dissected.

But have a look at the new comic. I think you’ll enjoy the refreshing chance to actually see the real story, and how vastly more dramatic and compelling history is… than lies..

== Political manias ==

In the Guardian, an article by one Sam Thielman proves that insipid political mania is ecumenical.  While today’s entire American right wing appears to have gone loco, there certainly are substantial islands of left-wing mania, as well.  

The article on white supremacists is actually very interesting, portraying a neo-Nazi polemicist -- right-wing sci fi author Harold Covington, whose attempts at promulgating incitement novels – fomenting white power revolution – were cited by the Charlseton church shooter, Dylann Roof. As happened in the last century, when Timothy McVeigh cited “The Turner Diaries,” it is only by association with lunatic murderers that such execrably-written trash ever gets attention beyond a small circle of the mentally ill.  A process that Norman Spinrad brilliantly satirized in his novel, The Iron Dream.

So why am I aiming some of my own ire toward Mr. Thielman, if I agree with almost everything he says about such tripe-spinners?  Well, the following should give you a hint:

“Covington, the latest in a long line of rightwing sci-fi writers…”  and “American science fiction has long had a rightward tilt, from the contemporary strain of small-press sci-fi Tea Party fantasias swarming the Hugo Awards nominations all the way back to libertarian deity Ayn Rand.” 

Alas, this author knows very little of the field. No genre of literature ever did more to question ancient prejudices and pave the mental path for progress than Science Fiction. Let tho be a lesson, then.  You can agree with one thing a person says… while also avowing that he/she is -- in other ways -- an ignoramus.