The sad, tragic, depraved Russian invasion of Ukraine can have only one result: a claimed victory by Russia. It is hard to see something otherwise. The Russian advantage in hardware is overwhelming. Their talks are just that. Along with the attempt at deception with the 'withdrawal' of their troops, they want to create the impression that peace is important to them. It is, but just the way they want it.
If the goal is to take over Ukrainian government buildings in Kyiv and replace Vladimir Zelenskyy, alive or not, with a puppet ruler, that will get accomplished. The only question is how bad Russia will look when it's all over. So far, it's pretty bad. Russia's getting shunned on a worldwide scale, at the U.N., in athletic competitions, in international banking, by banning flights from it. Even the Swiss, who stay the heck out of everything, are now in on the back turning. There will be no safe haven for Russian money there. Either.
Vladimir Putin, one of the all-time great villains of history now, expected in his fairly vacant mind that the Ukrainians either wouldn't put up much resistance or it would be token and inconsequential. As self-indulged as he is, he apparently couldn't surmise that nationalism holds true for all who live under their own flags, most of whom have ancestors who shared the same soil.
That the Ukrainians are fairly outgunned by an awful lot, and not likely to get nearly enough to provide lasting resistance, is irrelevant. The Russians will pay a significant price for the invasion on which they have embarked. They have been branded as outlaws, and that brand will not easily be washed away.
Putin is a disgusting bag of garbage who has vastly underestimated both his conjured enemy's willingness to fight back and also, it would seem, the willingness of at least some of his own troops to engage in a clear and unmistakeable international crime mission. But someone else called him a genius.
That someone is also a disgusting bag of garbage, and has a cultish following here. Like Putin, he respects the display of strength, not real strength itself, which would take effort and consistency. All he can do is talk, which is all he did while he was our ridiculous, incompetent president.
Not only isn't there a damn thing he would do, not a finger he would lift, to assist the Ukrainians, but he's also called Putin a "genius." As things get messier there, Democrats would be well-advised to keep that comment in the front of people's minds, as in: What kind of a genius does he look like now?
It's becoming clearer to a slowly developing group of honest-to-goodness thinkers in the Republican Party that this pestilence, worse in its way than Covid, is leading them down the road to self-destruction. Meanwhile, some of the evangelicals honestly believe that Putin is developing the backdrop to End Times, in which we all perish and meet our maker all at once. Never mind climate change; let's do this right now and move up the meeting date.
That is beyond crazy. That is mental illness masquerading as devotion. It's the same thinking which postulates that ex-'s power is dictated by the almighty in the Bible. It's salve for those who don't wish to think critically.
Republicans of decent rationality know, they know, that faced with this sham, they have to (as we say in Wisconsin) 'go up' with the bar dice cup. These poor folk would never win in liars' dice.
But they keep shaking the cup, hoping for a better result. It isn't there. Putin has no redeeming values. He is a megalomaniac bent on gobbling up everything in his way. So is ex-.
We are slowly emerging from a Covid nightmare. Yes, inflation is a problem, and President Biden addressed that in his State of the Union address last night. When supply lines are freed up, things get to market faster and prices stabilize (gas is another issue, since everybody's shut down Russia's supply). He still believes this is temporary. He'd better be right.
Without that issue, all the Republicans have to go on is the concoction of weakness from a weak man. Someone must use decent logic and reject the rantings of the idiot they once supported for four years. The simple repetition of the nonsense begins to make less and less sense as we go. Despite his insistence, the world moves forward.
This is a terrific opportunity for someone in the Republican Party to mount a counter-organizing effort. Nobody's saying they have to become Democrats. But someone must be seeing that, with time crawling forward, the kind of world that ex- insists upon isn't happening, indeed can't happen. It's ridiculous to believe that some of them aren't thinking that. But they must have a place to land. It must be sound, and it must be re-electable.
They can look at the present day in two ways: The last gasp of faulty, paranoid thinking, and the last chance to establish an authoritarian regime, or a chance to push away from it and conduct business the way it should be conducted--with sometimes ferocious verbal combat, but with no deals that are non-starters from the word go.
If no one steps forward, we might get a repeat of the nightmare starting in January 2017. Mere nodding in the direction of democracy won't do it; that's why several states have already tried to fix the next election. That's the catch-all of people who know their ideas will fail. They don't wish to preserve democracy. They know democracy will turn on them. Their ideas are dying, but they'll grab the side of the rowboat and tip the rest of us into the water if they have to.
The door is closing on any notion that the Republican Party can separate itself from its incompetent monster. Someone with organizational courage must step forward, come what may. I'm not sure anybody will, but anyone who's looking can see that we are at that inflection point.
Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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