I am always heartened when apparently left leaning thinkers recognize how authoritarian the left has become, because for me it is one of the most shocking and massive shifts in American politics in my lifetime. I am shocked to find that groups which I always supported since they seemed to be fighting against an unjust establishment, hav…
I am always heartened when apparently left leaning thinkers recognize how authoritarian the left has become, because for me it is one of the most shocking and massive shifts in American politics in my lifetime. I am shocked to find that groups which I always supported since they seemed to be fighting against an unjust establishment, have now morphed into enforcers for that same establishment---the cheerleader for the sabotage Trump movement literally engineered by the intelligence community, which leftists always DIStrusted, being the most obvious and insane manifestation of the newly developped bankruptcy of the left. But what is missing, in this discussion, is what to DO about this reorientation. Even those leftists who recognize this reorientation seem unable to change THEIR orientation and perhaps...ADMIRE the fact that President Trump wound down the butchery in TWO longstanding wars, strolled in the demilitarized zone with the intractable leader of North Korea, cancelled and renegotiated the disastrous trade treaties which Bernie Sanders railed against in 2016 and promised to cancel and renegotiate, produced the lowest unemployment in HISTORY for various minorities and women. I mean, for chrissake, how much does a populist have to do before you stop HATING him and have the decency to PRAISE his accomplishments. And even those who supposedly reject the stalinistic turn the left has taken, like a Glenn Greenwald, and like the Tara and Andrew Potter, lack the decency to praise Donald Trump's accomplishments. Until they do, there will remain an unreality about their thinking. If you can praise obvious accomplishments, then you're reaction to events is...quite simply...warped.
As in, perhaps, the insane western media reaction to Russia finally taking their own measures after 15 years of pleading with western leaders of all stripes to stop the insanity of using NATO as a cudgel to bring them to heel. And 8 years of having to watch and try to bring a halt through endless, futile negotiation to the constant bombardment and killings by the Nazi backed Ukraine government of their Russian descendant citizens in The Donbass.
Well, I'm afraid I don't exactly share your point of view. There was conflict in the Donbass because Russian backed separatists were trying to secede from Ukraine! The Russians have not at all been angels in this scenario. Moreover, do you not see that Russian intervening in Ukraine, to protect ethnic Russian separatists in the Donbass, is a move straight out of Hitler's playbook with Czechoslovakia in the late 1930s, when Germany backed the ethnic German separatists in the Sudetenland, and then move into to occupy it and dismember Czechoslovakia into a rump state in order to "protect" the ethnic German separatists whom the Germans had encouraged???? Yes, American intelligence agencies engaged in brinksmanship which led to the current situation, and yes the Obama/Biden administrations engaged in hopeless corruption in Ukraine, not just through Joe, but Hunter, and then John Kerry's son, and others. But in the final analysis, of COURSE the Ukrainian government was going to try to use force to stop the separatists in the Donbass from leaving---just as much as the Czechs would do to keep the Sudetenland and the northern states in the U.S. did during the civil war. You cannot blame them for doing so, or excuse Russia from stirring up the separatist troubles. I'd say there is plenty of blame to go around. But the bottom line is that the Ukrainian government's attempts to put down an internal rebellion did not constitute a threat to international peace. The Russian wholesale invasion of Ukraine DOES constitute a massive breach of international peace, such as Europe has not really seen on its lands since, well, since Hitler marched soldiers into Sudetenland to protect the poor ethnic Germans there whom he had egged on to engage in separatist activities. That cannot stand. You cannot forbid a country from putting down an internal rebellion. But you can, and should, forbid a country from INVADING another country on the grounds of the longstanding pretext of protecting a common "ethnic" minority. You do that, and boundary lines all across central Europe are in trouble... It threatens massive destabilization.
You go to great lengths to compare the actions of Russia in this instance to the history of Nazi Germany, and then go on to justify the atrocious actions of the Nazi backed, illegitimate Ukraine government against a huge swath of their own peoples as being quite in order. Amazing. For 8 long years the "breakaway republics" endured devastating bombardments even after their government entered into an agreement to work with those republics to develop a constitution that recognized them as autonomous regions. An agreement ratified by the UN Security Council, no less. The ink was not even dry when the agreement became dust in the wind because the Nazi descendants wouldn't stand for it. If western nations wouldn't protect them even with UN backing, then whom? This is, and has been a matter that sane governments could have addressed years ago had they even deigned to listen to the Russians. But because they are Russians, to hell with their internal security concerns. Ukraine is not self-governing nor has it been since 1990. It has been a USA/NATO/EU lacky since gaining "independence" and as such a serious threat to Russian internal security. A fact stamped in stone with the 2014 coup.
Well, I described the parallel between Germany/Sudetenland and Russia/Donbass in detail because the comparison IS detailed. A larger country encouraging people belonging to its ethnic group to revolt against the government of a smaller country. These are just historic facts. Nor is it amazing that the Ukraine government (regardless of whether YOU consider it illegitimate) fights to maintain its own territorial integrity. If the Czechs had been able to hold onto the Sudetenland in 1938, and Neville Chamberlain et al. had not acquiesced, the conflict with Nazi Germany might have developped very differently. I do not share your penchant for calling people Nazis, other than the actual Nazis who ruled Germany many decades ago. And I think you are just obviously flat out wrong when you say that Ukraine has been a USA/NATO/EU lacky [sic] since 1990. That's just demonstrably not true. Indeed, up until the Orange Revolution in the early 2000s, the Ukrainian government was very heavily influenced by Russian interests. And then some years after the Orange Revolution, pro-Russian political forces once again retook control of the national government. And then control shifted again towards Western countries with the Maidan revolt of 2014. So, you're talking through your hat when you reduce the history of the conflict between the West and Russia for influence over the Ukraine to the false statement that every Ukraine government since 1990 has been a lackey [correct spelling here] to the West. You have some interesting points to make about the failure of the parties to follow up on an agreement to provide for more autonomy for the Donbass, but no doubt shifting allegiance from Russia to the West of successive Ukrainian governments, as well as violence on the part of Russian separatists, may well have played a role in these difficulties. All in all, I don't think your brand of vilifying Ukraine, while it may satisfy your apparent desire to indulge in purple rhetoric, captures the complexity of Ukrainian history...
The complex history of Ukraine is merely another exploitive portfolio of the American State Department. Such was to have been the fate of Russia beyond Yeltsin had the little known V. Putin not been thrust into the breech. Ukraine will always be the useful idiot to western governments as long as the lunatic Nazi fringe are encouraged and financed by them. As it is they must be really pissed at losing the massive economic potential of the eastern oblasts. Karma can be a bitch. In any event, thank you for the rose colored glasses view of events in Ukraine over the past 8 1/2 years. Now where is file 9?
I'm not sure the people at large are as cowed by the mainstream media's hate propaganda against Trump as leftists and the media would have you believe. After all, Trump increased his voter support from about 60 million votes to about 74 million votes from 2016 to 2020, which shows an incredibly popular presidency. But the left and the liberals have been completely coopted from their former default position of distrusting the national security apparatus, opposing restrictions of free speech, and opposing regime change wars...by a combination of two things. First, the hate Trump mania just spread like wildfire among the left and the liberals. They have just engaged in an orgy of hating---perhaps because their political philosophy on the surface forbids hating anybody, so they have all this repressed ill will and no one to pin it on---until Trump pops up. Here, you wanna hate, knock yourself out, and you can do it in the name of opposing hatred!!! hahaha. Second, the establishment has bought off the left with the talismans of Critical Race Theory and Queery Theory. Mesmerized by these almost entirely useless sociological analyses, the left and the liberals have dropped any and all opposition to the establishment and the national security apparatus. I mean, they literally abandonned their traditional identity, in return for getting a chance to engage in mass hatred of Trump and in truly vapid sociological crusades which lionize a small fraction of the population while everybody else gets screwed. It's sad. It's perverse. And only a few on the left (like Greenwald or Jimmy Dore) manage not to drink the establishment's koolaid...
I am always heartened when apparently left leaning thinkers recognize how authoritarian the left has become, because for me it is one of the most shocking and massive shifts in American politics in my lifetime. I am shocked to find that groups which I always supported since they seemed to be fighting against an unjust establishment, have now morphed into enforcers for that same establishment---the cheerleader for the sabotage Trump movement literally engineered by the intelligence community, which leftists always DIStrusted, being the most obvious and insane manifestation of the newly developped bankruptcy of the left. But what is missing, in this discussion, is what to DO about this reorientation. Even those leftists who recognize this reorientation seem unable to change THEIR orientation and perhaps...ADMIRE the fact that President Trump wound down the butchery in TWO longstanding wars, strolled in the demilitarized zone with the intractable leader of North Korea, cancelled and renegotiated the disastrous trade treaties which Bernie Sanders railed against in 2016 and promised to cancel and renegotiate, produced the lowest unemployment in HISTORY for various minorities and women. I mean, for chrissake, how much does a populist have to do before you stop HATING him and have the decency to PRAISE his accomplishments. And even those who supposedly reject the stalinistic turn the left has taken, like a Glenn Greenwald, and like the Tara and Andrew Potter, lack the decency to praise Donald Trump's accomplishments. Until they do, there will remain an unreality about their thinking. If you can praise obvious accomplishments, then you're reaction to events is...quite simply...warped.
As in, perhaps, the insane western media reaction to Russia finally taking their own measures after 15 years of pleading with western leaders of all stripes to stop the insanity of using NATO as a cudgel to bring them to heel. And 8 years of having to watch and try to bring a halt through endless, futile negotiation to the constant bombardment and killings by the Nazi backed Ukraine government of their Russian descendant citizens in The Donbass.
Well, I'm afraid I don't exactly share your point of view. There was conflict in the Donbass because Russian backed separatists were trying to secede from Ukraine! The Russians have not at all been angels in this scenario. Moreover, do you not see that Russian intervening in Ukraine, to protect ethnic Russian separatists in the Donbass, is a move straight out of Hitler's playbook with Czechoslovakia in the late 1930s, when Germany backed the ethnic German separatists in the Sudetenland, and then move into to occupy it and dismember Czechoslovakia into a rump state in order to "protect" the ethnic German separatists whom the Germans had encouraged???? Yes, American intelligence agencies engaged in brinksmanship which led to the current situation, and yes the Obama/Biden administrations engaged in hopeless corruption in Ukraine, not just through Joe, but Hunter, and then John Kerry's son, and others. But in the final analysis, of COURSE the Ukrainian government was going to try to use force to stop the separatists in the Donbass from leaving---just as much as the Czechs would do to keep the Sudetenland and the northern states in the U.S. did during the civil war. You cannot blame them for doing so, or excuse Russia from stirring up the separatist troubles. I'd say there is plenty of blame to go around. But the bottom line is that the Ukrainian government's attempts to put down an internal rebellion did not constitute a threat to international peace. The Russian wholesale invasion of Ukraine DOES constitute a massive breach of international peace, such as Europe has not really seen on its lands since, well, since Hitler marched soldiers into Sudetenland to protect the poor ethnic Germans there whom he had egged on to engage in separatist activities. That cannot stand. You cannot forbid a country from putting down an internal rebellion. But you can, and should, forbid a country from INVADING another country on the grounds of the longstanding pretext of protecting a common "ethnic" minority. You do that, and boundary lines all across central Europe are in trouble... It threatens massive destabilization.
You go to great lengths to compare the actions of Russia in this instance to the history of Nazi Germany, and then go on to justify the atrocious actions of the Nazi backed, illegitimate Ukraine government against a huge swath of their own peoples as being quite in order. Amazing. For 8 long years the "breakaway republics" endured devastating bombardments even after their government entered into an agreement to work with those republics to develop a constitution that recognized them as autonomous regions. An agreement ratified by the UN Security Council, no less. The ink was not even dry when the agreement became dust in the wind because the Nazi descendants wouldn't stand for it. If western nations wouldn't protect them even with UN backing, then whom? This is, and has been a matter that sane governments could have addressed years ago had they even deigned to listen to the Russians. But because they are Russians, to hell with their internal security concerns. Ukraine is not self-governing nor has it been since 1990. It has been a USA/NATO/EU lacky since gaining "independence" and as such a serious threat to Russian internal security. A fact stamped in stone with the 2014 coup.
Well, I described the parallel between Germany/Sudetenland and Russia/Donbass in detail because the comparison IS detailed. A larger country encouraging people belonging to its ethnic group to revolt against the government of a smaller country. These are just historic facts. Nor is it amazing that the Ukraine government (regardless of whether YOU consider it illegitimate) fights to maintain its own territorial integrity. If the Czechs had been able to hold onto the Sudetenland in 1938, and Neville Chamberlain et al. had not acquiesced, the conflict with Nazi Germany might have developped very differently. I do not share your penchant for calling people Nazis, other than the actual Nazis who ruled Germany many decades ago. And I think you are just obviously flat out wrong when you say that Ukraine has been a USA/NATO/EU lacky [sic] since 1990. That's just demonstrably not true. Indeed, up until the Orange Revolution in the early 2000s, the Ukrainian government was very heavily influenced by Russian interests. And then some years after the Orange Revolution, pro-Russian political forces once again retook control of the national government. And then control shifted again towards Western countries with the Maidan revolt of 2014. So, you're talking through your hat when you reduce the history of the conflict between the West and Russia for influence over the Ukraine to the false statement that every Ukraine government since 1990 has been a lackey [correct spelling here] to the West. You have some interesting points to make about the failure of the parties to follow up on an agreement to provide for more autonomy for the Donbass, but no doubt shifting allegiance from Russia to the West of successive Ukrainian governments, as well as violence on the part of Russian separatists, may well have played a role in these difficulties. All in all, I don't think your brand of vilifying Ukraine, while it may satisfy your apparent desire to indulge in purple rhetoric, captures the complexity of Ukrainian history...
The complex history of Ukraine is merely another exploitive portfolio of the American State Department. Such was to have been the fate of Russia beyond Yeltsin had the little known V. Putin not been thrust into the breech. Ukraine will always be the useful idiot to western governments as long as the lunatic Nazi fringe are encouraged and financed by them. As it is they must be really pissed at losing the massive economic potential of the eastern oblasts. Karma can be a bitch. In any event, thank you for the rose colored glasses view of events in Ukraine over the past 8 1/2 years. Now where is file 9?
Bill, please point to examples (include references in popular media) that support the notion that Ukraine is "Nazi-backed." Otherwise, STFU.
I'm not sure the people at large are as cowed by the mainstream media's hate propaganda against Trump as leftists and the media would have you believe. After all, Trump increased his voter support from about 60 million votes to about 74 million votes from 2016 to 2020, which shows an incredibly popular presidency. But the left and the liberals have been completely coopted from their former default position of distrusting the national security apparatus, opposing restrictions of free speech, and opposing regime change wars...by a combination of two things. First, the hate Trump mania just spread like wildfire among the left and the liberals. They have just engaged in an orgy of hating---perhaps because their political philosophy on the surface forbids hating anybody, so they have all this repressed ill will and no one to pin it on---until Trump pops up. Here, you wanna hate, knock yourself out, and you can do it in the name of opposing hatred!!! hahaha. Second, the establishment has bought off the left with the talismans of Critical Race Theory and Queery Theory. Mesmerized by these almost entirely useless sociological analyses, the left and the liberals have dropped any and all opposition to the establishment and the national security apparatus. I mean, they literally abandonned their traditional identity, in return for getting a chance to engage in mass hatred of Trump and in truly vapid sociological crusades which lionize a small fraction of the population while everybody else gets screwed. It's sad. It's perverse. And only a few on the left (like Greenwald or Jimmy Dore) manage not to drink the establishment's koolaid...