Tag Archives: Ukraine

Culture, History, radicalism

Will Donald Trump commit political suicide?

Donald Trump is way ahead of Joe Biden in the race for the next President of America. Biden shows signs of the onset of dementia, but I don’t think it’s as bad as it looks. Elderly people’s cognitive powers slow, but their conceptual powers do not necessarily go with it. I’ve heard Biden speak sensibly about difficult political matters.

No, the real reason Trump is so far ahead of Biden is his connection with the concerns of ordinary Americans who are forced to observe the gradual destruction of the nation’s foundational principles. Trumps’s rhetoric is often rough, abusive and sometimes incoherent.

But the ordinary American can see past these faults to what he thinks about America’s problems and how he proposes to fix them.

Trump understands ordinary Americans and they understand him. The woke elite look on this with incomprehension, dismissing Trump supporters as an ignorant ‘far-right’ rabble. The more they do this, the stronger Trump will hold his constituency.

Trump, however, has an Achilles heel and if he doesn’t do anything about it, I predict he will lose the election to Biden or whoever may replace Biden. The Achilles heel is his attitude to Putin and the war in Ukraine.

It is dismaying to see so many conservatives swallow the narrative that Nato and the West are responsible for the war in Ukraine. They allegedly pushed Putin into a corner where this (alleged) defender of traditional values and Christianity had to come out fighting.

This is utterly delusional.

The cold hard facts about Putin’s idea of Russia’s history and its destiny, his scheming from the moment of the fall of the Soviet Empire, and his barbaric ‘special operation’ in Ukraine where civilians and fundamental infrastructure are targeted, show that Putin can justifiably be compared to Hitler.

Trump should be warned: many of his constituents who understand him also see the real Putin and his objectives. Everything Putin says and does points to his unrelenting efforts to establish a renewed Russian Empire. Their fear of this maniacal dictator will overcome their support for Trump – if he sticks to the false narrative. They will turn their support to whoever stands up to Russia’s delusional megalomaniac.

The video below is from one the best commentators on the war in Ukraine and Putin’s objectives.

Culture, Politics, radicalism

Russia’s elite – barbarians, liars and psychopaths

Over the years Vladimir Putin managed to fabricate an image of himself as a rational statesman with understandable grievances about security. He had nothing more in mind than to protect Russia, its history, and its culture – an unexceptionable conservative project. There was also the impression that he took action to prevent the cancerous disease of wokeness from entering Russia. In this way, he managed to gain sympathy from conservatives in the West.

I was among them. I was even ready to believe that the assassinations of Russians in the West were the work of rogue elements in the military or the FSB (The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation). But is was all a sham – all a carefully planned fabrication.

The unfolding of the brutal obscene invasion of Ukraine has taken the curtain away from the psychopathic Kremlin clique running the invasion at the head of which is dictator Putin. Nothing will stand in the way of Putin’s agenda.

People in foreign lands are assassinated without a jot of regard for the laws of the country. Countries are invaded without the slightest regard for its citizens or its infrastructure. People and buildings are pulverized. Drunken uncontrolled soldiers rape women after shooting dead their husbands or boyfriends. Clearly some of the actions of the Russians in Ukraine are war crimes. The world has become ill at the barbarism of the Russians in Ukraine.

The comparison of Putin with Hitler is not far fetched. You see the same characteristics: a manic nationalism, Slavic superiority, counting one section of humanity as beneath contempt- Putin names Anglo-Saxons – and the preparedness to exterminate the perceived enemy. The world must not let this new Hitler get away with it. It must slowly squeeze Putin to death.

But it’s not just people in the West revolted by Russia’s barbarism. There is evidence of spreading disgust among a great part of the Russian population, despite the frantic propaganda by Putin and his clique to fool ordinary people.

Culture, History, Left, Political

Vladimir Putin – a vandal and barbarian after all

Vladimir Putin had reasonable issues regarding Russia’s security – the same America had at the time of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. John Mearsheimer, to whom I referred in previous comments, outlined a background – NATO’s eastward movement – for Putin’s concerns about security in his video, Why is Ukraine the West’s Fault? I found his case compelling.

A second reason I had sympathy for Putin’s position was his projection of a Burkean conservatism in speeches that invoked Russia’s rich history, traditions and culture. But the idea that Putin espoused a Burkean conservatism was a chimera – a chimera destroyed by a brutal invasion that has since degenerated into barbarism and vandalism.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine shows he cannot be trusted and that his nationalism is similar to that of Hitler’s or Mussolini’s, both driven by a warped vision of their history. Their form of nationalism must destroy the sympathy of those who think history, tradition, and custom, circumscribed by the natural law, are of fundamental importance to a healthy nation. Nothing can excuse the indiscriminate pulverising of Ukraine’s cities.

The best outcome now for Putin is a Pyrrhic victory, the worst, total defeat. One must have not only sympathy for the people of Ukraine, but also for the Russian people, most of whom clearly did not want a war with the people of Ukraine and who regard the Ukrainians as brothers and sisters.

Culture, History, Left, Media, Politics

Hyping for a needless war

The numskulls in NATO and the US keep at it

It’s embarrassing to listen to the puerile belligerence of NATO and the US. The clear impression is that the Americans are angling for a war with their constant repetition of the ‘threat of a Russian invasion’ of Ukraine.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is furiously pounding the biggest drums of war in decades. He’s like a gang leader daring his adolescent enemies to take him on. All the while Russia is saying that they have no intention of invading Ukraine. It’s just a lot of hysteria on the part of American and its European allies. All Russia wants is her security guaranteed by not having NATO and US missiles placed on their borders.

What part of the Monroe doctrine do the Americans not understand? What part of the Kennedy Cuban principle don’t they understand? I remember the Cuban missile crisis as if it was yesterday. Kennedy was prepared to go to war over the Soviet placement of missiles on Cuban territory. The world shuddered and then breathed a sigh of relief when Krushchev turned the ships around. Why not the same application for Russia with missiles able to reach Moscow within minutes from Ukraine?

And do Biden and the other numskulls in the EU think they will solve anything by threatening to crush Russia? Have they not heard that pushed into corner that threatens their very being, a country will come out all guns blazing? One despairs over the West. Have Edmund Burke and his principle of prudence been completely forgotten? Indeed, Putin sounds more Burkean with his talk about the prescriptive nature of custom and tradition, the balance of power, and historical antecedence.

I provided a link to Professor John Mearsheimer’s analysis of the Ukraine problem Why is Ukraine the West’s Fault? in previous posts. It has had nearly two million views on youtube. Yet I hear nobody – not in Australia or overseas – answer the details of Mearsheimer’s case against the West. The news reporting is particularly ignorant and superficial in Australia. It’s as if the reporting on Russia and Ukraine has been handed to cub reporters who can do nothing but reel off the narrative of the Cold War years.

If Russia does end up invading Ukraine they must know they will look like people nobody could trust, but their case will remain valid. On the other hand, I wonder what the response will be if Russia does not invade Ukraine. The conclusions will be more devastating for the US and NATO – that they are a bunch of clowns who don’t know what they are doing.

NOTE: I posted most of the above in the comments section of an article on the ‘Russian threat’ in the Australian newspaper. I ended the comment with, ‘Now print this if you dare.’ The comments editor didn’t dare. He (or was it a she?) knocked it back, as is usually the case with my comments. My comments stray too far from the Australian‘s allowable range.

History, Law, Politics

Who is establishing a pretext – Putin or Biden?

One rule for all

The Biden administration claims without any hard evidence that Russia is seeking a pretext to invade Ukraine. Why not the other way around? Biden could just as easily be establishing a pretext for NATO to go to the help of Ukraine. One should not automatically swallow the claims of Biden’s girls and boys.

Russia’s insistence that the US and NATO not expand into territories which have been traditionally in their sphere of influence is reasonable and justified. If the US can create a Cuba principle and a Monroe doctrine, why cannot Russia create the equivalent? The threat of a senseless war which will reverberate worldwide is on present evidence coming from the Biden Oval Office.  

History, Political, Politics

Is Russia the baddie?

Has power-hungry Putin fixed his lustful eyes on Ukraine?

Commentary in Australia says ‘yes’. Vladimir Putin is just another Russian dictator about to crush a weak defenceless country – a country without the protection of the US and NATO. But this a stereotypical unresearched (even self-serving) view of President Putin. There is far more to the story and it could be the US and NATO who are at fault.

Professor John Mearsheimer provides a compelling case that the West is responsible for the explosive situation on Ukraine’s border in his hour-length video, Why Ukriaine is the West’s fault. If one wants to stick to the case that Russia and Putin are showing their characteristic lust for power, one has to answer the extensive detail in Mearsheimer’s case.

I have been taking an increasing interest in Russia and Vladimir Putin since the Oliver Stone interviews in 2017. Until then I thought of Putin and Russia in the way most in the West think – a communist dictator in a different dress, the Soviet Union in a different uniform. The interviews changed my mind, as they must have with many people in the West who saw them.

First, Putin was open, candid, and endeavoured to give straight answers all to Stone’s questions. Second, and this is what impressed me most, he argued with much verifiable evidence that the West had gone back on promises made to Russia. If Putin was right, then the West was playing a dirty game of shameless lies and deceit.

What? I thought. It’s the communists who are the liars, not us. We’re pure, innocent, keep to our undertakings. No, in this case, if Putin is right (and it’s easily verified), it’s the West who fits the image we have had of the communists.

Since the interviews I have been following developments and viewing the many youtube videos on Russian history and culture. Particularly informative are the Russian vloggers who give a fascinating look at ordinary Russians and Russian culture. As regards Professor Mearsheimer’s presentation, he has merely confirmed and filled out my own conclusions about the Ukraine problem.

The US and NATO are the problem and as of today, it looks they are prepared to unleash a senseless war which nobody wants.