I warned everyone years ago that if the Republican party managed to get the upper hand and get their guy into the White House, even for the one term in which that was achieved, they would stack and pack the judicial system, right up to the highest court in the land, with radical conservatives who would give the judicial activism they lambasted for years a real run for the money.
With women’s rights now on the cutting block in the Supreme Court and in states all over the country, it should be sinking in with voters what a right wing court system can do. This could only be the beginning. Numerous states are passing laws severely restricting abortion rights, they’re cooking up numerous arguments, with every logical fallacy in the book, that Roe v. Wade is somehow not a guarantor of reproductive rights.
Stare decisis is shredded. Transparency is shredded. They’re launching their right wing reign of terror on the country and wanted to do it in complete secrecy. Conservatives all over the country wish that the leaker be punished, as they wanted the plan to move forward without a hitch.
Today it’s reproductive rights, tomorrow, who knows? Maybe you get De Santis 2.0 that decides a state somehow has the right to restrict interracial marriage. Or pass ever more draconian ‘tough on crime’ laws that give pretext for police forces to further run roughshod on poor, black urban communities. These are all things the right likes because despite their claim that they’re against big government, the GOP and its constituents have a deep and dark history of using the government to suppress, silence, and subjugate their enemies, that is, anyone who doesn’t fit into their little conservative bubble.
So my question is, what the hell is ‘states’ rights’ for? Because the right wing has used states’ rights to trample on the rights of every group not in their pre-approved list of acceptables. It’s been used to justify everything from segregation to the execution of juveniles. Whose rights are protected when right wing governors act as dictators?
3D Render of a Straight Pin at the Position of the City of Mariupol on a Map of Ukraine. Vintage Color Style. Very high resolution available!
Like Sevastopol, in Crimea, Mariupol’ is/was one of those picturesque postcard model cities near the water, with a great latitude that makes for relatively moderated weather and climate, sprawling, stony architecture with a mix of neoclassical and Romanesque architecture…and then of course, the most dangerous of attributes, a significant port location leading Putin to believe its his to take.
Part of eastern Ukraine, it lies in the Donbas region, the ‘contested’ part of country. Remember, it’s the part of the country that Putin and his propagandists, from their state media on down to the little bloggers and vloggers stateside who’ve been turned via their being plugged in to Trumpism, that this “special military operation” is supposedly all about.
Unlike Crimea, however, Mariupol’ did not remain under the influence of Putin in 2014, nor did it fall into the hands of the separatists who lead LPR or the DPR. This is what has lead up to where the city is today, “completely destroyed”, according to Zelenskkyy(1), one month and a half after Russian forces launched their initial assault on the city. Over and over again, one hears and reads, Putin’s fan club laud the invading forces’ supposed precision and commitment to humanitarianism, despite the systematic cutting off of essential resources to the city, not to mention blockading the escape of civilians, which really shows us the Russian forces really haven’t evolved passed the tactics employed in Chechnya, Georgia or even Afghanistan.
I had, in the early days of the invasion, seen people on the internet alleging that the footage of the chaos and destruction had been recycled from other places, such as Syria. It also didn’t help that some video clips from explosions elsewhere were passed off as having taken place in Ukraine, or that footage from Euromaidan were falsely described as being from 2022. It has nonetheless, become painfully apparent that there are no need for fakes if one is trying to get the point across that once beautiful cities all over the country are now in ruins, not when even pro-Russian videos make little effort to hide the extent of the damage. Having been completely misinformed (and disinforming) on COVID, it’s amazing to me the extent to which the conspiracy theory right never have to face ridicule, let alone answer for, being wrong on almost everything else they speculate is fake.
That brings me to the point I would like to make regarding the siege: Interpretation is a reflection of ideology, and ideology depends on how you’ve interpreted previous information.
What do I mean by this? Well, for starters, Putin’s sympathizers, and in the West, they include this bizarre unholy alliance of authoritarian right wing nationalists (most call themselves civic nationalists; most are the sort that hope for a Trump 2024 comeback special), tankies, and a few so called libertarians for some reason I’ve yet to figure out, are more likely to believe Russia’s military setbacks are overstated, that the collateral damage from their attacks are understated, and/or that Putin can somehow be trusted when he claims he launched this invasion for the purpose of “liberating” anyone.
That may seem strange to a Westerner who is not sympathetic to Russia’s objectives or intentions, or someone who is at the very least as horrified as anyone should be at the extent to which civilian casualties have been heartbreaking and horrifying in Mariupol. The actions taken by Russia’s military in Putin’s war are taken as atrocities by most reading this, but there are many others who either dismiss the existing information on the siege as either propaganda or are cold enough to write horrors off as inevitable costs of waging war, despite that to take such a position, one cannot claim to be on the defensive and has no moral leg to stand on.
If that sounds difficult to believe, keep in mind that Mystyslav Chernov reported being told by Ukrainian soldiers on his exit that the Russians had been seeking to reach him first, with the intention of coercing him to declare his coverage of the city as fake. If questioning the authenticity of coverage is the goal, than it’s not hard to assume it’s probably reflected in the opinions of Putin’s sympathizers.
Hmmm… denouncing information that makes your position look bad as “fake news”, where have we heard that one before?
Shifting of geopolitical power, as well as profits for the weapons industry. Other than that, I’ve said before that war is not in the best interests of anyone else on the planet, even the profiteers in the long run, because with the ongoing pandemic and the encroaching effects of climate change, what good are profits when you don’t have a planet to use them on?
That’s at least my take on it.
And make no mistake, this isn’t just about Ukraine & Russia. Ukraine just had the misfortune, as it has had in the past, of being the focus of this never ending proxy war between east and west. It was a flashpoint during WWII and the Cold War years; it’s a flashpoint now. It’s precisely why we should not only pray for the people of Ukraine, but create, by collective multilateral action, the frameworks that would enable the nation not to have to live under Russia’s shadow. It should go without saying that Ukraine should not have to make alliance decisions based on threats by Putin. Assuming it’s not now far too late to consider these metrics.
That brings me to the subject of nuclear deterrence. If you’re reading this, you’re likely familiar with the MAD (mutually assured destruction) doctrine, holding that if both sides hang the threat of annihilation over each other, knowing what happened in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, nobody gets hurt. It worked to some extent, especially for nuclear powers. The proxy wars tore the weaker countries apart during the Cold War years, but that’s for another post. We’ve at least not yet had a WWIII because the West & the USSR saw their nukes as the go to of last resort, should an existential threat be posed or perceived.
Proponents hold this as the doctrine’s success. My feelings on the matter have always been mixed. Some of the arguments against nuclear deterrence include:
Misunderstandings, miscommunications, and miscalculations can bring the whole house of cards down. There are numerous instances in which the whole world came dangerously close to seeing the full blown launch of ICBM’s over such miscalculations. All it would have taken would have been a trigger happy madman to hit that button with decisive resolve.
We just assume we don’t have madmen in charge of the world, even though we have one leading the Eurasian power of the world right now, who launched an unprovoked invasion and has access to the codes of the biggest nuclear stockpile. And I recall last year, a story which appears to have vanished into thin air in which Putin had hinted as resigning some time in the near future due to health reasons. This of course was reversed when he changed the laws in Russia that would enable him to stay in office as long as 2036, at least. But it still brings forward the burning question, might Putin be in ill health? How ill? Is Putin dying? I have to say, we have a lot more to fear if he is. A madman who may be nearing the end of his life and believes Russia to be under existential threat sounds like a man who will put his finger on those buttons.
Once it starts, there’s no stopping it. If ICBM’s get launched at New York and London, the West launches at Moscow, China gets involved, India gets involved, you get the idea. It’s like everyone has their guns loaded and pointed at everyone else. We’re talking about the planet going BOOM. And as many say, if you don’t end up in the immediate blast radius, you will wish you were, should you wind up in the periphery. Americans in particular don’t understand this because they’ve not read detailed accounts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki outside of the central blast zones. It’s unspeakable. It’s real. It’s like hellfire unleashed. And it’s staggering how many Americans feel like the Japanese just deserved it, even though the civilian casualties were very high.
Those are a couple of the arguments against nuclear deterrence. They’ve played a significant role in facilitating nuclear disarmament efforts all over the world, with South Africa being an example of a nuclear power that dismantled their weapons.
In the case of Ukraine, long story short, the country was persuaded in the immediate epilogue of the Cold War and dissolution of the Soviet Union to give up its nuclear weapons. American politicians who participated in these talks included Richard Lugar (R), who by all appearances seemed well intentioned. Ukraine was assured that both Russia and the USA would protect the country from foreign threats should it disarmed.
It disarmed, now Russia has done the opposite of what it promised and invaded it. The USA and NATO have to very carefully tread in regards to how they respond, lest this madman on the other side perceive that existential threat mounting and launch.
If that’s not a sign there are some instances in which disarmament is unrealistic, I’m not sure what is. And it’s a sad thing to have to acknowledge if you’re a peacenik at heart. But sometimes a bully like Putin only responds to the raw display of power, and Russia and the West played their part in stripping Ukraine of it.
Have you ever gotten the feeling that the traditional understanding of the left/right spectrum is in light of more recent political events, breaking down? Particularly in the United States, that is? It would seem that since COVID-19 broke out, two years ago, we’re reaching this strange new step in the evolution of political science where tests on sites like PoliticalCompass.org may not fully explain where you stand on today’s ideological map. Things like the ideal COVID response (or whether one should engaged in COVID denial, a position too crazy for me to acknowledge on here), whether or not we should even regard climate change as real, let alone do something substantial about it (again, the crazy position being mostly unique to US conservatives), and what foreign policy actions the US and the West should take with regards to Ukraine are the new front and center issues.
Where one lies on the traditional linear spectrum may not be an accurate prediction of what stance they may take on these issues.
*breathe*… So where do we begin on this? Let’s start with foreign policy… we know, and have known for a while that there are a good number of people in the Western World, many of them younger people, who for various reasons are deeply skeptical of NATO’s continuing role on the world stage, skeptical of Atlanticism, and on the more extreme end of this, tacitly approve of or even outright praise Putin. I’ve explained in the past that a lot of this sentiment in the United States has its origins in the Trumpist right. But there’s also a presence of anti-NATO skepticism among some elements of the American left, on anti-war and anti-imperialist grounds. In fact, just last month, Dana Rubinstein and Katie Glueck in the New York Times, reported on the New York 16th Congressional District primary and the challenge ongoing towards Jamaal Bowman.
Now, I followed the Bowman/Engel race in 2020 very closely. I was pleasantly surprised by the results. Bowman represents another much needed new mind to US leadership and Elliot Engel was just another centrist dinosaur that didn’t stand for anything other than big politics & big money. And given Bowman is a democratic socialist, it’s also a pleasant surprise to me that some centrist PAC with deep pockets didn’t manage to stop his efforts with more red scare tactics.
But what makes this round different is that his challenger, Vedat Gashi, is a Kosovo refugee. Basic history recap: the Kosovo refugee crisis was a direct result of the unspeakable horrors inflicted upon civilians by the dictator Slobodan Milosevic, who was eventually overthrown and charged with war crimes, dying before the trial could be completed. Frustratingly, Putin sympathizers and apologists are often also Milosevic apologists.
Why this is relevant to Kosovo is that NATO intervened to stop these horrors in 1999 and Putin never forgave the West for it. Putin has even gone so far as to say that the tensions between NATO & Russia started in 1999, owing to this intervention. Naturally, Mr. Gashi constitutes the position that Putin’s aggression in Ukraine must be met with clear cut foreign policy opposition. In the words of the NYT, he is, “…making foreign policy central to his primary challenge.”.
This is where the Democratic Socialists of America further represent a fracture of their constituents’ opinions; the DSA cited imperialist provocation by NATO as the cause of Putin’s invasion, rather than Putin’s own decision to invade, and even gone so far as to call for the withdrawal of the US from NATO altogether:
The group condemned the invasion, but also urged the United States “to withdraw from NATO and to end the imperialist expansionism that set the stage for this conflict.”
I identify as a social Democrat, or interchangeably, a Democratic Socialist, perhaps in a buffer zone in between. I firmly believe that Bush 43’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 is one of the most disastrous and crooked foreign policy undertakings the US ever waged. But I myself being ideologically left am left here asking,
“Withdraw from NATO in the midst of a war an invading power unilaterally started? How crazy can we get?
And it is crazy. It would be like taking Ukraine’s arms away and letting the chips fall where they may, which is what makes isolationism dangerous. Anti-war is not IMO a policy of unconditional isolationism. The US for all intents and purposes is NATO, or at least, its most defining member state. Remember, this was a talking point weaponized by then presidential candidate Trump in 2016, when he seized the US’ dominance in the alliance as a means to attack the Baltics’ social spending. It was a dirty tactic, it likely emboldened Putin, and it has since prompted countries like the Baltics to unnecessarily cut social spending.
Predictably, the DSA and others who made these statements have since walked back on these positions, lest they’re interpreted as being too pro-Putin. And on that regard I can understand the frustration. There’s too much of an either or mentality in the West today, as Cold War 2.0 commences, just as there was when the original Cold War was raging throughout the world, both in its form of endless proxy conflicts and the culture of fear that gripped nations not hit directly by them. I get that anyone who is anti-war is going to feel as though NATO has inappropriately expanded eastward, making a confrontation with a bully like Putin inevitable.
But the time to pull out of the existing foreign policy structure of multilateral action and multilateral alliance is not when a world leader who has expressed on numerous occasions that he does in fact want Ukraine; demanding Ukraine stay out of NATO, or else, is in effect, expressing a will to control it, no matter how fast saying this will cause the Trumpist right, and some tankies to lose their shit. Putin wants control of the Ukraine; he did the unthinkable when he sent those troops right into their land, and this reflects a reality thrown right at our doorstep.
So even though arguments by academics like John Mearsheimer, who maintains NATO’s expansion has been provocative have some merits, that people like George W. Bush should not be revered, or are otherwise in no position to give foreign policy lectures, given that he launched an invasion of Iraq on false information, that NATO’s intervention in Libya was iffy at best…. the alliance is still a firewall that might be, however imperfect, the one thing keeping the madman regime to the east from rolling right over Ukraine and into other countries Putin no doubt believes should once again be under the sphere of influence of Russia,…like the Baltics.
If the US were somehow able to just pull out of NATO it would be like signing the Ukrainian peoples’ death warrant, even if direct NATO confrontation should be regarded as a last resort.
It’s frustrating that there are people on the right, as well as, how we see here, some on the left, that are, however softly, shielding Putin from the criticism & condemnation he so thoroughly deserves for a war he unilaterally initiated.
TYT reports that Trump’s biggest fans continue to be belligerent nincompoops calling for armed uprisings if their dear leader doesn’t get the political advancement they believe he deserves.
I’ve said numerous times that the more MAGA becomes a growing force in US politics, the more vocal the worst of their supporters will get. It’s all but open here; they’re not even attempting to put a buffer on the rhetoric in the form of something along the lines of,
“I don’t condone the Capitol Hill riot, but the liberals made it inevitable that some bad apples would act.”
…why didn’t any of these wingnuts say this upon being interviewed? The obvious is obvious: they didn’t see the Capitol Hill riot as a bad thing, their only regret was that it didn’t go to the furthest extent.
Maybe you feel that these are a sample of the worst of the MAGA crowd, that the majority of Trump’s supporters aren’t actually this inflamed, or that this video is fake… the MAGA crowd does have a tendency to declare fake, that which doesn’t suit their narrative of being these persecuted angels under the vise grip of American communism itself…
But all you really need to do is look at the comments of any one of the YouTube or Bitchute videos that deal with Trump politics to see the amount of regular people who feel that civil war is either inevitable or preferable. Spar with them and you’ll be threatened, maybe even targeted, and I don’t say that lightly. Because in addition to their tendency to declare that which they don’t like fake, they also have the tendency to harass those who disagree with them.
Here’s Beau of the Fifth Column outlining his hope that witnessing the war in Ukraine might make the horrors of war a little “more real” to any Americans that romanticize the thought of civil war to meet their political objectives:
It remains to be seen how this might affect the American right’s perception of war, however. The American right like war. They were the ones who supported the War in Iraq and described its biggest critics as traitors of American interests, no matter how much they are now trying to attribute the attitudes to Democrats.
All in all, there’s a similarity here to Putin, another figure many of them have always outright liked: give us the results we want or we will start a war.
In Putin’s case it’s keep Ukraine out of NATO or we will start a war.
In the Trumpers’ case it’s give us the president who failed to get reelected or we will start a civil war.
That is, with the re-election of Hungarian PM Viktor Orban, just another quasi-populist thug who campaigns on socially regressive causes, the ‘national security state’, xenophobia, & purporting to be the example of people-centered leadership despite having been in power for a damned long time and relying on gerrymandering and voter intimidation…let’s see… just like Lukashenko in Belarus, Putin…and American Republicans in line with Trump.
When regressive political trends such as Orban’s popularity in Hungary continue to be a thing, it has to be pointed out, again and again, that neither the progressive options nor the electorate’s commitment to sense & reason can always be taken as a linear given. And since Orban represents interests in Europe sympathetic to Putin & his geopolitical objectives under the guise of “staying out” of the war in Ukraine, we have to wonder either what ugly feelings are stirring up in the Hungarian electorate, or what dirty tactics the right wing have undertaken to manipulate the vote.
The implications of either the persistence of right wing populism, an unfair election, or both, definitely proves concerning.
Sad to see sense and reason lose in Hungary today.
So Tucker Carlson, one of the nation’s most highly paid wingnut pundit, recently surprised me when he mentioned the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War, and how it went unnoticed by most Americans. This was mainly pertaining to compare the situation to the economic sanctions ongoing against Russia, saying that one day it might have nothing to do with us, the next day it could affect our personal lives.
He’s not entirely wrong. The American public does have a way of…tacitly approving of all sorts of bad policies and foreign affairs misdeeds until the consequences of such hit their doorsteps. And smaller scale wars that go on are no exception. A small scale war 7,000 miles away is of little concern to most Americans. This is a post I made the other day on this such war, between Armenia & Azerbaijan that went on for more than a month in the fall of 2020. Read:
“One and a half years ago, a war between Armenia and Azerbaijan raged for more than 40 days because of long standing territorial disputes too complex to get into here.
Thousands were killed. Many more displaced. Territory was shifted around before a ceasefire could be brokered (by Russia no less).
Americans didn’t know or care that this was happening, one, because of COVID concerns taking up our mindset. That’s understandable, a surge was picking up and we didn’t even have a vax yet. Two, we were going through a super contentious election the Trump movement was threatening to outright steal, ok…
And three, because the big news outlets didn’t report of it on top headlines. Not ok.
There’s a whole world out there that doesn’t pertain to the US and we constantly forget that.“
Why did I post this? Well, because I may not be a multi million dollar a year earning cable news anchor like Tucker, but that doesn’t mean I’m without a few points that I would like to drive home too. This war was brief. Yes, the casualties were higher, but the majority of those killed were military. Of course that doesn’t make it any better. There were also thousands of displaced Armenians which is in itself a sad story except for the fact that it was the Armenians that drove Azerbaijan out of these territories some 30 years before.
Now here’s where it gets interesting in that we really see that the psychology of this war played out like that seen after a football championship:
From Wikipedia:
After the ceasefire agreement was signed, President Armen Sarksyan held a meeting with Karekin II, where they both made a call to declare 22 November as the Day of Remembrance of the Heroes who fell for the Defense of the Motherland in the Artsakh Liberation War.[248] On 16 November, he declared that snap parliamentary elections and Pashinyan’s resignation were inevitable, proposing that a process be overseen and managed by an interim “National Accord Government”.[249]
This was after the unfavourable terms of the cease fire was accepted by the Armenian government, to the consternation of the public. In fact, when the leader of a country has to get together with a religious patriarch to calm the masses down, you know that public confidence is gone.
Of the Azerbaijani side:
The peace agreement and the end of the war was seen as a victory and was widely celebrated in Azerbaijan.[253][254] On 10 November 2020, crowds waved flags in Baku after the peace deal was announced.[255] On 11 November, the President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, at a meeting with wounded Azerbaijani servicemen who took part in the war, said that new orders and medals would be established in Azerbaijan, and that he gave appropriate instructions on awarding civilians and servicemen who showed “heroism on the battlefield and in the rear and distinguished themselves in this war.” He also proposed the names of these orders and medals.[256] About a week later, at a plenary session of the Azerbaijani National Assembly, a draft law on amendments to the law “On the establishment of orders and medals of the Republic of Azerbaijan” was submitted for discussion.[257]
Again, the whole thing feels like very clear cut team psychology, and frankly, like an very old fashioned war, with clear cut boundaries and in this case a clear cut “winner”. There were government crackdowns on dissent within both countries and attempts by both sides to launch disinformation campaigns on social media, but it doesn’t have the asymmetric character of how modern warfare is usually conceived.
This I find to be an interesting take:
According to peer-reviewed journal Caucasus Survey:[305]
Meanwhile, for the first time in the post-Soviet era, the Azerbaijani leadership has achieved a high degree of social solidarity. All opposition parties and organizations, including the Popular Front, Musavat, ReAl, and National Council, expressed their full support for the war. The citizens acquired a shared emotional experience of “making history”. (…) The government received the stamp of approval from its most vicious critics. The authoritarian government and the civil society it long persecuted were united in the name of homeland. The definition of homeland, consequently, has been reduced to a military victory for the soil, not values or the rights or lives of its people. By supporting a war the government waged, both the opposition and civil society contributed to the creation of a new source and reserve of legitimacy for authoritarianism. Further, while the opposition and civil society criticized the regime in Russia for its authoritarianism and imperialist nationalism, the majority of them did not express misgivings about the no less authoritarian and imperialist politics of Turkey, and enthusiastically embraced ultra-right pan-Turkism.
…even if it is the case that this was a recovery of land previously taken by Armenia, we’re reminded here that war benefits authoritarian states (Putin…Putin…) and makes states more authoritarian (Putin’s arrest and detainment of thousands protesting his war on Ukraine). Further, the crackdown is generally proportional to the chances a nation at war could lose. There was stigmatization and even some bullying of anti-war protesters and activists as Bush invaded Iraq on false premises in 2003, but never full on authoritarian crackdowns and democratic backsliding. Why? Because militarily Iraq never had a chance. But we saw the heat come down on war critics and concerned citizens calling for peace and isolationism during WWI and WWII and that’s not given much mention in the history books. If NATO and the West were to ever go direct in a war against Russia, one would definitely expect their respective governments to discourage critical voices, and I’m putting that in soft language terms. Not a good scenario for freedom. Not to mention we all could get nuked, anyway.
That’s about it for today, pay more attention to what goes on in the world.
Just watched yet another edition of Tucker Carlson’s garbage ideology and rhetoric, in which he’s interviewing a certain public figure who alleges he’s being targeted for having dissenting opinions. I clicked onto expecting that maybe, just maybe, the conservative media’s well paid racist had uncovered something previously unknown to all of us. Like damning evidence that somehow right wingers were indeed being picked on for being right wing.
Once again, NOPE! Instead you’ve got yet another conservative equating consequences for shall we say, aggressive political maneuvering to ideological persecution. Meanwhile, the right spent 4 years calling for and playing cheerleader to the following forms of real political repression:
They had absolutely no qualms about ICE crackdowns, the use of ICE as an added arm of domestic law enforcement, and the separation of immigrant families.
They’ve encouraged local politicians to do anything they can to shred voting rights, particularly in communities of colour under the guise of “voter integrity” and pushes for voter ID laws.
They still love and want war, except if it’s with Putin.
They clamor for the recognition of protest rights of those they identify with, as they’re currently doing with the ‘Freedom Convoy’ movement, but openly advocate for the complete suppression of said rights in the case of groups with which they’re unsympathetic, namely Black Lives Matter and climate change activists.
…they wanted Trump himself to send the military into Portland to run roughshod over the right to protest in the heavily Democratic city and attributed Mark Esper’s refusal to do so to some kind of deep state interference.
…this is all proof positive the American right is only concerned with liberties and fair play if they perceive their own bottom line to be at stake.
Now it has always been the humble opinion of the author of this site that the Ukraine and most of the world is better off strengthening its ties to the European Union, NATO, and the West in general, rather than Putin’s Russia. But it should also go without saying, and be more obvious than it unfortunately seems not to be in major news media outlets, that war is not in the best interests of anyone other than major shareholders in major defence corporations. That should be pure and simple.
That said, though, it’s the strangest thing in the world to me, that the populist arm of the American right, anti-Russian and xenophobic as their past has proven to be during the USSR years, have this tacit sympathy for Putin, his cabinet, and their perspective. Worse, my own research into the matter, take it as you will, has more so shown me that many of these people just straight up like the guy. Could be they admire the “strong man leadership” exhibited by himself and one former president this side of the Atlantic. Could be they share his taste for “traditional values”, or the yearning for nationalism and “strong borders”.
Either way it can’t be rationally interpreted as anything other than disturbing as all get out. How can it be? The man has a years long history of jailing opposition figures, standing by while his allies shred progressive values and antagonize LGBT’s, and possibly poisoning critics.
It again baffles me that some Americans would sympathize for that sort of thing just because they see some representation of their values in such a leader.
All eyes are on COVID & the attempted Trumpist insurrection right now, and those are serious issues indeed. But so is the climate. The climate, however, doesn’t receive continued salience even in the most left leaning media outlets unless there’s a distinct recent event that manages to harness focus for just a moment.
But let’s make no mistake. 2020 was a unique horrific year for the climate. Your climate.
Anybody wanna say, “Oh shit”?
Well, the problem for the climate and the planet is that when things get rocky in other matters of public life, people forget that the climate is in a perilous place. The deniers want to turn around and ignore the problem. But let’s see how long you can ignore it when sea levels keep goin’ up, earthquakes in unexpected locations continue, and wildfires of unprecedented proportions rage throughout the Pacific northwest and beyond.
So I ask you this, what, big or small action might you be willing to take to preserve the environment? Because I think it’s terribly obvious that regardless of the political situation, we can’t just assume the state, private sector, or non-profits will do it all for us. In my neck of the woods , the Rio Grande Bosque preservation group FORROS has done great things for the local ecosystem. It’s groups like that that give me hope. We need efforts like that everywhere. Collective, grassroots movements that stem from genuine hope that we can indeed save our planet.
Without a functional climate, we have no hope of mitigating any of the other problems plaguing our civilization.
Kapitalist Kitty 