Crimea Bridge is an Object Lesson

 

Before we get into the inevitable ruckus about who invaded who and committed war crimes from the jump, I would like to use the blog's time to issue a shout-out to (checks notes) Puddin' who is 70 psychopathic years old, and the object of affection of fellow psychos everywhere from Chechnya to Syria, from Mar-A-Lago to Englewood. 

Now, if, like myself, you admire the grit and ingenuity of the Ukrainian people and as a matter of human rights, support their basic right to self-defense, you can't help but look at the flaming birthday candles just about a week from Putin's appalling overreach and ask yourself: Does this look like a man with a plan?

He is not. He is not a genius.  He wasn't goaded into the invasion by the US at all but was warned off of it. And absolutely everything Mike Flynn says about Russia at the moment has to be understood as proof who of pulls his actual strings. This is a man so bought as to warn off all potential customers because he's spoiled for them, a man whose only honor seems to be adherence to blaming America First. (Only the religious right in this country could stomach him, because they are accustomed to laundering scoundrels.) 

Russian apologists might want to pule and whine that this strike is terrorism, following Putin's lead. I don't think we should forget the UN and the president of Ukraine at the time, Poroshenko, considered it illegal from the start. It was military infrastructure.  So, what does Russia do, the innocent and besieged entity foxed by the people they invaded? 

What they always do, bomb the shit out of Zaporizhzhia (or any civilian center, any town), this time, especially civilians.  You know, where one of the nuclear plants are. 

.@ZelenskyyUa: “#Ukraine never wanted this war. We are dealing with a state that doesn’t want peace.
The world must see the truth. A missile attack on the civilian population of #Zaporizhzhia destroyed residential houses, where people slept at night, lived, didn’t attack anyone.” pic.twitter.com/q6lFSb5M1j

— MFA of Ukraine 🇺🇦 (@MFA_Ukraine) October 9, 2022

Ukraine is taking back their territory which was illegally seized with the materiel support of "The West", which means people who support democracy. Trump and Flynn find themselves sounding like the bloody Twitter Tankies, who offer up a dialectics of how Putin, who wants to make a new Iron Curtin descend over the bits of Eastern Europe he thinks should be Russia's, is the real anti-imperialist, here, and the people who are giving military aid to Ukraine because they are a Bulwark against incursions by Russia into Estonia or whatever are the real malefactors, because they are resisting him. 

Call it appeasement of Putin by pretending it is the new manliness. Craven cringing before Russia (Potemkin-ass bullshit hollowed out military) because we so scared of nukes.

Let my Generation X ass tell you about nukes, sonny-Jim: Afghanistan fought Russia and the US, we both had nukes, and them MF's were broke and not scared. Viet Nam, Korea, etc. Conventional warfare against folks with nukes. No nuclear shit happened. Why? 

Nobody wins if everybody loses. It's the only lesson anyone knows. If Putin is that fucked up, we have to believe somebody stops his ass. We actually just have to. 

People are waiting for the object step too far, the thing where Putin goes and does the unthinkable. I think the object thing is, Ukrainians made a stamp of the bombing of this stupid bridge, a symbol of Russian subjugation, so fast because the only answer to totalitarian thinking is the biggest middle finger of all. 

If you are up all night wondering how to de-escalate this war and no one asked you, maybe this isn't a question for you, at all.  Except keep the communications open, if that worries you, as it should. 

UPDATE: Russia, as is typical, launched strikes on major population centers, killing civilians and damaging civilian infrastructure (the type of thing they want to call "terrorism" when Ukraine strikes a bridge used for military supply). To parrot the Russia line that this is "retaliation" or "revenge" for the bridge strike buys into their fake framing, it launders the perspective that Putin and by extension Russia, has the right to do any of this.