This Would Be Appeasement

 

Former Trump Advisor Douglas MacGregor says we need to stop demonizing Putin, lift all sanctions, stop providing weapons and aid, that it’s “hopeless,” and just let Putin take whatever part of Ukraine that he wants. pic.twitter.com/HBnLWVdVgD

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) February 28, 2022

From a purely defensive point of view, I realize that the loss of lives could be temporarily paused by something like this--if you wanted to gamble with the freedom of actual human beings, if you wanted to count on Putin not going further. If you thought this action would not lead to Putin executing Ukraine's leadership and destroying whatever industry or organizations that made Ukraine a functioning independent state. If you thought a little bit of totalitarianism was okay. If you were without ideals about what we in the US actually are supposed to stand for. If you didn't also know our other allies would be imperiled. If you just swore an oath to the constitution and incidentally never cared what our democracy means or what our ideals mean, to the world.

I don't know what American exceptionalism means if it means catering to bullies and telling other nations to bow their heads and kneel to totalitarianism. It can't be that. Not ever that. 
 

Putin isn't being demonized but accurately described based on the words coming out of his word-hole and his long history of death and destruction.  I understand to some extent the rationale of people who want to see strongmen like Putin as a father figure--but these people need to get psychoanalysis, not an opportunity to advise countries about foreign policy. 

Look what Putin has done: faked a rationale to invade Ukraine. He has used his military to attack kindergartens and children's cancer hospitals. He is targeting civilians. This isn't "peacekeeping" or anything to do with concern about Russian ethnics or whatever rot he purported for a stupid audience of people who don't know history. This isn't in response to NATO expansion: he let us know what was up in his dumb speech about whether Ukraine was even a country--and whether a lot of other territory that thought they were perfectly good sovereign nations should also be treated as such. 

To my mind, that means expand the fuck out of NATO, actually. Golden tickets all around. Call for a cease fire, make Ukraine totally NATO, and tell them if they start hostilities again they either go nuke or go home. And frankly, I think Putin gets topped before that dumbshit happens. Because as Gordon Sumner sang back in my day the Russians do love their children too. 

I'm not a monster, just a rational person trying to figure out a stupid game I was taught about cinematically in 1983, to prevent what I saw that same year depicted on tv. Understanding what the stakes are, we don't naturally want to play. But knowing what the stakes of totalitarianism are, we also must not let the position of having nukes destroy our ability to say no, to resist oppression, to not let moral idiots rule us with fear. 

I know the way of staring down destruction is fraught with second-guessing and I fucking don't care. Bay of Pigs. You just keep staring. You don't back down, You handle it.

Trumpism is full of gutless appeasement pussies that no Democrat would stand for a minute. America First Republicans were squishes about Hitler and never could have handled what Roosevelt was faced with, All the motherfuckers who want to call Biden out now are just undermining the strength of America in a fraught time, and while this is not unexpected, it's obviously unhelpful and should count against them, these fake patriots, these lawless fat of the land opportunists, who see trouble and decide to politically capitalize, rather than do anything remotely helpful. These partisan swamprats. These heathens. 

Republicans are not patriotic and are useless. This is the only thing I ever can say about them given all I see. They would rather culture war than cope with reality. They care more about pronouns as an affront to their comfort than respect for human freedoms. They think the people who immigrate to the US without papers are an invasion akin to the tanks of Russia. How disgusting and wrong. The desire of human beings yearning to breathe free, anywhere, to earn money and raise their families in peace, are compared to people who are destroying human values, peace, prosperity--by assholes.

We stand for something as Americans or we sit with nothing. I stand with Ukraine, and I sit here and blog against assholes who think by sacrificing some Ukrainians you've accomplished anything at all. All lives matter. Ukraine matters. 

The right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is about them, or it isn't even about us. I know where I stand. I stand with all the desperate and yearning to breathe free. It is Ukraine's decision to be free or die. And Live Free or Die was something some Americans are supposed to understand.