Tuesday, March 8, 2022

Gaslighting and Gas Prices

 

The above screenshot from Twitter (because I don't think his account is liable to stay up forever as this situation progresses) shows Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and the following statement: "The goal of Russia's special military operation is to stop any war that could take place on Ukraine territory or that could start from there. "

Great shades of "We had to destroy the village in order to save it." The kids who don't remember the Cold War might not know that one, as well, but they will probably recognize a few bars of what else the Russian narrative is trying to lay down--the potential of a dirty bomb made in Ukraine (if I knew that was coming, I'd have baked you all a yellow cake) and biowarfare labs (but were they dangerously on wheels, I wonder?).  There's even a laptop! (Is it Hunter Biden, secret Burisma NATO undercover spy's laptop? inquiring minds might indeed venture to ask at this idiotic point in time.)

It almost feels like the laziness of the Russian disinfo spree is to throw the US's own war lies back in our face, as if to say, well, why can't we do it as well? To me, it makes no difference. I was as opposed in 2003 to stupid big countries laying waste to smaller countries who didn't deserve it, so they aren't fucking me up, any.  And actually, I kind of did want the Bush Administration to get their feet held to the fire and still do, because of torture and indiscriminate killing of civilians and use of mercs like Blackwater and all that. I still do.

I was a baby during Vietnam and I still feel some kind of way about it. My father's working class neighborhood all went and a lot them had health issues including mental health issues from that. They drank, they got cancer, they lived recklessly sometimes and my dad doesn't have a lot of friends still alive in his early 70's. One of my mom's brothers went and he was a bad alcoholic and died in his 60s and I don't think those things weren't unconnected. I don't like stupid wars. They kill human beings, sometimes for a long time after we are still counting the death toll of them. 

Anyway, it isn't about NATO and it wasn't about WMDs and it isn't about preventing a war because honey, if this isn't a war I don't know what one looks like, and it had nothing to do with denazification because these assholes sent an actual neo-Nazi group into Ukraine. Probably to kill their Jewish president. 

It might make more sense for Putin to activate his deep-rooted sense of imperialism because Ukraine's pipelines exist. I mean, he doesn't have any use for the people. But just like the Iraq/Kuwait issue, there are other equities to consider

So with all this disinfo and intentional bullshit in the ether, this obviously one-sided decision to wage actual war by Putin's government and all that, and what are our journalists going to talk about? The gas prices going up like 50 cents over the past week. And isn't that a Biden problem? Let me turn to my bete noir, Sara Carter, for why this is fucking stupid. 



She is literally wrong on every point. US oil companies can drill here, drill now, as conservatives have been saying since the Obama Administration, but they would rather price gouge. They are managing a finite and climate-disruptive resource in its end-stage.  Keystone XL isn't the problem. Whether we sanctioned Nordstream wasn't the Russian problem. Our addiction to fossil fuels on a dying planet and our love of money over human lives is. 

I'm getting sick of the gaslighting. I'm sick of the gaslit foo dogs of war. When you talk about scarcity--talk about renewables and why it didn't have to be this way. When you talk about Putin's invasion and war against Ukraine, talk about how it probably boils down to greed and backfired because Putin and his kleptocrat state never bothered to adapt to the 21st century, but we all have to. 

Every part of this debacle is everything I hate. Lies, greed, death and massive human stupidity. 


4 comments:

Ten Bears said...

Gas companies gouging. I'm kicking myself in the ass this morning: sometime between eight and noon yesterday gas went up fifty cents at the neighborhood depot, I should have saw it coming. I should of topped off the vehicles before it cost a hundred bucks. The kids are going to lood on their way to work, I'm willing to bet it went up again overnight, or by the end of the day.

bluzdude said...

As we've seen over the years, gas companies will use any reason to spike their prices, wars, floods, hurricanes, stock markets, discovering another moon around Saturn... whether it actually affects production or not. If it sounds plausible to outsiders, hike the prices. And you know the saying... Gas prices go up like a bullet but come down like a feather.

Dan Kleiner said...

vix, carter isn't worong on every point, she's LYING. part of the gaslighting you decry.

these fucking people. they just CAN'T not lie.

Vixen Strangely said...

I can't speak to whether Sara Carter is actually lying because I don't assume she would have bothered to know better. It's easier to deliver the talking points if you don't know better. She might know, she might not. But actually doing a journalism is obviously secondary to getting the talking points out. I've noticed that a feature of the Trump era is youthful know-nothings delivering "truths" that are anything but. Take Tomi Lahren, Candace Owens, Charlie Kirk. Not a qualification among them. Not any life experiences or especial education. But they deliver the talking points and are rewarded. Are they lying? Do they know any better? Does anyone care? It's moot. They exist to reinforce the previously existing biases, not to do anything new or disruptive. They are pablum pipelines.

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