Christmas Memories: 1991

 

The Soviet Union collapsed on December 25, 1991

The flag of the Soviet Union was lowered for the last time over the Kremlin and replaced with the Russian flag.

Nobody thought USSR would fall, yet it did. There’s a lesson right here Putinpic.twitter.com/mQfKmC8dnI

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) December 25, 2023

Look, I was a Cold War kid and this was meaningful to me in the way the fall of the Berlin Wall was. My neighborhood had a lot of people who were immigrants from the USSR. I believed it was about generational change--the youth getting rid of the Communist gerontocracy. It felt like popular protest made things happen. But it wasn't that alone.  Not exactly. There are opportune times for things to happen. 

Putin tried to take an opportunity when the West was tired of war to make something happen that never will again.  Russia is paying a price for trying to make their neighbor, Ukraine, unfree. If US conservatives rooted against the USSR like I did as a liberal agnostic kid who passionately loves freedom, they would continue to support the valiant struggle for sovereignty and western values. Support NATO. Look down on despots.  

Otherwise, if they support tyranny and strongmen  (doing lipservice to religion as an opiate of the masses) who are really littledick men projecting terror because they can't fill potholes or collect taxes properly, or who are desperately clinging to power so they can avoid civil and legal penalties, they can go suck an exhaust pipe. 

This is my expressive Christmas wish for the CPAC/Turning Point/MAGA grifters. This love of eastern-style tyranny is fucked in the head and not what this nation was founded on. You all just gross me out for having no sense of history. Get with the western values that made America great, or admit you got nothing and just want to be arschleckers to a big daddy figure. 

"Hungary" for Turkey?

 

Trump: I was very honored, there’s a man, Viktor Orbán. He’s the leader of Turkey pic.twitter.com/h3vrIESVrF

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 23, 2023

Perhaps it's a little petty of me to note that Trump should know better and doesn't it seem just a little like he's...losing it? But--oh heck, This isn't the first time that I've pointed it out, and it won't be the last. He's not a stable genius. He's met both Erdogan and Orban. 

He also said in his recent rambles that he just realized that the "US" is also "us." Aw. He compared himself to Nelson Mandela and said he was never indicted? He's claimed Sidney Powell was never his lawyer.

He thinks the United States could also use an "Iron Dome". (This isn't a new one for him. He's obsessed with "the nuclear" and I think wants something like Reagan's "Star Wars" program. I firmly believe Trump knows more about STI's than SDI. Also, I want to speculate again that it's possible that somehow, some way, secrets about penetrating Israel's Iron Dome got around...hm? Trump is always projecting and telegraphing. He's the Edison of inventing his own reality.)

Oh, that's right, and he also wants to pull out of NATO. I know, it isn't entirely new, but it feels like he's trying to get Daddy Putin's attention again. 

The man ran for office unprepared and ignorant of what was expected of him, served for four years, and LOST GROUND in understanding what the job entails. Isn't it time that the media focuses on that? Sure, he's criminally deceitful. But damn.

Sometimes I think he's also just dumb.

The Far-Right in Europe is a Global Mess (UPDATED)

I don't want to think about what it means for Giorgia Meloni to break the glass ceiling of women in power in Italy when to me it sounds like the breaking of so much other terrible glass elsewhere. Perhaps a "Kristallnacht."  I do want to think about what it means when US Republicans think that she is a great example of the fight against Communism and the kind of politician we need more of, here. 

Scalise on Meloni: It’s interesting to see that Europe is leading the way by throwing out Socialists with Conservatives and great bold Conservative women like Meloni and Truss. We need to bring that kind of conservatism to the United States” pic.twitter.com/Ln7XHCe24v

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 25, 2022

Does he just not know the difference? Or is it true that "David Duke without the baggage" absolutely does want fascism right here, right now?  I can't help but think he does. She supports Viktor Orban of Hungary, the focal point of CPAC and Tucker Carlson's wretched White Power Hour. 

Is she the worst? I don't pretend I know. I know me and the spouse won't be comfortable visiting the homeland with this person in charge and hope the weird vagaries of Italian politics make a new vote a thing in a pretty basic tick tock. 

We are told the right succeeds because the left fails to do more than point out that the right exists and is terrible. But the right does exist and is terrible. I don't know what the left needed to do because unless a party is in power, they can do little to demonstrate their ideals. But there is always the idea of defining their morality and highlighting the difference. 

I don't know if that is enough. 

I don't know why knowledge of history is so limited it isn't already enough. 

UPDATE: If I were Liz Truss, I would hate this comparison so much I'd go out of my way to refute it, and I rather hope she does. 

UPDATE: A further introspection into what the US rightwing (and other right-aligned folks) see in Meloni might be summed up in this meaningless, but buzzword-laden speech that seems defiant against an unknown "them" that is trying to deny people their cultural and family heritage. No one is saying Meloni can't be a woman, a Christian. an Italian, a mother. What an absurdity! Can I proclaim myself a woman, an atheist, an American, and childfree? I do. The existence of other people and their experiences don't negate my own, they start conversations. 

But what is Meloni's answer to people who are different? LGBT people fear for their families with her in a position of leadership, because she would deny them their right to be themselves, to be parents, to have their legacy and authenticity. Every right-wing claim of victimhood is a confession about what they would do to others--always.