Enjoying the view from Limbo
Russian forces are withdrawing from the area around Kiev. This is a good sign on its face, and a testament to the will of the Ukrainian population, the courage and competence of their leaders, and the effectiveness of their military. Having said that, it is far from obvious to me that this retreat is an unqualified good, given that the man who ordered...
Ukraine may well be winning the war at this moment. In fact, the amount of damage and humiliation they have already inflicted on the Russian war machine is a moral victory for the world, on so many levels, regardless of the long-term outcome of the war for Ukraine’s sovereign territory. I say “regardless of the long-term outcome” because it is obvious that the...
Here is how Republican congressman Jim Jordan responded to Joe Biden’s supposedly unscripted remark that Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power”: “Here’s the president potentially having more war-triggering type language than probably any president in American history,” Jordan warned. “We need to be careful and precise in things we say, particularly as commander in chief of our country.” “We need to be careful...
Numerous Western “leaders,” à la France’s Emmanuel Macron, are insistent today that one should avoid using overly harsh terms in describing Vladimir Putin or his actions in Ukraine, or suggesting that regime change in Russia is a suitable goal, since such language threatens to escalate the situation. Avoiding escalation is standard and perhaps reasonable rhetoric during a time of diplomatic breakdown or “heightened...
Liberty's Labors Lost / What is The Establishment? / World Politics
by Daren Jonescu · Published March 28, 2022
Five seconds after daring to say in public the most obvious and uncomplicated truth on the planet today, namely that Vladimir Putin should not remain in power, Joe Biden’s administration was in panic mode trying to “downplay” and “walk back” that remark, fearing how it would be interpreted. Fearing how Putin might respond. Fearing how the statement might affect future negotiations with Putin...
When someone as simple-minded as Sean Hannity can see right through you and effectively expose you as an overt propagandist for a murderous dictator and avowed enemy of freedom, you know your talking points have become way too detached from visible facts. Mind you, Hannity, who lost the primetime king war to Tucker Carlson, has an added incentive to revel in this moment...
During the acknowledged period of the Cold War (which never really ended), the nuclear risk, though serious, was always somewhat mitigated by the fact that the Soviet Union’s goals and strategies were systemic, rather than personal. That is, the Cold War was waged not against one unstable individual who, if feeling threatened — including from within his own country — might become rabid...
The recent actions of the United States of America and the Russian Federation with regard to Afghanistan and Ukraine, respectively, offer us a tidy summary of some essential differences between a declining democracy and a declining tyranny — differences which, characteristically, the tyranny recognizes and hopes to exploit, but the democracy does not. Democracy regards twenty years as too long to sustain a...
You tell yourself that you are showing restraint and offering concessions to the bully in order to help him save face, thereby perhaps preventing him from acting rashly in his humiliation. He tells himself that your boasting of restraint and your concessions are merely your means of saving face as you surrender to him, and that he may therefore be more certain than...
Congressman Adam Kinzinger, or “Little Adam,” as kook fringe (i.e., Trump-supporting) blowhard Madison Cawthorn once called him, has taken another step away from the Idiot Party mainstream, by doing what almost no prominent Republican has dared to do. He has called Israel’s government to account for its current stand and rhetoric on Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked scorched earth campaign against a peaceful sovereign country. ...
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