Tagged: Emmanuel Macron

The USA and France, or Their Remnants

The United States of America Today: A Dialogue Truth: Donald Trump, with his self-seeking demagoguery, fear-and-lie-grounded radicalization of millions of his supporters, and open praise and normalization of tyrants and tyrannical methods at home and abroad, has done catastrophic and possibly irreparable harm to his country. Tribalism: But what about Biden, Hillary, and Obama! Truth: Fine. In that case reason affords you two...

Putin vs. Russia

Vladimir Putin is not Russia, nor is he “the Russian people.” He is a ruthless dictator who murders or imprisons his most popular opponents and critics, propagandizes his subjects out of any clear alternative perspectives on life and the global political situation, and exploits the poverty and hopelessness that he himself has fostered to cajole the weak and desperate “masses” into viewing him...

Macron Demonstrates What Mediating Between Tyranny and Freedom Really Means

Poland has been Ukraine’s most stalwart ally during that country’s war of self-defense against Vladimir Putin’s empire-building invasion. Poland is the country to which most Ukrainian women and children flee, and where they are accepted and cared for, during the horror of Putin’s wanton destruction. Poland was the Soviet satellite nation that rebelled most effectively against the communist empire at the moment of...

The Rhetoric of Appeasement

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...

Lovers Awake

In a eureka moment for the small-minded, French President Emmanuel Macron, after his latest phone call with Vladimir Putin, has rushed to his nearest microphone to announce to the world that, as a Washington Post headline puts it, he is “convinced that ‘the worst is yet to come’ and that Russia wants to take all of Ukraine.” Oddly, I have never shared a...

Trump: God’s Gift to the World’s Puny Men

One of the strange but predictable results of Donald Trump’s presidency is that in his ignorance he has found remarkably inventive ways to elevate and aggrandize some of the world’s most absurd and/or dangerous leaders. Leaving aside Vladimir Putin, Trump’s favorite bully, but a thug who was doing just fine without Trump’s help, the list of lousy men whose stock has risen under...