Why does this war feel so different? Every war and every war possibility, starting with Vietnam, felt like a mistake. My reaction was always no, please, no more war mongering, get us out of that war, do not get us into this war. But this war isn’t about saber-rattling or oil or power for power’s sake. This war is the front on the war for democracy not autocracy. Ukraine is fighting for all of us.
Does this war feel different for you?
I truly appreciated the many thoughtful replies.
There is so much gray area to nearly everything. Two sides to every story, and all that. But the war in Ukraine really is the mythical fight between good and evil. Light vs Darkness. Right vs. wrong.
A leader we can truly admire, who has more than met this impossible moment. A leader with heart and more bravery than I can fathom. The Ukrainian people have that, too.
Plus quite a bit of David and Goliath thrown in.
But for me it all comes back to heart and the righteousness of the cause. And a President who, in the midst of this war for survival of his country, can take the time to write this letter.
I extend my heartfelt condolences to the family of Brent Renaud who lost his life while documenting the ruthlessness & evil inflicted upon ?? people by Russia. May Brent’s life & sacrifice inspire the world to stand up in fight for the forces of light against forces of darkness. pic.twitter.com/bvQjM470OU
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) March 14, 2022
President Zelensky has the heart of a lion and the soul of a warrior, an inspiration to anyone who values love of country over love of power.
I also want to highlight one of the great comments we have seen from Carlo Graziani over these past three weeks, this one in answer to the question I posed on Sunday.
Yes. No question. I believe that the reason we sense this war is different is that it’s the bookend that closes an era, whose opening bookend was the collapse of the Soviet Union.
I wrote one of my posts about it at the tail end of a comment thread a couple of days ago – so I won’t rehash the whole thing here. The TL;DR is that there used to be an international architecture — amoral, but mindfully-constructed — for managing the Cold War, and when it became obsolete in 1991 it was not replaced by anything well-thought out. Rather, a smug elite “Davos Consensus” ruled, which one might capture in a phrase by “all that remains now is for the rest of the world to become as smart as we are, and everyone will get rich”.
Everyone did not get rich. Instead, a series of economic, military, climate, epidemiological, and income/wealth inequality-driven instabilities created massive global popular anxiety, which was exploited by nationalist populist demagogues with no commitment to the Enlightenment project, (Milosevic, Orban, Berlusconi, Putin, Modi, Bolsonero, Le Pen, Farage, Trump, among others). The Davos Consensus never deigned to notice the growing challenge, and at the same time undermined the West’s understanding of what it stood for. “Freedom” was right-wing nutter discourse, embarrassing in polite company. We talked instead about the importance getting rich.
By 2016, everything had turned to shit, and we could not understand how things could possibly have gone this apocalyptically badly. The anti-democratic challenge from the discontents of reason seemed unstoppable, at times.
Fast forward to “I need ammunition, not a ride!”
That would be Zelenskyy reminding us of our heritage. Of the fact that liberty is, in fact, more important than getting rich. Showing us what liberty really means, what it is worth, and what it costs.
That was the turning point. That’s why this war is different. Even the damn Germans would now prefer liberty to getting rich. Zelenskyy turned the war in Ukraine into the antidote for the intellectual toxicity of the Davos Consensus. He reminded us of our duties to our freedoms, and that “freedom” is not, in fact, a dirty word, however badly idiot truckers may abuse it.
Supporting this war is not “warmongering”. Rather, it signifies a return to the best version of our Western selves. We owe Ukrainians, and Zelenskyy in particular, more than we can ever repay them.
I will likely highlight more great comments from Carlo, and from Sebastian, over the next few weeks.
Baud
Right. Probably the first such situation since WWII.
New Deal democrat
I read a thread yesterday on how it has been one saeculum since then end of WW2. The “living memory” is gone, and the lessons must be relearned.
The Ukraine invasion reminds me of the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s. It is the time when everyone realized it was time to choose sides. It marks the definitive comeuppance of the great neoliberal delusion that free trade and economic integration will lead to democracy and the Rule of Law. Just as 1914 exploded “The Grand Illusion,” neither Putin nor Xi embrace that consensus any more than did Wilhelm II.
West of the Rockies
I had not been aware of Carlo’s presence here until this wretched war began, but yes, his observations have been extremely edifying. Ditto for Sebastian.
MattF
One of Zelensky’s strengths is that he doesn’t need to make calculations about the psychological state of his would-be adversaries. When he suggests to the ill-fed, ill-led, ill-equipped army stuck in the mud outside Kyiv that just leaving is better than being killed, it’s not psyops, it’s merely the truth.
different-church-lady
Are we supporting a war? I thought we were supporting a country that has been invaded.
Soprano2
I think this is why fascism is coming back. The people who know from personal experience how bad it is have mostly died.
Cathie from Canada
As I try to follow this war on twitter, I often see the “what about” comments — Palestine, of course, but also Yemen, other places on the Gulf, countries in Africa, South America, etc. Wars going on all over, it seems, and yes, I feel guilty that I hadn’t been paying much attention to any of these other conflicts recently.
But Carlos’ comment is very perceptive about what is different now about the Ukraine Russia War, what it means to the nations of the world that I call the West. Thanks so much for highlighting this analysis.
Kent
We are supporting an END to the war represented by Russia going right back to where it came from
And we wish to see this example of military aggression fail and serve as an object lesson to any other countries who way wish to follow Russia’s lead and invade their neighbors.,
Carlo Graziani
@New Deal democrat:
I really like that historical analogy. Irrespective of the different circumstances and (mostly) players both wars function as clarion calls.
MattF
@different-church-lady: Ukraine is certainly actively engaged in a war. A war that is ‘good’ in an unironic way.
cmorenc
@different-church-lady:
And what exactly is the meaningful difference between the two? Please state what you think the difference is the difference in tangible, concrete, practical terms, rather than abstract noble-sounding platitudes that don’t translate to specific, meaningful action.
patroclus
FDR, in advance of Lend-Lease, outlined the Four Freedoms in January of 1941 – Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want and Freedom from Fear. This was a humanistic outline of the goals of the Allies in WWII. After the war, this morphed into freedom (generally and inclusive of all the above), democracy, human rights and the rule of law and became the goals of the democracies which survived and thrived in the post-war world. The goals of public administration and public finance are different – they can be summarized as growth, stabilization (safety and soundness), an efficient allocation of resources and an equitable distribution of wealth and income. And the basic goals of the American Century – prosperity and security – are also a bit different. All of these goals are laudable and are not mutually exclusive, but at various times since WWII, some have been emphasized more than others. The Ukrainian war has highlighted the importance of all of them and given us valuable perspective as to the core aspects of each of them. All of them form the essence of liberalism. How can we pursue one group while ignoring others? We humans should try to achieve all of them.
Queen of Lurkers
This war feels different because the country that has been invaded has a *democratically* elected government. It helps that Zelenskyy has turned out to be such a charismatic leader. I watched Winter on Fire recently (documentary about the 2014 Maidan revolution that ousted Yanukovich). What impressed me most was the doggedness and persistence of the Ukranians, their unbreakable spirit in protesting day after day for months. They made it clear that they wanted a West-facing country, not a Russified one. And that’s why they will ultimately prevail.
GoBlueInOak
@Carlo Graziani: The Ents are going to wake up and find that they are strong.
trollhattan
@Soprano2:
I think this is true. Fasc-curious morphs into fascphilia quite rapidly once it’s realized it’s a scheme to simultaneously become rich and powerful AND crush your enemies, whoever they happen to be this week.
PJ
@different-church-lady: The notion of a “good war” has always struck me as perverse. American soldiers who actually had combat experience in WWII would rarely talk about it – there is nothing “good” about shooting and blowing up people, or seeing people get shot and blown up.
Waging war is sometimes necessary; violence is sometimes necessary to stop an even worse state. But the idea that we should be looking for, and celebrate, a “good war” that we can embrace and support is, in my opinion, very unhealthy.
Ruckus
@different-church-lady:
We are specifically not supporting the act of war. We are supporting a country attacked by a madman (I think he’s a madman – his dreams are bullshit, his war is bullshit, his concept of life is bullshit. He is bullshit. Dangerous bullshit.)
Wars we have fought since WWII have for the most part been saber rattling that have cost a lot of lives for basically misguided, well there is no other word – bullshit. This is warfare, yes. It is not war in the way we have defined war for the last 75 yrs. It is a war of theft. Theft of land, theft of life, of raw power that is wrong. The theft of a country that isn’t his or his country’s.
different-church-lady
@cmorenc: Putin is supporting this war plenty, no?
Practically speaking there isn’t much difference. Nobody but Putin chose this, and warfare is, for the moment, the only practical response. But when it comes to semantics and politics, I think we can safely say no moral person wants to see this war continue.
Shorter: supporting “this war” just seems like bad framing.
trollhattan
@MattF:
I’m sorry we don’t have John Lewis around to have a “John Lewis explains everything” moment. He’d get this.
WaterGirl
@patroclus:
This is an (incomplete) posted list of what Ukraine stands for.
Not a bad starting point either, though not as succinct as FDR’s 4 freedoms.
SiubhanDuinne
Zelenskyy is addressing the US Congress tomorrow morning at 9:00 am. I hope and assume we’ll have a link and dedicated thread.
He addressed the Canadian Parliament this morning, and they gave him a three-minute standing ovation. If our Congresscritters fail to match/exceed that benchmark, I will be disappoint.
different-church-lady
Guess maybe I should clear up that I was responding to a specific phrase Graziani used, not the general topic Water Girl has introduced. And it’s a very minor point.
PJ
@trollhattan: A lot of people are just waiting for their opportunity to inflict cruelty on others without fear of punishment, and better still if it is acclaimed by authority, or encouraged by one’s peers.
WaterGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: I made the basic thread for that yesterday, as much as I could without a lot of information, and it’s scheduled to go up at 8:15.
I have seen the address called a “closed door” session with congress, so I don’t know for sure that there will be a live link, but I am hoping so.
Baring a live link, I am hoping for a link as soon as it’s over.
But we will have the 8:15 thread for this one way or another.
Geminid
@Carlo Graziani: One defect in the analogy is that the some of the participants on the Republican side of the Spanish Civil War had a lot of noncombatants’ blood on their hands too.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
On another note, guess who’s as obsessed with Hillary as an Alabama trucker.
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-sanctions-joe-hunter-biden-hillary-clinton-10-others-1688214?amp=1
JoyceH
@Soprano2:
I’m starting to think (but I’ve been accused before of being optimistic) that we might be seeing the high water mark of the authoritarian trend, and are swinging back in the direction of democracy.
For quite a few years, as democracies around the world have started backsliding into ‘strong-man’ systems, the proponents of authoritarianism have touted how messy democracies are and how efficient autocracies are. That’s why so many Republicans touted Putin’s strength – he could just order something done, whereas the US President always had to do a cat-herding exercise with Congress, which took forever and didn’t always work. So I’m liking that the cardboard facade of that ‘efficiency’ is being exposed as it dissolves in the mud of Ukraine.
And heck, Starbucks franchises are being unionized, so maybe Labor is coming back too!
Ruckus
@MattF:
I understand what you are saying but there is no good war.
There are necessary wars, throughout history, usually because of one sick asshole attempting to steal, well everything from others.
There are unnecessary wars. They are based upon crappy egos and selfish assholes. They seem to outnumber the necessary ones by a noticeable amount.
This was an unnecessary war. It has turned into a necessary war by the ass who started the unnecessary war. As it usually is.
There is never, ever, at any point in history, a good war.
No such thing exists.
The two words do not belong together.
Carlo Graziani
@different-church-lady: I think that I did express myself inaptly, and drew you into a hornets’ nest. Sorry, I should have found a better shorthand than “supporting this war”.
Calouste
@Soprano2: In the UK, the 60-70 year olds who grew up hearing heroic stories about WWII, the Spirit of the Blitz, etc. voted mostly for Brexit. The 80-90 year olds, who actually lived through it, far less so. National mythology is a very dangerous thing.
David Collier-Brown
@Carlo Graziani: I’m hoping it’s more like Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia. Czecho had given up the Sudetenland in exchange of a promise of no more territorial losses to Germany: Hitler invaded anyway. That put some spine in the allies, and they responded when Germany invaded Poland. Much to Hitler’s surprise, as he’d thought he had them cowed.
Old School
OT: The Senate just voted to make Daylight Saving Time permanent.
Xenos
Living in the EU/NATO area, the war in Ukraine feels very much like an attack on the whole lot of us.
The refugee crisis from Syria was difficult for the EU countries to deal with (not defending the racism, but the cultures have not been considered as very compatible, ever). There has also been a large diaspora of Bulgarians, Poles, Romanians, and non-xenophobic Russians into the EU cities over the last 20 years. These people are colleagues, friends, family – the attack on Ukraine feels very close to the rest of the continent. And the financial and manpower resources of the EU outclass Russia by a huge amount – absorbing 10 million Ukrainian refugees is a foregone conclusion, and people are competing to take them in. And that is just the first step.
The Russian establishment is going to get stomped, beggered, and eventually buggered by the response to this invasion. And the UK being out out of the EU will really limit the ability of Russian money to stop this from happening. 400 million relatively wealthy people have been pushed into a corner by this, and know the only way out is to get organised and really wreck some shit.
lowtechcyclist
@PJ:
This. Ukraine is fighting for its life, because (stealing from someone on Twitter, can’t remember who) if Ukraine stops fighting, there will be no Ukraine. And we are and should be supporting Ukraine in this fight, because what is right and what is wrong, and what the stakes are, has rarely been clearer.
But we should wish for, and work for, a world where such a war doesn’t need to be fought in the first place, rather than for another ‘good war’ where we can have our own heroic moment. We should all pray that the necessity is never forced on us.
wombat probability cloud
@West of the Rockies: I had the same reaction and am very grateful to them both.
MattF
@Ruckus: ‘Good’ will mean different things to different people. As long as it means something other than ‘whatever that guy says’, I wouldn’t rule it out automatically.
PJ
I agree that the wars the US has fought since WWII have mostly been for bullshit reasons or goals, but that’s most wars, from one side or another. From a Ukrainian or Russian perspective, Putin’s reasons and goals are also bullshit, but pointing that out would never stop him, because he sees only valid reasons, just as pointing out to Bush and Cheney that invading Iraq was bullshit would never have stopped them.
Thucydides said that all wars start from one or more of three causes: fear, interest, or honor. Obviously, you can analyze the reasons for wars any way you like, but I can’t think of a modern or ancient war that doesn’t involve one or more of those elements. Putin invaded Ukraine because he was afraid of the example a flourishing democracy aligned with Europe right next door to Russia would have on Russia (and his own rule) (fear), and because nothing would boost his power in the near future in Russia like a quick, successful war (interest). It also seems to have personally offended him that Ukrainians should consider themselves a nation distinct from Russia and not bow down to his suzerainty, like Belarus (honor). The wars the US has launched, or involved itself in, since WWII can also be analyzed in the same manner (I don’t have time now to do it.) From what I consider a more enlightened perspective, these reasons are bullshit, but for the people who start them, they are real and are justified.
The Moar You Know
@Old School: I’d have preferred a total repeal but I will take this and be EXTREMELY happy with it. This twice a year time change bullshit is, on a personal level, bad for me, bad for my wife, and bad for my dog. Needs to stop. The reasons for it have long ago been proven to be bullshit, so just make it stop.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@New Deal democrat: So I looked up saeculum, and realized I could have inferred the meaning from your comment. It’s more or less a generation. Apparently we need living memory rather than history to remember things.
Geo Wilcox
@MattF: But if they leave, they may be executed or imprisoned in Russia.
Rusty
@WaterGirl: It’s an exceptional list. What I particularly like is it doesn’t talk about money or property. For too much of the recent past (since Reagan), freedom as defined by the right has been focused on property, keeping it and getting to do whatever you want with it. It’s a top down freedom of the rich. What we have in this list is bottom up freedom, freedom that applies to all of us no matter your material circumstances. The Four Freedoms of FDR focused on these too. It goes to show how cramped and narrow the freedoms espoused in our Constitution really are for real people. The Constitution has no mention of freedom from fear (with the second amendment we actually have the right to threaten and commit violence, just the opposite) or freedom from hunger. In America the wealth and the poor are equally free to starve to death.
I hope from this we really start to think about what real freedoms mean and how they are implemented. Unfortunately we have six reactionaries on the Supreme Court that are completely committed to top down freedoms, the freedoms of the wealthy. We will have to fight even in our own country for these bottom up freedoms.
zhena gogolia
@wombat probability cloud: Me too. Glad to see Carlo showcased. His comments are very nuanced and wise.
wonkie
It is, at least to me, clearly a war with a good side and a bad side. It is also a war where the visual on TV is millions of white women who look middle class being driven from their nice homes. I do not mean to be cynical. My heart is warmed by the way Europe and the US, even Republicans, have been supportive. But is lucky for Ukraine that they are an overwhelmingly white nation and their refugees look so good on TV. The POles were leaving Turks to freeze in the woods. And we have a whole political party here dedicated to hating Central Americans.
Yeah I am cynical. But glad they are getting help.
patroclus
@WaterGirl: The Atlantic Charter formulated by FDR and Churchill in August of 1941 is also a good starting point. Importantly, it emphasized no territorial aggrandizement, which is clearly at stake in the Ukraine War. And, given that the Atlantic Charter is essentially the starting point for NATO, the proscription against taking another country’s territory emerged as the core post-war policy of NATO and all the democracies. I don’t think it would be a bad idea for Biden to re-formulate FDR’s vision for the 21st Century in a major address (say, at NATO).
Suzanne
I certainly don’t dispute the impact of racism on why so many of us are concerned with Ukraine.
But the biggest reason is that Russia is, like, our biggest nemesis of many of our lifetimes. The biggest bad. The Evil Empire. So it’s a story arc, one that many of us experienced our entire lives. That captures the attention.
TheWesson
Right …
Wanted to add: before that the 2008 crash had a devastating effect on peoples’ willingness to believe in the expertise and good will of cosmopolitan technocrats.
The post-WWII consensus of liberal democratic capitalistic thinking was supposed to keep the economy ticking and bring at least some wealth and prosperity to everybody (even if that was not evenly distributed.)
But that class of people, that way of thinking failed – due to ignorant greed and failure of duty (think of the ratings agencies stamping AAA on a jiggered tranche of subprime rotten loans to the get-rich-quick-flipping-houses crowd.)
Turns out that leadership class was mostly interested in grabbing everything they could while the grabbing was good.
The collapse of belief in a global, cosmopolitan leadership like the Davos consensus leaves a vacuum in which people will look for leaders that tap into the most primitive nationalistic energy.
The elites failed. Time for the idiot slob a-holes to take a turn.
WaterGirl
@Geo Wilcox: Unless defecting Russian soldiers are welcomed into Ukraine. That would of course mean they would need to take Ukraine’s side in this fight. But fighting for something is so much better than murdering people so you can take their land, so I think the would be a pretty good deal.
trollhattan
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Hillary, quizzing staffers around the office: “Hey, did I have any Russia trips coming up? No? Okay then, thanks.”
trollhattan
@lowtechcyclist: Per Vlad there was never a Ukraine to begin with. Gotta hand it to the guy, he certainly made his intentions known right up front. “Housecleaning.”
Bill Arnold
Emotional appeals featuring individual people (God bless Ukraine’s (and the US’s) information warfare game, to be clear; the Russian government has tried to close off Russia’s access to western media/social media because it was/is dangerous to its war effort) deliberately acknowledge the human inability to empathize(or even feel compassion) at scale.
The academic work on this as related to large scale suffering is voluminous (though (from some skims) with relatively crude models), e.g.
Psychic Numbing and Mass Atrocity (book chapter) (PDF, 2013, PAUL SLOVIC, DAVID ZIONTS, ANDREW K. WOODS, RYAN GOODMAN, DEREK JINKS)
or (recent fMRI study, small, and fMRI studies have a bad (not entirely deserved) rep for finding spurious correlations.)
Brain imaging evidence for why we are numbed by numbers (09 June 2020, Zheng Ye, Marcus Heldmann, Paul Slovic & Thomas F. Münte)
Humans brains are not sufficient for empathy at the scale of e.g. thermonuclear war, or even smaller wars like (the current war between) Ukraine/Russia.
For instance, to even approximately empathize with the suffering from a thermonuclear war, one way would be to make a hundred million variations on some wrenching moving like the UK “Threads” drama, each with different characters and plot lines, then scale one’s mind up to the level where one could watch all of them simultaneously, perhaps with some megamind MDMA to help with fully empathizing with all the characters.
Annie Dillard (1999):
“There are 1,198,500,000 people alive now in China. To get a feel for what this means, simply take yourself-in all your singularity, importance, complexity, and love — and multiply by 1,198,500,000. See? Nothing to it”
TL;DR when thinking about suffering at scale, one must force oneself to internalize the numbers involved.
Anyway
@TheWesson:
In the 70s, 80s and before the RICH (0.1%) were content with ~70% of the pie and left behind enough for the middle calss and the poor.
Now they want ALL of it – not content with over 90% and though the pie has grown enormously it’s very hard for the poor and middle class to see any path forward for their children.
Failure of the elites, for sure.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@Rusty: Communism didn’t catch on because people wanted gulags, but because capitalism doesn’t necessarily breed democracy and, as we have seen worldwide, does breed corruption. The presence of Communism as a viable enemy briefly reformed the West; taxes were never higher than when Joe McCarthy was brandishing his State Department list.
I really hope that the defense of Ukraine leads to unmasking all the hidden wealth in the form of anonymous LLCs, ratf*cking donations, and other examples of corruption.
Meanwhile, the cynic in me wonders if Tucker Carlson will even notice this: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fox-news-cameraman-pierre-zakrzewski-killed-kyiv-ukraine-attack-benjamin-hall-wounded/
Calouste
@Suzanne: Yep, it weren’t Syrian tanks that rolled into Prague in 1968, Hungary in 1956, Poland in 1981, or that people were afraid of in East Germany in 1990.
Craigie
@The Moar You Know:
Amen
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Parallels between 2022 Russo-Ukrainian War and Operation Barbarossa 1941
New Deal democrat
@Dorothy A. Winsor: “Apparently we need living memory rather than history to remember things.”
Thanks. “Saeculum” encompasses in one word what otherwise would take an entire phrase – and it is so explanatory.
E.g., one saeculum after Glass Steagall was passed, it was repealed.
In Econ, there is a hypothesis that it takes one saeculum for bond yiels to complete one entire wave, (or “Kondratieff cycle.”)
TM
“But the war in Ukraine really is the mythical fight between good and evil. Light vs Darkness. Right vs. wrong.”
If UK investors had not grasped eagerly for a killing in the London real estate market from Russian oligarchs–if the US and the EU had not been dominated by a predatory neoliberal economic ideology when the Soviet Union collapsed–if the Obama administration had not drawn a “red line” at Russian/Syrian use of chemical weapons, and then ignored their own red line–if the west had ever been serious about using its power and influence to draw and defend bright lines between light and darkness–and so on—then maybe there would now be no war in Ukraine.
There is a long and horrible history over the last 100-plus years of drawing bright lines between good and evil as a prelude to inflicting great evil on the “evil ones.” A few in a long list–the Allied firebombing of dozens of German cities in WWII (not just Hamburg and Dresden), the internment in concentration camps of Japanese-American citizens, the American firebombing of Japanese cities, the atomic bombs. And on and on and on.
Ukraine’s cause is just. Putin’s invasion is evil. But there’s always a context, and it’s always in shades of grey. Moral clarity attached to great violence threatens to be a false comfort, and a dangerous intoxicant. I honor the good intentions of the Balloon Juice community. But talk of clear good v evil in regard to war makes me really nervous.
lowtechcyclist
IOW, we’d be keeping standard time, just moving one time zone to the east. Because that’s the effect of ‘spring forward.’ So if this becomes law, everyone out to most of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula will be on what’s now Atlantic standard time year round, most of the Great Plains would be on Eastern standard time, the Rockies would be on Central standard time, and the West Coast would be on Mountain standard time.
I expect they’d probably rename the time zones, though.
I wonder how long it’s been for most U.S. Senators since they had a child waiting for the school bus? Because a lot of kids would be waiting for the bus in the dark in the middle of winter.
artem1s
For me the Ukraine war is different for the same reasons intervening in the genocide in Kosovo was different. I don’t understand why that has gone down the memory hole. Except that it is proof that Democrats and NATO handle interventions better than the GOP and that forcing countries to return to WWII era borders doesn’t work. The GOP doesn’t want the voters to remember that Clinton and Warren’s Dayton Accord worked to end the conflict in the Balkans, unlike Cheney’s intervention in Iraq. They failed to build an international coalition and refused to consider a three state option when rebuilding the Iraqi government and now it’s another forever war. Kosovo is a perfect example of why and how the US needs to intervene for humanitarian reasons when an authoritarian state has taken control and is committing human rights violations to retain power. The military intervention worked, the diplomacy worked and Milosevic was tried for war crimes. The situation in Ukraine has the same potential to end the Soviet influence over their country forever. It’s not a balance of power stalemate the way Vietnam or Korea was.
The GOP and war hawks in the US love to pretend the bombing Kosovo was a Wag the Dog situation. The reality was that Newt’s pursuit of impeachment over a blow job was Wag the Dog over his being miffed about AF1 seating. He did it to discredit the Clinton/Gore administration and pave the way for W to win the election in 2000. Warren and Clinton both deserved Peace Prizes for the Dayton accord but instead the GOP was allowed to discredit that victory by tying it to a blow job in the WH.
Kosovo, Rwanda, and Ukraine are NOT like Vietnam or Korea or Iraq. And Biden isn’t responsible for Putin’s actions and won’t be responsible even if the next GOP president decides to bomb some country back to the stone age so Putin, Texas, and the Sauds get to profit off speculation in the oil markets and tie the US to foreign oil dependence for the next century.
Motivated Seller
I hope the wealthiest will soon understand, that they cannot enjoy their gains in a world at war.
different-church-lady
@Carlo Graziani:
Most certainly no apology necessary! Indeed, I regret any distraction my minor quibble created away from your otherwise excellent comments.
different-church-lady
@Old School:
What, Manchin didn’t object based on some kind of economic insecurity issue?
Suzanne
@Calouste: I was born in 1980 and the USSR was the first country of which I had any awareness other than my own. And they reappear as an adversary, in every generation. They’re like the Borg but real.
Roger Moore
@Queen of Lurkers:
There are a couple of other reasons this war feels different. One really important one is that it’s right within Europe, which gives it a sense of immediacy that similar wars further away (e.g. the Russian attack on Georgia) don’t have. It’s also really clear that this is an attack meant specifically to stop the democratizing, westernizing forces in Ukraine. It’s not just a coincidence that it happens to be between an autocratic government and a democratic one; that difference in government is a root cause of the war.
WaterGirl
@Anyway: All of this. Truth.
germy
Old School
@different-church-lady: It was passed with unanimous consent, so I’m not sure how many senators were even in the chamber at the time.
Uncle Cosmo
Um…not really. It’s more or less the length of a typical human life, i.e., roughly 80-85 years. “Generation” is the interval between the births of a cohort of humans and the births of the cohort of their children, roughly 20-25 years. So a saeculum spans about 4 generations.
Roger Moore
@JoyceH:
There’s just enough truth to the efficiency of authoritarians to make it dangerous. In practice, that efficiency is only valuable as far as the authoritarian is wise and benevolent. If they’re selfish and cruel instead, you just have an efficient way to let them enact their worst impulses.
Kay
germy
Putin called her a “hooligan”
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Uncle Cosmo: That’s what I was trying to say. Thanks for the clarification
WaterGirl
@TM:
Ukraine’s cause is just. That’s a great way to put it. Stealing that.
I believe that this war really is good defending itself from evil. But I agree that a lot of different actions on all sides (except perhaps Ukraine) helped create the situation today, but given that we are here now, I really do think it’s a matter of good vs. evil. Democracy vs. autocracy. Freedom and life vs. imprisonment, one way or another. But you are right to point out what brought us to this point, and I hope this will illuminate some of the dangers that brought us to this place.
We have our own oligarchs, even if we don’t call them that, and they own far too much and control far too much. The corruption – mostly on the Republican side, but not solely – is wide and deep. Let’s hope this is a pivotal moment and that the US ends up with the collective wisdom to start to address that.
Here is the US, that means keeping all 3 branches in 2022 and 2024. Without that, it doesn’t look hopeful.
Betty Cracker
@Xenos: Interesting perspective — thanks for sharing it! I wonder if Putin and his admirers/dupes regret the Brexit push now.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
The bigger problem is seeing this as an Apocalyptic confrontation of Good versus Evil is it means negotiated settlements are out of the question and the war must continue until one side or the other is utterly destroyed no matter the cost in lives.
Geminid
@Chacal Charles Calthrop: Some help is on the way!
The Corporate Transparancy Act was attached to the National Defense Authorization Act during the the late 2020 “Lame Duck” session. The NDAA was then passed over Donald Trump’s veto.
The Corporate Transparency Act requires dislosure of the “beneficial,” or actual ownership of all new shell companies. Existing companies were given two years to comply.
A reporter for Forbes Magazine described the CTA as the most significant corporate reform legislation in decades. Democratic Representative Carolyn Maloney (NY) was instrumental in the passage of the CTA, after many years of advocacy.
BlueGuitarist
@Geminid:
The fascists killed far more civilians, in part by bombing, most famously, Gernika. That might be (as an addition to the clarion call mentioned above) part of the resonance of the analogy to Russia’s war on Ukraine.
International brigades began arriving 2 months after the fascist coup….
cain
Expect MTG to cover herself in
gloryfeces by embarrassing all of us.germy
trollhattan
@germy:
I have a long enough memory to remember when Putin’s literal cossacks clubbed the all-woman punk group Pussy Riot when they protested at the Sochi Olympics. That, mister president, is what hooligans are. Lady with sign, not a hooligan.
Baud
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Yeah, I stopped advising Hitler after that fiasco.
PJ
@WaterGirl:
Ukraine is already offering rewards for Russians defecting with planes. In this thread, Galeev suggests offering cash for destroying Russian equipment plus some pathway to citizenship outside of Russia: https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1503818308650426368?cxt=HHwWgICz3Zey0d4pAAAA
Martin
@wonkie: Let’s not overlook another aspect of this. For white Americans (of which I am one) this is a war where the victims look like us. You could pluck a Ukrainian out and drop them in any neighborhood in the US and they would look the part. They wear western fashion, drive western cars, perform western jobs, and look European. It’s very easy for us to empathize with them, to imagine that was us.
And even though this is a community where we check those biases and support refugees from Central America or the Middle East or wherever, most of us can’t fully divorce from who we are. Intellectually I can say these people are no different from Yemenis, but my emotional reaction at the very least lags a bit for the Yemenis. The biases of ‘oh, this is just what happens in the Middle East’ creep in. I can front of mind counter it, but I gotta sometime stop and front of mind it.
This is what culture does to us. It tells certain stories and not others, or tells them in a certain way. It programs that bias into our brain without us agreeing to it or even sometimes noticing it. In the end, all shooting wars are culture wars, and all culture wars risk becoming shooting wars. This is why I’m so worried about the current state of the US, even though I’m optimistic that the current conservative regime is in rapid decline. I don’t think they’ll go out without a fight.
WaterGirl
@germy: Boy, I would like to hear the take on that from someone who is in a better position to interpret that than I am.
They are arresting old Russian women in the streets for protesting but this woman gets a slap on the wrist for publicly standing up to Putin?
This makes no sense to me.
germy
@trollhattan:
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Awww! I was (and still am) the kind of kid who would have crawled into the nearest dark corner to escape that sort of attention, but it’s heartwarming to see! :)
lowtechcyclist
@germy: Well played, Hillary!
trollhattan
@cain: She and the Colorado trixie will taunt him like they did Biden at the SOTU. They’re classy like that. Cawthorn will wear his “I ? Daddy Vlad” hat.
germy
@WaterGirl:
Are the old Russian women given longer sentences than the TV broadcaster? I don’t know
BlueGuitarist
@WaterGirl:
in case you’re still looking for Jason Momoa with folding chair:
on you tube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyBXU0ZXD1A
or at
https://tenor.com/view/jason-momoa-folding-chair-like-a-boss-gif-7551664
Martin
@SiubhanDuinne: I think you can rely on Congress to get top marks in performative bullshit. It’s what they do. Sometimes it’s all they do.
To paraphrase a great man: “I need ammunition, not a standing ovation.”
trollhattan
@germy: What is this, Classic Rock Radio? The old hits keep getting repeated.
And the cossacks get their dachas.
WaterGirl
@germy: I don’t know, either. But this looks orchestrated and civilized, and dragging old women in Russia off to jail does not.
WaterGirl
@BlueGuitarist: Thank you for that! The GIF is just what I was hoping for.
wonkie
@Martin: I think that’s what I said: The crowds of Ukrainian refugees could be a crowd of Americans at a sale in front of a big box store. Individually, they look like models for LLBean ads. I’m white too. The Turks–families with little kids–were left by the Polish government to freeze to death in the woods. I am glad the Ukrainians are getting help. They deserve the help. I just wish that generosity of spirit was shown more broadly.
Jeffro
@WaterGirl:
Or, as Madison Cawthorn would put it, “incredibly evil” and “woke” ideologies…
Geminid
@BlueGuitarist: Well, the Ukrainians aren’t executing any noncombatants, much less the tens of thousands executed by Republican forces over the course their Civil War. That makes a difference
Don’t get me wrong. I believe that the Republicans had the moral high ground politically. But that war excited very bloodthirsty passions, and some on the Republican side were not immune.
PJ
@WaterGirl: The Russian newscaster was fined today for the pre-recorded statement (urging Russians to protest the war) she made that was released after her appearance on the newscast with the sign – she will have a separate trial for the sign incident. I don’t know whether she made some repentance to Putin that will be trotted out later, but she is apparently a famous person, and Putin may have decided not to make a martyr out of her.
germy
Calouste
@germy: I wonder whether somewhere high up they decided to make this high profile case not look too bad to foreign eyes by using the new law, or whether somewhere lower in the prosecution organization they decided to work-to-rule.
zhena gogolia
@germy: I haven’t heard of anyone getting the 15-year sentence yet. It’s more of a threat to deter people, it seems like. So far it feels as if they’ve been letting people go after a night or so. But I have a hard time keeping up with the news.
Ken
Optimist. I’m hoping none of them scream “You lie!”, start ranting about biolabs and Fauci, or throw feces at the screen
EDIT: I see others got there first.
jonas
@artem1s: In terms of how the aggressors are justifying their actions, the parallels between Ukraine and Kosovo are striking. And perhaps not coincidentally, Putin believes the NATO intervention in Kosovo (particularly the air war against Serbia) was just another in a long list of Russia’s post-Soviet humiliations at the hands of the West.
Ken
I’m old enough to remember the last time they did that. The news orgs (all three of them) were hand-wringing about the kids having to go to school in the dark.
Betty Cracker
@Ken: Now the kids can just use their smartphones to light the way.
Baud
@Ken:
Two words: Mask lamps.
Kent
That is a real issue here in the northern latitudes. I live in the Portland metro which is at 45 degrees 36 min north. That is north of Halifax Nova Scotia by east coast standards and closer to southern Newfoundland. During the mid-winter we have a lot of darkness. If you stay on daylight savings year-round and don’t adjust the school start times there will be 4+ months of school when kids are walking to school in pitch darkness. And when you consider how poor much of our pedestrian infrastructure is, especially in poor neighborhoods, that is a recipe for more kids getting struck by cars or otherwise in danger.
jl
Yes, it does feel different. In retrospect, Putin was going to do it no matter what. So I think all the debate about this or that kind of chess strategy could have done something or other leading up to this is besides the point. Even if we had provided the proper signaling that some suggest was needed after Crimea, it is very likely that Putin has been so delusional about what is going on in Ukraine, and his military forces ability to do thunder run out of Mad Max and do a quick coup, that he wouldn’t heed even the best signaling .
But, to end on a downer note, I think there will be plenty of gray areas before this is over. There will be a big controversy over best way to end it, relative roles of Ukraine and US in how and when to end sanctions. If it drags on there are already people who want NATO to intervene not because of a direct attack on its territory, but it can’t tolerate trouble just over its border (I think that would be nuts, but ex military brass are making noises about it, thankfully, no no one currently serving).
Calouste
@Old School: It’s supposed to take effect next year, so it’s legislative performance theater that is not going to become law. Airlines can’t deal with an hour shift in a decent chunk of their international schedule with less than a year’s notice (possible a lot less than a year), and will sue.
Constance Reader
@PJ: Your point can not be repeated enough – they do it because they can.
Geeno
@Old School: I want to set the clocks back and get the extra hour one more time. Ending it after losing the hour feels like “they” won – the bastards. I WANT MY SLEEP!
Can we just keep falling back each month?
matt
@WaterGirl: They’re not going to make a martyr out of her now. They’ll quietly dispose of her some other time I’d guess, if they have the chance.
Baud
@Geeno:
Perpetual falling back is a major Baud! 20XX! plank.
Calouste
@Kent: 45 degrees is not northern latitudes, that’s Venice, Italy!
jl
@Baud: I thought it was staggering around then falling down. I need to pay more attention to the Baud 24th and a half Century platform of the day.
germy
Ken
@Baud: I’m partial to XKCD’s 6/6 system. Unfortunately it isn’t compatible with his Earth Standard Time.
Old School
@Geeno: I’m sympathetic to the argument that Spring Forward should take place on a Friday at 4:00 p.m. and Fall Back should be a Monday morning at 8:00 a.m.
jl
@matt: I read that the trial today was for a less serious previous offense for protesting the war. The trial for her demo during the news show will be later.
Old School
@Baud: Saw an online comment: “Amazing that Republicans would support something that doesn’t turn back the clock.”
jl
@Old School: Might be a good idea.
My idea is to do it during peak drive time commute, preferably when it’s raining, and am taking it to the Baud XXXX! campaign for its consideration.
Betty Cracker
@jl: I agree it will get messier. On the matter of sanctions, if the need arises, maybe it would make sense to attach conditions to ending the sanctions, i.e., Russia pays war reparations to Ukraine or no dice.
Baud
@Old School: Heh. That’s good.
Dangerman
As the USSR was going kaputski, I thought the Powers That Be did a masterful job of keeping things under control (no loose nukes, etc)…
…but the end of The Cold War somehow allowed for the rise of Putin and Populism and here we are.
So, if I remember my history well, the end of World War I somehow led to the rise of Hitler (because Germany wasn’t too happy about the Treaty of Versailles)…
…and there we were in WW2.
Not sure where this thought is going but there is a pattern here. Time for a nap (damn medicine anyway).
JoyceH
@BlueGuitarist: Oh for heaven’s sake! I’ve probably seen that clip a thousand times and hadn’t realize it was Momoa, thought it was just some random guy. (How old is he here?) It’s used a lot on Twitter as a meme, to indicate “okay, this thread/dumpster fire is getting interesting so I’m just gonna settle in and watch the show”.
jonas
@Kent: I agree — it’s not a frivolous argument. Up here in upstate NY, the first light of dawn during the winter months would be something like 8am with year-round DS. My kids have to catch their bus at 7:15. Having sundown be more around 5 than 4 would extend time for snow sports like skiing and such, but I think I’d rather have kids be able to walk to school and busstops during daylight hours.
jl
@Betty Cracker: How to end the sanctions will be interesting and controversial. IMHO, we need to take the lead from Ukrainian government on what is best to stop the violence and reverse the invasion as soon as they get a deal they can accept. That should be a big consideration on starting the reverse the sanctions. I think if US pushes forward trying to do more than that with sanctions, I think there is a good chance that the allied coalition will fray and the sanctions will lose their effectiveness.
gvg
@Ken: As a kid, I hated waiting in hte dark. I was one of those kids who hated waiting in the dark. I was 9.
Quote from wikipedia
Previous observation of year-round daylight saving time
Permanent DST in the US was briefly enacted by president Richard Nixon in 1974, in response to the 1973 oil crisis. The proposal was initially supported by an estimated 79% of the public; that support dropped to 42% after its first winter, owing to the harshness of dark winter mornings that permanent DST creates. In the state of Florida alone, at least six school children were killed by motorists due to the dark mornings created by the new law.[18] The new permanent DST law was retracted within the year.[1][2][43][44] However, critics argue that anecdotes of deaths in the dark could be equally applied to darker evenings, and that the elimination of Permanent DST was politically motivated.[45]
Perhaps it is relevant that I live in Florida. At any rate, I actually like fall back spring forward. I don’t mean it’s fun adjusting, but that I like the extra daylight hour to get stuff done after work in the right seasons, and hate leaving the house in the dark. Our current system is just very practical.
@Ken:
Old School
@JoyceH:
It’s from a 2009 episode of the television series The Game, so he’d be 29.
Geeno
@Kay: Link did not take me to the correct tweet.
germy
@jonas:
School hours need to be changed. There’s no reason for young students to begin classes so early. Its ridiculous.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Russian armored column destroyed (photo)
Drooonze have done an amazing job and are being recognized more and more.
Carlo Graziani
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
I’ve deliberately tried to stay away from moral categories like good and evil, because, among other things, I don’t think they really capture the strictly political values that are at stake in this war, and that we in the West are, perhaps, now remembering are worth protecting.
The rule of law is a good one, but how about this refinement: we would like to be ruled by rulers who are themselves governed by laws, rather than above them. That’s not a moral category, but it is a hill worth dying on.
More broadly, the Enlightenment, as a political project to bring reason into governance, did not stop in the 18th century. It was, and is, a living thing, and obviously needs not only nurturing (we are still living with the hangover from slavery in the US!), but frequently even armor. Those are ideals we could lose, if we forget their value.
To me, these sorts of secular values are plenty nourishing, without having to take moral philosophy to war.
trollhattan
@germy:
Since educators and medical types have been pleading for later school bell times so that kids can get needed sleep–change winter bell times to be after dawn. Then it won’t matter so much how far north one lives.
Man, I love fixing things.
billcoop4
Also in upstate NY, and I rather like having it light later, especially in summer.
I’ll also be the first to say that I don’t have any problem with the time changes twice a year, and don’t understand the drama about it…it’s a compromise of course, but compromise is not a dirty word.
BC
jl
@gvg: Obviously the only solution is to put thousands of rocket thrusters around the earth to stabilize the earth’s orbit and eliminate inconvenient changes in the length of the day.
Maybe Musk and Bezos are racing to get that done in another of their US oligarch dick measuring contests, and it will done soon if the dead hand of bureaucratic big government regulation doesn’t get in the way.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I like how it’s triumphant instead of pitying or sad- “you made it! How great are you?” :)
germy
@trollhattan:
There’s certainly lots of things needin’ fixin’.
jl
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
” The bigger problem is seeing this as an Apocalyptic confrontation of Good versus Evil is it means negotiated settlements are out of the question and the war must continue until one side or the other is utterly destroyed no matter the cost in lives. ”
An interesting thing, either reassuring or an indication of moral rot depending on your viewpoint, is that from watching the seminars on the war given by the people at the US military war colleges, they don’t think that way. They say to decide what is the range of stable and sustainable political outcomes that are acceptable, and work your strategy and tactics backwards from that. I don’t hear those folks talking in terms of final battles between good an evil. I do see a subtext of using crises as a pretext to impose one’s preferred solution to the great contest between good and evil, and Solve All Problems, from the political science, international relations and national security pundits.
Edit: and also from some retired military brass, who conveniently won’t be responsible for cleaning up any shit that hits the fan from rash decisions.
Betty Cracker
@jl: Agree. I’m astounded they managed to put such a unified front together in the first place — and so quickly. It can’t have been easy, and we don’t want to screw that up.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Vlad still has Hillary Derangement Syndrome
Baud
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:
You jest, but he just became the front runner in the Republican primary.
Geeno
@Baud: I will walk that plank – can I put in charge of it? Maybe weekly or daily would be better
@Old School: I like the way you think – we could do it weekly ….
jl
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch: But no most favored nation status for Tucker? They put out a sloppy package.
Renie
@Soprano2: Reminds me of the old saying “HIstory repeats when people forget”.
jl
After Graham and other goofballs yelled about taking out Putin in some way or another, killing or coup-ing, that topic came up at some of the seminars. The reaction of the military war college wonks was ‘be careful what you wish for, how well can we predict what will come afterwards.’
I’m glad Biden is getting advice from people who try to think two or three steps ahead. As opposed out-of-control pandering posturing and preening.
SiubhanDuinne
Well, this just sucks.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/15/business/economy/raskin-fed-nominee-withdraws.html
Roger Moore
@TheWesson:
I have to disagree with this. The problem wasn’t that the post-War consensus failed, per se; it was that it had been replaced by a system that was driven entirely by greed. That was the essence of the Reaganism and Thatcherism. They hollowed out the administrative state, replacing regulators and regulations intended to protect the common citizen with ones intended to let capitalists have their way. That is the absolute essence of Reagan’s 9 scariest words.
Bill Arnold
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:
No Donald J. Trump on the list?
He says he was the toughest on Russia.
Alison Rose ???
@germy: I CACKLED omg I still love her
Bill Arnold
@SiubhanDuinne:
It does. Joe Manchin is firmly on team gigadeath-by-global-heating. (In a just world, he … [redacted])
raven
@Alison Rose ???: I left a note for you in the previous thread.
catclub
I remember that John McCain was basically treating issues as a tv pundit would, rather than a President.
WaterGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: Vote them all out.
Omnes Omnibus
@JoyceH: Kneejerk pessimism/cynicism doesn’t get us anywhere. If you see reasons for optimism, people need to see them. Ignore the h8trz!
grandmaBear
@trollhattan: you could make school start at ,say, 9, but then what about the parents who have to be at work at 8? Here the grandkids have to accompanied by an adult at the bus stop. It’s one of the things I do. But not everyone has a resident grandma.
Ked
I see our time zone overlords have fixed the system the WRONG WAY again, permanently meaning I spend six months waking up before there’s any useful daylight. I swear this is a republican conspiracy to derange the workforce, leaving them mentally more vulnerable to proto-fascist talk radio.
I’m not kidding.
Villago Delenda Est
Zelenskyy is a REAL leader. So totally unlike the worthless sack of rancid shit unfit even to fertilize crops that is TFG.
Ruckus
@The Moar You Know:
Agreed.
One way or the other was fine. Just stop the changing, just because we’ve done it that way doesn’t mean we should continue.
catclub
can you put a pendulum in a saeculum?
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore: It amazes me that Reagan remains popular, despite the fact that he and his vile minions, and the Thatcher bint, destroyed the essence of the post war order in the name of unfettered greed.
SiubhanDuinne
@Martin:
This entire comment is brilliant and profound. I’m copying into Notes so I can easily return to it, ponder it, act on it. Thank you for this eloquence.
Ruckus
@Ked:
It never works out well for everyone.
But I like your blaming republicans, they usually are responsible for all, or at least most of the crap in our lives.
Citizen Alan
@lowtechcyclist:
Seems to me we could solve that problem just by having the school day start an hour later, but what do I know
Villago Delenda Est
@SiubhanDuinne: What you said about Martin’s post.
Ruckus
@Villago Delenda Est:
Isn’t unfettered greed a band name?
OK now that that is out of the way….
I agree, Reagan didn’t do any favors in any way for anyone other than the greedy.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
The sun should set between 6 and 7 pm. I don’t care about anything else or how it’s achieved, but I am now a single-issue voter. Someone will have to inspire me a with a solution.
PJ
@jl:
@Betty Cracker: As someone up above noted, we are moving into a different era than the one that marked the post-Cold War, Murkah #1! period, just as the Cold War was different from the thirty years of war and depression that preceded it. How we proceed now may determine what conditions we will all live under for the next generation or two. Will it be authoritarianism, or democracy? Unhinged capitalist oligarchy, or some kind of more egalitarian economic system?
Simply getting Russian troops to leave Ukraine (all parts, including Crimea and Donbass) is insufficient for the security not just of Ukraine, but of Europe, and, by extension, the US. I think if Putin is allowed to continue leading Russia, he will learn from his mistakes, and the next war he starts will be more devastating for everyone, because he might win.
I have been heartened by how well, and how quickly (I am sure it did not come together overnight) Biden and his team put together the package of sanctions and was able to persuade so many countries with stronger economic ties to Russia than ours. I am hopeful that Biden and his team are thinking through what kind of institutions should be strengthened and created to prevent this kind of war from happening again. I have more thoughts on this than time allows right now, but we will need strong leadership and foresight to create this better world.
Villago Delenda Est
@Ruckus: The modern GQp hates The Enlightenment and all of its fruits. To include the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. They want to return to feudalism.
Brachiator
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:
This makes me dizzy. It’s as though Putin believes the misinformation that he has been feeding Fox News.
Jinchi
I always have the same reaction when people ask that question. No I don’t support the war. Putin supports the war. I support the Ukrainian fight to end it and hope Putin’s army gets routed.
I think it’s a matter of language. It seems like a simple question, but we all bring our own definition of what “the war” is.
Ruckus
@Martin:
I don’t think they’ll go out without a fight.
I don’t either. I am however somewhat confident that they will be so blatant in their goals and methods because they seem to have no other path left, that it will become obvious to many that their goals are not good even for their rabid followers. January 6th seems to be getting it there for a number of them.
Jinchi
He’s part of the same information loop. He knows if he adds Hillary to the list it will tie Fox closer to his side. We can expect Tucker to dedicate a night or more explaining just why Putin was correct to add her to his enemies list.
Maybe he’ll even speculate that we could end the war by handing her over.
Jay
@Dangerman:
when the USSR collapsed, we, the West, had major “Marshall Plan” programs for the Warsaw Pact countries, aid, loans, advisors, anti-corruption programs, activist and democracy programs to aid their transition from kleptocratic Communism to early democracies with regulated capitalism.
The Soviet Union remained for a while, tried to implement it’s own reforms, politically and economically, but one by one the ‘stans left, reforms failed, as the same “Leaders” remained in charge. Only “Russia” remained, there was a armed Coup attempt, and by the time that Russia was willing to accept Western Aid and advise to transition their Political, Economic and Legal Structures, the Ledeenists were in charge in most of the West.
Remember “trickle down”, Capitalism is the “natural” economic end state, assorted other Libertarian Greed is Good bs?
So, there was little to no aid, the West joined in the “Gangster Capitalism” looting of Russia, accepted and leveraged as best they could, the corruption,
and in the End, the Gangsters Won, because they were willing to use guns and murder to facilitate Corporate takeovers.
Full disclosure, Consulted for a big Timber Corp, that acquired 6 mills and timber rights in Siberia, ( semi legally, bribes were paid). Their ownership lasted a bit more than a year, the 5 year program of modernizing everything had been identified and started, the mills started to make a profit, and then the black SUV’s with the guys with badges and AKM’s showed up, and the operations were under “New Ownership”. Lawsuits and Court Cases were filed, but the Judges knew that the “New Ownership”, knew where they lived, so every loophole in Soviet and the new, post Soviet laws were used to confirm the “legality” of the New Ownership.
Brachiator
@Villago Delenda Est:
The couldn’t spell “feudalism” if you spotted them all the letters in the word. It would be “futilism.”
But I agree with your point.
The crazy thing is that the Enlightenment got them here, but they want to throw it away.
It’s like those people who say “now that modern medicine and sanitation has eliminated many diseases, we no longer need vaccines or public health.”
I used to think it was a good thing that there were not a lot of people shouting that Covid 19 was “God’s Will.”
I did not anticipate that they would reach deeper down into the big bag of stupid and come up with anti-vaxx nonsense.
Origuy
Note that changing DST is going to require an update to every computer in the country that automatically changes its clock twice a year. That includes all the iPhones and Android phones.
Ruckus
@Villago Delenda Est:
I do like the way you speak.
Jinchi
I don’t want to trivialize this. There’s clearly a Euro-centric aspect to NATO’s sympathy with Ukraine.
But this is literally the war that it was created to defend against. We spent decades preparing to fight a resurgent Russia, threatening to expand its reach, right at NATO’s doorstep. The former East European countries probably feel this to their core. They’ve been under Russia’s yoke and they don’t want to go back. They know they are the next target if Ukraine falls.
Ruckus
@Villago Delenda Est:
Equal opportunity haters they are.
Villago Delenda Est
@Origuy: Piece of cake. Very easily included in patches for every OS.
Brachiator
@Jinchi:
RE: It’s as though Putin believes the misinformation that he has been feeding Fox News.
I don’t know. This gets close to a paradox. I know that many jackals think it no big deal, but I don’t understand how the rabid Fox news audience can say “I love America and Putin.”
Then again, I didn’t spend a lot of time trying to figure out how evangelist Pat Robertson could come out from under his rock and declare that God’s plan was for Putin to attack Ukraine on his way to Israel.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
Isn’t the bag of stupid bottomless?
Villago Delenda Est
This was reported by Al Hunt back in 2011. There you have it.
Ruckus
@Villago Delenda Est:
My iPhone is set to see west coast time, based upon the atomic clock. Won’t that not be changed to reflect the no time change, thereby precluding the need to change time at all?
(Not actually a) Dr. Thoth Evans
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Maybe use sundials?
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator: They’re a lot like techbros who hate the government…which created the very industry they work in, with computing research in WWII, miniaturization in the Apollo program, and the Internet, which Ma Bell said was impossible.
jl
@Jay: My first job out of college was a statistician for a neo-con think tank. So I got to know those folks up close and personal. As a result of my exposure, I grew to wonder whether neocon thought, as with extreme forms of libertarianism, was developmental emotional disorder rather than a coherent school of thought. Behind all the fancy theorizing about what should happen after the Cold War was over, was an attitude of ‘F-them, they lost’. Also I wonder whether some of them were on a permanent adrenaline high from playing continuous virtual wars and crisis show down dramas in their heads.
Radical free market economists didn’t help, and people who should have known better, like Lawrence Summers, allied with them. They had this theory, totally unsupported by any theory or evidence that I know of, is that if we suddenly created private property rights for pretty much every collectivized asset you could think of from the old USSR and auctioned them off to the highest bidder, than that market freedom would lead to natural creation of stable democratic institutions. Edit: and of course, let the dead hand of pesky government regulation stay out of the way of the immediate privatization process.
I’ve been reading on the history of the end of the Cold War. Seems like the only leader who made serious proposals about how international institutions should evolve was Gorbachev, who thought that the process should begin by a democratic Russia joining NATO. I don’t know if that would have worked, but at least he thought about it. From what I can tell, other leadership in Russia and US either dismissed it or waved it around for some kind of grand-standing for various purposes.
Villago Delenda Est
@Ruckus: The OS checks the time zone at present on your clock, be it on an iPhone or a Mac or whatever. When the legally mandated spring forward or fall back happens, the OS automatically moves you forward one time zone or back to the standard time zone. Once this law gets enacted, the OS will just move us all forward a time zone (one hour closer to GMT/Zulu time) for good. This is a very simple OS patch fix.
Ruckus
@Villago Delenda Est:
At one point in time I had to deal with their petroleum company. I believe I have never disliked anything as much as that.
My respect for them is a negative value. A large negative value. A fucking huge negative value. I may dislike the owners more…..
Villago Delenda Est
@(Not actually a) Dr. Thoth Evans: That would REALLY be retro. In the medieval theocracy that is Saudi Arabia, they operate on “solar time”. That is, whatever a sundial tells them the time is, which just doesn’t work for railroad schedules, which is how time zones came about in the first place. Hell, the Imams KNOW when Ramadan starts, because the phase of the Moon is perfectly predictable, but they don’t trust science and must actually observe the sliver of the moon that starts the lunar month.
cain
@Kent: I think though for certain grades (especially as also living in the same area as you) – it makes sense to shift school to be later. That might play havoc for those who need to go to work. But work should accommodate all of that. Cultural change is needed.
Ruckus
@Villago Delenda Est:
I may be thinking of my prior cell phone. I used to set my clocks/watch by the atomic clock and when I worked in pro sports the timekeeper did the same with the event clock.
The end result is the same of course – the correct time. Or at least close enough…..
Villago Delenda Est
@Ruckus: Waay back in ancient times, the Clinton administration, you had to have a separate piece of software running to sync with an atomic clock somewhere…Naval Observatory, some place in Colorado, whatever. Now the OS just automatically checks with the atomic clocks and updates your personal display accordingly. So the OS has to be smart enough to figure out the time zone vis a vis the legal DST start/end date and display that accordingly.
Ruckus
@cain:
A thought.
The time change was actually for business so that it didn’t disrupt the income stream by having people with kids (future customers!) have to disrupt their far more important working lives.
Just a thought.
Jinchi
Yeah, it’s very weird to try to get in Robertson’s head.
Putin is evil, but he’s doing God’s work, which is intended to bring about Armageddon, which Robertson is giddy to see happen before he dies.
Makes me wonder if Pat knows who the Biblical good guys are, or if his viewers realize which team Pat’s been on the whole time.
Bill Arnold
@SiubhanDuinne:
It also applies to Russian troops, to some extent. Chechnya is Moslem, and Russian sentiment has been thoroughly anti-Moslem since the first Chechnya war (or maybe those apartment bombings that many people think Putin false-flagged). And the Chechens were brutal with Russian soldiers, regularly recording videos of torture of Russian soldiers and distributing them, and the behavior quickly became mutual.
Ukraine is populated by 10s of millions of people that look like them, and many of them, even the ones shooting at them, can speak Russian.
OTOH, at this point in Russia, “Nazi” semi-officially is partly synonymous with “opposed to Russia”.
Omnes Omnibus
@artem1s: This.
Ruckus
@Villago Delenda Est:
Please. Give me a break, I’m an old, I’ve forgotten how to wind a watch and haven’t worn one for over 20 yrs because I have a cell phone which tells me the time where I am, very close to the second without doing anything except looking at it, which seemingly I can still do. And since I’m retired I rarely need to be, well anywhere, anymore. And if I’m going to be late because of transportation or some such I can use the phone to see the time and call the other party to tell them I’ll be late. The only thing time tells me is that I likely don’t have as much left as I did when I was 20. Big news flash that one…..
Brachiator
@Villago Delenda Est:
Good comparison
Origuy
@Villago Delenda Est: If you have an Android running on an old version that no longer gets patches, will you have a problem? Apple is pretty good about that sort of thing.
There are systems that never connect to the Internet, for various reasons. Mostly in secure environments.
NotMax
@(Not actually a) Dr. Thoth Evans
“Gnomon, coordinate.”
:)
Elizabelle
Is this the first war where we have not had the usual gatekeepers? As in, can scroll social media/blogs/news sites for information, rather than being stuck with Mrs. Greenspan, telling us we did not just see or hear what we just saw and heard?
Gvg
@germy: parents have to leave the house early, so kids schools need to be early.
My idea is school districts could allow people to be in districts close to where they work instead of where they live. Then you can drop the young ones just before work and pick up from daycare right after work…
Jay
@Elizabelle:
probably the 5th. Starting with Dubya Dubya Me Too, where more and more people bailed on TV and Cable for bloggers,
Afghan occupation, Iraq Insurgency, Georgian Russian War, Yemen War, with shifts to YouTube, Twitter and local media, eg Al Jazeera,
for those of us more interested in the world and events than watching the 9O’clock.
Villago Delenda Est
@Origuy:
No idea, but if your old Android made the DST switch this time, it’s possible it will “fall back” as usual come Fall 2023, if no patch is available. But, as you say, perhaps Google will do something smart. However, no guarantees, as they are far more interested in selling you a whole new smartphone.
Villago Delenda Est
@Ruckus: Sending you a virtual Kit-Kat now.
Slappy Kincaid
@New Deal democrat: This is the blood that must water the tree of liberty, as Jefferson said. Not the childish, petulant personal gripes of those angry cranks who use that statement to complain about paying taxes, or being responsible for even the slightest inconvenience for the good of their neighbors, or any number of asinine phony culture war outrages, but the actual battle between liberty and oppression. This is what Jefferson was talking about. It is the great test of our generation, and I am not sure we will pass it.
Unique uid
@Villago Delenda Est:
I think you are off a bit here… pretty sure the computers are using NTP, network time protocol. Time servers are ranked into stratum’s, top level ones probably use GPS as a time source. Next level pulls time from the top ones, they might be regional or network based, for example phones probably get time from their cellular network. Maybe iOS from Apple NTP servers, Android from Google? Microsoft used to refer to their own time servers. I think there is a DHCP parameter to suggest a time server, but computers can have one hardcoded instead.
I’m not aware of anyway to pull time from the atomic clock directly over the net. You can buy a card with an antenna that picks up the signal from Colorado. Maybe $300?
Perhaps gps gets time from the atomic clock, but I suspect it is calculated between the satellites and ground stations to settle on the correct value.
If you look at Adafruit, they sell a $45 gps that will sync with a Raspberry Pi or similar. So you can have your own time server for less than $100. That gps will put out a pulse every second that is within 20ns of true time. Oh, time servers work with GMT, don’t worry about local time zones. There is a config setting on computers that tells what zone to adjust to.
germy
@Gvg:
Or maybe (here’s a wild idea) school buses.