Today, President Biden delivers Remarks on Support for Ukrainians defending their country.
Just to be clear, what follows are my thoughts, not Biden’s.
The people of Ukraine are fighting against Russia’s brutal attacks on their country. They are fighting for their freedom. Fighting for their right to democracy; fighting for their right to exist as an independent country.
Ukraine is fighting for its very existence. In Putin’s world, if Putin can not have Ukraine, then no one can.
I have come to believe that in Putin’s world, in Putin’s mind, Putin = Russia, and Russia = Putin. In Putin’s mind, there is no daylight between the two. I am no expert, obviously, but it feels to me like all that is left of Putin is pure ID – all urges, impulses, rage, vengeance, hate, retribution. He has been reduced to something lower than an animal, with nothing left that resembles a soul.
Perhaps in having lost his own soul, Putin is no longer able to perceive or recognize humanity. Putin, with a blackened heart and nothing resembling a soul, no longer sees Ukrainians as human beings, as people with lives and hearts and souls and choices; they are merely insubordinate pigs to be led to the slaughter – how dare they stand up to him??
A ticking bomb has to be defused very carefully, and even as I think every day “we have to find a way to do more”, I realize that each wire in this plate of lethal spaghetti has to be handled separately, and that takes time and patience.
But who has time and patience when people are being slaughtered?
Thankfully, I think that President Biden and his team have demonstrated that patience, even as they feel the same pain we do as the sane world watches this play out. Biden and his team are playing a big part in holding the coalition of sane nations together, and without that unity we have don’t have the tools needed to continue to defuse the ticking bomb.
I have faith that, like the seemingly hopeless task of untangling the tight, tangled chain of a precious necklace, where you start at the edges and at first it feels like there is no progress, and it feels impossible, still no progress, but then you find a tiny spot in that tight, tangled chain and a single piece loosens, and then another and another.
I suspect that some impossible knots are being untangled behind the scenes, that we are making progress in turning the tide, but that from the outside we are not able to see the loosening of at least some of the knots. I am trying to have faith in the untangling that I cannot see.
What makes this so unbearable is that good people are dying, and worse, every single day, even as we work to untangle the mess that is Putin’s twisted evil, and we can’t possibly untangle it fast enough.
Still, I am grateful for the steady hands that are doing the untangling.
Open thread.
Eunicecycle
I feel the same frustration you do, Watergirl. The “why aren’t we doing more to stop the war crimes and the senseless slaughter?” But I do have faith that the Biden administration is doing a lot we don’t know about, and maybe shouldn’t know about. After all, the Russians watch our news, too.
Bupalos
Putin is doing a very human thing, which is to fall under the spell of a big, wrong idea that happens to put himself at the center of history. He is essentially insane, but I think its pretty important to understand in what way he is insane. I’d really encourage folks to read Masha Gessen’s book on him, as well as Timothy Snyder’s Road to Unfreedom.
Studying Putin and the Putinist moment, and especially its reliance on a false mythology of innocence, victimhood, and cultural unity also sheds a lot of light on what is going on in America and Europe.
Parfigliano
Putin is a monster. History is full of them and I am positive the future holds more. The way this thing ends has to be with him dead not off somewhere enjoying his yachts, homes, and whores.
Betty Cracker
I’ll recycle my now-trashed post on this same topic as a comment instead:
The Times provides some context for today’s speech:
Adam’s post last night emphasized quotes in President Zelensky’s daily brief that addressed Putin’s use of trade to widen the conflict. That’s already happening.
But TPM notes there are “ominous rumblings” about the military component of the conflict expanding in unexpected directions:
The linked TPM piece quotes a CEPA article:
Peacetime constraints my ass — we can see with our own eyes the Russians have reduced entire Ukrainian cities to rubble and committed atrocities against civilians. But it’s not surprising that the Russian command’s failure and humiliation are driving them to more extreme rhetoric.
Will the push for “all-out war” beyond Ukraine remain rhetorical, or will Putin order attacks on NATO countries? That would be nuts, but it’s impossible to predict what a wounded bear might do. I wish we lived in slightly less interesting times, friends.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: I can trash mine if you prefer. I didn’t see that you were working on a post on this until i had already put mine up.
Betty Cracker
@WaterGirl: Nope — please leave yours up! WordPress just fucking sucks is all. Half the time I can’t tell if someone else is posting on the same topic or not either.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: If powers that be in Russia truly believe that they are the victims and that they are working under peacetime constraints – if this isn’t just knowing lies and propaganda – then they truly are delusional.
The mind boggles.
debbie
@Betty Cracker:
Y’all can’t set up some sort of IM system?
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: On the bright side, together our joint post covering this from two perspectives is pretty interesting!
debbie
@WaterGirl:
They know it’s bullshit. They don’t believe a word of their lies. It’s all pure propaganda.
WaterGirl
@debbie: This was probably my fault. I always try to put up Biden (LIVE) posts for all the big events, and I usually add the title and hit SAVE DRAFT right away so no one else will have to wonder if someone is doing a post on the big event.
But for some reason this morning I didn’t hit SAVE DRAFT right way. If I had, then it would have been more obvious.
On the other hand, i think what Betty wrote is really interesting, so I’m kind of glad that we have both because I get to see what she wrote.
Bupalos
@WaterGirl: They truly are delusional. But the victimhood and innocence is more generalized than any particular claim, in fact, it does not rest on particular claims at all. It’s a mythology of an always virtuous Russia always suffering at the hands of the West, supposing to span centuries. It’s based on simplification and falsification of a complex history
We have a similar, infant version of this kind of myth growing in America.
WaterGirl
@debbie: I guess the gaslighting does work because in sane humans, when you hear someone say the sky is PURPLE, part of you thinks “they couldn’t possibly be saying something so absurd if they didn’t actually believe that” and then maybe they win if even for a minute you think “am i wrong? maybe the sky is purple”.
And that’s not even accounting for the people for whom believing the sky really is purple is a benefit that serves them in some way.
So even if they lose, they win.
Bupalos
@debbie: of course it’s pure propaganda, but there are beliefs behind that propaganda that are similar (and similarly held) to a Chekist Soviet Union or Nazi Germany.
Betty Cracker
@Bupalos: I think we’ve always been similarly deluded about our place in the world: Manifest Destiny, American Exceptionalism, etc. Maybe all countries are susceptible to such delusions, but great powers definitely are.
Bupalos
@WaterGirl: I think the way to win is to address the actual beliefs that underlay the signifiers. The sky-is-purple signifiers are in a way designed to be unaddressable, they are more like tantrums than statements of belief. But like tantrums, there is something psychologically real behind it.
Heidi Mom
I fully agree with the many suggestions that President Zelensky deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, but I think President Biden does as well. One good, brave man called for help; another good, brave man answered. (Too schmaltzy?) No objection to Jose Andres, as well.
Redshift
@Betty Cracker: I find the “ominous rumblings” weirdly kind of reassuring. Russia needs to be fighting NATO because losing to Ukraine would be disastrous, but they know that actually fighting NATO would be even more disastrous. They’ve been saying they’re really fighting NATO and that this war is to prevent Russia from destruction since before this invasion.
Likewise, the Russian government and media have been periodically insisting that certain actions opposing or just criticizing Russia are “acts of war,” but every time they don’t respond to them like acts of war, it loses some of its punch. We’re seeing actions by Western countries that they didn’t do at first for fear of escalating or crossing a red line, and every time it turns out not to be a red line, our freedom to act has grown.
Bupalos
@Betty Cracker: All nations have their deluded myths, for sure. Some better, some worse. None has proven more powerfull in the 20th century to now in working evil than the myths of victimization, innocence, and national unity.
Russia is working off a very potent mythological mix right now. I think we’re going to keep being surprised until we learn this language.
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty Cracker: Read the British writing about themselves. Or the French. Or the Germans. Or the Russians. Or the Argentinians. Or the Brazilians. Or the Japanese. Or Indians. Or the Chinese. Okay, I will stop now.
UncleEbeneezer
@Bupalos: The myth of American purity/greatness has been around since we first colonized/stole this country. The exact words change but it’s pretty much always been there in some form as a justification for all kinds of bullshit. The documentary series Exterminate All The Brutes details it all, pretty well
[Oh I see, you mean “infant version” compared to how long we’ve been around vs. Russia…that makes sense]
Betty Cracker
@Omnes Omnibus: Hence the “great powers” qualifier, which is open to interpretation, I guess. Does Micronesia puff itself up in similar fashion? I have no idea.
sxjames
Just popping in to say thanks WaterGirl. You very eloquently captured what I’ve been hoping and thinking.
zhena gogolia
@Redshift:
Right. It always goes to 11 for them.
Betty Cracker
@Redshift: Great points — thank you!
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty Cracker: FWIW from experience, I could easily have put Romanians and the Swiss in there. I think it’s simply a byproduct of nationalism which is fairly harmless in Sports and Eurovision but can get pernicious quite quickly.
WaterGirl
Starting now!
UncleEbeneezer
@Betty Cracker: I think you are correct. Every nation/culture/people thinks they are special, but it’s the great power that really piles the tinder just waiting to be lit.
Sort of like how all people think they know everything, but it’s with great power that the Trumps, Hitlers, Weinsteins, Musks of the world get the opportunity to unleash real fuckery on the world.
Bupalos
@Redshift: they do not believe they are fighting ukraine at all they do not believe ukraine exists. To them, that is just a region of the russian cultural empire that the west invaded and infected. It is “little Russia.” In the Putinist mind, NATO started this war by invading Ukraine, and they have tried to fight that invasion as peacefully as they could. But having let the Western/Nazi infection spread beyond what they realized, they now indeed may have to terrorize or kill every man, woman, and child.
To get into their mindset, imagine Canada scraping their constitution and joining a league with Iran and North Korea.
Betty Cracker
@UncleEbeneezer: That’s a clarifying analogy — well said.
catfishncod
Watergirl has tapped into something, I think, with this observation:
I notice because there’s a similar pattern in, of all things, Shakespeare’s histories. Aristocrats are referred to, and address, as if they are the territories their titles lay claim to. He’s not just “The Duke of Gloucester”, or “His Grace of Gloucester”, or even “Humphrey of Gloucester”. He’s “Gloucester”. Full stop. I thought this was just a verbal shorthand at first, and sometimes it is. But sometimes it’s a lot more.
Everyone else is “of Gloucester”, but not him, because he is Gloucester and everyone else “of Gloucester” is defined by their relationship to him. His actions — and his alone — are described as what “Gloucester” is doing, and it’s just assumed that everyone “of Gloucester” is working to execute the Duke’s will, because he is the sole human with agency and legal power to act on behalf of everyone and everything associated with the Duchy of Gloucester.
And when this convention is active, it applies at every level of nobility, and only to nobility. The King of France is France. The Earl of Cambridge is Cambridge. Even the Archbishop of Canterbury is Canterbury. Prince John of Lancaster isn’t referred to as Prince John, even though that’s a higher title, nor as Lancaster, his house — he’s a Prince of England, and a member of the House of Lancaster. But he’s the Duke of Bedford — and in charge. So he is Bedford.
But it doesn’t apply if you’re an elected or appointed official. The Mayor of St. Albans is not St. Albans — because he has to confer with others “of St. Albans” to act for the town of St. Albans.
This isn’t a realistic conceptualization even of actual nobilities; in reality, if you did too many crazy things, you got intrigued against, or disinherited, or exiled, or unfrocked, or whatever — so any noble with half a brain conferred with peers and followers before acting. (There were, of course, plenty of nobles with much less brainpower.) Nonetheless, many nobles internalized this convention, leading to what I would like to call Dysfunctional Aristocratic Identity Disorder — the inability to distinguish your identity, your office, and your power from one another. And I think Putin has contracted DAID.
Amir Khalid
@Bupalos:
It seems to me that every emperor, or wannabe emperor like Putin, falls under the spell of this same big wrong idea. It might, in fact, be the central idea of imperialism itself.
debbie
@WaterGirl:
It’s lazy gaslighting. The answer to any question or any accusation is “No, we didn’t.” Why doesn’t anyone ever call them on their bluff?
Ksmiami
Bury Putin and restructure Russia- there’s no other option at this point.
Betty Cracker
Great answer from Biden in response to the question about Russia’s escalating rhetoric. Echoed Redshift’s point at #18, i.e., that it’s a sign of weakness.
debbie
@Bupalos:
I think it’s more Putin thinking he could take advantage of that line of propaganda for his own ends rather than his sincere belief in it. He’s such a manipulator. He shows no emotion, ever, in his delivery.
Geminid
@WaterGirl: The kernel of truth in the claim that Russian armed forces operated under “peacetime cinstraints” is that they began the war assuming that it would be over in three days, so bombing vital infrastructure was unneccesary and wasteful. The gloves are off now and they are hitting rail lines, bridges and other vital infrastructure. But Ukrainian forces are beginning to control their country’s airspace, and Russia may have lost their chances for an effective strategic bombing campaign.
Bupalos
@UncleEbeneezer: no the infant myth of innocence and victimization I refer to is the current Trumpist one.
I’ll join you in the idea that myths like manifest destiny or american exceptionalism are extremely problematic. But they are also mixed and complicated in the human emotions and actions they bring out. Manifest destiny was kind of a tack on to a fairly ugly universal historical reality that groups always take what they can. American exceptionalism made us turn a blind eye to our wrongs, but also did inspire at least some sense of a calling to be morally higher.
The myth of national innocence and victimization and humiliation is unequivocal in what it wants. Revenge and blood and darkness. Only.
I think its pretty important to be accurate here. To not fall into a trap that is best exemplified in Trump’s response when asked about putin being a killer in 2015 debates : “you think we’re innocent?”
We’re not “so innocent,” but we also haven’t and can’t give up trying to fulfill and better live up to our stated values. And that means first and foremost not entertaining that kind of absolutist moral relativism.
The first and almost last step in giving up and regressing is contained in that Trumpian exchange. Its all the same. We’re all bad. It ever was thus and ever will be. Who are we to judge genocide? If you listen, Putin hammers at this constantly.
Betty
I was happy to hear the comprehensive nature of the funding request. That should make it an easier sell and reflects the level of thought put into developing it.
WaterGirl
@Redshift: Well said!
sdhays
I started out thinking that Putin and his coterie’s delusions and corruption were the source of this awful situation, but check out this quote:
Who said that? Tsar Alexander II, ~150 years ago. Putin could have, and probably has, said words to this effect. The roots for all of this go deeper than just Putin. And, unfortunately, removing Putin won’t be the panacea we hope for (still worth hoping for, though).
WaterGirl
@sxjames: Oh, thank you for that.
Frank Wilhoit
@Bupalos: The signifiers exist to protect the “beliefs” and make them inaccessible, because they are not beliefs but an addiction.
Bupalos
@sdhays: Removal of Putin won’t be a panacea, agreed. But that quote runs fairly opposite to Putinism, and this idea that entire regions are somehow destined to wreck havoc by their stars is nonsense worthy of an ignoramus like that.
The material realities of 2022 are historical lightyears away from that time, just as 2150 will be lightyears from here.
laura
I am so very grateful that we have a Biden/Harris Administration because that last guy and his grifty venal scabrous Cabinet would have sold out the world to his owner and handler.
Bupalos
@Frank Wilhoit: I’ll think about the language of addiction here. I’m thinking more in the realm of emotional or psychological disturbance.
gvg
@WaterGirl: The sky is frequently purple for real. sunsets, sunrises and storms depending. In fact I am not sure there is a color that the sky isn’t sometimes. Green is pretty rare but I have seen pictures of auroras with a lot of green. this is a traditional argument, but I just noticed that it doesn’t work as well as I thought.
sdhays
@Bupalos: I’m saying that Russian elite thinking about how they view Russia’s place in the world hasn’t changed much in 150 years. Putin’s actions, not just his military actions, but the way he has organized the state and the priorities he has set point to a view of Russia being a menace that has to be appeased. He doesn’t care about Russia being competent at anything or having a strong economy or innovating. All of those things would threaten the Tsar.
So, his focus on achieving “greatness” is stealing more land for the empire and menacing other countries. And Russians have been whipped to accept this for centuries. It will take transformative leadership to break this cycle.
sab
@catfishncod: An important thing to remember in readi g Shakespeare’s histories is their historical inaccuracy.
PJ
@Betty Cracker: Everybody wants to feel important on some level. I have read works by authors from small, never-going-to-be-great-power countries which attests to their country’s singular role in world history, blah blah blah. Irish Americans – less so the Irish still stuck on the island – are particularly prone to this kind of blather.
That said, I do think that particular geographies and histories can give a person, and a country, specific perspectives which might be absent or less obvious elsewhere, and that kind of diversity is very valuable. Ukraine is a case in point. Most Americans haven’t grown up in a land where an overbearing neighbor from time to time starves them to death or tries to wipe them off the globe, and paying heed to the Ukrainian experience can be instructive to us (aside from the immediate concerns of the current war.)
gvg
I was startled to learn when this began, that apparently Russia had previously promised that draftees didn’t get sent into combat or outside the country, only volunteers. I read that this had come about because of protest by mothers during the Chechnya wars when poorly trained draftees were sent to get killed. The articles quoted people who doubted the promise would be kept and there were already examples of some “mistakes” where draftees were sent.Since this war isn’t going well, I wonder if that rule will remain. It seems like Russia is now a lot smaller with a smaller population which means it’s army is smaller too,
PJ
@Amir Khalid: Never buy into your own angle. Never get high on your own supply.
catfishncod
@sab:
On details, sure. Also on slant; everyone buttered up Liz One, and once Jim Six-and-One was on the throne, his company was the King’s Players and had beaucoup incentive to make His Majesty’s historical precedents as positive as possible (and opposing views as villainous as possible).
But this is a trope spanning all that, and beyond; it’s something he expected his audience to understand. And it applies whether he’s doing a villain or a hero, a real person or a faked-up character. So I don’t think we can just discount it altogether.
Any subject matter experts know of other examples / counterexamples?
Omnes Omnibus
@catfishncod: By Shakespeare’s time, the title did not necessarily imply control over a specific piece of land.
Josie
@Bupalos: Thank you for this cogent explanation. I’ve never seen the answer to Trump’s statement laid out so well before.
Villago Delenda Est
I have always doubted the deserting coward’s soul detection abilities. I am happy to see I am not alone.
catfishncod
@Omnes Omnibus: Which is why I referred specifically to histories.