Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Found liable for massive fraud, is required to post a massive bond, gets a break, then files a *fraudulent* bond!

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

President Biden is doing good where he can, and getting it done.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

“Why isn’t this Snickers bar only a nickel?”

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

If West Virginia and San Francisco had a love child.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Cole is on a roll !

I conferred with the team and they all agree – still not tired of winning!

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

There’s always a light at the end of the frog.

Books are my comfort food!

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

People are weird.

Fuck that bum, let’s go Joe!

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

“That’s what the insurrection act is for!”

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / War for Ukraine Day 553: The Russian Bombardment of Civilians and Civilian Targets Continues

War for Ukraine Day 553: The Russian Bombardment of Civilians and Civilian Targets Continues

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(Image by NEIVANMADE)

Quick housekeeping note: we are all good here! Power never went out, some branches down on the property, but none of it on the house or roof. We were, once again, very, very lucky!

The Russians opened up on Ukrainian civilian targets again overnight:

Last night, russians attacked Ukraine with 28 cruise missiles and 16 Shahed UAVs.
All missiles and 15 drones have been shot down.
@CinC_AFU

Unfortunately, there are killed and injured civilians, as well as ruined buildings, as a result of falling fragments of destroyed missiles and drones.

Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump.

No queues: MMCs’ work digitalization is of great importance – address by the President of Ukraine

30 August 2023 – 22:37

Good health to you, fellow Ukrainians!

A report for the day.

First of all, the NSDC. I held a meeting today. As I said earlier, there was only one issue – MMCs.

The inspection of military medical commissions across the country is underway. Law enforcers will complete it soon. And there are already several conclusions.

It is necessary to check a significant number of decisions of the military medical commissions on disability and unfitness for military service that were made after February 24. Today, the relevant statistics were presented at the National Security and Defense Council. There are examples of regions where the number of people removed from the military register due to the MMC’s decision has increased tenfold since February last year. It is absolutely clear what these decisions are. Corrupt decisions. And in the criminal proceedings that are currently underway against the staff of MMCs and MSECs, it is even clearer how many decisions could have been falsified. Law enforcement officers have already clearly identified unreasonable MMCs’ decisions. Specific evidence has been recorded. It has been presented behind closed doors. Different regions of the country, different TRCs, different officials. The bribes range from 3 to 15 thousand dollars. They will be held accountable.

The list of those who went abroad due to obviously dubious decisions of MMCs will be analyzed separately. First of all, due to the decisions of those who have already been caught taking bribes. We are talking about at least thousands of people.

We will also address the issue that almost all commanders in the field are referring to – the concept of so-called limited fitness. For a very long time, this concept allowed for manipulation in the manning of units. In particular, combat brigades. Everything related to fitness or unfitness for military service must be as clear as possible. So that a person understands how he or she can help the defense, and so that the units have clarity on who will be joining them.

And a very important point is the digitalization of the MMCs’ work. No more queues. No more wandering around to find or sign the right paper. All this can be ensured electronically and by the presence of the necessary military personnel at the place where the medical examination takes place, if it is in a civilian medical institution. Government officials will complete this digitalization work. And we need full accessibility in all areas of the civilian medical system for the purpose of undergoing the MMC’s examination. Some regions, such as Volyn, have ensured this one hundred percent. And another example is that in Kyiv, almost nothing has been done to allow people to undergo the MMC’s examination in civilian medical institutions.

Therefore, the military command, the medical sector, and all levels of government must work as actively as possible to resolve this issue.

The second topic for today is our international agenda. We are actively preparing for the negotiations and meetings scheduled for September. I have held meetings with international relations officials, with our ambassadors in the respective countries. We clearly see which leaders we need to meet and negotiate with, and what results we have to bring to Ukraine.

The third issue is the European Union. I held a large meeting with representatives of the parliament, government officials, and our international relations officials on our readiness for the launch of membership negotiations with the EU. The implementation of the recommendations. The necessary bills that have already been prepared and need to be passed in the parliament. 226 votes for each decision for Ukraine in the European Union is an obligation.

And a few more things.

Peace Formula. Today, a new meeting was held with representatives of diplomatic missions on the implementation of the Peace Formula. Andriy Yermak chaired it. And today, there were 11 more diplomats, bringing the total to more than 70 diplomatic missions involved. This is a very good dynamic. And there can be even more participating states. The world majority will be with us.

The Peace Formula is designed so that every country and every leader can demonstrate their capabilities for the sake of a common result, for a just and lasting peace.

And our air defense. I thank every warrior who defends Ukrainian skies every day and every night. We are working very hard to provide Ukraine with new air defense systems. Now is not the time to talk publicly about the details, but negotiations on additional air defense systems are ongoing with our various partners. Step by step, we are bringing this success closer for Ukraine.

Glory to everyone who fights and works for Ukraine! I thank everyone in the world who helps!

Glory to Ukraine!

The cost:

A childhood dream. In an art therapy session, 9-year-old Kamila illustrated her dream: to have her father, who perished in the war, return to Earth as an angel. They are all angels – our heroes – safeguarding their little ones in dreams as they slumber.
Story: Pierre Polard
📷 Patryck Jaracz

I meant to include this video yesterday and forgot until after the post had been up for several hours, so it goes in tonight. Since I don’t know the nym of the commenter who sent it to me, just the person’s real name, feel free to sound off in the comments and take credit it for sending it across. Thanks!

Last night in comments way2blue asked:

The past few weeks we’ve seen repeated complaints from unnamed Pentagon & intelligence officials—nitpicking the pace & focus of the Ukrainian counter offensive.My question to you is why?Could you offer insight into their motives?  Seems counter-productive & perverse.

Are their military assessments not being taken seriously by the White House?So they leak to the public hoping for traction?Or the opposite?Is Russian framing hardwired within segments of the Biden administration?Are they left over from the Trump administration?Scapegoating?Something else?

Thanks as always for your professional insights into so many facets of war in Ukraine.

You are most welcome. Thank you for the kind words. To answer your question, I do not know. Some of this stuff has leaked to WaPo’s David Ignatius, who is considered to be the go to source for the Intel Community leadership to get information they want out to the public out to the public. But since these concerns and complaints are being made anonymously I have no idea if these are senior people with permission to leak or they’re frustrated career folks or they’re uniformed or civilian. What I do know is that all this does is help the Russians with their information warfare campaign.

Speaking of Biden administration statements, this is interesting:

Here’s the screen grab from Rozen’s tweet above:

Screen grab of a statement regarding Russian-DPRK cooperation made by John Kirby.

This would be an authorized disclosure of information/intelligence.

Andriy Zagorodnyuk, the former Ukrainian Minister of Defense, did an interesting interview yesterday with Christianne Amanpour:

Verbove:

 

This is very, very bad. The Ukrainians cannot afford to lose any pilots or aviation assets.

Suspilne has the (machine translated) details:

August 29 on Bakhmut direction died six pilots from the 18th separate brigade of army aviation named after Igor Sikorsky. This happened during the combat task.

This was reported to the Public by a spokesman for the brigade Eugene Rakita.

The fallen had officer ranks. One of them — comes from Poltavshchyna, the rest – from other regions of Ukraine, the spokesman added.

 

For you Russian equipment go boom enthusiasts:

A bunch of locations in Russia and Russian occupied Crimea were attacked by drones last night:

Drone attack on six Russian regions reported:
– Pskov airport: four Il-76 military transport aircraft damaged;
– Bryansk: Kremniy El microelectronics factory on fire
– Kaluga: oil reservoir hit
– Moscow
– Oryol
– Ryazan

Sevastopol and the bay attacked by naval drones.

Is everything still according to plan?

The Financial Times has details:

Ukrainian drones struck seven Russian regions overnight, destroying several military cargo planes, in Kyiv’s most sweeping unmanned aerial attack inside enemy territory since Moscow invaded last year.

Videos showed nighttime blasts of rocket fire over the city of Pskov close to Russia’s border with Estonia. Flames could be seen rising over the city’s military-civilian airport as Russian air defences attempted to take down the drones. According to state news agency Tass, at least four Ilyushin Il-76 planes, large military cargo carriers, were destroyed in the Pskov attack.

Drones also attacked targets in the Oryol, Kaluga and Ryazan regions, and in Bryansk, where they aimed for the local television tower, among other buildings. Another drone aiming for Moscow was shot down in the Ruzsky district west of the city, the Russian defence ministry claimed.

In Bryansk, the region’s governor, said they had shot down seven drones overnight and in the early morning hours.

The airport in Pskov was closed to civilian use on Wednesday, Russia’s aviation agency said. The governor said authorities needed to assess whether there had been any damage to its landing strip.

Emergency services told the Tass state news agency that four Il-76 planes were damaged. “A fire started, two aircraft are engulfed in flames,” it said.

Ukraine has steadily extended its ability to strike targets deeper behind enemy lines. It has used foreign-supplied artillery and missile systems, such as US Himars and British Storm shadow missiles, to hit Russian targets on Ukrainian soil.

But to strike within Russian territory, Ukraine has had to develop homegrown solutions as its western allies have refused to give it weapons to attack Russia itself.

Such attacks “have military utility”, Mick Ryan, a former Australian general and frequent commentator on the war in Ukraine, said on social media, because they “could force redeployment of Russian air force assets from Ukraine”.

Since Ukrainian drones fly more slowly and at a lower altitude than missiles, and are often made of non-metallic parts, analysts say they have sometimes been able to dodge Russian air defences.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s improved air defences have been increasingly able to intercept Russian aerial attacks. Russia launched a massive missile and drone attack on Kyiv overnight that left at least two dead and two wounded. But Ukrainian air defences managed to down all 28 missiles and 15 out of the 16 Russian drones, according to Valery Zaluzhny, commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces.

Much more at the link!

The Financial Times also brings this excellent piece by Bronwen Maddox, the Director of Chatham House:

Of the two startling images that circled the globe last week, only one should prompt a foreign policy rethink for the UK and its allies. It is not the flaming wreckage of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s plane near Moscow. The dramatic death of the leader of the Wagner group, widely predicted since his attempted mutiny against Vladimir Putin in June, told us nothing new. This assumed demonstration of theatrical brutality only strengthens Ukraine’s resolve in the fight against Putin.

It is the police mugshot of Donald Trump that deserves more thought. Carefully posed (he chose to glower rather than smile under the combed sweep of his hair) and immediately circulated by his team as a symbol of his supposed martyrdom, it drove his poll ratings only higher. The image will dominate next year’s presidential campaign (in which he holds the overwhelming lead for the Republican nomination). US District Judge Tanya Chutkan on Monday set a start date of March 4 2024 for his federal criminal trial on charges of alleged election interference, one day before “Super Tuesday”, when Republican voters in more than a dozen states head to the polls to pick their nominee.

British foreign policy, like that in much of Europe and many democracies beyond, is based on the presumption that the US in some sense always remains the same. Its presidents, its policies, its wars of choice come and go. But America upholds the principle of international institutions even if it rails against some of them or funds them sporadically. It continues to pick up the giant’s share of the tab for Nato, above all.

Those assumptions are confounded if Donald Trump is elected again. His critics say that surely he would not win more support than in 2016, but President Joe Biden’s stumbles, literal and figurative, and the unpopularity of Kamala Harris as vice-president have left the Democrat vote vulnerable.

Dealing with Trump in the White House again would present problems on a different scale. In a second term, he would be a president who had denied the result of one election and rejected the legal process of being held to account for that. He would have an utterly different conception of America’s role in the world and the nature of its democracy at home, of the rule of law at home and abroad. And so would the US voters who elected him.

At that point, the US becomes, for its allies, a different country altogether. The implications for global institutions, for international law and order, for predictability of a world superpower are stark. That they are barely discussed in published foreign policy is perhaps because of concern about jeopardising current relationships. But the prospect of the US being led by a president who denies the principles of American democracy is likely enough that this is no longer a good excuse.

Much, much more at the link!

I want to make an important point in light of Maddox’s op-ed. For those who think that Trump could not or would not be elected again in 2024 you need to realize that it is possible that he could or would be. Given the nature of the electoral college Trump still has the same 30% chance of getting reelected that he did in 2016. The revolt and insurrection of his followers is ongoing. Unlike in the 1860s, this is actually a civil war albeit a cold to lukewarm one. We sit the warmer to hotter spikes multiple times a week. This past week we saw them at UNC and in Jacksonville and in several other places. Yes, Trump and some of the more/most senior co-conspirators in the attempt to overthrow the constitutional order and the constitution itself have finally be indicted. That’s great. There is no way to know if Trump will actually be held accountable. In half the states, as I wrote about Florida last night in response to a question in the comments to hurricane update thread, we have illiberal managed Christian herrenvolk democracy:

[Florida] has been gerrymandered within an inch of its life and DeStupid also controls the courts as he’s appointed the majority of the state supreme and appeals court judges over the last five plus years. The state is a managed white Christian herrenvolk illiberal democracy run on behalf of DeStupid’s ambitions and the oligarchs that fund them.

Over half the states are just like Florida in terms of GOP trifectas. Right now Robin Vos, the Speaker of the Wisconsin House is working to overthrow the last judicial election. The minute he files the impeachment charges against the new state supreme court justice she is suspended from all further judicial activities. Meaning she can’t rule on anything and the state supreme court is a 3-3 deadlock, which essentially neuters it. Bloomberg just published a piece on how the GOP majorities and supermajorities in red state legislatures are subverting the Democratic municipal governments inside their states. These governments are usually in the largest urban areas.

In red states across the South, Republican legislatures are increasingly interfering in the governance of Democratic cities by blocking liberal reforms and often dictating conservative policies in their place. In Texas, Republicans overrode measures in Austin and Dallas guaranteeing water breaks for construction workers and blocked cities’ ability to mandate paid leave for workers. In Mississippi, Republicans created a separate police force and court system for a majority White part of the heavily Black capital city of Jackson, prompting the US Department of Justice to file a complaint calling the move “racially discriminatory.” In Missouri, Republicans forced Kansas City to increase spending on policing and have been trying to take control of police oversight in St. Louis, which would reverse the outcome of a statewide ballot initiative passed 10 years ago.

Much, much more at the link.

As I’ve written here before: an insurrection (or revolt or rebellion or civil war) that goes unpunished is practiced. The only way to ensure that it is stopped is a transparent response that happens quickly. The response in regard to the leadership to the 6 January revolt and the ongoing insurrection and cold to lukewarm civil war has neither been transparent nor quick. The only reason it is happening at the Federal level is that former Speaker Pelosi set up the January 6th Committee in order to shame AG Garland into doing more than pencil whipping whatever DOJ was doing around the executive suite of the building. The US is being internally subverted – out administered – in conjunction with the non-kinetic elements of a world war being waged against us by Russia. Our domestic institutions are sclerotic, unstable, and in need of significant TLC. The international order we established after WW II is in similarly bad shape and, because we are in a world war being waged against us and our allies by Russia, despite no one in the Biden administration being willing to even consider that reality, let alone admit it, once that war concludes the global system we have all been living in is going to be remade whether we like it or not. Think I’m being hyperbolic, here’s Fiona Hill’s assessment:

“This is a great power conflict, the third great power conflict in the European space in a little over a century,” Hill says. “It’s the end of the existing world order. Our world is not going to be the same as it was before.”

Part of the problem is that conceptually, people have a hard time with the idea of a world war. It brings all kinds of horrors to mind — the Holocaust and the detonation of nuclear weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the dawning of the nuclear age. But if you think about it, a world war is a great power conflict over territory which overturns the existing international order and where other states find themselves on different sides of the conflict. It involves economic warfare, information warfare, as well as kinetic war.

We’re in the same situation. Again, Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014, exactly 100 years after Germany invaded Belgium and France — and just in the same way that Hitler seized the Sudetenland, annexed Austria and invaded Poland. We’re having a hard time coming to terms with what we’re dealing with here. This is a great power conflict, the third great power conflict in the European space in a little over a century. It’s the end of the existing world order. Our world is not going to be the same as it was before.

People worry about this being dangerous hyperbole. But we have to really accept what the situation is to be able to respond appropriately. Each war has been fought differently. Modern wars involve information space and cyberspace, and we’ve seen all of these at play here. And, in the 21st century, these are economic and financial wars. We’re all-in on the financial and economic side of things.

Much, much more at the link.

If you don’t think Trump can be elected again in 2024 you are deluding yourself. If you don’t think he will then capitalize on being elected and quickly move to overturn the constitutional order and the Constitution in the name of protecting them to establish an illiberal, managed white Christian herrenvolk democracy then you haven’t been paying attention. The greatest domestic threat to the US would be a second Trump administration. It would also be the greatest threat to the international order and global system. The US would hand Ukraine, as well as Moldova over to Russia. And the Baltics would likely be in play too because Trump will pull the US out of NATO. He just announced he’d impose a set of tarriffs and start a trade war that would crash both the US and global economies. None of this is written in stone. Our fate is not utterly binding. There are a lot of dynamics in play, such as the continued effects of the Dobbs decision. However, we are dealing with a civil war inside and related to a world war and if we don’t get our heads around this soon we will wake up in November 2024 and it will be too late.

That’s enough for tonight.

Your daily Patron!

There is a new Patron slideshow at his official TikTok. These don’t embed here, so click through if you want to see it.

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

116Comments

  1. 1.

    Citizen Alan

    A hundred years from now (assuming our species survives that long), historians will say that World War 3 took place in 2016. It was fought entirely in cyberspace, and the victory of Czar Putin’s New Russian Empire was so absolute that Great Britain willingly committed national suicide and America inflicted what may yet be fatal wounds on its polity. I genuinely don’t see how the country survives the next twenty years. Not unless the Millennials give up on gun control and start stockpiling weapons at a faster pace than the orcs of the right wing.

  3. 3.

    Freemark

    Seeing President Zelenskyy at the ceremony greeting the family of the fallen really fucks with my allergies.

    How anyone in the West can observe Zelenskyy, observe Putin,  then choose Putin and Russia blows my fucking mind. It’s a moral test like choosing Trump x1000. It ain’t a difference of opinion, it’s a difference in morality. I really can’t trust the humanity of those who choose like that and that includes family.

  4. 4.

    Cameron

    I wish it was harder to believe that Trump couldn’t get elected again.  But that is a very real possibility.  I can’t begin to imagine what everyday American life would be like – certainly nothing like it is now.

  5. 5.

    Freemark

    @Cameron: The, probably wrongly attributed, Chinese curse “May you live in interesting times” comes to mind. The power gained by Trumpians (racists, misogynists, etc.)  may actually not last long if he was elected, but the instability would probably last for decades here and globally.

  6. 6.

    Betty Cracker

    This is important to say because it really is easy to lose sight of the stakes sometimes, at least for me. (I’m sure Ukrainians don’t have that problem.) Thanks, Adam.

  7. 7.

    Chetan Murthy

    For those who think that Trump could not or would not be elected again in 2024 you need to realize that it is possible that he could or would be. Given the nature of the electoral college Trump still has the same 30% chance of getting reelected that he did in 2016. The revolt and insurrection of his followers is ongoing. Unlike in the 1860s, this is actually a civil war albeit a cold to lukewarm one. We sit the warmer to hotter spikes multiple times a week. This past week we saw them at UNC and in Jacksonville and in several other places.

    Adam, I think this is really important.  Two thoughts occurred to me:

    1. Murc (of Murc’s Law) noted over a year ago that *given the structural advantages the GrOPers enjoy*, it’s a lead-pipe cinch that they’ll gain the trifecta sometime in the next 10-15 years.  Sure, maybe not in 2024.  But if so, only b/c the dice rolled well for our side, *not* because the GrOPers have been defanged.  It’s a *lead-pipe cinch* they’ll take the trifecta.  And when they do, there’s every chance that democracy in America will be ended.
    2. Barbara F. Walter wrote a book about civil wars: _How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them_.  And the things you note about the stochastic violence that flared up at UNC and Jacksonville are precisely the things she talks about.

    I feel blessed that you’ve been running this seminar series for all of us, about the peril our Republic faces.

  8. 8.

    oldster

    Reading Zelenskyy’s daily address today I noticed something I should have picked up on a long time ago:

    He writes it as though he is a subordinate updating his superiors.  Here are the tasks I have been working on. Here’s the progress I have made. Here’s what I still need to do.

    It perfectly reflects his ethos of being a literal servant of the people.

    And from the sublime to the ridiculous:

    Yeah, Trump, yeah, doom and gloom. We’re going to survive the next 20 years, and many more years than that. But how well those years go is partly up to us. So, recommit yourself to the cause of doing something to make those years go better. Dedicate yourself to the great task remaining before us, as someone once said.

    And keep your chin up. As Josh Marshall likes to say, optimism is not an evidentiary stance, but a moral stance.

    You may have seen — if you have not, then I cannot recommend it — footage from the evacuation of a wounded Ukrainian soldier earlier today. He is in considerable pain, and clearly wounded in several places. And while his comrades help him out of a trench using a tarp as a makeshift stretcher, he begins to sing the Ukrainian anthem. Not well, but with as much strength as he can muster. His friends join in.

    We don’t know what the next years will bring us. But we must have the courage to sing the songs of our nation, even during setbacks, even when we are suffering, even when we think we may not make it. We owe it to each other, to our descendants, and to those who suffered far worse than we have, but still made a joyful noise.

  9. 9.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Chetan Murthy: Nothing is a “lead pipe cinch.”  There are probabilities, but probabilities are not destiny.  As Joe Strummer said, “The future is unwritten.”

  11. 11.

    zhena gogolia

    I’m glad you’re all safe.

    Those assumptions are confounded if Donald Trump is elected again. His critics say that surely he would not win more support than in 2016, but President Joe Biden’s stumbles, literal and figurative, and the unpopularity of Kamala Harris as vice-president have left the Democrat vote vulnerable.

    Fuck her.

  12. 12.

    Old School

    Regarding Zelenskyy’s address, are people bribing their way out of being drafted?  Is that how it should be interpreted?

  13. 13.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Omnes Omnibus: I think what he means  is, the probability is high enough *just based on structural factors and Duverger’s Law* that over 4-5 trials, they’re going to win one of them.  And I agree with him.

  19. 19.

    Dan B

    Thanks for the WW III and Cold Civil War analysis.  It’s felt that way to me since 2016 and is ramping up.  We watched the PVS special series on the Troubles and it seemed like watching the current USA with a brogue.  There are too many Americans who are not paying heed or who want to do nothing to disturb their shopping and entertainment – bread and circuses.

  21. 21.

    Alison Rose

    I am not naive to the risk of TIFG being elected again, but when people write things like this:

    President Joe Biden’s stumbles, literal and figurative, and the unpopularity of Kamala Harris as vice-president

    I don’t see how that helps our side. (With the caveat that I don’t know the author’s political party.) His “literal stumbles” is ableist bullshit, and as for figurative, literally every single politician who has ever lived has made “figurative stumbles” and acting like that’s a bad scary thing is inane. Also, Harris is not actually that unpopular, unless the person claiming so chooses to completely ignore POC, which tells me a lot more about the person making the claim than the object of said claim. If we want to avoid TIFG being reelected, the path to doing that does not include shitting all over our candidates.

    (Note: I’m not accusing you, Adam, of shitting on them.)

    Watching that video of Zelenskyy giving out the posthumous awards should show every fucking Democrat, Independent (or as I call them, spineless ignoramuses), and the roughly 11 Republicans who have somehow retained a few molecules of their souls what it means to actually be a patriot and to actually fight for something, what a real leader looks like, what integrity looks like. Getting out the vote doesn’t just mean getting people to their polling places — it means getting them to understand why they need to go, and what is truly at stake when they mark their ballots. But that doesn’t mean only emphasizing how horrible the other side is. It also means highlighting how good our side is. Because our side is really fucking good, “literal and figurative stumbles” and all.

    Anyway.

    Thank you as always, Adam.

  22. 22.

    oldster

    Omnes and others, — thanks. And just one more story, to tell you where I’m coming from.

    Before COVID came, I used to sing with a wonderful choir, led by the son of an African Methodist Episcopalian preacher, and mostly composed of members of the Black church. There was also a minority of us pallid people in it, drawn by our love of spirituals and gospel music, the foundations of all genuinely American music to this day.

    At our first rehearsal after Election 2016, a number of us were staggering, shell-shocked at the enormousness of the catastrophe that had occurred. We had just lost the Presidency. We had lost Congress. We had lost the Supreme Court. The police departments were going to turn into fascist enforcers of the new Trump regime. We felt that we were cut off from every avenue of recourse or appeal. We felt despair.

    And our choir director beamed at us with weary amusement, and said, “do you understand now, what my people have lived through for the last four centuries? Do you understand, a little better, why we sing these songs?”

    When have Black Americans ever been able to say, “well, we lost the Senate this time, but we still retain a solid lock on the House and the Presidency”? When have they been able to say, “if the Supreme Court turns against us, we know that we can count on Congress to protect us”? Or, “if vandals and thugs attack us, at least we can always call the Police for protection”?

    There is no realistic political outcome for the next 20 years that will make White Americans worse off than Black Americans, on average, have been for the last 400 years. If they can sing songs of courage, hope, and resistance, then so must we. I may be an atheist, but I’m convinced that God don’t want no coward soldiers in his band.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPTVqkdMz7I

  23. 23.

    Adam L Silverman

    @oldster: I am not suggesting this is written in stone. It isn’t. I am stating that unless we are clear eyed about what is actually going on we’re going to be very unpleasantly surprised and things are going to get far uglier than most can imagine really fast.

  24. 24.

    Lyrebird

    @zhena gogolia: You mean the writer (Madddox), not Madam VP, right?

     

    Adam, if a US citizen wrote a letter to a Ukr govt official apologizing for the dumb_ss questions they get asked by US-based journalists, would that be a violation of that law against contacting foreign governments?

    (ETA: I watched the Amanpour interview, and I know she is one of the best,  but jeepers creepers no this war is not something they wanted or can script.  Seriously!)

     

     

     

    @oldster:

    Keep on preaching! And if you find the link with the soldier singing through the pain, please post it. Maybe someone else has it.

  25. 25.

    Elizabelle

    It occurs to me that Bronwen Maddox of Chatham House is going by what she can extrapolate from talking to people she knows, in government and formerly so, and from the US press.  Maybe think tanks too.

    And:  how often do you see photos of Biden, or engaging stories about what his Presidency has accomplished?

    I think the FTF Nepotism Hire NY Times punches way too high here.  Every single day:  a prominent photo of Trump, often entering or exiting his airplane.  Trump, Trump, Trump.

    The WaPost is similar.  It’s like Biden is the incredible disappearing President, only that is because he is working effectively on his priorities, and is not a drama llama.

    WHAT stumbles?  Maybe Bronwen hangs out with Mr. and Mrs. Peter Baker, and people of that ilk, and feels that she is getting an objective view of the United States.

    Kamala being unpopular.  Hello, does Bronwen know a lot of Democratic voters?  James Fallows had a really good recent post about people who are undercovered in the media.  I give you: actual Democratic voters.  Not just the excitable social media types.

    Look at the major MSM websites.  Look for Biden.  He is not often there.  It’s insane.

    They’re undermining him.  Do you think by accident?  Maybe negligence, but maybe not.

  27. 27.

    Adam L Silverman

    @zhena gogolia: She’s responding to how the US journalists who cover politics are reporting and how that is being internalized by Americans. When you look at the polling data what she is describing in that pull quote is accurate. And when you review what is being published as news and commentary those track right along.

  28. 28.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Alison Rose: That entire paragraph is fucking GrOPer agitprop, right down to “the Democrat vote”.  I don’t know what Ms. Maddox’s politics are, but I gotta wonder.  Then again, the UK is going down the right-wing shitter, so maybe she’s just try’nna, y’know, “bothsides” it.

  29. 29.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Bex: Thank you! I really do appreciate you emailing it to me. And I need more sleep because I just rechecked the email and you did include your nym.

  31. 31.

    Jay

    @Old School:

    Yes. Medical staff and Conscription Staff have been taking bribes, (or demanding bribes) to both provide immunity from service, and the ability to leave Ukraine.

    One Military Conscription officer amassed over $5million dollars in cash and assets, most stashed outside Ukraine.

  33. 33.

    oldster

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Adam — I definitely did not take you to be dooming and glooming, just saying that forewarned is forearmed. We have a lot of work to do to avoid the worst and aim at the best, and there’s no point in denying it or minimizing it.

  36. 36.

    Elizabelle

    @Adam L Silverman:  But we have a serious problem with what US journalists choose to cover, and what they are ignoring.  You have to really watch out for perception becoming “reality” and conventional wisdom.

    James Fallows, Substack (no paywall, but he would love some more paid subscribers).

    First:
    Media World, Part 1: Let Us See How the Sausage is Made.
    The sausage ends up on our table. We might feel better if we know where it came from. Or maybe worse. But more informed either way.
    Second:
    Forgotten Americans (of a different type)
    Some people, institutions, and ideas that could use more of the media spotlight.

  38. 38.

    oldster

    @Lyrebird:

    The video of the wounded Ukrainian soldier is definitely not safe for work — there’s a lot of blood, and he is pretty beat up. People who want to find it can look e.g. on the Reddit Ukraine Video Report thread. But I’d rather not risk inflicting it on people here.

  42. 42.

    Lyrebird

    @oldster: OK, thanks!

    And I double plus agree with what you are saying about that balance, though it is probably never perfect, between preparing for the worst and hoping for the best.

    I am so thankful that Adam and the other front pagers read and watch the news and distill it, adding in much more here of course, because I would not be able to wade through the spin without giving up.

  44. 44.

    Adam L Silverman

    @oldster: That’s why I don’t post those here. Even with a warning. Because I don’t want people freaking out in comments and/or emailing me the freak out.

  47. 47.

    oldster

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Ah, okay — thanks for the explanation. Even though I have been reading BJ for a *long* time (like I came here when John was beefing with The Editor at the Poorman), I still cannot keep track of all of the characters and their interactions.

  48. 48.

    Jay

    Rumours are that the Pskov raids were a joint operation by the SBU and the Freedom of Russia Legion, launched from inside RuZZia.

  51. 51.

    Jay

    ChrisO_wiki Profile picture
    ChrisO_wiki
    @ChrisO_wiki
    18h • 14 tweets • 4 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
    1/ Mobilised Russians who joined the ‘Wolves’ mercenary group say they are being threatened with execution if they don’t go to the front line, despite being untrained. They have not been rotated for months due to manpower shortages caused by huge casualties. ⬇️

    https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1696767193877250176.html

  54. 54.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Alison Rose: No.  A Canadian girl, a bunch of drinks, and an uneven path led me to hurt my elbow badly while on a trip to Mykonos.  An example though, my ex-wife was Romanian.

  58. 58.

    Prescott Cactus

    @Lyrebird:

    Christiane Amanpour is based in London for CNN and has British, Iranian and Bosnian citizenships.  But she sure seems to speak for us (and US).

  61. 61.

    Lyrebird

    @Prescott Cactus: Christiane Amanpour is based in London for CNN and has British, Iranian and Bosnian citizenships.

    Thanks, I knew her situation was complex, and I couldn’t remember all of it.  I was a little taken aback by how she did seem to speak for rather than about the “why haven’t you done more?” caucus, but  I may have misunderstood.

    The military official stayed more collected than I would have,  not that I am  any kind of spokesperson, with the “but they have 4 times more people you do” part.  One of my teachers really liked the phrase “no sht, Sherlock”, which would have been disrespectful…

  62. 62.

    Andrya

    @Lyrebird:   Is there a law against contacting foreign governments?  I’ve never heard of it.  An American who lobbies for a foreign government must register as a foreign agent (that’s what Paul Manafort got in trouble for).  It seems to me that forbidding writing to a foreign government would violate the First Amendment.  I’ve written letters of protest to various foreign governments (including friendly governments- for example, to Canada protesting the baby seal hunt way back when).  Any lawyers care to comment?

  64. 64.

    Feathers

    Was recently reading something about the UK abolishing slavery in its colonies. Said that the necessary thing that happened first was expanding the franchise, partly through getting rid of the “rotten boroughs” that were largely under the control of slaveholders, who had outsized wealth compared to those with only domestic business interests.

    What struck me is that with our shifting population, quite a few of our 50 states are now rotten boroughs. And we have a true outsize wealth problem.

    That this isn’t part of mainstream discourse is a sign of how bad the problem is.

    Adam, thanks for being so clear on all of this. Helps to tie in other things we come across.

  65. 65.

    MaryLou

    @Alison Rose: 100% agree with you about the British lady’s characterization of our president and vice president. She completely bought into Republican framing of our candidates as too old and too unlikable (shades of Hillary on the second one). There’s literally no credit given for the actual accomplishments of the Biden administration on foreign, economic, and domestic policy. Instead we get snide implications about ‘energy level’ and ‘likability. Never a mention that Trump is only 3 years younger than Biden and apparently never did a lick of actual work on behalf of the American people when he occupied the White House.

  67. 67.

    Prescott Cactus

    @Feathers:

    And we have a true outsize wealth problem.

    That this isn’t part of mainstream discourse is a sign of how bad the problem is.

    Space Karen (Musk) could cover (USB Bank) estimates of Idalia damage ($9 billion) 26 times with his $244 billion net worth.

  70. 70.

    Andrya

    There’s an extremely interesting post today by BJ alumna Cheryl Rofer at LGM (link):   A drone attack on a russian airbase in NW russia.  Several planes were destroyed.  The airbase is 370 miles from Ukraine but about 15 miles from the Estonian border.  It seems to me that there are 3 explanations for this:

    1.   Ukraine has agents deep inside russia capable of launching a drone that does a lot of damage.
    2.   A Ukrainian drone evaded russian air defense for 370 miles.
    3.   Estonia is getting really, really scared of what will happen if (G-d forbid) russia prevails in Ukraine, and has decided it’s worth the risk to make sure that does not happen.
  71. 71.

    YY_Sima Qian

    Adam, great rant!

    A couple of quibbles:

    1. I think any of the GOPer candidates getting elected in 2024 will endanger the Constitutional order. I don’t see any difference between Trump & DeSantis, Ramaswamy or Halley in this regard (or many other regards).
    2. The post-WW II international order, such as it is/has been, is under threat because the international institutions the order build on had been circumvented & undermined by the great powers (the US & the USSR) since the start of the Cold War, & increasingly rendered irrelevant during the US’ unipolar moment. Even when the institutions functioned, they structurally favored the West (see who have led the WB, the IMF & the ADB, & the voting shares of these institutions), the neoliberal economic order (when driven by the West) largely failed support development in most of the Global South (except for E/SE Asia that themselves followed the developmental state model), & how the institutions that did not so heavily favor the West (or other great powers) such as the UN & the WTO are made dysfunctional to allow the great powers greater freedom of action. This is the environment which gives Russia the opportunity to ferment chaos, & undercut national, regional & international order (such as they are).

    Beating back Putin is merely a stopgap, & does not solve the underlying dynamics. If the US & the West is to really defend the international order that advantages them, or at least to ensure the changing international order does not disadvantage them, the above need to be grappled w/. Countries most vulnerable to AGW, predominantly in the Global South, are also deeply frustrated at the lack of support from the Global North (including China) to assist in AGW mitigation, in terms of technology sharing & funding.

    I am glad that the Biden Administration is now talking about WTO reforms again, rather than just continuing to render the adjudication mechanism dysfunctional. I am also glad that both the US & the EU are now offering programs to help the Global South countries improve their infrastructure, even if it is obvious to them that the US & the EU are only doing so in response to the rising Chinese influence. However, these efforts are orders of magnitude short of the developmental needs of the Global South countries, & conceptualizing the Global South entirely as an arena for great power competition will not serve Global South interests.

    The same applies to US domestic politics: decades of neoliberal economics intensified middle/working class scarcity/precarity/insecurity, which feeds the reactionary politics promoted by the GOP, giving Putin the opening to exploit. Removing Putin as a player does not change the underlying dynamics in US domestic politics.

    It important to contain Putin or his successor(s) as agents of chaos around the world, but that is far from adequate by itself.

  74. 74.

    Carlo Graziani

    @Andrya: Yeah. I’ve been wondering about the range of those drones too. A couple hundred kilometers seems generous, yet wholly insufficient to strike Moscow. And yet…

    The simplest conclusion is that Ukrainian SoF/Intelligence agents are able to operate inside Russia, and maintain communications/supply securely from Russian counterintelligence and law enforcement. Which would certainly not have been possible against the USSR, but evidently modern Russia is a much softer target.

  79. 79.

    Bill Arnold

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    As Joe Strummer said, “The future is unwritten.

    Yep. (“has not yet been written”).
    Americans need to decide what (sorts of) things they would be willing to do to block seizure of power by Republicans, then tool up[1]/skill up as needed, and do those things.

    One aspect (among many) of the stakes:
    Quantifying Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Human Deaths to Guide Energy Policy (Joshua M. Pearce and Richard Parncutt, 19 August 2023)

    If warming reaches or exceeds 2 °C this century, mainly richer humans will be responsible for killing roughly 1 billion mainly poorer humans through anthropogenic global warming, which is comparable with involuntary or negligent manslaughter.

    [1] Metaphorically! Guns are not the only tools.

  80. 80.

    Carlo Graziani

    @oldster: To put an even more constructive spin on this than you did:

    While the 2024 Presidential election outcome is as uncertain as any future event, it is, unquestionably, the Democrats’ to lose.

    In the first place, for an incumbent President to fail to get re-elected, some kind of political calamity needs to occur. For Trump, it was COVID-19, and, well, Trump. For GHW Bush, it was a serious recession. For Carter it was the Iran hostage crisis and another lethal recession (Nixon, who whatever his faults knew his electoral politics, felt that Carter could have survived either, but not both). At the moment, one would need to forecast some kind of new calamity to befall the country in order to imperil Biden’s reelection, according to this pattern. Mercifully, the recovery from COVID-19 is proceeding rapidly enough to buoy Biden’s numbers by November 2024.

    Moreover, the same electoral math that maintains our Fascist party in range of the levers of power also implies that Trump needs all three of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin to win. He’s not going to get Michigan, and Pennsylvania is doubtful. Wisconsin is a gerrymandered shitshow, but gerrymandering is of little consequence in a statewide election, and Dobbs is the same millstone around the GOP’s neck there as it is elsewhere.

    So, insofar as proactive agenda is concerned, those who can should canvass/contribute in those three states, to make sure that the Blue Wall stands this time. I plan to get in touch with the Wisconsin Democratic operation, and take time off in October to work whatever menial task is required. Jackals in range of Blue Wall states might consider doing likewise.

  83. 83.

    Another Scott

    Meanwhile, … VOANews.com:

    WASHINGTON —
    The Biden administration has approved the first-ever U.S. military transfer to Taiwan under a program generally reserved for assistance to sovereign, independent states.

    The State Department notified Congress of the sale on Wednesday. It said the material would “be used to strengthen Taiwan’s self-defense capabilities through joint and combined defense capability and enhanced maritime domain awareness and maritime security capability.”

    The package is modest — only $80 million of what Congress had set aside as a potential $2 billion — but the implications of using the so-called Foreign Military Financing program to provide it will likely infuriate China.

    Beijing, which regards Taiwan as a renegade province, has repeatedly not ruled out the use of force to reunite it with the mainland and vociferously protests all U.S. arms sales to the self-governing island.

    However, previous arms sales to Taiwan have been approved under other authorities that do not necessarily imply statehood. U.S. officials were quick to say that the provision of FMF funding to Taiwan did not represent a change in policy. It’s a position the Chinese are sure to disagree with.

    In explaining the change, two U.S. officials said, “The United States has provided Foreign Military Sales (FMS) to Taiwan for years. FMF simply enables eligible partner nations to purchase U.S. defense articles, services, and training through either FMS or, for a limited number of countries, through the foreign military financing of direct commercial contracts (FMF/DCC) program.” The officials were not authorized to comment publicly and did so on condition of anonymity.

    […]

    Interesting. And sure to get Xi’s attention.

    It’s yet another indication that the US is “going to continue to assist Taiwan in maintaining a sufficient self-defense capability”.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  84. 84.

    Traveller

    I am going to take a bit of a contrary position here…Why are the Democrats not having primaries for the 2024 Election? We have tons of articulate, demonstrably successful people with executive experience, young and energetic and ready to champion great and progressive agendas.

    Phil Murphy Gov of New Jersey, Gov Whitmir of Michigan, Gov Jay Inslee, on the legislative side there is Sherrod Brown and Sheldon Whitehouse or even the Independent Angus King…I could go on and on, our bench is deep with very good people.

    I confess and argue everywhere that President Biden has been probably the best president of my long life…in some capacity I’ve worked on every democratic campaign for President since Adli Stevenson, holding my mother’s hand but still passing out flyers.

    Yet I sat out the 2020 election….first ever…I mean I wrote positively, defended Mr Biden’s campaign tactics…the basement was really smart and he has been a wonderful President and should be re-elected on the basis of his defense of Ukraine if nothing else…but there has been plenty else. I know this…yet, I wish I had someone else to work for in 2024.

    Here I can write this…were I to write elsewhere, I would never say this…but here it cannot do any damage what I say. It may also be noted that I don’t mind be attacked on this…I wish I felt for enthusiasm for President Biden…but he doesn’t excite the senses; do I go out of my way to  hear him speak? No…I find him difficult to listen to.

    All of which is not to say that I won’t work for Mr Biden’s re-election…I will write glowingly about him and our future with him…all of which I sincerely think is true…and yet, and yet…I do shrug my shoulders at him. Best Wishes, Traveller

  85. 85.

    Adam L Silverman

    @YY_Sima Qian: Trump will be the nominee. So yes, all of them would do some variants of what he’s proposing, but none of them are going to be the GOP nominee.

  86. 86.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Traveller: Because Biden is running for reelection and you don’t primary your incumbent. Even if you don’t agree with everything the incumbent is doing or with how they’re doing it.

  88. 88.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Another Scott: You mentioned in a post few days ago that the Terry Guo, head of Foxconn, has thrown his hat into the ring of TW’s presidential election. This will split the anti-DPP vote three ways, all but assuring that the DPP candidate, current VP Lai, will cruise to victory w/ a plurality (the same way Chen Shui-bien of the DPP did in 2000 & 2004). May be Guo’s action is posturing, & the 3 non-DPP camps eventually reaches an accommodation. There are 3 potential positions available to be divided – President (has almost unilateral say over foreign policy, defense policy & cross-strait relations, commander-in-chief), Vice President (mostly ceremonial), & Premier (head of cabinet, executes policy, especially domestic policy). The problem is, each 3 of the anti-DPP candidates probably think he should be President, none are short on ego.

    Given the fairly widespread dissatisfaction w/ the 8 years of DPP administration (especially among the disillusioned young, a common theme around the world), however, the TWese election could still be fluid.

  92. 92.

    Carlo Graziani

    @Adam L Silverman: Trump may be the nominee. However, the wild card is that he will be the defendant in a 6-week Federal trial for seditious conspiracy beginning on March 4, during which the bulk of the as-yet-unrevealed evidence in the possession of Jack Smith will be daily fodder to the 24-hour news cycle. And the primary schedule extends until June.

    And his rivals can point to 14th Amendment disqualification.

    Among other possible outcomes,Trump—who is a risk-averse coward, unlike many of his brain-dead cultists—may actually cop to a plea bargain.

    Overall, it’s too confused a future to make confident predictions.

  93. 93.

    Andrya

    @Traveller:  Aside from the risk of a primary challenge to a president running for re-election (the last time that happened, Edward Kennedy challenged Jimmy Carter in 1980 Democratic primary- the result was that Ronald Reagan was elected….)

    But also, we cannot afford to let Sherrod Brown run for anything but Senator from Ohio.  Ohio is now a totally red state- but Brown can win because he is personally popular.  I doubt we can get another Democratic senator from Ohio in the foreseeable future.

  94. 94.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Andrya: Well, there’s also:

    4. Estonia understands what “plausible deniability” is.  As long as it can’t be traced back to Estonia’s *government*, hey, they’re all good.

    Just as Russia exercised it when they blew up ammo warehouses in Czechia, Bulgaria, attempted to murder a British citizen (Skripal) and his daughter, etc.  Russia does it all the time.  Sure, Russia could decide that this is an act of war.  But …. that’s a tough row to hoe, and deciding to start World War III in earnest, b/c some hotheads launched some drones from backwoods Estonia, well, you gotta wonder whether Russia would do it.  Doesn’t hurt Estonia’s case, that hey, they’re real tough to track, so *proving* that they were launched from Estonia is really hard.

    I’m just spitballin’ here.

  95. 95.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Traveller: There’s a saying: “Democrats fall in love; Republicans fall in line”.  Until we stop demanding that our elected leaders excite our senses, make us fall in love, and instead merely demand that they execute on policies at the center of mass of the Democratic party, and execute effectively, well, until that happens, we’ll always be at a handicap compared to the GrOPers.

    HAHA Goodman,  Walker Bragman, and a host of others all said (in 2016) the same things you said, y’know?  They just weren’t excited by Hillary.  And …. well, you can see what we got for that.

    It’s one thing to fight hard against some candidate in the primary: GrOPers do that too.  But once the candidate is chosen, we gotta fall in line, unless the candidate is so awful that we simply cannot bear to do it.  In which case, we have to wonder whether our party has gone mad.  I don’t think the Democratic Party has gone mad.

  96. 96.

    wjca

    @YY_Sima Qian:

    Can a judge take away his phone & shut down his Twitter account?

    Absolutely.   In fact, it would be routine.  Also restrictions on email, Internet access, etc.

    Most likely TIFG would get special treatment.  But it would be exactly that: special treatment.

  97. 97.

    Carlo Graziani

    @Chetan Murthy: Moscow is 600 km from the closest point in Estonia. So attributing this attack to a launch from Estonian territory begs the question of where attacks on Moscow are launched from, and unneccesarily complicates an explanation compared to one wherein they all have the same source: Ukrainian agents operating in Russia.

  98. 98.

    Traveller

    @Chetan Murthy: ​
      The whole 2016 Hilary campaign was fairly traumatic for me…it may even be true that I still have not entirely recovered from that…event, from Comey, from the FBI in the Eastern District of NY forcing his hand by threatening to go public, from the 15 year old girl in North Carolina at her father’s prompting, baited Anthony Weiner into his d*pic…there were so many fateful….accidents of chance and human will…I will never completely understand these interlocking events.
    I was running, (supervising) two phone banks here in CA, later shifted to Michigan and PA….you could just feel things fall apart in those last 10 hellish days…cold calls happy to talk to us before, now not so much…

    Maybe like Rutger Hauer’s character Batty in Bladerunner…I’ve just seen too many terrible things in politics….I turn my eyes away…lol
    Best Wishes, Traveller

  99. 99.

    JCJ

    @Traveller:  I am not a historian, but I believe primary challenges against incumbent presidents have not been helpful.  I always loathed Ted Kennedy for challenging President Carter as this created a negative atmosphere which might have helped us get stuck with Reagan.  Reagan himself challenging Gerald Ford probably did not help the criminals in 1976

  100. 100.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Traveller:

    I confess and argue everywhere that President Biden has been probably the best president of my long life

    From your comment, I gather that while you say this in public, you don’t actually believe it?  I wonder why?  B/c Granpa Joe was *last on my list* during the primary, and I have never been so happy to have been wrong about him.  He *is* one of the, if not THE best president of my lifetime (I’m 58).  And that’s saying a lot, b/c I thought Barack Obama *was* the best president of my lifetime.  It sure looks like Granpa Joe is gonna unseat Obama for that title.

    So: why do you not believe Granpa Joe is the best President of your life?  And if  you *do* believe that, then why would you not want more of him?  [I mean, sure, I worry that he’s sacrificing his golden years, when he should be enjoying his family, and travel, for *us*.  But that’s not a reason why I don’t want more of him.]

  101. 101.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Traveller:

    it may even be true that I still have not entirely recovered from that…event

    heh indeed.  I will never recover from that event.  That was the day I learned that nearly half of my countrymen wanted me and mine dead or in camps: disenfranchised and dispossessed.  That they hated me and my kind, and were willing to do whatever it took to hurt us.

    I will never forgive them, and as far as I’m concerned, I have more concern and care for Ukrainians, than I do for the residents of Weatherford TX, where I grew up.  They can all drop dead.  Sooner the better.

    Yeah: I’ll never recover from that night.

  102. 102.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Chetan Murthy: I don’t think I have recovered from the whiplash of going from Obama to Trump, from the hopes & optimism about the future to utter shock, confusion & depression. I fully expected Hillary to win comfortably, & as I followed the returns in the morning in China, I just could not believe the races were so tight. I kept telling myself that the tallies from the urban areas had not come in, yet.

    I spent the rest of the week dazed, unable to concentrate at work, & having to field bemused queries from Chinese & other Asian (Taiwanese, Hong Konger, Japanese, Korean) colleagues, made worse by the fact that it was an amusing freak show to them but it was a gut punch to me.

  103. 103.

    Chetan Murthy

    @YY_Sima Qian: If Obama had lost to Rmoney (sic), I’d have been able to handle it.  B/c Rmoney didn’t run on “exterminate the brutes”.  TFG did, and …. well, that was everything.  That “exterminate the brutes” won …. was really, really unmooring.

    I don’t care what Omnes says, and I don’t give a flying fuck about his disapproval.  MAGAts are scum, and I don’t care whether they live or die.  Subhuman filth.  And I certainly don’t think of them as my countrymen any longer.

  104. 104.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Chetan Murthy: I remember talking to the African & Asian American colleagues we had working on projects in China, shortly after the election, we all said this is not the country we thought we knew, or, this is in fact the country it has always been but we are just seeing it for the 1st time. Neither was comforting.

  105. 105.

    Chetan Murthy

    I could swear Adam had mentioned a book about the decline of the USA, in his post, but for the life of me, after 4 reads thru his words, I can’t seem to find it.  Am I losing it?

  106. 106.

    Chetan Murthy

    @YY_Sima Qian:

    we all said this is not the country we thought we knew, or, this is in fact the country it has always been but we are just seeing it for the 1st time.

    I grew up in shit-KIKKer Texas, around shit-KIKKer Texans — white cracker racist misogynist homophobes.  Before TFG’s time, I used to say that sure, I understood their xenophobia, and at some level, they were justified in agitating for stringent border controls and  such: after all, it’s their country too, and even if I think that they’re not going to work, even if I think they’re immoral, they have a right to vote to influence our foreign policy.  Sure.

    But I never thought they would literally decide that people like me weren’t Americans, and that we could be treated like foreigners.  [yes, I understand that this is an *imperialist* framing …. let’s go with it for the moment]  I had always thought that in America, we were slowly extending the rights enshrined in the Constitution to all Americans — that it was a one-way ratchet, and eventually all Americans would have these rights.  Sure, it was an enragingly slow process, but it was moving forward.  And again, I speak only about Americans, not anybody else.

    But it turned out, nosirreeebob, that ratchet isn’t one-way, and yes indeedy, many of us can have our rights stripped away.  And the MAGAts were a-rarin’ to do it.  And so from “boy howdy, there are a lot of racists back where I grew up” it went to “fuck, they’re all listenin’ to Radio Milles Collines, fuckfuckfuck”.  It didn’t used to be like that: they weren’t gearing up to kill us all, when I was growing up, again, in East Incest TX.

    Something has changed in America, and not for the better.

  107. 107.

    sab

    @Chetan Murthy: I worked on the Hillary campaign and I was excited. But one of the things that pissed me off at the time was that her own higher up campaign people locally were not excited. They were all young male imports from elsewhere, and they were pretty much all Democratic hacks working for the party not her.

    Misogyny runs deep everywhere in politics. I have still not gotten over the shock of realizing that a high proportion of men really hate women.

  108. 108.

    Chetan Murthy

    @sab:

    I have still not gotten over the shock of realizing that a high proportion of men really hate women.

    Over at LG&M, the commenter “Karen, Cassandra of Texas” has repeatedly noted (correctly) that misogyny is far, far more central to our national plight, to the MAGAt system of beliefs, than any of us want to admit.  And yeah, you’re right, that a lot of Dems are pretty awful in this regard too.

  110. 110.

    Geminid

    Reports are that the Putin-Erdogan meeting is on for Monday, Sept. 4 in Sochi. Topics to be discussed include Black Sea grain shipments, Syria, and trade.

    Turkish FM Hakan Fidan met with Lavrov today in Moscow.

  111. 111.

    dnfree

    @Chetan Murthy: You are exactly right.  I like the way you express it, that the ratchet seemed to be going one way.  I’m now 77—turned 70 in 2016.  Up until then I perceived my lifetime as having been a steady but slow progression of increased rights and recognition and inclusion—first courageous black Americans, then women, gays, other cultures.  The last seven years have astounded and grieved and angered me.  This isn’t the way I want to leave the country or the planet.

  112. 112.

    dnfree

    @Traveller: I feel like your attitude is how we wound up with Trump rather than Hillary.  I am not among those who found her exciting, and I have a philosophical objection to dynasties of any kind, whether Bush or Clinton.  But I was raised to vote—always, every election, because if you don’t vote you can’t complain about the results.

    Too many people in states that were thought of as “safe” for Democrats (Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota) either didn’t vote or voted for a third-party candidate to show they didn’t like the choice between Trump and Hillary.  You see where that got us.  We don’t have to like the candidates in the general election—we just have to decide which one will do a better, more competent job of advancing our aims.

  114. 114.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @dnfree: One of my favorite lines from Obama’s speeches, in which he was quoting MLK, Jr., was that “the arch of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”. During the Obama presidency I believed it to be true at a deep level.

    Now, after 4 yrs. of Trump, & even during the Biden Presidency (because of the unapologetic illiberalism & reactionary force from the SCOTUS & GOP run states), I can only say that I think the line is still true, & I would still like to believe the line to be true, but I do not have the steadfast conviction any more. Perhaps if I am religious I might have more faith.

  115. 115.

    Gin & Tonic

    @dnfree:

    As in other sections of the book, Foer does not use direct quotes or cite sources when reporting the Biden-Zelenskiy meeting on 1 September.

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