I don’t mind arguing with you Jeff. I do mind your taking it personally. Al families have pasts.

Your argument of ‘Putin wins, democracy loses’ smacks of jingoism to my ear. It also seems like maximizing the stakes. We are in a literal situation where nuclear exchange is on the table and everything seems to be pushing for s maximalist posture.

I’m extremely angry at the armchair soldiering going on with your side of the aisle. (I hate both political factions, as you know). The enthusiasm of flooding a conflict zone with lethal weapons to hurt an adversary largely of our own making. It’s going to lead to many more deaths for soldiers and civilians alike. Knowing you don’t care for him, I’ll recommend Matt Tiabbis latest piece he felt he had to write as he felt the need to defend himself from accusations of being a ‘Putin lover’. He describes his front row seat of our foreign policy smoothing the sheets for Pitin in order to shift Yeltsin out is informative. He had journalist friends killed during that time. I like getting unvarnished reporting, I assume you do too. I recall we both appreciated Bill Mauldin.

I think Putin is an autocrat that was our autocrat until he wasn’t.

My old man’s dad came over from Italy in the 30’s. Hard to get work in northern Italy as a trade unionist at that time. I remember as a teenager reading reports about our man in Chile taking shop stewards off the floors for helicopter rides and disappearing thousands of leftists. You may not recall it, but I think I mentioned growing up in a union household. My dad was a shop steward. I share a burning hatred for fascism too. I see the Clintons and the corporate Dems being the worst enemies of labor and the working class of this country. They got more done as Dems to destroy labor. I don’t believe in the binary that’s being peddled in corporate media when it comes to this current situation. Just as I don’t believe the false binary of our two political factions in this country. Russian POW’s, as I recall, were liquidated by Nazis right along with polish Jews. There’s disturbing history in western Ukraine with regard to the Jews there as well as Poland.

Again, we’re escalating at a murderous level in a deadly dangerous situation that could all have been avoided with negotiating a security treaty with Russia.

We have no Democracy. We have stagecraft. Something you and I should know something about, having worked in entertainment.