Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Foreign Policy & News The long and winding road to Dumbass

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.

--And yet in the end, IF Putin wins, democracy loses, whatever we have of it that remains.
I do not know your personal definition of what democracy should look like, but I think we can both agree that having unfettered access to the vote is perhaps the most
important thing we are losing right now thanks to our own lawmakers and their addiction to money and power, but in the end, we would lose ALL of it that still remains.
We're at 11:30 PM on a hypothetical clock where midnight transforms us into a fully managed fake democracy where we get to vote all we like just as long as we vote "YES" on a ballot consisting of Fascist #1, Fascist #2, or Mild Fascist #3, and such voting would likely be mandatory and few would dare to vote "NO".
Want to help that along?
I don't and I guess if that sounds jingoistic, so be it.
Talking about jingoism works both ways, you know.
What we now know as The Party of Trump has spent the last decade and a half telling its faithful that "democracy is awful, horrible, terrible, two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner, mob rule, free bread and circuses, the Founding Fathers HATED democracy (yet somehow accidentally leaving voting as a sacred constitutional right) and that America has never BEEN a democracy....it's a republic...yada yada yada."

The jingoistic part is where they attack democracy saying that they are fighting for the survival and preservation of the republic.


Yes, to the point where you will cheerfully burn all of it down without any concern for what marches into the power vacuum left behind.
I am more than well aware. That's called ACCELERATIONISM.


The enthusiasm of flooding a conflict zone with lethal weapons to hurt an adversary largely of our own making. [/quote]

I already pointed out that "largely of our own making" is nonsensical.

There is NO WORLD that exists where that never happens, get over it.


There are almost NO jews remaining in Poland, and Poland's right wing parties acted out a tantrum objecting to the press making references to Poland's participation in Nazi atrocities, saying it was unfair character assassination.
Your paternal grandfather might as well be MY Italian maternal grandfather, who was almost taken for one of those rides, although not in a chopper.
He was told he had a matter of hours to vacate his wrought iron works and cabinet-making shop, which resulted in him fleeing to America in the 1920's with my Mom in tow while his wife stayed behind trying to salvage anything that was left. A few years later he returned and tried to make another go of it but gave up and came back to America, this time with the wife.


The day you're not allowed to vote at all or forced to vote as I described, you get to say that.
Or you can be a half-empty glass guy and say it but I intend to vote this fall and in 2024 if we still can.
Do I think our representative democracy is ideal? Far from it.
But I don't even know what you think IS ideal democracy...if you want direct democracy, know that direct democracy failed 2500 years ago in Athens and that The Party of Trump exerts enormous effort at painting what WE have AS the Athenian experiment when they claim the Founders never intended us to be one.
They count on ignorance to achieve that sleight of hand and you know that.

Avoided by a security agreement with Russia?
Should we also have made security agreements with El Chapo?
After all he ran pretty much all of Latin America.

You do realize that Russia's DEMANDS in said agreement are non-negotiable and consist of

The demands include:
1. A ban on Ukraine entering Nato --- OKAY that one's understandable. Ukraine being in NATO is and always was problematic.
2. Russia wants NATO arms out of Eastern Europe.
3. Russia wants a ban on NATO missiles within striking distance
4. Russia wants autonomy for eastern Ukraine

Hmmmm, no NATO arms anywhere in Eastern Europe...so is there any counter that demands Putin never move his arms INTO Eastern Europe?
A ban on NATO missiles within striking distance, precisely what Trump engineered as regards those Javelins, Ukraine can have them but they
must be parked out of range, making them useless and pointless.
Autonomy for the colonies which Stalin erased and repopulated?

Yeah, sounds very reasonable, if you're on Putin's side, but sorry, very unreasonable unless everyone's okay with more Donestks, more Luhansks, more and more and more
until almost ALL of Ukraine is incrementally Russianized.
Do the Ukrainians get a voice in all of this?
Doesn't sound like they do, Ukrainians be damned so yes let's go with Putin's demands and then say that listening to Ukrainians equals jingoism.

Man oh man it's SOOOO easy to just call people jingoist.

Didn’t say listening to Ukrainians was jingoism.

What I said is- ‘ Your argument of ‘Putin wins, democracy loses’ smacks of jingoism to my ear’. That seems to annoy you. You might simply ask me why it would.

I’m glad you think showing up to vote is democracy. I would disagree but that would be a big departure from the topic at hand. But the argument of losing our democracy seems vague to me. How would we lose our Democracy (your ability to show up to vote) by negotiating a security treaty with Russia. We didn’t seem to lose our ability to go vote (noting not everyone was able to) during the Soviet era of the Cold War and detente. I find your list of Russian demands to be reasonable. Why would we not want to negotiate? The Democratic dies argument doesn’t have any logic to it, imo.

Are you saying you think we should be placing nuclear weapons on Russias border?

I don’t believe you answered my question- Are you ok having Russian troops, bases and weapons systems on our border?

And if you are not, would you explain why not. Ditto if you are.

---I think you're hearing something other than me.
If Putin wins, as in "wins IN Ukraine" ....if he subdues Ukraine, he places his military in Ukraine.
That moves Putin to the doorstep of Europe, agreed?

If not, tell me why that's okay, why subduing the Ukrainians is okay.


Rephrase your question because that's not what I said.
I am saying that if Putin wins, fascism wins, if fascism wins, it grows stronger and continues feeding the monster here.
I did not say that if we negotiate a (entirely one sided) "security agreement" that we wake up tomorrow sans democracy.
Don't play these stupid games.


And that means you think the needs of Ukrainians don't count.


No, of course not.
I think it is obvious why.
I also think that giving in to 100% of Russia's want list puts us one step closer to having Russian troops, bases and weapons systems on our border because
Russia's list does not end with Ukraine, it ends with Trump and the US political party that is now loyal to Putin.
Even if Trump never takes office again, his party is still loyal to Putin now.

In essence, we already HAVE 147 Russian troops in Congress right now and we had Kremlin eyes and ears in the Situation Room for four years.

No, it’s not obvious why.

If it suited the needs of Mexico or Cuba any other neighbor to align itself with the Chinese or Russian governments, would that then make it ok to have either of those countries troops, bases and weapon systems on neighboring territory?

Okay then it's not obvious why and I'll have to live with that.
Still, I live HERE, so I guess that makes me jingoistic in your book, have to live with that, too.

Thing is, if Putin succeeds in putting Ukraine back in the subdued colony list, he's going to do everything in his power to regain access to his vast
global cash holdings, distribute it to his friends in the US Congress and then he ends up funding a fascist takeover here, at which point you can count on
Russian troops wherever he wants them, including inside the borders of his favorite client state, the United States.
He already has 147 congressmen on his side.
You don't seem to have much to say about that either...I know I know, "you hate both sides" you're both-siding this to death.

Sorry that you think 100% of Russia's demands are reasonable and sorry you think it's okay that they are also 100% non-negotiable.
And I am not interested in debating the merits pro or con, I'm really not, because I don't think there's much left to talk about.
Far as I can tell, you're not interested in Ukraine's future...unless it meets Putin's full approval.
Ukraine has a right to its own self-determination, Ukraine has a right to be a democratic republic.
Russia's demands need to be a bit more negotiable.
I guess we will find out if that comes to pass.

By the way, do you also think Putin is also right to make threats about Sweden and Finland joining NATO?

I'm completely fine with Mexico invading the US and taking-back Tejas.

Your aghastitude seems only to extend to Russias involvement in the Ukraine. I don’t recall your indignation ever being expressed with the body counts we’ve racked up in the recent decades. Our ongoing assistance with genocide in Yemen. The many coups.

As long as your so good at knowing what I think , I’ll have a go too and say I think you are unhinged with regard to dealing with a nuclear power. Just guessing but I think you got yourself into a conspiracy lather since 2016 and never found an exit ramp. Full on Blueanon.

Yeah, I’m done trying to talk to you too