The US Christian Right are 'good' Christians in the same sense Greitens is a 'good' husband. Not as if Matthew 25:40 informs the Christian Right's priorities.
So it turns out the Snake Island incident was just propaganda--- the Ukrainian soldiers weren't killed. They were captured and are alive. Truth is the first casualty of war.
I remember how quickly the audio recordings of their defiance (which was in fact thrilling!) shot around social media faster than a bullet.
BUT the valorization of the Ukrainians as having died rather than surrender followed along. It should have---if it was true. Defiant as they were they did, in fact, surrender. They were not valiant warriors taken down by a vicious army. They did the RATIONAL thing when confronted with an overwhelming force. This made them no less heroic because they allowed themselves to be taken as POWs.
I follow the news pretty closely but I never caught up to the reality of what happened on Snake Island until today while listening to "On the Media" on public radio. I have found the NYT report (which I just missed apparently) and a few other media clarifications of the events but no where near the blizzard of stories that accompanied initial reports of the incident.
All of which leads me to wonder how much of the media coverage of the war is factual and how much is just cheerleading. I suppose it doesn't matter since the righteousness of Ukraine's cause is self evident.
Nevertheless I expect more probity from the media and a greater willingness to admit when they get it wrong.
"victim of a vast conspiracy involving Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell"
Everything. I do mean everything is a vast conspiracy in MAGA world. Hangnails. Annual seeds that fail to germinate. Mint flavored toothpaste. Siamese cats. You name it and if MAGA feels so unfairly picked on or foaming-at-the-mouth angry contrarian one day [actually it's 24/7/365], then its time for another conspiracy. I'm telling you, there is a debilitating mass mental illness in this US of A. For how many? You want a number?
About 40 percent of total population. You know. MAGA.
You can be on Trump's good side by being anti-anti-Trump without being specifically PRO-Trump in name, all you have to do is treat his enemies badly, dodge questions about him publicly, and promote his agenda without using his name specifically.
Trump grew up swimming in a world of mobsters where he tried to pretend he was one. He knows how to operate on stochastic messaging and putting signals into the water without telling you what he wants you to do one-on-one on record. Just operate in that world and you're speaking his language and he'll throw you a nomination. It really is that simple for GOP politicians to get his support folks. Think like a wannabe mobster and you have his language.
Trump has been very successful at persuading his fans that the people who hate him hate them too, and that he is all that stands between his people and their enemies.
Don't underestimate Putin's ability to exploit the same dynamic. Which Biden just endorsed before his handlers walked it back.
It's all very well for Westerners to indulge themselves (again) with fantasies of the End of History in Russia while aggravating the latter's centuries old inferiority-induced paranoia, but as long as they aren't willing to put their missiles where their mouths are (for obvious reasons) it might behoove them to show rhetorical restraint.
I am wondering whether Biden isn't using Trump's own rhetorical trick (possibly inadvertently), of saying the thing, then walking it back juuuuust enough for plausible deniability, but now it's out there. Carol S. gives the example of his rhetoric on Jan. 6. I don't know if it was the right thing to do, but I'm also not completely sure it was all bad.
I think Trump's "peacefully" was probably a strategic CYA planted in the midst of what he really wanted his fans to hear.
Biden's comments was an emotional outburst after seeing up close some of the suffering that Putin is causing. I think he meant the comment as a moral desideratum, not as a statement of intent to engineer the end of Putin's power. From that perspective, he doesn't need "deniability" in the sense of pretending he didn't reveal something he should have kept quiet. It's a rather a matter of trying to persuade people that he really was not stating a policy goal.
Well, you know... Biden said the quiet part out loud. It was impolitic so "clarified." But we all know what he truly meant and I bet most of the world agrees.
Eh, much of the world (India, China, much of Africa and Latin America) begrudges the West its past colonialism and other overseas interventions and sympathizes with Russia accordingly. Americans need to remove the proverbial mote from their eyes before making assumptions about others.
Contradiction maybe? I mean, if previously colonized countries resent the West for their colonial power grabs, how does that make them more sympathetic to Russia's power grab of Ukraine? Please explain.
Very simple. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. It's an old Arab saying.
Do you suppose the United States allied itself with France against Great Britain during the Revolutionary War because the Founding Fathers admired the ancien régime of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette?
You are still assuming Biden was referring to a regime change policy rather than an emotional reaction. I 5think most of the world probably shares his emotional reaction regardless of the history of past US actions.
Perhaps I should have been more specific "Most of the Western World agrees." Do you think Africa and Latin America enjoys the colonialism of Russia & China? China, Pakistan and India most likely is watching with interest but has no investment in Putin other than as a tool against the West.
For all those who have their undies in a bundle over Biden's comment about Putin must enjoy watching people being killed and cities being flattened. I'm not sure it was a "gaffe" but our Presidents honest feeling and if so good for him. What Putin is doing is so unnecessary but for whatever reason he continues. Thank heavens his army is poorly trained or Ukraine might already belong to Russia. I grew up during WWII so I've seen this before, it wasn't pleasant then and it's less so now.
Believe it or not, you're not the only person who's familiar with the history of WW2. In any case, if Biden isn't ready to go to war to achieve an aim like regime change in Russia, he shouldn't raise expectations about it. Perhaps you recall that Bush 41 urged the Iraqi Shias to rebel against Saddam Hussein, whom he'd just let off the hook, and they were slaughtered for their troubles. It is not a President's job to react viscerally in public to events he's made no commitment to affecting.
Who said anything about "regime change"? You are making a giant leap from the statement that "That man cannot remain in power" to some threat of war against Russia. Biden said, "that man" not "that regime." Last time I looked at the dictionary, a "man" was not a "regime."
Biden's 'gaffe' and the turmoil around it are an example of the adage : Do what you want and ask for forgiveness afterwards. Generally speaking, I am against that mode of operating in the world as it opens up numerous amoral pandora boxes (affairs, political smearing, bad behaviour in general) but in this case, I think they were right to walk his statement back, if only to keep the heat on the world stage at a simmer rather than a roiling boil. But...as Tom Nichols said in his recent Atlantic article, he speaks from his heart and for the heart of many sentient, feeling persons. Maybe a seed will be planted from these comments that will grow into some swell of resistance, internally. We can't predict the unfolding of events but diplomatic utterances leave much wanting. An honest, perhaps impolitic statement, from Biden is what good and decent people everywhere want to say on the world stage. The White House shouldn't grovel. Trump said nefarious garbage like this everyday but only to support evil in the world. Gaffes can be windows into a soul at work. In this case, I think it was. For good.
Biden isn't "the drunk". He's a man who talked with mothers and children fleeing devastation. They cried and poured their heart out to him. He listened to all their pain. He talked with Chef Jose who has been feeding thousands of the refugees on a daily basis. And he said what any normal human would say after experiencing that. The people who know Putin best, like Garry Kasparov, agreed with Biden. What I heard in the President's voice was sorrow and truth.
So Rich Lowry has finally decided another two years of Trump dominating the news cycle is too much. He's finally had it riding the bipolar roller coaster that some of us got off before it left the gate. He's decided it's time to move on. I find it laughable that he mentions the TFG ( that fat guy, that fucking guy) had some policies that were good. What policies? I got nothing from his tax cut but an extra $20.00 in my paycheck every other week. He spent seven months of his first term trying to take away people's healthcare. Remember repeal and replace? Only it was all repeal and no replace. Rich instead offers alternatives to TFG such as Josh Hawley, Ron DeDantis or Ted Cruz, three loathsome individuals. Hey Rich, you bought the ticket, you get to go on the ride.
You got a tax cut?! Hmmm...seem to recall hearing something about that. Guess I must not have been looking at my paystubs close enough. I'd better go back and check.
I wish we lived in a world where Andrew Ordover's suggestions above would be employed, but that world no longer exists. After having lived through Tom Delay's terrible hold on Congress, I figured these new Pelosi/Reid characters would usher in civility again. Wrong. They were as divisive and toxic as Delay or anyone else. Now all our politics are based on grievances and recriminations. I see no way out of it unfortunately
"Trump's words are so vague, general, and empty that his supporters can map whatever they want to see onto him." -- He has also stated starkly opposing views on the same issue within a short span of time, so Trumpers can quote the statement that serves their purposes and ignore the others. A striking example is how they zeroed in on the word "peacefully" in his 1/6 rant and ignored his many uses of the word "fight" in the very same speech.
The Trumpist hall pass is one of the more disturbing aspects of the Trump era. More bizarre is the notion that someone who's a poor example of personal ethics, and lacking any discernible piety, was the best possible defender of conservative religious and moral values in the national culture. It's like openly declaring "We love hypocrisy!"
Then there was the "Let Trump be Trump" moral exceptionalism. That phrase was always a way of saying it was unfair to hold him to any standard outside himself -- i.e. an endorsement of his solipsistic ethical understanding.
Once you've taken the position that Trump is so special he shouldn't be held to normal standards of ethics, and that only he can save America's religious and moral character, it follows that anyone who tries to hold him morally accountable is an agent of corruption -- part of the eeevil Deep State.
Then, some people discovered that the Trumpian moral exceptionalism that began is pretty much exclusive to Trump himself could be stretched out into a permission structure for anyone who praises Trump -- you know, all the good Christians who want to save America from satanic forces. And then it turns into the ethos of a whole party.
They only glommed on the word "peacefully" after it all went south. In the moment, they heard what we all heard, "fight" and responded as they had been primed to respond for weeks.
It's not a silver lining by any means, but it's fascinating to see a world-class demagogue at work. It's like watching Hitler. Trump has used his severe multiple mental illnesses to dominate the United States, disabling the Constitution and democracy itself. When do Republican senators such as Murkowski and Romney get off the fascist train? Why are they riding Trump's coattails all the way into the station, feeding themselves by eating undigested crumbs from his feces like birds?
Lowry has flipped sides on the issue of Trump so many times I have lost count. But I agree with Mingo below. In for a penny, in for a pound.
It's surprising a party which embraced Mr Grab-em-by-the-Pussy would shy away from another politician who goes in more for dungeons and lewd photos?
This is just a few steps further along the path the GOP has chosen to tread. Family Values are so last millennium.
Totally agree with you on the Bidens Putin “gaffe”. Never considered it could have been Biden’s take down this wall moment
Missouri, Texas and Florida. All run by crazy people who claim to be good Christians.
The US Christian Right are 'good' Christians in the same sense Greitens is a 'good' husband. Not as if Matthew 25:40 informs the Christian Right's priorities.
So it turns out the Snake Island incident was just propaganda--- the Ukrainian soldiers weren't killed. They were captured and are alive. Truth is the first casualty of war.
I remember how quickly the audio recordings of their defiance (which was in fact thrilling!) shot around social media faster than a bullet.
BUT the valorization of the Ukrainians as having died rather than surrender followed along. It should have---if it was true. Defiant as they were they did, in fact, surrender. They were not valiant warriors taken down by a vicious army. They did the RATIONAL thing when confronted with an overwhelming force. This made them no less heroic because they allowed themselves to be taken as POWs.
I follow the news pretty closely but I never caught up to the reality of what happened on Snake Island until today while listening to "On the Media" on public radio. I have found the NYT report (which I just missed apparently) and a few other media clarifications of the events but no where near the blizzard of stories that accompanied initial reports of the incident.
All of which leads me to wonder how much of the media coverage of the war is factual and how much is just cheerleading. I suppose it doesn't matter since the righteousness of Ukraine's cause is self evident.
Nevertheless I expect more probity from the media and a greater willingness to admit when they get it wrong.
"victim of a vast conspiracy involving Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell"
Everything. I do mean everything is a vast conspiracy in MAGA world. Hangnails. Annual seeds that fail to germinate. Mint flavored toothpaste. Siamese cats. You name it and if MAGA feels so unfairly picked on or foaming-at-the-mouth angry contrarian one day [actually it's 24/7/365], then its time for another conspiracy. I'm telling you, there is a debilitating mass mental illness in this US of A. For how many? You want a number?
About 40 percent of total population. You know. MAGA.
Andrew Ordover has got it just right.
As a center left Democrat, I believe that a part of wisdom is knowing and accepting that you cannot have everything you want.
Compromise is truly the only way forward.
And, I think The Bulwark is helping lead the charge.
You can be on Trump's good side by being anti-anti-Trump without being specifically PRO-Trump in name, all you have to do is treat his enemies badly, dodge questions about him publicly, and promote his agenda without using his name specifically.
Trump grew up swimming in a world of mobsters where he tried to pretend he was one. He knows how to operate on stochastic messaging and putting signals into the water without telling you what he wants you to do one-on-one on record. Just operate in that world and you're speaking his language and he'll throw you a nomination. It really is that simple for GOP politicians to get his support folks. Think like a wannabe mobster and you have his language.
Trump has been very successful at persuading his fans that the people who hate him hate them too, and that he is all that stands between his people and their enemies.
Don't underestimate Putin's ability to exploit the same dynamic. Which Biden just endorsed before his handlers walked it back.
It's all very well for Westerners to indulge themselves (again) with fantasies of the End of History in Russia while aggravating the latter's centuries old inferiority-induced paranoia, but as long as they aren't willing to put their missiles where their mouths are (for obvious reasons) it might behoove them to show rhetorical restraint.
I am wondering whether Biden isn't using Trump's own rhetorical trick (possibly inadvertently), of saying the thing, then walking it back juuuuust enough for plausible deniability, but now it's out there. Carol S. gives the example of his rhetoric on Jan. 6. I don't know if it was the right thing to do, but I'm also not completely sure it was all bad.
I think Trump's "peacefully" was probably a strategic CYA planted in the midst of what he really wanted his fans to hear.
Biden's comments was an emotional outburst after seeing up close some of the suffering that Putin is causing. I think he meant the comment as a moral desideratum, not as a statement of intent to engineer the end of Putin's power. From that perspective, he doesn't need "deniability" in the sense of pretending he didn't reveal something he should have kept quiet. It's a rather a matter of trying to persuade people that he really was not stating a policy goal.
Well, you know... Biden said the quiet part out loud. It was impolitic so "clarified." But we all know what he truly meant and I bet most of the world agrees.
Eh, much of the world (India, China, much of Africa and Latin America) begrudges the West its past colonialism and other overseas interventions and sympathizes with Russia accordingly. Americans need to remove the proverbial mote from their eyes before making assumptions about others.
Contradiction maybe? I mean, if previously colonized countries resent the West for their colonial power grabs, how does that make them more sympathetic to Russia's power grab of Ukraine? Please explain.
Very simple. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. It's an old Arab saying.
Do you suppose the United States allied itself with France against Great Britain during the Revolutionary War because the Founding Fathers admired the ancien régime of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette?
You are still assuming Biden was referring to a regime change policy rather than an emotional reaction. I 5think most of the world probably shares his emotional reaction regardless of the history of past US actions.
Sitting presidents are not permitted such "emotional reactions" unless they're prepared to fight a war to justify them.
Perhaps I should have been more specific "Most of the Western World agrees." Do you think Africa and Latin America enjoys the colonialism of Russia & China? China, Pakistan and India most likely is watching with interest but has no investment in Putin other than as a tool against the West.
For all those who have their undies in a bundle over Biden's comment about Putin must enjoy watching people being killed and cities being flattened. I'm not sure it was a "gaffe" but our Presidents honest feeling and if so good for him. What Putin is doing is so unnecessary but for whatever reason he continues. Thank heavens his army is poorly trained or Ukraine might already belong to Russia. I grew up during WWII so I've seen this before, it wasn't pleasant then and it's less so now.
Believe it or not, you're not the only person who's familiar with the history of WW2. In any case, if Biden isn't ready to go to war to achieve an aim like regime change in Russia, he shouldn't raise expectations about it. Perhaps you recall that Bush 41 urged the Iraqi Shias to rebel against Saddam Hussein, whom he'd just let off the hook, and they were slaughtered for their troubles. It is not a President's job to react viscerally in public to events he's made no commitment to affecting.
Who said anything about "regime change"? You are making a giant leap from the statement that "That man cannot remain in power" to some threat of war against Russia. Biden said, "that man" not "that regime." Last time I looked at the dictionary, a "man" was not a "regime."
That's disingenious. It's like saying "Hitler cannot remain in power" and then insisting you'd be fine with Himmler.
Biden's 'gaffe' and the turmoil around it are an example of the adage : Do what you want and ask for forgiveness afterwards. Generally speaking, I am against that mode of operating in the world as it opens up numerous amoral pandora boxes (affairs, political smearing, bad behaviour in general) but in this case, I think they were right to walk his statement back, if only to keep the heat on the world stage at a simmer rather than a roiling boil. But...as Tom Nichols said in his recent Atlantic article, he speaks from his heart and for the heart of many sentient, feeling persons. Maybe a seed will be planted from these comments that will grow into some swell of resistance, internally. We can't predict the unfolding of events but diplomatic utterances leave much wanting. An honest, perhaps impolitic statement, from Biden is what good and decent people everywhere want to say on the world stage. The White House shouldn't grovel. Trump said nefarious garbage like this everyday but only to support evil in the world. Gaffes can be windows into a soul at work. In this case, I think it was. For good.
Yes, but Biden is prone to gaffes, so he just looks bad.
No, his WH Comms team looks bad. Biden expressed what most of us think. The whole speech was extraordinary.
His use of "can't" is very common in English, as in, "That can't happen." It does not indicate any proactive plans.
Biden isn't "the drunk". He's a man who talked with mothers and children fleeing devastation. They cried and poured their heart out to him. He listened to all their pain. He talked with Chef Jose who has been feeding thousands of the refugees on a daily basis. And he said what any normal human would say after experiencing that. The people who know Putin best, like Garry Kasparov, agreed with Biden. What I heard in the President's voice was sorrow and truth.
So Rich Lowry has finally decided another two years of Trump dominating the news cycle is too much. He's finally had it riding the bipolar roller coaster that some of us got off before it left the gate. He's decided it's time to move on. I find it laughable that he mentions the TFG ( that fat guy, that fucking guy) had some policies that were good. What policies? I got nothing from his tax cut but an extra $20.00 in my paycheck every other week. He spent seven months of his first term trying to take away people's healthcare. Remember repeal and replace? Only it was all repeal and no replace. Rich instead offers alternatives to TFG such as Josh Hawley, Ron DeDantis or Ted Cruz, three loathsome individuals. Hey Rich, you bought the ticket, you get to go on the ride.
You got a tax cut?! Hmmm...seem to recall hearing something about that. Guess I must not have been looking at my paystubs close enough. I'd better go back and check.
But first...where's that darned magnifying glass?
Let’s not give geeks a bad name now!
R2-D2...C-3PO...nice phonetic resonance, no? I kinda' like T-3FG. (Assign f's & g per individual taste) (And apologies, Star Wars fans)
I wish we lived in a world where Andrew Ordover's suggestions above would be employed, but that world no longer exists. After having lived through Tom Delay's terrible hold on Congress, I figured these new Pelosi/Reid characters would usher in civility again. Wrong. They were as divisive and toxic as Delay or anyone else. Now all our politics are based on grievances and recriminations. I see no way out of it unfortunately
"Trump's words are so vague, general, and empty that his supporters can map whatever they want to see onto him." -- He has also stated starkly opposing views on the same issue within a short span of time, so Trumpers can quote the statement that serves their purposes and ignore the others. A striking example is how they zeroed in on the word "peacefully" in his 1/6 rant and ignored his many uses of the word "fight" in the very same speech.
The Trumpist hall pass is one of the more disturbing aspects of the Trump era. More bizarre is the notion that someone who's a poor example of personal ethics, and lacking any discernible piety, was the best possible defender of conservative religious and moral values in the national culture. It's like openly declaring "We love hypocrisy!"
Then there was the "Let Trump be Trump" moral exceptionalism. That phrase was always a way of saying it was unfair to hold him to any standard outside himself -- i.e. an endorsement of his solipsistic ethical understanding.
Once you've taken the position that Trump is so special he shouldn't be held to normal standards of ethics, and that only he can save America's religious and moral character, it follows that anyone who tries to hold him morally accountable is an agent of corruption -- part of the eeevil Deep State.
Then, some people discovered that the Trumpian moral exceptionalism that began is pretty much exclusive to Trump himself could be stretched out into a permission structure for anyone who praises Trump -- you know, all the good Christians who want to save America from satanic forces. And then it turns into the ethos of a whole party.
They only glommed on the word "peacefully" after it all went south. In the moment, they heard what we all heard, "fight" and responded as they had been primed to respond for weeks.
A concise summary of the creeping rot.
Re: "We love hypocrisy."
Apparently they must, since they practice it religiously. No pun intended. Well, maybe a little.
It's not a silver lining by any means, but it's fascinating to see a world-class demagogue at work. It's like watching Hitler. Trump has used his severe multiple mental illnesses to dominate the United States, disabling the Constitution and democracy itself. When do Republican senators such as Murkowski and Romney get off the fascist train? Why are they riding Trump's coattails all the way into the station, feeding themselves by eating undigested crumbs from his feces like birds?