Many years ago, during the Soviet era, I said, "well, at at least the Soviets have the good taste to never put on something that looks like the Superbowl Halftime Show". Now that Putin et al are going full-on anti-West, full-on "Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality" - i.e. full-on anti-enlightenment rejection of the modern world, we see something that looks a lot like the Superbowl Halftime Show or "Wrestlemania". As if to say "stick with us and you still be part of exiting, sexy, prosperous modern world" - Not.
my gawd I hope this is true. I hope Russia is losing. But I'm having 2016 flashbacks, where it constantly looked like Trump's campaign was weak and in chaos, and so he was going to lose. And then he won. Guess I'm still a little shell-shocked.
"KYIV, Ukraine — Tetyana Vlasenko was bleeding from 12 bullet wounds to her legs when she begged a Russian military officer nearby for help. His soldiers had opened fire on her family’s car, yet the officer was apologetic as the soldiers gave them first aid.
While she lay there seriously hurt, she recalls him saying, “I’m sorry for doing this but we have an order to shoot everything that is moving, and you cannot imagine how many cars like this we have full of Nazis who are trying to bomb us,” Tetyana, 42, told NBC News on Wednesday from her bed in Kyiv City Hospital 17."
"Tetyana, a former shop worker, said the Russian soldiers she encountered “truly believe that everyone around is a Nazi.” She added that the soldiers “were all terrified,” and she had spoken calmly with them prior to the shooting."
What on earth do you suppose the Russians imagine Nazis to be? I submit the word "Nazi" here is "socialist" in America. And in America the mindfucked have been taught that the "socialists" are trying to kill them too. Socialists, demons, witches, commies...
I too would be terrified if I were a Russian soldier who finds himself in a place where the people really really do want him gone and many are willing to kill him. For good reason, even though it wasn't his intent, but necessitated by forces beyond his control. American conscripts in Vietnam = Russian conscript in Ukraine.
Despots rule by mindfucking. Sorry for the anglo-saxon verb portmanteau word but no other locution comes close. And what do we have in America? Any difference? A national mindfuck. Multiple mindfucks, multiple fearfuckeries. Treat your people like dogs, and turn them into fear-biters. Take their need to serve and be loved and use it to torture their hearts into servile anger and fear. The police are your enemy, because they've been kicked and brutalized so they really are. The liberals are your enemy, because they've been shown all the reasons to despise ignorant brutal racist assholes. The hoity-toity educated are your enemy, becasue they've spit on you, and you are their enemy because they have spit back.
My son and my daughter and their spouses both took on rescue dogs. It is very, very, very hard to bring a mindfucked rescue animal back from the hell that formed it. Like the Romanian orphans, the human and dog brain wiring digs in early. Humans are like dogs in many ways, and mostly in this: in their hearts they want to be loved. And they want to serve. And they want to obey. And they want, in return, to give love back.
The key to rule is twist that love, twist it with fear, and make it a biter.
As long as people and dogs are who they are, we will be cold meat to those who know how to make us fear, and make us hate.
Putin is only a couple days away from announcing 'Evidence that Biden stole the election is in Ukraine' and having 50million saps in their Barcaloungers sit up and go, 'What???'
Putin would love a sophisticated brainwashing media outlet like Fox News, which is constantly spewing nonsense about Democrats. I am an Independent and have friends who are both Democrats and Republicans. We all get along just fine. We don't watch Fox News, so we don't believe the worst of each other.
I get the feeling from all Putin is doing and saying, he is actually emulating Trump. I realize that disinformation was always part of his arsenal but it has a much more Trumpian tone to it this time around: repeating ridiculous themes ad nauseum, holding fake rallies, never explaining anything unless it is to double-down.
Trump would like to emulate Putin but is unable to, a great source of frustration to him. Trump recently said that if he is ever president again, he wants the power to fire anyone in the Executive branch who fails to do his bidding. That's exactly how Putin rules, though he might do more than just fire them.
He will be able to do this and much more as of Jan 21 2025. The entire American government, and then from there outward every business, industry, and institution in the country that engages with or does business with the Federal government State governments controlled by the regime, will be overwhelmed and drawn into the nightmare life that is a society not protected by rule of law.
- Intelligence agencies will be required to produce the product their masters want to hear. Putin’s difficulties in Ukraine right now are a foretaste of the consequences when intelligence services are compelled to become intellectually corrupt.
- We have a professional military. One of the positives about such a system is that if morally healthy it promotes the best and weeds out the worst. However, after Jan 21 2025 any member of our armed forces who hopes to have a career will have to “sign loyalty oaths”. Promotion will depend on political loyalty. It will become necessary not only to compete in demonstrations of personal obeisance, it will soon also become mandatory to report on disloyalty in others. Reporting corruption and criminal activity will become not only death to one’s chances for promotion, it will eventually become the short route to arrest and even physical harm. (Google Eddie Gallagher. ) The result will be an increasingly ineffective, massively corrupt, lavishly funded bureaucracy staffed by thieves and looted, pillaged, and operated by gangsters.
- We can also expect to see replicated in every part of our economy the egregious financial corruption permeating every “shithole country” in the world. As the poison spreads, doing business with other businesses that require permission from the authorities to operate will entail flows of favors and inevitably bribes and payments. In a corrupt system this behavior comes to be engaged in not only for personal gain, but for personal protection. Being corrupt is a way of proving to everyone else you won’t turn them in, so they don’t come after you.
It also is a way of ensuring that you always have something on everyone. The “law” becomes a means of making examples “pour encourager les autres”. And the wider the corruption the more the non-corrupt abandon efforts to oppose it.
Remember… Trump pardoned Blagojevich. And Bannon. He had no personal reason (aside maybe some favor to someone who did have a reason, probably pecuniary) to put himself on record as favoring such egregiously criminal and personally unpleasant miscreants. He did it strategically. He was sending a message.
This doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface.
Today one’s ability to find employment, rent an apartment, borrow money for transportation, obtain health insurance, pay for auto insurance, or do countless other things, is largely governed by a number assigned by three companies that collect and sell information on you, and there is nothing you can do about it. And this is a relatively benign sort of tyranny.
Consider that today the Republican Party boasts of a database of every voter. Pause a moment to reflect on what happens every time you read your email— the ads that follow you as relentlessly as Trayvon Martin was hunted until he finally stopped and made the mistake of trying to fight off his pursuer. The regime that takes power on January 20 2025 — I don’t want to dignify it with a term like “government”— that regime will have tools for oppression no secret police agency in history has ever had before, tools that will enable them to predict, to statistically valid confidence levels, a loyalty index for every human being cursed with the misfortune of living under its sway.
A boot stamping on a human face forever and ever, as George Orwell famously put it, will be a kindness compared to what is coming.
I second the Putin/Trump comparison. One key similarity between them is their high emotionality. Putin's entire "adventure" in Ukraine is driven by emotion, which is the same way Trump governs. There have been lots of theories surrounding Trump's affection for Putin (all of which may be true), but one thing that I think has been overlooked is that they might get along simply because they are similar in personality.
People with personalities like those of Trump and Putin do not really get along. If they perceive each other as equals, then they will make nice to each other in public and bad mouth each other in private--because there is no visible hierarchy.
Otherwise, the "stronger" one will rule the weaker one--who will be trying very hard to emulate the stronger one. The stronger will despise the weaker--the weaker will fear the stronger.
it is simple pack behavior in a sense--the alpha and everybody else.
Putin was the alpha in the Trump/Putin relationship... in fact Putin, XI and Kim all have it over Trump because Trump is a wanna be and the others actually rule. he is the beta to their alpha.
It would be interesting to see Putin's response to an offer of substantial funds and safe passage for himself and a reasonable entourage to a residential location of his choice (stipulating that they would accept him) as a quid pro quo forceasefire and immediateremoval of all Russian personnel and equipment from all Ukrainian territory as it stood prior to the turn of this century. He'd also be barred from any participation in business or politics for the rest of his life
None of these type of people are the type of people top accept such an offer... if they were that type of person they would have never got to where they are ITFP.
It is a VERY rare person that can go from a position of absolute authority to being some guy sitting things out in even palatial surroundings. These people die in their position or are killed, in most cases.
I agree, but it would still be interesting to make the offer. Some dictators have accepted exile and there is one SE Asian king who exiled himself to Germany and lives on what he still steals.
Can't think of too many actual dictators who have outside of Latin America--and royalty? As long as they can maintain their lifestyle, what do they actually care--most of them have little or no power in reality and/or are facing replacement by their own military or ambitious wanna-be dictators.
There is a difference between running some third world (or worse) country and skimming off the top and being the guy whose word is law in a place like Russia (or the USSR, or China, or Italy or Germany during the 40s).
You could make the offer, no real downside to that... but I do not realistically see it being accepted.
Agreed. With Putin, however, I think there is a strong component of actually wanting Russia to be great again. Remember that this is a man who was a member of the KGB and was pretty privileged in the old system.
The venality/corruption is merely a basic part of the way things have tended to work there and he also saw it as a handle on some people and a resource to gain power with.
I think it has always been about getting the power with the goal of restoring the old system under a different name and restoring the image of Russia and its power/influence.
He looked like he had it dialed in for a while there, but it ended up being largely a facade. Had there been less corruption and an intelligent approach/attempt to diversify the Russian economy and build actual greatness rather than the facade, things might have actually been pretty good for him and Russia.
But the Russians did the kind of standard Russian thing and here we are.
I keep hearing of the possibility of moles within Putin's government, since the West's intel on his plans is so accurate. Putin is making arrests of some associates close to his inner circle. I don't quite understand why people would be willing to risk so much to undermine Putin by blabbing to the West, but they're not willing to try to do the one thing that would end this Hell, and potentially WWIII, and take him out.
The thing that makes me doubt this is that the Russians have ALWAYS been so far ahead of the West on this that the very claim requires the possibility that the historical river has started to flow backwards.
Just speculating here...may be a few who would be willing to do so if they could somehow get the opportunity, even if they knew it would mean their own certain demise. But the son of a bitch won't even sit within 20 feet of his own generals, so I expect such opportunities are practically nonexistent.
However, speaking as someone who found the fact that Osama bin Laden drew his last breath looking at the muzzle of a gun held by an American (well, at least in my imagination he was looking at it, and had a split second to recognize who was facilitating his exit from this world and perhaps think something along the lines of Oh shit!!)...as supremely satisfying as that was, I'd be equally pleased if Putin's end came similarly at the hands of one of his own people, with just enough delay for his demented brain to think Oh, shit, I really f**ked up.
Can someone explain to me how/why Putin's demands for a ceasefire telegraph weakness? I've seen the argument here and elsewhere, but I don't feel like I understand it.
When you are winning, the last thing you ask for is a cease fire... because you are winning. Why stop? It isn't like you are going to all of a sudden get all humanitarian and stuff.
People who are losing ask for cease fires. People who recognize that they are in a stalemate and not getting anywhere ask for cease fires. People who are trying to buy time because everything went sideways ask for cease fires.
OK...I'll give it a go...If you discount the fact that those demands may just be a feint serving the purpose of making himself look "reasonable" in some way to his own people and others inclined to support him in different parts of the world, if you were ostensibly Roman Reigns and found yourself in a match with Minnie Mouse, but Ms. Mouse unexpectedly turned out to be Ronda Rousey with outsized ears and you discovered that you were getting your ass kicked, would you not just go on and stomp the Mouse into a grease spot if you were able to do so without bringing the whole house down on your head instead of proffering a thinly veiled call for a timeout of sorts.
Pardon that particular metaphor, but I'm not the one who brought up WrestleMania...
Anything Putin does will be a con. He doesn't think much of Lenin, but it requires a strenuous exercise of credulity to imagine he would have agreed with Lenin to back down and sign the treaty of Brest-Litovsk as an actual sincere undertaking.
True enough, I think. Putin is, among other nefarious things, a skillful con man. (How many successful tyrants throughout history haven't been, to one extent or another?) And as the old saw goes...it's hard to con a con. Hence the very sticky and real problem of how to bare our teeth to this dog in a way that he will ultimately believe without inviting him to call what may be seen as a bluff and an opportunity to go cock his leg someplace else. A place perhaps where there will be no way out for anyone that doesn't victimize everyone.
This rabid mutt needs to be put down. If it weren't for his nuclear bite, it would be much, much easier for all those wishing to do so to act as animal control and get it done. I sure don't envy any of them the decision-making process they are having to engage in at the moment, being burdened with a conscience as they are...definitely a disadvantage when playing for keeps with a mongrel that completely lacks the same.
Re: Putin's special stage On the day Putin was going to award trophies to the winners of the World Cup, in a pouring down rain, he was the only one dry with an umbrella over his head. Everyone else, in suits as well as soccer kit, including the guy holding the umbrella, was soaked to the skin. It was surreal.
It's the cult of the Leader. The nation is not the people, it's the will of the leader expressed as the hive. Only the queen counts because in the queen is the essence of the hive. All the other organisms are just protoplasm.
The Latin letter Z dropped into a Cyrillic phrase is just... weird. Do his PR people think this is just like a company going through a rebranding? Did they have to scramble and ret-con a meaning for the symbol after the invasion bogged down?
I have not seen or heard a comment about this but it is the most astonishing report so far about this invasion.
Apparently at checkpoints out of Mariupol refugees are actually being interrogated and asked if they are Nazis. The command structure of the Russian invaders is apparently actually devoting time and energy to finding Nazis.
This is literal insanity. The Russian soldiers are searching for Nazis. In Ukraine! Just as MAGA heads are searching for pedophiles in pizza parlors and bamboo in ballots here. And it will wind up the same way everywhere. Here, it will be red-capped patriots in F-150's standing up for America at intersections near you.
Literally it is true humans are the same everywhere. That's why we want to kill each other-- they are exactly like us, and we are them
Poisonous evil is the music of the world and sung in arias of malice by every average man and woman. The tune is the devil's laughter. How risible the world is to him. What an opera of malice and stupidity!
Apparently, from what I have read, there actually is a neo-Nazi party in Ukraine.
In the Ukrainian parliamentary system, that party typically garners about 2% of the vote. But the fact that they even exist is probably more indicative of how terribly Ukrainians, historically, have been treated by Russia. If we were in a parliamentary system, would 2% of Americans vote for an explicitly pro-Nazi party? Probably not. In the popular American mind, Nazi=evil. But if you polled for attitudes and beliefs in the US, I am sure we could find 2% who have attitudes and beliefs that closely match those held by Ukrainian neo-Nazis.
It is an American icon. And very useful if you have to move something around. But from my observation the miles driven by F-150's carrying anything more bulky than a bag of groceries is a very small fraction. The acquisition and use of an F-150 is mostly for reasons not related to the particular functional advantage of large cargo capacity.
Every morning I drive in to work. Hundreds of other vehicles are also driving in to work. It's about 20-25 miles, and of course many vehicles are headed in longer distances.
I usually drive at about 60 mph. It typically takes me 20 minutes or so to arrive. If I drive at 70 I arrive a little less than three minutes earlier. My gas mileage degrades by more than that because the laws of physics apply instead of the laws of Congress or the State Legislature.
The driver of an F-150 at 75-80 mph, which is what the individuals who come up behind me and angrily honk and flash their lights in fury at me for having the temerity to not exceed the speed limit, has it within his power to get a 5% improvement in fuel economy -- effectively, a reduction in fuel consumption & hence fuel cost --for each 10% reduction in drag.
Drag increases as the square of the speed so an increase of speed from 60 mph to 75 mph is a 20% change in speed. The increase in drag is 1.2^2 or 1.44, or 44%. 44% divided by 10 is 4.4, so a reduction in speed from 75 mph in an F150 will save 4.4 x 5% or a 22% increase in gas mileage.
Now not owning one I don't know what the achieved gas mileage of an F-150 is, but by report (from googling) it's around 25 mpg or so at 55 and less than 20 mpg at 75. Assuming you refill the tank when it is down to 20% full, at the price I just paid for gas that's a fillup of $88 or so. So...
Reducing speed to 60 mph in the commute, for these otherwise empty pickup trucks being driven by individual communters, could save each of them almost $20 per fillup at a time tradeoff of three minutes each way. By contrast I am now paying a little more than $20 for my fillups. I do have and generally drive a smaller, fuel-efficient vehicle, but I'm also not as careful as my wife is to drive efficiently, so by comparison with hers my fuel expenditures are exorbitant. We have recorded every drop of gas we ever bought since the Jimmy Carter administration (yes, I am a wierdo) so with respect to our own habits I can base my impressions on solid numerical data.
So my point is not that F-150's are bad. But I do feel that angry F-150 (and similar vehicle) owners who want to organize national fiscal and energy policy so as to subsidize their personal transportation preferences have a lot less to complain about than they permit themselves to do. And they have it within their power to reduce their own fuel costs significantly, at minimal and even negligible cost in time and convenience, even without a capital outlay to replace their vehicle of preference with something less costly to operate. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that a not insignificant motivation for lots of people is a desire to feel sorry for themselves as hard as possible...
I loved this rational, numbers based approach to commuting. But, one can go a step further. If one considers: (a) becoming a bicycle commuter if it is safe and possible to do so between your home and workplace (a) ditching the second car and use Uber on rare occasions, (b) save thousands of dollars per year AND then invest those savings and retire earlier, thus working fewer hours - or one day, only working because you love your work, and (c) the decision to commute by bicycle, nearly always results in weight loss and improved health. The catch is the learning curve. Cyclists need to be super-defensive and learn how to find alternative residential routes that an average car driver would never think of using - which is what makes those routes much safer for cyclists. A residential street that has a 20 mph speed limit is not too slow for a cyclist. Still further, a 15 or 20 mile bicycle commute might have been seen as too long ten years ago. Not so much today with electric assist. But I caution, ten years ago, only a very skilled, experienced cyclist could average 20 MPH. That may be too fast for a new, novice commuter.
Yes. When my 40 mpg civic (at 70 mph) is passed on the highway by someone in a full size pickup or suv going 10mph over the speed limit, they have no right to complain about gas prices. BTW, I have tried explaining that drag increase is related to square of speed - lost cause...
We had a rabbit diesel in the Carter administration. We got 42 mpg. The exhaust had a bracket that kept breaking.
Now we have two Honda Fits. Mine has 220K miles. Alas they aren't' selling them here any more.
MAGA will send pickups with gun toting militias to kill me (they will anyway after the next election) but what the world needs is $10/gal gas. If we can sustain industrial civilization at those prices the hydrocarbon mafia states would be in a bind.
"If Russia pulls out the nukes I'll die. Everyone on this panel will die" JVL thought he was the top dog of podcast pessimism, but in comes Noah Smith with the booyah! Take a seat Jonathan. Remember March 17, 2022 as the day JVL dropped the belt to Noah!
I guess you can take solace in the fact that the same potential for nuclear winter has existed our entire lives, and we've lived a lot of days without thinking about it. There were probably much higher risk days during the Cold War. Might as well not even think about. Ain't gonna help.
I grew up under the threat of nuclear annihilation (the 1960s). It was always floating there in the background. I was in the military during the Cold War. I can neither confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons aboard the submarines I served on. People who grew up then or lived through that know what that means.
A lot of that disappeared with the collapse of the Soviet Union. We let ourselves forget about that because it seemed like it was gone--nobody realistically thought the Chinese would use theirs and Russia was too fubar to worry about.
Now we have Jack Nicholson from the Shining, hacking his way through the door to stick his head through the hole and say.. "I'm back." Only a lot of people aren't really ready to think about that yet.
I wasn't in the military, but grew up during the 50's & 60's myself, so I do indeed "know what that means." Lots of memories from that time, vis a vie nukes, Russia etc. And the background noise of that continued on for a long time in my life. As you said, we let ourselves forget about it...with emphasis on the word "let". And for those who came later, the visceral fear of what a nuke launched in anger would mean for the world is an unknown.
What you just wrote is so well put. Jack Nicholson, indeed!
“We want you to love your children more than you fear your government.” That’s an all-timer.
The U.S. should change its constitution so that we can make Zelensky our president after the war the way that big college sports teams steal coaches from smaller ones.
Many years ago, during the Soviet era, I said, "well, at at least the Soviets have the good taste to never put on something that looks like the Superbowl Halftime Show". Now that Putin et al are going full-on anti-West, full-on "Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality" - i.e. full-on anti-enlightenment rejection of the modern world, we see something that looks a lot like the Superbowl Halftime Show or "Wrestlemania". As if to say "stick with us and you still be part of exiting, sexy, prosperous modern world" - Not.
my gawd I hope this is true. I hope Russia is losing. But I'm having 2016 flashbacks, where it constantly looked like Trump's campaign was weak and in chaos, and so he was going to lose. And then he won. Guess I'm still a little shell-shocked.
Take a look at this. This is how despotism survives -- by mindfuck.
https://www.yahoo.com/now/don-t-know-survived-family-093014932.html
"KYIV, Ukraine — Tetyana Vlasenko was bleeding from 12 bullet wounds to her legs when she begged a Russian military officer nearby for help. His soldiers had opened fire on her family’s car, yet the officer was apologetic as the soldiers gave them first aid.
While she lay there seriously hurt, she recalls him saying, “I’m sorry for doing this but we have an order to shoot everything that is moving, and you cannot imagine how many cars like this we have full of Nazis who are trying to bomb us,” Tetyana, 42, told NBC News on Wednesday from her bed in Kyiv City Hospital 17."
"Tetyana, a former shop worker, said the Russian soldiers she encountered “truly believe that everyone around is a Nazi.” She added that the soldiers “were all terrified,” and she had spoken calmly with them prior to the shooting."
What on earth do you suppose the Russians imagine Nazis to be? I submit the word "Nazi" here is "socialist" in America. And in America the mindfucked have been taught that the "socialists" are trying to kill them too. Socialists, demons, witches, commies...
I too would be terrified if I were a Russian soldier who finds himself in a place where the people really really do want him gone and many are willing to kill him. For good reason, even though it wasn't his intent, but necessitated by forces beyond his control. American conscripts in Vietnam = Russian conscript in Ukraine.
Despots rule by mindfucking. Sorry for the anglo-saxon verb portmanteau word but no other locution comes close. And what do we have in America? Any difference? A national mindfuck. Multiple mindfucks, multiple fearfuckeries. Treat your people like dogs, and turn them into fear-biters. Take their need to serve and be loved and use it to torture their hearts into servile anger and fear. The police are your enemy, because they've been kicked and brutalized so they really are. The liberals are your enemy, because they've been shown all the reasons to despise ignorant brutal racist assholes. The hoity-toity educated are your enemy, becasue they've spit on you, and you are their enemy because they have spit back.
My son and my daughter and their spouses both took on rescue dogs. It is very, very, very hard to bring a mindfucked rescue animal back from the hell that formed it. Like the Romanian orphans, the human and dog brain wiring digs in early. Humans are like dogs in many ways, and mostly in this: in their hearts they want to be loved. And they want to serve. And they want to obey. And they want, in return, to give love back.
The key to rule is twist that love, twist it with fear, and make it a biter.
As long as people and dogs are who they are, we will be cold meat to those who know how to make us fear, and make us hate.
Putin is only a couple days away from announcing 'Evidence that Biden stole the election is in Ukraine' and having 50million saps in their Barcaloungers sit up and go, 'What???'
Putin would love a sophisticated brainwashing media outlet like Fox News, which is constantly spewing nonsense about Democrats. I am an Independent and have friends who are both Democrats and Republicans. We all get along just fine. We don't watch Fox News, so we don't believe the worst of each other.
Surprised that this hasn't popped up yet. Somebody in Russian agitprop is slacking.
I get the feeling from all Putin is doing and saying, he is actually emulating Trump. I realize that disinformation was always part of his arsenal but it has a much more Trumpian tone to it this time around: repeating ridiculous themes ad nauseum, holding fake rallies, never explaining anything unless it is to double-down.
Putin isn't emulating Trump, the other way around, but the point is still valid.
Trump would like to emulate Putin but is unable to, a great source of frustration to him. Trump recently said that if he is ever president again, he wants the power to fire anyone in the Executive branch who fails to do his bidding. That's exactly how Putin rules, though he might do more than just fire them.
He will be able to do this and much more as of Jan 21 2025. The entire American government, and then from there outward every business, industry, and institution in the country that engages with or does business with the Federal government State governments controlled by the regime, will be overwhelmed and drawn into the nightmare life that is a society not protected by rule of law.
- Intelligence agencies will be required to produce the product their masters want to hear. Putin’s difficulties in Ukraine right now are a foretaste of the consequences when intelligence services are compelled to become intellectually corrupt.
- We have a professional military. One of the positives about such a system is that if morally healthy it promotes the best and weeds out the worst. However, after Jan 21 2025 any member of our armed forces who hopes to have a career will have to “sign loyalty oaths”. Promotion will depend on political loyalty. It will become necessary not only to compete in demonstrations of personal obeisance, it will soon also become mandatory to report on disloyalty in others. Reporting corruption and criminal activity will become not only death to one’s chances for promotion, it will eventually become the short route to arrest and even physical harm. (Google Eddie Gallagher. ) The result will be an increasingly ineffective, massively corrupt, lavishly funded bureaucracy staffed by thieves and looted, pillaged, and operated by gangsters.
- We can also expect to see replicated in every part of our economy the egregious financial corruption permeating every “shithole country” in the world. As the poison spreads, doing business with other businesses that require permission from the authorities to operate will entail flows of favors and inevitably bribes and payments. In a corrupt system this behavior comes to be engaged in not only for personal gain, but for personal protection. Being corrupt is a way of proving to everyone else you won’t turn them in, so they don’t come after you.
It also is a way of ensuring that you always have something on everyone. The “law” becomes a means of making examples “pour encourager les autres”. And the wider the corruption the more the non-corrupt abandon efforts to oppose it.
Remember… Trump pardoned Blagojevich. And Bannon. He had no personal reason (aside maybe some favor to someone who did have a reason, probably pecuniary) to put himself on record as favoring such egregiously criminal and personally unpleasant miscreants. He did it strategically. He was sending a message.
This doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface.
Today one’s ability to find employment, rent an apartment, borrow money for transportation, obtain health insurance, pay for auto insurance, or do countless other things, is largely governed by a number assigned by three companies that collect and sell information on you, and there is nothing you can do about it. And this is a relatively benign sort of tyranny.
Consider that today the Republican Party boasts of a database of every voter. Pause a moment to reflect on what happens every time you read your email— the ads that follow you as relentlessly as Trayvon Martin was hunted until he finally stopped and made the mistake of trying to fight off his pursuer. The regime that takes power on January 20 2025 — I don’t want to dignify it with a term like “government”— that regime will have tools for oppression no secret police agency in history has ever had before, tools that will enable them to predict, to statistically valid confidence levels, a loyalty index for every human being cursed with the misfortune of living under its sway.
A boot stamping on a human face forever and ever, as George Orwell famously put it, will be a kindness compared to what is coming.
I second the Putin/Trump comparison. One key similarity between them is their high emotionality. Putin's entire "adventure" in Ukraine is driven by emotion, which is the same way Trump governs. There have been lots of theories surrounding Trump's affection for Putin (all of which may be true), but one thing that I think has been overlooked is that they might get along simply because they are similar in personality.
People with personalities like those of Trump and Putin do not really get along. If they perceive each other as equals, then they will make nice to each other in public and bad mouth each other in private--because there is no visible hierarchy.
Otherwise, the "stronger" one will rule the weaker one--who will be trying very hard to emulate the stronger one. The stronger will despise the weaker--the weaker will fear the stronger.
it is simple pack behavior in a sense--the alpha and everybody else.
Putin was the alpha in the Trump/Putin relationship... in fact Putin, XI and Kim all have it over Trump because Trump is a wanna be and the others actually rule. he is the beta to their alpha.
It would be interesting to see Putin's response to an offer of substantial funds and safe passage for himself and a reasonable entourage to a residential location of his choice (stipulating that they would accept him) as a quid pro quo forceasefire and immediateremoval of all Russian personnel and equipment from all Ukrainian territory as it stood prior to the turn of this century. He'd also be barred from any participation in business or politics for the rest of his life
None of these type of people are the type of people top accept such an offer... if they were that type of person they would have never got to where they are ITFP.
It is a VERY rare person that can go from a position of absolute authority to being some guy sitting things out in even palatial surroundings. These people die in their position or are killed, in most cases.
There is no retirement.
I agree, but it would still be interesting to make the offer. Some dictators have accepted exile and there is one SE Asian king who exiled himself to Germany and lives on what he still steals.
Can't think of too many actual dictators who have outside of Latin America--and royalty? As long as they can maintain their lifestyle, what do they actually care--most of them have little or no power in reality and/or are facing replacement by their own military or ambitious wanna-be dictators.
There is a difference between running some third world (or worse) country and skimming off the top and being the guy whose word is law in a place like Russia (or the USSR, or China, or Italy or Germany during the 40s).
You could make the offer, no real downside to that... but I do not realistically see it being accepted.
We're substantially agreed. I don't think there's much chance either because Putin is more power hungry than venal.
Agreed. With Putin, however, I think there is a strong component of actually wanting Russia to be great again. Remember that this is a man who was a member of the KGB and was pretty privileged in the old system.
The venality/corruption is merely a basic part of the way things have tended to work there and he also saw it as a handle on some people and a resource to gain power with.
I think it has always been about getting the power with the goal of restoring the old system under a different name and restoring the image of Russia and its power/influence.
He looked like he had it dialed in for a while there, but it ended up being largely a facade. Had there been less corruption and an intelligent approach/attempt to diversify the Russian economy and build actual greatness rather than the facade, things might have actually been pretty good for him and Russia.
But the Russians did the kind of standard Russian thing and here we are.
I keep hearing of the possibility of moles within Putin's government, since the West's intel on his plans is so accurate. Putin is making arrests of some associates close to his inner circle. I don't quite understand why people would be willing to risk so much to undermine Putin by blabbing to the West, but they're not willing to try to do the one thing that would end this Hell, and potentially WWIII, and take him out.
The thing that makes me doubt this is that the Russians have ALWAYS been so far ahead of the West on this that the very claim requires the possibility that the historical river has started to flow backwards.
Rivers can flow backwards. In tsunamis.
Just speculating here...may be a few who would be willing to do so if they could somehow get the opportunity, even if they knew it would mean their own certain demise. But the son of a bitch won't even sit within 20 feet of his own generals, so I expect such opportunities are practically nonexistent.
However, speaking as someone who found the fact that Osama bin Laden drew his last breath looking at the muzzle of a gun held by an American (well, at least in my imagination he was looking at it, and had a split second to recognize who was facilitating his exit from this world and perhaps think something along the lines of Oh shit!!)...as supremely satisfying as that was, I'd be equally pleased if Putin's end came similarly at the hands of one of his own people, with just enough delay for his demented brain to think Oh, shit, I really f**ked up.
Zelinsky has definitely shown world leadership!!
Can someone explain to me how/why Putin's demands for a ceasefire telegraph weakness? I've seen the argument here and elsewhere, but I don't feel like I understand it.
When you are winning, the last thing you ask for is a cease fire... because you are winning. Why stop? It isn't like you are going to all of a sudden get all humanitarian and stuff.
People who are losing ask for cease fires. People who recognize that they are in a stalemate and not getting anywhere ask for cease fires. People who are trying to buy time because everything went sideways ask for cease fires.
OK...I'll give it a go...If you discount the fact that those demands may just be a feint serving the purpose of making himself look "reasonable" in some way to his own people and others inclined to support him in different parts of the world, if you were ostensibly Roman Reigns and found yourself in a match with Minnie Mouse, but Ms. Mouse unexpectedly turned out to be Ronda Rousey with outsized ears and you discovered that you were getting your ass kicked, would you not just go on and stomp the Mouse into a grease spot if you were able to do so without bringing the whole house down on your head instead of proffering a thinly veiled call for a timeout of sorts.
Pardon that particular metaphor, but I'm not the one who brought up WrestleMania...
Anything Putin does will be a con. He doesn't think much of Lenin, but it requires a strenuous exercise of credulity to imagine he would have agreed with Lenin to back down and sign the treaty of Brest-Litovsk as an actual sincere undertaking.
True enough, I think. Putin is, among other nefarious things, a skillful con man. (How many successful tyrants throughout history haven't been, to one extent or another?) And as the old saw goes...it's hard to con a con. Hence the very sticky and real problem of how to bare our teeth to this dog in a way that he will ultimately believe without inviting him to call what may be seen as a bluff and an opportunity to go cock his leg someplace else. A place perhaps where there will be no way out for anyone that doesn't victimize everyone.
This rabid mutt needs to be put down. If it weren't for his nuclear bite, it would be much, much easier for all those wishing to do so to act as animal control and get it done. I sure don't envy any of them the decision-making process they are having to engage in at the moment, being burdened with a conscience as they are...definitely a disadvantage when playing for keeps with a mongrel that completely lacks the same.
Given that Putin's first negotiating terms were "surrender or die", (that is a paraphrase btw) he has backed off quite a bit.
So now we are reading, do not know if we should believe it or what it means, he has left Moscow/St Petersburg and retired to bunkers in the Urals.
My recommendation is -- be sure to tell your wife, children, and everyone you love -- you love them.
Oh thanks, that's simpler than I thought.
Re: Putin's special stage On the day Putin was going to award trophies to the winners of the World Cup, in a pouring down rain, he was the only one dry with an umbrella over his head. Everyone else, in suits as well as soccer kit, including the guy holding the umbrella, was soaked to the skin. It was surreal.
It's the cult of the Leader. The nation is not the people, it's the will of the leader expressed as the hive. Only the queen counts because in the queen is the essence of the hive. All the other organisms are just protoplasm.
The Latin letter Z dropped into a Cyrillic phrase is just... weird. Do his PR people think this is just like a company going through a rebranding? Did they have to scramble and ret-con a meaning for the symbol after the invasion bogged down?
Maybe they haven't heard that World War Z is already taken.
I have not seen or heard a comment about this but it is the most astonishing report so far about this invasion.
Apparently at checkpoints out of Mariupol refugees are actually being interrogated and asked if they are Nazis. The command structure of the Russian invaders is apparently actually devoting time and energy to finding Nazis.
This is literal insanity. The Russian soldiers are searching for Nazis. In Ukraine! Just as MAGA heads are searching for pedophiles in pizza parlors and bamboo in ballots here. And it will wind up the same way everywhere. Here, it will be red-capped patriots in F-150's standing up for America at intersections near you.
Literally it is true humans are the same everywhere. That's why we want to kill each other-- they are exactly like us, and we are them
Poisonous evil is the music of the world and sung in arias of malice by every average man and woman. The tune is the devil's laughter. How risible the world is to him. What an opera of malice and stupidity!
Apparently, from what I have read, there actually is a neo-Nazi party in Ukraine.
In the Ukrainian parliamentary system, that party typically garners about 2% of the vote. But the fact that they even exist is probably more indicative of how terribly Ukrainians, historically, have been treated by Russia. If we were in a parliamentary system, would 2% of Americans vote for an explicitly pro-Nazi party? Probably not. In the popular American mind, Nazi=evil. But if you polled for attitudes and beliefs in the US, I am sure we could find 2% who have attitudes and beliefs that closely match those held by Ukrainian neo-Nazis.
In other words, "...half a basket of deplorables..."
Got to stick up for F-150's....
It is an American icon. And very useful if you have to move something around. But from my observation the miles driven by F-150's carrying anything more bulky than a bag of groceries is a very small fraction. The acquisition and use of an F-150 is mostly for reasons not related to the particular functional advantage of large cargo capacity.
Every morning I drive in to work. Hundreds of other vehicles are also driving in to work. It's about 20-25 miles, and of course many vehicles are headed in longer distances.
I usually drive at about 60 mph. It typically takes me 20 minutes or so to arrive. If I drive at 70 I arrive a little less than three minutes earlier. My gas mileage degrades by more than that because the laws of physics apply instead of the laws of Congress or the State Legislature.
The driver of an F-150 at 75-80 mph, which is what the individuals who come up behind me and angrily honk and flash their lights in fury at me for having the temerity to not exceed the speed limit, has it within his power to get a 5% improvement in fuel economy -- effectively, a reduction in fuel consumption & hence fuel cost --for each 10% reduction in drag.
Drag increases as the square of the speed so an increase of speed from 60 mph to 75 mph is a 20% change in speed. The increase in drag is 1.2^2 or 1.44, or 44%. 44% divided by 10 is 4.4, so a reduction in speed from 75 mph in an F150 will save 4.4 x 5% or a 22% increase in gas mileage.
Now not owning one I don't know what the achieved gas mileage of an F-150 is, but by report (from googling) it's around 25 mpg or so at 55 and less than 20 mpg at 75. Assuming you refill the tank when it is down to 20% full, at the price I just paid for gas that's a fillup of $88 or so. So...
Reducing speed to 60 mph in the commute, for these otherwise empty pickup trucks being driven by individual communters, could save each of them almost $20 per fillup at a time tradeoff of three minutes each way. By contrast I am now paying a little more than $20 for my fillups. I do have and generally drive a smaller, fuel-efficient vehicle, but I'm also not as careful as my wife is to drive efficiently, so by comparison with hers my fuel expenditures are exorbitant. We have recorded every drop of gas we ever bought since the Jimmy Carter administration (yes, I am a wierdo) so with respect to our own habits I can base my impressions on solid numerical data.
So my point is not that F-150's are bad. But I do feel that angry F-150 (and similar vehicle) owners who want to organize national fiscal and energy policy so as to subsidize their personal transportation preferences have a lot less to complain about than they permit themselves to do. And they have it within their power to reduce their own fuel costs significantly, at minimal and even negligible cost in time and convenience, even without a capital outlay to replace their vehicle of preference with something less costly to operate. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that a not insignificant motivation for lots of people is a desire to feel sorry for themselves as hard as possible...
I loved this rational, numbers based approach to commuting. But, one can go a step further. If one considers: (a) becoming a bicycle commuter if it is safe and possible to do so between your home and workplace (a) ditching the second car and use Uber on rare occasions, (b) save thousands of dollars per year AND then invest those savings and retire earlier, thus working fewer hours - or one day, only working because you love your work, and (c) the decision to commute by bicycle, nearly always results in weight loss and improved health. The catch is the learning curve. Cyclists need to be super-defensive and learn how to find alternative residential routes that an average car driver would never think of using - which is what makes those routes much safer for cyclists. A residential street that has a 20 mph speed limit is not too slow for a cyclist. Still further, a 15 or 20 mile bicycle commute might have been seen as too long ten years ago. Not so much today with electric assist. But I caution, ten years ago, only a very skilled, experienced cyclist could average 20 MPH. That may be too fast for a new, novice commuter.
Excellent points, especially the safety.
Yes. When my 40 mpg civic (at 70 mph) is passed on the highway by someone in a full size pickup or suv going 10mph over the speed limit, they have no right to complain about gas prices. BTW, I have tried explaining that drag increase is related to square of speed - lost cause...
My DD (Daily Driver) is a 2001 VW diesel, about 40-50 mpg.
We had a rabbit diesel in the Carter administration. We got 42 mpg. The exhaust had a bracket that kept breaking.
Now we have two Honda Fits. Mine has 220K miles. Alas they aren't' selling them here any more.
MAGA will send pickups with gun toting militias to kill me (they will anyway after the next election) but what the world needs is $10/gal gas. If we can sustain industrial civilization at those prices the hydrocarbon mafia states would be in a bind.
The innumerate rule the world
Mine's got 59k over 23 years. Garbage to the landfill, mulch, rock, and "stuff."
We want you to love your children more than you fear your government.
This is the most brilliant encapsulation I have ever seen of the exact thing a despotism must prevent.
"If Russia pulls out the nukes I'll die. Everyone on this panel will die" JVL thought he was the top dog of podcast pessimism, but in comes Noah Smith with the booyah! Take a seat Jonathan. Remember March 17, 2022 as the day JVL dropped the belt to Noah!
Yeah, that was heavy.
I guess you can take solace in the fact that the same potential for nuclear winter has existed our entire lives, and we've lived a lot of days without thinking about it. There were probably much higher risk days during the Cold War. Might as well not even think about. Ain't gonna help.
I grew up under the threat of nuclear annihilation (the 1960s). It was always floating there in the background. I was in the military during the Cold War. I can neither confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons aboard the submarines I served on. People who grew up then or lived through that know what that means.
A lot of that disappeared with the collapse of the Soviet Union. We let ourselves forget about that because it seemed like it was gone--nobody realistically thought the Chinese would use theirs and Russia was too fubar to worry about.
Now we have Jack Nicholson from the Shining, hacking his way through the door to stick his head through the hole and say.. "I'm back." Only a lot of people aren't really ready to think about that yet.
I wasn't in the military, but grew up during the 50's & 60's myself, so I do indeed "know what that means." Lots of memories from that time, vis a vie nukes, Russia etc. And the background noise of that continued on for a long time in my life. As you said, we let ourselves forget about it...with emphasis on the word "let". And for those who came later, the visceral fear of what a nuke launched in anger would mean for the world is an unknown.
What you just wrote is so well put. Jack Nicholson, indeed!
“We want you to love your children more than you fear your government.” That’s an all-timer.
The U.S. should change its constitution so that we can make Zelensky our president after the war the way that big college sports teams steal coaches from smaller ones.