A MIXED REACTION TO A BRUTAL INVASION

 Last Thursday, Russian leader Vladimir Putin ordered his military to carry out a full on invasion of the country of Ukraine.  This unprovoked attack on a country that has been democratic since 1991 is a barbaric act that could result in the death of hundreds of thousands of people on both sides.  Putin's stated motivations are absurdly false, from claiming that the Ukraine is run by "neo-Nazis" to saying that NATO is threatening to destroy Russia.  His real motivation seems to be rooted in his anger at the breaking apart of the Soviet Union during the 90's.

The good news is that Putin has only strengthened the alliances of the NATO countries, and he may be in for a tougher fight than he expected because a strong majority of Ukrainians are opposed to the invasion.  He also may discover that occupying Ukraine after invading could prove to be difficult, just like the US found out in Iraq.  Even installing a puppet dictator would be met with strong resistance by the Ukrainian people.   And the war may not be popular with the Russian people, even with government propaganda running the media, as thousands of Russians have already taken to the streets to protest the invasion, a bold move given the country's often brutal crackdowns on such protests.

Putin's act of aggression shows the danger of one country being run entirely on the whims of one leader; he can lie about his reasons, or over how popular the attack is with the Russian people, but at the end of the day this is Putin's war for him and him alone.  Democracy may be messy system, and it often makes it  difficult to get things done, but it still requires more than one leader's decision to go to war.  There's a reason why there has never been a democracy that invaded another democracy.

President Joe Biden has responded to the attacks by arming the Ukrainians and slapping sanctions against Russia, while also gathering together American allies to do the same.   The Republican response has been mixed, to say the least.  Many of them have both agreed with Biden's actions while trying to say that his response has been "weak".  

The right wing media has been even crazier: just after the invasion, Tucker Carlson, the number one rated talk show host on Fox News, asked a series of odd questions that implied that he was angrier at American liberals and China (“Has Putin ever called me a racist?", "Has he shipped every middle-class job in my town to Russia?”) than at Putin.  Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon on his right wing podcast said that it was“not our fight” and praised Putin for being "anti-woke."

And then there's Trump himself, who has always had an admiration for Putin.  Recently he said in a speech at Mara Lago that Putin was "pretty smart" and “He’s taken over a country for $2 worth of sanctions, taking over a country — really a vast, vast location, a great piece of land with a lot of people — and just walking right in.”  Yes, the former president is describing a military attack that could leave thousands of innocent people dead as "just walking right in".  It's obvious why Trump can't bring himself to criticize Putin, and it's not just that the Russian government helped him in the 2016 election.  Clearly Trump responds to strongman dictators who rule their countries with an iron hand, because he wishes that he could have run our country the same way.   Although a sociopath like Trump cannot truly care about any other person, he does respect power, and he sees the fear that Putin and North Korean leader Kim-Jong Un have over their underlings and wants that to.  The fact that Trump praises a leader who carries out an unprovoked invasion of a neighboring country is reason enough to hope that he never occupies the White House again.  But who knows?  The sanctions against Russia will more than likely wind up hurting the American economy, which would help Trump if he runs again in 2024.  As horrifying as it might sound, Putin might once again help Trump win the presidency. 

A DIZZYING DOUBLE STANDARD

 

Boris Johnson is in big trouble.  The British Prime Minister, it has recently been disclosed, held at least twelve different large parties at a time when when his country was under a severe pandemic lockdown.  The extent of these violations of his own government's rules is so big that it may lead to a police investigation.   The resulting outrage in England has caused Johnson's approval rating to plummet, with fully two thirds of the country wishing he would step down.  Even his own conservative Tory party has also turned on him, with the Guardian reporting that 48% of voters who supported him in 2019 would like for him to, as former conservative cabinet minister David Davis put it, “In the name of God, go.”

Obviously what Johnson did was extremely stupid, and while he has resisted calls to remove himself from office, it's clear that his standing as both a prime minister and a Tory have been diminished.  While I can certainly understand the anger at Johnson, I can't help but wish that some of that same outrage at a leader's corruption and incompetence could find its way to the US.

When you compare what Johnson did with how Donald Trump  handled the pandemic when he was president, it's seems clear to me that Trump's response was far worse.  Yes, Johnson holding parties during a lockdown was bad, but was it as bad as Trump's initial dismissal of the pandemic ("a liberal hoax"), and then his downplaying of its severity("it will disappear when the weather gets warmer")?  Or when Trump openly pushed for people to try hydroxychloroquine as a cure for covid, despite there being no research showing that it worked?  And his even  more absurd comments about injecting bleach? And then there was the rally that he held in Tulsa, Oklahoma in June of 2020, during the height of the pandemic, in which thousands of unmasked rally attendees sat  next to each other and screamed.  Add to that the fact we now know that our former president tested positive for covid and chose not to tell anyone for over a week, exposing hundreds of people to it, and it's clear that the Tory party's ability to see incompetent corruption for what it is in their leader is a quality that the Republican party lacks.

But then Trump's terrible reaction to Covid-19 is old news.  What about his more recent comments?  At a rally last Sunday, Trump openly showed sympathy for the January 6th. rioters who are currently in jail, and he promised that if he runs and wins the White House in 2024, he will pardon them.  So, the Republican party, the party that has successfully branded itself as the party of law and order, is still supporting a former president who wants to pardon rioters who attacked and beat police officers, stole their shields to smash in windows, and invaded the floors of congress.  How can the Republican party attack Democrats for wanting to "defund the police", (a stand that only a handful of  Democrats have actually supported), while cheering for Trump's call to pardon the violent insurrectionists?  

To be fair, there has been some criticism on the right for Trump, with Senator  Lindsay Graham saying that his pardon comments were inappropriate.  But even those comments were weak, and Trump immediately responded in an interview, saying that Graham "doesn't know what the hell he's talking about".  Anyone who's followed Graham and Trump for the past few years knows how this will end, with Graham going to Mar-o-Lago to beg Trump for forgiveness, followed by him announcing that if Trump wins in 2024, he can pardon as many police beating protestors as he wants to.   

A few months ago I wrote how angry I was at how the Democratic party's rightful rebuke of Andrew Cuomo for his multiple sexual harassment charges compared to the Republican party's ignoring the 26 charges of sexual assault or rape made against Trump.  And here we are again. I hate to be a broken record when it comes to Trump, but I just continue to be amazed at how he gets away with saying and doing the most horrible and incompetent things, with his command of the Republican party never really wavering.  I wish that  the Tory party's reaction to Boris Johnson could happen here with the Republican party and Trump, but then Trump has never really been  a politician like Johnson, instead he's a unique figure, equal parts showman, con artist, mob boss, cult figure, and  white nationalist leader.   While he currently  is under investigation for both his business interests and his attempts to steal the 2020 election while he was president, I fear that he will walk away unscathed from these charges just as he has so many times before.  Putting it bluntly, there is no bottom with Trump and the Republican party, and the possibility of him re winning the White House in 2024 is terrifyingly real.