Glaring Correction
Regarding my last post on the political absurdities that plague us today, a subscriber pointed out that I missed the most absurd scene on the stages of the political Theatre of the Absurd: Russia’s relentless daily hammering of Ukraine by the biggest bully on the playground – Vladismear Putin.
As I often write about greed and thirst for power bringing out the worst instincts of our species, Vladismear is no doubt the #1 power jockey on the planet. The other highest profile power jockeys – President Xi Jinping of China, U.S. President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary – are not murdering civilians, burying them in mass-graves, and sending rockets and armed drones into another country’s population centers almost nightly. Not that they wouldn’t, if they thought they could get away with it. That is, if their individual political systems would allow it while the rest of the world’s countries would virtually sit with their collective thumbs up their collective asses, sitting on the sidelines watching the spectacle unfold comfortably from their sofas, in the dark, with their faces shining only in the glow of their TV sets.
Though President Xi supports Putin’s aggression against Ukraine, it’s no secret that he would invade democratic Taiwan in a heartbeat. But, for now, Xi is keeping his powder dry while watching Putin’s actions with great intent.
While fomenting chaos domestically and internationally, it’s not a stretch to imagine King Con invading Canada, Greenland and Panama to create the 51st, 52nd and 53rd states.
Meanwhile, still training to become a power jockey in the supremacy major leagues, Orbán is sitting on the bench, studying and taking notes on these more experienced power brokers. Oh yeah, almost forgot Kim Jong Un, Supreme Leader of North Korea, who would absorb South Korea in an instant if he could, and in his dreams, the United States.
Obviously, various political systems and checks on each other keep all these countries from invading their neighbors. As well, there are “deals,” horse trading to be made in smoke-filled backrooms, amplifying that other worst human instinct, greed.
The New York Times reported that the recently revealed Trump administration’s proposed 28-point Russia-Ukraine peace plan was “drafted with no input from the Ukrainians, the European allies or the Congress.” The proposed deal as reported by Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic, “was negotiated by Steve Witkoff, a real-estate developer with no historical, geographical, or cultural knowledge of Russia or Ukraine, and Kirill Dmitriev, who heads Russia’s sovereign-wealth fund and spends most of his time making business deals.” Worthwhile to note, King Con and Witkoff have a shared interest in bitcoin and developed the $2 billion investment by Dubai in what is referred to as the “Trump-Witkoff stablecoin.” Ya think there’s some sorta, uh, hidden agenda in this “piece” plan? We digress…
The entire world is directly implicated in the perpetuation of this absurd war between Russia and Ukraine, effectively just sitting back and watching Russia pound the shit out of its neighbor daily.
The Russo-Ukrainian war began with the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014, with little resistance from Ukraine. Within one month, the Crimean Peninsula was annexed after a widely condemned and disputed referendum. There was no substantial pushback from the world community on this land grab. Putin must have thought, “Hmm. That was easy. Let’s take some more.” Russian paramilitaries soon began a war in the eastern Donbas region against Ukraine’s military, which resulted in a full-on invasion eight years later in 2022. What was supposed to take “two weeks” to capture Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital city, is now entering its fourth year. Not so easy this time.
Russian air attacks have killed thousands of Ukrainian civilians and destroyed hospitals, schools, churches, apartment buildings, electric grids, shopping malls, streets, businesses, factories and other civilian infrastructure – all of which amounts to war crimes for which Putin has been charged, and for which, under terms of the deal, he will not face prosecution at the International Court of Justice.
Besides supplying money and weapons, the world continues to sit idly by and watch Russia pound the crap out of all of Ukraine, a sovereign and peaceful nation. Only supplying money and weapons to Ukraine is like giving your college dropout money for food, rent, and other living expenses without any guidance to help clear the path of the obstacles and help make a good kid independent.
My reader who took me to task for neglecting to include this absurd war in my previous post, wrote: “NATO SCHMATO! Pounce on Putin’s ass. The outsized Russian military is no match for the deployment of the collective might of all nations lining up on Russia’s borders, getting in Putin’s face, and giving him 24 hours to get out of Ukraine and be forced to surrender Crimea as a consequence for his bad behavior. There can be no invasion by any country of another country in the 21st century.”
The Blind Guy regrets the omission.
While this war remains #1 on the absurd spectrum, a close second and third would be the terms of this “peace plan,” too numerous to review here, but suffice it to say, they essentially enrich both Putin and Trump and their absurdly rich cohort. And the #3 absurd item would be Vladismear’s ego.
It’s high time for the strongest nations on Earth to gather together and create a “World Congress” that will include a global police force whose singular mission would be to keep the world peaceful. But I’ll save this notion for a future post.
Weekly Tune Up
If you keep reading, I’ll keep writing.
Humor and human instinct make for great literature and I thank you. Unfortunately it is not fiction that you are writing. Instead, you are like the announcer at a global chess championship where the pieces are countries and humanity is the pawn. Sadly brilliant and accurate commentary.