The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    Orion's picture

    "A More Unified West"

    By Orion on Wed, 03/02/2022 - 1:00pm |

    It is an understatement to say how divided this society is. The loneliness epidemic, in which people are terrified and unaware of who their own neighbors or even family members are, a polarizing identity politics that gave us a whole bunch of groups that didn't really believe in the core of society anymore - feminists, the Alt Right (which encompassed men's rights activists, white nationalists and others), gave us a more and more atomized and anxious society.

    Here's a potential rhetorical break from Joe Biden's SOTU speech:

    “When the history of this era is written, Putin’s war in Ukraine will have left Russia weaker and the rest of the world stronger,” he said. “While it shouldn’t have taken something so terrible for people around the world to see what’s at stake, now everyone sees it clearly. We see the unity among leaders of nations, a more unified Europe, a more unified West.

    One pejorative that the woke crowd often puts out there is the "invention of whiteness." According to them, before America, white people were Dutch, English, French, German, Irish, etc. "Whiteness" was invented to separate from other groups essentially in order to subjugate them.

    That assessment might essentially be correct, at least to some degree. Nevertheless, "white" people generally do not really see themselves as those nationalities. Biden speaking of "a more unified West" gives us a healthier and less divisive identity - we are the west. 

    This society needs a cohesive identity like that, so that people look at other people and see someone who shares a commonality, instead of someone who embodies an external threat. We are a community and we do have shared roots.

    Comments

    Girls Gone Wild - Joe had 'em shaking their thang in the aisles.


    Perhaps this is the detente we've been waiting for - do all 16 dances even the Aqua Velva, even the Dirty Dog (Matt Gaetz where are you?), sad faced "why won't you dance with me, I ain't no Limburger" just before the break - Congress & the SOTU will never be the same. Dance this Mess Around indeed...


     

    by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 03/02/2022 - 2:23pm

    Here's a pretty outrageous disinfo attempt, which was posted a lot on Facebook, to make it look like CNN & Zelensky's office were propagandizing, when in actuality the poster was the one trying to sow disinfo. The outrageous kicker is that they pasted a silhouette of Joe & Jill Biden with their dog from another picture ontop the explosion picture

    ⚠️ This is not an authentic screenshot of a CNN broadcast.

    The picture of the explosion is from 2022 and was released by the Ukrainian president's office on February 24 https://t.co/JEegKV8pAr pic.twitter.com/o8aoJlRgKn

    — AFP Fact Check (@AFPFactCheck) March 4, 2022

    by artappraiser on Sat, 03/05/2022 - 12:19am

    well here's the identity you were looking for right under our nose all along:

    Americans. Proud members of "the west."

    (I'd suggest all those college Humanities Departments bound and determined to publish almost exclusively Woke papers about how "the west" and/or America are evil colonialist enterprises, responsible for many of the miseries of history, need to start looking at alternative views)

    We need to stop listening so much to loud, noisy extremists, and to the polarized media, right and left. They are not giving an accurate picture of the country.


    by artappraiser on Fri, 03/04/2022 - 7:20pm

    could be our own NCD, who often argues how dumb most Americans are, or could be one of the American Woke "elite", or could be a Qanon member thinking the majority of Americans don't know the truth,

     but turns out he just joined Twitter in November, has 12 followers and follows 30, uses a Russian picture on his home page and uses a picture of a black man with braids as his avatar. It's really hard not to come to the conclusion he's really a foreign troll. Here's what he has to say about the poll:

    "74% of Americans" , "Think about how dumb the average #American is, now realize HALF of them are dumber than THAT" - George Carlin https://t.co/0jHDallJbi

    — Chisha Foka (@GeraldW54396001) March 5, 2022

     


    by artappraiser on Fri, 03/04/2022 - 7:30pm

    And what does it take for these "Americans" to stop trying to own the libs a sec, stop trying to demonize Biden a moment to actually pay attention to US security and humanitarian issues abroad? How often can this repeat? Will they demand Trump back tomorrow? Will they lose their mask outrage? Zelensky isn't Dem or Rep, so maybe politics finally ends at waters edge, but Fox & the far left are still supporting Putin against American imperialism.


    by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 03/04/2022 - 8:20pm

    How the West Marshaled a Stunning Show of Unity Against Russia

    In a few frantic days, the West threw out the playbook it used for decades against the Kremlin and isolated Russia with unparalleled sanctions and penalties.

    By Mark Landler, Katrin Bennhold and Matina Stevis-Gridneff @ NYTimes.com, March 5, 2022Updated 1:10 p.m. ET

    LONDON — The day after Russian tanks and troops poured across the Ukrainian border on Feb. 24, NATO leaders received a deeply frightening message. The alliance’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, opened an emergency video summit by warning that President Vladimir V. Putin had “shattered peace in Europe” and that from now on, he would openly contest the continent’s security order.

    However unlikely, Mr. Stoltenberg told the leaders, it was no longer unthinkable that Mr. Putin would attack a NATO member. Such a move would trigger the collective defense clause in the North Atlantic Treaty, opening the door to the ultimate nightmare scenario: a direct military conflict with Russia.

    President Biden, who had dialed in from the White House Situation Room, spoke up swiftly. Article 5 was “sacrosanct,” he said, referring to the “one for all, all for one” principle that has anchored NATO since its founding after World War II. Mr. Biden urged allied leaders to step up and send reinforcements to Europe’s eastern flank, according to multiple officials briefed on the call.

    Within hours, NATO had mobilized its rapid response force, a kind of military SWAT team, for the first time in history to deter an enemy. It was one in an avalanche of precedent-shattering moves, unfolding in ministries and boardrooms from Washington to London and Brussels to Berlin. In a few frantic days, the West threw out the standard playbook that it had used for decades and instead marshaled a stunning show of unity against Russia’s brutal aggression in the heart of Europe.

    A “new normal,” Mr. Stoltenberg called it.

    In truth, these 10 days in February shook the world, upending long-held assumptions, sundering decades of productive engagement, and wiping out billions of dollars of investment in Russia. It was anything but normal.

    Much as the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 set off a tumultuous cascade of changes across Europe, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has brought the West to a comparable, if far more ominous, historical reckoning.

    “That was an epochal, peaceful liberation,” Timothy Garton Ash, professor of European studies at Oxford University, said of Communism’s collapse. “This is an epochal, violent attempt at recolonization. As we were moved then with hope and excitement, so we’re moved now by horror, anger and fear.”

    The shock of Russia’s invasion led Germany to discard six decades of military-averse policy rooted in its own wartime experience. Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced [....]

    the above is like a fifth of the long-form article! this is one for the history books...

    quote from much later in the article

    The most quoted Russian in the heart of Europe right now is not Vladimir Putin, but Vladimir Lenin: “There are weeks where decades happen.”


    by artappraiser on Sat, 03/05/2022 - 8:39pm

    It is a bit of a cliche to say that history repeats, but the rise of the Soviet Union came around the same time as a global pandemic. This time around the roles may be flipped, with the West embracing a leftists totalitarian ideology and Russia fully embracing chauvinism, racism and nationalism.

     

     

     


    by Orion on Sat, 03/05/2022 - 9:05pm


    by artappraiser on Sat, 03/05/2022 - 9:03pm

    One huge talking point of the Right for a long time was that Russia Trump collusion was a fabrication and that Democrats were making it all up. 

    This all incidentally proves that that was never the case.

     


    by Orion on Sat, 03/05/2022 - 9:33pm

    Appalled, but not enough to report it or testify before Congress after the fact or for impeachment hearings  Self-absorbed twits.


    by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 03/05/2022 - 10:54pm

    Just salaried soldiers following the crazy boss politician's orders:

     


    by artappraiser on Sun, 03/06/2022 - 12:12am

    well it appears the "more unified west" thing has finally sunk in with the Drumpf as the new populist meme du jour,  as opposed to "MAGA". so here's his idea to soothe his cognitive dissonance:

    Former President Trump told donors that the US should put Chinese flags on America's F-22s and then 'bomb the shit' out of Russia, leading to conflict between Beijing and Moscow while 'we sit back and watch'. - Josh Dawsey of The Washington Post

    — The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) March 6, 2022

    surprise

     


    by artappraiser on Sun, 03/06/2022 - 12:20am

    Francis Fukuyama in the March 4 FT (no paywall for this): 
    "Putin’s war on the liberal order Democratic values were already under threat around the world before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Now we need to rekindle the spirit of 1989"


    by artappraiser on Sun, 03/06/2022 - 2:49am

    Yes. Leftists have created a whole Grand Theory of why wars happen -- the military-industrial complex, the Blob, imperialism, Israel, etc. -- and just none of it applies to this war at all. Yet they keep trying to use it. It's just utterly broken. https://t.co/ECAiwnJxrr

    — Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) March 6, 2022

    And this is just one of the utterly broken Grand Theories that leftists have insisted progressives swallow over the last 7 years or so. The others being their theory of change, degrowth as the organizing principle of environmentalism, and NIMBYism as a form of resistance.

    — Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) March 6, 2022

    Yes definitely time to see the writing on the wall, time for new theories & ideas...


    by artappraiser on Sun, 03/06/2022 - 2:08pm

    for those who don't know Snyder, he is a longtime left liberal voice,. amplified by essays in elite publications like the NY Review of Books, but also a prestigious scholar, a Yale historian specializing in the history of Central and Eastern Europe and the Holocaust, over 50, not a naive newbie, been around the block some.

    Check out his full tweet (that Noah Smith retweeted) and article he recommended by Volodymyr Artiukh on "U.S.-plaining"

     


    by artappraiser on Sun, 03/06/2022 - 2:23pm

    related to Synder's analysis, here's a statement from the "Workers' Front of Ukraine", they're going for the classic Marxist line - "it's all the capitalists' fault, don't you see? workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains...."


    by artappraiser on Tue, 03/08/2022 - 4:21pm


    by artappraiser on Tue, 03/08/2022 - 4:15pm

    There was a big show of American fast food restaurants showing up in Russia, IIRC.


    by Orion on Tue, 03/08/2022 - 8:42pm