Putin Becoming a Saint for Certain Twisted Conservatives?

 

I just saw this Twitter quote posted by Scott McConnell, co-founder of The American Conservative magazine, from Jan. 15: “At least Putin doesn’t hate his own people and own country.”

I’m not sure what this quote is referring to exactly, if anything in particular.

Things like this can be said in a joking way, of course, and perhaps it is even true in some ways. I recently heard a Democrat historian who doesn’t fit the mold of a typical 21st century Democrat say that the biggest reason that American leftists don’t care about the opioid crisis is that it is killing off rural white men who 21st century leftists really do not care about anyway. Well, I’m sure that some leftists might care if the electrical grid, food supply, and transportation system crashes, but I’m sure they can think about that later.

Russia President Vladimir Putin’s Russians could still get slaughtered in Ukraine. It looks like 5,768 Russians have been killed in the Russo-Ukrainian or Donbass wars since 2014. That’s 2.38 times the number of American military personnel killed in Afghanistan in just eight years, as compared to 20 years for the Afghanistan War.

I have seen posts on Twitter from some likely conservative types who state that Ukraine is really part of Russia anyway.

Ridiculous, but if you really want to try to make that comparison, Belarus would probably be the better example. Only about 12% of Belarusians actively speak Belarusian; however, Ukrainian is the native language of about 68% of Ukrainians, with Russian being the native language for about 30% of Ukrainians, and 2% of the population using other languages. The percentage of 68% is quite a lot. The last American president to win more than 61.05% of the popular vote was James Monroe in 1820. Besides, native languages are not the only thing when it comes to determining the borders of a country. Some guy already tried Putin’s Sudetenland trick about 84 years ago. If language was the only important thing for determining a country’s boundaries, most of Latin America outside of Brazil and Haiti would simply be one giant Spanish-speaking continental nation. The Ukrainian language is apparently more similar to the NATO languages of Polish and Slovak than Russian anyway, with words borrowed from German, while Russian apparently borrowed more words from Turkish, Latin, and even French due to Peter the Great.

I’ve been told by some Twitter conservative types that the Ukrainian government is one of the most corrupt in the world. Yeah, I think they have been rated even slightly more corrupt than Russia itself, but most countries are rather corrupt to a certain extent except for a few ideal Nordic countries, which I am sure have their own problems. Some Twitter conservative types state that the people in Russia have much better lives than the people in Ukraine. Well, having a hostile Putin as a neighbor isn’t helping that situation. Besides, a person in Qatar on average is richer than the average American, but I have no desire to live there. Russia has had the same dictator since 1999. Ukraine has had six presidents and about 16 prime ministers since 1999. At least there is some democratic turnover there.

Putin may be the richest person in the world by some estimates. I wonder how he acquired all that wealth. I remember reading some article about how our NATO ally Turkey throws all of its disagreeable journalists in jail. Yeah, there’s is a lot of outrage about that, and I don’t think Putin does that. I think Putin just has his enemies killed or deported or both.

I think a lot of the Twitter conservative thought that is default defending Putin is because those people do not want the United States to send its citizens to get into a fight with nuclear-armed Putin, trying to save a corrupt government in Ukraine. That’s understandable, but American presidents should be more like former President Ronald Reagan and at least push back against evil whenever possible. This should be an ongoing concern of any American president. Reagan barely got involved in any military actions during his eight years as president other than Granada and a few strikes against Muammar Gaddafi, but he was also trying to find a way to support freedom and the forces of good.

Former President Donald Trump’s weird somewhat friendliness toward Putin was even a very minor reason why I essentially tossed my presidential vote away in 2016.

Any ideas about how to convince conservative default Putin fans that they have gone down some terrible path?

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  1. Manny Coolidge
    Manny
    @Manny

    The Cloaked Gaijin: I’m not sure what this quote is referring to exactly, if anything in particular.

    There is a small contingent of people on the right that like Putin.  For some reason they buy into his stance on supporting the Russian Orthodox Church.  Somehow they ignore the disconnect between his private life and façade of his Christianity.  Then there are others (and it might be the same people) who tend to agree with his arguments on Crimea and Ukraine.   They agree that NATO is violating promises to Russia from the conditions of the fall of the Soviet Union.  

     

     

    • #1
  2. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    Manny (View Comment):

    The Cloaked Gaijin: I’m not sure what this quote is referring to exactly, if anything in particular.

    There is a small contingent of people on the right that like Putin. For some reason they buy into his stance on supporting the Russian Orthodox Church. Somehow they ignore the disconnect between his private life and façade of his Christianity. Then there are others (and it might be the same people) who tend to agree with his arguments on Crimea and Ukraine. They agree that NATO is violating promises to Russia from the conditions of the fall of the Soviet Union.

     

     

    I don’t care for Putin at all. I was on alert at Fort Bragg for a couple of weeks in 1962 when the Soviet Union had nuclear missiles in Cuba. I haven’t forgotten what communism is. Now that so much of the Western world is advocating for global socialism, I find it very difficult to support American imperialism while conservatives here are being challenged to save the American Republic from being taken over by the American socialists.

    • #2
  3. Manny Coolidge
    Manny
    @Manny

    Bob Thompson (View Comment):

    Manny (View Comment):

    The Cloaked Gaijin: I’m not sure what this quote is referring to exactly, if anything in particular.

    There is a small contingent of people on the right that like Putin. For some reason they buy into his stance on supporting the Russian Orthodox Church. Somehow they ignore the disconnect between his private life and façade of his Christianity. Then there are others (and it might be the same people) who tend to agree with his arguments on Crimea and Ukraine. They agree that NATO is violating promises to Russia from the conditions of the fall of the Soviet Union.

    I don’t care for Putin at all. I was on alert at Fort Bragg for a couple of weeks in 1962 when the Soviet Union had nuclear missiles in Cuba. I haven’t forgotten what communism is. Now that so much of the Western world is advocating for global socialism, I find it very difficult to support American imperialism while conservatives here are being challenged to save the American Republic from being taken over by the American socialists.

    I agree with you.  I was answering the question.

    Edit:  What American imperialism?  We may have gotten involved in too many foreign conflicts, but none of them were for the purpose of imperialism.

    • #3
  4. BDB Inactive
    BDB
    @BDB

    Putin calls out woke tyranny as insanely self-destructive.

    Is he wrong about that?

    The entire Obama/Biden crew hate America, hate republican government, hate whitey and hate merit.

    Yes, I would rather have Putin as President than the bastards we have in power throughout the deep state.

    Faint on that.

    • #4
  5. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    Manny (View Comment):

    Bob Thompson (View Comment):

    Manny (View Comment):

    The Cloaked Gaijin: I’m not sure what this quote is referring to exactly, if anything in particular.

    There is a small contingent of people on the right that like Putin. For some reason they buy into his stance on supporting the Russian Orthodox Church. Somehow they ignore the disconnect between his private life and façade of his Christianity. Then there are others (and it might be the same people) who tend to agree with his arguments on Crimea and Ukraine. They agree that NATO is violating promises to Russia from the conditions of the fall of the Soviet Union.

    I don’t care for Putin at all. I was on alert at Fort Bragg for a couple of weeks in 1962 when the Soviet Union had nuclear missiles in Cuba. I haven’t forgotten what communism is. Now that so much of the Western world is advocating for global socialism, I find it very difficult to support American imperialism while conservatives here are being challenged to save the American Republic from being taken over by the American socialists.

    I agree with you. I was answering the question.

    Edit: What American imperialism? We may have gotten involved in too many foreign conflicts, but none of them were for the purpose of imperialism.

    Perhaps I should have just pointed out that we have a greater interest in preserving our Republic. 

    • #5
  6. Manny Coolidge
    Manny
    @Manny

    Bob Thompson (View Comment):

    Manny (View Comment):

    Bob Thompson (View Comment):

    Manny (View Comment):

    The Cloaked Gaijin: I’m not sure what this quote is referring to exactly, if anything in particular.

    There is a small contingent of people on the right that like Putin. For some reason they buy into his stance on supporting the Russian Orthodox Church. Somehow they ignore the disconnect between his private life and façade of his Christianity. Then there are others (and it might be the same people) who tend to agree with his arguments on Crimea and Ukraine. They agree that NATO is violating promises to Russia from the conditions of the fall of the Soviet Union.

    I don’t care for Putin at all. I was on alert at Fort Bragg for a couple of weeks in 1962 when the Soviet Union had nuclear missiles in Cuba. I haven’t forgotten what communism is. Now that so much of the Western world is advocating for global socialism, I find it very difficult to support American imperialism while conservatives here are being challenged to save the American Republic from being taken over by the American socialists.

    I agree with you. I was answering the question.

    Edit: What American imperialism? We may have gotten involved in too many foreign conflicts, but none of them were for the purpose of imperialism.

    Perhaps I should have just pointed out that we have a greater interest in preserving our Republic.

    OK.  :)

    • #6
  7. James Salerno Inactive
    James Salerno
    @JamesSalerno

    Trump was the most anti-Russian president we ever had. Which made the “Putin sympathizer” claims insane.

    I generally liked Trump’s foreign policy (and determining what was actually his vs. what his appointees sabotaged at every turn is another story) and I voted for him twice. But he was needlessly aggressive towards Russia. He was never their friend, despite what NR or CNN says. And Putin is not “evil.”

    • #7
  8. James Salerno Inactive
    James Salerno
    @JamesSalerno

    The Cloaked Gaijin:Ukraine has had 6 presidents and about 16 prime ministers since 1999. At least there is some democratic turnover there. BookmarkPublished in General 

    A big reason why there has been so much turnover in their democratic process is because we’re not exactly interested in democracy when Ukraine elects pro-Russian governments.

    • #8
  9. RushBabe49 Thatcher
    RushBabe49
    @RushBabe49

    Putin may not be evil, but he is an unreformed communist, who never got over the fall of his precious Soviet Union.  He is doing his level best to reconstitute it.  We owe it to Ukraine to support them, but we know that Biden will be happy to let Putin invade-Putin is very smart and has had Biden’s number from Day One.

    • #9
  10. James Salerno Inactive
    James Salerno
    @JamesSalerno

    RushBabe49 (View Comment):

    Putin may not be evil, but he is an unreformed communist, who never got over the fall of his precious Soviet Union. He is doing his level best to reconstitute it. We owe it to Ukraine to support them, but we know that Biden will be happy to let Putin invade-Putin is very smart and has had Biden’s number from Day One.

    Hi RushBabe,

    I don’t think he’s a communist. I think you and I are probably in line on a lot of things, but I’m not seeing this one. Authoritarian, maybe. But he’s not into a global Russian order, communist or otherwise. 

    • #10
  11. BDB Inactive
    BDB
    @BDB

    Putin is a despicable evil thug who isn’t even a Communist.  Any form of tyranny will do, so long as he’s at the top.  But you know what he isn’t doing?  He isn’t selling out his country to the Chinese, to the US, or to the caliphate, and he isn’t filled with vengeance against his own country, Hell-bent on taking Russia down a peg the way that American Democrats are in their own country.

    He’s evil, but he isn’t stupid, and he isn’t weak.

    • #11
  12. CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill
    @CarolJoy

    James Salerno (View Comment):

    The Cloaked Gaijin:Ukraine has had 6 presidents and about 16 prime ministers since 1999. At least there is some democratic turnover there. BookmarkPublished in General

    A big reason why there has been so much turnover in their democratic process is because we’re not exactly interested in democracy when Ukraine elects pro-Russian governments.

    Exactly. It was the USA under VP Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry that saw to the overthrow of a legitimately elected Ukrainian president. Then “our” guy was installed. the population in the Ukraie was possibly evenly divided, but the USA saw to it that skinhead Nazis erampaged around the ountryside, attacking people, playing at war and in general ensuring that people fled the Ukraine rather than sticking around. (At least 200,000 people left the Ukraine for Russia due to fear of war and then the war itself.)

    But  it was for a good cause. Once we installed the president we wanted, Burisma and Sleepy Joe, and Hunter, too had plenty of access to the Ukrainian shale oil  reserve, perhaps the largest in the world.

    By the way, this whole thing was an exercise to see how too unravel a society. During the summer of 2020, TheAntiFa and BLM fanatics that tore apart 38 US neighborhoods and killed between 50 to 200 people in the process – all that chaos was modeled on what had gone down in the Ukraine.

     

    • #12
  13. OmegaPaladin Moderator
    OmegaPaladin
    @OmegaPaladin

    BDB (View Comment):

    Putin calls out woke tyranny as insanely self-destructive.

    Is he wrong about that?

    The entire Obama/Biden crew hate America, hate republican government, hate whitey and hate merit.

    Yes, I would rather have Putin as President than the bastards we have in power throughout the deep state.

    Faint on that.

    Here’s the point – this is not really an endorsement of Putin as much as it is an denouncement of the Left.    It’s saying that even an ex-KGB killer is better than crybully progressives who use politics like a S&M fantasy  “Oh America is so racist, punish us!”

    • #13
  14. Hang On Member
    Hang On
    @HangOn

    RushBabe49 (View Comment):

    Putin may not be evil, but he is an unreformed communist, who never got over the fall of his precious Soviet Union. He is doing his level best to reconstitute it. We owe it to Ukraine to support them, but we know that Biden will be happy to let Putin invade-Putin is very smart and has had Biden’s number from Day One.

    You are probably referring to Putin’s statement that the fall of the Soviet Union was an enormous tragedy. This can be interpreted the way you interpret it or the way Putin probably meant it.

    The Soviet Union was a huge multi-ethnic empire which then dissolved into seperate ethnic countries on the basis of maps that weren’t drawn with ethnic populations in mind. Add to this that during the Russian and Soviet Empires, large numbers of Russians primarily but also Ukrainians and others were sent to live in other regions for reasons such as working in factories or gulags. This became a source of friction before and war after the breakup of the Soviet Union. This is what is being played out in Ukraine-Russian and the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflicts.

    Putin is an authoritarian, but he’s no Stalin either. And Russia is not the Soviet Union.  The Soviet Union was an existential threat. Russia isn’t and is a distraction from today’s existential threat China.

    • #14
  15. Kozak Member
    Kozak
    @Kozak

    Manny (View Comment):

    The Cloaked Gaijin: I’m not sure what this quote is referring to exactly, if anything in particular.

    There is a small contingent of people on the right that like Putin. For some reason they buy into his stance on supporting the Russian Orthodox Church. Somehow they ignore the disconnect between his private life and façade of his Christianity. Then there are others (and it might be the same people) who tend to agree with his arguments on Crimea and Ukraine. They agree that NATO is violating promises to Russia from the conditions of the fall of the Soviet Union.

     

     

    Who exactly violated the agreement?  Russia signed the Budapest Accords, where in return for Ukraine to turn over its sizable nuclear arsenal, Russia promised not to make any territorial claims on Ukraine.

    Unfortunately the Ukrainians actually believed the guarantees that they received from the West as well.  Should have held onto the nukes.

    • #15
  16. Victor Tango Kilo Member
    Victor Tango Kilo
    @VtheK

    Recognizing that Vladimir Putin is far more intelligent, and has a far better  Understanding of realpolitik than any western leader does not necessarily make one a fan.  It’s more a lament that there is no western leader to counter his insidious intentions. 

    Realistically, how smart is Putin compared to Biden, Johnson, Macron, or Scholz? It’s not even close. That’s not praise for Putin, it’s just reality. 

    • #16
  17. Victor Tango Kilo Member
    Victor Tango Kilo
    @VtheK

    Kozak (View Comment):
    Should have held onto the nukes.

    Yes, and Taiwan should have nukes. 

    • #17
  18. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

    BDB (View Comment):

    Putin is a despicable evil thug who isn’t even a Communist. Any form of tyranny will do, so long as he’s at the top. But you know what he isn’t doing? He isn’t selling out his country to the Chinese, to the US, or to the caliphate, and he isn’t filled with vengeance against his own country, Hell-bent on taking Russia down a peg the way that American Democrats are in their own country.

    He’s evil, but he isn’t stupid, and he isn’t weak.

    He is a nationalist for sure

    • #18
  19. Manny Coolidge
    Manny
    @Manny

    RushBabe49 (View Comment):

    Putin may not be evil, but he is an unreformed communist, who never got over the fall of his precious Soviet Union. He is doing his level best to reconstitute it. We owe it to Ukraine to support them, but we know that Biden will be happy to let Putin invade-Putin is very smart and has had Biden’s number from Day One.

    If Putin is responsible for the deaths of all those newspaper writers (and others) who have been critical of him, then he is most definitely evil.  

    • #19
  20. Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patriot) Member
    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patriot)
    @ArizonaPatriot

    What a post title!  In the best tradition of “when did you stop beating your wife,” I think.

    First, I don’t see why people think that Putin is so terribly evil or despicable.  He’s no saint, but he doesn’t seem very different from many successful leaders in countries without a strong tradition of representative government, which is difficult to develop.  I can’t say that I know much about the details of anything that he’s done.  Maybe the internal political oppression is worse than I suspect.  It seems a very, very far cry from the gulag days, and probably quite a bit better than China.  

    Sure, he’s not Abraham Lincoln.  But can you think of a better Russian leader, as a historical matter?

    Second, I don’t see anyone claiming that Putin is a saint, either.  Some, like me, object to the caricature of Putin as a noteworthy monster, and to the narrative suggesting that any territorial dispute is exactly like Munich in 1938.  Putin seems to be doing an effective job advancing Russia’s national interest.  Remember that Russia has a strong historic basis for paranoia, having been invaded repeatedly over the centuries from the east (the Mongols), the south (the Tatars), and the west (Napoleon and Hitler).  The natural borders around the ethnic and cultural Russian core are not easily defensible.

    Third, I don’t think that I am “twisted” for declining to adopt a view about Putin and Russia that seems, to me, to be an overly simplistic demonization of the other side.

    Fourth and finally, as Hang On pointed out, I think that we need to be realistic about Putin and Russia.  China is a much greater threat, I think, and we could use Russia on our side, to the extent possible.  It may be that the best Russian strategy is to remain neutral between us and China, and rely on the threat of nuclear retaliation to deter Chinese aggression toward Russia.  At a minimum, though, it would be wise to avoid driving Russia into the Chinese orbit.

    • #20
  21. Manny Coolidge
    Manny
    @Manny

    Kozak (View Comment):

    Manny (View Comment):

    The Cloaked Gaijin: I’m not sure what this quote is referring to exactly, if anything in particular.

    There is a small contingent of people on the right that like Putin. For some reason they buy into his stance on supporting the Russian Orthodox Church. Somehow they ignore the disconnect between his private life and façade of his Christianity. Then there are others (and it might be the same people) who tend to agree with his arguments on Crimea and Ukraine. They agree that NATO is violating promises to Russia from the conditions of the fall of the Soviet Union.

     

     

    Who exactly violated the agreement? Russia signed the Budapest Accords, where in return for Ukraine to turn over its sizable nuclear arsenal, Russia promised not to make any territorial claims on Ukraine.

    Unfortunately the Ukrainians actually believed the guarantees that they received from the West as well. Should have held onto the nukes.

    Those accords are now about thirty years old.  It’s not the west that is luring Ukraine into NATO.  It’s Ukraine that wants to join NATO.  At some point their new generation has a right to self determination.  Not only that, the west has made every effort to bring in Russia into the west.  If Russia had really pursued it, they could have been let into NATO, or some sort of agreement with NATO.  The opportunity was there.  They certainly had the opportunity to be economically integrated into Europe in a more substantive way than this hodge-podge ad hoc method.  Russia has resisted the west’s efforts.  I don’t know if it’s Putin or more than Putin, but they dream of reconstituting the power of the Soviet Union.  

    In fact, and perhaps this is outside my scope of knowledge, but Ukraine’s desire to join the west is caused by Russia’s resistance to integrate with the west.  

    • #21
  22. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    What a post title! In the best tradition of “when did you stop beating your wife,” I think.

    First, I don’t see why people think that Putin is so terribly evil or despicable. He’s no saint, but he doesn’t seem very different from many successful leaders in countries without a strong tradition of representative government, which is difficult to develop. I can’t say that I know much about the details of anything that he’s done. Maybe the internal political oppression is worse than I suspect. It seems a very, very far cry from the gulag days, and probably quite a bit better than China.

    Sure, he’s not Abraham Lincoln. But can you think of a better Russian leader, as a historical matter?

    Second, I don’t see anyone claiming that Putin is a saint, either. Some, like me, object to the caricature of Putin as a noteworthy monster, and to the narrative suggesting that any territorial dispute is exactly like Munich in 1938. Putin seems to be doing an effective job advancing Russia’s national interest. Remember that Russia has a strong historic basis for paranoia, having been invaded repeatedly over the centuries from the east (the Mongols), the south (the Tatars), and the west (Napoleon and Hitler). The natural borders around the ethnic and cultural Russian core are not easily defensible.

    Third, I don’t think that I am “twisted” for declining to adopt a view about Putin and Russia that seems, to me, to be an overly simplistic demonization of the other side.

    Fourth and finally, as Hang On pointed out, I think that we need to be realistic about Putin and Russia. China is a much greater threat, I think, and we could use Russia on our side, to the extent possible. It may be that the best Russian strategy is to remain neutral between us and China, and rely on the threat of nuclear retaliation to deter Chinese aggression toward Russia. At a minimum, though, it would be wise to avoid driving Russia into the Chinese orbit.

    You got this right. Putin subscribes to an ideology not favored by traditional Americans. He appears to be an effective political leader with an understanding of Russia’s national interest and acts where he perceives the serious threats to be. I think he is mistaken in that view of a serious threat coming from Eastern Europe.  He does bad things. From a leadership standpoint, America is not doing as well as Russia.

    • #22
  23. BDB Inactive
    BDB
    @BDB

    Kozak (View Comment):

    Manny (View Comment):

    The Cloaked Gaijin: I’m not sure what this quote is referring to exactly, if anything in particular.

    There is a small contingent of people on the right that like Putin. For some reason they buy into his stance on supporting the Russian Orthodox Church. Somehow they ignore the disconnect between his private life and façade of his Christianity. Then there are others (and it might be the same people) who tend to agree with his arguments on Crimea and Ukraine. They agree that NATO is violating promises to Russia from the conditions of the fall of the Soviet Union.

     

     

    Who exactly violated the agreement? Russia signed the Budapest Accords, where in return for Ukraine to turn over its sizable nuclear arsenal, Russia promised not to make any territorial claims on Ukraine.

    Unfortunately the Ukrainians actually believed the guarantees that they received from the West as well. Should have held onto the nukes.

    Same as with China promising that HK would remain free.  Only idiots believed a word of it.

    • #23
  24. BDB Inactive
    BDB
    @BDB

    Victor Tango Kilo (View Comment):

    Kozak (View Comment):
    Should have held onto the nukes.

    Yes, and Taiwan should have nukes.

    And allies.

    • #24
  25. DonG (CAGW is a hoax) Coolidge
    DonG (CAGW is a hoax)
    @DonG

     

    BDB (View Comment):

    Putin is a despicable evil thug who isn’t even a Communist. Any form of tyranny will do, so long as he’s at the top. But you know what he isn’t doing? He isn’t selling out his country to the Chinese, to the US, or to the caliphate, and he isn’t filled with vengeance against his own country, Hell-bent on taking Russia down a peg the way that American Democrats are in their own country.

    He’s evil, but he isn’t stupid, and he isn’t weak.

    Wait.  What is a communist?   China, Russia, Venezuela, Cuba all look like communist countries to me.   Are people using that “true communism has never been tried” definition?   Sorry, that does not and cannot exist.  Every communist country is an authoritarian hell hole. 

    Putin is evil.  He blew up an apartment building in a false flag attack to win his first election.  That means he also does not value his people the way I value people. 

    Lastly, the Russian speaking part of Ukraine is not natural.  During the communist rise, Russia killed 4 million Ukrainians and replaced then with Russian apparatchiks.  The Holodomor has not been forgotten.

    • #25
  26. Doug Watt Member
    Doug Watt
    @DougWatt

    CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill (View Comment):

    James Salerno (View Comment):

    The Cloaked Gaijin:Ukraine has had 6 presidents and about 16 prime ministers since 1999. At least there is some democratic turnover there. BookmarkPublished in General

    A big reason why there has been so much turnover in their democratic process is because we’re not exactly interested in democracy when Ukraine elects pro-Russian governments.

    Exactly. It was the USA under VP Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry that saw to the overthrow of a legitimately elected Ukrainian president. Then “our” guy was installed. the population in the Ukraie was possibly evenly divided, but the USA saw to it that skinhead Nazis erampaged around the ountryside, attacking people, playing at war and in general ensuring that people fled the Ukraine rather than sticking around. (At least 200,000 people left the Ukraine for Russia due to fear of war and then the war itself.)

    Actually that was a Russian disinformation campaign that began with RT (Russian Television). It was picked up by political bloggers, and almost repeated word for word in different blogs across the Left and Right in Europe. The revolt in Ukraine certainly had a multitude of factions but it was not engineered by the US government. 

     

    • #26
  27. DrewInWisconsin, Oaf Member
    DrewInWisconsin, Oaf
    @DrewInWisconsin

    This just demonstrates the polarized political thought in this country. Saying that Putin is right about something equates to “PUTIN IS A SAINT!” No, . . . no it’s just that he’s right about something.

    It’s kind of like how if you find yourself agreeing with President Trump or even (gasp) voting for him, the left and certain idiots on the right proclaim “TRUMP IS YOUR CULT LEADER!”

    How dumb are you to think either of those things above? Because they’re just dumb, kindergarten-level analysis.

     

    • #27
  28. Barfly Member
    Barfly
    @Barfly

    The Cloaked Gaijin: Any ideas about how to convince conservative default Putin fans that they have gone down some terrible path?

    What is the word that means an attempt to justify and enjoy an emotionally based conclusion by projecting a caricature of its opposite upon others? I think you’re doing that. There are no conservative Putin fans. 

    • #28
  29. Kozak Member
    Kozak
    @Kozak

    Victor Tango Kilo (View Comment):

    Kozak (View Comment):
    Should have held onto the nukes.

    Yes, and Taiwan should have nukes.

    If they want to stay independent they should.

    • #29
  30. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

    DrewInWisconsin, Oaf (View Comment):

    This just demonstrates the polarized political thought in this country. Saying that Putin is right about something equates to “PUTIN IS A SAINT!” No, . . . no it’s just that he’s right about something.

    It’s kind of like how if you find yourself agreeing with President Trump or even (gasp) voting for him, the left and certain idiots on the right proclaim “TRUMP IS YOUR CULT LEADER!”

    How dumb are you to think either of those things above? Because they’re just dumb, kindergarten-level analysis.

     

    Yes, exactly. More of the same. 

    • #30
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