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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?
Published in General
I don’t know about all of that. First, NATO stands for North Atlantic~, and neither Russia nor Ukraine count by that score. While literal Atlantic coastline was not a condition for membership, as a descriptor it summed about the half of the problem that could be stated aloud politely. The other half was that the whole thing was a counterbalance to the Soviet machine eating whole countries and threatening the rest.
Turkey was admitted specifically in order for NATO to own access to the Black Sea (read “from the Black Sea” for our purposes), and Greece was brought in alongside for parity, as they hated each other, and we found both useful. So the two least Atlantic members of NATO are there specifically to block Soviet expansion.
I vaguely recall Russian membership in NATO being considered, although that may have been more talking heads than anything else. I recall NATO puking at the notion of abnegating its very reason for existence, and as the ascent of Putin shows, there’s more to changing a country than going bakrupt and changing the name. Russia is the same old Soviet Union pulling the same country-swallowing act.
Poland is as far east as Western Christendom goes until you slide southeast through the hardly-untroubled Balkans with their fractal borders and fractious borderlanders. Poland once held the vast majority of the Ukraine, Including Kiev, and in fact their eastern border still has a big bite taken out of it from just after World War II. Yet who is agitating there? Belarus is, at the behest of Mother Russia, sending freshly-imported “refugees” to the Polish border in a re-run of a recently successful destabilization tactic.
IIRC, NATO and Russia toyed with the idea of Russian membership, and NATO wisely discarded it. I don’t know if it was ever serious — I do recall it, but details are fuzzy.
Speaking of independence, @Kozak, are you back to work anywhere yet?
All the qualifications you give for those that are not on the Atlantic could have been given for Russia. It was seriously considered, at least from what was in the public news. Or disband NATO and come up with a treaty that incorporates them all. The point is we tried to bring in Russia. Putin or some in Russia just resist.
Russia is a mob kleptocracy. Saying that Russia is now a communist state is simply to re-define communism as “I don’t like it.” So I hope you’re not aiming “no true commie” at me. You’re welcome to try. Not every authoritarian hellhole is a communist country.
As for evil, yes, I said that. Twice.
Ukraine’s part-Russian nature can be seen to surface in the Cossack rebellion in the 1600s, in which Orthodox Cossacks bolted from Catholic Poland and unified with Mother Russia. Much trouble has been had since. It is not fair to say that Ukraine is not Russian. It is also not fair to say that Ukraine is Russian. Ukrainian opinions have varied over centuries.
Putin is a thug and he should keep his hands off of that which is not his. On the other hand, I’m all done with sending US troops overseas for fun and profit until we get our own civil war won. Frankly, Poland, Taiwan, and Japan are about it for remaining valid uses of troops — Poland to curb Russia *without* getting in Orthodox business, and Taiwan and Japan to curb China. South Korea has had over fifty years to figure it out, and keeps electing commie-loving lefist shills. We’re not there for them, but for us.
I hear you and agree. Unfortunately that’s what Putin is counting on.
I disagree. “We” hardly tried, because “we” hardly want them. Russia, just like China, retains a center of gravity which has hardly budged in a hundred years. Why on Earth would we want to be in an alliance with Russia? We already find it difficult to keep in harness for purely economic or trade organizations, much less treaty organizations.
You missed the point that NATO is anti-Moscow.
I don’t agree with that. I remember George W. trying to forge a strong, positive relationship with Putin.
I had this same impression, but looked up some of the history. There was an NRC “Nato-Russia Council” and a couple of other bodies, but I now think that the “Russia join NATO” stuff may have been more media decoration than actual Consideration by Important People. No doubt it was popular for political conversation, but unless I have missed it, it was more a media creation than a hard-nosed actual thing.
Like you, I remember it being a thing — I just don’t see it in what I’ve read so far.
Guys, I’m gonna upvote this OP (currently stalled at 4 votes) because the conversation is a good one.
Yup. We let them take a bite out of Georgia, and shortly afterward they threw us out of Kyrgyzstan.
And the democrats are evil, stupid and weak.
Therefore we should:
* Run right in there and fight another land war in Asia against a near-peer on his own border?
… or …
* Never mind what Putin is counting on, and mind our damned business.
If you have nukes allies are optional.
How can anyone ever think such promises could be permanent no matter who makes them? I think of the endless battles over the federal budget. Always some ten year plan with the real benefits being realized in year ten. As if, even if the plan were real, there ever could be some expectation that the next congress, which will be different and responsible for producing a new budget, doesn’t have the authority or motive plot a new course or to defer the utopian end result of balanced budgets and chickens in every pot just one more year.
There are also a large number Russian speaking Ukrainians, who want nothing to do with Russia. It’s just that in the East, it was predominant language, and for decades Ukrainian was not taught there.
Having been in Ukraine the average Ukrainian despises Yanukovich. His former palace is now a museum of corruption.
Wasn’t that when George looked in Vlad’s eyes and saw his soul?
GWB saw what he wanted to see.
Dah, Komrade.
Yup. That was a deal made in Hell that gave the US and Russia a free hand to do what they wanted without too much interference. The same way that the purveyors and professors of various incompatible lines of nonsense tacitly agree not to call each other on the other’s nonsense. Pure go-along to git-along.
Just out of curiosity, what kind f inducement would Russia have to join NATO?
And was likely rebuffed by the pragmatists. But really, isn’t that what every leader says?
Neither. I’m not endorsing military engagement. We just have to make Putin pay economically. And support Ukraine’s military.
Generally I am in favor of nuclear non-proliferation. These comments show the damage done to non-proliferation by the Obama Regime.
And for most of the rest of the last century they have spent their time invading other countries.
Perhaps the rest of the world has a strong basis for anti-Russian paranoia, no?
Neither does Turkey (NATO member since 1952), but please continue with the geography lesson.
I am quite curious to know how many more NATO countries don’t actually have borders that touch the North Atlantic.
Like North Korea; China isn’t exactly an ally and that is all they have.
@barfly
I’m doing a few hours a week at Teledoc. Work whenever I want, just roll into my study and log on. Get paid by the patient, so the more I see the more I make. It’s a nice little side gig.
Perhaps if Russia would just stop invading neighboring areas, they might be more friendly?
They have been historically horrible neighbors.
I’m going to throw these pictures from my trip to Kyiv in September up.
There’s a memorial to all the soldiers who have died fighting the Russian goons in Donbas and Crimea.
They are ready to fight, they just need the tools to do it. Obama sent them MRE’s and blankets. Trump sent them Javelins and Stingers.
It goes on for almost a city block.
Putin may be able to invade Ukraine. But he will be facing a guerrilla war if he does. Not many know that Ukrainian partisans
fought the Soviet Union until the mid 1950’s with essentially no support from the West.
You gonna re-visit this? I did exactly that in the rest of the *very same comment*. I think you only read the first line.