Sasha unleashed. Intelligent, principled, and wrong. Finding a husband. Putin's reluctant soldiers.
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Yesterday Grandpa Sasha had a toothache that demanded immediate attention. The need to get him to a dentist forced us to do what I had been attempting for a year: get him and his wheelchair out of the house.
The plan we had concocted months ago worked just fine. We rolled his wheelchair down two planks laid from the back porch to the lawn. It is flat ground from there to the street.
We were delighted to find that there is a fleet of four taxi-vans equipped with wheelchair lifts. It was no problem whatsoever getting him to the dentist, who extracted the tooth at once.
Today, when Oksana suggested taking Marianna for a walk, I capitalized on yesterday's success. I proposed taking Grandpa Sasha and his wheelchair as we went. We walked about 10 blocks, Sasha traveling about three of them under his own power.
Celia Farber and I are on the same side of every issue except Ukraine. It is her opinion that the United States has no business interfering. To a lesser extent she seems to feel that there is some justification for Russia's aggression. My opinion that Joe Biden is totally corrupt and wrong on every issue except Ukraine is too nuanced. She, like many conservatives, wants to believe he is wrong on absolutely everything. Such simplicity would make it easier to differentiate allies and enemies.
I am absolutely, totally with her regarding her two latest posts on Covid, which you can find on her site. She has taken a lot of grief, lost a lot of friends, for her courageous stand against the establishment when it came to the jabs.
I appreciate her concern that giving aid to Ukraine is an expense the United States cannot easily afford, and that arming Ukraine risks an escalation of the conflict. Weighing that against the absolute moral wrong that Ukraine has suffered, and the almost certainty that unless checked Russia will continue its historical practice of initiating aggression whenever it can, I conclude that the time to stop them is now and the place is here.
I detest the neocons for having gotten us into this, but since we are here, I must appreciate that they are supporting us. How many times in the past (viz., Vietnam, Georgia) has the United States promoted a conflict only to back away when it was inconvenient?
I consider Celia to be intelligent, principled, well-studied. And wrong. On the other hand, the pro-Russia trolls on her site are just the typical idiots. I would hope she would observe and judge from the kind of allies she attracts that she might be on the wrong side of the issue. One of them, celebrating the fall of Bakhmut that she covers in this post, repeats the outlandish claim that Ukraine is suffering seven times the casualty rate as Russia. My responses pointing out the absurdity of such arithmetic are a waste of time. These blockheads remain undeterred. It's like arguing with Cousin Phil about the Covid jabs. He'll only accept the truth posthumously. If then.
Bob Homans linked today to a very insightful article by Alexander Motyl. The "Russian" soldiers captured in Bakhmut are about half Ukrainians from the Donbas. Far too old for that sort of stuff – mostly middle aged – and badly led and equipped. That explains why they have such low morale and suffer such high losses.
The Russian takeover in 2014 put caught them between a rock and a hard place. Farber's posters will not concede that it was actually Russia taking over in 2014 or that the People's Republics were forced on them rather than democratically established. Such is the power of propaganda. At any rate, one has to have sympathy for those poor SOBs.
I have posted the video I mentioned that I was planning to make of my upcoming speech on how to find a husband. I have to concede that there is a small possibility that my observations on the dating and mating scene may be out of date. On the other hand, given the demonstrable lack of success young people have navigating these waters on their own, why shouldn't I offer traditional wisdom? Please, offer your comments. Laugh out loud at my naïveté.
That's the opinion from Lake WeBeGone, where Marianna and Eddie absolutely loved going for a walk with Grandpa Sasha. I am sure Sasha's body relished drinking in the vitamin D sunshine, and his arms benefited from getting a bit of use to navigate the wheelchair.
As you know, I commented on Celia Farber's latest piece. I must point out that the individual posting on that site who are pro-Russia are not blockheads or idiots. They are well educated and paid well to post their comments. I took the time to read all the comments by one of the Russian supporters, and it's clear that he knows far too much to be a westerner. In fact, I would argue that he is knowledgeable and smart. If you understand his job, then it's easy to see what he is doing. His job is to provoke, distract, and confuse the commentary, not to engage in dialogue. I believe I have interacted with him before on this site or another under another name. He knows for example that Bakhmut is not the Russian name for the city, and he knows details about the LNR and DNR that few people could know, unless they had a close connection to Ukraine or Russia. After reviewing all his comments, not just on my thread but on all the threads, for he was everywhere attacking Christianity, insulting the west, calling you and me for example trolls of the US state department. His role as I understand it now is to prevent legitimate discussions and to generate anger, frustration, and insults, such as to call him an idiot which I almost did several times. By behaving as he does, he breaks down the lines of communication and prevents us from bridging the gap with others so that we can't come to some accord which might lead to detent. He is a disrupter and thus discourages people like us from engaging with those with whom we disagree. He must be a Russian Troll from the troll factory in St. Petersburg, and I once lived not far from their office on Primorsky Prospect.
In case you haven't noticed, these trolls have shut down almost all internet discourse. At one time, you could chat with others on almost all news sites, such as the Guardian, The New York Times, and others, but now you must sign in with a password using some third-party system such as Google or Facebook which I refuse to do. The net purpose of this is to continue to throw a monkey wrench into western civilization to prevent it from fully functioning. It's very clear that this is one of Putin's objectives. He has paid huge sums to the Scottish National Party with the hope that ie would break away from the UK. He pays Marine Le Pen huge money as opposition leader in France. I know that he has supported the Catalonian attempts to seek independence. This holds true of the Veneto liberation parties in Italy. Although I have no knowledge of his connections to the AFD, I am certain that he supports them as well financially. It doesn't much matter if they win or not. Putin wants to be a thorn in the side of the west at every opportunity. I know that he has donated money to the Sierra Club, the ultra lefty queen of the environmental movement because of their opposition to fracking. Naturally, Putin doesn't want the US to become energy independent and thus he opposes fracking. It also doesn't matter to him if he succeeds in these goals, especially if he can irritate and upset the country and its citizens. That is ultimately his goal.
These covert actions cause the west problems and when that happens Putin smiles. The problem is that most people don't notice that this type of guerilla warfare is going on. That's why Russian trolls were using Facebook to send opposing camps to the same place for two different rallies. So, I don't see that this troll on Celia Farber's substack is an idiot. Far from it, he is very successful in his work to be annoying, disruptive, and to discourage genial exchanges on the Internet.
It makes me a bit depressed that people will base their opinions on situations such as the Ukraine war on what stance Biden takes. Biden supports Ukraine, therefore Ukraine is wrong..... It's a weak and stupid approach but it appears to be how the majority of people 'think', empty tribal following rather than actual thinking.