"In his sermon approximately two weeks into the war, on March 6, the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church justified the invasion of Ukraine as necessary to defend Orthodox Christians against Western values and gay pride parades. On March 24, during a meeting with young artists, Russian President Vladimir Putin complained... the West was now 'trying to cancel a whole 1,000-year culture, our people … Russian writers and books are now canceled.'... Russian media filled with TV shows and 'documentaries' on 'Gayropa' and 'Sodom.' These shows conjured up a caricature of weak 'gayish' Western males and women who lost their femininity by competing with men in spheres where they could achieve nothing serious. Russian media frequently stressed the oddity that many Western democracies nominated women as defense ministers... ... Russia depicted itself... as the country of strength, the bulwark of traditional families: with strong men, fertile women and children properly guarded against subversive homosexual propaganda... Fascinated by this flattering vision of Russia, elites, it seems, overestimated the nation’s strength and underestimated Ukraine’s."
Write Kristina Stoeckl and Dmitry Uzlaner in "Russia believed the West was weak and decadent. So it invaded. Russia sees itself at the global forefront of the culture wars, leading the resistance to gay parades, ‘cancel culture,’ and liberal values more generally" (WaPo).
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These shows conjured up a caricature of weak 'gayish' Western males and women who lost their femininity by competing with men
caricature? you keep using that word.. I no think that word means what you think it means
Conservatives: The bad guys in any situation!
Patriarch Cyril's most recent sermon:
"For eight years there have been attempts to destroy what exists in the Donbass. And in the Donbass there is rejection, a fundamental rejection of the so-called values that are offered today by those who claim world power. Today there is such a test for the loyalty of this government, a kind of pass to that “happy” world, the world of excess consumption, the world of visible “freedom”. Do you know what this test is? The test is very simple and at the same time terrible – this is a gay parade. The demands on many to hold a gay parade are a test of loyalty to that very powerful world; and we know that if people or countries reject these demands, then they do not enter into that world, they become strangers to it.
But we know what this sin is, which is promoted through the so-called marches of dignity. This is a sin that is condemned by the Word of God – both the Old and the New Testament. Moreover, the Lord, condemning sin, does not condemn the sinner. He only calls him to repentance, but not to ensure that through a sinful person and his behavior, sin becomes a life standard, a variation of human behavior – respected and acceptable.
If humanity recognizes that sin is not a violation of God’s law, if humanity agrees that sin is one of the options for human behavior, then human civilization will end there. And gay parades are designed to demonstrate that sin is one of the variations of human behavior. That is why in order to enter the club of those countries, it is necessary to hold a gay pride parade. Not to make a political statement “we are with you”, not to sign any agreements, but to hold a gay parade. And we know how people resist these demands and how this resistance is suppressed by force. This means that we are talking about imposing by force a sin condemned by God’s law, and therefore, by force to impose on people the denial of God and His truth.
Therefore, what is happening today in the sphere of international relations has not only political significance. We are talking about something different and much more important than politics. We are talking about human salvation, about where humanity will end up, on which side of God the Savior, who comes into the world as the Judge and Creator, on the right or on the left. Today, out of weakness, stupidity, ignorance, and most often out of unwillingness to resist, many go there, to the left side. And all that is connected with the justification of sin, condemned by the Bible, is today a test for our faithfulness to the Lord, for our ability to confess faith in our Savior."
Pride parades are symbol of submission. Period.
"Russian conservative elites?"
I'm wondering how hard-line Soviets morphed into conservatives. I have heard this before, though; during the incipient Gorbachev administration, TV news reporters characterized Kremlin resiters as conservative. Using a buzzword to create bogeyman is an insidious tactic.
Is The Washington Post written by sex-obsessed idiots or written for sex-obsessed idiots?
The West is weaker and definitely decadent. However, 'weaker' does not mean weak. We are less equipped than we should be, and certainly less militarily ready for a major conflict. When we're teaching pronouns instead of strategies, that's bound to have a long-term effect. One that we may not be seeing just yet. We've forgotten that the military's priority, in the end, is to destroy things and kill people. The threat of that is what keeps peace. Lacking that threat, there is no peace.
And the Russians could use some reality on their own self-view. They are drunker, older as a nation, less spiritual, and their military is less capable than they figured as has been clearly demonstrated by their devastating losses in Ukraine. From what I've read, I'm not sure their soldiers even know why they are there. And when they find out, many are disgusted and terrified. From our own experience, we know how that works out.
The Russian leaders- both in government and in religion- have become detached from their own people. Hmm...where have I heard that before? Anyway...while the US today is not the US of yesterday, in many ways, both good and bad, we are not The West. The West includes a lot of other nations. And to think all nations are the same is a mistake by the Russians. While the others used to take the lead of the US, that ended in January of 2021.
Yes, Russians reject your evil feminist ideology, prof.
Your evil ideology has destroyed our schools, churches and families. Two generations of kids have now grown up feral, most of them without a father, not even knowing the Ten Commandments. They are savages.
You and your evil sisters did this, mostly out of rich white girl boredom. The triumph of perversion entertained you. Normal, decent people are now forced to kiss the asses of disgusting perverts just to keep a job. A complete moral inversion. Thank God, I’m retired and I don’t have to put up with it.
We’re right on the edge of all out nuclear war. Your ideology is the spearhead of U.S. imperialism. It’s a demonic plague.
Hint: Today’s Russians see themselves as the true successor to Rome with the true Christianity out of the Byzantine Rome-East Empire that outlasted Italy’s version by 1000 years. Marxism is the last thing they ever want. They know Marxism up close and personal. And Putin the Terrible is leading them.
A view of Sodom from the steppes. Curious.
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And Putin, the Czar, appointed by god to oversee and protect the Russian people. He's not wrong though. When you look at the decadent west and you see Biden it's like a prophesy fulfilled. And because Putin sees himself as gods righteous appointee he will have no qualms about using his nukes to assure outcomes.
Biden voters, real and imaginary, have a lot to answer for.
Russia says correctly that the sequence of events began with the Maidan protests against Ukraine's elected President Viktor Yanukovych during the first months of 2014. That truth rarely is reported and discussed in our mass media here.
A superb YouTube video about those protests is here. This video is 52 minutes long, but well worth the time.
If you do not want to watch that long, then watch at least the two-minute segment from 2:00 to 4:00, which shows how violent these protests were, but nevertheless were supported by US politicians.
These protests ended in a massacre, in which more than 50 people were killed by snipers. What makes this YouTube video so superb is its effort to figure out who the snipers were.
In fact, nobody knows who the snipers were or what the massacre's purpose was. Essentially, the video indicates that a group of professional snipers was hired. The snipers did the massacre and then disappeared.
The massacre cannot be blamed fairly on Yanukovych or his supporters.
This is all garbage.
Oil prices went up. Putin got money. Putin invaded a neighboring country.
Period. It is what he does when he gets money.
The regime in Washington DC needs war around the world hide what they are doing domestically. That is why whenever they are in power there is war all over the world and they have lots of foreign enemies to. They also like to fund the war machine they have built. Lots of opportunities for graft.
They also get to call opponents of war traitors.
When narratives collide with reality, history happens.
Putin just wanted more land and power. He wanted to show off. All this other stuff is a distraction. Typical WaPo.
A decadent Western missile just sunk your Commie battleship. Explain that!
There are still lots of men. It's just that their online comments are deleted so they seem not to exist.
Russia went in big for abortion and divorce under the Soviets, but are they really wrong about the West now? It's not the gay thing--see Ancient Greece about that--but aren't we softened and enfeebled by affluence and guilt?
The secular West has become increasingly materialistic, hedonistic and decadent. Among our elites morality is limited to a noxious admixture of pliable woke and wooden utilitarian principles. It is understandable, therefore, that other cultures resent Western cultural invasions, and I do think that such a resentment at least partially explains the hostility of much of the Islamic world. But I don't think for a minute it explains Putin's decision to invade his neighbor, even if it might explain why some religious elements in Russia interpret an obviously immoral invasion as a welcome rebuke of the West.
Russia depicted itself... as the country of strength, the bulwark of traditional families: with strong men, fertile women
Have they looked at demographic trends in Russia lately? Alcoholic men dying young. Declining birthrates and declining population. Russia as the virile bulwark against Western decline is a joke.
I fail to see the relevance of anything coming out of the Russia Orthodox Church.
Unless they are the entity calling the shots. The connection is all but non-existent. The part I read seems to be nothing but a vehicle for the author to label religion as evil. Would be the same as racism. Using one example of wrong, and taring the entire group.
Cancel culture is NOT a liberal value! It is illiberal. I am sure these "Russian elites" would love to cancel lots of people.
Well, the West is decadent. And much weaker than it was. They are correct about that.
But Russia didn't attack the West, they attacked Ukraine. Do these Western journalists think they and the West could resist Russia like Ukraine is? Does Ukraine have gay parades and cancel culture? Straining for narrative.
This absurd premise is part of a campaign to destroy Elon Musk, a so-called member of the conservative elite, and as such must therefore approve of and support Russia's war of conquest against Ukraine.
That said, don't be fooled into thinking this gathering assault on Musk is entirely about his determination to defend free speech and make Twitter a neutral ground for a thousand flowers to bloom. That's just the gaudy cloak worn to deceive sex-obsessed idiots. The real motivation is the seething jealousy and greed of Jeff Bezos -- jealousy of Elon Musk for his far greater wealth and far greater brilliance. Musk has realized what Bezos can only dream of, a successful and innovative private space program that designs and builds its own rockets using engines of its own design and manufacture, not to mention its own manned orbital spacecraft and Starship, that will shortly be the most powerful rocket ever built. Then there is naked greed. Bezos is the founder and CEO of Blue Origin, a company that fancies itself a competitor to Elon Musk and SpaceX. While SpaceX routinely launches hundreds of satellites a year and has completed three crew missions to the International Space Station (and will shortly launch a fourth) Blue Origin has only managed a few suborbital tourist jaunts for the amusement and hubris of the ultra-rich. SpaceX makes money, lots of money. Blue Origin, however, is a joke.
In short, Musk operates a phenomenally successful space program, while Bezos runs a tawdry amusement park with only one ride. Without an operational heavy-lift booster, Bezos will fail. He has none and the Blue Origin rockets being planned are years away from testing and more years away from being man-rated, if ever. Bezos does not have the money to drive his rocket company forward, even with his income from Amazon. And he is having trouble attracting investors, who have seen no significant accomplishments so far. His only hope is a hugely lucrative contract from NASA for America's hoped-for return to the Moon. Musk has already received an R&D contract based on his success with the Starship project. Bezos extorted a favor from Joe Biden and got a similar contract for Blue Origin's entirely notional lunar lander. (His partner, Lockheed-Grumman, is losing interest quickly, btw. Insiders say they'd like to partner with SpaceX, instead.) The frustrated and invidious Bezos seeks to hinder Musk rather than compete. The FAA and EPA red tape SpaceX has had to deal with lately are more favors extorted from Joe Biden.
"the global forefront of the culture wars, leading the resistance to gay parades, ‘cancel culture,’ and liberal values more generally"
Russia is decadent in its own way, and it women less fertile than propaganda has it, and its strong men weakened by drink, but resistance to "our" values is real.
By the way, do "we" believe in "our" liberal values? What are they these days?
Good to see the WoPo is still trying to make the war in Ukraine about 'us'.
Never let a war go to waste.
WaPo readers will be outraged when there are no shirtless faggots cavorting in the Ukrainian victory parade.
Women could leave Ukraine but men stayed.
Russian elite's take on Western Civ reminds me of the investing advice: being right and early is no better than being wrong.
All I'm seeing is the government's post-hoc justification for a costly, failing invasion, disseminated through take outlets like the Orthodox church and state-friendly media. No indication that anyone actually believes any of this.
Russian elite's take on Western Civ reminds me of the investing advice: being right and early is no better than being wrong.
Yeah, those poor Russians getting just one point of view. It must be sad to turn on the TV and get all the news showing some foreign country in a biased one-sided way without any nuance and treating them as an enemy.
So unlike here.
From what I've read Putin as a 80% approval rating in Russia. Almost 30% of Ukrainains speak Russian as a native language. many Russians feel the crimea and the Donbas which have huge numbers of Russian speakers really belongs to Russia.
The great, proud history of Ukrainian nationalism you're being sold is absolute bullshit.
Take a look at this time lapse of the changing borders of Europe. See if you can even find it prior to the dissolution of the USSR.
This entire area was historically warlord territory. A Ukrainian state existed for about 5 years before it was absorbed into the USSR.
The current nation of Ukraine is an invention of the CIA. The CIA has been changing governments there about as frequently as you change underwear in order to promote its current favorite. The spearhead of U.S. imperialism is Althouse's fag hag feminism. U.S. troops are fighting on the ground and directing the Ukrainian Nazi battalions. This is a proxy war between the U.S. and Russia.
We're fooling around with global nuclear war here. Russian and Ukrainian society are plagued by alcoholism on a scale and depth you cannot imagine. The armies on both sides are dead drunk and stoned all the time. On the U.S. side, our politicians are crazy with Althouse's fag hag feminism, and Biden's dementia is not under control by his advisors.
In other words, Soviet Russia wants to de-nazify the whole world.
We have our paper of record, the Babylon Bee, banished from social media for making Rachel Levine Man of the Year. We have an intact male swimmer winning national titles in women's swimming. We have confused adults teaching young children confusing ideas about sex. With worries about the end to Roe v. Wade we have states passing abortion laws. In Colorado a mother has until crowning to abort. How many states are allowing denial of care for babies, after birth? More than one. Hard to deny our lack of morals.
The poster children for the declining decadent West are members of the MAGA obesity Army. Pillsbury dough boys and cottage cheese corpulent girls are actually soft and weak. All's Putin needs to get your obedience is to hate the gay. Funny how the shirtless Vlad looks like the poster boy for The Advocate.
What is with this hysteria to cancel everything Russian? No classical composers from Russia. Concerts disinviting musicians of Russian descent. Films, art, what else? Is this sudden anti-Russian zealotry supposed to shape opinion about the war our president is trying to prolong?
We are weak and decadent, just not weak and decadent enough.
Yet.
The Chinese are biding their time...
I don't have a subscription, so I'm just basing this on the snippet. But the examples given of "Western power as decadent and declining" are from after the war started. So they don't logically support the headline. Maybe there's more in the article.
Certainly the Russian people are no more or less stupid than anyone else. And the Russian government doesn't control the media nearly as tightly as say, China, much less North Korea. The Russian people know what's going on. And they apparently generally support Putin and the invasion. Maybe it has something to do with Western values, but I think it has much more to do with national pride.
The West has cancel culture. How does this become "and so Russia invades the Ukraine?" Richard Pipes in his history of Russia (starting with The Old Regime in Russia) argued that the Soviets had kept all the major elements of the old regime. And from this we can infer that a supporter of the Soviet regime could easily support a Potemkin return to a conservative, Old Russia regime with the Eastern Orthodox Church in a central place. There's Czar/ "Czar" who holds all power - all the land, all the justice, all the power to fill places in the bureaucracy - the "patrimonial system" and also the Soviet system and also the Putin system.
So in Russia "conservative" is a tin soldier word which can be easily bent so that it means: "supports the Soviets" who were materialists who persecuted Christians; and can also mean "supported the old Czarist Russian regime"; and can also mean "supports the 'restoration' of the Old Russian regime under Putin". These various meaning of the word "conservative" are deployed in the Wapo article as if they referred to one entity. It's a chance to bash the right and the Christians and bash the Christians in the Easter season - what a good feeling.
But we know that "liberal" does not refer to the New Regime in America any more than "conservative" refers to Putin's New Regime in Russia. Bari Weiss, Jordan Peterson, Bill Maher, Chris Rock, Althouse and Meade - these are liberals but they have all been categorized as conservatives by cancel culture because they believe in free speech.
So if you think about what these two words mean, about the triple meanings criss-crossing each other which history has given them then you can see how this WaPo article is just another dishonest Wapo hit piece.
It would be more to the point to examine the similarities and differences between "filtering" and "cancelling."
The essential Roman Catholic position on disagreements with other citizens in a democracy on policy is to try to win the argument by changing minds and hearts, not by disregarding other people's consciences. see The Dialectics of Secularization: On Reason and Religion, a debate between Jurgen Habermas and Cardinal Ratzinger, he whom became Benedict XVI. Summarized here: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/does-society-need-religion-pope-benedicts-debate-with-jurgen-habermas/
Russian women fertile? Maybe so, but Russia has a declining birthrate. Maybe the Russian men are the weak .... link.
Huh. Guess those manly men in Russia forgot to teach fire fighting skills to their sailors. Huh.
It sure ain't the trans/alphabet brigades who are defending the Ukraine.
As for the Russian Orthodox Church they remind me of the 'Reichskirche' under another Fuhrer.
Dear Russia, just because a relatively small group of American men believe they're having a period isn't reason to think we're ripe for takeover. Once our electorate speaks again and our newsrooms begin to reflect normal values to maintain market share, our ship will be righted. Oops, sorry for the metaphor.
The CIA’s choice of Zelensky as their stooge is an inspired bit of propaganda that covers two important bases. Although I can’t say for certain, it looks as though his political funding was passed through the Oligarch who owns Burisma, i.e., with the guidance of U.S. Intel.
1. Zelensky is a perv, either bisexual or gay, precisely the type of perv who gets to Western fag hags and gay men right in the heart and in the crotch. He’s super macho and can pass for straight. The ultimate fresh meat fantasy. The Intel services have outdone themselves with the Hollywood treatment for him in the U.S.
2. He’s Jewish, the perfect cover for those thousands of neo-Nazi troops.
I don’t see any good guys in this conflict, only bad actors on all sides. You’re kidding yourself if you think that there’s a sane hand somewhere in this mess that guarantees that this conflict won’t go nuclear. I’m going to bed every night praying that my beautiful grandkids survive into adulthood.
Blogger Howard said...
The poster children for the declining decadent West are members of the MAGA obesity Army. Pillsbury dough boys and cottage cheese corpulent girls are actually soft and weak. All's Putin needs to get your obedience is to hate the gay. Funny how the shirtless Vlad looks like the poster boy for The Advocate.
Howard prefers those strong and brave BLM demonstrators who burned down cities to show how tough they are and then, when the last black-owned small business was ashes, bought mansions with the corporate contributions. That'll show Putin.
Douglas B. Levene: Guess those manly men in Russia forgot to teach fire fighting skills to their sailors.
US Navy aircraft carrier lost to fire (2020) because "fire-suppression system was improperly maintained and sailors were unfamiliar with how to use it."
Marek said...
But Russia didn't attack the West, they attacked Ukraine. Do these Western journalists think they and the West could resist Russia like Ukraine is? Does Ukraine have gay parades and cancel culture? Straining for narrative.
Exactly.
rcocean said...
From what I've read Putin as a 80% approval rating in Russia. Almost 30% of Ukrainains speak Russian as a native language. many Russians feel the crimea and the Donbas which have huge numbers of Russian speakers really belongs to Russia.
That is because if you don't approve of Putin you end up in jail or out of a job and your communications are suppressed. Much like what the Biden Regime is trying to install in the US.
There is a herd mentality when it comes to dictators. The sentiment degrades under the covers a lot like a sink hole forming under a road.
At some point it all falls into a hole that nobody saw from above.
Putin and Biden are racing to see who gets pulled out of power first.
The Russian Orthodox Church is as much an arm of the Russian government as the FSB and the Strategic Rocket Forces, and has been since the Great Pete at least.
That will never change, though the Earth perish.
"It is not uncommon for Ukrainians to refer to African-Americans as “[N-Word]”. Volunteers of color may be called ‘a monkey’ or may see children’s games with Blackface,” one volunteer wrote.
Journalist and former Peace Corp volunteer Terrell Starr said he was stopped 29 times while living in Ukraine, and no one would rent him an apartment while he was there.
The Peace Corps recommends that the Black volunteers react to racism in various ways depending on the situation. They can choose to “remove themselves” from the situation, get help from other volunteers or staff, or practice self-care or coping strategies.
Peace Corps guidance for black volunteers in Ukraine causes a stir.
https://www.yahoo.com/video/does-not-justify-peace-corps-131100283.html
I have to give the authors points for tying the homosexual agenda to the Ukraine war. That's creative. Did they draw pictures to illustrate this for the readers at the Post?
"Guess those manly men in Russia forgot to teach fire fighting skills to their sailors."
On this point, we have no room to talk.
One of the developments in historical study of the last half-century, as everyone knows, is Gay History.
The historical record is clear that many Russians were willing particpants in gay sex, especially among the upper classes.
Speaking of gay parades, puberty blockers ,pride days, pre-school sex ed.
Teasing a friend in dark blue Santa Cruz about the Soquel High School (Howard coached there) about the school winning some gay pride honors, I realized this seems to be a middle and upper middle class thing.
They get the same positive attention in the minority and inner city schools?
Oh, incidentally, Soquel principal is Lesbian and vice principle is gay man married to a gay man.
Russia observed that the West backed a Slavic Spring in the Spring world war series that placed Ukrainians, their own nation, and neighbors at a clear and progressive risk.
“These shows conjured up a caricature of weak 'gayish' Western males and women who lost their femininity by competing with men.”
Conjured up a caricature? All they have to do is reprint the Times:
"We’re entering a new age where male-presenting bodies are feeling comfortable wearing effeminate shapes, effeminate fabrics that did not exist when I was growing up."
"It feels like a very brave new world. We’re really trying to explore and push and question the binary that has limited us for so long.... This was born on the dance floor.... Everything was so curated and wonderful and beautiful.... I needed to step up what I needed to wear, whether it was a soft harness instead of all the leather, or the metal on the market, or a body-con bodysuit that would accentuate my features as a male-presenting person."
Conservatives: The bad guys in any situation!
Moderation is so gauche. The modern model embraces progress, liberalism, diversity [dogma], retributive change, Mengele mandates, sex chauvinism, and the wicked solution for social, redistributive, clinical, and fair weather causes.
Blogger rcocean said...
From what I've read Putin as a 80% approval rating in Russia. Almost 30% of Ukrainains speak Russian as a native language. many Russians feel the crimea and the Donbas which have huge numbers of Russian speakers really belongs to Russia.
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30% (plus) of American in the Southwest speak Spanish which is why Hispanics feel it really belongs to Mexico.
"In his sermon approximately two weeks into the war, on March 6, the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church justified the invasion of Ukraine as necessary to defend Orthodox Christians against Western values and gay pride parades."
I see his point. No kids getting their dicks cut off in Russia.
The best writers you’ll find on these issues are Glen Greenwald (a gay man) and Chris Hedges (a Marxist).
You can find them both on Twitter and Substack. I’m surprised to find myself in almost total agreement with them on this issue.
Russian men are no more or less inclined to be gay than any other ethnic group. Russians generally believe, as I do, that the best place for gays is the closet, and that traditional Christian/Jewish theology should be the dominant public morality. Hypocrisy and silence are for the best here. Keep it to yourself. Do your reciprocal duty to your parents and give them grandkids. Deal with your guilt on your own.
Matt Taibbi is also good, although less focused. He is the funniest, however. He notes that these U.S. foreign adventures always start with a lot of chest thumping bravado (“We have the damn greatest military in the world!”) and end 10 to 20 years later with everybody trying to figure out what in the hell went wrong as we exit with our tail between our legs. After all, we won every battle!
"I'm wondering how hard-line Soviets morphed into conservatives."
To the journo-lisps, conservatism is primarily an emotional stance. It is recognizable by its insistence on the existence of standards that must be preserved, and an unwillingness to weaken those standards just because someone finds them onerous. Once the revolutionaries have established a Communist state, Communism is run by conservatives.
https://images.app.goo.gl/XWrisucJKh93QBNc7
"The Russian conservative elites currently in power supported war because they see Western power as decadent and declining...."
True but beside the point. The real motive is to recreate the Russian/Soviet Empire and the rest is self-serving horse manure.
The problem for the Russians is that the non-Russians don't want to be a part of Russia. Very few of the non-Russian peoples of the former Russian and Soviet Empires want to be part of Russia and the Russians just can't accept that. Those countries want to join NATO for the very reason NATO was founded for: keep the Germans down, the Russians OUT and the Americans in. I'm surprised at the number of commenters that are all but pushing the narrative for Russia. Why I don't know. However no one is pushing for the Western Europeans to reprise their Empires so why the support for Russian revanchism?
The article starts out referring to "Russian conservative elites now in power". And that's OK I guess: those in power in a dictatorship are certainly an 'elite'; and they want to stay in power, so they are 'conservative' in that sense. But that encourages Post readers to identify Putin's supporters with U.S. "conservatives" (those bad people!). Not that many of them need much encouragement.
Aside from that, not a bad article.
Right, luckily for the rest of Europe Putin didn't attack a Western European country, he attacked Ukraine. If he attacked France or Germany (hard due to geography), who knows how many of the inhabitants would have had the desire and disposition to do something to defend it.
"[S]o why the support for Russian revanchism?"
Good question, and I doubt there's a single good answer.
Some people--including ex lefties of which there are some here--are just naturally drawn to men of power, doing to their imagined enemies what they can't, themselves.
Some just hate their own culture so profoundly that any assault on it and its values is justified. Raw oikophobia with a side of self-hatred.
Just a few possibilities.
Gee, what could have caused Russians to think the West had become weak? Surely it couldn't have anything to do with the person the Americans picked to be President in the last election.
Gee, what could have caused Russians to think the West had become weak? Surely it couldn't have anything to do with the person the Americans picked to be President in the last election.
cubanbob said...
"Very few of the non-Russian peoples of the former Russian and Soviet Empires want to be part of Russia..."
We can go even further and say that even Russian peoples living in former Soviet republics don't want to be part of Russia. Until recently they were quite content to be part of Baltic states and Ukraine. That presents a question, why are they being antagonized and pushed back to Russia? Because that is what really happening.
So called 'Russian separatists' in Donbas didn't want to separate from Ukraine. They were scared by new Kiev rulers after Maidan coup starting to pass anti-Russian laws, so they sought protection in autonomy inside Ukraine. Kiev answer was to send military and other forces to crash them. There was bloody fighting and then stalemate. When Zelensky ran for President in 2019, his main two promises were to end corruption and bring peace to Donbas. Solid majority (over 70%) of Ukranian voters voted for him. Obviously majority of Ukranians wanted peace in Donbas. Instead there was escalation. How did that happen? And why every time US gets involved things get progressively worse between Russia and Ukraine?
Some people make an obvious point that US is still quite strong. Which is missing the point, because Russia is not really afraid of strong and confident US. That is why things were peaceful during Trump, who projected image of strength and confidence. Russia has realistic foreign policy and knows how to play a second fiddle. Russia is afraid of the weak and unpredictable US, which massive strength can be misused and abused for some idiotic reasons.
Candide said...
We can go even further and say that even Russian peoples living in former Soviet republics don't want to be part of Russia. Until recently they were quite content to be part of Baltic states and Ukraine. That presents a question, why are they being antagonized and pushed back to Russia?
The breakup of the Soviet Union has reduced Russian to a secondary player status at best. Vlad longs for the good old days of the S.S.R's when nobody in the West farted loudly without letting the Soviets know in advance.
Immorality has nothing to do with it. The Roman empire was much more sexually immoral and still won battles. It was not a pleasant place for the weak and powerless, but the strong and the rich could indulge all their sexual appetites, so it was fine. This is where the US and Western Europe are headed. Once they get this accepted as the new morality (see: Ed Buck) they have nothing to worry about. A pagan or Islamic army can win battles just as easily as a Christian one.
Mike (MJB Wolf) said...
"What is with this hysteria to cancel everything Russian? No classical composers from Russia. Concerts disinviting musicians of Russian descent. Films, art, what else?"
Wait for it...FDR-style internment camps for Russians and anyone who dares to support them.
Jupiter said...
["I'm wondering how hard-line Soviets morphed into conservatives."]
"To the journo-lisps, conservatism is primarily an emotional stance. It is recognizable by its insistence on the existence of standards that must be preserved, and an unwillingness to weaken those standards just because someone finds them onerous. Once the revolutionaries have established a Communist state, Communism is run by conservatives."
True to a point, but at the time the newbies were talking about Gorbachev, I also heard them call Kremlin hard-liners "far-right." They didn't dare call them far-left.
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