Putin's War With Ukraine (and democracy, freedom, self-determination, etc.)

Russian and Ukrainian people are not of one opinion. They are divided, not any different from us in the USA. I hesitate to judge or deny others perceptions because history is determined by the victor, and even history changes over time. This doesn't mean that I do not have my own!

I knew many Russians and Ukrainians when I lived in SoCal. Actually quite few in the entertainment biz. Been piecing tidbits of information I've been sharing back and forth with others. (A few us with personal and business connections have been in contact with folks over there on and off, it's spotty, especially in the Ukraine). In general, the older people who remember the stability of the Soviet era love Putin. The young people wanna get the f**k outta there. (Explains why so many Russian immigrants in the USA).

In the Ukraine, it depends upon where you live and if you are a Russian speaker first. It runs the entire gamut from "f**k Putin, we want to be part of the EU" to "Ukraine is a part of Russia". Actually less the latter. However, there's a lot of in between: "This is a proxy war between USA and Russia -and- f**k Putin for killing us".

Again, I have my own opinions. However, I feel that Western media may be only telling us stories that we want to hear. I do feel uncomfortable that Western outlets are banning RT, tweets, FB posts from Russia. Misinformation, propaganda, or whatever: the truth is, we do the same. In a free society, what are we afraid of?

The fact is, this was entirely preventable by the USA. Heck Germany and France didn't want Ukraine into NATO. The USA should have closed the door on NATO membership for Ukraine long ago. In fact, we should have gotten ourselves out of NATO and let the Europeans have their own mutual defense pact.

Has any American considered this: why the f**k do we have a mutual destruction pact (NATO) with Estonia if Russia ever attacked them? Most Americans don't even know what NATO means. Why the heck are we spending trillions to defend Europe, especially when they would rather buy Russian gas instead of US LNG?

 

Not anymore. Things started to get spotty a few days ago with respect to comms. Now it's dark.

 

What liberals art should be (with respect to careers in diplomacy): How we came to be, our values, how we think. How others came to be, their values, how they think. How to think. How to understand.

What liberals arts is (including the academic environment): How we in our bubble are right and everyone else is wrong. Here's a bone to <insert minority group of the day>. Here are some classics. Read and regurgitate.

LOL, I'm not even sure liberal arts today even properly prepares one for the labor market (which is a tighter understanding).

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POTUS: We don't let Russia tell us who we can or not let into NATO!
My 13 year old kid (from watching YouTube videos on history): Bruh.

 

Seriously, this is the US position! NATO expansion wasn't that "bad" or unexpected, until 2004 when Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, right next to Russia, were gobbled up. I bet Putin was like WTF.

This is also another part of it. Western nations think they hold the truest lineage from Christ via Rome, and forget that the Christian tradition moved on to Constantinople / Istanbul (while Rome got sacked and the rest of Europe stayed in the dark ages for 1000 years), and from there further north and east. European history taught in American high-schools and universities tend to omit the Christian lineage and civilizations east of Rome.

Ding! That's it right. One can take the cynical view and view this NATO stuff as part of the military industrial complex, F-35s cough cough (so many partner manufacturing nations as customers). If we've learned anything from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it's that Russia is no threat. If Russia tried to do the same with a NATO country, that 40-mile long line of tanks and APCs would have been exploded in two hours by a squadron of A10s and F16s, cleaned up by Apaches. And these three are decades old combat systems. However I digress.

However much people bitch about the USA, people bitch more when there is no big brother / policeman USA to help. Look at the Serbia Kosovo Yugoslavia shit which happened in the EU's backyard in the late 1990s. The USA declined to get involved from the longest time and the Europeans didn't and couldn't do jack shit about it. Clinton said he regretted taking so long to get us involved. The USA gets involved because the USA has the power, the will, the money, and people who are generous in spirit (how many people on SBAF have given to Ukraine already, privately and publicly). I gave at the bequest of someone who felt that this was a proxy-war between the USA and Russia -and- Putin is an asshole; not because I bought the narratives in US news media. I still think Biden should cut a deal for a temporary cease fire: let's start here - we are OK with no Ukraine in NATO. Right now we are on the path of lose-lose and that is bad. Putting Putin and Russia into a corner and waging economic war until their GDP is 50% of what was last year is bad.

I'm just not sure we the USA should lead today. Soviet Union was a different time and it seemed that we were more pragmatic back in those days (We backed down in Cuban missile crisis by removing missiles from Turkey). I know the EU is hesitant to ever use force because of their history of violence in various continental wars for hundreds of years, but USA cannot remain the policeman or act as big brother. Europe must be allowed to grow and be responsible by itself. Also, with great power showdown against China, I am not sure the USA can afford this.

I'll mention this again. No Taiwanese leader is insane enough to declare Taiwanese independence. They are all thinking it, but they dare not. In fact, the USA highly advises to Taiwan: please don't declare independence! Yet at the same time, the USA is all like gung-ho on Ukraine, the NATO door is open for you! Our media is cheering on Zelenskyy for poking the Bear (as a reminder, a bear that has nooks). I think this is part of Putin's frustration - not being taken seriously. Why does USA take Xi seriously but not take Putin seriously? Putin is an asshole, but he really has no choice but to take this to the very end. Which again, is lose-lose.

The serious misunderstanding began when the USA opened its eyes and realized that China was not being a responsible player playing ball but instead a bad actor. When China was admitted to the WTO, even my dad was hopeful: China becoming successful economically would become more democratic. This was early 2000s. The Obama/Biden administration also believed the same thing in 2010; they were dumb and didn't see the signs that they were being played by the commies. Hindsight is difficult though, and no one foresaw a Xi type figure who purged all dissenting internal voices to become Emperor of China.

With respect to China being a bad actor: claiming practically all of the South China Sea, sending massive fleets of fishing vessels supported by armed coast guard into Philippine waters, likewise similar off the shore of Ecuador, forced technology transfers with foreign businesses, barring of US businesses and services (Google, FB, etc) while developing their own, limits of US imports (films for example). State owned enterprises given infinite resources to compete, e.g. HuaWei. Free trade is great when it's free. The problem is that it's not, and getting fucked in the ass thinking one day China will open up is idiocy. The problem is that many USA corporations had offshored so much to China where the balance started to tip (less good jobs, more shitty jobs at Starbucks), to be noticeable to the average American. Trump seized upon this, what Americans already inherently knew (let's face it, any country needs to have a decent manufacturing base because not everybody likes reading books). The Republicans didn't give a shit because they were blindly pro-global pro-business. The Democrats didn't either because Clinton took a page from the Republican playbook. Obama talked about redistribution, but lobbyists crushed his plans, and Americans didn't want redistribution, they wanted good jobs.

P.S. Although past history doesn't predict future history, the HuaWei cybersecurity concerns are very real.

 

Don't worry, I know a lot of folks who do not like the Focals and I totally understand why. It's usually the metal driver timbre. This is audio. 100% guaranteed that someone will find what you like to be shit and someone else's shit as your treasure.

I don't know enough about monetary theory to say anything about that. Only that our money is Monopoly money where Uncle Sam can dip into the stack of Monopoly bills on the side and add to the existing supply any time they feel like. Which is essentially what happened and at least half the cause of the current inflation.

Starting around COVID, people suddenly had a lot of money with the trajectory of money supply increasing at a higher rate than in the past. This is M2, the total money supply in the USA consisting of coins, bills, short-term deposits - fairly liquid money. Used to buy food, gas, Nvidia graphics cards, iPhones, audio gear, etc.

I would say that the results have been devastating, considering that the US population has increased from 220M to 330M since 1980. Below graph is all employees in thousands, manufacturing from 1980 to 2022. We can see what happened after China joined the WTO. US companies pulled an Eileen Gu. Great recession was an excuse to move more to China.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/

BTW, FRED is a great resource.

 

It was been the same way here in the USA until Trump. My parents are single-issue voters, and they voted Trump both times because they felt Trump would be better to Taiwan than to China. To his credit, Trump did bring the plight of the Taiwanese into the national discussion better than any other prior POTUS. Trump's not exactly a sensitive guy, so he certainly did not give a shit about hurting Chinese Communist's feelings.

Now even kids (in nowhere South Texas) at my son's junior high school talk about Taiwan / ROC as "Real Original China" or as "East China" vs "West China" (the mainland). I don't know where they get these ideas because I did not teach my son these terms. However, social media is powerful. My son tells me of Roblox accounts named "Free Taiwan". Kids are into this stuff I guess. I'm like holy shit, how do you kids know about this stuff? I think it could be part of the Texas thing where the state of Texas kind of prides itself on being independent of the USA.

I grew up with Americans thinking I knew how to throw ninja stars (Japanese), throw Taekwondo kicks (Korean), and thinking Taiwan was Thailand.

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Think Russian and Ukraine with similar mentalities, but with water in between. Not exact, but very similar motivations. Like Europe, people in the East have longer memories compared to Americans. Basically China Communists feel humiliated because Western powers fucked China over and forced China to take drugs (opium). Boxer Rebellion, all that stuff, the British were cocksuckers, etc. Communists were actually the first dynasty that realized the dream of a unified China, unified under one language. Historically, China has been fragmented, very fragmented until very recently. The Commies have been a on roll, swallowing Tibet, parts of Mongolia, so they know this works for them.

People in Taiwan can speak Mandarin (Chinese) and Hokkien (Taiwanese). Those closer to China in the north of Taiwan can speak Mandarin no problem but may not be able to speak Hokkien. The languages are "close" if you can speak both, but really they are not that close. Like Ukrainian and Russian.

Taiwanese identity actually became stronger after China pushed for reunification hard in the past decade. Like Ukraine, the existence of a separate Taiwan is nebulous. Taiwan had been a trading post / colony of the Portuguese, Dutch, Japan. It had been nominally claimed as part of China. There had been x2 exodus of defeated rebels from the mainland to Taiwan. The most recent was in 1949 where Chiang Kai-Shek after his loss to the Communists brought his people over only to massacre tens of thousands Taiwanese leaders, intellectuals, and their associates. Ultimately, the people of Taiwan today don't really want to be part of China today. No one likes having to use a VPN, people like to elect their own leaders, and mainland Chinese have a reputation of being heartless people who are corrupt, taking cuts in lines, and leaving shit all over the toilet seats. I think these perception are more of what the "locals think of the tourists" thing.

The other reason for Taiwanese independence may be similar to Ukraine's: after tasting a functioning democracy however imperfect, and being controlled or subsumed by others, the people just want to do their own thing. Arguments against a strong independence stance are similar: don't poke the Panda / the Bear or strong allegiance to the motherland for whatever reason.

 

P.S. Think of modern China as a more successful Soviet Union that was able to get everyone to speak Russian. China actually achieved what the Soviets dreamed of.