IT IS INSANE THAT A COUNTRY (RUSSIA), WITH A GDP LESS THAN ITALY’S IS BLACKMAILING THE GLOBAL COMMUNITY TO BEND TO THE WILLFUL CRYING OF A PSYCHOPATHIC DICTATOR (? BUT QED?()

 The Perched Eye blog is 12+ years old, from 2009 with President Obama's first term. The focus has been eclectic ...  the ways and directions of American politics and culture, and occasionally summarizing the potential impacts of new technologies. Pericles21's observations sometimes attract a critical eye, but the 'pen' remains unblunted.                         -----------

(Biden POTUS's economic sanctions in response to Putin's invasion of Ukraine are brilliant, from the framework of threatening Putin's personal wealth and potentially damaging Russia's national economy. Biden's response has also been effective in its swift response and breadth, especially its application in stages ... as if designed by a psychologist's advice to parents of an acting-out child.)

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Putin’s disinformation campaign is bluntly threatening as if he just doesn't care about the 'rules' of superpower diplomacy. 

Putin misbehaves this way while he whines about not getting the proper respect Russia (him, personally) deserves as a superpower...while he threatens to push his nuclear button toys if he doesn't get his way...even though no one is threatening to invade Russia's borders... and as he violates those borders to terrorize democratically elected governments. 

Putin is getting away with these insane disconnects because he ‘knows’ his  threats of nuclear ‘acting out’ stymies the West from giving back to Russia its own punishments. 

Putin displays a deadpan public countenance while he destroys cities, tortures and mass-graves civilian populations, and ignores ‘rules’ of engagements, all showing he feels no need to excuse or cloak his satanically self-anointing, brutal, cruel, cynical behavior. 

In words, Putin behaves like a traditional autocrat in the style of Stalin, who he openly admits is his guiding mentor for foreign policy ... and personal conduct. 

Any country or belief system that blocks Putin’s targets or objectives is to be eliminated in the style of Stalin - with excessive, overpowering cruelty. The crueler, the better to prevent future rebellion. 

And Putin’s objectives are openly stated — to recover the land and hegemony Russia ‘lost’ in 1991 with the breakup of the USSR, even to recover east Germany, the Baltic states, Finland, and even Poland. These pronouncements should terrify the now proudly sovereign nations.

The West is faced with Putin’s hate and fear of democratic self-determination that resulted in the freeing of Balkan and Baltic states from Russian hegemony — Putin will not stop with his long game of reversing that history. 

And now, after 20-some years of total control over Russia, Putin has very good reason to fear the consequences of his autocratic rule - he is aware that rebellion will no doubt target him personally as its first target.

When you can’t ‘win’ a war with incompetent military strategy, inadequate self-cannibalized equipment, and even your own troops don’t support your purpose, just brutalize, torture, and kill civilians…and do the same with your own troops. (Russia’s Ukraine invasion is a mirror of its WW2 behavior, even to accompanying and threatening its own troops with ‘corrective’ political units (the KGB in WW2, now, the FSB).)

The West’s response should be as direct and harsh as Russia’s but without targeting civilians or even shedding blood if possible, but still as a goal, … like it is doing with recent economic sanctions on Russia…and especially on the oligarchs, who Putin has joined up with, with little disguising, to economically rape and pillage his own country. 

(Biden POTUS's economic sanctions in response to Putin's invasion of Ukraine is brilliant, from the framework of threatening Putin's personal wealth as well as damaging Russia's national economy. And it is brilliant in its swift response,  its breadth, and especially its application in stages ... all as if desigend by a child psychologist's advising of parents of an acting out child.)

As for the West’s response, note Russia’s appeal to its successful maneuvering a proxy leadership into America’s government ….Donald Trump’s first steps as POTUS was to attempt to lift economic sanctions placed on Putin’s Russia resulting from its earlier land-grabbing cruelties in Georgia and Crimea. Trump continues to support Putin and Russia in its invasion of Ukraine.

The overview —there is little chance Putin will (rationally) compromise over his Ukraine invasion. 

But, if Putin’s invasion of Ukraine isn’t stopped, he will proceed to destabilize other border democracies by the same formula — claim vested partial land ownership by population kinship, orchestrate political and civil destabilization from that platform, support insurrection then invasion and finally re-annexation in the face of a paralyzed West. 

Putin has to be stopped cold. THERE IS NO REASON A COUNTRY (RUSSIA), WITH A GDP LESS THAN ITALY’S IS BLACKMAILING THE GLOBAL COMMUNITY TO BEND TO THE WILLFUL CRYING OF AN AUTOCRATIC (AND PERHAPS PSYCHOPATHIC) DICTATOR.

HAS RUSSIA'S UKRAINE INVASION BECOME A HOLY WAR? RUSSIA WEAVES A FLAG FOR A MEDIEVAL HOLY WAR: The Battleship "Moskva" & The Holy Cross

The Perched Eye blog is 12+ years old, from 2009 with President Obama's first term. The focus has been eclectic ...  the ways and directions of American politics and culture, and occasionally summarizing the potential impacts of new technologies. Pericles21's observations sometimes attract a critical eye, but the 'pen' remains unblunted.

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 Whaaaat! Things in the Black Sea are getting weirder. Are we now in a holy war? Reportedly, the battleship Moskva went down carrying a piece of the "True Cross"? Will this now justify Russia using chemical or nuclear weapons to carry forth its invasion of Ukraine? How convincing is this? If even real, who might be the intended ears?

THE 'SLAP' - HOLLYWOOD AND AMERICA: CULTURAL ANGST AT THE 2022 OSCARS AWARDS 'EVENT'

This blog is 12+ years old, from 2009 with President Obama's first term. The focus has been eclectic ...focusing on the ways and directions of American politics and culture and occasionally new technologies. Pericles21's observations sometimes attract a critical eye, but the 'pen' remains unblunted.

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'The Slap,' 'The Slap.' No doubt this new meme will fade from the public mind, but not soon … and maybe America will find some deeper meaning in that 'Event' than prurient headlines. But not now.

The Hollywood Academy Awards is literally the biggest American cultural stage which has become, naturally, the most coveted hosting gig for any American comedian.

During the 2022 Hollywood Academy Awards (the 94th), Chris Rock, the comedian-host, made a joke about a relatively famous actress that apparently distressed her more than usual and motivated her husband (after a moment's hesitation that was later noticed to be an 'Event' itself) to rush from his audience seat onto the stage and slap said comedian-host…in the face. Hence, 'The Slap', the 2022 Academy Awards' Event'…. which 'Event' generated gasps, hollow silences, and endless discourse from the Awards audiences, in the live audience-pit and at home watching from television sets, and later viewers of videos replayed in many venues, e.g., Twitter, Youtube, TikTok, etc.

From the days of the greatly esteemed self-parodying comedians such as Richard Pryor, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Abbott and Costello, Red Skelton, Martha Raye, and others, Americans turned to greatly enjoy making fun of others. Still, this outward-turning of American comedy is rarely addressed in scholarly America and is even less often processed in public discourse. Since 'The Slap,' and the rules of the comedian-audience dance are now a hot topic. Maybe some good will result.

'The Slap' has led some to see that targeting and making fun of the 'other' is maybe not so funny. The outward targeting by 'modern comedy' is a kind of post-modern '-osis' displacement that is unhealthy and harmful to its targets… and to audiences.

After the fact, one senses that 'The Slap' had to happen somewhere, probably sooner than later and to someone who would get our attention. One would not have expected Will Smith to deliver 'The Slap' but in retrospect he was an ideal candidate. But there was a long line of other prominent names who could have 'delivered" as well as Will.

Maybe outward directed comedy that makes fun of others is a 'displacement' syndrome that has been escalating to higher and more cutting levels much like an addiction (neurologically valid) that leaves Americans with a good degree of cultural angst — an angst that is usually subliminal but surfaces in times of social stress, such as what happened at the 2022 Academy Awards ceremony.

(America's comedy angst, like an addiction to a drug, is abated only by higher and higher doses of insult-comedy, but it is only a temporary fix…like a drug.)

From this historical-cultural perspective on American humor and comedic stage performance, one might value The Slap because it helps clarify (frame) for future America the modes and boundaries of acceptable comedic and audience-responsive behavior, i.e., less culturally and individual-level stress.

As with many hallmarks of America's voyeuristic culture, The Slap will linger in the public mind for a while and make many of us amateur psychologists, juries, and judges — with almost as many different perspectives on The Slap as there are people in America.

Insulting others is now big business in America. Comedic targeting is now directed at anyone or group of notability, or notoriety, in any area of American culture. (The preferred targets are actual, 'deliciously' controversial individuals who occupy center stage in any area receiving fame or notice (and whether legal or not).

Nit-picking and laughing at the failures of others (Chris Rock, Andrew Dice Clay, Don Rickles, etc.) has replaced seeing and laughing at ourselves through the comedic geniuses of self-parodying (e.g., Richard Pryor, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and others).

The Hollywood Academy Awards' Event' (The Slap) has divided America…but it is a division of opinion not yet so severe as to become one of America's favorite pastimes, public and individual violence….at.least not yet.

One might appreciate the Slap because it helps to clarify and define (frames) for future American socially acceptable modes and boundaries in both the comedic delivery and audience response … will America progress to its own 'Kabuki-style' entertainment formulations?

In promoting public discourse and collectively stretching our minds as Americans, the Slap has a positive value — it might be described as an Event of cultural coming-to-terms, and maybe it had to happen….sometime sooner than later.

But one feels sad that Fate chose two iconic, well-liked African-American men, who, as a group, could benefit from less public spectacle of that nature to figuratively and literally play their parts on center stage.

As 'stage play,' which it was scenic-wise, the Slap might further be framed as an iconic Shakesperian moment in American cultural history to be written about and acted out in future stage plays as 'plays about a play on a stage, etc. …' and from many different perspectives.

Days later, from the intensity and breadth of public discourse about it, one senses that the Slap has brought America to be new and deeper thinking about its principles … in this case, 'freedom of speech. (It seems a rare moment when America must face itself and what it truly believes in and think about anything beyond momentary media glitz — but that is what America is doing now in the wake of the Slap.

The significance of the Slap goes beyond race. A personal observation is that the emotions raised by that well-acted Slap script are resonating (and being discussed) universally, beyond race. So for some time more, America will hold discourse with itself about the Event (Slap), pro and con each actor and in between, and one thinks we will come out of this a more mature and better culture.

GUESS IT'S THAT TIME FOR A REPUBLICAN PARTY REBRANDING

This blog is 12+ years old, from 2009 with President Obama's first term. The focus has been eclectic ...focusing on the ways and directions of American politics and culture, and occasionally new technologies. Pericles21's observations sometimes attract a critical eye, but the 'pen' remains unblunted.

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Political parties are in a bind when they don't have anything of substance to offer and don't have the sense, depth of real feeling, nor intellectual nuance to come up with real thoughts, real positions, or real contributions to society. Lacking these qualifications, a party such as the Republicans once more has to face the Nixonian challenge...'WTF are we gonna do to save this sinking ship?'  But, this time things seem more desperate than in Nixon's time because he and Ronald Reagan used up all the storylines, diversions, schemes, plots, canards, red herrings, and other facadic masks ...ie. they left nothing for current Republicans to scrounge from to fool the public.  

But, 'Hey, no worries...just rebrand, repaint, re-'stuff'  that smelly old sock...with anything that can be trotted out under the banner of 'New!', and pray that the public is as stupid as you think it is and that it swallows the tasteless swill that rolls down the chute from the Republican propaganda mill.

And this is where the 2022 Republican Party is now - it is neck-deep in mucky infighting, spouting slogans that carry no meaning except dog-whistle calls to violence and hate. It is awash in scandal, and an embarrassingly large number of its 'leaders' seem near to real historical charges of insurrection and sedition.

Back in 2009, this blogger commented on the empty vacuum that was the Republican Party which was drowning in its own self-destructive quicksand of empty phrases and zombie substitutions for real leaders; it was desperately reaching for a lifesaver, anything that could float and save the Party from complete irrelevance. 

And so the Republican 'brain trust' came up with idea of simply 'rebranding' itself as if it was a box of kiddy cereal that needed brighter colored packaging, larger type and more (faked) flavor stimulation. Nixon's "Southern Strategy" was the result - blame everything on America's favorite drug addiction, race.

So was 'invented' the easiest line up of substitutes for real thinking and substantive political platforms ... the Great Con Series (the Loyalty Oath (Michael Steele, RNC Chair/President) and the Tea Party....both mirroring their authoritarian precursors of 1930s Brown Shirts and the extreme authoritarian flavor of the Bolsheviks, Stalin, Mao, ...

Entering into the maelstrom of political 'midterms, one wonders what meaningless 'cons' and diversions the Republican Party will come up with this time...especially its ship has been near completely hi-jacked by such numeraries as Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Madison Cawthorn, Susan Collins (the sea anchor), and a host of other 'special' politicians...Cotton, Abbott, Cruz, etc.