ANOTHER TRY AT EXPLAINING RUSSIA

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

Russia’s Ukraine misadventure, Putin's "Special Operation", has transformed Russia’s aura from perhaps a somewhat romantic mystery to just plain national psychopathy.

Today, October 31, 2022, I, fortunately, stumbled across James Sunderland’s 2018 Medium piece, Twelve Reasons Why Russia Sucks, (Medium, June 9, 2018), … his grim picture of Russian culture and people from his years in Russia. (Is October 31 apropos for the decrepitude Sunderland observed in Russia?)

I wrote a ‘reply’ to Sunderland’s piece, below.

I had no knowledge of Sunderland’s 2018 piece before I wrote my own Medium, August 24, 2022, ‘Russia’ article - SOMETHING ABOUT RUSSIA: A LOOK AT ITS EMBARRASSING, SELF-DESTRUCTIVE INVASION OF UKRAINE… , (Medium, August 24, 2022).

Sunderland’s 2018 observations on Russia’s dark culture, alcoholism, and the hopelessness of its people eerily reinforce my August 2022 perceptions of what Russia might be made of (op cite). My perceptions are formed in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last February 24, 2022, and the in-country behavior of Russian troops in their rape of Ukrainian women, girls, children, men of all ages…and their drunken rampages through the occupied Ukraine territories.

My reply to Sunderland’s 2018 article (op cite):

“This is a frightening, depressing (and more), yet terribly apt piece in the current 2022 context of Vladimir Putin’s national mobilization forcing “300,000 patriots” to go fight against Ukrainians in Putin’s ‘Special Military Operation’ that doesn’t even barely disguise Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. This piece [Sunderland’s] clearly explains for me the war crimes Russian soldiers (and Wagner Group mercenaries) have committed on innocent Ukrainian citizens during the last 8 months of 2022. No wonder Ukrainians refer to the Russian troops as “Orcs” [as Sunderland also uses]…, demons from Hell driven by dark forces and blind drunk rage to kill and maim.”

Russia’s Ukraine misadventure has transformed Russia’s aura from perhaps a somewhat romantic mystery to just plain national psychopathy. (Russia seems to resemble a lost soul that wanders and blindly stumbles among modern nations that are striving to move on to the future.)”

Meanwhile, Russian citizens sheepishly bleat weak protests, allow themselves to be herded into cattle cars to deliver them to the Ukraine front lines…without training (a few weeks or even just a couple of days), with no uniforms or medical supplies, and even family-provided food … and obsolete, rusted weapons (or none) from WW2 (or even WW1), and 20–40 bullets that may explode in the barrels when ‘fired.’

That picture of the grossly inadequate preparation of Russian conscripts for front-line battle is even worse than I predicted in my recent September 2022, Medium piece, HOW UNPREPARED CAN NEW RUSSIAN CONSCRIPTS BE? I WAS SO RIGHT! SADLY (Medium, September 30, 2022).

My September 30, 2022, perception of how grossly under-supported Russian conscripts are going into battle in Ukraine: “I did not expect my September 20 exaggeration to fall short of just how rediculously pitiful their plight mught accturally be. I underestimated the idiocy and social debacle Putin’s ‘Mobilization’ has started.”

The best for the Russian people, and of course for Ukrainians, is for Russia to cease hostilities and leave Ukraine (intact).

BREXIT (UK) — A FAILED, TEAR-SHEDDING DREAM TO RESURRECT THE BRITISH EMPIRE FROM THE AGE OF SAIL IS IN THE GRAVE

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

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So, ‘Liz’ Truss resigned as Prime Minister (UK) on October 20, 2022 — after only 44 days in office, the shortest since 1827 when Tory George Canning died in office after 118 days. 

Her resignation speech is here — a signal example of a nationalist word salad of conservative slogans and hopeful but flawed illogic that some conservatives love to mouth but flounder on after a short time that shows how hollow those slogans actually are.

Ms. Truss makes the fifth UK prime minister in six years — the fastest turnover in nearly a century.

What can one say except it’s about time for the global fantasy-dreaming about past nationalist ‘glory’ to end … the ‘days of sail’ and exploitative spice trade are long over.

The ‘Now’ has changed from the crawling pace of sailing ships to the dynamic, high-tech, increasingly information-driven supersonic age that is above all sustained by interdependent associations not standalone empires… no one country is now truly self-sustaining. Not even America.

‘Brexit,’ the UK withdrawal from the European Union has proved to be an economic flop run by a false performer in a clown suit and Halloween wig (several candidates here, but …).

What Truss’s resignation means is that political posturing and claiming a mantle of past glory is what it sounded like to many— hot air and opportunism that rapidly turns into a disaster for the naive voter and certainly for their nation.

The lineup of guilty politicians who've covered their true motives or lack of true smarts is long but includes such stars as BOJO (Boris Johnson, Truss’s predecessor), Vladimir Putin, and, of course, the current era’s grand wizard behind the curtain, Donald Trump.

Putin is perhaps a special case as he seems to have the naked power to take Russia down with him, but he will not soften in his pursuit of personal glory and the glow of Tsarist Russia.

Let’s hope the UK will regain its senses…and find a way to re-enter the EU (big problems there with lots of 'cold crow' for the UK to swallow, but it has to be done to save England from economic collapse). And let’s hope the American path doesn’t curve back to Trumpism.

THE 'DONALD TRUMP PROBLEM' IS SIMPLE TO UNDERSTAND & FIX: TRUMP IS AN ANOMALOUS, ERRATIC 'FACTOR' THAT AMERICA IS JUST NOT SET UP TO CONTROL - TRUMP MUST BE BANNED FROM FUTURE POSITIONS OF POWER AND AUTHORITY

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

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The Trump Problem Is Simple to Understand. America just can't handle the irrational, anomalous, erratic 'FACTOR' that is Donald Trump. (Although it has to be admitted that many American citizens and power-influence centers have learned to cave to Trump for questionable/illicit/power gain.

TRUMP IS NOT SMART ENOUGH TO BE INTENTIONALLY BAD ... he is just ANOMALOUSLY BAD. And he must be removed from further mal-participating in society, or at least in America.

'Normal' boundaries and controls can't control Trump, and he appears to sneer at his 'opponents'/competitors who follow law or precedent, ...while he does not. 

Trump operates by ad hoc, transactional-ism which immobilizes and disables his rational thinking, play-by-rules competitors ...and his victims. 

It's time to just acknowledge that:  

(1) AMERCA'S RATIONAL LEGAL AND LOYALTY PRINCIPLES CAN'T HANDLE TRUMP BECAUSE HE SEES THEM AS 'FOREIGN AND EXTRANEOUS'; 

(2) TRUMP HAS TO BE SEEN AS AN ANOMALY; 

(3) TRUMP MUST BE PREVENTED FROM HAVING ANY FURTHER KIND OF POWER/AUTHORITY/POSITION OF INFLUENCE.

Of course, Trump would/did sell/promise classified secrets to Russia (and promise lifting sanctions on Putin) in return for Russia's future favors and past assistance to being elected in 2016, and forthcoming in November 2022 and in 2024.