Putin has backed himself into a no win corner
Republicans and Fox News hosts alike can learn an object lesson here. In the midst of his illegal rape of the sovereign nation of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has put his nuclear forces on high alert, ostensibly due to “the aggressive comments” of NATO countries. Proclaiming an emergency where none exists isn’t just a Vladimir Putin specialty. Republicans and other loudmouths at Fox News have been doing the same thing for decades.
Perhaps now the idiots on the alt right will finally see why rhetoric such as this can be immediately dangerous. In a single stroke, Vladimir Putin has moved the Doomsday Clock one more minute closer to midnight. It was a wholly unnecessary move that gained nothing. It only served to prove once again that the Homo sapiens solution to the stupidity of war is, too often, more war.
“This is really a pattern that we’ve seen from President Putin through the course of this conflict,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, “which is manufacturing threats that don’t exist in order to justify further aggression — and the global community and the American people should look at it through that prism.”
Don’t look to Putin to back down just yet. He keeps the nuclear button close to him because he understands there are forces inside the Kremlin and among his oligarchs who are beginning to like the idea of a Putin-free Russia. Threat of the “nuclear option” may be his only safeguard. We have no way of knowing for sure how determined he is to use it. But in any case, Putin backed into a corner could prove to be deadly dangerous, and reverberates to the core of our survival as a species.
Living as I do on the continent of conflict, I yet again resent Putin’s evil incursion into my own life. I’ve already had to endure his attack on my immediate community with novichok. Now it’s war and nukes. So my hatred and contempt for Vladimir Putin is nothing new.
One would hope that Republicans are at least halfway self-aware enough by now to comprehend the pertinent political message now coming out of Russia. If they need it spelled out for them I am happy to oblige: totalitarian governments are evil. Putin’s incursion into Ukraine is evil, and this conflict matters to everyone. People who defend their capitals are heroes, people who attack them are villains. Get the message, Republicans? And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.