The West

According to Reuters, Vladimir Putin claims that the West is Satanic and defies moral norms. The West rejects traditional religious values, Putin argues, as part of his campaign  against LGBTQ rights. His military attacked Ukraine on the assumption that the West was too decadent to attempt an effective defense.

The belief that western civilization is weak,  unmanly, badly organized, that it lacks decent values and so on, has been dear to authoritarians ranging from Hitler to the USSR  to West Asian  religious crackpots and to current authoritarians in Russia, China and Iran.  Losers.

In this context, the West is not a place or a direction but a culture. The culture of the West includes today's Europe, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, etc. 

It's clear that the West has sins of its own. The culture is flawed. But its simple existence threatens authoritarians. That's the rub. People living in tyranny can look across the border and see something a little better. The despot gets nervous.

September 30, 2022·1 min read

In this article: 

• 

  Vladimir Putin

  President of Russia

*

This content was produced in Russia where the law restricts coverage of Russian military operations in Ukraine.

MOSCOW, Sept 30 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said the West was "satanic" and rejected "moral norms" in a combative speech delivered from the Kremlin on Friday.

Putin attacked the West's liberalism, saying that, unlike Russia, it had turned away from "traditional" and "religious" values.

At one point in the speech, in which Putin announced Russia was annexing four regions of Ukraine, he asked the assembled dignitaries if they wanted "children to be offered sex-change operations", a practice he implied was widespread in the West.

In his two decades in power, Putin has routinely promoted what he says are "traditional values" and suppressed LGBTQ rights through a number of laws and by backing ultra-conservative movements and initiatives. (Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

Cossacks

About 70 years ago at UCLA, I took a course in Russian lit in translation. I read "The Sebastopol Stories" by Tolstoy, a collection of tales about the Cossacks. "Cossack" means "free man." So who were the Cossacks?

Today we call them Ukrainians. 

The Cossacks were European but lived  somewhat like the plains Indians of North America, roaming the steppes on horseback. At times they were murderous anti-Semites--they believed Jews were complicit with despotic authorities. The Cossacks themselves were democratic, electing their leaders, committed to personal freedom and military adventures.

For centuries the Cossacks fought for and against Poland, Lithuania, the Moslems and Russia. In the process they founded modern Ukraine. 

Without Ukraine, Russian is a middle-sized, despotic nation that mistakenly believes it is a great power with a fearsome army.  

 

What Is It Good For?

A year ago Putin launched his illegal war against Ukraine. How will it end? No way to know, but Putin is not going to get what he wants, and Ukraine is unlikely to get what it wants, which includes reparations, war crime trials, etc. 

One historian has predicted that the most likely ending will resemble the armistice signed in Korea 73 years ago. South Korea has become a healthy and adaptable member of the West. Meanwhile North Korea struggles with poverty under a rigid family dictatorship. 

Things can worsen. China might resupply Russia with offensive weapons. Our species may be in the process of splitting into an East v. West confrontation, a Third World War, a nuclear exchange. We may be that irrational.    

Thank God for Hypocrites

The latest Fox Gnus scandal consists of this: the hosts on Fox understood on the 6th that tRump and his MAGATs were lying and also lying. The Fox hosts didn't approve, but they went ahead and every day provided a platform for tRump liars. That is how Fox makes money. They please their watchers. So the Fox hosts were not lunatics or stupid; they were hypocrites, which is contemptible. 

Why is that good news? Because malicious hypocrites sometimes have lines they won't cross. They aren't crazy. Lunatics would have given tRump a Fox platform on the 6th. But during the attempt by tRump's maggots to overthrow the government, Fox refused the President's request for air time. He never got to call for Second Amendment measures. 

History of War

A historian recently said that in Ukraine this generation has found its Spanish Civil War. 

The Spanish Civil War began in 1936 as an attempt by the Fascist military to overthrow its elected government. The Spanish government was supported by the Left, which included unions, socialists, anarchists, volunteers from Europe and America (the Lincoln Battalion), the USSR and some famous people like George Orwell and Earnest Hemingway. The Fascists were supported by the rich, the Spanish Catholic Church,  Hitler and Mussolini. The government side eventually broke into factions that were for or against Marxism. The Fascists won the war. They ruled Spain until 1975.

The war had been a successful test of  German and Italian military equipment and tactics; Fascists saw it as a rehearsal for World War II.

If the European democracies had backed the elected government and fought the Fascists, the Spanish government might have won. Hitler might have made different plans. Instead Hitler (like Putin) became contemptuous of democracies and overconfident. The war encouraged Hitler and made the democracies look like easy marks. 

Like the Spanish Civil War, the historian said, Russia vs. Europe is a war between two incompatible models of civilization.  

Cunk on Earth

 If you get Netflix, try watching "Cunk on Earth." It's a fake documentary series. The host is a young woman who sounds exactly like all hosts on British documentaries except that everything she says is shockingly stupid.  Quite funny. 

Ukraine's Choice

Chris Hedges opposes war and opposes the war in Ukraine but points out that Ukraine is in Russia's "sphere of influence." 

In the 19th century European countries agreed to sort the rest of world into spheres of influence. Imperialists divided up the world that way to avoid expensive fighting over the spoils. But in the West, support for colonialism ended about 80 years ago. 

Today we endorse the United Nations and its  concept that the people in each of the member nations should make their own country's decisions. Ukraine faced a choice between colonization under an aggressive dictator or joining Europe. They chose Europe.