Jeff Danziger for November 13, 2022

And for a rebuttal from a parallel universe, here’s Ted Rall. . . .

Who is the guy?

Shouldn’t that be the RED HAT of Russia?

(Many languages put the adjective AFTER the noun, I dunno ’bout Russian).

However, Trump’s loss is Putin’s loss, too.

I’d feared the Red Wave as much for the Ukraine as for the USA.

Хай живе Україна

Another despot feeding the Crematorium of History.

If only Russians weren’t so hateful…

Stoking hatefully…

Not sure what to do with this. I am quite fed up with the Russian people for basically allowing crapbrains to mess up the planet. Russia should be an ally with us, and should be most concerned about their 4300 KM border with China. But why bring reason into this discussion.

Face it, there’s a lot to hate, certainly in the Russian government. Not so much the Russian people, who I have to believe are pretty much like “people” everywhere.

Russia has been a xenophic nation since its founding. It has feared invasions from west and east and this fueled its absorption of Ukraine, Georgia, etc. in the west and the Central Asia Republics in the east. It fueled its formation of the Warsaw Pact after WWII. It fueled Stalin’s pact with Hitler just prior to Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939, giving Russia the eastern part of Poland in exchange for Stalin ignoring Hitler’s invasion of western Poland. I don’t think Russia cares about being “liked” by other nations, it wants to be feared and its actions reflects that and its xenophia.

Is that Vova stoking the fire?

I regret that we don’t have a better relationship with Russia and China, too. With Russian leadership in Putin, that seems less likely. But with China, maybe it’s still a possibility.

They make themselves totally unlikeable, like republicans do.

What is kinda sad is that the Russians, after the fall of the Soviet Union, could have gone democratic and worked together with the EU to modernize themselves, maybe, like China, producing something other than oil and wheat that the rest of the world would want to buy. Instead, they got taken over by a bunch of thieves who commandeered all the resources and have instituted a right-wing oligarchy (kleptocracy?) that is just as paranoid as Russia has always been.

It’s interesting that the right still talks about “Communist China.” China calls its ruling party that, but communism is not what they are doing. China is a totalitarian regime that has a state-controlled market economy. To me communism was never the real problem. What "communist’ regimes have always done is impose a totalitarian society; the only places communism has worked is in small, closed societies. The sin is totalitarianism, whether it’s left-wing or right-wing (call that Fascism), and a significant faction of the right wants to do that to America.

Having been to Russia.. “the people” are as nice as any country I have ever visited.. and by far nicer than some. Just because they are led by some idiot should not paint the entire population as evil. Much like while trump was the president “all” Americans were not on the same wagon.

there’s a good precedent for hating the Russian leadership. Acquiesce of Russia’s behavior in Ukraine and saying, “Just give it to Russia to keep the peace” is not acceptable to many European countries. It didn’t work with Nazi Germany and won’t work here either. Putin would want more. Such as insisting Poland, Rumania, Finland, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania be removed from NATO. Russia feels endangered from these countries being in NATO. Well, how do you think these countries feel about Russia’s potential future design on them? Russia truly has much less to fear from these states than they have to fear from Russia.

I’m a retired military officer who served during the Cold War. My hatred for them needs no stoking.

Putain is doing it to himself.

Stoking hatred of Russia? What’s not to hate about a country that declares unprovoked war on a neighbor and is happy to charge a citizen with sedition who stands on a street corner in Moscow holding up a blank sheet of paper, and throw her in jail for 15 years? And reports of the conduct of Russian soldiers in Ukraine bring back all those cautionary tales about “the Russian Army”, than which there is no whicher. And as far as one can tell, 98% of all armed aggression has been against civilians, not the Ukrainian army. Of course, the official line is that the hundreds of apartment buildings in Ukrainian cities were actually headquarters of Ukrainian intelligence and Nazi subversives.