Last week I was walking past a Home Depot warehouse when I observed that on a short side road (not the main road) to make a turn onto the premises there appeared to be something sprawled out, obviously road kill. As I got closer I noticed slabs of the animal’s insides as far as 20 feet forward of it. It was a raccoon, and body parts were scattered all about.
What this meant was that whoever ran over the animal not only did it deliberately, but did so at such an unnecessarily high rate of speed; whoever did this obviously found enjoyment in doing it.
There are some sick people in this world, and sometimes the truth is treated in this way. Vladimir Putin seems to have gone literally psychopathic, behaving like a man who, unable to chase down a fly in the kitchen, sets the whole house on fire just to kill it. Now, I don’t know if Putin is experiencing any actual “enjoyment” in bombing civilian targets and killing innocent people in Ukraine any more than Donald Trump enjoyed watching the January 6 insurrectionists storming the Capitol Building, but it is plain to see that what he is doing is deliberate and unnecessary. Russia‘s foreign minister had the audacity to summon the American ambassador to scold him about how “unworthy” of a “statesman” it is to accuse another of war crimes; and Putin has been acting like a “statesman” all this time? Could have fooled me; I would have just called him a war criminal.
The truth "hurts" sometimes. While Russia seems to have a powerful military, there are reasons why their armed forces are a bit overrated, with the reliance on, or threat, of nuclear arms and hypersonic missiles to "even" the odds. While Putin’s goons are “warning” the U.S. not to continue to embarrass them by exposing their bumbling thus far in Ukraine and their desperate attempts to bomb the country into submission, the truth is that historically, Russian military success on the ground always seemed to require vast numerical superiority over the enemy; during Operation Bagration during the summer of 1944 that made German defeat inevitable, the Russians outnumbered the Germans in combat troops 3-1, in tanks 13-1, and in aircraft, field and assault guns by nearly 10-1.
But when facing forces more evenly matched with their own, Russian armies suffered from a handicap that most Western armies did not: the lack of a non-commissioned officer corps, meaning sergeants. This was likely done out of fear of creating a “proletariat” leadership, with squad and platoon sergeants taking initiatives against the wishes of officers. Of course the role of the noncom is in fact to keep the troops in line without officers having to dirty their hands with that business; without noncoms, officers may give orders without being certain they are being followed, or troops are left without knowing what to do if an officer is incapacitated or not available, or soldiers often finding themselves confused or are afraid to act on their own for lack of information.
In the field in the Ukraine, the basic lack of competence of Russian ground forces has not yet been overcome by sheer force of numbers as they have in the past. Ukrainian forces are clearly more motivated to act on their own initiative since they are defending their homeland. And what are the Russians fighting for? The truth, as "painful" as it is for some, is Putin's wish to absorb the Ukraine back into the Russian Empire, with him lording over it like a modern-day czar.
I suspect that most Russians know that most people in the free world “hate” them, although given the propaganda they are fed on a daily basis, they misunderstand the reasons why. After the Cold War, people thought that there would be “peace in our time,” at least in Europe. But there should have been a warning with the Serbs in the 1990s, who like the Russians are a people with a feeling of “social” inferiority in the European order, which can only be "remedied" by acting “tough” and bullying weaker neighbors—and when not getting their way, acting with barbarous cruelty.
There is a website that I occasionally visit to see if there is any product of interest to me that is apparently run by a Ukrainian. He left a message for visitors, stating that what is seen on the news in other countries is actually different than what is happening on the ground, in fact “it is much, much scarier than that,” especially where Western media has been driven out and unable to report it. Once things were peaceful in his town in southern Ukraine (it isn’t named), but it has been occupied by the Russians for three weeks now, with a “lot of military equipment” around, and because of the impossibility to move goods in and out of the city because of Russian checkpoints and constant shelling, it is on the brink of a humanitarian disaster. Although his country has “common roots” with the Russians, he warns that despite being “brothers,” if “they did this to us, imagine what they can do to you.”
But no, you have far-right smartasses in this country, like Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, who think (or lie about thinking) that they know the real “truth.” Tim Dickinson writes in the latest edition of Rolling Stone that GOP dirty tricks operative and convicted felon pardoned by Trump, Roger Stone, is among a growing number of far-right fanatics who seem to support Putin and his war because they are either attracted to the cult of fascism, or simply because they want to be contrary with a Democrat in the White House. While Putin is leveling Ukrainian cities and towns, Stone claims that he is “not acting offensively.” Well, Putin is acting “offensively” in more ways than one. Besides, why should we worry about Putin killing innocent civilians, including children, says Stone, when “millions of illegals are bringing disease” into this country?
Then there is media maven Cassandra MacDonald, one of those people who has no actual principles of her own, but just wants “radical change”—and if not Bernie Sanders, then Trump will do just fine. This MAGAmaniac has professed her love for Putin for no other reason that “you know who Putin is,” which apparently doesn’t seem to bother her. But Zelenskyy is just “a shifty little shit weasel.” Some of us would say he has shown a great deal more courage than the pathetic little shit weasels of the pro-Putin far-right. Dickinson then mentions former hard rock musician Aaron Lewis, who like fellow far-right nutjob Kid Rock is deep into those allegedly “patriotic” country music roots. At a recent concert, Lewis launched into a pro-Putin diatribe laced with Zionist conspiracy theories, and then denied anything “bad” was happening in Ukraine, saying it was all “bullshit,” parroting the Kremlin propaganda line about “fake news.”
Of course it isn't like we haven't been lied to by our own leaders, and I'm not just talking about Trump. Remember George Bush's non-existent "weapons of mass destruction" and "Al-Qaeda links" used to justify the Iraq war? But there is no "precision" in the crazed Putin deploying his military like a caveman’s club doing brain surgery; the truth of it is just so much road kill for his supporters both in Russia and in this country, and the sight of it should disgust us all.
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