The Russia-Ukraine propaganda war: Putin and Biden have common ground -- deceit

 So, about Ukraine. Let's not fall for the propaganda -- whether from Putin or the Biden administration.

Not Putin talk about 150,000 "peacekeepers" being mobilized for what inarguably amounts to the second round of annexation of Ukrainian territory. (In 2014, it was the Crimea).

His use of the old trope of just protecting ethnic Russian regions in Crimea, and now the Donbas, recalls the arguments once used by Nazi Germany to gobble up Czechoslovakia and Austria.

Meanwhile, Biden -- in a seeming echo of Neville Chamberlain's disastrous policy of appeasement 70 years ago with Hitler -- stumbles over calling Putin's actions a "minor incursion," or the "beginning of an invasion," or an fullblooded "invasion."

Biden's administration now tries to trot out the idea that this is brave DEMOCRATIC Ukraine fighting off a neo-Soviet juggernaut . . . but this is the Ukraine where he and his family have made millions from a corrupt government with its own autocratic ways (arrests of political opponents, stifling of news outlets not toting the Kyiv line, ethnically based seizures of churches and monasteries, etc., etc.)

Ukraine has its own oligarchs; they just aren't as "effective" as those governing their bigger, more powerful neighbor.

And we've been down this road before, with the call to faux righteous crusades to defend (or in more recent Middle East wars, create) "democratic" nations that were truly led by warlords and corrupt, opportunistic politicians themselves unafraid of ruling with iron fists.

Let's not get fooled again.

 

Well, assuming Trump's lawsuits and recounts don't provide what would truly be a dramatic shift . . . I muse, as a History grad, on one truth that seems to be understated (at the least):

Never before in American history has a president presiding over what had been a booming economy, record employment, and some rather impressive diplomatic and trade successes (pre-Covid, albeit) -- LOST a second term.

Other than the virus, what is the one factor that might have made the difference Tuesday? While the GOP platform's n pro-life and economic policies, secure borders, etc., likely found resonance with most or at least many Americans, Trump's character -- so crudely displayed, even while being the epitome of narcissistic (if inarticulate "bigly" as Donald would say) hyperbole and outright lies -- ultimately made HIM, not his administration's policies and accomplishments, the primary issue for too many Americans.

I realize that's a rather harsh assessment to some of my friends on the right, and not harsh enough to acquaintances on the left. Of course, we certainly saw widespread corruption, dishonesty, and cynical (tacit and intentional) use of the to-often-destructive mobs usurped by the extreme left over the summer.

But in the end, no one individual -- in particular not Joe Biden and Kamala Harris -- could fit into the spotlight of disgust Trump largely, if not completely, earned.

Was there unfair, biased reporting about the campaign, even unfettered open support by the news media for one party over another? Oh, yes. Was there voting fraud? Certainly, there always is, but was 2020's fraud any more widespread than that in past elections? That remains to be seen, and recounts and litigation may yet show the truth of that, or put the fears largely to rest.

But in the end, Trump's character, IMHO, will be seen as the tipping point. Historians likely will someday conclude that a vote for Biden and Harris in 2020 was, perhaps more often than not, a vote against Trump's public persona.

And be sure that persona was built at least as much by Trump's own actions/Tweets as a news media that, undoubtedly, lost its collective mind and shredded what was left of its journalistic integrity.

A 16th-century Irish proverb warns that it is, "Better the devil you know than the devil you don't know." The idea is that as bad as it might be with the present person or situation, what comes along to replace him, or it, might be even worse.

We'll see.