Americans Eager to Pile on Putin not Discouraged by Absence of Information

I feel like I’m the only person in America who doesn’t have a position on Putin and the Ukraine.

I have always thought Putin was ruthless, and I believed the people who accused him of poisoning dissenters. The thing is, even if those things are true, it doesn’t mean he’s wrong about Ukraine.

When he invaded Ukraine, my instinct was to go along with everyone else in the West. We are used to thinking invasions are bad. We don’t like occupiers of peaceful nations. Every intelligent person is against war. Leftists said Putin was wrong. Most conservatives agreed. I figured he was wrong.

Now I realize I don’t know who is right. I have not studied Russia or Ukraine.

I’m also wondering whether Americans should be heavily involved in the matter. I always say America shouldn’t be the world’s nanny or policeman. Shouldn’t I take that position with regard to Ukraine? It’s important to get involved when a bad actor is causing problems for the whole world, and we unquestionably had to fight the Cold War, but do we really need to jump in every time two far-off nations go at it?

Maybe we should limit our involvement. Maybe it’s shouldn’t be a huge concern to us if Russia invades its smaller neighbors. Ukraine chose not to join NATO, so it seems like our obligations are limited. It seems to be like Taiwan, which has no defense treaty with the United States.

There is no domino effect today. Neither Russia nor China is trying to build an empire of foreign colonies. During the Cold War, we had plenty of reason to think we had to fight communism overseas, because the Soviets truly did want to export it, by force, to the entire world, but neither Putin nor Xi has any interest in invading the United States.

I can’t find unbiased information on the war. Putin claims neo-Nazis are very powerful there, and they need to be taken down. I tried to Google this, and I got flooded with recent stories suggesting Putin’s claims were delusional. Then I changed my search. Suddenly, I was swamped with stories from several years ago. They came from the same news outlets that ran the anti-Putin stories. They said Ukraine was full of dangerous neo-Nazi militias that had to be stopped.

So Putin is delusional now, but he was right several years ago?

Putin claims drug addicts are powerful in Ukraine. I Googled Ukraine and heroin and learned that Ukraine is a huge conduit for heroin from places like Afghanistan. So apparently, Ukraine is the Colombia of the region, except it doesn’t do much of the growing.

Obviously, drug lords truly are a big problem in Ukraine. Big enough to justify military intervention from Russia? No idea. But it’s clear Russia has a legitimate concern.

I don’t think it’s all that important to decide whether Ukraine or Russia is right. To me, the question is whether we should be on the verge of a shooting war with Russia, over a distant land with which we have no defense treaty, in a time when Russia’s danger to us is nearly zero.

Maybe sometimes we should let other countries handle their own problems. I can see why we would work through diplomacy and humanitarian aid, and sanctions seem reasonable, but we are sending arms in a big way. Is that called for?

We are provoking an old-fashioned man modern Americans don’t understand, and many of the men who serve him are as old-fashioned as he is. We are wearers of skinny jeans. We whine about our feminine sides. We wear makeup and tights and cry when people get our pronouns wrong. Putin is different. He’s like our great-grandfathers. He has no feminine side. He’s the kind of man that was considered normal for thousands of years, before feminization hit the West.

My grandfather used to have his dental work done without anaesthetic. That’s what men used to be like. When his bird dogs got distracted by rabbits, he shot them to teach them to stick to birds. I worked in a bar a friend of his owned. The friend had an emergency appendectomy. The next night, he was back at work with a drink in his hand. A young man bothered him, and he threw the young man to the floor so hard I heard his bones hit the stones. That sound was how I knew there had been an altercation. He didn’t spill his drink.

When my grandfather bought pigs, he hired some friends to help him. They got out their pocketknives, grabbed the pigs, held them by the legs while they screamed, and cut their testicles out. They thought it was fun.

Men used to be different, and in many places outside America, they have not changed.

Many Russians are much tougher than we are. Putin is much stronger than Biden, and Harris isn’t even worth discussing. I suspect we are poking the bear a little too hard, without a compelling interest.

Maybe Russia is wrong, but governments are doing wrong all over the world, and we’re not supporting shooting wars against them. Saudi Arabia is full of slaves. Muslims use kitchen knives to cut girls’ clitorises out, and they sew their vaginas shut. Thailand tolerates child brothels. China mutilates dogs and boils them alive, and we all know what they do to human beings. Let’s not even discuss North Korea. The fact that a government does evil has never been sufficient justification for American intervention. It has always required more than that. Somehow, intervention had to be linked to preventing the evil from spreading far beyond the evildoer’s borders. Ukraine is right next to Russia, it used to be part of the USSR, and Russia isn’t going to use Ukraine as a launching pad to take Poland or Germany.

I admit, I know little about what’s happening. I have looked for information, but most of what I see doesn’t address the question of why America should be involved.

What happens if Ukraine loses? They get a new government. What about their human rights? I have Googled, and it appears Ukraine’s human rights record is similar to Russia’s, so it’s not clear they would lose significant ground. It sort of looks like being sucked into Russia wouldn’t do Ukrainians much harm, especially compared to the harm that would come from war on a wider scale.

Perhaps I’ll be furiously anti-Russia tomorrow, but right now, I have the impression that America should step back a little.

Is our position being driven by American leftists who are still pushing the Trump/Russia myth? Are they trying to punish Russia for supporting Trump (as China supported Obama and Biden, without repercussions)? Are they angry because Russia is less submissive to the alphabet crew than Ukraine? I wonder.

The web says Russia is not always nice to “LGBTI” people. What on Earth is I? Wasn’t it “LGBTQ+” last week? Does I mean you have sex with iguanas or what?

What happened to Q? What have they done with all the Q’s? I hope they’re okay. We may need to file for writ of habeas Q.

Maybe I is the new Q. Maybe they should call them IQ to keep things clear.

I don’t even try to keep this stuff straight. Even the people who seriously believe in it have fights all the time. No one can get it right.

My views on politics have changed. I used to be very patriotic, and I thought our republican system of government was the best kind. Now, I feel inclined to support America primarily because I live here and have citizenship, not because I have an overpowering, unreasoning sense of loyalty. If I had the opportunity to move to a place where I would be happier, I would probably take it. I think we should never have rebelled against England, and I think a good king is better than a republican government.

The best government is the government of Jesus Christ, but we won’t have that until he returns. After that, the best government is government by the Holy Spirit, dwelling in people and creating harmony of desires and beliefs. Unfortunately, that will never happen during the present age. After that, the best system is a theocracy in which Spirit-led priests and prophets tell us what to do. Then follows a Spirit-led king. Republics are further down the list.

Rule by the people is a degenerate notion. We are allowing all sorts of unintelligent, uninformed, malicious, selfish people vote on matters that are of great importance to all of us. We have chosen to be ruled by the stupid. It’s a wonder we have survived.

Our republican system appears to be a descendant of Greece’s direct democracy, in which every eligible resident voted on the issues. We generally rely on representatives instead of referendums, but the basic idea still comes from Greece, which had a pagan civilization that competed with the God-ordained system of Israel. It’s shocking how badly Greek thought has infected our own, given that the West has had the advantage of Christianity for over a thousand years. We should be further along than this.

I don’t believe God wants us to be a republic.

People are criticizing Putin, calling him a king. I have no problem with him becoming a king. What about his excesses, though? What about poisoning dissidents and so on?

This week, I listened to the books of Samuel. I heard some interesting things about kings.

The first kings of Israel were Saul and David. Neither was perfect, and Saul was worse than David, but both were considered good kings. Saul lost his mind toward the end, and he did some things that displeased God, but overall, he was not considered disastrous, as Solomon was. We know Saul was saved in spite of his failings, because the spirit of Samuel, who was a righteous man, told Saul he would soon be joining him. The people voted for Saul, but they didn’t have the power to vote him out, so he was not like a president. God himself elected him and approved of him.

Saul and David did some disturbing things.

Saul tried to kill David and his own son, in his own house. Imagine what would happen if Joe Biden tried to murder Hunter at the White House. Saul also killed a bunch of priests for helping David.

In order to persuade Saul to give him his daughter for a wife, David killed 200 Philistines, sliced the tips of their penises off, and presented them to Saul. David got a loyal army officer killed so he could have his wife. David told Solomon to kill a man who had insulted him.

Today, Saul and David would be considered serial killers and war criminals.

These men were chosen by God, and they were not considered evil kings, but we condemn a modern de facto king for poisoning his enemies. If Putin is bad, then David, Saul, and all the other kings of the Bible were war criminals, murderers, thieves, and human traffickers. We still admire a number of them, though.

God gave Nebuchadnezzar the Babylonian Empire. He also turned Israel over to Nebuchadnezzar and let him kill the king’s sons in front of him and blind the king. He let him castrate the sons of the nobility and make them slaves in his palace. Daniel was almost certainly castrated. God didn’t disclaim Nebuchadnezzar. He called him his servant and took credit for giving him his empire not once, but twice.

We expect to have a lot of control over kings these days. Is that system better than the old one? One of the things that make America weak is the rapid turnover in the White House. A real king could get things done, but a president knows he has a short time, and he has to kiss a lot of behinds and compromise. A foreign ruler with a longer reign can blow off much of what a president says, because he knows he will be around when the president is gone.

Obama killed all sorts of people without due process. His underlings say he insisted on being present to watch drone strikes, meaning he witnessed his enemies having their arms and legs blown off. Every president does things like this, even if Obama’s enthusiasm was exceptional and disturbing. Reagan bombed Khaddafi’s house. Hillary Clinton joked about Khaddafi’s death, which we helped bring about. Bush II killed a huge number of Muslims.

Trump appears to have singled out Michael Avenatti for sadistic treatment in the federal prison system. Bill O’Reilly was repeatedly audited under the Clintons. Trump is experiencing selective prosecution by allies of Obama and Biden who ignore misdeeds committed by their friends. Biden’s DOJ is going after 1/6 conservatives and ignoring similar and worse crimes committed by BLM and Antifa members.

Janet Reno murdered a lot of people in Waco, under Clinton. Waco is inside the United States. The dead were citizens.

Every ruler does a lot of evil. Maybe we should take a more mature view.

We have the idea that it’s impossible to enjoy life except in a system like America’s, but that isn’t true. If you’re close to God and you accept your position in life, you can be happy under most systems. Republican government is a relatively recent development in the West, but millions of people here had happy lives before it arrived.

I don’t know enough about Ukraine or Russia to take a side, but I’m pretty sure we are going overboard.