Thank God for comic relief at a time when casualty lists are being generated as in any armed conflict. It isn’t every day that a tank runs out of gas, but that is what has happened here and a Ukrainian driving by has the balls to stop and mock them. These Ukrainians are some serious badasses.
I like these people. I’ve always liked Ukrainians. I had a good friend at the last office I worked in before I became disabled, a lovely woman named Sofia who was from Kyiv. She was brilliant. She spoke five languages. We were both fans of the writer Mikhail Bulgakov and discussed his work on our breaks. She should have been teaching linguistics at UCLA or the like, but she came over from Ukraine in her early 50’s and took a job doing pre-lit, of all things, in a personal injury firm in Los Angeles. That’s where we met. I used to do litigation for ambulance chasers and Sofia and I shared a big window office that looked out on downtown.
That was a surreal life, but not nearly as surreal as what you are about to see.
It’s like AAA for the Russian Army. https://t.co/xnK2fBlHB5
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) February 26, 2022
This is F Troop. These people are clueless.
Maybe this will be over quickly like the Gulf War. That is so devoutly to be wished.
Here is a clip you need to see. Here is the Ukrainian ambassador shaming the Russian ambassador at the U.N. This is memorable.
Ukrainian Ambassador asks for a moment of silence to pray. He invites the Russian Ambassador to also pray… for his salvation pic.twitter.com/MZw0696sVy
— Acyn (@Acyn) February 25, 2022
Just watching these two ambassadors mix it up is something.
Again, we need to find levity where we can. There is already much pain and misery. Hopefully this conflict will stop sooner rather than later.
The Ukrainian state highway department is taking down roadsigns for the locals to store.
(The sign is their joke, not real – but the message is clear!)
Ukraine has become my favorite country. I admire the steel in their spirit. They don’t lie, give up false, hypocritical prayers, pretend to be patriots or anything that is fake. UNLIKE OUR COUNTRY THAT PISSES ON THE 400,000 DEAD WW2 SOLIDERS. I disagree with anyone who says we are the hope of the world. Trump ended that fantasy. Can u imagine us being invaded by a SUPERIOR military power & Trump refusing to run??? What a fucking joke we are. The rich, privileged GOP stands with Hitler’s view of the world. FACT. The patriots in Ukraine are the hope of the world. 13 faced certain death on snake island & still gave the time honored salute of rebellion…fuck you! They don’t just shoot their mouth off on the way to a 1500.a plate fundraiser for fascism. They walked the walk & serve as a beacon that FREEDOM IS NEVER FREE. I will always admire true heroes. I will always hate child killing fascists. Call urself patriots. Call urself Christian. All I can say is FUCK YOU!!! LONG LIVE UKRAINE!!!
Scott, it’s not our “COUNTRY” that’s been pissing on the “400,000 dead WW2 soldiers,” just a small faction that has far too much power and generally doesn’t recognize that they’re all being played for stooges.
Ironically, some 70 years ago, hundreds, if not thousands, of Americans had their lives disrupted–even destroyed–over claims they were Communists or “fellow travelers” (or had been years, even decades, earlier) and thus posed a major threat to national security (even when they didn’t work in jobs remotely connected to the national security). They were rarely treated as mere “stooges” who’d been duped by those evil Russkie Reds; they were treated almost exclusively as enemies who were deliberately acting against US interests. Nowadays, it’s the ideological descendants of those “patriots” who are now playing the role of “Russkie stooges.”
My reaction to your first sentence is mixed. You are correct that it’s not our country, yet a portion of our country FAR larger than I would have ever believed possible number of people voted for Trump and not just once but twice. The vast majority of them not only would do so again, but are echoing his “Putin is a good guy and we should support HIM and not our traditional allies” bullshit. This is all quite personal to me, reinforced by a long phone call yesterday with my sister who still lives back in our hometown. I might, might have possibly made a bit of headway with her and we do try to do the “agree to disagree” thing when things get too heated (most of the time when it happens) but at best she seems to not understand why people are so contemptuous of Trump or his supporters.
Getting back to the heart of what I want to say, even if “only” thirty or forty million people had voted for Trump in 2016 I’d have been some weird combination of pissed off and disheartened. That sixty-two million did and that thanks to the Constitutional quirk of the EC he became President when he should have been tens of millions of votes short of getting the job ripped out my heart, as in my belief in my country. I’ve known since I was very young we have flaws and some big ones. As I grew up and learned more I realized that for all the positive things we have some ugly aspects to our history and growth both as a nation and a world power. Yet for all that I believed for the most part, despite uneven progress (and even some regression at times and/or in some places) we were on the tracks headed towards one day getting close to our founding ideals so elegantly set forth in the Preamble to our Constitution. That the train was on the tracks, and that while it was slowed down or stopped at times and even pushed backwards it was on the tracks going downhill and would inexorably start forward again. That certainty I’d had all my life was shattered. Somewhere a switch had been thrown routing us not onto a nearby side/rip track but an entirely new set of tracks pointed to something like the “Wabe” in the poem Jabberwocky.
When one considers not just the WWII dead, but all who gave their lives all the way back to the beginning, or gave up limbs or parts of their humanity to fight the likes of dictators like Putin, and countless more who gave their lives or sacrificed so much not in uniform but in civilian roles, both overseas on behalf of our country or here at home to make us a better country or even down at the community level standing up against injustice AND think about what Trump and the MAGAts are saying and doing like I do (too often for my own well-being) it becomes a daily fight just to get going and try to make any positive difference at all even in the smallest of ways in daily life.
Somewhere things changed, and while the majority of us hold the right values and beliefs our numbers are far from decisive. We are no longer “Better than this” as a country. We won’t be unless or until like has happened with the Klan in the past these people who have always been there lurking are driven back under their slimy rocks and hesitant, if not afraid to let their freak flag fly. The problem is we now have mass SOCIAL media and I have grave doubts that’s possible to do anymore.
The fact that Trump got sixty-two million votes in 2016 was bad enough. The fact that number didn’t drop by tens of millions in 2020 and in fact increased by twelve million means to me at least almost half the country IS fine with pissing on the graves of our war dead and not just those 400k but ALL of them, as well as the service of all of us and again I don’t limit that to those of us who served in the armed forces. People I’ve known all my life including some I grew up and went to school with who once (back when I was on active duty and even had a minimal Reserve obligation) called me with every bit of vitriol they could muster a fucking commie, or that I should move to Russia since I loved THEM and hated America, or that I didn’t deserve the title United States Marine and should be Court Martialed and imprisoned NOW are trashing President Biden, continuing to worship Trump AND praising Putin and Russia!
It is a gut-wrenching thing to again have to admit but on one thing Trump was right. I and others who served were in fact suckers for having done so. I’m at least grateful that my dad who was so badly wounded in the skies over Europe and haunted the rest of his life over what he might have been called upon to do over the skies of Japan died young enough to not witness the transformation we can easily see began under Reagan, much less most of that prediction late one night come true. As terrifying as it was to hear him of all people lay out what was coming if as seemed certain Reagan won and how the back and forth swings would cause so much disruption that I’d live out my life under a different form of government, that the country I was born in to would no longer be such a country I never really thought it was possible until 2016. And while I still think (or at least hope) we can hang on to much of it there’s no guarantee we’ll be able to do so.
All of that sacrifice, including those who made the ultimate one doesn’t mean shit to damned near half of eligible voters. Even if I live another twenty years the tragic fact is that things will be up for grabs every four years. Six years ago before Trump’s campaign picked up steam the U.S. was the clear leader of the free world and although China was growing more powerful still the world’s only true superpower. However, that status wasn’t as we thought encase in thick, polished to a shine steel vessel but in what turned out to be a Mylar balloon and Trump immediately punched a hole it. And kept punching more as some tried to make repairs. He’s STILL punching holes with MAGA nation and conservative “news” cheering him on as fast as we repair them.
So yes, the majority of us have our heads and hearts in the right place, but instead of us being an overwhelming majority it’s actually only by a fairly small margin when it comes to voting for who will lead us. Yes, the number of actual bat-shit crazies who drink Trump hued orange Kool Aid by the gallon is “only” perhaps thirty million or so but a distressing number of others are (like my sister) willing to look the other way for purely their own interests like lower taxes, regulations or creating a country where equal rights and justice under law are realities instead of slogans because they don’t want to admit, much less give up their privilege. They too shit on the graves of all those war dead every bit as much as the full-throated “Fuck Jesus – Trump is MY savior” assholes.
I don’t understand, much less respect the mass of gullible idiot who think that Ronald Reagan and his crew or Trump and his crew (as well as the Bush family – particularly care about them and want to improve their lives. What is far more upsetting is the quite substantial number of people who KNOW the truth, but as I said personally benefit from a system that was always rigged in their favor and has become more so under multiple GOP adminitrations and/or Congresses in my lifetime. Advantage (and significant ones) hasn’t been enough for them. They want absolute control and the ability to ensure only “their kind” get the full blessings of the freedoms our Constitution is supposed to provide to all. Mitch McConnell has worked furiously for years towards that end, and Trump was the vehicle for taking a giant leap forward. So they put up with all manner of things they found distasteful, perhaps not realizing until it was too late that the beast they had nurtured and kept on a leash but lengthened (that leash) during elections had grown beyond their control. Still, they can benefit so they are trying to sit back and/or hunker down and ride out the storm and tolerate the carnage so that they can rebuild things EXACTLY the way they want (complete with a SCOTUS that will say it’s all nice and legal) when the carnage is over. They too don’t give a shit about all it took to elevate our country to where it was “BT” (before Trump). No, as the Poet Laureate said in that marvelous reading at Biden’s inauguration they ARE willing to burn it all down to ensure others can’t share.
If anything, these people are worse than the true not-blue-but-orange MAGAts as far as I’m concerned. They don’t give any more of a fuck about those “400,000” any more than Joe Billy Bob MAGA braying praise of Putin because Trump praised him.
Assuming no drastic turns in the next day or two (with the sun going down in Ukraine right now, Day 3 has wrapped), we’re likely looking at a reverse Six Day War or Gulf War I. Being well-supplied with weapons by, well, everybody in contrast to your invaders being this ill-prepared (seriously, losing two paratroop transport planes to ground missiles in as many days like this is amateur hour) is a big part why morale remains so high.
Maybe because I grew up outdoors, in the foothills of the Appalachian mts, I learned never hit a hornet’s nest with a stick. It won’t turn out to be as much fun as u thought. I can’t imagine a nest as big as france.