Putin Not Surprised Biden Abusing Political Prisoners Like Trump, Just Disappointed
Lectures from abroad.
Devastating news, everyone. Vladimir Putin is looking upon our American experiment and he is not impressed with how we are living up to our ideals, what with how we are so grievously letting Joe Biden persecute his political opponent, Putin’s liege, Donald Trump.
Putin would never persecute a political opponent, of course, it’s just that all his political opponents have terrible balance around windows and poor judgment about how much nerve agent to sprinkle on their dinner and how their planes should get from the sky to the ground.
Putin was at the Eastern Economic Forum in the throbbing metropolis of Vladivostok, and he hated to say these things about America, really he did, bless America’s heart, but:
“As for the prosecution of Trump, for us what is happening in today’s conditions, in my opinion, is good because it shows the rottenness of the American political system, which cannot pretend to teach others democracy,” Putin said at an Eastern Economic Forum gathering in Russia’s Pacific Coast city of Vladivostok.
Oh dear, we’ve missed the mark, have we? Says the guy who ordered an entire operation to destroy the candidacy of Trump’s 2016 opponent in order to install him as president, and then tried it again in 2020 but failed? Bless.
“Everything that is happening with Trump is the persecution of a political rival for political reasons. That’s what it is. And this is being done in front of the public of the United States and the whole world,” he said.
Right where everyone can see us. Democratic lighthouses like Belarus and … Hungary and … North Korea and … dangit.
Putin was really excited, though, that Donald Trump has said he has a secret plan to solve the Russia/Ukraine war in 24 hours:
“We hear that Mr. Trump says that he will solve pressing problems in a few days, including the Ukrainian crisis. Well, this cannot but bring happiness. This is good,” Putin said.
Donald Trump’s plan is to lick Vladimir Putin’s entire grundle from stem to stern and give him all the Ukraine he wants. Which cannot but bring happiness!
Unfortunately, Putin just isn’t sure America and Russia can ever love each other again, now that Joe Biden has torn our formerly ride-or-die relationship asunder:
“What to expect from the future, no matter who the president is, it’s hard for us to say, but it’s unlikely that anything will change radically,” Putin said. He claimed the Biden administration has instilled a strong bias against Russia and ”it will be very difficult for them to somehow turn this whole ship” in the other direction.
That splashy sound you hear is Donald Trump running barefooted across the Atlantic to reassure his hero that he can do better next time.
So clearly, this is a lot of fun, and we should take Vladimir Putin’s constructive criticisms to heart.
But it brings up something timely. Students of Russian recent history know that Putin’s goal is not to destroy America, but rather to make America’s democracy look meaningless compared to Russia’s fascist ethno-petro-autocracy. It’s to expose us as frauds. (Which we often do a good enough job of on our own thankyewverymuch.) For if America is as corrupt as Russia, then nobody is corrupt.
If Washington’s promises are empty as Moscow’s promises, then maybe they’re half-full!
Also: Democracy must fail in Ukraine, in this view. The danger to Putin ain’t NATO borders. It’s a thriving society of free and cool-as-fuck people just down the road from Putin’s authoritarian shithole, many of whom just happen to have family members in Putin’s shithole, who can tell them firsthand how much better life is in Kyiv or Lviv or Odesa.
Now let’s compare that to a bit of what’s happening back here in US America and see if we find any parallels.
Republicans are currently launching a campaign to impeach Joe Biden for reasons they still haven’t invented, in order to show the American people that impeachment is just a political act, high crimes and misdemeanors are whatever you say they are, and Donald Trump’s two impeachments were meaningless and/or not so bad after all.
Yes, even though one of those impeachments was because he tried to extort Ukraine into helping him steal the 2020 election, and the second was because he launched a coup to overthrow the government when he lost.
House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer and all his idiot henchmen are bending over backward to try to find ways to paint Joe Biden as a criminal — to no avail — because if Donald Trump is a criminal, so must also Joe Biden be, obviously! It’s not to argue that Trump isn’t. It’s to reinforce the idea that “Ehhhh! They’re all crooks.” What’s so bad about a little RICO sedition treason? Everybody does it.
For an extremely current example of how fucking cynical they are, the vilest Republicans alive are currently screaming “INSURRECTION!” because some activists occupied Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s office for a little while demanding a five-year reauthorization of PEPFAR funding.
It’s not “I know you’re an insurrectionist but what am I?” It’s that if all political activism at the Capitol is an insurrection, then nothing is. Now let all the January 6 terrorists out of jail.
Here’s one from the not-so-distant past. Remember after Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh’s other accusers came forward, and just in the thick of the #MeToo movement in general, each time a Republican man was accused of rape or sexual assault — Donald Trump, for example, by 26 different women — there was a campaign to suddenly have an equal-and-opposite accuser for every Democrat? All the false accusations they made up? For particularly clownish examples, remember when Jacob Wohl and his little friend were inventing accusers for Robert Mueller and Elizabeth Warren?
It wasn’t to argue that Donald Trump wasn’t a rapist, per se.
Just that, you know, everybody does it. Or nobody does. Who can even know the truth?
Now do you see whose playbook Republicans play by?
We bet a lot of them are also very concerned about the deterioration of American democracy, as expressed by Vladimir Putin, defender of freedom.
You betcha.
[AP]
Evan Hurst on Twitter right here.
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>> That splashy sound you hear is Donald Trump running barefooted across the Atlantic to reassure his hero that he can do better next time. <<
Evan, I love you, I do, but I must say that this bumped me out of the realm of poetic immersion. Vladivostok, after all, is across the PACIFIC, not the Atlantic.
So I was all ready to drop a note of criticism here in the comments. Then I realized that Trump doesn't know the location of Vladivostok, because Trump doesn't know anything. So I wanted to salute you for your creation of metaphors so exquisitely sensitive to subject and context. You are truly a master of your craft.
"It’s a thriving society of free and cool-as-fuck people just down the road from Putin’s authoritarian shithole, many of whom just happen to have family members in Putin’s shithole, who can tell them firsthand how much better life is in Kyiv or Lviv or Odesa."
Or Tallinn, Estonia, where Mr S is from. And it borders Russia.
Estonia is very pleased it has split from the CCCP post wall excitement. They are free now, and quite enjoy it. That's why they joined NATO as soon as they could, because they knew you can't fucking trust Russia.
Ukraine, unfortunately, did not take this path. I know why, but I'm not gonna go geopolitical today.
Fuck Russia. Fuck Putin. Fuck Putin even more than Ted Cruz.
Slava Ukraini