@Hoodat
Naw,it's just "stoopid Russian Macho Bush". Never met a Russian that didn't have an inferiority complex,for damn good historic reasons,and I have met more than a few. Oddly enough,this trait seems to pass through to at least two generations that are born in the west.
Yes,it IS "stoopid",but make no mistake about it,it is also extremely dangerous because these goobers just don't have enough common sense to know when to back off. All their lives they have been indoctrinated into "Defending Holy Mother Russia",and it is one of the very few things that was accepted by the authorities.
In Russia,and those who were born and who grow up in Russia,an inferiority comes at the moment of birth. I am going to play the 5 cent shrink here,and say it comes from every Russian but Royalty in all the history of Russia was born as a serf with no actual rights other than the right to die or be enslaved in a labor camp if they protest.
The typical westerner can't even begin to imagine the daily reality the typical Russian (AND Chinese) citizen grew up to accept as "just another day at the office". When I say they had a "lack of freedom",I mean a TOTAL lack of individual freedoms. They were nothing but tools of the state,and they didn't know any better than to accept that.
Any that didn't,immediately became an "enemy of the state" and most would spend the rest of their short lives in labor camps or as test subjects for medical research.
And the important,and damn near impossible part of this for a westerner to understand was they took this for granted and didn't see it as a big deal. They were flat-out OWNED by their Soviet Masters,and since they had no choice,accepted it as normal.
Royalty saw them all as nothing more than useful tools,and the Russian leaders still see them this way.
ANY western leader would be horrified by all the losses the Russians have suffered if they were their troops,but with the Russian leadership seeing their troops as nothing more than pawns,all it does is make them want to double-down. After all,THEY,personally are not threatened and are not going to be threatened in any way,even if the peons get fed up and decide to revolt. They will just get on their private jets or private yachts,and tool off to someplace with the billions they will steal/have stolen from the treasury.
And we ALL know that there is no such thing as a human being being so vile that Billions of dollars won't buy or rent them all the friends they need.
Hell,I wouldn't doubt that Putin has enough money stashed away in foreign bank accounts that there are several small nations he could just buy and then have a safe place to live.
I was actually thinking/hoping that the insanity attached to the massive losses of Russian troops would have already had him and the Politburo declaring victory and retreating back to Russia,but I now think this fool plans on the fighting going on until the last Russian soldier dies,if that is what it takes.
After all,there is NOTHING more important to the typical Russian male than his personal pride. Hell,it was practically the only thing the Soviet Masters allowed them to "own".
AND....,once again,THIS FORM OF SLAVERY HAS BEEN TRUE FOR THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF THE RUSSIAN NATION. It is/was literally the only way they knew to live.
I can only hope that foreign diplomats with trusted connections within the Politburo have been whispering 'Revolution" in their ears. These people no doubt have MASSIVE ego's,but if they weren't clever enough to have been obsessed with personal safety they would have never risen to the offices they now hold.
There has been plenty of whispers about Putin having bad health,and the time has come and passed for the movers and shakers in the Politburo to take him out of office,if for no other reason than to save themselves and their own positions,or POSSIBLY face another Russian Revolution.
After all,the typical Russian citizen of today is nowhere near as ignorant of world events and reality as their grandparents were,and it is the sons and fathers of these typical citizens that are doing all the fighting and dying,not the Politburo members or their relatives.
The worse part about this IMNSHO,is that they have been conditioned to be obedient to the system that even though they now KNOW they have been screwed for all of their history,it is hard to break the "obedient to authority" conditioning they have all grown up with.
One other thing I am growing more and more sure about every day is that if Russia isn't stopped NOW,and Putin removed from power,there WILL be another world war because getting away with this will only encourage them to go for more.
@sneakypete When I first cut the cable TV and had only Prime with a fire stick, I watched a few series from Russia, mainly out of curiosity.One was about a fighter pilot who was a hero, but whose zampolit, out of envy, referred him for disloyalty to the Soviet Union. Of course, he and his family went to prison for a year, and regrettably, while he was found innocent, his wife and kids died in prison.
He, however was found to be loyal to the Soviet Union and was reinstated as a fighter pilot, still loyal to the State, of course.
While an American, especially having lost his wife and kids over a jealous political officer, might take that plane and sort a few bastards out, the Russian Pilot was grateful to the State for finding him loyal--almost no mention of his losses.
The Czarist Russian/Soviet/'post-communist' Russian people have always been treated like livestock to some extent by their political masters, from what I can see.
Unfortunately, the people pulling strings here, on both sides of the pond, are not altruistic Americans, but somehow either intellectually or biologically inbred results of generations of people marrying their own cousins, punctuated by sheer cunning and ruthlessness, but a far cry from the more egalitarian concept of '
all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights'.
In their mindset, they have some sort of birthright to it all, and you and I have none but to be their pawns, their serfs, cannon fodder and trading chits in the grand scheme of things that enriches them and cares bugger-all about us. Multi-generational economic success has convinced them that this is true, even if that game is as rigged as the 2020 elections, and their toadying minions do all in their power to ensure that success (or suffer the consequences).
Where I am going with this is pretty simple. The first battle anyone has to fight in their quest for Liberty and fundamental human dignity is the one against themselves. They have to believe that they somehow deserve the basic human Rights to life, liberty, and property (pursuit of happiness), and that no one else has any greater or overwhelming right to that than the individual does.
Our loyalties are placed because we choose to do so, not because we were born tied to a patch of ground, or a certain family, but through our own determination that that is where our loyalty belongs. The trend, even here, however, and especially with the divisiveness of late is to break us down into tribal groups based on skin color, who we F**k, who/what we worship, any dividing line focused on lilliputian differences rather than overwhelming similarities--because otherwise, we cannot be manipulated, controlled, or kept at each other's throats while those who are pulling the strings (doing the manipulating) gorge themselves on a feast of our wealth, labor, even children, for their own appetites.
Two million people have overrun our borders--enough young men of military service age that they could have taken over any of the nice, tropical countries they came from if they had their crap together and a half-assed leader, but they are being led here, manipulated en masse, by whatever means and promises.
Other, more independently thinking people (at least for slavic regions) are being hammered out of that idea by their wannabe Russian overlords, at the behest of a cartel of power brokers who are choreographing the whole show--and ultimately, we are all paying not only for the ticket to the show, but for the concessions, popcorn and a pop, and maybe a candy bar, but for the little people everywhere, it is on our collective tab while others grow rich, if from nothing but skimming the vast funds being tossed about--regardless of what border, where is being violated.
Send bullets, not bucks, to both borders. Inform the stampeding herd on its way here like it was black Friday at the border to just put the brakes on, because one way or another they will be met with a wall, and putting the few women and children in front won't help them any more than it helped the Chinese troops in Korea to march villagers in front of them when advancing on US positions.
It is time we rebel against this manipulation, time to assert our own sovereignty to the degree we are not the chattel of these relatively few people who think they own us--and the essential first step is mental--to free ourselves of being manipulated through some of the loyalties hammered into us from the cradle.
Free people choose who or what they will be loyal to, and go from there.
That said, I believe our Constitution is a framework by which a people, despite their differences can be free, or as close as any have ever been as a large group with a pile of relatively minor differences that can be overcome by the suitable application of human dignity.
The greatest obstacle to achieving that has become our employees who have the temerity to think they are our rulers.
