That Porky Pig is a real stand-up guy. How can you not like him? Yosemite Sam is a different animal. A real meanie? Oh wait, I forgot, they are just cartoon characters. My bad.
To all those posting Ukrainian flags on their Facebook pages, Volodymyr Zelensky is merely a cartoon character. Y’all know as much about him as you do Foghorn Leghorn. Zelensky fills the void left by the demise of mid-day soap operas. He is the escape from reality that allows many to cope with the drudgery of their day-to-day lives. What soap operas were in past decades, our cartoonish mainstream news media is to today’s escapist virtue signalers. Zelensky is General Hospital’s Luke Spencer, and Putin is as The World Turns’ Anthony Herrera. Saints and villains. The oldest subplot of all literature, from Gilgamesh to Harry Potter.
Andy Griffith was nowhere near as nice a guy as Sheriff Taylor was in Mayberry, but nevertheless, folks fawned over him as though he was. Vincent Price always played monstrous villains, but in real life, he was a kind, sweet, and charitable man. This will be a shock to many, but professional “rasslers” Ric Flair, Rowdy Roddy Piper, and Blackjack Mulligan were all fake. Virtually everybody we see in the public square is an actor, and the biggest dichotomy between the roles people play and their true character are political figures thirsting for power and money. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of escapism, rooting for one’s favorite Netflix character, but it gets dangerous when cartoon- and soap-opera mentality is infused with the realpolitik world.
In my last article, I explained how the real world is different from the Hollywood movie script of Putin v. Zelensky. Putin was born in 1952, and his parents survived the Siege of Leningrad, where some Russians ate each other to keep from starving. It would be impossible for Hitler’s invasion of Russia not to be permanently a part of Putin’s consciousness. Perhaps the greatest time of peace and prosperity in Ukraine was during the 263 years it was part of the Russian Empire (1654 to 1917). Crimea is overwhelmingly ethnic Russian, and Russian was its predominant language. A referendum was held, and Crimea voted to join Russia. Although it was a “rigged election,” a fair election would have certainly delivered the same result. Yes, Putin seized Crimea, but it was only after Victoria Nuland and Obama deep-state operatives executed a coup overthrowing pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. At the same time, Ukraine, with the help of the United States, began to oppress the native Russian population in the Donbas. A regional civil war ensued. The majority of the Donbas are also ethnic Russians, and they too have voted for independence and to be part of a Russian federation. Isn’t self-determination mentioned in the preamble of the UN Charter? Who’s to say that the people of these regions won’t be better off, happier, and more prosperous being part of Russia?
Before the 2022 war, Ukraine was thought to be the most corrupt country in Europe, even more so than Russia. Zelensky was a comedian and actor who starred in a Ukrainian TV show where he was the president of Ukraine, whose chief charge was ironically fighting corruption. Realizing an opportunity, corrupt oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky bankrolled Zelensky’s campaign in hopes of cashing in (which he did). As is the Ukrainian way, Zelensky funneled millions in stolen money to himself. He’s canceled all opposition political parties, likely “knocked off” political rivals, and surrounded himself with fellow kleptocrats. He admits that Ukraine cannot account for $100 billion in United States aid, which is akin to saying, “I stole all that money, but I’m going to play dumb.” It’s also a fact that Ukraine sold some of the weapons stockpile the United States has given them to our enemies. The character he plays on TV is not who he really is.
Sometimes war is necessary, but history proves that in most circumstances, it only results in generations of succeeding misery, where often the objective at the outset of hostilities would have happened anyway. The justifications for war are almost always postscript rationalizations to make the effort seem noble when the reason for all the killing is power and money for those at the top at the expense of the conscripts at the bottom.
What happens to Zelensky if there is peace? He loses his grip on power. Perhaps all his crimes are exposed. Besides losing his wealth, he might also lose his head, as there are plenty of Ukrainians who likely want to and have the means to kill him. If there is peace, the money-laundering machine stops, and the Deep State Washington types not only lose their cash cow, but their money-laundering crimes are likely to be exposed.
At the time of German reunification in 1990, there were only 16 NATO members. Now there are 31, and Russia, boxed in, is less than half the size of the old Soviet Union. Proletarian internationalism, i.e., bringing communism to the rest of the world through geographic expansion, does not exist. Since 1990, the US has repeatedly poked the Russian bear, but Russia’s red line was always no NATO expansion into Ukraine. NATO membership can only work for stable countries, not one that is a kleptocracy undergoing a civil war where its inhabitants are already revolting against their government. It is insane, as all 31 NATO states are required to go to war if one country’s territorial integrity is violated. Ukraine cannot even control its own inhabitants from killing each other in territorial disputes.
Perhaps you’ve never heard of the Excised Penis Rule. Generally, only we students of Sun Tzu and Clausewitz know about it, but it is an ironclad geopolitical maxim. If one political party thinks it is okay to cut off a 10-year-old boy’s penis so he can become a little girl, all members of that party are absolutely f-ing insane and have no credibility in any matter, much less a matter of war. Have you noticed that the people clamoring for war are the same folks who are also obsessed with slicing off little boys’ penises? These people belong in insane asylums and are the very last people who should be listened to when it comes to preventing worldwide nuclear annihilation. I think it was Niccolò Machiavelli who said, “When it comes to foreign policy, always do the exact opposite of what the penis slicers say to do.” This war would have never started if the Biden Administration had told the Russians, “Ukraine will never be part of NATO.” Instead, it did the opposite, practically an engraved invitation for Russia to invade Ukraine.
Yes, no one wants their daughter to marry someone like Putin, but reality is reality. Before the war started, Ukraine had agreed in the Minsk Accords that the Donbas and Crimea would be under Russian control. Now, the “cut the boys' penises off” crowd wants to keep on fighting so it won’t have to do what it already agreed to do before the war. Huh?
Remember, it’s always about money and power for the people at the top.
