For 242 days, Russians tried to wrestle the Donetsk Airport away from a handful of Ukrainian fighters. Many of the best Russian special ops soldiers were killed in the effort. Many Chechens were killed.

The Donetsk Airport became a symbol of Ukraine ‘ s heroic resistance in the face of a much more powerful and numerous enemy force.

Finally, the Russians realized that they weren’t going to achieve the feat they’d been promising the avid TV viewers back in Russia and capture the airport. So in a fit of blind fury, they destroyed it.

Here is what the Donetsk Airport looks like now:

This is what it looked like before:

And this:

So much senseless destruction, so much death.

But at least the Russian TV viewers are happy because tonight’s shows will be especially fun to watch. The destruction of the airport is being massively celebrated right now in Russia. Now they have really shown the evil Americans who’s boss!

Reader Stille asked a very important question as to what the difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is at this point.

I believe that underneath all of the empty sloganeering aimed at people who like to hear familiar and comforting sounds all of the time, there is a single yet crucial distinction:

Republicans believe that if you’ve got to cut a dog’s tail off, it’s better to do it in a single clean cut instead of dragging out the painful process indefinitely. They want to roll back the nation-state ‘ s caring government* now and let the post-nation – state sweep in immediately.

Democrats, on the other hand, believe that the transformation will be painful and there is still time to soften the blow.
This contrast can be easily observed in Obama’s extremely proactive SOTU last night and the Republican insistence on tinkering with the boring issue of abortion in the newly Republican congress. The Congress chose to concentrate on this matter precisely because it’s so irrelevant to the voters. The downside of the caring government was always its obsessive need to control and legislate morality. It is no longer possible for a government to do that, and the Republican Congress is reminding us (not consciously, of course) what we will be gaining when we let the nation-state go.

It’s time to stop clinging to our old party allegiances** and reevaluate them in view of the new reality. Do you believe that the transition away from the nation-state should be softened? Or do you believe that it makes no sense to drag the process out?

I obviously believe that it should be softened as much as possible.

* As we have learned in our discussions of the nation-state, such a caring government is both a wonderful and a horrible thing.

** An incapacity to let go of old systems of belief and change one’s mind is a symptom of intellectual caducity.

You know why I almost never buy food to go? Because the chances that I’ll drop it into the biggest puddle available right outside the restaurant are enormous. As I just discovered.

Russians hated yesterday’s State of the Union Address. They are polluting the media with rabid excretions of how much they hated it. Here is just one example:

“The Americans have taken the course of confrontation and do not assess their own steps critically at all,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a news conference.

“Yesterday’s speech by President Obama shows that at the center of the (U.S.) philosophy is only one thing: ‘We are number one and everyone else has to recognize that’ … It shows that the United States wants all the same to dominate the world and not merely be first among equals.”

I told you it was a great speech. Would the Russians have hated it so much if it sucked?

Don’t be a Russian! Support the SOTU!