Finally, I decided to go check social media and immediately ran across the worst take I could even think of. The Ukrainian military took back the Hostomel airport near Kiev that had been taken by elite Russian special forces.

How can it be? idiots ask.

Maybe the Russian soldiers ‘ hearts aren’t in it! they conclude.

No, really. See for yourselves.

https://twitter.com/Icky_Mettle/status/1496955206432702467?t=zu5hyWewc90lQ6W1m_8fdw&s=19

I wonder how it must feel to be quite this stupid.

On a positive note, I’m glad that I don’t know anybody who isn’t supportive and is acting like a bastard in this situation. It doesn’t help that we are in yet another weather-related lockdown today. It took everything I had to spend the day entertaining my kid and not fall apart.

I now went for a drive, in spite of the weather because I need to recharge to be fit for human company. I’m trying to avoid updates from the battlefield because I can’t process them. What makes it really bad is that this is our brothers and sisters doing it. My own child is half-Russian. It’s easier when it’s a distant foe and not somebody who grew up next to you, watching the same cartoons and laughing at the same jokes.

I also would like it if people quit with the “Putin this and Putin that.” Putin does what his people want him to. Every time he sends troops somewhere, his ratings go through the roof. Yes, he’s dumb. But even an opossum would learn this simple reward system by this time.

This isn’t semantics. Putin will die at some point. But a hundred million people armed to the teeth with nukes and burning with an extreme hatred of the US aren’t going anywhere.

Our main hope right now is, strangely, the neoliberal capital I keep talking about. The capital won’t be into a nuclear holocaust. Let’s see what the forces of the capital do.

Some points that Americans forget at their own peril:

1. There’s no China as an independent political actor. China is a satellite of Russia and does as it’s told. People who say “our biggest geopolitical threat is China and not Russia” have no idea what’s going on. There’s no “x but not y.” XY are an entity with common goals.

2. The reason why the Russian people hate the US isn’t anything the US did. This hatred isn’t about the NATO, the 1990s or anything of the kind. Consequently, there’s nothing that Americans can do to make themselves less hated.

3. The current invasion of Ukraine by Russia is domestic policy, not foreign. People who keep asking, “but why would Putin do this?” are, again, very unaware of recent history. Putin is doing it because every time he invades somebody, his approval ratings soar. His people are loving it. There’s no cruel dictator forcing an unwilling populace to murder. The populace is willing, happy, and very upset.

4. Americans believe they are the center of the world and everything happens because of something they did or didn’t do. But that’s not true. Its very possible for people to hate you without you doing anything to them. They hate that you exist, period.

I know that the TV says the opposite, so it’s useless to bring all of this up. But I’ve got to try.

You’ve seen what can be done to people with propaganda, right? We’ve all seen it. And that’s just a couple of years. Now imagine twenty years of relentless, daily, unadulterated propaganda conditioning people to hate you. Americans. Telling people to blame every trouble on you. The evil, the hateful, the inhuman you.

I really hope there’s somebody in the White House who’s in control of something and is preparing in case there’s a strike against us.

Ukraine is small potatoes. Imagine how happy the people of Russia will be if there’s a nuclear strike on the US. Yes, they’ll die, too. But dying for something this beautiful is totally worth it.

You can chant, “it’s not our conflict” as much as you want. But if somebody hates your guts, incantations don’t help.

Russia is bombing Kiev, Kharkov, Odessa, and many other cities. The people of Russia are cheering. Putin is threatening the rest of the world with nuclear war.

This is not a post about COVID. The COVID debacle is only a culmination of lomg-existing trends

My sister who lives in Canada forgot to renew her car registration on time. They’ve been under a lockdown for two years and haven’t had a chance to use the car much. It’s easy to forget if you aren’t actually driving.

Then she remembered and tried to renew. The process of renewal for registrations that lapsed by a few months is so byzantine, multi-staged, confusing and humiliating that I’m not going to try to describe it here. Life is too short. All I can say is that it’s designed purposefully to make life as uncomfortable as possible for people who DARED TO BREAK THE RULES. A crowd of useless, angry people are employed to harass citizens who pay a boatload of money in taxes so that the useless, angry idiots can get hired. And so on.

This reminded me of how in the USSR disabled people had to come to a disability office every year to re-certify their disabilities. If you were an amputee or a blind person, for example, you had to present yourself in person (and wait in a long line, which is particularly sweet when we are talking about disabled people) to prove that your amputated leg hadn’t grown back and your eyesight hadn’t been magically restored. Of course, the authorities didn’t really believe that people could grow a spare leg. But they didn’t want to waste a great opportunity to torture and humiliate the unwell citizens.

If I had more time, I could also relate the story about how my sister had to pay $1,000 last week for a yearly wellness check in the “free healthcare” Canada. Or how her kids don’t have a pediatrician because the free healthcare is completely free from having to provide services.

What I’m trying to say with all this is that COVID strictures aren’t a new unexpected development. Canadians have been trained like poodles for many years to put up with totalitarian discomfort, humiliation, pointless regulations, etc. Yes, almost all of my Canadian stories are from Quebec, which is at the forefront of Canadian totalitarianism.

So is the Canadian trucker protest over? That’s it? Does anybody have a credible update?

They should have spent some of that money on taking a basic math course. Or paid better attention in grade school.

My 6-year-old would be able to calculate this better. For shame.