Reading Greenspirit, Steve and vast numbers of others, they seem chimplike in their thinking. Humans are made of chimp tribal alpha male territorial dominance hierarchies. Ukraine war seems predicated on the conviction that nukes will not be used. I very much hope it doesn’t happen, but if things get desperate for Russia, it becomes very likely. That’s why I define victory in this war as “”no nukes used; the world survives””.
Because they can string together sentences with grammar, spelling and some ideas and facts in coherent form, they think that they've done reasoning. Such linguistic thinking is false thinking. But very seductive.
Tribal thinking is normal and I have been aware all my life that I'm outside the normal way of thinking, so I've got a good perspective on the process. Mostly people are dependent on being part of the tribe. It's very dangerous to not be part of the gang that's in charge, so like a school of fish, staying in the crowd is vital for survival. Going out alone to face life's challenges is very time consuming and takes a lot of cognitive horsepower. None of us can do it for everything. So we have to trust the experts for nearly everything and go with the flow for the most part. But the more we can think for ourselves, and be right in that thinking, the better we do. Hence the great big brains above our eyebrows.
After watching Greenspirit and others do their "reasoning", hundreds and thousands of them, it's apparent that they are locked and loaded and cannot vary - as is normal and as I've always seen happen. I've profited during my life by being able to figure out situations, and making the big effort.
Sometimes I've failed because I can't be everywhere and figure out everything. The failures have been when depending on said experts. Financially, I've lost when thinking the madness of crowds would not be as much as it turned out to be. Look at the price of shares in electric car companies over the last couple of years! Reached insane heights.
After a lifetime of atomic bomb threats, they have rarely been so ready to go as now. There was Cuba which was very frightening, plus the general threat which always loomed. There were close calls of which I was unaware at the time they happened such as false positive for launch warning, fortunately stopped by a cautious military response to possibly fake news.
But now, we're in a ready to go situation, with Greenspirit and swarms of others thinking they have a winning hand and that they can just grind Russia down with no 1812 Overture response. Even my description of that got the silly response that it was a music competition between the Russians and the Ukrainians - with the SI poster giving links to music of hope and something or other. They turned even that into a fight for music supremacy, totally missing the point.
They do not do reasoning. They do mind-reading of Putin and assert absurdities such as he's trying to reconstitute USSR properties and conquer the free world. Explaining that in 20 years of power, he has done nothing other than respond in Georgia and Ukraine to USA/NATO threats and actual attacks. Even if we accepted that Putin started those conflicts with a view to gaining land and resources and to regain USSR territory, in 20 years, he has gained pretty much zero.
Crimea was Russian anyway, so that wasn't really a gain. Sevastopol was the Russian navy base and nothing changed. It had become Ukrainian by a paperwork change during USSR days decades ago by Nikita. During the 1992 collapse, it stayed there. Too small to deal with in the big picture.
Georgia was a colour revolution, with a minuscule piece that could be considered to have swapped sides.
The special military operation is obviously not going to take over all of Ukraine and that was obviously never the intention. 180,000 soldiers couldn't do that and keep it. As Putin said, and was obvious, the problem was the attacks on the easterners by Azov thugs. After thousands dead, with continued and enlarging USA/NATO arming and preparing, Russia sensibly demanded a peaceful transition to independent countries in the east, like Northern Ireland, Serbia, Bosnia and the various other part of Yugoslavia, Scotland's independence vote, England's Brexit choice.
Greenspirit and co claim to be in favour of democracy, but not for eastern Ukrainians apparently, who must be lesser humans than Scots, English, Irish, Quebecois, Kiwis, Ozzies, Canadians, heck even Yanks who chose independence from England hundreds of years ago and that not by voting.
At the rate Putin and Russia are reconstituting and acquiring the old USSR territories, it will be 10,000 years before they get it done. Greenspirit and co can't do arithmetic or something and continue with the absurd mind-reading idea, and use that to justify the end of the world.
Putin is 70. At best he's got maybe 10 years to get the USSR redone. In his more youthful 2 x 10 years he had done nothing to get it done. He's got his hands full just managing the Ukrainian USA/NATO attacks. Russia's military, economy, population and wherewithal are too trivial to do more than offer a threat to stop Yank Tanks to Murmansk, as was practised and remains a threat from Norway, with threat all the way down the front line states to the Black sea.
The only thing Russia has to avoid being simply conquered by a billion USA/NATO population, with vast economic power, vastly superior technology and huge conventional onslaught over the vast borders is the threat of last-ditch Armageddon.
Biden to his credit remembers the nuclear war danger from his younger days. But he's not running the show. The loons are in charge and they are baying for blood like any ordinary gang of chimps seeing weakness.
Putin has tried to explain his and Russia's situation, but the violent loons have no listen function.
There are some sensible people with some influence in the USA, but I doubt they'll get a hearing either. When the blood lust is up, such nattering nabobs of negativity are over-ridden. As an example, look at Germany - their Nuremberg and goose-stepping rallies were a lot of patriotic gung ho warmongering, not amenable to reason or warnings that it might not end well. For a while, it looked great as UK fled from Dunkirk and Rommel had north Africa and the rest of Europe, with Russia helping in the east and Japan giving USA a run for their money.
But look at Germany in the end. Hitler dead in his bunker. Berlin pretty much obliterated. Along with Dresden and a lot more besides.
And here they go again, as I predicted in 1999 when I watched tough leather-jacketed beer drinking young German men together [I forget which town it was]. Ursula, Klaus, Stoltenberg can't see that they are doing the same old German thing. I can understand that Russians, having just celebrated victory over Germany, are not keen on having Germans marching in mass murdering yet again.
I remain hopeful that Russia can bring enough to bear that they'll enforce eastern independence and USA/NATO will accept the reality of how it went. Thereby avoiding mutual assured destruction. But USA probably won't and will keep pressing.
Even if USA/NATO accept that the east goes independent and enjoys democratic processes like Northern Ireland, Scotland, England, Quebec and swarms of others who voted, Russia has been forced into the possession of China who will buy their gas and oil and resources, fertilizer, wheat and whatnot, but at discounted prices compared with what Euroserfs would pay.
USA/NATO has forced China's expansion right up to the border of Europe. That's a very bad move if China is considered a threat, which Americans consider it is. China and Russia have already agreed alliance, unbounded. Russia is NOT the dominant party in that relationship. 140 million poor Russians are a tenth of the 1,400 million increasingly wealthy Chinese. China basically owns Russia. I'd be surprised if there isn't an outright sale of Siberia to China, east of the Urals say.
Because there seems to be no constituency of a sensible democratic solution of eastern autonomy, it seems we're headed for atomic bomb escalation. I suppose it would start with say a retaliation on a USA carrier fleet, to avoid civilian deaths, in revenge for the sinking of Russian warships. USA would presumably respond, escalating further, with destruction of various Russia military facilities. Russia would then go again. And USA again. USA would run out of targets in Russia so would have to target ICBM bunkers. And the few Russian submarines.
USA has got a LOT more to lose than Russia. So has UK. And Germany.
UK would get an early attack as Boris has for years been highly belligerent against Russia.
I watched Putin before the war at the memorial tomb, standing for many minutes, not the usual cursory formal nod and a couple of seconds of standing to make it look good that Boris and normal politicians do. He knew what he was committing Russia to.
In this game of nuclear chicken, Putin has thrown the steering wheel out the window. He cannot avoid collision. The USA has to swerve to avoid Mutual Assured Destruction.
Greenspirit and co seem to think Putin has a spare steering wheel or something.
I wonder if the Pentagon and White House people will get into their bunkers before obliteration. Mariupol has bunkers too. Apparently life in bunkers is not good when all above is gone. Hitler's bunker wasn't a happy place in the end. I recommend USA people get a grip on reality and stop the goose-stepping to Armageddon.
I vote for voting. It's much nore civilized to vote than to murder easterners into submission. Especially when the easterners are armed with MAD.
Northern Ireland just had a vote. Scotland gets a vote. England had a Brexit vote. Quebec had a vote. Arrange a vote in Donetsk, Luhansk, Mariupol. Voting is much better than murdering. When atomic bombs go off in Peoria, and Washington looks like Hiroshima, maybe survivors will wonder if there wasn't a better idea. There is. It's called democracy, freedom, free enterprise, voting, self-determination.
And cancel all the stupid sanctions and trade barriers and economic destruction.
Meanwhile, with fertilizer and wheat sales stopped, a billion borderline people are going to starve, migrate, invade, try to survive. To prevent voting in Donetsk, USA/NATO is willing for a billion people to die, even without a nuclear war. It's already too late to avoid calamity for many millions who will starve and die.
If USA/NATO take it right up to nuclear war, of MAD proportions, that will be a billion obliterated immediately, with another 5 billion in months from starvation and local conflict, and another billion whittled away. The total human population when the smoke clears and populations stabilize would be about 200 million spread around rural hinterlands such as the Amazon jungle, Papua New Guinea, remote India, no doubt some Afghan goat herders who are well-armed, and the well-armed Preppers across rural USA.
It's strange that most Americans prefer that outcome since they have so much to lose. I guess they think it will just be on tv and won't affect them personally.
Mqurice |
