Life and death

 I am not completely comfortable citing Stephanie Grisham as a source, but she probably had no motive for lying when she told The View, "I think [Trump] was afraid of [Putin]...because Putin is a scary man.  I also think he admired him greatly.  I think he wanted to be able to kill whoever spoke out against him...In my experience he loved the dictators, he loved the people who could kill anyone, including the press."  

Grisham may have hit on the real reason Trump wanted the presidency, despite all his whining about the "great life" he gave up for it:  He assumed he could kill with impunity, which is still denied to most private citizens.  Rather, he could order others to kill for him and not dirty his hands like a common Kyle Rittenhouse.  "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters," he bragged in 2016, which was either his idea of a joke or a shrewd assessment of the depravity of his supporters.  But the dream was always to have a vast military at his disposal, not to mention hit squads like the one that killed Osama bin Laden.  It would be an improvement on "You're fired" -- "You're dead."  He wanted military parades, with tanks.  He wanted invisible planes and ships not named after John McCain, and above all he wanted nuclear weapons to deploy against hurricanes if no terrestrial target presented itself.  I'm sure he sits in front of his drive-in-size TV every night re-winding the footage of burning cities and corpses in the streets.  Even better than January 6.

Comparisons with Europe's last major war are not helpful, but certainly Putin's dream of quick victory has given way to Schwerkrieg.  There is no atrocity he hasn't engaged in, from bombing nuclear power plants to pulverizing the Mariupol children's and maternity hospital.  Refugees have reported guarantees of safe passage withdrawn without notice, exit routes leading only into Russia, and even being forced into minefields.  The level of free information inside Russia, never very high, has plummeted.  Brave Russians continue to protest, certain of arrest.  The Ukrainians fight on. 

If NATO is still worried about the war spilling over the borders, it can relax.  Already Russia is interfering with GPS signals of aircraft across the Finnish border.  Is this supposed to scare the Finns into withdrawing their application for NATO membership?  The Finns didn't scare in 1940.  See how hard it is to stop thinking about that war?

Yesterday Joe Biden finally announced that the US will no longer buy Russian oil, a tiny percentage of our imports but a signal for the oil companies to jack up gas prices.  (Bring back the Office of Price Controls from World War II!)  Republicans began clamoring for this last week, shortly after most of them stopped cheerleading for Putin, certain that it would damage Biden and the Democrats in the midterms.  Surprise!  According to the Wall Street Journal 79 percent of Americans support the ban even if it costs them more to gas up.  Quinnipiac reports that 56 percent want him to get tougher on Russia.  What that might mean is unspecified, but thanks, Republicans.  I don't say that often.

Here's something that would not have happened in The Greatest Generation's war:  the #CallRussia initiative.  To counter propaganda, Russian-speaking volunteers in the UK are calling Russians at random to explain what is really happening.  Of course many are hostile and suspicious (and frightened) but not all.  If this proves effective we should try it on the Americans brainwashed by Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson.  Baby Tuckoo is in fine form, assuring his cult that Biden encouraged Putin to invade Ukraine so he could promote green energy.  (Apparently renewables will make us vassals of the Chinese.)  Primed to believe in Democratic perfidy, they may go for it.  I used to run into older people who were convinced on a religious level that Roosevelt let the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor to get us into World War II.  You could not tell them otherwise, and now that I've read Richard Hofstadter I know why.  

"Don't mention the war," said Basil Fawlty.  Easier said than done.

You can't sum up a war in a single photograph but Francesco Malavolta came close with this -- compassion, solidarity, heartbreak.  Polish mothers are leaving strollers at train stations for Ukrainian women arriving with children and maybe a couple of suitcases, all they possess.