W. Niederhut

John, I can't fix your reading comprehension problems, or your limited knowledge of Russian history. At best, I would suggest that you re-read my commentary about Kotkin and Putin's neo-Soviet agenda more slowly. Beyond Mearsheimer and Jeff Carter's punditry, I'd be curious to see a list of Russian history books that you and Chris Barnard have studied. My hunch is that it's a very short list. As for Ben Cole extolling Trump's diplomatic skills in comparison with Obama and Biden... 🤥 Like most Trumplicons, Ben still hasn't figured out that Putin's Orange Asset was always an international laughingstock, as Colin Powell said in 2016. I'm guessing that Ben also missed the J6 Committee evidence yesterday about Trump's precipitous December 2020 order to rapidly withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by January 15, 2021.

Ben's time zone never seems to interfere with his ability to immerse himself in the daily MAGA-verse propaganda. But he's someone who really needs to study the damning evidence about Trump's J6 coup attempt, including the fact that the Secret Service knew in advance that Trump's mob was armed and planned to attack the Capitol. As for Mathew Koch, he needs to take a break from watching Faux News and Ron DeSantis commercials to learn the terrible truth about Mango Mussolini and his seditious goon squad. Did Fox even cover the historic Congressional hearings today?

Incredibly, Chris Barnard doesn't seem to realize that there are a number of people on the forum, and in the right wing media, who have been directly or indirectly blaming Joe Biden and/or the U.S. for Putin's decision to invade and bomb Ukraine this year. Chris, himself, has repeatedly blamed the U.S. for Putin's bloody debacle, quoting Mearsheimer, and accusing Putin critics of projection and mass psychosis. 🤥 On this very page, we can observe Ben and Mathew Koch claiming that Putin would not have invaded Ukraine if his Orange Asset Donald Trump were still POTUS. The only thing consistent about Ben's shifting 2022 opinions on Ukraine is that, whatever happens, it's Biden's fault. Ben had argued for much of 2022 that Biden and NATO should have been more aggressive militarily in supporting Ukraine, but now his narrative has shifted to implying that Biden is a militant globalist lackey who baited Putin into further expansion of his neo-Soviet police state. Meanwhile, I hope that Ben and his MAGA-verse associate, Mathew Koch, listened to the damning Congressional evidence today about Trump's criminal efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

"Setting aside partisan politics..." Posted without intentional irony, eh, Ben? Trump's "diplomacy?" Are you referring to Trump's embarrassing press conference in Helsinki, after Putin dressed him down behind closed doors? Certainly, our EU allies had no illusions about the fact that Trump was, obviously, a compromised Kremlin asset. The only people on the planet who still haven't figured that out are the Republicans in the Trump cult. My hunch is that Putin didn't want to undermine his Orange Asset by annexing Ukraine while Trump was POTUS. He miscalculated, because Trump would have rolled over for Putin on demand. Meanwhile, Ben, did you and Mathew Koch watch the historic J6 Congressional hearing today?

Yes, it's weird. None of us would hesitate to express outrage about Hitler bombing English civilians with his damned V-2 rockets in WWII. But that's, essentially, what Putin is doing to the Ukrainian people right now. The man is a homicidal psychopath with a morbid hatred of Western democracy.

John, I don't view this Ukrainian invasion/annexation as a pissing contest between the U.S. and Russian imperialists-- i.e., as a transmuted version of the Cold War. Everyone knows that Soviet communism is defunct. Even Putin and his KGB associates anticipated its collapse in 1991. (See Catherine Belton's Putin's People.) In my view, Putin's Ukrainian invasion seems more like another chapter in Putin's broader war on liberal Western democracy, and his goal of confiscating and controlling other people's lives and property. It's about theft and control-- precisely what we experienced in the ROCOR when Putin and the FSB seized our churches in 2007. At the time, a Russian friend of mine said, "It's a shame the Kremlin took over our church." The Russians here had no illusions about what Putin was doing! What does he resent about Ukrainian democracy and autonomy? The Ukrainians had no offensive military agenda toward the Russian Federation. Putin wanted their property, and control of their population. Putin has spent the past 20 years establishing his totalitarian police state in the Russian Federation. He is openly contemptuous of liberal democracy. That is why he has actively supported right wing fascist politicians in the U.S. and Europe-- including the Trump cult here in the U.S. What amazes me are the illusions many people in the West still have about Putin's police state-- despite the daily atrocities we are hearing about in Ukraine, including the bombings of civilian targets. Many well-intentioned people have wanted to believe that Putin is some sort of enlightened autocrat. In reality, he's the son of a man who served in Stalin's NKVD Destruction Brigades, and the apple didn't fall far from the tree.

John, Where to begin? You're wrong about Russian history, and about the "projection" misdiagnosis. To deny Putin's goal of re-incorporating former Soviet republics into his fascist police state is to deny 21st century reality. To accurately perceive what he is up to is no "projection." Look at what he has done in Chechnya and Ukraine. Stephen Kotkin is a professor Russian historian at our highly prestigious Princeton University here in the U.S. He has written a number of acclaimed books about Russian history. You have simplistically misrepresented his thesis and accurate criticism of Mearsheimer's Putin apologetics. I should mention that I have had a longstanding interest in Russian history, literature, and culture. I have even served as a cantor in the Russian Orthodox Church (ROCOR) during the past quarter century. And the man who wrote the definitive history of the ROCOR has been a personal friend of mine. Stephen Kotkin is quite correct about the history of Russian imperialism. Obviously, the Russian Empire has been one of the great empires in world history-- spanning one-sixth of the world's land mass. They played a decisive role in crushing Napoleon and Hitler. We owe them a debt of gratitude for their defeat of the N-a-z-i Wehrmacht in WWII. 80% of N-a-z-i military casualties in WWII occurred in Russia. As for Ukraine, Russia's imperialist aspirations for control of the Don Cossacks and the Crimea was first achieved by Potemkin during the reign of Catherine the Great. But the Ukrainians have also had longstanding nationalist aspirations. Petlyura's regime succeeded the 1918 Hetmanate before the ultimate triumph of the Bolsheviks in Ukraine, and its incorporation into the U.S.S.R.'s police state. In the 1930s, the Soviet government was directly responsible for the genocidal Ukrainian famine of the Holodomor. Then, voila! Ukraine achieved independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. So, like Kotkin, I tend to view Putin's aspirations to annex the Ukraine as part of a centuries-old autocratic, Russian imperialist tradition. It's not a projection. It's reality. The imperialism of the Romanov's Russian Empire was transmuted by the Bolshevik revolution into the "imperialism" of Stalin's U.S.S.R. and Comintern. Eastern Europeans have had no illusions about it. Recall that Stalin and Hitler partitioned Poland before Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa. Then, look at the fate of the Baltic republics and Warsaw Pact nations in the post-WWII era. What is the attitude toward Moscow of people living on Russia's boundaries? Estonia? Lithuania? Poland? Chechnya? Georgia? As I said, I'm the furthest thing from an apologist for the atrocities of the CIA and U.S. military in the post-WWII era. At the same time, I pointed out to you the contrast between the U.S. Marshall Plan in Western Europe and the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe after WWII. Would you have preferred to live in Dresden or Munich in the 1960s and 70s? As for the present, what you think about Putin doing to Ukraine what Hitler did to England during WWII? Do you approve of Putin bombing civilian targets in Ukraine?

Anyone watching the J6 hearings today? Rep. Lofgren presented the damning evidence about Trump's pre-election plan to declare victory and claim the election was stolen/rigged. Rep. Schiff presented the damning evidence that the Secret Service knew Trump's J6 MAGA mob was armed and intended to attack the Capitol. Trump and his accomplices must be brought to justice.

To put this in perspective, it appears that Putin is doing to Ukraine what Hitler did to England during WWII. But Putin is, apparently, using Iranian-made kamikaze drones instead of V-2 rockets. Live updates: Latest news on Russia and the war in Ukraine (cnbc.com)

Huh, Mathew? You posted a Ron DeSantis commercial on the previous page of this thread last night. In all fairness, your hero, Ron DeSantis, deserves some credit for shipping those Venezuelan refugees to Martha's Vineyard prior to Hurricane Ian. But his Congressional vote against Federal aid for Hurricane Sandy victims is more problematic. Below: Ron DeSantis cheerleading for Hurricane Ian first responders

Yes, Matt, it's certainly a puzzling geopolitical shift for the Saudis, who were bankrolling our Neocon proxy war against Assad and Putin in Syria. Then Trump and Kushner were bribed to support the genocidal Saudi war against the Houthis in Yemen. (And to quietly accept Kashoggi's murder.) Conversely, Biden and the Democrats have not supported the Saudi's Yemen war, and my hunch is that Bin Salman's latest October Surprise with OPEC is intended to damage Biden and bring the MAGAts back to power in Washington. Ben Cole is jubilant about Bin Salman's treachery, as he and Tulsi Gabbard continue to blame Biden for Putin's decision to invade and bomb civilians in Ukraine. It's another weird night in the MAGA-verse, even featuring a Ron DeSantis Top Gun commercial posted by Mathew Koch... 🤪

Chris, Please spare us from your absurd misdiagnoses. In a nutshell, you have no real understanding of American history, politics, nor of the people whom you habitually insult here. Rather than responding to your latest puerile, ad hominem drivel, I will simply refer people back to my commentary (above) about your misdiagnosis of the American political spectrum in relation to fear mongering and mass delusions. As for my basic question about whether Putin has committed war crimes, it is entirely relevant to our opinions about U.S. and NATO interventions in Ukraine. Suffice it to say that I remain puzzled by the prevalent denial of Putin's crimes against humanity, including the murders and incarcerations of his own people during the past 20 years. The Crucial Difference in How Russia and Ukraine Wage War - The Atlantic (archive.ph) No Paywall

Dead wrong, John. I already rebutted Chris's inaccurate "psychic contagion" post in relation to contemporary American politics. (See re-print.*) Some of you guys have adopted Ben Coles' habit of ignoring specific rebuttals and re-posting the debunked theses. IMO, if people take the time to respond to arguments here, you all should take the time to read the rebuttals. Also, Democrats in the U.S. do not espouse Republican Trickle Down economics. They voted against Trump's December 2017 Trickle Down tax cuts, and against the Bush/Cheney Trickle Down tax cuts in 2001 and 2003. * John Cotter and Chris Barnard have quoted Nietzsche, Goethe, and Carl Jung here, but they, obviously, don't understand how the social psychology concepts they referenced actually apply to American society today. In reality, fear mongering and shared mass delusions are essential characteristics of America's Trump cult in 2022. In contrast, we liberals don't belong to any organized political party-- we're Democrats. True story. I played golf today with an elderly gent who believes that Dr. Fauci, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and other Godless liberals will soon be destroyed in a kind of Rapture, while Trump is reinstated in the White House! (Needless to say, I didn't tell the old guy that I'm a liberal Democrat.) 🤥 Trump came to power by fear mongering about Muslims, Mexicans, blacks, and invading immigrants at the borders. And the Republicans are currently fear mongering about almost everything before the elections-- crime, oil production, election fraud, "woke" liberals, the border, and what-have-you. As for the current crisis in Ukraine, I'm still waiting for John, Chris, Mathew Koch, and other Putin apologists to answer a simple question. Has Putin committed war crimes in Ukraine? The only deflective response to my question all day was a post by Mathew Koch claiming that liberals were celebrating a "war crime" -- the demolition of the Kerch military supply bridge! Matt Allison isn't suffering from a mass delusion when he, appropriately, condemns Putin for committing war crimes in Ukraine. That's reality.

Chris, I'm a psychiatrist, and I was still practicing psychiatry during Trump's unexpected, fateful election to the U.S. Presidency in 2016. Many people were shocked at the time, and rightfully so. "Triggered" is an understatement. It was especially difficult for black and Hispanic people I knew. Hate crimes against minorities had increased in the U.S. as soon as Trump began denigrating them in 2016. The vibe for U.S. minorities was probably quite similar to the way Jewish people in Germany felt during the rise of the N-a-z-i Party in 1932. Most American psychiatrists were deeply concerned in 2016 to see a sociopath and toxic narcissist like Donald Trump ascend to the Presidency in 2016. 27 of them even published a scholarly anthology called, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President: Lee, Bandy X., Lifton, Robert Jay, Sheehy, Gail, Doherty, William J., Chomsky, Noam, Herman M.D., Judith Lewis, Zimbardo Ph.D., Philip, Sword, Rosemary, Malkin Ph.D., Craig, Schwartz, Tony, Dodes M.D., Lance, Gartner Ph.D., John D., Tansey Ph.D., Michael J., Reiss M.D., David M., Herb M.A. Esq., James A., Glass M.D. M.P.H., Leonard L., Friedman M.D., Henry J., Gilligan M.D., James, Jhueck L.M.H.C. D.M.H.P., Diane, Covitz Ph.D. A.B.P.P., Howard H., Teng M.F.A. L.M.S.W., Betty P., Panning Psy.D., Jennifer Contarino, West M.A. L.L.P., Harper, Kessler M.D., Luba, Wruble M.D., Steve, Singer M.D., Thomas, Mika M.A. L.C.P.C., Elizabeth, Fisher Ph.D., Edwin B., Gartrell M.D., Nanette, Mosbacher M.D. Ph.D., Dee, Soldz, Stephen: 9781250179456: Amazon.com: Books And, as New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow correctly observed in 2017, "In Donald Trump's case, things always turn out to be even worse than we imagined." Six years later, it's obvious that the psychiatrists were correct about Trump. He served as a compromised Russian asset, divided American society, took bribes from foreign and domestic billionaires, gutted the Environmental Protection Agency, withdrew from the Paris Climate Accords, tried to sabotage our healthcare system, and incited a violent attack on the U.S. Congress in an attempt to remain in power. Now he has stolen classified government documents, including identifying information about under cover intelligence assets-- many of whom have disappeared since January of 2021. Meanwhile, Trump has continued to lie about losing the 2020 election-- fomenting ongoing discord, threats, and violence against public officials in the U.S. He has also destroyed personal friendships and family relationships in the U.S.-- pitting brother against brother with his lies and manipulations of his cult followers. Who is delusional here-- Trump's critics, or his cult members? My impression is that many of you guys in the U.K. don't really understand who Trump is and how he has damaged American society. My psychiatric advice is to use what you have learned about mass delusions to better understand Trump, Putin, and their followers in the U.S. and Russian Federation. You're, basically, misdiagnosing the Trump and Putin critics.

Indeed, Joe. John Cotter and Chris Barnard have quoted Nietzsche, Goethe, and Carl Jung here, but they, obviously, don't understand how the social psychology concepts they referenced actually apply to American society today. In reality, fear mongering and shared mass delusions are essential characteristics of America's Trump cult in 2022. In contrast, we liberals don't belong to any organized political party-- we're Democrats. True story. I played golf today with an elderly gent who believes that Dr. Fauci, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and other Godless liberals will soon be destroyed in a kind of Rapture, while Trump is reinstated in the White House! (Needless to say, I didn't tell the old guy that I'm a liberal Democrat.) 🤥 Trump came to power by fear mongering about Muslims, Mexicans, blacks, and invading immigrants at the borders. And the Republicans are currently fear mongering about almost everything before the elections-- crime, oil production, election fraud, "woke" liberals, the border, and what-have-you. As for the current crisis in Ukraine, I'm still waiting for John, Chris, Mathew Koch, and other Putin apologists to answer a simple question. Has Putin committed war crimes in Ukraine? The only deflective response to my question all day was a post by Mathew Koch claiming that liberals were celebrating a "war crime" -- the demolition of the Kerch military supply bridge! Matt Allison isn't suffering from a mass delusion when he, appropriately, condemns Putin for committing war crimes in Ukraine. That's reality.

I saw Hearts and Minds at Denver's Flick theater in Larimer Square the year it came out back in the 70s. I remember feeling overwhelmed by the film-- probably moreso than I had ever felt before, or since, after watching a movie. I also remember thinking that I never, ever wanted to watch that film again. I had a similar reaction to The Deer Hunter back in the day.

Geez... Mathew Koch, obviously, lives in the delusional Fox MAGA-verse. Apparently, Mathew hasn't ever studied the long-delayed report on Russian election interference in 2016 by the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee. Does Mathew also still not realize that Trump floated pardons to Michael Flynn, Rick Gates, Paul Manafort, and Roger Stone during Robert Mueller's Russiagate investigation, to stonewall Mueller's investigation of their 2016 contacts with Kremlin assets? As for Putin's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, I have two basic questions for Mathew, John, Chris, Tucker Carlson, Tulsi Gabbard, and the Putin apologists. 1) How do you define war crimes? 2) Has Putin committed war crimes in Ukraine?

War crimes in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_in_the_2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine#cite_note-1

Some people are comparing Putin's shocking invasion and bombing of Ukraine this year to historical events like the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, where JFK's negotiations with Khrushchev, thankfully, resulted in a peaceful resolution of the potential military conflict. But that isn't an apt historical comparison. What Biden and NATO are dealing with in Ukraine is more akin to Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939. Should England and the France have done nothing in 1939, in order to avoid "escalating" a dangerous conflict with Hitler? Pursuing peace at any cost, as Neville Chamberlain did in Munich? We are dealing today with a similar totalitarian police state in Russia that has violated international law by invading and bombing the civilian population of a sovereign nation. Obviously, the situation is extremely dangerous in an era of nuclear weapons, but does that mean that Biden and NATO should simply do nothing, in order to avoid escalating the conflict? I hope there can be a peaceful resolution of Putin's Ukrainian disaster. The best outcome would involve Putin being removed from power, and the Russian government putting a stop to the madness.

Does anyone around here other than our Don Trump, Jr. fan, Mathew Koch, think that Putin's bombing of civilian targets in Ukraine, like Shevchenko Park, is comparable to the Ukraine defense forces blowing up a militarily strategic bridge? I have noticed that people in the Trump cult, generally, have difficulty grasping ethical concepts, but this one takes the cake. It's ranks up there with Trump cult members dying of COVID who ridiculed masks as "face diapers."

John Cotter has a reasonable point about the international crimes of the U.S. in recent years-- especially in regard to PNAC and our post-9/11 Neocon "War on Terror." As for Putin, I have been somewhat obsessed with understanding the man since 2007, after he and his FSB assets seized our Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) in the U.S., Western Europe, and Australia. IMO, Putin is, definitely, a product of the Yuri Andropov Institute -- a latter day Stalinist sans Bolshevik economics. His murder of journalists, war crimes in Ukraine, and exfiltration of Ukrainian civilians to Russian prison camps, is the ultimate proof of his vileness. And, although he lights occasional ceremonial candles, the man is no Orthodox Christian. His Moscow Patriarchate has been a tool of the NKVD/KGB since the murder of Patriarch Tikhon in 1921.

Putin bombs Shevchenko Park in Kyiv

John, You wrote: "That’s what I mean by projection. Kotkin’s thesis is essentially the Manichean “evil Russia vs good USA” one that I mentioned previously. It’s a thoroughly perverse perspective because, if anything, the preponderance of morality lies not with the aggressor, the USA, but with the victim of the aggression, Russia." I emphatically disagree. I'm the furthest thing from an apologist for CIA and U.S. military atrocities in the post-WWII era, but let's not forget about the dark side of Russian history since 1917, including Putin's current atrocities in Ukraine. Stalin was one of the most evil, immoral men in the annals of world history. Jared Diamond and other historians consider the Stalinist/Soviet genocide to be the single worst genocide in human history-- resulting in an estimated 20 million Russian deaths caused by the Soviet government, including the Ukrainian Holodomor. Have you read Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago? The Mitrokhin archival material published at Cambridge University as The Sword and the Shield is another important reference about Soviet KGB history. (A less well known eye opener is Professor I.M. Andreeyev's history of Russia's Catacomb Saints, documenting the horrific, largely secretive persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church by the Soviet government after 1917.) As for Putin, his grandfather Spiridon Putin was Stalin's chef, and his father Vladimir worked in Stalin's notorious NKVD Destruction Brigades in WWII. Putin was a KGB agent stationed in Dresden during the collapse of the Soviet Union, before later re-surfacing as an "ex-KGB" apparatchik in the Yeltsin government. After coming to power in the 1990s, Putin gradually transformed Russia's nascent democracy into a totalitarian police state, run by Putin's FSB-aligned oligarchs.. British author, Catherine Belton, has written cogently about this subject in Putin's People. Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West: Belton, Catherine: 9780374238711: Amazon.com: Books Compare the legacy of the U.S. Marshall Plan in Western Europe to the fate of the totalitarian police states of the Soviet Eastern bloc. Is it any wonder that the people of Ukraine, the Baltic states, Poland and the former Warsaw Pact nations want to belong to NATO? What does Putin's oligarchic/police state offer them? So, Kotkin is correct, like most Princetonians.

John, Chris Barnard and I have discussed Mearsheimer's opinions about Ukraine on a few occasions here. I tend to agree with Princeton historian Stephen Kotkin's contrary view (above.)

Ben, Would you prefer Kevin Coup-Denier McCarthy as Speaker? How about Medicare-Slayer Paul Ryan? John Tobacco-Industry Boehner? Pedophile Dennis Hastert? Newt "Freddie Mac" Gingrich? Pelosi is, far and away, the best House Speaker of the past quarter century-- warts and all. And your misogyny is showing again. Consider joining Incels Anonymous. Meanwhile, you're, obviously, still delusional about Trumplicon pseudo-populism-- imagining that Trumplicons are concerned about American workers because they fear monger about immigrants. It's almost as if you never read the rebuttals people posted in response to your repeated claims that Trump is a populist. Can you list anything that Trump has ever done to benefit the American working class? His signature legislation was the December 2017 GOP bill cutting taxes for billionaires and attempting to sabotage the Affordable Care Act.