"I Don't Need a Ride. I Need More Ammunition."

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari.) 

The lead image, courtesy of yours truly, tells a big story. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is literally taking up arms against an allegedly superior Russian invading force while Donald Trump, after seeing a handful of protesters outside the White House, fled to a bunker, no doubt with the same look of panic as when, in an eerie moment of prescient symbolism, that eagle flapped its wings at him. Then he, typically, lied about it, claiming he was only inspecting the bunker.

 

 

   What Zelenskyy is doing is a little too dangerous to pass for political or PR theater. He's doing something calculated, alright, but not in the way that all other politicians calculate. He's doing something that one only reads about in history books going back to the Middle Ages: A head of state suiting up to literally do battle with an invading force. The business suit had been replaced with an ordinary GI uniform. The climate-controlled offices have been supplanted with the frigid front lines of Kiev.

    Most importantly, what Volodymyr Zelenskyy has done is give himself a job for life, if he wants it. His very real desire to risk his life to defend his homeland, within the capital, has made him an international hero. In the tiny fraternity of heads of state, he's a rock star, William the Conqueror and Mother Teresa all rolled into one.

   Of course, President Zelenskyy is none of those things. But what he is is a head of state who passionately loves his homeland and, much more importantly, the people within it, and is willing to put his very life and legacy at great hazard to that end. One doesn't need to be a cultural icon, historical hero or quasi-sainted figure. What Zelenskyy's doing is more than good enough. 

    And the human population outside of Belarus and CPAC 2022 can easily see what a hero Zelenskyy is. Boots on the ground are the same everywhere. And when they see their leader wearing their uniform, with no rank insignia or medals, eating beside them, literally rubbing elbows with them and taking up arms with them... Well, that buys a lot of loyalty.

     With his leadership and that of his generals on the ground, they've thus far, after five brutal days, successfully repelled a force superior in numbers and weaponry, although you wouldn't know it from Russia's disastrous invasion. Russian bodies are lying on the streets and bridges of Kiev and elsewhere, twisted, smoking metal all that's left of convoys after getting hammered by Ukrainian soldiers firing Javelins at them.

     Napoleon had his Waterloo and, before that, his disastrous invasion of Russia. Now it's Putin's turn.

Biden: His Time

However, President Zelenskyy isn't the only world leader to show strong leadership on the world stage. An old foreign policy wonk from way back, President Joe Biden is almost single-handedly stitching NATO back up after the Trump years and building an international coalition of the willing that makes George W. Bush's seem anemic by comparison (which isn't saying much).

   What cruel madness Vladimir Putin is inflicting on Ukraine and, by extension, Russia, isn't unprecedented, even in this generation. But this time, nuclear weapons are theoretically in play here and even Biden isn't willing to go down that road. As well as putting his nuclear system on high alert, he's already begun staging his warheads in Belarus, one of the very few shithole ex-Soviet states left who support him, along Ukraine's northwestern border. 

     However, what Putin had done is to not only elevate Zelenskyy to a national, and world, hero, he's also revived Biden's sagging presidency. At the time I write this, President Biden is saddled with approval ratings hovering at 37%, which matches Trump at the nadir of his popularity. These abysmal numbers are not altogether for good or legitimate reasons. Republicans seem to actually be winning the war on the White House by calling Biden weak in his response to Putin's aggression while cheering on the Russian dictator in his illegal and extremely unpopular invasion.

     As President Biden prepares to make his first State of the Union Address before Congress this Tuesday, he's doing so as a beleaguered and embattled president. His domestic agenda has failed entirely because of Republican and Blue Dog obstruction (Yes, Manchin and Sinema, I'm looking right at you). Passing the John Lewis voting rights and Build Back Better bills this year are little more than a pipe dream at this point because of right wing legislative IEDs. He desperately needs at least a foreign policy victory to take with him to the SOTU.

    Putin just gave it to him. And those low poll numbers? That was conducted just before Putin's invasion began in earnest five days ago.

    And what the Russian dictator is doing, while it may not be unprecedented, is nonetheless producing historically unprecedented things, none of them good for his cause. Here's one example: After decades of almost militantly refusing to join up, Finland and Sweden are now seriously considering joining NATO while blowing off Putin's warnings about doing so. Here's another: The famously neutral nation of Switzerland is freezing Russian assets. If that doesn't point to the seriousness of Putin's actions, after remaining neutral during Hitler's invasion of Europe, nothing will.

     Biden's no cop but he is a helluva recruiter.

The Яepublican Caucus

Trump's meeting with Putin was the most disastrous meeting between a Russian leader and US president since Kennedy met with Khrushchev in East Germany in 1961. When the two emerged to meet the press in Helsinki after a super secret two hour meeting, Trump's umber-faced demeanor and slouch next to Putin's loosey-goosey grin and body English only required a spiked dog collar around Trump's neck to complete the humiliating tableau. That was the job performance evaluation summit in which Trump, obviously under orders, sided with Putin over his own intelligence community regarding Putin's interference in the 2016 election.

   As shocking as that was then, that attitude is now mainstream in the Republican Party. How mainstream?

    Matt Schlapp's usual hate and bile-fest, aka CPAC, concluded last night, only this year it was different. This time around, it was a Groundhog's Day version of Victory Day, the Soviet-era holiday celebrating the end of the Great Patriotic War. Indeed, add a few hundred more square feet to the hotel's ballroom and one would've had a serviceable substitute for Red Square on May 9th.

    The day after calling Putin a "genius" for declaring independence he never had a right to grant on two Ukrainian regions (Donetsk and Luhansk), Trump slouched toward CPAC to reiterate his effusive praise for his lord and master by calling him "smart" while pivoting in his usual incoherent manner by also saying that Putin's failed invasion that made him so smart was something that was still bad and was all Biden's fault.

    Obviously, Putin's orange cockholster wasn't the only one to sing his praises at CPAC. But Trump, still widely seen as the frontrunner for the 2024 GOP nomination, still had the most noteworthy comments because he essentially promised more of the same pro-Soviet cocksuckery that we had to endure from 2017-2021. And the Soviet imagery isn't liberal agitprop on my part, either.

    Putin unambiguously has said that he wants to bring back the old USSR, the regime that made him. Right around the time the invasion started, he praised Lenin and Stalin and gave them credit for "creating" Ukraine. Earlier, he said the fall of the USSR was the greatest tragedy in the 20th century. That was behind his failed attempt to "annex" Ukraine in 2014 and settling for Crimea. It was a stunt that got him kicked out of the G8 and invited crippling sanctions.

    And, as stated in a previous post, Putin simply thinks of Ukraine as his personal back yard, that Ukrainian notions of sovereignty and identity are quaint and charming at best, treasonous at worst. So, essentially, Putin's trying to reassemble the Soviet Union and the smart money says he won't stop at Ukraine. And the party that was stridently anti-Soviet from the end of the second World War until Trump is now cheering him on.

   We need to remember who was on whose side at this moment in history and to not let these Republicans who are currently singing Putin paeans recalibrate or let their plaudits fall into the memory hole. We need to remember what character and leadership looks like. And they look like the Ukrainian president in ordinary fatigues and the American president midwifing a rock-solid international alliance standing up to a bully with nuclear weapons.

    And when Trump starts stumping for legal immunity next year, we also need remember that he's cheering on a tyrant for invading a capital city, something he can only fantasize about in his Adderall fever dreams.