Reading Log: March 24, 2022 -- Disarray among the Russians; GOP racism

Caution is a good thing when it comes to news from Ukraine or Russia. Everybody has an agenda, and we here in the US read according to our values and desires.

But there's a substantial uptick in reporting of disarray within Russia. 

• There are reports of Russian units suffering frostbite at 50 percent rates, complaining that they're being forced to target civilians, and even in one case attacking a colonel. (Not that complaining among soldiers should be a surprise.)
• Tens or hundreds of thousands of well-educated, well-employed Russians are fleeing the country, citing disgust over the war, fear of repression, or a mixture of the two. Maybe 250,000.
  
• One such Russian is Anatoly Chubai, a special envoy to international organizations. He has resigned his position and left the country.
• Remember, weeks before the invasion a group of Russian active and retired general level officers warned that an invasion of Ukraine would be disastrous with long-term consequences. 

We, Russia’s officers, demand that the President of the Russian Federation reject the criminal policy of provoking a war in which Russia would find itself alone against the united forces of the West.

(For Gessen on the flight of Russian nationals, see this video.)

Putin the Menace

When the conversation concerns race, we should listen to those directly victimized by racism. When it comes to Russian aggression, we should listen to folks from the former Soviet Bloc. The Czech Republic's Prime Minister Petr Fiala 

 says that Russia will seek to retake its former territorial dominance: “If we don’t beat him [Putin], he will not stop in Ukraine. He will roll on and will recreate the USSR.”

Dog Whistles Everyone Can Hear

Republicans are trying to stick Ketanji Brown Jackson with the Critical Race Theory canard. Especially heinous is Ted Cruz, while Josh Hawley wins the prize for pressing her sentencing for child pornography offenders. His claims are all untrue or misleading, but that doesn't stop anything. (Link is to a piece by Ruth Marcus that lays it all out.)

That wonderful Christian (nationalist) Charlie Kirk commented: Ketanji Brown Jackson "is what your country looks like on critical race theory. Your children and your grandchildren are going to have to take orders from people like her. And what's amazing is that she kind of has an attitude too." (Per Media Matters.)

It's revealing: when they say you'll have to take orders, they mean they intend to give orders.

Bringing Russia to America

Paul Manafort was a key consultant to Ukraine's last pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych. Then he was campaign manager for Donald Trump. He lied repeatedly to the Mueller investigation after having (a) gotten support for Ukraine cut from the 2016 GOP platform, (b) coordinated a meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and Russian spies, (c) shared campaign polling data with Russian spies, and (d) Zeus knows what else. He went to jail, and Trump pardoned him.

On Sunday Manafort was removed from a flight headed to Dubai. His US passport has been revoked. But what, you wonder would Manafort be doing headed to Dubai? Nothing good, I promise.

Reading Log: Is Ukraine Winning? March 23, 2022

According to multiple sources, on Tuesday Russia's central newspaper Pravda published the number of Russian casualties--9861 killed, 16,000 wounded--then removed it. These numbers are lower than Ukrainian estimates, but they're still shocking. According to some experts, a modern army cannot sustain an offensive with this rate of casualties.

So for the first time, lots of experts are beginning to believe Ukraine is actually winning this war. That's not necessarily good news if Vladimir Putin becomes desperate. A Russian cyber attack could wreck infrastructure, particularly in the US. And we don't want to contemplate him following up with his nuclear threats. 

Acknowledging those legitimate dangers, we can also hope for Putin's reasoned decision to accept Ukraine's sovereignty and relinquish stolen territory. Here's Anne Applebaum: 

The Ukrainians, and the democratic powers that support Ukraine, must work toward a goal. That goal should not be a truce, or a muddle, or a decision to maintain some kind of Ukrainian resistance over the next decade, or a vow to “bleed Russia dry,” or anything else that will prolong the fighting and the instability. That goal should be a Ukrainian victory.

Experts have been wrong about a lot of things in this war, but this outlook is a change.

Other Notes

I've just started reading Timothy Snyder's The Road to Unfreedom, which tracks the lines between authoritarianism in Russia and what's happening in the United States. A Yale historian, Snyder is a Ukraine specialist, so he knows exactly what he's talking about.

A big takeaway from Snyder: if somebody shows you their fascist tendencies, take them seriously. The signs are everywhere: book banning, don't say gay, voter suppression, you name it. Yesterday a United States senator actually said he'd be fine if the matter of interracial marriage were left up to the states. 

I don't want to jump into the perpetual outrage machine, but I'm also alarmed how few Americans realize the danger we're in.

Reading Log: March 22, 2022

Although links get more views with individual posts, I think it's helpful just to keep things together. A couple of items got my attention over the weekend.

David French

Here's conservative commentator David French linking covid denial/vaccine refusal, January 6, and support for Russia all as a big middle finger to "the narrative" we encounter from experts and mainstream media. In "What the Russian Invasion Teaches Us about the Right," we find this brilliant line, "Contrarians aren’t critical thinkers. They’re gullible reactionaries, vulnerable to conspiracy theories."

French still lives in a very right wing world, or what used to be the right wing, but this piece is insightful. Why he wouldn't include climate change denial, I have no idea. 

Russian Fascism and American Fascism

I grew up in the militarized, patriotic South, where we could valorize Stonewall Jackson and George Patton with no sense of contradiction. That was and is problematic, but we had a sense that democracy was worth defending. That's why I've been so troubled by Trumpist devotion to Russia and Hungary, not to mention US betrayal of our Kurdish, Afghan, Syrian, and Iraqi allies. But I digress.

What we're seeing is a form of globalized fascism, in which authoritarians look out for one another. That's why India and China are helping Putin despite his criminal actions in Ukraine. It's why Trump embraced every authoritarian under the sun.

In an 8-minute video Mehdi Hassan unpacks the philosophical underpinnings of Putin's philosophy. From what I'm reading, especially from historian Timothy Snyder, this analysis is spot on. Putin literally distributes books by a Russian one-time Nazi, Ivan Ilyan, once exile but now with a Putin-approved statue.

Christian Nationalism

Bad news: Christian nationalists are getting increasingly radicalized and authoritarian.

Sexless

Kids these days. Recently I was in a conversation where some grumpy old men were grousing about immorality among the youth. I don't buy that line at all, especially since the generation my age and up has basically pillaged the planet and seems determined to keep it that way. 

But we should all be concerned how little sex younger Americans are having. Today's more permissive sexual culture is not making people happier. In fact, it's leading to less sexual intimacy, even less solo sex, than used to be the case. In the New York Times Michele Goldberg offers a sympathetic but critical read of Rethtinking Sex: A Provocation by Christine Emba that's worth a conversation. I'm not saying more sex is always a good thing, but loneliness sure isn't.

It's funny how often our conversations about sex and morality react against "traditional Christian values." But nobody's reading contemporary theological ethicists, who have lots of good things to say. I'll just note one contribution Christian ethics could make to our conversations about sex: sex is social and political as much as it is personal. Feminists used to say this a lot.

GOP So Far Down the Rabbit Hole

I've had a tendency to pepper social media with evidence of the danger our democracy faces, in large part because the Republican Party embraces radicalism and devalues human dignity and participatory democracy. Sometimes I just keep news links open to remind myself how ridiculous it's gotten.

Every once in awhile, it's time to vent. Some recent examples.

They Can't Freeze Out January 6 

Generally speaking, the Republican Party would like simply to forget about January 6. So much so that the party that ran eight congressional investigations of the Benghazi disaster has disowned party members who participate in the House investigation. 

But why? Because so much of their base wants revolt. The Party has been nurturing this sedition at least since armed Ammon Bundy and his group survived two armed standoffs with law enforcement officers. But a January poll indicated that 1 out of 5 Republican men believe violence against the government is justified right now. 

Imagine where the Republicans would be without all those treasonous men. We even have a Supreme Court justice whose spouse attended January 6 events with the intention of cancelling the 2020 election results. Ginni Thomas denies having participated in the planning.

Embrace of Explicit Racists

It's no longer a problem when GOP politicians embrace white supremacists. Idaho Governor Janice McGeachin and Georgia US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene have both appeared on platforms provided by explicit racist Nick Fuentes. Both Green and McGeachin denied knowing about Fuentes and his activities. Fuentes promotes the "Great Replacement Reality" on his talk show and has tweeted,

If you are a White male zoomer, remember that the people in power hate you and your unborn children and they will try to genocide you in your lifetime.

Here's a recent Fuentes "joke":

Now they’re going on about Russia and Vladimir Putin is Hitler—and they say that’s not a good thing.

Yet somehow these professional politicians know nothing about the guy who organized their appearances.

Government Overreach

The Republican Party has traditionally advocated limited government. But a wave of prohibitions involving education (books like Maus and Critical Race Theory) and aggressive anti-abortion and anti-queer legislation reveals that impulse has long since dissipated. 

Just this week we learned that Texas will not do business with financial firms that boycott fossil fuels. 

Senate Bill 13, which went into effect in September, prohibits the state from contracting with or investing in companies that divest from oil, natural gas and coal companies.