The pathetic susceptibility to his disinformation tactics

I leave tomorrow morning to travel to visit family for Thanksgiving. I’ll be gone a week. Then Brother comes to visit for a few days followed by the start of my performance season. So it could be more than two weeks before I post again. An Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos reports that former First Lady Rosalynn Carter has died at the age of 96. She was a partner to Jimmy Carter in the fullest sense of the word over their 77 years of marriage. I have much respect for her and Jimmy both for their work in the White House (though I may not have appreciated it fully then) and their amazing work since then putting their faith to work through the Carter Center and Habitat for Humanity. Jimmy, at 99, is still alive, though has been in end-of-life care since February. Hunter of Kos wrote that Russia is losing soldiers with waves of assaults at Avdiivka. Ukraine is making progress near Kherson. And Putin is deciding whether to remain as president until 2030. Al that means the propaganda is going full force to convince the masses it is all worth it (not that he cares about their opinion).

Putin's press secretary just gave Russian viewers a wonderfully tacky defense of the oligarchy: Sure, we might be murdering your sons in a war of conquest dreamed up by an aging mob boss, but our kids have had it tough too!

For example, Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov is declaring his daughter is living in France in very Spartan conditions. Of course, there are lots of tweets showing just how not Spartan her life is. The rest of us – including all those Russians who don’t have toilets – would be delighted to live in such poverty. Dartagnan of the Kos community discussed an article by Ann Applebaum for The Atlantic detailing Putin’s long range plans for Ukraine. Applebaum is quite qualified to explain Putin’s thinking. Dartagnan lists her qualifications. Some of the major points: The West must decisively crush Putin’s “neo-imperial dream.” At the very least that means pushing Russia totally out of Ukraine. If we don’t... Yeah, Putin miscalculated in starting this war. But the war rages on and causes suffering from Europe to the Middle East to Africa. He may be in a stalemate in Ukraine, but he has turned that into a waiting game. And he believes time is on his side. Wrote Applebaum:

If he can’t win on the battlefield, he will win using political intrigue and economic pressure. He will wait for the democratic world to splinter, and he will encourage that splintering. He will wait for the Ukrainians to grow tired, and he will try to make that happen too. He will wait for Donald Trump to win the 2024 U.S. presidential election, and he will do anything he can to help that happen too.

The nasty guy’s return to the White House is at the top of Putin’s wish list. Dartagnan wrote:

But the pathetic susceptibility of Republican politicians and their favored media organs to his disinformation tactics is also key to the calculation, just as it was during the 2016 election.

Applebaum’s evidence is the number of Republicans already spouting Russian and Chinese talking points, plus the delay of the next package of aid to Ukraine. Applebaum then explains Putin’s efforts to turn Russia into a permanent state of war. He worked as a KGB agent in East Germany so the idea of perpetual war is plausible. 40% of the state budget – 10% of GDP – now supports the military. Russia in a permanent state of war means that once he conquers all of Ukraine (and that’s still a goal) he then comes for Poland, the Baltic states, and perhaps even Germany. Applebaum turned to what we can do about it:

If Russia is already fighting America and America’s allies on multiple fronts, through political funding, influence campaigns, and its links to other autocracies and terrorist organizations, then the U.S. and Europe need to fight back on multiple fronts too. We should outcompete Russia for the scarce commodities needed to build weapons, block the software updates that they need to run their defense factories, look for ways to sabotage their production facilities. Russia used fewer weapons and less ammunition this year than it did last year. Our task should be to ensure that next year is worse.

Put more sanctions on Russia’s military supply chains. All those Russian assets frozen at the start of the war should be seized and given to Ukraine. Dartagnan concluded:

In sum, Applebaum offers a clear-eyed assessment of the reality. It’s unfettered and unimpeded by the political gesticulations and pandering of people more interested in performing and catering to their constituents’ fears and prejudices than in actually standing up for our nation against a corrupt, malevolent tyrant. In that respect, it neatly mirrors the same choice our country will be facing in 2024, when it decides who will be its next president.