Well, it's begun to happen. Russia is now officially invested in the full separation of the Donbass region from the rest of loving, caring, supportive Ukraine (talk about wrenching a child from the arms of its mother). And mostly, from what I gather, at the instigation not of Putin himself but of a majority of that beastly, dastardly Russian Duma. And here I was thinking he was the globe's most absolute autocrat outside of North Korea.
And yet . . . I continue to hope, pray and even fast - however foolishly (wouldn't be the first time) - for . .
What?
I pray - you guessed it - that poor beleaguered, besotted, befuddled Vladimir doesn't take the real bait. I mean, of course, the bait of launching a full-scale invasion of non-separatist Ukraine.
"And why pray, idiot?" you ask. Because I also continue to suspect that - whatever may be Putin's real impulses, fears, ambitions, hysterias - there are some Seriously Progressive and Enlightened Folks here out West, too, who don't just want him to launch all-out war (any moment now?), but so badly, they can all but smell and taste it. Which is to say, at least as much as he (supposedly) does.
I'm thinking of venerable foreign-affairs icons like Chatham House, the Atlantic Council, the German Marshall Fund and God knows how many other hand-wringing, pearl-clutching congregations of souls who no doubt would howl in outrage at the mildest imputation of being Russophobic. And yet who still, from everything I can determine, really believe that not just Putin but Russia herself is beyond redemption. At least for the foreseeable future. I.e., so long as she remains recognizably Russian.* And who further reason that, Moscow being the last geopolitically serious holdout of barbarism in our Gloriously Unfolding Sino-Western Corporatopia, why not goad her into "finishing the job" by doing something really stupid and nasty? Thereby confirming both our worst "we-knew-it-all-along" expectations of Muscovy, and our noblest vindications of ourselves? To say nothing of further hardening, solidifying, but above all ideologizing NATO. And in particular its most devoutly anti-Russian elements.
*As opposed to her becoming Progressively more and more Chinese, or Islamic, or Germanocentric (depending on the Russian region in question).
After all, can a truly Progress-Infatuated Globe (PIG) ever have enough reasons for loathing, despising, frustrating, isolating, anathematizing such a wicked old vestige of empire (Long live the POST-imperial West!) as Russia?
And who knows? The eagerly-awaited invasion may be taking place even now, as I write.
More on this later . . . possibly even within the same post . . .
