Why do most people believe Putin will launch his nukes and actually end mankind? I understand he is ‘unstable’ at the minute, but surely he isn’t a total psychopath? Unanswered question on Quora.

Providing Kyiv with MIG-29 fighter jets and other potentially game-changing weapon systems could help turn the tide. Refusing to do so may only prolong Ukraine’s agony…. Refusing to impose a no-fly zone in Ukraine may be justified because it exceeds the risks NATO countries are prepared to tolerate. But the idea that doing so could start World War III ignores history and telegraphs weakness. New York Times editorial by conservative columnist Bret Stephens.

Senior EU official: “The longer the Ukrainians hold out, the more they can withstand attacks on buildings, the more likely it is the Russians will either use chemical weapons or targeted, limited nuclear weapons. We can’t rule this out; can’t say for sure we wont see this happen” A Tweet by Mujtaba (Mij) Rahman @Me_EuropeMD Europe @EurasiaGroup. Formerly @hmtreasury@EU_Commission. Senior Research Fellow @LSEEI. Columnist @POLITICOEurope. My views. Seeking analytical truth.

About thirty-five years ago, I was involved in a development that involved another builder. He had bought one half of the project from the landowner and I was developing the other half for a group of three investors who had bought it several years earlier from the same guy. We were processing the properties through the city at the same time and he wanted us to name the streets after his family and the owners of the property I was processing had already named them for a couple of members of their family. The former owner had no leverage with us but did with the other builder and he wouldn’t sign on some needed city documents without his street names.

I agreed to meet with the other builder and the seller to talk about the roads but going in I told them we weren’t going to change the names. When I got there, the other builder was frantic, saying something like “He’s crazy, he’s going to cancel the sale unless you change the street names. He is up the road yelling at somebody but he’ll be back in a couple of minutes. You’ve got to change the names.” I told him that I didn’t see how the seller could cancel the sale but, if it really became a problem, I would agree to change the street names. But first, I asked the other builder to let me try an experiment.

When the seller came back, he started yelling at me that saying that, if I didn’t agree to change the street names, he was going to sue me. I started yelling back. I remember I had a clipboard with a small map on it and I threw the clipboard on the ground and started kicking it, doing everything I could to start frothing at my mouth. Spitting, swearing, and kicking the clipboard around in the dirt. The seller immediately stopped yelling and switched to trying to get me calmed down. He was fine with our names, all he had wanted to do was have a conversation, blah, blah, blah. He told the other builder that of course, he would sign the documents. It was shocking.

When I was in college, probably my sophomore year, I spent Easter vacation on campus. If I remember right, there was only one other student there, a RA from another dorm. He was a Quaker – formally known as the Religious Society of Friends – and we couldn’t have been more different, but we both played chess and we bonded over two games every day. He had been an orderly at an insane asylum and he told great stories about it. He more or less held the opinion that almost all the patients were rational in their own world and he told one story I still remember. He was watching a guy eating soup and his head had fallen to the side, almost laying on his shoulder, so that the soup was dribbling out of his mouth and he couldn’t get any. My friend asked him why his head was like that and the patient told him he didn’t know, “the head just did it”. My friend thought about it for a few minutes and said, “I see the problem, you are only using your right hand, use your left hand for a while and that should tilt your head back up.” And that’s what happened.

We are afraid of Putin, everybody is afraid of him, it seems. Afraid that Putin is crazy – like irrational crazy – and he might start a nuclear war if we directly confront him. Our fear disempowers us as it empowers him and he is counting on that and is continually stoking our fear. To quote Molly McKew, who says it better than I can, writing on the www.greatpower.us website; the fears Putin creates for us are boxing us in. This has been the Russian strategy from the start. It is the clear reason why we have so much intelligence on what they planned to do and what it would look like. Because they wanted the White House to see it, because they knew what the likely reaction would be. And they were right. We put ourselves into the box and took actions off the table that could have changed the outcome. We accepted the stage that Putin set…

Putin is a coward — by which I mean, he is not brave. He plans and acts in ways where he believes he has the greatest advantage and will endure the least costs for the greatest rewards. He does take risks — when there is empty space before him into which he can move before an opponent can. But he is not the type to die bravely and nobly in heroic sacrifice for his nation…

This matters in particular in relation to his overt nuclear fearmongering — which he is doing exactly to keep the White House penned in and afraid to act, not because he wants to risk his own annihilation…

[T]here is nothing to indicate he is a blaze of glory guy. It seems unlikely he would use a nuke in a circumstance when there would be equal retaliation. In one sense, this means that we should stop being hemmed in by this fear and accept that the risks and costs are Ukraine’s to assess and determine. Ukraine is taking all the risk. They are paying all the costs. We should listen to them about what risks they are willing to take and costs incur. This is the minimum amount of respect that we can give to them when they have already shown the soundness of their strategic planning against Russia has far, far surpassed our own.

People are always picking and choosing when to act like art, entertainment & media has no political power & I’m so tired of it. A Tweet by Bree Newsome who identifies as artist – grassroots organizer – free black woman – proud wife & mama – removed sc’s confederate flag in the name of Jesus on june 27, 2015

Hitler was one of the first great rock stars. He was no politician, he was a great media artist. How he worked his audience! He made women hot and sweaty and guys all wished they were the ones who were up there. The world will never see anything like that again. He made an entire country a stage show. Said David Bowie after he and Mick Jagger had seen Triumph of the Will, Leni Riefenstahl’s film of the 1934 Nuremberg rally, fifteen times.

I’ve been reading Hitler and The Power of Aesthetics by Frederic Spotts and it is fascinating. I recommend it if you are at all interested in World War II or how Hitler came to power although it isn’t really about either one. It is about Hitler as an artist and the power of that art, especially performance art. As far back as I can remember being told anything about Hitler, it was that he was a buffoon. I don’t think I have ever been shown a movie clip of Hitler speaking except to demonstrate that he was a foolish little man.

That is ad hominin thinking at its purest. Hitler was evil, he was a narcissist and a sociopath, and, after he was in power, increasingly out of control and out of touch with reality. At twenty, he was a powerless evil man, and how he became a demi-god is fascinating. As I type this, I can hear myself getting defensive to an imagined “Why would anyone want to read about that little evil man?” so I’ll resort to quoting Timothy Snyder: It is easy to sanctify policies or identities by the deaths of victims. It is less appealing, but morally more urgent, to understand the actions of the perpetrators. The moral danger, after all, is never that one might become a victim but that one might be a perpetrator or a bystander.

This book was written – or, at least, published – during the Trump Administration and there are times when what Hitler did seems to resonate with what Trump did during his 2016 campaign, especially in terms of his rallies. In both cases, they have been criticized and ridiculed for their use of language but in Hitler’s case – and probably Trump’s also – his use of language was thought out and practiced. Hitler admired Llyod George, the Liberal Party Prime Minister of England, for the primitiveness of his language which Hitler thought connected him to his followers. Hitler’s speeches were all emotion, he didn’t lay out programs, he charmed his listeners and they adored him. According to William Shirer, the author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich who saw Hitler in Nuremberg in a 1934 rally, They looked up at him as if he were a Messiah, their faces transformed into something positively inhuman. If he had remained in sight for more than a few moments, I think many of the women would have swooned from excitement.

I started this blog post just before Putin launched his attack on Ukraine which has sucked up most of my bandwidth and stalled me out. But I did find this book fascinating and wanted to comment on it so I can get it off my desk. I also want to comment on the isolation and paranoia of autocrats. Hitler and Putin are very different men but there are commonalities worth looking at. One of them is the arc towards isolation that all autocrats seem to follow.

Humans are social animals and, to a certain extent, that socialness is what keeps us sane. Bumping into other people – not physically but emotionally and developmentally, at least – is what sets boundaries and keeps us coherent, it enables us to be in a relationship with our fellow travelers. People who amass great power sort of step out of normal societal rules, they do not follow the conventional wisdom, they are, almost always, sociopaths. It becomes increasingly easy for them to think they are the only one who is right and everybody else is wrong, that has been the case up to that time after all. Their advisors become sycophants and the only reality they see is the sociopathic leader’s reality which they reflect back to them. As their reality drifts away from our common reality, the sycophants follow them, and the sociopath is free of checks, leading him into a fantasy land of his own making.

As late as Spring of 1945, as Germany was imploding, Hitler was in his bunker, moving imaginary armies around on the situation board and refining models of his plans for rebuilding German cities as grand displays of the power and longevity of the Third Reich. I don’t think that Putin has reached that level of delusion yet, but he clearly thought taking Ukraine back into the Russian fold would be easier than it has turned out to be and his army is clearly not as well trained and equipped as he imagined. I’m beginning to think that, with enough support, Ukraine has a chance in this war.

The first casualty when war comes is truth. Attributed to California isolationist Senator Hiram Johnson (and others, starting with Aeschylus in about 450BC.

Have you captured a Russian tank or armored personnel carrier and are worried about how to declare it? Keep calm and continue to defend the Motherland! There is no need to declare the captured Russian tanks and other equipment because the cost of this … does not exceed 100 living wages (UAH 248,100), Statement by Ukraine’s National Agency for the Protection against Corruption

Putin’s reaction to shame has become my greatest obsession & fuel for deep instinctive fears. I know, deep in my bones, that humiliating a powerful man is the worst possible result. The energy 4 revenge will be potent & vast. I’m scared. & I hate that I know this. But it’s real. A Tweet by Julia Sweeney @JIsbackintown fading into oblivion with acceptance Los Angeles, CA

A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic Attributed to Stalin.

Yeah, it is true. We are now in another devastating European war. It makes one want to ask, What is it with these White Europeans? Are they just the most violent people on the planet? It’s pretty hard not to come to that conclusion, about two/thirds of mass shootings in the US are by White men of European heritage, after all. On the other hand, maybe it is just because White men have access to the best weapons, we’ve been fighting wars ever since we all lived in Africa, since we were hunter-gathers and this is just another chapter. And I want to quickly point out that it is not everybody, that it is always only one man, but I think that one man is a distillation of the crowd. This time it’s Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin who is the angel of destruction.

There is no good news really but, if there were, it would be that Ukraine is rewriting the book on how to wage a 21st-century propaganda war. They are brilliant. On the propaganda front, at least, Ukraine seems to be doing everything right. They are constantly showing stories of Ukrainians fighting back and winning despite the odds, starting with the nine guys who gave their life protecting Snake Island and the pilot who shot down six Russian jets.

The propaganda on President Volodymyr Zelensky is especially good with pictures and videos of him defending the country from the trenches versus pictures of Putin sitting at the end of the longest table on earth with three minions, nervously huddled at the other end. In a video, in response to the US offer to evacuate him, Zelenskyy says “I Need Ammunition, Not A Ride”. Whenever damage is shown, it is damage to Ukrainian civilian facilities or Russian military assets (to use the current jargon). Still, as good as their propaganda is, it probably will not be enough to save the country. We all hope Ukraine wins this war and even though it is unlikely without NATO air support, it might be possible if Ukraine gets enough high-tech weapons. Especially if the war drags on and turns into a guerilla war which, undoubtedly and unfortunately, will result in even more people dying.

Russia is bogged down in the north and that has been encouraging if you’re rooting for Ukraine like I am. But Russia can still throw a lot more into their attack and they can’t all be as unprepared as the first wave, seemingly, was. They have oodles and oodles of room to escalate and nastiate the war. The Russians can bring in more men and material and direct more firepower to attack civilian targets. Right now, the Ukrainians feel like they are winning but Putin has shown himself to be a dreadful enemy who is capable of pursuing a burnt earth strategy similar to the campaign Russia waged in Chechnya. But that will take time, time that Joe Biden is counting on to make his sanctions effective.

When I listened to President Biden’s State of the Union speech, I was very impressed. I completely agreed with heavy sanctions and supplying weapons to the Ukrainians as a way to fight Putin. Establishing a no-fly zone over Ukraine seemed too provocative but I’ve changed my mind after reading a Tweet Thread from Garry Kasparov, former Russian – and now a citizen of Croatia (go Croatia) – and, as he says, 13th World Chess Champion. Kasparov thinks that Putin won’t stop attacking people and taking territory until he is stopped. In that regard, he is like Hitler or, to use an example with less political valence, Alexander the Great.

I think Kasparov is right in that assessment and I expect that President Biden does also and, I should add, that is a position that seems to be catching on. What doesn’t seem to be catching on is the logical conclusion, at some point, Putin has to be stopped and it will continue to get harder.

Putin’s war on Ukraine has entered its next phase, one of destruction and slaughter of civilians. It is also a part of Putin’s World War, a war on the civilized world of international law, democracy, and any threat to his power, which he declared long ago. The free world’s denial of this war and decades of appeasement allowed Putin to threaten and conquer abroad while turning Russia into a police state. The price to stop him has gone up every time he has advanced unchallenged. Ukrainians are paying that price in blood.

If Putin is not stopped now, not prevented from destroying Ukraine and committing genocide against its people, there will be a next time and it will be in NATO, with an unprecedented nuclear threat. Do not let Putin escalate again in a time and place of his choosing.

Lindsey Graham Tweeted Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military? The only way this end is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out. You would be doing your country – and the world – a great service, and every liberal Blogger and Tweeter I read went ballistic, shouting out that he was not only wrong but criminally wrong. But they are wrong, not criminally wrong, but wrong. The best way out of this would be to kill Putin or exile him at, say, to the Medvezhyi Islands, and somehow move Russia back into the democracy camp. But that would be very hard to do, I imagine Putin is the most protected human in the world. Still, I guess, we can hope.

Here are a couple of two contrasting propaganda pieces that should help us hope.

Russia treacherously attacked our state in the morning, as Nazi Germany did in #2WW years. As of today, our countries are on different sides of world history. 🇷🇺 has embarked on a path of evil, but 🇺🇦 is defending itself & won’t give up its freedom no matter what Moscow thinks. A Tweet by Володимир Зеленський @ZelenskyyUaПрезидент України Ukraine president.gov.ua

when you read about Ukraine in the news now, you might think of it as a strange place. War, tanks, dead etc. But Ukraine is a normal country with people willing a normal life. To be happy, enjoy life, raise kids. Not to attack anybody. Normality is an important word here A Tweet by Volodymyr Yermolenko @yermolenko_vUkrainian philosopher, analyst & journalist, chief editor at @ukraine_world – explaining Ukrainian politics & society in English.

Driving on the road towards Kyiv and the radio announcer is giving out instructions on how to make Molotov cocktails. A Tweet by Shaun Walker @shaunwalker7 Covering central/eastern Europe for The Guardian. Author of The Long Hangover: Putin’s New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past.

More TV, more articles to come, but I’m sad and angry. Ukraine is suffering another long night alone. The sanctions so far are weak, ignoring Putin’s worst oligarchs. They would have been fine in 2008, or even 6 months ago. Now, with Kyiv under siege? Too little, too late. A Tweet by Garry Kasparov @Kasparov63 Join RDI! @Renew_Democracy. Chairman of the Human Rights Foundation. Author, speaker, 13th World Chess Champion.

I’m always surprised when I see pictures of people from Ukraine. I always expect them to be more exotic, more like people from further east on the Silk Road, more like people from Kazakhstan, not like blond Europeans. I shouldn’t be though. They are European even if they write their language in Cyrillic and they are even what we would call a first-world country – if that is still OK to use as an identifier – in that they have subways and traffic jams. But it is important ti know that they are not first-world in that their main exports are seed oil, corn, and wheat and they are big importers of coal briquettes and used clothing. The country has a population of over 44,000,000 souls, most of whom want to be more European and less Russian and the capitol, Kyiv, is the seventh-largest city in Europe with a population of almost 3,000,000, bigger than Chicago, Rome, or Paris, so Putin may end up like the dog that caught the bus. Imagining tanks rolling into one of those cities gave me the chills.

I’m reading a book on Hitler and it may be coloring my thinking but, it seems to me that Putin is a typical autocrat in that he will keep trying to enlarge his empire until he is stopped. He attacked Georgia during the Bush Administration calling it a peace-keeping special operation. Then he took the Crimea and an enclave in eastern Ukraine during the Obama Administration and now he is going after the rest of Ukraine. If he takes Ukraine, there is no reason to think he will stop trying to rebuild the USSR by bluff, threat, and, if necessary, tanks. If Putin takes Ukraine, the next target would probably be Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, who are members of NATO, which would mean a major war for sure. The whole thing is frightening.

Proprioception, otherwise known as kinesthesia, is your body’s ability to sense movement, action, and location. It’s present in every muscle movement you have. … Proprioception allows you to walk without consciously thinking about where to place your foot next. It lets you touch your elbow with your eyes closed. WebMD

You’re walking
And you don’t always realize it
But you’re always falling
With each step, you fall forward slightly
And then catch yourself from falling
Over and over, you’re falling
And then catching yourself from falling…Walking & Falling, Song by Laurie Anderson

Proprioception is a word I hadn’t known even existed three weeks ago. That’s too bad because for most of my life I’ve had pretty good proprioception and it would have been nice to know the word when I could have used it in a positive – read subtle bragging – way, but now, my spacial awareness is one of the casualties of getting older. Now, I’ll be walking down a sidewalk and catch one of my feet – one of my shoes? – on, uhh…seemingly nothing. Now, I’ll grab a glass and, while lifting it, knock over a neighboring glass unless I’m specifically paying attention which I almost never am.

Specifically paying attention to the mechanics of walking, however, is almost impossible. Walking is something that most of us have been doing since we were somewhere around one year old, and now walking is entirely unconscious. I’ll trip on a rug on the hardwood floor and tell myself, “Be more conscience.” but it is not about being conscience, it is about my deteriorating proprioception. Knowing that it’s normal to lose my sense of balance as I get older is not as much of a comfort as it might, at first, seem.

In my case, maybe it is karmic punishment for not being very sympathetic when old people complained about their arthritis or I was told of some old person – maybe a mother or, usually, a grandmother – falling over and breaking her hip. I thought they would have solved the problem by just paying attention, I thought they should be more conscious and, of course, that isn’t really the problem. the problem is deteriorating proprioception.

Speaking of proprioception, Michele and I have been watching the Olympics for the last two weeks and, along with their extraordinary athleticism, the Olympians are a group of people who always know where their body is in space. Especially the athletes who are competing in sports like figure skating and are performing aerial tricks. In these sports, in which the competitor is spinning or somersaulting or, as improbable as it seems, both at the same time, superb proprioception is mandatory. And in these sports, East Asians dominate the medals. By East Asian, I mean people whose heritage is Chinese, Japanese, or Korean, even if they are now from Europe or the USA.

There are lots of reasons why East Asians dominate these sports but, it seems to me, that the paramount reason is that East Asians just have a better sense of where they are as they are spinning and tumbling. In other words, Nathan Chin, Chloe Kim, Ayumu Hirano, and their ilk just have better proprioception.