I don’t have a title for this blog yet.  So I’m going to write it and then title it as the last thing I do before posting.  If I can remember.

I mentioned in my last post that this whole war situation is particularly stressful for me.  It is difficult because I was programmed as a child to fear exactly this kind of war.  And it is astonishing to watch such a war play out in real time, in a world where it’s very difficult to keep images from the actual battlefield from being sent around the world at near real time.  This is as much a war of propaganda as it is a war of munitions, and quite obviously, Ukraine is winning that war.  But, to be frank, I don’t trust that narrative.

That’s not to say that I support Russia.  I think that NATO and the west screwed up really badly (and still don’t realize how they screwed up) by not taking Russia’s facially legitimate concerns seriously, but Putin’s response to that seems quite, umm… disproportionate.  The way I personally feel about this is:  war sucks, but I don’t have a personal dog in the fight, it’s between Ukraine and Russia.  So I don’t stand with either, I don’t trust the propaganda coming out of either, I don’t know what’s true, so a pox on all of it.

What I’m not sure I understand is why the media seems to want to scare the crap out of everyone, and why they (and also the Republicans, for some reason) seem to want a world war.  There’s something going on here that isn’t being said out loud.

What strikes me is that this is, right now, 90% a war of speculation.  We know what Putin has done, we know what Ukraine has done, and we know what NATO has done.  But that’s not what everyone’s reporting on.  Everyone’s reporting on what this could become, what Putin could do, they’re trying to extrapolate on conditions that haven’t yet happen.  Truth is, we have no idea what Putin could or would do (though I think we’re making some pretty unfounded assumptions on his mental acuity), we have no idea what this could or would become, we are completely in the dark as to what the future holds.  I mean, we thought that Russia would be able to take Ukraine within two days, it’s been a month, and they’re still stalemated.  Could Putin use nukes?  Well, I suppose the ability exists.  I also think it’s unlikely.  Do we even know if his nukes are in the same state of disrepair as the rest of his military?  We have no idea.  I’m not even sure Putin knows.

So far the most accurate assessment of Russia’s military is that it’s mostly a paper tiger with a formidable but ultimately unknown nuclear capability.  Even to them.

The global geopolitical situation is particularly unstable right now, and anyone who claims to know how it will turn out probably has an agenda.  At this point, about all you can do is live your life as normally as possible and hope that at some point soon cooler heads will prevail.  I don’t know how this is going to turn out, all possibilities are on the table, but the worst possibilities, while certainly possible, are unlikely.  They’re trying to scare you, and probably succeeding.  Don’t give them that.  And that’s much easier said than done.

Here’s the part that I keep coming back to:  nothing’s really changed.  We’ve had several countries with formidable nuclear stockpiles for, what, seventy years now?  Those weapons have always been there, pointed at targets, waiting for the word.  The only thing that’s changed now is that we have someone who has credibly threatened to make use of them (though the odds that it’s saber rattling are pretty high, everyone knows what the consequences of that kind of escalation are).  The very fact that these weapons exist at all is something that we have become used to, and that, in itself, should be an utterly intolerable situation.  I know it’s just a matter of scale, but why should we allow ourselves to get used to this state of affairs?  I understand it’s a difficult situation, and there are good reasons for keeping stockpiles, but it’s an “abomination of desolation” that they exist and this should be the real problem that we’re addressing, somehow.  These are the primary reason that what should be a localized, regional war is of such concern to the world.  Somehow, this needs to be addressed, and fast.

This is the kind of situation only God can deal with, and I hope he does.  I don’t think the functional destruction of the world is in his interests.  There is a certain line that, one would think, even he cannot allow to be crossed.  I wish I could trust him to agree with that.

I will say one final thing:  When Kavanaugh was attacked by the democrats, I decided that I would never vote for another democrat.  Now that I’m seeing how the Republicans, for some god-forsaken reason, are actively trying to start world war 3, I’m never voting for another one of them either.  Third party, write in, or nothing from now on.  I’m tired of it.