​Acting Citizen: ​My Name Should Be on the List

By James Knudsen

WHAT?!?! 
HOW MANY?!?! 
THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!!!
    I am insulted. I am aggrieved. I am HURT.
    For seven years I have been taking shots at Donald J. Trump. Some of my best work has been devoted to mocking the Putrid Platinum Pompadour. I have dropped one-liners that served no purpose in advancing the column’s message. The only reason they were there was to take a well-earned jab at the Orange Menace. And several articles exist SOLELY to make fun of the twice impeached, one-term, former head of the executive branch. All this is not enough to warrant a place on Russia’s list of sanctioned individuals. Sad.

From “The Scratching Post”: 2022: Stories of the year

By Ken Marks

[Opening from the original on The Scratching Post, December 24, 2022, published here by permission of the author.]

Each year, I try to pick the most important story of that year, the one most likely to affect our immediate future. This year, however, I’ve picked two stories. They seem to have little in common but are strangely inseparable, at least to me. Perhaps it’s because they share the same theme — the death spiral of a monster.

The first story involves the war in Ukraine, which started late last February. It was supposed to be a quick mauling of any Ukrainian forces that resisted the Russian invasion. It was anything but. To understand why, we have to imagine a dictator who is among the greatest fuckups in history, and also one of the cruelest, most impulsive, and most vengeful — Vladimir Putin. If you’re wondering what he could have done to earn these distinctions, here’s a record of ineptitude that may challenge your credulity:

• Putin’s first responsibility was to gather intelligence, and in this he failed utterly. The estimate of Ukraine’s readiness and will to resist missed the mark completely. The estimate of the West’s commitment to Ukraine also erred badly. The West quickly agreed on crushing sanctions that all but crippled Russia’s economy. Then it followed through by providing Ukraine with advanced weapon systems, technical assistance, military intelligence, food, clothing, medical supplies, and infrastructure support. Putin failed to realize there was no way to intercept supply lines without invading NATO nations and triggering a doomsday scenario. In effect, Putin found himself fighting against the entire industrialized world, minus China, India, and Iran.
• He never bothered to understand the logistics of fighting a war. He had no access to Ukraine’s rail system, so he sent countless military and supply vehicles down Ukraine’s roads, where they stalled and became targets. The glut of traffic was so immense that fuel, munitions, spare parts, and other materiel couldn’t be efficiently moved to troops in forward positions.
• He put quickly trained — and therefore poorly trained — soldiers in the field. Moreover, he sent far too few of them. Approximately 150,000 to 190,000 Russian soldiers, regulars and irregulars, were in the initial invasion force, facing a country of 44 million people. That’s a ratio of 4 Russian soldiers for every 1,000 Ukrainian inhabitants. Data from modern warfare shows that roughly 20 soldiers for every 1,000 inhabitants are needed to conquer and pacify a hostile population. This explains why Putin has been desperate to find more soldiers. He has hired mercenaries and offered convicts freedom if they agree to fight. He has gone so far as to institute a draft, but this caused such an uproar that he had to give it up.
• Last April, Russian troops halted their advance on Kyiv. It was the perfect moment for Putin to cut his losses and pretend he had delivered a harsh warning to Ukrainians who dared to collude with NATO. Sadly, he was too proud to accept the rebuke he was dealt. He redeployed Russian forces to the East and South, where many Ukrainians identify with Russian culture. The Russians were brutal in asserting their claims to these regions. Rockets destroyed urban centers and residences. People on the street were indiscriminately executed and consigned to mass graves. Many of the survivors were tortured; women were raped. The new strategy was to demoralize Ukrainians by subjecting them to a barrage of war crimes. The memory of this savagery will evoke Ukrainian hatred for centuries. Even if Russian reverses its record of screwups and losses, it will never pacify a single acre of Ukrainian territory. Russia hoped to avoid sharing a border with a NATO country. Now they will share a border with something far worse, a blood enemy. And if Ukraine is ever in a position to dictate the terms that will end the war, Putin and his surviving generals will certainly face war crimes trials, imprisonment, and execution.
• He is oblivious to the enormity of his crimes. This winter he has doubled down. He’s sent missile barrages against Ukraine’s infrastructure, depriving Ukrainians of light, warmth, water, and food supplies. He has actually weaponized winter. This strategy will never drive his foe toward capitulation; it will have exactly the opposite effect.
• He has never had a contingency plan for a long war. After 10 months of fighting, he’s using charity drives to supply soldiers with medicine, sleeping bags, felt boots, woolen socks, mittens, scarves, and body armor. One charity event raised the equivalent of $45 thousand. Contrast this with the $45 billion that Congress recently passed for emergency assistance to Ukraine and NATO allies. The appropriation includes a critical infusion of Patriot anti-ballistic missiles.

    The war will end in either of two ways. One, Russia loses in the traditional way — they capitulate and Ukraine dictates terms, which will undoubtedly include Putin’s removal (if he isn’t already dead), loss of the Crimea, and war reparations. Two, Russia loses in the pyrrhic way; that is, they win but pay a staggering price in lives, leadership, prosperity, and reputation. If it’s the second way, it won’t be called “pyrrhic,” because no winning military in world history will have paid such a disastrous price. It will be called a “putinic” (poo-TIN-ic, with two short i’s) victory. It’s amazing to think that the likelihood of a no-win scenario has probably never occurred to Putin.

The second story begins….
[Read the whole thing on The Scratching Post.]

Copyright © 2022 by Ken Marks Ken Marks was a contributing editor with Paul Clark & Tom Lowe when “Moristotle” became “Moristotle & Co.” A brilliant photographer, witty conversationalist, and elegant writer, Ken contributed photographs, essays, and commentaries from mid-2008 through 2012. Late in 2013, Ken birthed the blog The Scratching Post. He also posts albums of his photos on Flickr.

All Over the Place: War and Beauty

By Michael H. Brownstein

Let us say the colorful hummingbird symbolizes peace.

Let us say the two legged giant with weak arms is the gray of cruelty—

The hummingbird swift and agile, a glitter of texture;

the giant clumsy and slow, the creator of tools of destruction.

Goines On: Okie blows

Click image for more vignettes

The morning after Mrs. Goines read to him from The Dreamt Land (which is about the state of water in California), Goines knew what to call them when he had applied a thumb to each nostril and blown his nose: Okie blows.
    He was out back taking up their now-unused rock light fixtures and collecting them in the utility corner to await their deciding where to create a sort of museum, or “rock light plaza,” when he simply had to blow his nose. Using a thumb was by far the most convenient way to accomplish it.

All Over the Place: Just Because a Leader Is Mad Does Not Mean You Must Follow Him

By Michael H. Brownstein

Putin tries to poke holes into the body’s work of a nation

but the body’s work of the nation cannot be poked through—

 

gut-shot punctuation, terrorist renderings, vocabulary of madness

and Russia bleeds fire, cruelty, vocabulary of an insane man's mind.

From “The Scratching Post”: A perfect prelude

By Ken Marks

[Opening from the original on The Scratching Post, March 26, 2022, published here by permission of the author.]

I’ve never read On the Beach and only got around to watching the movie on TV years after its theater release. Maybe I avoided it because of the emotionally draining story, the kind my 11th-grade lit teacher called “cathartic.” I ended up liking it very much. My sole criticism was the ceaseless playing of “Waltzing Matilda” until my head was ready to explode.
    I recall a stirring scene between Ava Gardner and Gregory Peck. In a fury of incomprehension, she asks what could have caused the world’s leaders to order an all-out nuclear exchange. After all, it’s the ultimate geopolitical fuck-up, a step so breathlessly stupid that lunacy seems the only possible explanation. But the movie doesn’t deal in explanations, just consequences. Its focus is on the psychic torment of those remote from the bombing as they await the arrival of radiation poisoning.
    Glutton for punishment that I am, I crave an apocalyptic movie in the same vein, but one that shows how the buildup to catastrophe can be plausible and insane at the same time. We badly need such a movie. Without it, we miss an invaluable chance to behold the macabre duality of human nature, our capacity for simultaneous sanity and madness.
    It happens that the world stage is at this moment supplying a story line for such a movie. It’s a perfect prelude to On the Beach. I refer to the horrific war in Ukraine. Putin is the ideal villain. He’s 69. The clock is ticking. His dream of restoring the Soviet empire on his watch is fading. Snatching a tiny Baltic state will no longer qualify as progress. He needs a big win — Ukraine. The hero? There are two, Volodymyr Zelensky, the President of Ukraine, and NATO, the grand Western alliance that Trump sought to castrate.
    As the drama unfolds, Putin and his generals….
[Read the whole thing on The Scratching Post.]

Copyright © 2022 by Ken Marks Ken Marks was a contributing editor with Paul Clark & Tom Lowe when “Moristotle” became “Moristotle & Co.” A brilliant photographer, witty conversationalist, and elegant writer, Ken contributed photographs, essays, and commentaries from mid-2008 through 2012. Late in 2013, Ken birthed the blog The Scratching Post. He also posts albums of his photos on Flickr.

“Never met one I didn’t like”

Excerpt from one of my books

By Tom Harley

In the ministry one evening in upstate New York, I approached a man about to launch his hobbyist drone. I told him I had never seen one up close and he invited me to watch. It took off. He guided it up and over the street, over the rooftop of the neighbor’s house, and I saw in his viewfinder what the drone saw. Yes! There it was! As he suspected, his first mini-drone had come down over the house and was stuck in the gutter.

Trump is beset upon

And Chelsea Clinton objects

By Tom Harley

Chelsea Clinton tweeted about the woman holding aloft the bloody severed mock head of the President. “This is vile and wrong. It is never funny to joke about killing a President,” she said. Her star rose several notches in my eyes. After all, if anyone should be excused for wanting Trump’s head on a platter, it is she, daughter of the woman who went down in a contest deemed crooked.

Correspondence: These are the times

True & faux

Edited by Moristotle

Trump continues to receive ill-deserved respect: “Donald Trump’s Campaign Stands By Embrace of Putin” [Jonathan Martin & Amy Chozick, NY Times, September 8]. Excerpt:

There's buff and there's buff

Our "president" may not be so buff as the shirtless Vladimir Putin, but has Putin ever said anything so brave as what Bush said yesterday (to those friendly VFW folks), that we shouldn't have gotten out of Vietnam until we'd completed the job (the way he wants us to do in Iraq)? Surely that's its own kind of buff. If Bush had been in charge in 1970 (and Rove had somehow been able to engineer his remaining in charge):

• We might still be in Vietnam trying to "get the job done."
• There'd have been several times the number (58,000) of United States lives lost.
• There'd have been several times the number (350,000) of United States casualties.
• There'd have been several times the number (between one and two million) Vietnamese deaths.
• I'd probably be in jail by now (with a huge number of other Americans) for criticizing and ridiculing the simply ridiculous Bush in public.

Now, that's buff!