We live in a world of moral confusion, writes Bari Weiss. The Russian dissident was as clear as he was courageous: there is freedom and there is unfreedom.
I am much more worried about our own country. Jeffrey Epstein did not kill himself. The FBI has his client list and refuses to disclose it. They also refused to investigate him when he was still trafficking women and girls.
People have been rotting for four years in the DC Gulag for crimes people with the correct politics were then and are now released for the same day, if they are arrested at all.
President Trump has had the whole of our national legal apparatus directed at him. He did less than what Biden did--Biden was careless and sloppy, where Trump's records, that he removed as PRESIDENT, not Vice-President, were stored securely--but Biden was not charged BECAUSE HE IS SENILE. That is the story as I heard it. Also, self evidently, because he is a Democrat and he plays ball with the real power brokers in our country.
Trump was just issued a farcical judgement for hundreds of millions of dollars for what amounts to a technicality, if it even happened at all. His judge in Georgia is the daughter of a pretty obvious Communist.
Don't worry about Russia. That is what all the people who are doing this to Trump because of his open support for America, American interests and the American people WANT you to do. They want you focused anywhere else, on any imagined threat they can concoct. They want you fearful of everyone BUT the people whose tyranny is well advanced, and whose power over our lives you SHOULD fear.
Putin is an authoritarian and a murderer. But he is not in charge of our country. He is not our problem. Our problems exist in a government that accepts no limits, and is only biding its time until the charade is no longer necessary. If we do not organize and wake up before that, we will be as bad or worse than Russia is now.
The current Trump saga should scare all of us. With the incomprehensible skein of laws and regulations, you always run the risk of violating something.
Sure, we can't expect all government enforcement to be fully fair in a distributional sense. When a cop pulls over a speeding driver, she doesn't have the ability to (equally) pull over all other speeding drivers in the same line of cars.
But the Trump situation shows, so clearly, the partisan political abuse of our nation's expectations of broadly fair, even-handed enforcement of laws.
Our friends sometimes take a break from daily work on the land and chat about the technical violations of unclearly written and ridiculously over-expansive laws. Did they fairly value each and every asset on the financing application for the John Deere tractor? Did they run the excavator through a small stream and discuss it with the kids (conspiracy)?
The prosecution of Trump shows all of us live on the edge of losing it all. If we become political enemies.
in both countries we are sadly down to only a chimera of law. Evil men place evil men in robes who pretend to administer equal justice discrediting noble ideals and law itself.
"Your good/evil distinction is useless, Bari. It's all evil--there and here." I cry for Bari, who surely hopes that your takeaway would be other than this.
First there was God alone as the source and foundation of truth, reality, and law; with the Enlightenment God and Nature became the shared source; Modernism killed God (declared so by Nietzsche) leaving Nature and Natural Law as the sole basis of reality; and now, Post-modern Relativism has killed off Nature leaving us each to our singular self-defined realities in which the ultimate piety to to defy Nature in the greatest extreme, hence even gender is shorn from consideration of the Natural, and the Virtual world creeps evermore upon us. As Yates so famously observed:
First there was God alone as the source and foundation of truth, reality, and law; with the Enlightenment God and Nature became the shared source; Modernism killed God (declared so by Nietzsche) leaving Nature and Natural Law as the sole basis of reality; and now, Post-modern Relativism has killed off Nature leaving us each to our singular self-defined realities in which the ultimate piety to to defy Nature in the greatest extreme, hence even gender is shorn from consideration of the Natural, and the Virtual world creeps evermore upon us. As Yates so famously observed:
It's good to know that one need only go to Letitia James at the southern district of New York to determine the fair market value of their property or asset.
I know it's always risky business trying to defraud the government But hey Trump didn't seem to mind using the courts to filed for bankruptcy 8 times, allowing him to not to pay contractors and shareholders. You say this is partisan and political, but have you even considered the possibility that he is truly guilty? Refusing to consider this is the very definition of partisan and political. When Biden was accused of taking kickbacks I read everything I could find about it. Hunter's laptop has undergone years of scrutiny and investiagions have turned up nothing. Even the FBI informant who claimed he had evidence of some payments (minimal anyway) admitted he was lying. Fine, dislike even hate Biden's politics, his policies on the border, whatever, but all this Trump as political martyr and Biden crime family storytelling is just that...fairy tales for adults who fanticize that they hvae some direct line to the hidden truth of everything. Newsflash. You don't. You have the same feet of clay as the rest of us. .
Give me a break. You have to be hermetically sealed into an echo chamber to think that the Bidens are anything except a bunch of grifters. You do not profess your opinions with an iota of intellectual humility but a certainty that belies an unwillingness to consider what does not conform to your beliefs. Anyone who disagrees is indulging in fantasy. Typical.
Show me the facts...I've looked and found nothing. I've read countless comments here referring to the Biden crime family, but seen nothing except incessant repetition of the label. I seriously don't know people are referring to beyond a few accusations that have been looked into and seem to have yielded nothing. All I see is innuendo. If there are facts and not just suspicions please share them. I've said this before, there is a reason I visit this site. I am hoping to get facts that maybe I would find highlighted elsewhere. I am certainly not in an echo chamber. If I were what am I doing here listening to you? Every once in a while in the comments I ask for facts and actually get some here and there, which I find useful. I'm hoping for some now
I will add that all these attacks on Tucker amount to attacks on independent journalism outright. All the critics I have encountered so far didn't even bother to watch the interview, because the FACT THE INTERVIEW WAS DONE AT ALL BOTHERED THEM.
What did Tucker actually do? He went over to Russia and asked the architect of a war we are being asked to participate in by funding it heavily, and where we almost certainly have embedded SpecOp guys on the ground, some basic question: Why did you start this war? What will it take to end it? Are those not important questions? Are his views not critically important? Of course. Of course.
He also asked several times for the release of an American being held prisoner for espionage. That part seemingly got little or no coverage.
Here is my question: what effing beef do people have with larger perspectives and more information? Are your brains so effing small that it hurts to try and cram in new ideas, potential confusion, and to risk being lied to, as if you were not already being told lies on all sides daily?
Our decadence is truly amazing. It is seemingly worst among the people who paid the most for college.
Tucker Carlson was used magnificently by Putin throughout the entire interview which I watched. Tucker looked like a schoolboy boy next to Putin.So what if he asked about Evan? He certainly didn’t get any response It’s quite disturbing reading all these comments that seem to cheer on Communism as some utopian society.
I'm about as anti-Communist as you can get. What I am saying is OUR OWN NATION IS BECOMING COMMUNIST. If you don't see this, all I can say is you need to do more reading, both of history, and of what relatively honest journalism still exists. Also use your brain. That's often the overlooked X factor.
And I thought the interview was useful. How can it not be useful to provide an unfiltered, unedited interview where a significant adversary is asked why he went to war, and what it will take to stop it? Does it matter if he spun things? Does it matter if he left things out? Much of what he said was sensible, and logical and almost certainly true.
What was obvious is we can stop the war tomorrow. The Ukraine is throwing its men into a meat grinder, for land where many of the people don't even want to be Ukrainian. This war is continuing because it is PROFITABLE for many, in many ways. That's it.
I am baffled by how easy it is to bamboozle some large part of America. I was opposing the Soviet Union when the Left was burning flags and shouting Better Red than Dead. I have personally watched people burn flags. Now that Russia has renounced all global ambitions, people are piling on the Cold War rhetoric. It's astonishing. It's embarassing. It's pathetic.
Simple question: why should we waste money in the Ukraine that could be spent on hungry and unhoused Americans?
But that’s not true. The vast vast majority of us want to be Ukrainian. Does truth not matter to you at all? How many Ukrainians in the occupied territories do you know personally? How many do you know who have fled from there? Have you talked to the children russia stole and heartlessly abused? I’ve run a nonprofit in Ukraine for years, since before the full scale invasion, and the blatant lies that people repeat about my country and my people these days without even bothering to listen to us, actual Ukrainians, are so painful. How can Ukrainians stop this? How can we explain that no of course we don’t want our men to die, but we know beyond the shadow of a doubt that Putin will not permit a free prosperous Ukraine on his border. Any ceasefire will be an opportunity to regroup and then keep attacking what’s left of a free Ukraine or destabilizing our country so we can’t be a functioning democracy. We have no choice but to keep dying for our freedom. Funnily, I thought Americans would be the first to understand that.
And I would add: has Zelensky not become a tyrant? Has he not banned most opposition media and arrested political opponents, all while getting rich from money skimmed from Western aid?
Unsaint Finbar: “has Zelensky not become a tyrant?” Maybe in the same sense that Abraham Lincoln had “become a tyrant” — in Confederate propaganda. “Churchill is as bad as Hitler,” idiots insisted.
Zelensky has indeed cracked down on pro-Russian media and politicians in Ukraine, including the Moscow-controlled Russian Orthodox church; but not the several other, independent Orthodox churches, which are not controlled by Moscow.
The Zelensky “getting rich” stuff appears to be pure, unadulterated claptrap. If he were that kind of man, he would simply have fled into exile as the Russian tanks closed in on Kyiv. There’s lots of money — and much less risk — in a government-in-exile.
This is not really about Ukraine or the truth. The American “right” simply hates the woke “left” (for real, good reasons) and now automatically believes the opposite must be “the right thing to believe”. If Biden would have handed out Ukraine to Putin, gift-wrapped, then Trump and Tucker Carlson would have been Ukraine’s greatest champions. Nobody actually cares about the Ukrainians.
The ‘Right’ woke up that the Bush/Cheney led Iraq War was predicated on a Big Fat Lie. The scales fell away from many (many) eyes over that, including people who lost friend and families, living today w/ PTSD. The Patriot Act also resulted from this era, which the NSA used for mass surveillance and Snowden and others clued us into this erosion of our civil liberties. That mistake and its timing was a big one. Because with the confluence of two major pieces of tech in 2014 (smartphone w/ camera + widespread social media platforms), the Right was able to question other mistakes by our government in relation to Iraq (like Vietnam). And NATO inviting Georgia and Ukraine as NATO members in-waiting, was recognized as another Big Fat Mistake. The Right then surmised that it was actually a Uniparty (neocons) behind ginning up these continual conflicts since WW2 (it’s $ profitable) and those opposed to this, no longer felt ‘Right’ any longer, but rather ‘Populist’. President Eisenhower was the one who was ‘right’ when he forewarned the danger of the Military Industrial Complex, during his 1961 farewell speech. It just took a couple of generations for many of us to fully wake up. The Left ‘woke’ who support our offshore wars today (that are not in USA vital interest) largely do not hold the same views. IMHO, the Populist wing of the ‘Right’ has evolved. We by and large know war, and its terrible, corrosive results.
I don't doubt the vast majority of Ukrainians want to be Ukrainian. But it is my perception that Putin just wants the Donbass. Why do you believe he wants more? He is losing a lot of troops too.
Unsaint Finbar: Shortly before he invaded Ukraine, Putin wrote an essay about how Ukrainians are just deluded Russians, defining the Ukrainian nation out of existence.
The world may wish to believe he will be satisfied by Crimea and southeastern Ukraine, just as the world wished to believe Hitler wanted only part of Czechoslovakia, but so far every successful annexation he pulls off just increases his appetite for more.
After Ukraine, the next step in his project of recreating the Soviet Union will be to attack the Baltic States — which as NATO countries means American boots on the ground.
"I thought Americans would be the first to understand that."
Most of us do understand that, Katerina. We support your fight for freedom, and we want our government to supply you the arms you need to push Putin back to Moscow.
Some commentators here want the opposite. OK, that's their view, they're entitled. I don't share it, and I'd venture that most Americans want you to win and want to help you do so.
In 1954, the USSR freely handed its sovereignty over the Crimea and Eastern Ukraine to you. At that moment all that territory is part of sovereign Ukraine. Putin has zero right to cry foul sixty years later and send troops to take you back. That is invasion and conquest by definition, and you are right to repel it. The West is right to help you.
You haven't had a "functioning democracy" since the US-led coup in 2014. You are a US vassal state. Putin wants Ukraine to be independent: not part of NATO, and not controlled by any foreign power.
What would change about your day to day life if the flag on the government building was blue red and white instead of blue and yellow?
What “freedom” are you fighting for? Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries in the world, certainly in Europe. An excellent place to launder billions of American dollars.
Talk to some people in the occupied territories about how their lives have changed. How they are forced to swear allegiance to the russian flag and sing the russian anthem and exchange their Ukrainian passports for russian ones. How our culture - our history, our books, our language - was immediately destroyed. Literal book burnings, schools closed and teachers forced to teach the russian curriculum and history or lose their jobs. About men forced to fight for russia. About the harassment, threats, looting, destruction of property, beatings, rape. About murders of journalists and complete removal of press freedom.
You talk with such confidence about the corruption in a country you have never set foot into. Have you tried to open a business or nonprofit in Ukraine? Do you know many entrepreneurs and young professionals there? We were successfully building a new Ukraine, and that's exactly what threatened Putin enough to attack us.
While I am not denying your opinion or experience, I have two friends who grew up in Crimea and they tell me that they always wanted to be part of "Mother Russia". Obviously this is anecdotal but perhaps it is evidence of a difference of opinion in those regions.
It's a big question. First of all, I think Ukrainian culture is less focused at the "big man on top" than US culture, so I'm not sure we talk about Zelensky as much as Americans do. For us, the leader is more like the instrument carrying out the people's will.
Zelensky is a bit like Trump (sans the bigotry and lack of respect for military). He is a celebrity outsider who wanted to challenge a broken system. But unlike Trump, I don't think he's in it for himself or his own glory. I think it's extremely brave that he stayed in Kyiv 2 years ago, and that move was crucial at that moment for Ukraine's survival in those first shocking weeks. You and I wouldn't do that...really the vast majority of people wouldn't.
As far as how he is as a president... he is a broadly well-intentioned but inexperienced leader who already faced an impossible job before the full-scale invasion: trying to eliminate Soviet-era corruption and build a new, modern Ukraine with v limited capital and human resources. And now he's doing his best in an even more impossible situation. This war is like a 12-year-old fighting a bodybuilder. There is only so much any leader could do when they are operating at an extreme, extreme deficit.
Being the leader of a small country and trying to navigate superpowers who just want to use you or destroy you is so hard. What could anyone do in that situation?
The one frustrating thing is that he did not prepare for this invasion more. After the war started, he said we need to be like Israel. The idea is that the only way for a smaller country (that's still big enough to be of interest to the superpowers) to survive - to arm yourself and depend on yourself. I tend to agree, but why not start earlier? However, even this point is complicated because of limited economic resources and fear of provoking Putin by arming ourselves, so it wouldn't have necessarily prevented the current full-scale invasion.
Even if no money was sent to Ukraine, or any foreign govt. "we" would not spend it on "hungry" and "unhoused" (now there's a politically correct word) Americans.
Russia's "global ambitions" are still in play. Have a look at their mercenaries in Africa.
To Unsaint Finbar: You are passionate and I admire that. And I still have questions: (1) How do we know that "... many of the people [in Ukraine] don't even want to be Ukrainian." I'm reading historical scholarship about Ukraine now, as well listening to Konstantin Kisin (who is Russian and with Ukrainian family). While there may be some Russians in Ukraine who want to be part of Russia, I don't think it's by any stretch a majority. I'll read more because I'm a novice at that, but I'm curious how you came to that conclusion. (2) How do we know that Russia has renounced all global ambitions? Again, I'd love to get more of your insight here.
Did you know Ukraine means "borderland"? Or that the first use of Rus was Kievan Rus, which Putin claimed was the original Russia?
I'm not going to claim to be an expert, but based on everything I read the Donbass region, which is the closest part of Ukraine to Russia, seems to want in general to be part of Russia. I suppose you could draw the example of Northern Ireland, which is a Protestant conclave in a Catholic nation, but which ALSO has Catholics, and where a whole lot of conflict happened.
My point would simply be that THIS IS NOT OUR PROBLEM, any more than the dozens of conflicts usually raging at any given time in Africa are our problem. We don't need to divert money from our own people, much less risk American lives, to intervene in places where we are not even particularly wanted, and where our sacrifices will not even be valued. We've been doing that, and it is pointless.
And as far as Russia's global ambitions, they are no longer Communist. They face, now, the whole of both NATO AND the Warsaw Pact. Their old allies flipped. There is no victory there, and Russia is not lacking in land or resources. It's a stupid idea, and one not made stupid by trusting in Putin's goodwill, but in his self interest. When people are not insane, you can usually trust in their self interest.
To Unsaint Finbar: You are passionate and I admire that. And I still have questions: (1) How do we know that "... many of the people [in Ukraine] don't even want to be Ukrainian." I'm reading historical scholarship about Ukraine now, as well listening to Konstantin Kisin (who is Russian and with Ukrainian family). While there may be some Russians in Ukraine who want to be part of Russia, I don't think it's by any stretch a majority. I'll read more because I'm a novice at that, but I'm curious how you came to that conclusion. (2) How do we know that Russia has renounced all global ambitions? Again, I'd love to get more of your insight here.
Thank you for taking the time to actually read about my country. You will see that our history is a rather depressing cycle of various powerful players trying to snuff out and destroy Ukrainian culture and identity...and Ukrainians continuing to fight against the odds, and lose and keep fighting. Because the desire to be Ukrainian and to be free is that strong.
Our history is so hard to read. For example, even as a Ukrainian, I only recently learned about the Bandurist Massacre in 1932:
Kobzars and bandurists were a unique class of musicians in Ukraine, who travelled between towns and sang dumas, a meditative poem-song. Kobzars were usually blind, and required the completion of a three-year apprenticeship in specialized Kobzar guilds, in order to be officially recognized as such. In 1932, on the order of Stalin, the Soviet authorities called on all Ukrainian Kobzars to attend a congress in Kharkiv. Those that arrived were taken outside the city and were all put to death.
Is it too much to ask to stop being murdered and just to have the same chance as other countries to be a free democracy protected from Putin's wars?
You are not going to retake the land you have lost, and hundreds of thousands of your men have died. You are not fighting for the whole of the Ukraine, just a part of it.
This war could have been ended 18 months ago. We have not just Putin's word for it, but reports from many places. What has been gained with all this death? You are being played by Americans so some small elite among us can profit from it.
You would have been much, much better off never allowing this war to start in the first place.
"While there may be some Russians in Ukraine who want to be part of Russia, I don't think it's by any stretch a majority." -- Most of the eastern and southern regions of Ukraine are predominantly comprised of ethnically Russian people.
"How do we know that Russia has renounced all global ambitions?" -- Due to the fact that it endeavors (along with the BRICS+ nations as part of the Eurasian Economic Union's Belt & Road Initiative) for a multi-polar world, which would honor the sovereignty of ALL countries. Contrast that with the West's (led by the US) uni-polar ambitions for a One World Order, wherein NO country would be sovereign.
OMG no. These are basic population numbers. Seriously, I don't understand how you can just so confidently lie. Like, I could say that most people in America are Mexicans so Mexico could just take over...but that doesn't make it true.
The only place where russians are the majority is Crimea, due to very specific history. Soviet rulers tried to stomp out Ukrainian identity by moving russians into Ukraine. Even so, they are not the majority whatsoever. Trying to be very generous, did you mean that most people in Eastern and Soutnern Ukraine speak the russian language? That doesn't make us russian!
I think all of us who get what is going on--open graft and profitable business--would vastly prefer it.
But yes, personally I think the poor and homeless are a matter for the States, so I would prefer we not BORROW that money upon which we have to pay INTEREST. Any day now the interest on the national debt is going to surpass Defense in our budget, and we have something like 5x the defense budget of any nation in the world. The sums will be approaching a trillion dollars a year we spend JUST ON INTEREST.
BTW: US Budget Watch 2024 calculates that Trump’s actions as president added 8 trillion to debt. It’s too early to accurately calculate Biden’s contribution to debt, but provisionally they estimate it as 4.5 trillion. At the same time Biden has managed to create legislation to shore up infrastructure, something Trump promised but failed to do. I would suggest it’s because he has no idea how to govern, but he’s a gifted campaigner and rally holder and name caller, I’ll give him that. Some might even say a gifted propagandist. Somehow he had managed to convince many people here that he is an innocent victim of the “deep state” just like they are. Here’s link to debt estimate details:
Couldn’t agree with you more Joanne. The whataboutism being expressed in the comments is ridiculous. My friend’s father watched his brother be murdered on the streets of Communist Yugoslavia for being a Catholic Priest before emigrating to the United States. Whatever our shortcomings we are still the greatest country in the world. Navalny was a hero. Imperfect, sure, but who amongst us isn’t? And he was murdered by Putin’s henchman for daring to fight for Russia’s freedom. First Viktor Orban then Putin- What is Carlson’s obsession with murderous dictators? Bravo Bari! Thank you for this piece.
What I took away from it was his effort to show us how things really are in Moscow and to try to understand why Putin would do the things he does. I am reminded of Barbara Walters' interview with Gaddafi.
He says at the outset that he is not supporting Putin and is not a fan. But no one is paying any attention to that. He is not cheering on Communism. He is pointing out that we are heading that way, that the large cities in the US are crumbling, and that Americans are oblivious/apathetic to this. He is pointing out our faults by comparison, and asking why that is?
Tucker was way outclassed for sure, but no one, not even Tucker, was lulled By Putin’s talk —it’s well understood what it means that Putin was the former head of the KGB. To me, the critical outcome of the interview was the stark demonstration of the mental capabilities of Putin compared to that of the little wizened guy still occupying the White House. (He who is still lauded for doing a good job by the Muggles.) Never mind he started out with the Afghanistan debacle and has been trying to outdo himself ever since.
I found Putin frighteningly articulate and manipulative, but he brought up some disturbing truths that the US media is trying to shout down. Meanwhile Biden and most of Congress still thinks it’s ok that the US continue to taunt a country that has an extensive nuclear arsenal with a wimpy but horrifically expensive proxy war via the Ukraine against Russia. And we refuse to negotiate. All this insulting grandstanding.. the truly scary thing is we seem to be counting on Putin to have the good sense not to start a nuclear war. No one really thinks Russia will accept defeat but where does it end? Never mind. That would require forethought. And it’s hard to admit, but we did stupidly turn our backs on potential trade & access to Russia’s incredible raw resources, not to mention how our sanctions and aggressive actions appear to have led to a now formidable alliance among Russia, China, India and Iran. Railing against the evil empire Russia is just not useful. If we put together an excel spreadsheet comparing odious world regimes, it becomes obvious we should really be saving our worry for China. The Babylon Bee hit it right…these old guy politicians really aren’t worried. Because in just a few years they’ll all be dead of natural causes. This is just their last hurrah.
What I took away from it was his effort to show us how things really are in Moscow and to try to understand why Putin would do the things he does. I am reminded of Barbara Walters' interview with Gaddafi.
He says at the outset that he is not supporting Putin and is not a fan. But no one is paying any attention to that. He is not cheering on Communism. He is pointing out that we are heading that way, that the large cities in the US are crumbling, and that Americans are oblivious/apathetic to this. He is pointing out our faults by comparison, and asking why that is?
Disturbing indeed, Joanne. It's isolationist in the extreme. The refrain here seems to be - it ain't our problem, leave them be. When did we hear that before? Mmmm, was it around 1940?
I understand your frustration. To me it's not so much a cheering on Communism, since Putin is more of a gangster than anything else, it is the rampant 'stay within our own borders' isolationism that willfully blinds people to accept atrocities overseas - because, well, it ain't happenin' here, we have our own shit to deal with, and it ain't our problem anyway. It is Trump and the infection his populism has inflicted on what was a grand old party. It is ignorant of all of recorded history. You give an adversary an inch, and they will take a mile.
Joanne, there's many who did not watch the interview. Here's the ~44 questions Tucker asked Putin, so Free People here at The Free Press, can make up their own minds:
1. How did you concluded that America might strike Russia out of the blue?
2. Why didn't you make the case that Ukraine wasn't a 'real country' in the first 22 years of your Presidency?
3. Do you feel Hungary and other countries also have the right to take lands back from Ukraine to the 1654 borders?
4. Have you told Victor Orban that he can have part of Ukraine?
5. Is it a fair characterization that you felt a physical threat of nuclear weapon use by the West, and that is what prompted you to invade Ukraine?
6. Were you sincere when you asked Bill Clinton in 1998 if it was possible for Russia to join NATO?
7. If Bill Clinton had said 'yes you can join NATO', would Russia have joined?
8. Why do you think it didn't happen, what do you think was the motivation for the West to rebuff Russia joining NATO in 1998?
9. Are you saying the CIA was trying to overthrow your government prior to 2014?
10. 2x you described US Presidents making decisions but those decisions reversed/undercut by their agency heads (NATO 1998, Missile Defense System), is it your telling that you're describing a system that's not run by people who are elected?
11. At time of Ukraine PM Yatsenyuk (2014), did Ukraine do more business with Russia or the EU?
12. You describe a coup-de-tat in 2014 that resulted in a pro-western Ukraine government. What triggered you now, 8 years later, to invade Ukraine?
13. In years prior to Ukraine invasion, was there any channels of communication open to US government for Russia to say if you (West) keep on militarizing Ukraine with NATO arms, that this is going to force Russia to act?
14. Will you stop the war now? Have you achieved your aims?
15. What is de-Nazification, what does that mean?
16. Would you be satisfied with the Ukraine territory that you have now?
17. How do you (Russia) control Ukrainian nationalism? How do you go about de-Nazification?
18. How does (Russia) eliminate a culture or ideology in Ukraine when Russia does not control the entire country?
19. When was the last time you spoke to US President Joe Biden?
20. Why don't you just call Biden and say 'let's work this out' given the danger of the conflict widening?
21. Can you imagine a scenario where Russia sent troops to invade Poland or Latvia?
22. You invaded Ukraine, are you saying you unequivocally don't have further expansionist aims?
23. US Senator Chuck Schumer said yesterday the US has to continue funding the Ukrainian effort, or else US soldiers could end up fighting there. How do you assess that?
24. Who blew up Nordstream?
25. Do you have evidence that NATO or the CIA blew up Nordstream?
26. If you have evidence that Russia did not blow up Nordstream, why wouldn't you present it and win a propaganda victory?
27. Why do you think the Germans are being silent on who blew up Nordstream, given that it greatly damaged their economy, was biggest act of industrial terrorism ever and largest emission of CO2 in history?
28. Can you describe your view on the new blocs of alliances in our new, multi-polar world?
29. Do you think the US Dollar is going away as the world's common Reserve Currency? How have sanctions (against Russia by West) changed the US Dollars place in the world?
30. Are BRIC countries in danger of being dominated by the Chinese economy, in a way that is not good for BRI's sovereignty? Does Russia worry about China's domination of the BRIC alliance?
31. Do you think if there is a new administration after Biden that Russia could establish a [top-to-top] communication with USA, or does it not matter who the US President is?
32. Who do you think actually makes the decisions in the United States, who do you think are the power centers?
33. You stated the expansion of NATO eastward is in violation of 1991 promises between Russia and West. Right before Russia invaded Ukraine, the US Vice President traveled to the Munich Security Conference and encouraged the Prime Minister of Ukraine to join NATO. Do you think that was an effort to provoke Russia into military action?
34. As of Feb 2024, do you think Zelensky has the freedom to negotiate a settlement to this conflict?
35. Where do you think Boris Johnson is and why do you think he did that?
36. What does it mean for you and what effect does it have on you [to be an Orthodox Christian leader]
37. Christianity is a non-violent religion [turn the other cheek, do not kill]. How then can a leader who has to kill, be a Christian? How do you reconcile that to yourself?
38. Do you see God/The Supernatural when you look out across what is happening in the world? Do you ever think to yourself there are forces at work that are not human?
39. When do you think the AI empire starts?
40. As a sign of your decency, would you be willing to release Evan Gershkovich to us? [and we will bring him back to the USA]
41. Does is degrade Russia to ask for a 'real spy' in exchange for Evan [who is not a real spy]
42. Are you worried that what's happening in Ukraine could lead to something much larger and more terrible? How motivated are you to call the US government and say "let's come to terms"
43. You already stated/been publicly reported that Ukraine was prevented from negotiating a peace settlement by the former UK Prime Minister (Boris Johnson) acting on behalf of the Biden Administration and is why I asked about Russia dealing directly with the USA. Just want to make sure I understand you, you do want a negotiated settlement to what is happening in Ukraine?
44. Would you be willing to say "congratulations NATO you won" and just keep the situation where it is right now?
The "mainstream" media, and now Bari apparently, are upset because Tucker enabled us to hear directly from the tyrant Putin. The media is angry because they want us to only hear their interpretation of what Putin says. How dare someone go to a primary source.
When I was in grad school at the University of Chicago they made it obvious by example why you always have to read the primary sources. They are richer and better. They take MORE WORK. You have to sift lie from truth, as best you can, and think about whether or not their arguments make sense, but that sort of work is ALWAYS necessary for anyone who is not so lazy they just want to be told what to think.
Our problem is that most Americans really are that lazy. The Matrix risked rupture by an unmanaged intrusion and this possibility sent a lot of people into hyperarousal. The last thing you want, when you have fallen asleep, is unexpected noise.
This is a basic fact that Americans are not shown. This is why Putin is more popular, verified by Western polling agencies, than any president in US history. He has multiplied GDP per capita by 12 times. The oppressors of the Russian people are not his regime. It is the US administration. They know.
The problem isn’t that Tucker talked to Putin (primary source) the problem is treating him as the ONLY source, which is what such an interview without context (beyond an afternoon on the subway and in a supermarket) without background and without consulting other sources. That’s not journalism that’s desperation.
Many serious journalists tried to interview Putin, and he refused. The problem is not interviewing Putin per se - it’s the fawning approach and totally skewed end result. Even Putin laughed at Tucker’s brownnosing in remarks after the interview.
Yes, Lee... her country, before that invasion, had a coup that drove took down "her" democracy in 2014. That junta (The Banderas) immediately attacked Donbas in the east committing ethnic cleansing against Russian ethnics living there. That coup forced the president to flee the country, and he died shortly after he fled. Joe Biden made the phone call to the Kremlin asking Russia to calm things down by keeping troops in barracks. This made the coup possible.
Years of civil war killing Russian ethnics in the east, and Russia did not invade. Finally, with Biden back in office, the new figurehead president (a comic actor) made a speech in which he said he would make nuclear weapons. Ukraine has an ICBM factory. Ukraine has nuclear power plants to get plutonium from. This was not an idle threat.
This was a violation of the agreement under which Ukraine got its independence. Russia then took over the nuclear power plants to control the source of easy nuclear weapons material. Russia then said it would stop, but Donbas and Crimea go back to Russia. And the nuclear power plants remain in Russian custody.
Here we are. If Mexico was shelling Texas for 6 years, and shooting Americans, we would roll tanks how fast into Mexico city?
Viktor Yanukovych, who fled Ukraine after a student uprising (in which the students were joined by their parents), is alive and well and living in Russia, where he was born and raised before moving to Ukraine. The student uprising in the Maidan was a direct result of young people like Katerina having voted for him because h promised to sign an agreement with the EU for Ukraine to be put on a path to membership in the EU (which finally happened last month) and then Yanukovych reneged on that campaign promise under pressure from Putin. The students occupied the Maidan for days on end and their parents joined them. Yanukovych got his snipers to start firing on the protesters to get rid of them, and the crowds were so outraged that they turned on the police and forced Yanukovych out of the building and ultimately out of office. Young Ukrainians like Katerina want no part of Russia. They want what they grew up with, freedom. The Banderites existed during WW2 for a brief period and haven’t been present in Ukraine for over 50 years. The conflict in the Donbas was started by Russian paramilitary forces led by Igor Girkin, who used his men and local partisans to disrupt the peace and begin a breakaway movement. Girkin’s troops started killing Ukrainian soldiers and the Ukrainians responded. Russia started the conflict in the Donbas.
Ukraine can make nukes? On a dime? Like, in a few months? Now THAT would be something I would expect Putin to rail about. Yet I don't remember him saying anything about that. Instead he whines about NATO.
I love it. It's the 'you asked for it' invasion. To your example, I certainly think with the truckloads of Chinese sourced fentanyl/cocaine etc through Mexico and their gangs streaming across our porous Southern border, we would have had ample reason to invade years ago. I can't wait to go. Want to lead the charge? It can be James Polk in 1846 all over again..
Since you alone seem to have the real info, you write we are being told lies on all sides, where do you get all your info? And why are your sources so beyond doubt? My only comment here regarding a tiny bit of info you mentioned - Epsteins list. With a former president adjudicated a rapist and the brother of Englands king on Epsteins list, what makes you think that effing list is so important to anyone? The Majority of the GOP love and canonized the pussy-grabber and would absolutely vote for him again. England still has its royal family. Is every news outlet “in on the scam” or just the usual suspects? Ya know the dreaded NYTIMES?
I've been with many women, and at some point I've "grabbed" them all. It's quite pleasant for them, when done in the right way at the right time by the right person. And I certainly wouldn't say no to many women who wanted to grab me. That was all Trump was saying. If Bill Clinton had been caught saying the same thing--and even when he was President he reportedly discussed pussy constantly while golfing with Vernon Jordan, since Bill is clearly a sex addict--the media would have made it disappear virtually overnight. How dare you interfere in his personal business, they would have said, or something. It would have been spun, according to the needs of that moment.
What Biden did with Tara Reade was quite different, both then, and even worse, recently, in driving her out of the country. And what he does with little girls in public also seems to indicate some disturbing patterns in private.
The case for Biden being a malignant pussy grabber is much better than that of Trump. Why don't you care? You want to talk about Trump all day. Biden not at all. It's hard to see how any principle of any sort could be involved. You don't have the ability to evaluate rationally his own daughters report that he took showers with her when she was 8. That is creepy by any standard, but your only concern is attacking the story, isn't it?
As to the rest, why don't you do this: start adding, say, The Gateway Pundit or Breitbart or the Epoch Times, or Newsmax to your daily list, and start noticing what stories appear in one place and not in the other. Why don't you start asking yourself, having seen both perspectives, what actually makes sense to you, as a thinking, rational human being?
If you have any emotional intelligence and a mind of any worth at all, it won't take long for you to realize how corrupt and dishonest most of our media is. But of course it would take integrity and a sincere desire for truth to do that. I won't suppose I KNOW what sort of person you are, but certainly I am going to make an assumption.
Go ahead make an assumption. If the news sources you’ve recommended are where you get the whole story then I can make an assumption as well. And I’m so glad you feel you can walk up to women and lay hands on them without their permission. There’s a name for men like that. And I think we as a nation heard more than we needed to or cared about presidential sexual misbehavior. My point, dear PG, wasn’t GOP or Dems was why on Earth would there be any point in the FBI keeping Epstein list quiet. We’ve already heard about Lewinsky and her stained blue dress who gives a crap who hung out with Epstein and his harem.
I didn't say any of those was where I got the whole story. Did I?
I didn't say I feel like I can walk up to women and lay hands on them. Nor did I imply it. Did I?
If you are going to tell lies about what I said, and put words in my mouth, would it not just be simpler to run down the list that starts with racist, and make the accustions more credible by pretending I said them?
I mean, once you know how to lie, and see no argument against it, why not go whole hog?
As far as Epsteins list, I would ask if you are thick, but I think that answer is already pretty obvious.
What if Mitch McConnell is on that list? Chuck Schumer? Barack Obama? James Comey? Chris Wray? Etc.?
These women were trafficked, and many of them were underage, and whatever footage Epstein had, it apparently worked to make him very rich, and would make the possessor of that information potentially powerful.
Obviously. But we are not playing a game of mutual understanding here, are we? You don't want to understand me, but I understand you quite well.
Roxanne, who do you suppose placed hands on Mr. Epstein? If the folks on his list are not important to you, perhaps your concern is for Jeffery? Trying to follow your moral logic and coming up scrambled eggs. 🤷♂️
Moral logic? What is moral logic? I didn’t know logic was now divided into sub- genres like fiction The commenter wasn’t there when Epstein died - aided or unaided. What bothers me is the absolute superior attitude that some commentators here have that they, and they alone KNOW the absolute truth about everything. So my response was, simply, if all of us are being lied to from all sides, what makes them believe their source of information is unimpeachably accurate? My comments were simply this: Epstein had a list. Okay however, There are also dozens of photographs of rich and powerful men partying with the guy including a former president AND the brother of the English king. I used Epstein as an example. I could have used any of the other examples of how “we” are lied to yet the poster has somehow risen above those lies with his sources of information. The commenter implies superior sources that at best is unbridled arrogance and at worst delusional. And my question was never answered although I was told to expand my news sources to Breitbart and Epoch Times. News sources with no history of agendas
"Potential confusion". What a great metaphor {?} those two words provide. We seem so terrified of a little confusion, of questions, of paradox. The gates of enlightenment are guarded by confusion and paradox. Great post Mr. Finbar.
If Tucker thought that the would hear truths from Putin who is not only a politician (that alone would be enough to be highly suspicious) but also a thug, than he is really stupid. He can not be that stupid - so why did he do it? Self-aggrandizing, that is my guess.
Megan Kelly did a very good peace on the circumstances surrounding Jeffrey Epstein's death. After viewing it, you'd have to be naive to think Espstein killed himself.
No naivety needed Jefferey didn’t kill himself, however I don’t believe it was the sex trafficking bullshit I think (and it’s merely MHO) that he was murdered, because he had other stuff on all the people who visited his island like evading tax (he was a brilliant tax specialist). Also laundering their money from the 20 year Iraq/Afghan wars. I have read recently that he has a $600 mil estate which the powers that be would love to get their grubby little paws on. I recently saw and interview with his brother Mark who showed pic’s of Jeffery’s neck it was garroted not bruised. We won’t get a fair investigation into Jeffery’s death, under this Administration it won’t be allowed.
I've always been under the impression that Trump (well, someone on the downlow on behalf of Trump) had Epstein killed. After all, it was while Trump was president, and Epstein probably had some serious dirt on Trump as much as he had on the Clintons or Prince Andrew.
Trump actively distanced himself from Epstein once he found out what he was about. This from one of the women who made all this public.
Trump is clearly not that sort of person. He's not violent. He's not mean. He's certainly a bit thin skinned, but having endured thousands of personal attacks myself over many years I can say it gets tiring and never brings out my best.
In my own view, Epstein cooperated closely with US agencies like the FBI and CIA to gather incriminating material to use for blackmail, and it's almost certain those same agencies wanted to be absolutely sure none of that got out.
Or it could have been the Brits or even the Clintons. When you start to look at the list of all the weird deaths associated with them--like the Starbucks gal in DC--it's hard not to believe there is something there. But who would investigate? The FBI? Those files are probably kept next to the Seth Rich files in a vault known only to the invited.
I suspect they have a LOT on Joe Biden. He is possibly the most reliable President they have ever installed, not least because he can't remember most of what they ask him to do.
Very unlikely in my view. I don't think it was the Clintons either - Bill Clinton cheating? Gasp - with his track record, who cares? Even Hillary wouldn't care. The Royal Family - not their style. It's someone we don't know about and, since the FBI won't release all the records (and the names of the prisoners in the cells that night) and Ghislaine won't talk, we'll likely never know. I think it was a privately ordered hit, not the CIA. It was too sloppy.
SS-- I tend to agree w/ you on this. As much as we'd love to blame the Clintons, Trump or the Royals- Epstein was a blackmailer and had dirt on many a man!
So who do you think did it? It had to be someone whose reputation would have been completely destroyed by a revelation. And he had to be powerful and well-connected at the highest levels to pull this off.
Ha- SS- if only I had a clue? I'm not savvy enough! I'd probably have to take some peyote or go do a walkabout in the outback to gain some enlightenment on the subject- or maybe give Gislaine M. some sodium pentothol!
Liberty is under daily attack HERE. Freedom is being stolen from citizens HERE. The weaponization of our judiciary against people who are not part of the chosen elite, is happening HERE.
Ignore the shiny object 8,000 miles to the east, and focus your eyes where it matters.
Bari et al. Yes we live in a world of moral confusion. That is what is bothering so much about this article. I don't really think there is moral confusion about Putin. It's long been clear. (it's also clear that supporting Ukraine won't stop him). What's bothering me is that TFP wants to pick on Tucker and others who really want to look at the moral confusion here at home (read these comments!). We know Trump is a walking moral confusion and know what we are getting. This is amply and perhaps often incorrectly investigated and reported. What is missing and what I wish TFP would do is look at the moral confusion of every institution in OUR society. I believe TFP is joining in with the MSM in it's moral confusion about our current administration. (AGAIN, read the comments)
You didn't even mention Musk, who is now under assault in every one of his holdings because he stabbed a knife in the heart of corrupt censorship and Leftist Power.
Hillary Clinton is also an authoritarian and a murderer, so I'd love to know how Bari thinks we're better than Putin. Wasn't Nellie just joking about an assassinated Clinton enemy a few weeks ago? How quickly these things pass us by.
We'll traffic underage girls for sex, use it as blackmail, and then murder the guy who was employed to do it. But yeah. Poor Navalny. Putin such bad man.
No, no; if the Liberal woke power brokers say the death was an accident, well who could question that, as we all know the Clintons, Obamas, Kerry, Gore and all the others are the true protectors of freedom and democracy. Oh wait, I forgot to add great people like Slow Joe, Newsome, Whitmore and all of the other freedom fighters. Putin is just more direct and less filled with BS. Make no mistake that the so called Davos elites will and have done worse.
Navalny was courageous, or foolish, depending how you look at it. But Navalny was, for the West, first and foremost, a US asset. No question about that. The USA's interest in Navalny was that he was an asset to destabilize Russia and make the country ripe for plucking. My take on Navalny has always been that he was, in his country, a weird idealist. The idea here in the USA that the 90's were some sort of "better time" is completely wrong. At least 4 million Russians died of homicide, suicide, and starvation during those horrific years. Everyone had relatives who were murdered, often horribly, by gangs. The reign of the oligarchs, which the USA backed, was a reign of gangsters.
In that time, one could go to a restaurant, and see a man stab his waitress with his fork, over and over, to punish her for some slight or other about the food. Those men who fled to the West? They had private armies, and they stole what the wanted with impunity. How? A colleague's secretary was left across the street from his office, bound with wire, dead---a message. This was not freedom.
Banks were run by gangsters who took them over by force, holding a gun to the head of the directors and officers. If they resisted, they had their brains blown out. The gangsters literally played poker in the back with customer money. This was not freedom.
Today, in Russia, and since the start of the Putin group's party rule, for most Russians, life improved astonishingly. The GDP per capita is 5X what it was in 2000. When you account for currency and purchasing power parity, Russians are often better off in real terms than Americans. When they are not, things work now.
Soros said it a long time ago. "Freedom without economic choices is no freedom at all." Navalny, in practice, mostly fought for a return to the wild west oligarch's time. Today, it is far from perfect, but things are trending steadily up for most. Economic choices are real now. Before, economic choices were only real for the elite of the oligarchs. The intent of the West, and definitely of Joe Biden, is the overthrow of Russia, and installation of fools who would allow the nation to be raped. That is what this administration wants.
You may say, "Oh, there's no difference. It's still oligarchs." It is still oligarchs, but now they are subject to some rule of law, and are not allowed to destroy their country as they like. Putin and his group have been playing, "Finding Joe Kennedy."
People forget. Joe Kennedy was a gangster oligarch. The Kennedy family would be described in Russia as oligarchs. They are, by any sane measure. But, the Kennedys turned themselves to supporting civil society. They could be worked with. That is the kind of oligarch that today's Russia allows. There were many oligarchs who learned that if they didn't step up, and if they ran a bank, didn't employ people who understood what a bank was, well... accidents happen.
Russia is not America. For Russia to survive and support its people properly, much tougher steps were needed. They still are. We have plenty of deaths too, and that includes political ones. Many quite suspicious deaths occur that will never be solved.
Separately, I know more than a little about chemical weapons. The symptoms described are wrong for the Novichok class of drugs. I am not close, but unless it was a month-long medically induced coma, that isn't what nerve agents like VX, sarin, or Novichok do. And a month medical coma is wrong for such a drug. The longest lasting antidote to those drugs is BZ, which was found in that gentleman in England.
Nor is it true that only Russia has the ability to make or use such molecules. That is just ridiculous. Anyone who can make an insectide can make them, or something like them. I am not saying Russia's government did, or did not attack Navalny in this way. I don't know. But I would treat everything around Navalny that is reported as very questionable. I know for a fact that if the FSB (or the US) wants to kill someone it can be done without leaving any forensic chemical evidence at all.
I will point out to a general audience that I can read all this, digest it, remember it, and consider some or all of it to be true, without assuming necessarily that it IS all true and that I can't change my mind later if I get what seems like more reliable information.
This is what responsible thought looks like. Let people speak their piece, listen to what they have to say, then make a provisional decision that seems appropriate that you are ready to change later because you are not an idiot.
So many people want a simple world. Comics are simple. The world is not. It can be made to LOOK simple if you apply the force of stupidity to it with determination, but that does not make it actually simple. It makes you incapable of reacting to anything appropriately and with skill and intelligence.
What the noise and PR about Navalny from the top echelon here tells you is that Navalny's utility was mostly to gather support for American foreign policy in this country. Ask yourself where did he get his money? How could he afford to travel at will and stay in hotels, with a bodyguard? How did he finance what he did? He wasn't working in Russia. His job appears to have been making enough publicity against Russia's policy to please his US funders. Navalny really wasn't much in Russia. If he had been effective, most likely, the US would have kept quiet about him. That is not guaranteed, of course. Our politicians are the most appalling idiots when it comes to anything to be handled clandestinely.
Having grown up in Russia in the 90s I agree with everything you say regarding crime and hunger. However, there was freedom. Freedom unlike ever before. For a very short time there was no censorship on TV, there was independent media, there wasn’t Soviet propaganda in schools. It was a scary, but fascinating time to live through. It is painful for me to think that my generation, “children of Perestroika” is the only one who grew up free to think and say what we wanted.
To those here who want to speculate about who killed Navalny and think it had to be someone from the west because Navalny wasn’t a threat now to Putin, think again. In March there is a presidential election in Russia. Navalny had/followers. Someone raised with the freedoms we have in the US might assume they could anticipate Putin’s reasoning. But that’s just hubris pure and simple. Putin’s proven M.O. is murder. I realize chasing zebras is a fun pastime but it’s no way to understand world politics.
Really. This guy who was a literal Nazi, and led rallies with the sieg Heil salute? That's Navalny. He got what? 3% of the vote? No. Navalnny was around in other elections. He just wasn't much of anyone of importance in Russia.
Navalny's importance is as propaganda aimed at us.
Very much like with the CCP, the US thought that encouraging financial liberalism and growth would translate into liberalism in the political sphere. And today we see that the Chinese and Russians have more recently enjoyed greater economic success, but they are still slaves to the regime.
It’s easy to say in hindsight what the West did wrong in its 1990s relationship with Russia. This 20/20 hindsight is especially strong with you.
Russians maybe 15-20 years ago had a choice to resist Putin’a regime, while now resistance is all but impossible. Tucker has a choice as well and he resold Putin’s propaganda for free. And yes I listened to it.
I saw the 90's in Russia directly, on the streets, with mothers at 2 am sitting on the curb selling vodka for a few bucks to stay alive. I knew, just like Jeffrey Sachs figured out, that the policy of shock treatment was an ivory tower monstrosity, that the economists who backed it covered their butts about. Jefrey Sachs has spent the rest of his life trying to atone for the horrific harm he inflicted on Russia.
Get this through your head --- everyone. (You too Bari.) Putin and his group (it's a group, not a one man show) are more popular in Russia, verified by western (and US) polling agencies, than ANY administration in the history of the USA. ANY! That includes the peak of John F Kennedy's popularity. Putin and his group are very good managers of their nation. Very.
Look at that. From the start of the Putin group's administration starting to operate in mid 1999 ($1331), to 2013 ($15,974) GDP per capita went up by a factor of ... 12 times! Imagine a US president who multiplied the median real wage in the USA by 12 times! Would he or she be popular? You betcha.
Russians know damn well what has caused the drops in their economic fortunes, and it's not Vladimir Putin, it is machinations against them by the USA, and Europe. It's sanctions. It's terrorism against their pipeline. It's war. They know, it's no secret, that the stated goal of this US administration is to break Russia, and that this has been building since 2004.
And yet, here in America, there is this bizarre narrative that Putin is a dictator who does terrible things and the people of Russia are oppressed and crushed by him. This is completely wrong. The only oppressing and crushing of the Russian people is by the politicians of the USA and Europe. They are pretty well aware of this.
None of what I just said is "propaganda", it is all easily verifiable fact. The only propaganda is the bizarre story that you and virtually everyone else in the USA believes about Russia and its leadership.
“And yet, here in America, there is this bizarre narrative that Putin is a dictator who does terrible things and the people of Russia are oppressed and crushed by him. This is completely wrong.”
You give long comments so thanks for crystallizing your actual stance. Now I know the depths to which you are a Putin apologist and how full of it you are. Thanks.
I say we take this entire conversation, warts and all, offering vastly different points of view, free speech and all that, and conduct it in Moscow - let's ask Bari for her to open up adjunct office of the FP there so that she can host it. And we can invite Navalny supporters and Ukraine dissenters to join in.
And what's not to like about free housing, food and money, after you break our laws and are unlikely to be prosecuted for anything?
America is richer than most of the world. There is more money here. Of course people want to come here. But your comment in no ways addressing the creeping fascism which can only be denied through willful and vigorous acts of ignorance.
For the past two years Russians have been fleeing to European democracies. All immigrants I know in the Houston area are working difficult low paying freeway, housing, restaurant, and cleaning jobs. I’ve never heard about free food, housing, or money. They are comparing their country’s political and economic situation to ours, and like I said, some are dying trying to make a better life for themselves and their children. The ones I hear about from the kids in school are not freeloaders. But I will tell you this, they love our opportunities for hard work in a relatively safe environment. Even in Texas of all places. I do not know or see the “fascism” you are referring to. I guess it depends on what is your comparison country. I’m really not scared right now of the centrist left. Moreso of the far left and the fascist right, so I’ve been told.
What centrist left? Give me an example of someone who matters, in a position of power. I see no evidence of anything but batshit crazy.
And of course America in general is better than Russia in general. But there are no guarantees it will stay that way. It clearly won't on the path the Democrats and their Republican fellow travelers have laid out for us.
I tend to call the lot of them Collectivism. Fascism and Communism are just rival street gangs that use basically the same methods to achieve basically the same ends. The main difference is that Fascism is somewhat rational, in that it sort of works, whereas Communism is fully psychotic, and runs purely on lies and graft.
Good retort. I am coming to believe that since most people do not know the true meaning of Fascism, Socialism, Communism, etc. the labels are meaningless. The important distinction is are they American Patriots or not.
Yes. And I sat on a beach on a remote island in Fiji a couple decades back, talking to a schoolteacher native of the island. It was incredible. Perfect temperature, light breeze, palm trees, and wavelets inside the reef phosphorescing. It was breathtaking. And she wanted to go to Texas. She carried on about Texas as the promised land of fables.
Fijians come here, and... some regret it. Some go back. Most don't even if the regret it.
Yeah. And familiarity. To her the gorgeous world around her was just the world. It was boring. It was small. It was, to her, provincial. She knew everything about everyone and they knew everything about her.
And lived to tell the tale. I was in the army in the late 50s, and if I would have been called up in the Vietnam era, I would have done what the 339,00 thousand did. There was no reason to go to war in Vietnam, just like there was no reason to go to war in Iraq, or Afghanistan.
Early on we thought fighting in Viet Nam was noble, to stop the advance of communist China taking over southeast Asia, the same way communist Soviet Union took over Eastern Europe.
The cause to stop the domino effect of nations falling was just, but it escalated into a war we could not and chose not to win.
In addition to meeting Ukrainians, you may want to meet some of the many, many russian refugees (more in Europe, but yes, plenty in the US as well). There has been a documented ongoing brain drain even since before the war. When the war started there was an exodus.
Yeah. And I think you are part of that. Yes? So why not go to Ukraine and fight? Hmm?
I have talked to many Ukrainians in the USA. Out of all of them, just one said something positive about Zelensky and the Kiev dictatorship. His wife works for Zelenksy. But still, he is in the USA, and has no interest in fighting in that war.
So here’s a really weird thought. Clearly Putin could have killed Navalny at any moment he wanted, agreed. I’ve followed Navalny’s story pretty closely (and, Bari, he wasn’t sent directly to Polar Wolf. Initially he was in a prison not far from Moscow and did not turn up at Polar Wolf until Dec 25,2023. I digress.) So, why now? Is there a connection between the Tucker interview and Navalny’s killing? Is DJT seriously considering Tucker for VP? I have no idea and wouldn’t think so, but the killing plus the interview are sure riling people up against Tucker. We also now have the just-released “serious threat” of Russia’s potential weapon in space, which has been known to the US for at least a month. I need someone smart and suspicious to explain the timing of all this to me, because I no longer believe in coincidences!
Tucker lauds Putin, the puppies lap it up, Putin kills Navalny, the puppies say, not my problem. That interview was perfectly stage managed by Putin. Who's next, the Myanmar Generals?
The only puppies who are lapping things up are the dipshit communist seditionists who think that some guy getting killed in Russia is more important than what Democrats are doing to destroy America.
One has to ask who benefits from Navalny's death? He certainly didn't seem to be much of a threat to Putin so why would he have him offed now? One might look closer to the west. You make some good points.
Alison-- Great points! I think we tend to think of Putin (and Russia) as in their own slightly backwards sphere, invading Ukraine in a brutal simplistic land grab (because "USA so veak") but we don't think of him a skilled propagandist, and I think that is a mistake. After all- Lenin was the master. I'm sure Vladimir has studied Vladimir extensively!
There is no peace and as long as people are making money from war, there will not be peace. As long as someone wants something that is not theirs and belongs to someone else, there will be no peace. That is the history of mankind.
I worked in real estate finance with several major lending institutions. Trump did what every prospective borrower does—provide an inflated valuation of a property—which is why lenders are required to do their own, as well as obtain an outside MAI appraisal. Valuation is based upon cash flow, so the loan could only have been paid if the cash flow/underlying valuation upon which the lender based its loan had been correct. The banks were paid in full.
This case is an absolute outrage. Every real estate borrower in NY should be charged with a crime if this is the standard.
Totally agree. I’m not convinced Putin even killed Navalny. Why now? Navalny’s death serves western propaganda interests not Putin’s. However genuine Navalny was as a freedom fighter, he was also an MI6 asset and was working with them to plot a Colour Revolution in Russia. Imagine what the US government would do to a journalist or political operative trying to do the same in the US - oh wait we don’t have to because Julian Assange rots in Belmarsh prison, the J6ers most of who were convicted of trespassing (!) are also in jail and the Democrats and DOJ are running an unbelievable lawfare campaign to try to put Trump, the leading Presidential candidate behind bars as well. Not to mention Biden did not lift a finger to prevent the imprisonment and murder of journalist Gonzalo Lira who was tortured and killed in a Ukrainian prison and is currently funding the Israeli genocide, including the murder of journalists, in Gaza. So I have little time for any moral outrage expressed by the western media in relation to Navalny.
There is little or no evidence Navalny was working in Russia to do anything particularly. He got a few people to token protests. Then he traveled in Europe, staying in nice hotels. He was a lawyer without any visible means of support. Navalny was mostly ignored by Russians. He was no threat to the current administration. In fact, Putin intervened to allow Navalny to leave Russia when Navalny was on probation. The communist party is the loyal opposition in Russia.
The more I look into Navalny, the more he looks like an "asset grifter". He said and did enough to get money, quite a bit of it, from the West. Navalny was used. He was mostly protected by the Putin administration. He probably believed that would continue, and he could keep working his grift. Navalny was for US propaganda purposes. He was little or nothing significant in Russia itself.
What a bunch of words desperately trying to hide how the American Trumpists essentially copy the method and the madness of the American Democrats, concluding that two wrongs make a right. From what I see, the difference is not in tolerance or decency, but simply in who has the power. The people manipulating the senile Biden lie, cheat and abuse the law today; let’s see what Trump and his cultists will do tomorrow.
Sure, Russia is faraway, so it’s perfectly fine to kiss Putin’s feet, repeat his propaganda and praise his KGB state, because if the wokes are a disgrace, it’s OK for everybody to do the same.
How is not sending huge sums of money we had to borrow to a nation that is patently corrupt, ,embezzling large chunks of it, and is clearly losing the war, "kissing Putin's feet"? Why the hell should any of us care about the Ukraine? All this is in Europe. Are there not response-able European nations capable of dealing with this? How in God's name is this our problem? The Cold War is over. We spent the money to win it. Europe still owes us for that.
The rest of that is word salad. It's hard to response intelligently to incoherent rambling. It's actually vaguely comical, because I feel very sure you thought what you wrote was trenchent and on point.
In case you didn’t notice, you are posting a rambling comment to a article by Bari Weiss about the murder of Alexei Navalny in a Russian prison, contrasting it to the shameful but much-admired, in your circles, brown-nosing that Tucker Carlson just gave Putin. You are trying to drown what Bari is clearly saying about this contrast. One might have thought that just on this particular day when a true brave man has been murdered, in a comment to the article that honors his memory, you will have the decency not to pretend that you “are much more worried about our country”. As far as I can tell, you’re not in a penal colony in Alaska.
Tucker Carlson's interview style is to ask questions that allow the interviewed person to explain what they think and what they think they know. He lets the person talk. If you back someone into a corner with "tough questions," you have a cornered person, not a person who talks and tells you themselves where they are at that moment. I think that's a pretty savvy interview style. I think he gets much further with it. That style in no way makes Tucker Carlson a lightweight who is in over his head. We could ALL do much better with listening better. Not listening is how this country got so polarized politically.
Louisa, have you ever listened to an “yellow press” interview, like NPR interviewing some author on “the scourge of systemic racism and white supremacy” in the US, where the “reporter” is simply cheering on the person supposedly interviewed? Do you like that? Do you believe that reduces polarization or it actually infuriates listeners? Now, Carlson giving a softball interview to the murderous dictator who single-handedly started a war that has killed and maimed more than a million on both sides, that’s just the start. After that, Carlson proceeded to provide pure propaganda for the Putin regime, by pretending that life in Russia is so much better there than the US. Please look up Walter Duranty. Is this really the “journalism” that you like?
Gee, Bari’s choice is such a mystery! Yes, why would you want to contrast a brave Russian giving his life to confront the dictator of his country, with an American who, without any obligation, goes to Russia to lick the behind of the same dictator, including idiotically pretending that life in Russia is somehow better than in the US? Maybe, just maybe, Bari wanted to point out that some people still have both spine and brains? We could use something like that today in the US, don’t we?
Well, seems quite odd that Bari, as a self proclaimed ‘independent’ journalist with a blog site literally called ‘The Free Press’ would use another independent journalist in this way. Talking to your adversaries it seems to you/some is ‘boot licking’ because he (Tucker) didn’t ask the questions as you would have. Very poor form. Who’s to say Tucker doesn’t get follow up interviews w/ Putin now that ice is broken?
It’s a good point Bari - why no concern for the breakdown of the legal institutions in America. You seem to cheer on the injustice here - certainly you protect it and you vote for it. How long are we supposed to care about barbarity and injustice in other places spoken of by people who are just fine with the persecution of their own neighbors
I am much more worried about America too. We view ourselves as morally superior. Yet do we know what our CIA does all over the world? Oh no, we prefer not to know, or we tell ourselves whatever they are doing is to advance democracy. Our CIA has done some pretty awful things. We need another Church Commission to air it all out.
I used to call us a global force for good, but no longer. The scales have fallen from my eyes. I am still strongly supportive of the rank and file military, and the honest leaders, but have gone to view our REAL motivations in general as money making.
It's odd how the Left and Right have in many respects flipped on this.
Many of us the ‘Right’ have experience in uniform, and some of us in combat zones. We have ‘seen’ the $ insanity, and the damage done. Most (but not all) on the Left have not served, and operate from some video game cocoon. Maybe the Left support of war and militarism fulfills the alpha, testosteronic mode they lack.
I am also more worried about our own country, Unsaint. We all know that the Tsars, Stalin, Putin, whoever follows after him.... are mass (and individual) murderers. It is super sad that this is not new and that history is full of terrible things including slavery dating back to antiquity. I want the best for the people of the world!
But, we have had something special in this country which is under threat by the very people who have been screaming about Democracy Dying in Darkness. These people Always accuse others of exactly what They are doing.
I have been trying to think of what countries the US has successfully "fixed" and the only one I can come up with is Japan. But, we nuked them and wrote their constitution for them. And, we would never have entered WWII/taken on Japan if they had not taken out our fleet in Hawaii with a surprise attack. I was a little pro involvement in Ukraine at the beginning but I think the taxpayer money bleed to that part of the world has to stop absent a clearly explained (to the American people) plan that involves a ceasefire.
Why do we hate ourselves and work to throw away what we have?
See The Eagle. Lindsey. “Sleep on o wise and brave hearted man. To live in mankind is far more than to live in a name.” Good bye hero. Hope to see you on the other side of the river.
Assange is a (maybe) double rapist - he never had the courage to face his two female accusers in a Swedish court; certainly a narcissist; a coward; and a dupe for Putin by hacking and releasing thousands of secret files before the 2016 elections. He is not a journalist and he’s certainly not a hero.
Assange is not double rapist, he was accused of having sex without condom. In both cases persons involved never clamed that he raped them and never wanted him to be prosecuted.
She should have stopped with praising his courage. The rest was totally unnecessary. She could easily invite Tucker on to Honestly and have a real conversation
Tucker has earned the criticism he is getting over his behavior since the interview with Putin. Interviewing Putin doesn’t give him a pass. Even conservative commentators are calling him out for his cringy anti-American commentary that sounds more like the ramblings of Bernie Sanders than a rational adult man with decades of journalistic experience.
He has utterly lost perspective because aw shucks! dictators may kill dissidents, but wow, those trains and grocery stores! So yes, in the face of Nalvany’s death, Tucker looks positively foolish.
Bari doesn’t owe him an opportunity to explain himself. He has his own show—he can address her criticism and everyone else’s on HIS platform if he so chooses.
That's not credible. There have been so many times that Navalny could be killed. And he was a virtual nobody in Russia. He was never much of an opponent for the Putin group.
Yes. But, when you live in a nation that had one of the highest murder rates in the world, a country in recovery from a mass murdering state that had kill quotas for every police station, a nation fallen I to the grip of sociopathic rat-bastards, pounding your drum for "freedom", when it means dismantling the state again so the nation and its people can be raped and crushed under the boots of utterly sociopathic oligarchs again...
That is not helpful. It's not really a call for freedom. It's something else. Idealist is the most generous term. Blockheaded is also generous.
I have seen very sharp comedy on Russian TV skewering Putin. The picture drawn here by people who mean well, like Bari, who never set foot in the country, haven't learned the language, have read no literature... it's wanting for grounding in objective reality.
Even here on this forum, someone told me to pack my bags because I have been there. WTAF is that? How utterly stupid, even mad, is that?
The USA as a whole is educated about Russia as a cartoon. It's akin to the education Arabs have about Israel.
he was a sex predator and a YouTube pick up artist who traveled to Ukraine illegally. He also conducted espionage on behalf of Russia. He was kicked out of Ukraine twice, and he kept coming back. In the end, he died of pneumonia- because he was a fat pig, and a heavy smoker.
I am a conservative but Tucker is an isolationist anti-Semite. He is also not much of an intellectual or a history buff and he totally got played by Putin. Add to that his maniacal laugh. Yuck!!
Actually most of these comments are out of context. This article is about this particular Russian doing what 100% of these commenters would not do. The article is about raw bravery for a moral cause. And yet, you all pick up where you left off in your last comment thread. We call this “off topic.”
1000% agree. Every f8cking FP article is another opportunity to grind one's pet ax. Rarely is there a cogent comment about the topic of an article, and when there is a relevant response, it rapidly deteriorates the into the same old sh!t.
The TFP comments are a MAGA sewer. It’s one of the reasons I cancelled my subscription, and I told Bari that. Unfortunately, the way Substack works, when you cancel, they don’t give you a refund. They just don’t renew the subscription when the time period you paid for runs out. So I guess I can lurk here from time to time until summer. But omg, does this place smell bad.
The truly interesting thing is that I also complained to Bari about the contents of TFP, and poof! The tenor of the articles changed overnight. And so much outrage in the comments as a result……
To Ann P: You are absolutely right about the comments here. I find myself stunned sometimes. I'm not sure how The Free Press gained such a following (???), but I wish folks like you would stay. There are plenty of us who hope to be more thought-full and intellectually engaged, testing out our ideas, listening to others, learning, but not to be heckled by what you call the Maga sewer. Anyway, you are appreciated by TFP readers!
Thanks, JR. Ray told me something similar in a different thread. But unless there’s a dramatic and consistent change in both content and comment, summer will be the end for me. It’s truly bizarre how TFP has evolved. Over at The Bulwark the writers are also puzzled by TFP’s evolution. One of them recently said, “If you want to know how far off the rails Bari Weiss has gotten, just read the TFP comments and see the kind of weirdos she attracts.” Now, I don’t think Bari meant for any of this to happen. Instead it seems like a certain cohort relished the idea that a “flaming liberal” left the NYT in a dramatic fashion, had finally “seen the light” and was leaving the dark side for the righteous right. Bari and Nellie are regarded as if they were recovering alcoholics who just haven’t spent enough time in the rooms yet. Whenever Bari, Nellie, Oliver, or anyone else on the staff isn’t sufficiently conservative, the comments get their panties in a twist. The comments consistently fail to understand that THIS is who these people ARE. They are never going to cross that invisible middle line. They’re center left, and they will always be center left. So. We’ll see what the future holds.
Another explanation might be that many of those who post have significant relevant experience on a given subject that may be foreign to some readers, especially those who haven't had much int'l experience and surround themselves with sycophants.
However I have to agree with DWL that people often do get off track and into their own familiar rants. It's a human condition. We all need to work on it.
The minute the pejoratives (e.g., MAGA sewer) come out, the poster loses all credibility. And their hubris prevents them from ever seeing it, which ultimately is what sits at the core of our escalating division. Deplorables much, anyone?
Well, I have tons of international experience. I’ve studied abroad in France, and my husband studied abroad in Moscow (during the 70’s H smuggled a letter out of Russia for Andrei Sakharov). My daughter studied math in Budapest. My son teaches English as a foreign language in Spain (he did the same in France). I spent last month in Australia and New Zealand. I am out of the country roughly every other month, generally Europe, but also Latin America (Chile and Argentina). I’ve been to Tallinn, Estonia several times, the last time we stayed in the same hotel my H stayed in when he was a student, the Hotel Viru. They have a KGB museum on the top floor where you can see the stuff the KGB left behind when they fled the building as the Soviet Union fell. Our tour guide the last time was from Lithuania; she had some interesting stories.
So are you including me in your description/veiled insult?
Certainly the comments here usually do not reflect the opinions of Weiss or her staff. I think conservatives gather here because it is one of the few places they are allowed to express their views. I commend TFP for allowing open expression.
Oh, I have no doubt that the opinions expressed here are not shared by Bari and her staff. There’s a noticeable disconnect between the contents and the comments. But the TFP content has become more commentary/opinion over time than it has become “news”. What news is printed is usually just stuff they found somewhere else and they repeat it here. A lot of it is either banal, or I can read it in something else I already subscribe to. So there’s nothing of value for me here anymore. Nevertheless, I do find the disconnect bizarre.
This gives off an unflattering impression. You probably did not intend or would wish for that.
The Free Press has one of the most thoughtful and intelligent comment sections that I have interacted with in 20 years. The lean here is simply "not crazy". That's pretty much it. I think many are here because they have been severely disaffected by legacy media sources and the corruption and rot in both political parties. I have spent a lot of time here and have seen respectful disagreement, witty repartee, but not abuse.
I would love for you to define MAGA. Does MAGA include me, who voted for Trump twice as a lesser of two evils choice, who has never owned a red cap, and who finds much of Trump's behavior immature, boorish, unnecessarily cruel, and beneath what I would consider the standard of behavior of our public leaders, but whose policies I mostly agree with?
I think this probably more accurately describes what you derisively describe as a MAGA sewer.
Do you believe the 2020 election was stolen? Are you an anti-vaxxer? Do you believe Victoria Nuland and the CIA planned the Maidan Revolution in Kiev in the winter of 2014? Do you believe Epstein was assassinated and didn’t really commit suicide? Most of the comments that I regularly see here believe in all the popular conspiracy theories. They think the “MSM” lies to them on a regular basis. Do you? Are you an isolationist?
Those are the kind of things I think of when I think MAGA. It’s more than just “I’m voting for Trump because I think he’s the lesser of two evils” (which I can respect but also disagree with). It’s the whole conspiracy theory/isolationist bubble that MAGAs seem to live in. It’s “the Biden crime family” when the FBI informant admits he’s lying. It’s “Jan 6th was just a peaceful protest and the people in jail are hostages”. If you believe all that, then you too are MAGA.
Bari made a knee-jerk reaction of juxtaposing Navalny w/ Tucker. She cast shade on what many of us consider a seeker of truth. And it was completely unnecessary. Dish it out, then be okay to take it in return.
That was simply a beautiful tribute. I hope that Navalny's sacrifice and your words help us find the courage we need to reverse humanity's terrible slide.
How about pretending that Joe Biden isn't a senile imbecile who is stupendously unfit to be our president? I prefer a Tucker Carlson who has the courage to question over the fawning fools who comprise the US media and lie everyday that we're not being led by jokers and fools.
One can be critical of our mainstream media while also not falling for Tucker Carlson stunt... where is the courage there? a classic example of "useful idiot" for Putin. his picture should be in a thesaurus next to "useful idiot"...
What was bad about granting a person who is being villified in our press the ability to make his own case? Only idiots think they need to believe everything they hear. I certainly didn't believe everything Putin said, and unlike Americans am historically literate enough to know most of the history he left out.
But would we not have fewer wars if we spent more time humanizing our enemies? Are fewer wars not a good idea? Would it affect any of you who have no connections to the Ukraine in any way if Putin kept the Donbass? Why do you care? Why is this idiotic conflict worth large amounts of American money that could and should either be spent here, or not added to our staggering national debt?
Only idiots can take anything coming out of Putin's mouth as truth. I have some first hand experience with Soviet/Russian propaganda.
Do you, or should we all, care about anything taking place outside our own country? Middle Easr? Far East? I certainly would not argue that fewer wars is better, of course it is. But how does giving a platform to Putin gets us closer to that?
As Mel Brooks said in "To Be Or Not To Be":
I don't want war. All I want is peace. Peace. Peace!
A little piece of Poland, a little piece of France
A little piece of Portugal and Austria perchance...
And, in case you wondering, I am very skeptical of our mainstream media. And I really like Bari Weiss.
I think only idiots take anything coming out of Biden's mouth as truth. But the fact is, he only lies when he needs to. That is a lot, but not all the time. Why would Putin be any different?
All of this “but did you watch it” is such utter nonsense. There is no point in watching a dictator whose prose is compulsory lies. It’s like watching the latest cancer cure chiropractor on YouTube. You bring up the fact that it doesn’t matter what they say, wrong is wrong, fact is fact, and these people still say “but did you watch it”
But it isn't OK to stir up such wars either. We did it in Georgia, as well, to no good effect. Am I'm also old enough to remember that we were constantly trying to stir up the Poles and Hungarians and leaving them out to dry when the Soviets reacted. Until finally we had a president with the balls to face them down instead of temporizing with them. I also remember the very same latte slurping leftists attacking Reagan as a warmonger and "an amiable dunce."
How is it a stunt? Is it a stunt to learn that Biden & Putin haven’t spoken in 2 years? That’s what I heard in the interview that disturbed me the most. And from the White House on that statement, crickets. They (the White House) know not to address the substance of the interview. Because then those ‘useful idiots’ who support forever war might waver in support.
Yury, is that how you treat your own family? Do you give them the silent treatment? If so, how’s that working out?
Greater courage than any other American journalist has shown.
And do you deny that Joe Biden has never been tossed anything BUT a softball question? He would have no hope of answering any other kind, would he? And he screws up even the easy ones pretty consistently. The guy is not fit to run a gas station, much less a country.
We all know, of course, that he isn't in charge. But that logically means people are in charge we didn't vote for, and whose names we can't even be sure of. It's not Obama: he's not smart enough, and he didn't run his own Presidency. But who is it? Sane people want to know, but we have no good way of finding out.
And what other American journalist was invited to a long form interview? I think that most would jump at the chance to take Carlsons place! And don't bother telling me that because Carlson ASKED that he was allowed to do the interview. He was CHOSEN by Putin.
The journalists in Russia who wanted to ask Putin some questions are in jail or dead. The journalists Putin wants to interview him, go to the opera and grocery store and marvel at how pretty Moscow is.
You completely ignored the substance of my response, which amounts to the observation that we should be talking about Biden, not Putin, and that regardless of his motivations, Carlson increased the amount of information in the world, which is a journalists job. Figuring out what to make of it, traditionally, is YOUR job. You don't want to do your job. I get it.
You want journalists to tell you what to think, and the mere possibility they may not be in perfect ideogical conformity with you creates the real risk of intellectual malfunction. Independent journalists and unspun information are like the risk of fentanyl in most other drugs nowadays.
Me, I watched the interview. I believed some, thought some silly and self serving, and overall left with a much better personal impression of Putin, for good and for bad, and felt the time well invested.
We are so unworthy of you...not only are you a repository of pungent and correct analysis, you also can suss out a persons whole thought process from just a few lines!
The most hilarious thing is that these halfwits have a fit when Carlson asks Putin questions but sit by passively with a doddering imbecile leading our own nation.
I yearn for an America where the educated viewed the willfully ignorant with disdain. In our America the educated ARE the willfully ignorant. They have so little practice interacting with opposing and differing views they in general lack the ABILITY to even try.
And if you HAD watched the scary, scary interview, you would have heard Carlson ask for Evan's freedom multiple times. On Putin's account he was caught red handed with Russian secrets. He may have been lying, but it seems more likely to me he was telling the truth.
Asking a dictator multiple times to set someone free in the middle of the Kremlin, in the middle of Russia, was pretty ballsy. But you know, to know anything about that, you would have to put your BIG BOY pants on, stick a pacifier in your mouth, and sit through that terrifying interview. As you say, that ain't gonna happen.
Exactly. And his fellow bootlickers suggest that he’s the ONLY one who has thought to ask Putin for an interview. How stupid are these people?
Seems much more likely that Putin has refused all western interviews until he could get one with a dependable and useful idiot, who also has an exclusive audience of useful idiots and sycophant-wannabes.
What Duranty did, as a Communist, is cover up Soviet crimes. What Tucker did is air a two hour interview which anyone can watch and interpret for themselves. It is interesting that none of the people regurgitating anti-Putin/anti-Russian propaganda have the interest and integrity to actually watch the interview for themselves. Seemingly, they lack the stomach for ideas which have not been selected for them and predigested by someone else.
Carlson raving about how wonderful Moscow is reminds me of some ministers I know of in the 1950s being taken on a tour of Moscow and coming home and raving about how the USSR had all these active churches and freedom of religion. Useful idiots on a Potemkin tour, squired around by government propagandists.
It's possible to hold two separate ideas which seem in opposition to each other but in fact are not. One is that Russia has never been free, and the current ruthless kleptocracy rivals that of North Korea and Iran. At the same time, their subways are much better than ours, and they don't tolerate the sort of street crime and indolence that we look away from in the name of of equity, reparations, brotherhood, whatever you want to call our public cultural failure.
That’s how I think of it, too. About five months ago —LONG BEFORE Tucker went to Moscow — I had an HVAC business owner in my home for system maintenance, and we happened to discuss some of the issues plaguing our “blue” city, such as crime, homelessness, drugs, etc. He said, “How is this tolerated”? And it hit me that we have lost all ability to run a civil society.
For me, the point of Tucker’s praise of the safety/order/cleanliness of Moscow is not an implication that Moscow’s politics are to be emulated; rather it raises the question of why the USA, one of the richest and “democratic” nations on earth cannot manage something as simple as providing a safe environment for our children (that even corrupt, authoritarian Russia can!).
Yes, dictators get shit done. You talk about this like it’s some revelation. During the Roman republic, there was a clause that allowed any democratically chosen leader to become supreme dictator for a period of 6 months in times of crisis. The idea was that, unencumbered by bureaucratic constraints, one person could make decisive moves that yielded swift results. But dictatorship was limited to 6 months only, because the Romans hated the thought of a King and supreme power. Caesar served as Consul for 5 terms and then declared himself supreme dictator for life - we all know what happened to him. Putin has now been dictator for nearly 5 terms with no reasonable view of stopping. We don’t have that because the American people would never tolerate living on their knees under a dictator. We would riot and overthrow and refuse. Freedom is in the American genetic makeup. Not so for the Russians.
But yes, if we had a dictator, our streets would be super clean and the homeless would be dead.
You have completely misunderstood everything I said. Rather than praising dictators, I asked why our political system (with freedom, checks and balances, etc.) has resulted in a complete loss of civility and graciousness. It didn’t have that effect in the past. If you have an answer to that, I’d be happy to hear it.
I would take political freedom and the knowledge that if I publicly voice dissonance against my government, I don’t have to fear myself or my family falling out of a window, over clean subways any day. Our country is not perfect - but anyone who has fled the Soviet Union will tell you immediately what matters more.
Tell that to the hundred or so folks rotting away without trial in a DC gulag for simply protesting at the capitol on 1/6. And no, it wasn’t an insurrection. If they were being vandals or otherwise disturbing the peace they, like anyone else, should have been charged and tried. Yet they sit rotting without due process. So I’d question your assumption that you can still dissent without threat of repercussions. These folks are the canary in the coal mine.
I’m not a lawyer, I don’t know what they legally did that warranted that extreme of a sentence. I admit that it doesn’t sound legal to imprison someone with no court date in sight, but I don’t know enough about it to comment. As for their sentence, I’m sure it’s different from that of vandals and trespassers. Is it possible that breaking into the capitol building where our government houses important classified information, is sentenced differently than trespassing into say a Sears parking lot?
Totally agree with this. But you do realize that our government is trying to take that away? Not by brute force (as the first ammendment still needs to be contended with) but they are using every mechanism they can to push their agenda from the inside (e.g., MSM cooperating to push COVID, Russia hoax, and Hunter laptop narratives).
The fact that you know about these efforts means you got that information from somewhere. You consumed some source of media that told you about what was happening - which is great. Consider that proof of life, that our countries media freedom is functioning. Because here as a journalist you can run any story you want - you can even go on a nationally available platform and say the slain sandy hook children are all fakes. And you stay alive and out of jail. That’s the difference. Our government might be pushing some narrative, but you know all about it, you talk about it, you comment on it, you just wrote of it here, and you are not in prison.
And seemingly I need to state the amazingly obvious, which are that the interview, and Tucker's subsequent reports are completely separate. It's pretty obvious to me that what he is trying to argue is that all this ginned up Russia hatred is pathetic, unnecesary, stupid and dangerous. There are no doubt many worse dictators on Earth, such as Kim Jung Un. This is all pure manipulation. You would have no opinion on Russia, if you were not told what your opinion is.
Explain to me why Biden released bipartisan sanctions on Putin's oil by executive order as one of his top priorities as president, and why no Democrat I've ever spoken to has any issue or even curiosity about that.
Then explain to me why that's less "useful" than Tucker giving an interview.
In fact Biden on his first day in office signed an order to stop construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. It would have brought 800,000 barrels of oil per day from Canada to the U.S. We were at the time importing 600,000 barrels of oil a day from Russia. Most of those imports would have been wiped out. So Biden did something very positive for Putin and Russia.
One can reasonably say that that action, plus the awful withdrawal from Afghanistan, encouraged the Russians to invade Ukraine. The Russians saw that Biden was incompetent.
Of course that monumental decision (solely by Biden) is completely scrubbed from the discourse. It's like it never even happened. Not to mention Nordstream. We are so lucky there was not any blowback on that. If Putin wanted to attack a NATO country he would have had reason to over that. That's why I never bought in to that narrative that Putin was actually a threat to NATO.
So you have been to Moscow? It is a rather beautiful city in parts. And Russians, ordinary ones, don't abide by people vandalizing of anything else common in America. I once was tired, and I put my foot up on a seat on the Moscow subway for a short stretch. Found out that was not ok in a hurry. Their subways are in great shape because of that.
Do any of the things reported on youtube in NYC subway, and ... doubtful that person would live to see the next station.
Dude, just because you’re uncultured and would do a ridiculously American thing like putting your dirty foot up on a seat where people sit, doesn’t mean the people around you are somehow special. You are special. I’m all of Europe and Asia, no one would think that’s a normal thing to do. People take their shoes off indoors and don’t put their feet where others sit. In Japan, kids take their shoes off even for school and have special home slippers. You say this like Russians are extraordinary, when really it’s just you were being gross
Russians have a saying: " Проблема Москвы состоит в том, что она со всех сторон окружена Россией (The problem for Moscow is that it is surrounded on all sides by Russia)". Over the course of the last 30 years Moscow has become a gigantic vacuum cleaner that sucks all the financial resources form the rest of the country. I remember Moscow of the Soviet era and I've had a chance to visit it a few times in early 2010s. I'll admit that the difference is startling. Yet, it was accomplished via an immense wealth concentration at the expense of the rest of the country. Had Carlson ventured outside of MKAD and visited nearby towns in the Moscow Oblast', ha would've encountered people freezing in their apartments because the Soviet-era infrastructure has become completely dilapidated while whatever meager funds that were allocated to repair and maintenance had been embezzled long ago.
Putin wouldn’t take Tucker to the mud floor huts in the Деревня, where Russian soldiers stole toilets and washing machines from Bucha to take back to their homes. People think Russia is Dostoevsky and ballet - but in reality, only St Petersburg and Moscow are that. The rest of the vast county is worse than the developing third world - and it’s people are happy for it. They want to be slaves. That is the Russian history. Even when they had no king, they dropped to their knees and begged for one. Meanwhile
Putin has a billion dollar palace and russias poor dirty masses see no issue with this.
@Dasha, can you expound upon why the Russians are happy for it and want to be slaves? Realize that’s prob a very long essay, but I’m curious to hear a bit more.
It's truly inexplicable... Even a long essay would not do it justice... But I'll throw my 2 cents in... Until Putiin came to power Russia was a has-been in the world affairs, a shadow of how it once perceived itself in the Soviet days, exposed for what it was, a paper tiger, by the aggressive policies of Reagan's administration. Putin's saber rattling made the world pay attention to Russia. And, speaking from experience, Russians are very prideful (and not in its best interpretation of the word). If you asked an average Russian if they would prefer to be a Swede or a Norwegian, with much better quality of life, yet "insignificant" in global affairs, they would decline, and choose to continue to live in squalor but not ignored by the world. I fully realize the limitations of my overgeneralization, but...
Yury answered well. It’s very difficult to capture russian culture - but in short, it’s contentment with suffering. Their history is of such bloodshed, from the Bolshevik revolution to famines to WW1 to WW2 where they lost upwards of 30 million people. Russians are accustomed to despondency. Even all of their fairy tales end in someone dying. So when they are greeted with more suffering, they don’t ask for more - they just agree to it. Moreover, the most educated and cultured among the Russians have been eliminated. The thinking population, the nobility, they were all killed in the Bolshevik revolution.
A small anecdote about how this went about that captures what Russians are like - Tsar Nikolai and his family, as you know, were all brutally bayoneted to death by the communist revolutionaries. These people were poor, uneducated, living in meager huts (not unlike the vast majority of Russians today outside of the cities). They shot at Tsar Nikolai and his children in a dark basement, randomly bayoneting at whatever bodies they could find. They expended many more rounds than there were people to be killed. It’s written that some even cut up each other by accident, so ineffective were they at even this task. Afterwards they wrote profanities on the walls and a cartoon of someone raping the princess. In the middle of all of this, on the wall was written a quote of Heine’s, a German poet, in its original German form - something along the lines of Balthazar was slain by his slaves. Only someone educated could have written that - the rest of them only knew graffiti and profanity. Likely the Tsar had written in, in the dark, before he and his family died. That is the contrast between the people whose lineage survived in Russia and yielded the thieves, dictators, kleptocrats of today and their willing underlings. The cultured among Russia were all killed - there is no use for educated people when you try to maintain power.
Consider this now - Putin has a billion dollar palace (just one, of many of his properties). Navalny was able to film it with drones, you can still watch on YouTube what he found. Gold gilted molding, a full theater, spa, sauna, beef farm, helipad, etc. It’s the size of Versailles. The people he rules over find NO issue with this. Putin is not a businessman - he didn’t create Amazon or Tesla or anything that would warrant that ungodly wealth. It’s stolen right from the mouths of his constituents. And they DONT CARE. Imagine that happening in the US. People here riot when there’s a single police shooting - he has had parents arrrested when their children draw “no war” in art class. The amount of egregious theft, political murdering, absolute lack of freedom that the russian people tolerate is astounding. Russia is just a bad player - they dope their athletes at practically every Olympic game. They’re taught that lying and cheating is acceptable if it gets you ahead. They’re impoverished, wretched, morally bankrupt sheep. The best among them have left and will never return. Not unlike China and Maos revolution - when you kill the educated, the intellectuals, then you are left with a pliable class of people who won’t question and will blindly comply. The few who find this intolerable, the smartest people, will leave (no surprise why we have the best Chinese researchers and doctors here in the US). Once in generation someone extremely brave will speak out. But in Russia like in China, that person will be killed, and hopefully “flowers will grow on the blood he spilled into the earth” (a quote from a famous Russian WW2 singer).
Couldn't disagree more. Seems to me that Carlson's biggest critics are Duranty apologists of the Lillian Hellman variety, who still think the so-called "red scare" reaction to the atrocities of Communism posed a greater threat to civilization than Stalin himself. One can acknowledge Putin as evil without reducing Navalny, a true hero and patriot, into a mascot for a war in Ukraine financed primarily by America, whose demented dummy of a commander-in-chief not only failed to take the least step to deter it (remember the "minor incursion" invitation?), but indeed paved the way for Russian aggression by undoing the effective deterrence policies of the Trump administration, which opposed the Nordstream II pipeline, imposed sanctions on Russian oil sales, and vaulted us to near total energy independence. Navalny deserves better than this. So do FP readers.
more complex. Duranty a crook. Carlson a “useful idiot” driven by his own hubris on a few things while quite brave and courageous on others. Deeply wrong here because he knows/cares about only half the Ukraine /Russia story. Much like the otherwise decent reporters who covered only how Hitler had the trains running on time circa 1936. See for example the original printing of Inside Europe by Shirer compared to later editions. Tragically Carlson’s mind frozen circa 2005.
This is a time for great sadness. Navalny is the best of humanity. Brave to a fault. A Russian patriot to the end. This is also not a time to use this for cheap criticism of anyone who stands up to tyranny and lies in our own land. Tucker Carlson has a view which he is free to express and questions that he is free to ask. And which he should ask He was fired from Fox for stating what he believed. Bari has decided to take a cheap shot at him for going to Moscow and asking uncomfortable questions. That's her right, too.. But if people such as Bari were asking the questions that Tucker raises maybe we'd have a real free press. Or do you still believe that Russia blew up its own pipeline? Or that the CIA and FBI were not behind Hillary's ridiculous Russian collusion fantasy?
Tucker was fired from FOX because he defamed Dominion Voting Machines on air for months and it cost FOX $787.5 million to get rid of the defamation lawsuit. During the settlement negotiations Tucker sent a series of racist emails to FOX management that he thought were conversations but management thought, “Jesus Christ, this guy is psycho!”, so they cut him loose.
Huh? Look, I LOVED Tucker during the Kavanaugh hearings/shitshow, and he was must-see TV for me every night at 8, but I thought he started wobbling on his axis about when he got his streaming show and was pretty much off his rocker / unwatchable towards the end. I thought it was the Dominion Voting Machine settlement and the texts that sealed his fate at Fox News.
Cleary you believe Vanity Fair. Did you read his text about the beating of the Antifa stooge? It wasn't racist, at all. It was human. As far as the Dominion voting machines, isn't there commonality of ownership with Fox. Tucker was fired for saying uncomfortable things about the people in power. Such as the Epstein "suicide" and Russia blowing up its own pipeline.
Also the WSJ https://www.wsj.com/articles/tucker-carlson-is-leaving-fox-news-db31f2fa, where they spell out at length more than just the emails, but also text messages during the Dominion Voting Machine lawsuit, urging management to fire a female colleague who dared to fact check things Tucker said on air, and no doubt being one of the main reasons FOX was going to get nailed for defaming Dominion Voting Machines by repeatedly accusing them of being part of alleged election fraud (in addition to Tucker’s private views on Trump coming out during the discovery portion of the lawsuit):
“ Before the Dominion suit was settled, Superior Court Judge Eric Davis had already concluded that Fox News and Fox Business did in fact broadcast false claims about Dominion, voiced by both network hosts and Trump associates. In a statement announcing the settlement, Fox acknowledged the judge’s findings.”
“ Court documents also revealed Mr. Carlson’s feelings about Mr. Trump. In a text message exchange from January 2021, Mr. Carlson said the network was “very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights,” and said “I hate him passionately,” referring to the former president.”
Totalitarians would have you killed or sent to the gulag for implying they rig elections on the internet comment section of what would be a banned news source. Thank god you live in the US.
We are trending in that direction. Everything we say on the internet is tracked. Much of what we say in person to people, if our phones can hear it, is tracked. Where we go is tracked. Detailed databases on all of us are being compiled. Everything is in place for a nearly perfect surveillance state.
And the FBI is corrupt. They are the Political Police for the Democrats and Uniparty. They will protect you from the consequences of ANY crime if you play ball, and you will be prosecuted to the extent possible for crimes you did not commit, or worse, as is the case with Jan. 6th, for crimes they manipulated you into committing.
No, we are not YET a totalitarian state. But only an idiot would deny we are heading that way, and doing so quickly. Even now, our only real hope of avoiding it is honest people in the government.
The USA is not totalitarian, but certainly not the classical liberalism we always hoped the USA would be with election interference from the Fed and the push to jail political opposition.
You're wrong. Totalitarians ALWAYS hold elections. Kim Jong Un is elected with 100% of the vote every cycle. The same for China. Elections are a tool of totalitarians just as much as they are a tool for any other regime.
Look. As somebody who grew up in USSR, I am far better equipped to recognize such threats than somebody like you. And I very much recognized Soviet style repression during the Covid and BLM craziness. But what I'm also witnessing is extremely robust fight back - we didn't just go quietly into the night.
Yeah... gonna call this one BS Bruce. You literally can't print any dissenting things, or even run an opposition campaign within Russia or any of the other countries that Tucker Carlson seems to think are so great. The USSR was obvious even worse, but rather than ascend into a functional capitalist democratic state like we all hoped for back in the 90s, Russia has descended over the last 2+ decades into a corrupt parody.
Tucker is an embodiment of 1984... freedom is chains, good is bad, etc.
We know Putin is a thuggish autocrat. But when we have an entire political and corporatist class pretending Biden is fit to be our president we are the laughingstock of the globe.
Yes! You know why Biden can’t destroy the US? Because we live in a democracy where he can be voted out. Putin is about to be “elected” for a fifth term, running essentially unopposed as his last serious contender has just been murdered. Surely you see the difference. All those legal and illegal immigrants and migrants certainly do.
Do you leave the US much? I’m gone for 2-3 weeks every other month, and I can tell you that it’s the MAGA love affair with Trump that baffles the rest of the world, not Biden. Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Estonia, England, France, Spain, Chile, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, none of them can understand why anyone in their right mind would vote for Donald Trump to be the head of their government. Not one single person ever asks me why Biden is President, but they all want know who the crazy people are that vote for Trump.
Do you think the the people in the countries you list are hearing about stories like the one NY Times finally reporting that the Hunter laptop was legit and not Russian disinformation? And our own DOJ finally admitting there was no actual evidence that Trump was a Russian asset? Why is it not possible that the opinions of these people in other countries are also not victims of the disinformation the US MSM is pushing out to the American people? Why do you give so much value to the opinions of people that don't even live here? Your hubris is showing again here.
When Bruce Miller says that Biden has made us “the laughing stock of the world”, and I show him that in fact, the opposite is true, that’s not hubris. And so what if maybe they have a bad impression of Trump from their news media? The fact is that Biden is not making us the laughing stock of the world, Trump is. Is it really that difficult for you to follow an argument?
Bruce says the world is laughing about us having Biden as president. My experience IRL with real people in other countries is the opposite. The world thinks Trump is the problem and we are crazy for voting for him. Why they think that isn’t relevant. What’s relevant is that Bruce is wrong. What is Bruce’s experience with “the rest of the world”? What is YOUR experience with “the rest of the world”? What is your experience/knowledge of the media in other countries? Do you read BBC News? The Times of London? Le Monde?
It’s not that I value the opinion of people who don’t live here more than the opinion of the people who do live here, it’s that I am aware of the opinion of the people in other countries, and Bruce, apparently, is not. If you and Bruce don’t care what the rest of the world thinks or what their POV is, that is what I call hubris. Do you think we can, as a country, really just dismiss the rest of the world? They don’t have to dictate who we elect as our president but we do need to be more cognizant of world affairs than what I see exhibited in these comments.
Neither Trump nor Biden is fit for office albeit for different reasons That a country this big and diverse have these 2 , is a testament to the Uniparty control over the entire political process. That RFKjr a lifelong Dem was belittled and tossed aside, that Vivek did only a bit better on the Rep side is a testament to how dangerously corrupt our political system has become.If 2 wealthy idealistic, smart men are treated this way , the smart but not wealthy don’t have a chance.Maybe we are getting the “ leaders “ we deserve.
When is it courageous when there is no consequences for your actions? If Tucker were REALLY courageous he would have asked Putin some hard questions, but Putin was amazed at his kid gloves handling!
Biden gets all the questions ahead of time, and calls on them in order on the rare occasion when he does have a press conference. So i guess that makes the Washington press corps useful idiots.
He (Tucker) asked Putin why Austria didn’t still have claim to Western Ukraine, in same way Russia makes same claim to that land area. He also requested release of imprisoned American WSJ Evan Gershkovich. Did you not catch those parts?
Tucker, like many of us, feel the conflict was egged on by the West.
Did he ask why Putin felt justified in killing children and women? Why he was moaning on and on about a history thousands of historians would contest, when he also stated the expansion of NATO was the only reason he invaded Ukraine? Or did he just make his mouth breathing face and allow Putin to yap for an hour about things he isn’t educated enough to even question? The fact that he was there to begin with, mouth half open, at the ballet and nice grocery store, is an insult to America. When you interview a tyrannical kleptocratic dictator so reverently and say his cities are so much cleaner than your own, you’re un-American. And make no mistake - Russians hate you. They hate the west. They hate Americans. They hate our country, people, freedom, ideals, all of it. They would all parade for joy if a war started and your children perished. Think about that for a second before praising the mouth breather.
Matt I don’t know where you came from, but my parents where among those who risked their lives to leave the Soviet Union, for the dream that somewhere, you could believe whatever you wanted, and live with the freedom to pursue happiness. Sometimes I look at Americans and wonder if immigrants are the only ones left who love this country unconditionally. I believe this is the greatest country in the world - here, you can put a “F Biden” or “F Trump” lawn sign at your house, and you won’t be seized to go to a gulag in Siberia to freeze to death. Your children don’t need to fear for their lives if you tell your neighbors your believe your president is a criminal. The fact that this country is so politically divided is actually a sign of incredible political health - you could never be a president who systematically executes your opposition, when your opposition is half the country. But Tucker didn’t ask Putin about any of that. He just walked around amazed at how clean the streets are in the hometown of one of the worlds greatest propaganda machine (next to russias own best friends of North Korea, China and Iran).
I do it because I lived through it and anyone who also did would say the same. Tucker is a millionaire living in (is it NYC?) the most free country in the world, making his money pandering to those who luckily will never experience what goes on in a brutal political dictatorship like russia.
He was fired for getting caught in too many lies. If you watch his podcasts, you can hear him doing the same thing. He tells a few truths, then slips in a lie, then goes back to some truths. Very clever.
He was also fired for being a racist slob. Apparently the FOX management thought that was an act Tucker put on to attract a certain audience, but then he sent some rather explicit emails to members of management that were worse than anything he’d ever said on the air, and they decided over a weekend to fire him. Somebody called him on Monday morning and told him not to bother coming to work that day. This was during the Dominion Voting Machine lawsuit against FOX and management decided keeping Tucker was too much of a liability and if the emails ever got out (which they did eventually) it was going to cost FOX way more than Tucker was worth. And settling with Dominion cost them a bundle, almost $790 million, and mostly because Tucker kept lying about their voting machines.
I didn't say either way! I just repeated what Putin said. Softball questions. But Putin DID show that he is a demagogue with his rambling "history" lesson.
While Bari was in her LA apartment sucking down wine, Tucker was in Moscow pleading for the release of Evan Gerskovich. Describing journalists as unpatriotic for failing to toe the establishment line and conducting interviews of highly relevant geopolitical figures exhibits a level of immaturity of thought that is unattractive in adults. And his trip was not without significant risks to himself, although it is difficult to determine if the greater risk is from Putin’s administration or Biden’s.
Tell me why President Joe Biden wrote an executive order cancelling bipartisan sanctions on Putin's oil industry as one of his first actions as president.
I'm sick of Democrats ignoring this and then blaming Republicans of supporting Putin. Nobody in this country has directly supported Putin's war effort more than President Joe Biden.
Of course this very important point will be ignored in the comments. Don't you know, Anthony, this was officially scrubbed from the narrative!!!!! You ignorant, uneducated prole....
Why? If I were to accuse you of being nothing but a parrot for left wing talking points you spout out of habit, how could you defend yourself?
What Tucker did was go over there and ask Putin, who are being trained to view as our enemy, the questions "why did you go to war?" and "what will it take to stop it?"
How effing stupid would all Americans have to be not to want to stop this war? We are sending hundreds of billions of dollars over there that are being embezzled and used on weapons that are promptly destroyed. How is it not obvious the part of the money not taken by Zelensky and his gang is being redirected back to crooked people here both as graft and as weapons contracts? It's nearly open and naked theft.
I get it that that is not what you were told. Why would you be told? If stupidity is funny--and here I have mixed feelings because this is also sad--then you are funny.
Several people have been mentioned as a vice-presidential candidate, it's meaningless. Trump would never pick someone who would share the spotlight, he wants a Pence type yes person.
It's sad but proves again the greatness of the West. When the woke decry our history, the abolitionists were able to talk. Anti-War were able to talk, The Civil rights movement was able to overcome. Ghandi was able to protest till he drove change. Many were killed but not by the government. We are by no means perfect but looking at the alternative, I am so thankful.
At the same time we should be very attentive to those who try cancel and shut down the voice of people they refuse to hear. BLM, DEI, Political Correct We are not safe any longer.
Navalny is an inspiration. Sadly, that's not enough to make a real difference in Russia.
It may be politically incorrect to say a country has a character profile, but surely Russia suggests otherwise. For centuries the population has succumbed to autocrats, lies, incalculable hardship, Potemkin villages and the daily inhumanity of being forced to say what you don't believe and stay silent about the truth.
The Navalny's of Russia can't inspire the masses to do the right thing -- rise up and revolt -- because the masses are, epigenetically, too passive. Almost bovine.
This is not borne of rational fear. A broad majority popular movement in Russia could easily topple the current dictatorship. But this won't happen.
So, apart from the attention in the West (and from all serious people who respect Navalny's bravery), the moment will likely pass with no tangible results. Very sad.
Putin has a billion dollar palace (Navalny did a YouTube tour of it with drones - it’s still available). He gets Botox. He’s one of the richest men in the world while having no official business dealings, being a lawyer by trade. The Russian people outside of Moscow and St. Petersburg live in mud floor huts, in abject poverty, each family gets a Soviet production garbage car for their donation of a man to the special military operation - and they’re his strongest supporters. Think about that. The American public won’t even tolerate the arrest of a gun toting lunatic of certain demographics without rioting and burning buildings, and these people are content and fully supportive of a kleptocratic maniac stealing from their children and sending their sons as cannon fodder. These are a people who wouldn’t know what freedom is if it shit in their hair.
Russian leaders have been killing and exiling its brightest citizens for many generations. Russians with spark and drive leave. What's left are those who seem resigned, or to be incapable even of thoughtful, melancholy resignation.
But then there was Alexie Navalny. He came from somewhere.
The cost of freedom is paid for in blood. People have to first want to be free, they must demand it, fight for it, and sacrifice greatly. Instead, these people sit on their behinds watching propaganda and blaming the West and America for all of their problems. When you have systematically murdered all the educated, cultured people in your nation, you will be left with sheep.
Our country has many flaws, but our robustly arguing, chronically questioning, ever suspicious population are descendants of a bunch of Navalnys. Americans are the result of the brave few who demanded more, and look at what a fantastic result we have - the most powerful, free, and prosperous country in the world. By God, do I love this land.
What does a tribute Navalny's bravery in fighting Russian tyranny have to do with an American journalist helping others cut through censorship? If you can't write an article without putting a spin on it, and worse, using the death of someone who is a hero to denigrate someone you don't like, then you're no better than the corporate media. After reading this trash I'm considering dropping my subscription. We need journalism, not cheap opinion pieces.
I agree with you. The Tucker bit was completely unnecessary and denigrates the tribute to Navalny. I am also considering dropping my subscription. I am tired of these juvenile attacks…as if Tucker Carlson would trade American freedom for Russian tyranny. Give me a break, Bari. You’re better than that.
In the state of the world today, we need both. Tucker Carlson is an opinion ‘journalist’, if you can even call him a journalist. He is ‘talent’. He performs. He opines.
We can dislike Putin and his tactics while still admiring aspects of Russian society and lifestyle (e.g. cleanliness of cities). No doubt Tucker Carlson’s visit was “curated” a bit and he wasn’t followed/harassed (as far as he knew) to the same level the FSB would follow lower-level American government employees they wanted to remind of the country they were in.
While on active duty, I had the opportunity to visit Hanoi in Mar/Apr 2008 timeframe. I had never been to a communist country before and the first thing that struck me was the sight of Ford vehicle when we left the airport (followed shortly thereafter by a multitude of Hannah Montana billboards). While I was hesitant to take anything at face value from the Communist Vietnamese Government, I did find that I felt extremely safe walking the city (either by myself or at night). I even told my wife that I’d have no qualms bringing her and our 3-yr old for a visit. There were few American cities the size of Hanoi in 2008 that I would have given that assessment, even fewer now.
Later in my career I had the opportunity to speak to some young adults who pursued graduate degrees in China. When they asked Chinese citizens about the social credit system linked to the near ubiquitous monitoring by cameras everywhere, the Chinese seemed agnostic about it but were willing to tolerate it given the level of “safety” they enjoyed. Want to walk around at 2 am in a major city? You don’t have to worry about being robbed or murdered.
I’m no fan of Putin. I lament Navalny’s death. I can also admire the cleanliness of Russian cities and wonder why we can’t get our sh!t together.
Knowing several Russians (both friends and coworkers) and those who have visited there, I can attest that they do not have a universal view of Russian cities being clean.
I travel a lot. I'm amazed (meaning saddened) when I go to other countries and see their major cities free of drug-addicted homeless, the stench of pot, or piles of trash/human feces on the sidewalk. I certainly expect every city to have its clean/dirty parts. Except Copenhagen; it is my favorite city...i have yet to find its dirty area. Even Christiana where the hippies hang out is more orderly/clean than major US cities. I respect the Germans a great deal from my travels there and how orderly things were. I have never been to Russia. Even Mexico City when I walk the streets, the sidewalks are clean ... workers are out in the morning sweeping up leaves from the trees that have fallen ... no one is hassling me or looking at me through dead eyes. Our major city mayors could learn a thing or two about how a public park/area should look from Mexico City.
Then I fly into California ... absolutely stunning from the air. Stay in Hollywood, complete shit hole...crazies, literal human poop on sidewalks, Walk of Fame with all the stars looks more like Walk of Shame with boarded up buildings and mentally unstable people in doorways and crevices. Go to San Francisco, tent cities and stench of piss/poop as you try to walk to dinner (nope, guess I'll turn around and go the other way). Even San Diego while mostly clean has (had) its own tent city sprawled out across the sidewalks. All I can think is you've got everything advantage here California ... just get your freaking act together politicians and stop ruining it!
Even if they did - are clean cities worth getting sent to a Siberian gulag if you call this conflict a war? Or getting killed for running for the office of your political opponent? Or getting put in jail for being gay?
Like yes, I bet Moscow looks nice. I’d rather be free and alive.
Never said freedom was an extreme. What seems to have become an extreme is the expectation that leaders we put in charge of major population cities actually run the SWAT (shit, water, and trash) in their cities effectively.
Standing on principle doesn’t make him an idiot. He chose the battlefield he wanted to compete on, as did MLK and others. Violent revolt or underground resistance are other choices no less legitimate depending on the facts on the ground and the nature of the combatant. But they are all combatants. The motivations and courage required do not spring from idiocy.
I am much more worried about our own country. Jeffrey Epstein did not kill himself. The FBI has his client list and refuses to disclose it. They also refused to investigate him when he was still trafficking women and girls.
People have been rotting for four years in the DC Gulag for crimes people with the correct politics were then and are now released for the same day, if they are arrested at all.
President Trump has had the whole of our national legal apparatus directed at him. He did less than what Biden did--Biden was careless and sloppy, where Trump's records, that he removed as PRESIDENT, not Vice-President, were stored securely--but Biden was not charged BECAUSE HE IS SENILE. That is the story as I heard it. Also, self evidently, because he is a Democrat and he plays ball with the real power brokers in our country.
Trump was just issued a farcical judgement for hundreds of millions of dollars for what amounts to a technicality, if it even happened at all. His judge in Georgia is the daughter of a pretty obvious Communist.
Don't worry about Russia. That is what all the people who are doing this to Trump because of his open support for America, American interests and the American people WANT you to do. They want you focused anywhere else, on any imagined threat they can concoct. They want you fearful of everyone BUT the people whose tyranny is well advanced, and whose power over our lives you SHOULD fear.
Putin is an authoritarian and a murderer. But he is not in charge of our country. He is not our problem. Our problems exist in a government that accepts no limits, and is only biding its time until the charade is no longer necessary. If we do not organize and wake up before that, we will be as bad or worse than Russia is now.
The current Trump saga should scare all of us. With the incomprehensible skein of laws and regulations, you always run the risk of violating something.
Sure, we can't expect all government enforcement to be fully fair in a distributional sense. When a cop pulls over a speeding driver, she doesn't have the ability to (equally) pull over all other speeding drivers in the same line of cars.
But the Trump situation shows, so clearly, the partisan political abuse of our nation's expectations of broadly fair, even-handed enforcement of laws.
Our friends sometimes take a break from daily work on the land and chat about the technical violations of unclearly written and ridiculously over-expansive laws. Did they fairly value each and every asset on the financing application for the John Deere tractor? Did they run the excavator through a small stream and discuss it with the kids (conspiracy)?
The prosecution of Trump shows all of us live on the edge of losing it all. If we become political enemies.
But for the grace of God go I...
Fair point but OMG DO WE REALLY NEED TO PASS THAT NGO SLUSH FUND MONEY ASAP RIGHT NOW!!!!
Pass the spending right now or you basically killed Navalny yourself and you’re in a gay sexual relationship with Putin. Those are the rules.
in both countries we are sadly down to only a chimera of law. Evil men place evil men in robes who pretend to administer equal justice discrediting noble ideals and law itself.
"Your good/evil distinction is useless, Bari. It's all evil--there and here." I cry for Bari, who surely hopes that your takeaway would be other than this.
I used those exact words today! Once you throw out the rule of law---it's all "by the grace of God"!
And once you throw out the rule of law, you've also thrown out God. Was he not the first rule giver?
First there was God alone as the source and foundation of truth, reality, and law; with the Enlightenment God and Nature became the shared source; Modernism killed God (declared so by Nietzsche) leaving Nature and Natural Law as the sole basis of reality; and now, Post-modern Relativism has killed off Nature leaving us each to our singular self-defined realities in which the ultimate piety to to defy Nature in the greatest extreme, hence even gender is shorn from consideration of the Natural, and the Virtual world creeps evermore upon us. As Yates so famously observed:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
WBY saw very well the human condition, and I have seen no improvement of it.
Relativeley speaking, it's been a short dissent.
I try to keep my feet from being burnt.
First there was God alone as the source and foundation of truth, reality, and law; with the Enlightenment God and Nature became the shared source; Modernism killed God (declared so by Nietzsche) leaving Nature and Natural Law as the sole basis of reality; and now, Post-modern Relativism has killed off Nature leaving us each to our singular self-defined realities in which the ultimate piety to to defy Nature in the greatest extreme, hence even gender is shorn from consideration of the Natural, and the Virtual world creeps evermore upon us. As Yates so famously observed:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
"Absent a communal culture...representative government devolves into a conspiracy against its constituents." --David Mamet
It's good to know that one need only go to Letitia James at the southern district of New York to determine the fair market value of their property or asset.
I know it's always risky business trying to defraud the government But hey Trump didn't seem to mind using the courts to filed for bankruptcy 8 times, allowing him to not to pay contractors and shareholders. You say this is partisan and political, but have you even considered the possibility that he is truly guilty? Refusing to consider this is the very definition of partisan and political. When Biden was accused of taking kickbacks I read everything I could find about it. Hunter's laptop has undergone years of scrutiny and investiagions have turned up nothing. Even the FBI informant who claimed he had evidence of some payments (minimal anyway) admitted he was lying. Fine, dislike even hate Biden's politics, his policies on the border, whatever, but all this Trump as political martyr and Biden crime family storytelling is just that...fairy tales for adults who fanticize that they hvae some direct line to the hidden truth of everything. Newsflash. You don't. You have the same feet of clay as the rest of us. .
Give me a break. You have to be hermetically sealed into an echo chamber to think that the Bidens are anything except a bunch of grifters. You do not profess your opinions with an iota of intellectual humility but a certainty that belies an unwillingness to consider what does not conform to your beliefs. Anyone who disagrees is indulging in fantasy. Typical.
Show me the facts...I've looked and found nothing. I've read countless comments here referring to the Biden crime family, but seen nothing except incessant repetition of the label. I seriously don't know people are referring to beyond a few accusations that have been looked into and seem to have yielded nothing. All I see is innuendo. If there are facts and not just suspicions please share them. I've said this before, there is a reason I visit this site. I am hoping to get facts that maybe I would find highlighted elsewhere. I am certainly not in an echo chamber. If I were what am I doing here listening to you? Every once in a while in the comments I ask for facts and actually get some here and there, which I find useful. I'm hoping for some now
Sorry, wrote 8 bankruptcies, meant 6.
I will add that all these attacks on Tucker amount to attacks on independent journalism outright. All the critics I have encountered so far didn't even bother to watch the interview, because the FACT THE INTERVIEW WAS DONE AT ALL BOTHERED THEM.
What did Tucker actually do? He went over to Russia and asked the architect of a war we are being asked to participate in by funding it heavily, and where we almost certainly have embedded SpecOp guys on the ground, some basic question: Why did you start this war? What will it take to end it? Are those not important questions? Are his views not critically important? Of course. Of course.
He also asked several times for the release of an American being held prisoner for espionage. That part seemingly got little or no coverage.
Here is my question: what effing beef do people have with larger perspectives and more information? Are your brains so effing small that it hurts to try and cram in new ideas, potential confusion, and to risk being lied to, as if you were not already being told lies on all sides daily?
Our decadence is truly amazing. It is seemingly worst among the people who paid the most for college.
Tucker Carlson was used magnificently by Putin throughout the entire interview which I watched. Tucker looked like a schoolboy boy next to Putin.So what if he asked about Evan? He certainly didn’t get any response It’s quite disturbing reading all these comments that seem to cheer on Communism as some utopian society.
I'm about as anti-Communist as you can get. What I am saying is OUR OWN NATION IS BECOMING COMMUNIST. If you don't see this, all I can say is you need to do more reading, both of history, and of what relatively honest journalism still exists. Also use your brain. That's often the overlooked X factor.
And I thought the interview was useful. How can it not be useful to provide an unfiltered, unedited interview where a significant adversary is asked why he went to war, and what it will take to stop it? Does it matter if he spun things? Does it matter if he left things out? Much of what he said was sensible, and logical and almost certainly true.
What was obvious is we can stop the war tomorrow. The Ukraine is throwing its men into a meat grinder, for land where many of the people don't even want to be Ukrainian. This war is continuing because it is PROFITABLE for many, in many ways. That's it.
I am baffled by how easy it is to bamboozle some large part of America. I was opposing the Soviet Union when the Left was burning flags and shouting Better Red than Dead. I have personally watched people burn flags. Now that Russia has renounced all global ambitions, people are piling on the Cold War rhetoric. It's astonishing. It's embarassing. It's pathetic.
Simple question: why should we waste money in the Ukraine that could be spent on hungry and unhoused Americans?
But that’s not true. The vast vast majority of us want to be Ukrainian. Does truth not matter to you at all? How many Ukrainians in the occupied territories do you know personally? How many do you know who have fled from there? Have you talked to the children russia stole and heartlessly abused? I’ve run a nonprofit in Ukraine for years, since before the full scale invasion, and the blatant lies that people repeat about my country and my people these days without even bothering to listen to us, actual Ukrainians, are so painful. How can Ukrainians stop this? How can we explain that no of course we don’t want our men to die, but we know beyond the shadow of a doubt that Putin will not permit a free prosperous Ukraine on his border. Any ceasefire will be an opportunity to regroup and then keep attacking what’s left of a free Ukraine or destabilizing our country so we can’t be a functioning democracy. We have no choice but to keep dying for our freedom. Funnily, I thought Americans would be the first to understand that.
And I would add: has Zelensky not become a tyrant? Has he not banned most opposition media and arrested political opponents, all while getting rich from money skimmed from Western aid?
Unsaint Finbar: “has Zelensky not become a tyrant?” Maybe in the same sense that Abraham Lincoln had “become a tyrant” — in Confederate propaganda. “Churchill is as bad as Hitler,” idiots insisted.
Zelensky has indeed cracked down on pro-Russian media and politicians in Ukraine, including the Moscow-controlled Russian Orthodox church; but not the several other, independent Orthodox churches, which are not controlled by Moscow.
The Zelensky “getting rich” stuff appears to be pure, unadulterated claptrap. If he were that kind of man, he would simply have fled into exile as the Russian tanks closed in on Kyiv. There’s lots of money — and much less risk — in a government-in-exile.
This is not really about Ukraine or the truth. The American “right” simply hates the woke “left” (for real, good reasons) and now automatically believes the opposite must be “the right thing to believe”. If Biden would have handed out Ukraine to Putin, gift-wrapped, then Trump and Tucker Carlson would have been Ukraine’s greatest champions. Nobody actually cares about the Ukrainians.
The ‘Right’ woke up that the Bush/Cheney led Iraq War was predicated on a Big Fat Lie. The scales fell away from many (many) eyes over that, including people who lost friend and families, living today w/ PTSD. The Patriot Act also resulted from this era, which the NSA used for mass surveillance and Snowden and others clued us into this erosion of our civil liberties. That mistake and its timing was a big one. Because with the confluence of two major pieces of tech in 2014 (smartphone w/ camera + widespread social media platforms), the Right was able to question other mistakes by our government in relation to Iraq (like Vietnam). And NATO inviting Georgia and Ukraine as NATO members in-waiting, was recognized as another Big Fat Mistake. The Right then surmised that it was actually a Uniparty (neocons) behind ginning up these continual conflicts since WW2 (it’s $ profitable) and those opposed to this, no longer felt ‘Right’ any longer, but rather ‘Populist’. President Eisenhower was the one who was ‘right’ when he forewarned the danger of the Military Industrial Complex, during his 1961 farewell speech. It just took a couple of generations for many of us to fully wake up. The Left ‘woke’ who support our offshore wars today (that are not in USA vital interest) largely do not hold the same views. IMHO, the Populist wing of the ‘Right’ has evolved. We by and large know war, and its terrible, corrosive results.
I don't doubt the vast majority of Ukrainians want to be Ukrainian. But it is my perception that Putin just wants the Donbass. Why do you believe he wants more? He is losing a lot of troops too.
He only wants the Donbass, you say. Yet his first target in the war was Kiev..
Unsaint Finbar: Shortly before he invaded Ukraine, Putin wrote an essay about how Ukrainians are just deluded Russians, defining the Ukrainian nation out of existence.
The world may wish to believe he will be satisfied by Crimea and southeastern Ukraine, just as the world wished to believe Hitler wanted only part of Czechoslovakia, but so far every successful annexation he pulls off just increases his appetite for more.
After Ukraine, the next step in his project of recreating the Soviet Union will be to attack the Baltic States — which as NATO countries means American boots on the ground.
"I thought Americans would be the first to understand that."
Most of us do understand that, Katerina. We support your fight for freedom, and we want our government to supply you the arms you need to push Putin back to Moscow.
Some commentators here want the opposite. OK, that's their view, they're entitled. I don't share it, and I'd venture that most Americans want you to win and want to help you do so.
In 1954, the USSR freely handed its sovereignty over the Crimea and Eastern Ukraine to you. At that moment all that territory is part of sovereign Ukraine. Putin has zero right to cry foul sixty years later and send troops to take you back. That is invasion and conquest by definition, and you are right to repel it. The West is right to help you.
Stay strong.
You haven't had a "functioning democracy" since the US-led coup in 2014. You are a US vassal state. Putin wants Ukraine to be independent: not part of NATO, and not controlled by any foreign power.
What would change about your day to day life if the flag on the government building was blue red and white instead of blue and yellow?
What “freedom” are you fighting for? Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries in the world, certainly in Europe. An excellent place to launder billions of American dollars.
Talk to some people in the occupied territories about how their lives have changed. How they are forced to swear allegiance to the russian flag and sing the russian anthem and exchange their Ukrainian passports for russian ones. How our culture - our history, our books, our language - was immediately destroyed. Literal book burnings, schools closed and teachers forced to teach the russian curriculum and history or lose their jobs. About men forced to fight for russia. About the harassment, threats, looting, destruction of property, beatings, rape. About murders of journalists and complete removal of press freedom.
You talk with such confidence about the corruption in a country you have never set foot into. Have you tried to open a business or nonprofit in Ukraine? Do you know many entrepreneurs and young professionals there? We were successfully building a new Ukraine, and that's exactly what threatened Putin enough to attack us.
While I am not denying your opinion or experience, I have two friends who grew up in Crimea and they tell me that they always wanted to be part of "Mother Russia". Obviously this is anecdotal but perhaps it is evidence of a difference of opinion in those regions.
Curious what you think of Zelensky.
It's a big question. First of all, I think Ukrainian culture is less focused at the "big man on top" than US culture, so I'm not sure we talk about Zelensky as much as Americans do. For us, the leader is more like the instrument carrying out the people's will.
Zelensky is a bit like Trump (sans the bigotry and lack of respect for military). He is a celebrity outsider who wanted to challenge a broken system. But unlike Trump, I don't think he's in it for himself or his own glory. I think it's extremely brave that he stayed in Kyiv 2 years ago, and that move was crucial at that moment for Ukraine's survival in those first shocking weeks. You and I wouldn't do that...really the vast majority of people wouldn't.
As far as how he is as a president... he is a broadly well-intentioned but inexperienced leader who already faced an impossible job before the full-scale invasion: trying to eliminate Soviet-era corruption and build a new, modern Ukraine with v limited capital and human resources. And now he's doing his best in an even more impossible situation. This war is like a 12-year-old fighting a bodybuilder. There is only so much any leader could do when they are operating at an extreme, extreme deficit.
Being the leader of a small country and trying to navigate superpowers who just want to use you or destroy you is so hard. What could anyone do in that situation?
The one frustrating thing is that he did not prepare for this invasion more. After the war started, he said we need to be like Israel. The idea is that the only way for a smaller country (that's still big enough to be of interest to the superpowers) to survive - to arm yourself and depend on yourself. I tend to agree, but why not start earlier? However, even this point is complicated because of limited economic resources and fear of provoking Putin by arming ourselves, so it wouldn't have necessarily prevented the current full-scale invasion.
Even if no money was sent to Ukraine, or any foreign govt. "we" would not spend it on "hungry" and "unhoused" (now there's a politically correct word) Americans.
Russia's "global ambitions" are still in play. Have a look at their mercenaries in Africa.
Are there many countries where we do not regularly deploy troops?
And is China not by far the bigger threat, distracting from which seems to be one of the main goals of all this anti-Russian propaganda?
You state that there are Russian mercenaries in Africa....There has always been Russian & dozens of other countries players in Africa..
In fact, don't the Chinese own most of Africa at this point?
Thank you for all your comments this evening!
To Unsaint Finbar: You are passionate and I admire that. And I still have questions: (1) How do we know that "... many of the people [in Ukraine] don't even want to be Ukrainian." I'm reading historical scholarship about Ukraine now, as well listening to Konstantin Kisin (who is Russian and with Ukrainian family). While there may be some Russians in Ukraine who want to be part of Russia, I don't think it's by any stretch a majority. I'll read more because I'm a novice at that, but I'm curious how you came to that conclusion. (2) How do we know that Russia has renounced all global ambitions? Again, I'd love to get more of your insight here.
Did you know Ukraine means "borderland"? Or that the first use of Rus was Kievan Rus, which Putin claimed was the original Russia?
I'm not going to claim to be an expert, but based on everything I read the Donbass region, which is the closest part of Ukraine to Russia, seems to want in general to be part of Russia. I suppose you could draw the example of Northern Ireland, which is a Protestant conclave in a Catholic nation, but which ALSO has Catholics, and where a whole lot of conflict happened.
My point would simply be that THIS IS NOT OUR PROBLEM, any more than the dozens of conflicts usually raging at any given time in Africa are our problem. We don't need to divert money from our own people, much less risk American lives, to intervene in places where we are not even particularly wanted, and where our sacrifices will not even be valued. We've been doing that, and it is pointless.
And as far as Russia's global ambitions, they are no longer Communist. They face, now, the whole of both NATO AND the Warsaw Pact. Their old allies flipped. There is no victory there, and Russia is not lacking in land or resources. It's a stupid idea, and one not made stupid by trusting in Putin's goodwill, but in his self interest. When people are not insane, you can usually trust in their self interest.
To Unsaint Finbar: You are passionate and I admire that. And I still have questions: (1) How do we know that "... many of the people [in Ukraine] don't even want to be Ukrainian." I'm reading historical scholarship about Ukraine now, as well listening to Konstantin Kisin (who is Russian and with Ukrainian family). While there may be some Russians in Ukraine who want to be part of Russia, I don't think it's by any stretch a majority. I'll read more because I'm a novice at that, but I'm curious how you came to that conclusion. (2) How do we know that Russia has renounced all global ambitions? Again, I'd love to get more of your insight here.
Thank you for taking the time to actually read about my country. You will see that our history is a rather depressing cycle of various powerful players trying to snuff out and destroy Ukrainian culture and identity...and Ukrainians continuing to fight against the odds, and lose and keep fighting. Because the desire to be Ukrainian and to be free is that strong.
Our history is so hard to read. For example, even as a Ukrainian, I only recently learned about the Bandurist Massacre in 1932:
Kobzars and bandurists were a unique class of musicians in Ukraine, who travelled between towns and sang dumas, a meditative poem-song. Kobzars were usually blind, and required the completion of a three-year apprenticeship in specialized Kobzar guilds, in order to be officially recognized as such. In 1932, on the order of Stalin, the Soviet authorities called on all Ukrainian Kobzars to attend a congress in Kharkiv. Those that arrived were taken outside the city and were all put to death.
Is it too much to ask to stop being murdered and just to have the same chance as other countries to be a free democracy protected from Putin's wars?
You are not going to retake the land you have lost, and hundreds of thousands of your men have died. You are not fighting for the whole of the Ukraine, just a part of it.
This war could have been ended 18 months ago. We have not just Putin's word for it, but reports from many places. What has been gained with all this death? You are being played by Americans so some small elite among us can profit from it.
You would have been much, much better off never allowing this war to start in the first place.
"While there may be some Russians in Ukraine who want to be part of Russia, I don't think it's by any stretch a majority." -- Most of the eastern and southern regions of Ukraine are predominantly comprised of ethnically Russian people.
"How do we know that Russia has renounced all global ambitions?" -- Due to the fact that it endeavors (along with the BRICS+ nations as part of the Eurasian Economic Union's Belt & Road Initiative) for a multi-polar world, which would honor the sovereignty of ALL countries. Contrast that with the West's (led by the US) uni-polar ambitions for a One World Order, wherein NO country would be sovereign.
OMG no. These are basic population numbers. Seriously, I don't understand how you can just so confidently lie. Like, I could say that most people in America are Mexicans so Mexico could just take over...but that doesn't make it true.
The only place where russians are the majority is Crimea, due to very specific history. Soviet rulers tried to stomp out Ukrainian identity by moving russians into Ukraine. Even so, they are not the majority whatsoever. Trying to be very generous, did you mean that most people in Eastern and Soutnern Ukraine speak the russian language? That doesn't make us russian!
Yes the Republican house are all eager to redistribute wealth to the poor and the homeless…really?
"What exactly is your fair share of what someone else has worked for?"
Thomas Sowell
I think all of us who get what is going on--open graft and profitable business--would vastly prefer it.
But yes, personally I think the poor and homeless are a matter for the States, so I would prefer we not BORROW that money upon which we have to pay INTEREST. Any day now the interest on the national debt is going to surpass Defense in our budget, and we have something like 5x the defense budget of any nation in the world. The sums will be approaching a trillion dollars a year we spend JUST ON INTEREST.
BTW: US Budget Watch 2024 calculates that Trump’s actions as president added 8 trillion to debt. It’s too early to accurately calculate Biden’s contribution to debt, but provisionally they estimate it as 4.5 trillion. At the same time Biden has managed to create legislation to shore up infrastructure, something Trump promised but failed to do. I would suggest it’s because he has no idea how to govern, but he’s a gifted campaigner and rally holder and name caller, I’ll give him that. Some might even say a gifted propagandist. Somehow he had managed to convince many people here that he is an innocent victim of the “deep state” just like they are. Here’s link to debt estimate details:
https://www.crfb.org/blogs/how-much-did-president-trump-add-debt
In re Communism, it's the tyranny stupid.
Couldn’t agree with you more Joanne. The whataboutism being expressed in the comments is ridiculous. My friend’s father watched his brother be murdered on the streets of Communist Yugoslavia for being a Catholic Priest before emigrating to the United States. Whatever our shortcomings we are still the greatest country in the world. Navalny was a hero. Imperfect, sure, but who amongst us isn’t? And he was murdered by Putin’s henchman for daring to fight for Russia’s freedom. First Viktor Orban then Putin- What is Carlson’s obsession with murderous dictators? Bravo Bari! Thank you for this piece.
He's a journalist. He provided two hours of Putin speaking for himself.
In what respect is that not useful for any thinking and caring human being?
What I took away from it was his effort to show us how things really are in Moscow and to try to understand why Putin would do the things he does. I am reminded of Barbara Walters' interview with Gaddafi.
He says at the outset that he is not supporting Putin and is not a fan. But no one is paying any attention to that. He is not cheering on Communism. He is pointing out that we are heading that way, that the large cities in the US are crumbling, and that Americans are oblivious/apathetic to this. He is pointing out our faults by comparison, and asking why that is?
Nuance, people. Knowledge is power.
Great post Gray!
Tucker was way outclassed for sure, but no one, not even Tucker, was lulled By Putin’s talk —it’s well understood what it means that Putin was the former head of the KGB. To me, the critical outcome of the interview was the stark demonstration of the mental capabilities of Putin compared to that of the little wizened guy still occupying the White House. (He who is still lauded for doing a good job by the Muggles.) Never mind he started out with the Afghanistan debacle and has been trying to outdo himself ever since.
I found Putin frighteningly articulate and manipulative, but he brought up some disturbing truths that the US media is trying to shout down. Meanwhile Biden and most of Congress still thinks it’s ok that the US continue to taunt a country that has an extensive nuclear arsenal with a wimpy but horrifically expensive proxy war via the Ukraine against Russia. And we refuse to negotiate. All this insulting grandstanding.. the truly scary thing is we seem to be counting on Putin to have the good sense not to start a nuclear war. No one really thinks Russia will accept defeat but where does it end? Never mind. That would require forethought. And it’s hard to admit, but we did stupidly turn our backs on potential trade & access to Russia’s incredible raw resources, not to mention how our sanctions and aggressive actions appear to have led to a now formidable alliance among Russia, China, India and Iran. Railing against the evil empire Russia is just not useful. If we put together an excel spreadsheet comparing odious world regimes, it becomes obvious we should really be saving our worry for China. The Babylon Bee hit it right…these old guy politicians really aren’t worried. Because in just a few years they’ll all be dead of natural causes. This is just their last hurrah.
What I took away from it was his effort to show us how things really are in Moscow and to try to understand why Putin would do the things he does. I am reminded of Barbara Walters' interview with Gaddafi.
He says at the outset that he is not supporting Putin and is not a fan. But no one is paying any attention to that. He is not cheering on Communism. He is pointing out that we are heading that way, that the large cities in the US are crumbling, and that Americans are oblivious/apathetic to this. He is pointing out our faults by comparison, and asking why that is?
Nuance, people. Knowledge is power.
Disturbing indeed, Joanne. It's isolationist in the extreme. The refrain here seems to be - it ain't our problem, leave them be. When did we hear that before? Mmmm, was it around 1940?
I agree that it’s all disturbing and I believe everyone should be involved and aware. Isolationism never works
But you do have to put the oxygen mask on yourself before you help others...
I understand your frustration. To me it's not so much a cheering on Communism, since Putin is more of a gangster than anything else, it is the rampant 'stay within our own borders' isolationism that willfully blinds people to accept atrocities overseas - because, well, it ain't happenin' here, we have our own shit to deal with, and it ain't our problem anyway. It is Trump and the infection his populism has inflicted on what was a grand old party. It is ignorant of all of recorded history. You give an adversary an inch, and they will take a mile.
Joanne, there's many who did not watch the interview. Here's the ~44 questions Tucker asked Putin, so Free People here at The Free Press, can make up their own minds:
1. How did you concluded that America might strike Russia out of the blue?
2. Why didn't you make the case that Ukraine wasn't a 'real country' in the first 22 years of your Presidency?
3. Do you feel Hungary and other countries also have the right to take lands back from Ukraine to the 1654 borders?
4. Have you told Victor Orban that he can have part of Ukraine?
5. Is it a fair characterization that you felt a physical threat of nuclear weapon use by the West, and that is what prompted you to invade Ukraine?
6. Were you sincere when you asked Bill Clinton in 1998 if it was possible for Russia to join NATO?
7. If Bill Clinton had said 'yes you can join NATO', would Russia have joined?
8. Why do you think it didn't happen, what do you think was the motivation for the West to rebuff Russia joining NATO in 1998?
9. Are you saying the CIA was trying to overthrow your government prior to 2014?
10. 2x you described US Presidents making decisions but those decisions reversed/undercut by their agency heads (NATO 1998, Missile Defense System), is it your telling that you're describing a system that's not run by people who are elected?
11. At time of Ukraine PM Yatsenyuk (2014), did Ukraine do more business with Russia or the EU?
12. You describe a coup-de-tat in 2014 that resulted in a pro-western Ukraine government. What triggered you now, 8 years later, to invade Ukraine?
13. In years prior to Ukraine invasion, was there any channels of communication open to US government for Russia to say if you (West) keep on militarizing Ukraine with NATO arms, that this is going to force Russia to act?
14. Will you stop the war now? Have you achieved your aims?
15. What is de-Nazification, what does that mean?
16. Would you be satisfied with the Ukraine territory that you have now?
17. How do you (Russia) control Ukrainian nationalism? How do you go about de-Nazification?
18. How does (Russia) eliminate a culture or ideology in Ukraine when Russia does not control the entire country?
19. When was the last time you spoke to US President Joe Biden?
20. Why don't you just call Biden and say 'let's work this out' given the danger of the conflict widening?
21. Can you imagine a scenario where Russia sent troops to invade Poland or Latvia?
22. You invaded Ukraine, are you saying you unequivocally don't have further expansionist aims?
23. US Senator Chuck Schumer said yesterday the US has to continue funding the Ukrainian effort, or else US soldiers could end up fighting there. How do you assess that?
24. Who blew up Nordstream?
25. Do you have evidence that NATO or the CIA blew up Nordstream?
26. If you have evidence that Russia did not blow up Nordstream, why wouldn't you present it and win a propaganda victory?
27. Why do you think the Germans are being silent on who blew up Nordstream, given that it greatly damaged their economy, was biggest act of industrial terrorism ever and largest emission of CO2 in history?
28. Can you describe your view on the new blocs of alliances in our new, multi-polar world?
29. Do you think the US Dollar is going away as the world's common Reserve Currency? How have sanctions (against Russia by West) changed the US Dollars place in the world?
30. Are BRIC countries in danger of being dominated by the Chinese economy, in a way that is not good for BRI's sovereignty? Does Russia worry about China's domination of the BRIC alliance?
31. Do you think if there is a new administration after Biden that Russia could establish a [top-to-top] communication with USA, or does it not matter who the US President is?
32. Who do you think actually makes the decisions in the United States, who do you think are the power centers?
33. You stated the expansion of NATO eastward is in violation of 1991 promises between Russia and West. Right before Russia invaded Ukraine, the US Vice President traveled to the Munich Security Conference and encouraged the Prime Minister of Ukraine to join NATO. Do you think that was an effort to provoke Russia into military action?
34. As of Feb 2024, do you think Zelensky has the freedom to negotiate a settlement to this conflict?
35. Where do you think Boris Johnson is and why do you think he did that?
36. What does it mean for you and what effect does it have on you [to be an Orthodox Christian leader]
37. Christianity is a non-violent religion [turn the other cheek, do not kill]. How then can a leader who has to kill, be a Christian? How do you reconcile that to yourself?
38. Do you see God/The Supernatural when you look out across what is happening in the world? Do you ever think to yourself there are forces at work that are not human?
39. When do you think the AI empire starts?
40. As a sign of your decency, would you be willing to release Evan Gershkovich to us? [and we will bring him back to the USA]
41. Does is degrade Russia to ask for a 'real spy' in exchange for Evan [who is not a real spy]
42. Are you worried that what's happening in Ukraine could lead to something much larger and more terrible? How motivated are you to call the US government and say "let's come to terms"
43. You already stated/been publicly reported that Ukraine was prevented from negotiating a peace settlement by the former UK Prime Minister (Boris Johnson) acting on behalf of the Biden Administration and is why I asked about Russia dealing directly with the USA. Just want to make sure I understand you, you do want a negotiated settlement to what is happening in Ukraine?
44. Would you be willing to say "congratulations NATO you won" and just keep the situation where it is right now?
Russia is no longer communist.
The "mainstream" media, and now Bari apparently, are upset because Tucker enabled us to hear directly from the tyrant Putin. The media is angry because they want us to only hear their interpretation of what Putin says. How dare someone go to a primary source.
When I was in grad school at the University of Chicago they made it obvious by example why you always have to read the primary sources. They are richer and better. They take MORE WORK. You have to sift lie from truth, as best you can, and think about whether or not their arguments make sense, but that sort of work is ALWAYS necessary for anyone who is not so lazy they just want to be told what to think.
Our problem is that most Americans really are that lazy. The Matrix risked rupture by an unmanaged intrusion and this possibility sent a lot of people into hyperarousal. The last thing you want, when you have fallen asleep, is unexpected noise.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PCAGDPRUA646NWDB
This is a basic fact that Americans are not shown. This is why Putin is more popular, verified by Western polling agencies, than any president in US history. He has multiplied GDP per capita by 12 times. The oppressors of the Russian people are not his regime. It is the US administration. They know.
The problem isn’t that Tucker talked to Putin (primary source) the problem is treating him as the ONLY source, which is what such an interview without context (beyond an afternoon on the subway and in a supermarket) without background and without consulting other sources. That’s not journalism that’s desperation.
Good points, Paula.
Many serious journalists tried to interview Putin, and he refused. The problem is not interviewing Putin per se - it’s the fawning approach and totally skewed end result. Even Putin laughed at Tucker’s brownnosing in remarks after the interview.
How many interviews has Biden given to ANY interviewer? Hmm?
How many interviews has ANY American politician given to ANY Russian mainstream interviewer? Hmm?
The only "skew" I saw in Tucker's interview was the other way. But clearly, you have an agenda, and it is anti-Russian.
Maybe, Spartacus, because her country was invaded by Russians..
Yes, Lee... her country, before that invasion, had a coup that drove took down "her" democracy in 2014. That junta (The Banderas) immediately attacked Donbas in the east committing ethnic cleansing against Russian ethnics living there. That coup forced the president to flee the country, and he died shortly after he fled. Joe Biden made the phone call to the Kremlin asking Russia to calm things down by keeping troops in barracks. This made the coup possible.
Years of civil war killing Russian ethnics in the east, and Russia did not invade. Finally, with Biden back in office, the new figurehead president (a comic actor) made a speech in which he said he would make nuclear weapons. Ukraine has an ICBM factory. Ukraine has nuclear power plants to get plutonium from. This was not an idle threat.
This was a violation of the agreement under which Ukraine got its independence. Russia then took over the nuclear power plants to control the source of easy nuclear weapons material. Russia then said it would stop, but Donbas and Crimea go back to Russia. And the nuclear power plants remain in Russian custody.
Here we are. If Mexico was shelling Texas for 6 years, and shooting Americans, we would roll tanks how fast into Mexico city?
Viktor Yanukovych, who fled Ukraine after a student uprising (in which the students were joined by their parents), is alive and well and living in Russia, where he was born and raised before moving to Ukraine. The student uprising in the Maidan was a direct result of young people like Katerina having voted for him because h promised to sign an agreement with the EU for Ukraine to be put on a path to membership in the EU (which finally happened last month) and then Yanukovych reneged on that campaign promise under pressure from Putin. The students occupied the Maidan for days on end and their parents joined them. Yanukovych got his snipers to start firing on the protesters to get rid of them, and the crowds were so outraged that they turned on the police and forced Yanukovych out of the building and ultimately out of office. Young Ukrainians like Katerina want no part of Russia. They want what they grew up with, freedom. The Banderites existed during WW2 for a brief period and haven’t been present in Ukraine for over 50 years. The conflict in the Donbas was started by Russian paramilitary forces led by Igor Girkin, who used his men and local partisans to disrupt the peace and begin a breakaway movement. Girkin’s troops started killing Ukrainian soldiers and the Ukrainians responded. Russia started the conflict in the Donbas.
Ukraine can make nukes? On a dime? Like, in a few months? Now THAT would be something I would expect Putin to rail about. Yet I don't remember him saying anything about that. Instead he whines about NATO.
I love it. It's the 'you asked for it' invasion. To your example, I certainly think with the truckloads of Chinese sourced fentanyl/cocaine etc through Mexico and their gangs streaming across our porous Southern border, we would have had ample reason to invade years ago. I can't wait to go. Want to lead the charge? It can be James Polk in 1846 all over again..
Since you alone seem to have the real info, you write we are being told lies on all sides, where do you get all your info? And why are your sources so beyond doubt? My only comment here regarding a tiny bit of info you mentioned - Epsteins list. With a former president adjudicated a rapist and the brother of Englands king on Epsteins list, what makes you think that effing list is so important to anyone? The Majority of the GOP love and canonized the pussy-grabber and would absolutely vote for him again. England still has its royal family. Is every news outlet “in on the scam” or just the usual suspects? Ya know the dreaded NYTIMES?
I've been with many women, and at some point I've "grabbed" them all. It's quite pleasant for them, when done in the right way at the right time by the right person. And I certainly wouldn't say no to many women who wanted to grab me. That was all Trump was saying. If Bill Clinton had been caught saying the same thing--and even when he was President he reportedly discussed pussy constantly while golfing with Vernon Jordan, since Bill is clearly a sex addict--the media would have made it disappear virtually overnight. How dare you interfere in his personal business, they would have said, or something. It would have been spun, according to the needs of that moment.
What Biden did with Tara Reade was quite different, both then, and even worse, recently, in driving her out of the country. And what he does with little girls in public also seems to indicate some disturbing patterns in private.
The case for Biden being a malignant pussy grabber is much better than that of Trump. Why don't you care? You want to talk about Trump all day. Biden not at all. It's hard to see how any principle of any sort could be involved. You don't have the ability to evaluate rationally his own daughters report that he took showers with her when she was 8. That is creepy by any standard, but your only concern is attacking the story, isn't it?
As to the rest, why don't you do this: start adding, say, The Gateway Pundit or Breitbart or the Epoch Times, or Newsmax to your daily list, and start noticing what stories appear in one place and not in the other. Why don't you start asking yourself, having seen both perspectives, what actually makes sense to you, as a thinking, rational human being?
If you have any emotional intelligence and a mind of any worth at all, it won't take long for you to realize how corrupt and dishonest most of our media is. But of course it would take integrity and a sincere desire for truth to do that. I won't suppose I KNOW what sort of person you are, but certainly I am going to make an assumption.
Go ahead make an assumption. If the news sources you’ve recommended are where you get the whole story then I can make an assumption as well. And I’m so glad you feel you can walk up to women and lay hands on them without their permission. There’s a name for men like that. And I think we as a nation heard more than we needed to or cared about presidential sexual misbehavior. My point, dear PG, wasn’t GOP or Dems was why on Earth would there be any point in the FBI keeping Epstein list quiet. We’ve already heard about Lewinsky and her stained blue dress who gives a crap who hung out with Epstein and his harem.
I didn't say any of those was where I got the whole story. Did I?
I didn't say I feel like I can walk up to women and lay hands on them. Nor did I imply it. Did I?
If you are going to tell lies about what I said, and put words in my mouth, would it not just be simpler to run down the list that starts with racist, and make the accustions more credible by pretending I said them?
I mean, once you know how to lie, and see no argument against it, why not go whole hog?
As far as Epsteins list, I would ask if you are thick, but I think that answer is already pretty obvious.
What if Mitch McConnell is on that list? Chuck Schumer? Barack Obama? James Comey? Chris Wray? Etc.?
These women were trafficked, and many of them were underage, and whatever footage Epstein had, it apparently worked to make him very rich, and would make the possessor of that information potentially powerful.
Obviously. But we are not playing a game of mutual understanding here, are we? You don't want to understand me, but I understand you quite well.
Mutual understanding? I’m pretty sure that train left the station.
Roxanne, who do you suppose placed hands on Mr. Epstein? If the folks on his list are not important to you, perhaps your concern is for Jeffery? Trying to follow your moral logic and coming up scrambled eggs. 🤷♂️
Moral logic? What is moral logic? I didn’t know logic was now divided into sub- genres like fiction The commenter wasn’t there when Epstein died - aided or unaided. What bothers me is the absolute superior attitude that some commentators here have that they, and they alone KNOW the absolute truth about everything. So my response was, simply, if all of us are being lied to from all sides, what makes them believe their source of information is unimpeachably accurate? My comments were simply this: Epstein had a list. Okay however, There are also dozens of photographs of rich and powerful men partying with the guy including a former president AND the brother of the English king. I used Epstein as an example. I could have used any of the other examples of how “we” are lied to yet the poster has somehow risen above those lies with his sources of information. The commenter implies superior sources that at best is unbridled arrogance and at worst delusional. And my question was never answered although I was told to expand my news sources to Breitbart and Epoch Times. News sources with no history of agendas
"Potential confusion". What a great metaphor {?} those two words provide. We seem so terrified of a little confusion, of questions, of paradox. The gates of enlightenment are guarded by confusion and paradox. Great post Mr. Finbar.
If Tucker thought that the would hear truths from Putin who is not only a politician (that alone would be enough to be highly suspicious) but also a thug, than he is really stupid. He can not be that stupid - so why did he do it? Self-aggrandizing, that is my guess.
Well said!! Thank you
Megan Kelly did a very good peace on the circumstances surrounding Jeffrey Epstein's death. After viewing it, you'd have to be naive to think Espstein killed himself.
No naivety needed Jefferey didn’t kill himself, however I don’t believe it was the sex trafficking bullshit I think (and it’s merely MHO) that he was murdered, because he had other stuff on all the people who visited his island like evading tax (he was a brilliant tax specialist). Also laundering their money from the 20 year Iraq/Afghan wars. I have read recently that he has a $600 mil estate which the powers that be would love to get their grubby little paws on. I recently saw and interview with his brother Mark who showed pic’s of Jeffery’s neck it was garroted not bruised. We won’t get a fair investigation into Jeffery’s death, under this Administration it won’t be allowed.
I've always been under the impression that Trump (well, someone on the downlow on behalf of Trump) had Epstein killed. After all, it was while Trump was president, and Epstein probably had some serious dirt on Trump as much as he had on the Clintons or Prince Andrew.
If Trump was on the client list, it would have been released by now, and all the powerful Democrats on it would have just had to take the fall.
Agreed - Trump is also a germaphobe and I’m guessing that Bergdorf’s broad had obvious cooties so that he would not have thought going near her! LOL.
I read recently a bit of her history she was a serial rape accuser it was her game!
🪒🛎️
Trump actively distanced himself from Epstein once he found out what he was about. This from one of the women who made all this public.
Trump is clearly not that sort of person. He's not violent. He's not mean. He's certainly a bit thin skinned, but having endured thousands of personal attacks myself over many years I can say it gets tiring and never brings out my best.
In my own view, Epstein cooperated closely with US agencies like the FBI and CIA to gather incriminating material to use for blackmail, and it's almost certain those same agencies wanted to be absolutely sure none of that got out.
Or it could have been the Brits or even the Clintons. When you start to look at the list of all the weird deaths associated with them--like the Starbucks gal in DC--it's hard not to believe there is something there. But who would investigate? The FBI? Those files are probably kept next to the Seth Rich files in a vault known only to the invited.
I suspect they have a LOT on Joe Biden. He is possibly the most reliable President they have ever installed, not least because he can't remember most of what they ask him to do.
Very unlikely in my view. I don't think it was the Clintons either - Bill Clinton cheating? Gasp - with his track record, who cares? Even Hillary wouldn't care. The Royal Family - not their style. It's someone we don't know about and, since the FBI won't release all the records (and the names of the prisoners in the cells that night) and Ghislaine won't talk, we'll likely never know. I think it was a privately ordered hit, not the CIA. It was too sloppy.
SS-- I tend to agree w/ you on this. As much as we'd love to blame the Clintons, Trump or the Royals- Epstein was a blackmailer and had dirt on many a man!
So who do you think did it? It had to be someone whose reputation would have been completely destroyed by a revelation. And he had to be powerful and well-connected at the highest levels to pull this off.
Sounds like a movie or a TV series, and just as factual.
Well, this thread of thought is getting out into the fringe but if you’re comfortable going there, read this… https://www.mintpressnews.com/category/epstein-investigation/
Ha- SS- if only I had a clue? I'm not savvy enough! I'd probably have to take some peyote or go do a walkabout in the outback to gain some enlightenment on the subject- or maybe give Gislaine M. some sodium pentothol!
I think we have found that "Peter" is the male's equivalent of "Karen"
Such a great comment.
Liberty is under daily attack HERE. Freedom is being stolen from citizens HERE. The weaponization of our judiciary against people who are not part of the chosen elite, is happening HERE.
Ignore the shiny object 8,000 miles to the east, and focus your eyes where it matters.
Bari et al. Yes we live in a world of moral confusion. That is what is bothering so much about this article. I don't really think there is moral confusion about Putin. It's long been clear. (it's also clear that supporting Ukraine won't stop him). What's bothering me is that TFP wants to pick on Tucker and others who really want to look at the moral confusion here at home (read these comments!). We know Trump is a walking moral confusion and know what we are getting. This is amply and perhaps often incorrectly investigated and reported. What is missing and what I wish TFP would do is look at the moral confusion of every institution in OUR society. I believe TFP is joining in with the MSM in it's moral confusion about our current administration. (AGAIN, read the comments)
You didn't even mention Musk, who is now under assault in every one of his holdings because he stabbed a knife in the heart of corrupt censorship and Leftist Power.
Hillary Clinton is also an authoritarian and a murderer, so I'd love to know how Bari thinks we're better than Putin. Wasn't Nellie just joking about an assassinated Clinton enemy a few weeks ago? How quickly these things pass us by.
We'll traffic underage girls for sex, use it as blackmail, and then murder the guy who was employed to do it. But yeah. Poor Navalny. Putin such bad man.
No, no; if the Liberal woke power brokers say the death was an accident, well who could question that, as we all know the Clintons, Obamas, Kerry, Gore and all the others are the true protectors of freedom and democracy. Oh wait, I forgot to add great people like Slow Joe, Newsome, Whitmore and all of the other freedom fighters. Putin is just more direct and less filled with BS. Make no mistake that the so called Davos elites will and have done worse.
I want to ask why Democrat leadership think they can lie constantly and break the law with impunity
And then I remember that their voter support it.
Putin is filled with as much BS as any leader, he just knows how to spin better than most.
Navalny was courageous, or foolish, depending how you look at it. But Navalny was, for the West, first and foremost, a US asset. No question about that. The USA's interest in Navalny was that he was an asset to destabilize Russia and make the country ripe for plucking. My take on Navalny has always been that he was, in his country, a weird idealist. The idea here in the USA that the 90's were some sort of "better time" is completely wrong. At least 4 million Russians died of homicide, suicide, and starvation during those horrific years. Everyone had relatives who were murdered, often horribly, by gangs. The reign of the oligarchs, which the USA backed, was a reign of gangsters.
In that time, one could go to a restaurant, and see a man stab his waitress with his fork, over and over, to punish her for some slight or other about the food. Those men who fled to the West? They had private armies, and they stole what the wanted with impunity. How? A colleague's secretary was left across the street from his office, bound with wire, dead---a message. This was not freedom.
Banks were run by gangsters who took them over by force, holding a gun to the head of the directors and officers. If they resisted, they had their brains blown out. The gangsters literally played poker in the back with customer money. This was not freedom.
Today, in Russia, and since the start of the Putin group's party rule, for most Russians, life improved astonishingly. The GDP per capita is 5X what it was in 2000. When you account for currency and purchasing power parity, Russians are often better off in real terms than Americans. When they are not, things work now.
Soros said it a long time ago. "Freedom without economic choices is no freedom at all." Navalny, in practice, mostly fought for a return to the wild west oligarch's time. Today, it is far from perfect, but things are trending steadily up for most. Economic choices are real now. Before, economic choices were only real for the elite of the oligarchs. The intent of the West, and definitely of Joe Biden, is the overthrow of Russia, and installation of fools who would allow the nation to be raped. That is what this administration wants.
You may say, "Oh, there's no difference. It's still oligarchs." It is still oligarchs, but now they are subject to some rule of law, and are not allowed to destroy their country as they like. Putin and his group have been playing, "Finding Joe Kennedy."
People forget. Joe Kennedy was a gangster oligarch. The Kennedy family would be described in Russia as oligarchs. They are, by any sane measure. But, the Kennedys turned themselves to supporting civil society. They could be worked with. That is the kind of oligarch that today's Russia allows. There were many oligarchs who learned that if they didn't step up, and if they ran a bank, didn't employ people who understood what a bank was, well... accidents happen.
Russia is not America. For Russia to survive and support its people properly, much tougher steps were needed. They still are. We have plenty of deaths too, and that includes political ones. Many quite suspicious deaths occur that will never be solved.
Separately, I know more than a little about chemical weapons. The symptoms described are wrong for the Novichok class of drugs. I am not close, but unless it was a month-long medically induced coma, that isn't what nerve agents like VX, sarin, or Novichok do. And a month medical coma is wrong for such a drug. The longest lasting antidote to those drugs is BZ, which was found in that gentleman in England.
Nor is it true that only Russia has the ability to make or use such molecules. That is just ridiculous. Anyone who can make an insectide can make them, or something like them. I am not saying Russia's government did, or did not attack Navalny in this way. I don't know. But I would treat everything around Navalny that is reported as very questionable. I know for a fact that if the FSB (or the US) wants to kill someone it can be done without leaving any forensic chemical evidence at all.
Interesting. That makes sense.
I will point out to a general audience that I can read all this, digest it, remember it, and consider some or all of it to be true, without assuming necessarily that it IS all true and that I can't change my mind later if I get what seems like more reliable information.
This is what responsible thought looks like. Let people speak their piece, listen to what they have to say, then make a provisional decision that seems appropriate that you are ready to change later because you are not an idiot.
So many people want a simple world. Comics are simple. The world is not. It can be made to LOOK simple if you apply the force of stupidity to it with determination, but that does not make it actually simple. It makes you incapable of reacting to anything appropriately and with skill and intelligence.
Ask yourself how would people here react to me if Putin was helping me to protest against whatever, and made a lot of noise about it?
A basic exercise is to substitute Biden's statements as Putin's.
What the noise and PR about Navalny from the top echelon here tells you is that Navalny's utility was mostly to gather support for American foreign policy in this country. Ask yourself where did he get his money? How could he afford to travel at will and stay in hotels, with a bodyguard? How did he finance what he did? He wasn't working in Russia. His job appears to have been making enough publicity against Russia's policy to please his US funders. Navalny really wasn't much in Russia. If he had been effective, most likely, the US would have kept quiet about him. That is not guaranteed, of course. Our politicians are the most appalling idiots when it comes to anything to be handled clandestinely.
Having grown up in Russia in the 90s I agree with everything you say regarding crime and hunger. However, there was freedom. Freedom unlike ever before. For a very short time there was no censorship on TV, there was independent media, there wasn’t Soviet propaganda in schools. It was a scary, but fascinating time to live through. It is painful for me to think that my generation, “children of Perestroika” is the only one who grew up free to think and say what we wanted.
Highly interesting. Thank you.
To those here who want to speculate about who killed Navalny and think it had to be someone from the west because Navalny wasn’t a threat now to Putin, think again. In March there is a presidential election in Russia. Navalny had/followers. Someone raised with the freedoms we have in the US might assume they could anticipate Putin’s reasoning. But that’s just hubris pure and simple. Putin’s proven M.O. is murder. I realize chasing zebras is a fun pastime but it’s no way to understand world politics.
Really. This guy who was a literal Nazi, and led rallies with the sieg Heil salute? That's Navalny. He got what? 3% of the vote? No. Navalnny was around in other elections. He just wasn't much of anyone of importance in Russia.
Navalny's importance is as propaganda aimed at us.
Very much like with the CCP, the US thought that encouraging financial liberalism and growth would translate into liberalism in the political sphere. And today we see that the Chinese and Russians have more recently enjoyed greater economic success, but they are still slaves to the regime.
It’s easy to say in hindsight what the West did wrong in its 1990s relationship with Russia. This 20/20 hindsight is especially strong with you.
Russians maybe 15-20 years ago had a choice to resist Putin’a regime, while now resistance is all but impossible. Tucker has a choice as well and he resold Putin’s propaganda for free. And yes I listened to it.
I saw the 90's in Russia directly, on the streets, with mothers at 2 am sitting on the curb selling vodka for a few bucks to stay alive. I knew, just like Jeffrey Sachs figured out, that the policy of shock treatment was an ivory tower monstrosity, that the economists who backed it covered their butts about. Jefrey Sachs has spent the rest of his life trying to atone for the horrific harm he inflicted on Russia.
Get this through your head --- everyone. (You too Bari.) Putin and his group (it's a group, not a one man show) are more popular in Russia, verified by western (and US) polling agencies, than ANY administration in the history of the USA. ANY! That includes the peak of John F Kennedy's popularity. Putin and his group are very good managers of their nation. Very.
This is why. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PCAGDPRUA646NWDB
Look at that. From the start of the Putin group's administration starting to operate in mid 1999 ($1331), to 2013 ($15,974) GDP per capita went up by a factor of ... 12 times! Imagine a US president who multiplied the median real wage in the USA by 12 times! Would he or she be popular? You betcha.
Russians know damn well what has caused the drops in their economic fortunes, and it's not Vladimir Putin, it is machinations against them by the USA, and Europe. It's sanctions. It's terrorism against their pipeline. It's war. They know, it's no secret, that the stated goal of this US administration is to break Russia, and that this has been building since 2004.
And yet, here in America, there is this bizarre narrative that Putin is a dictator who does terrible things and the people of Russia are oppressed and crushed by him. This is completely wrong. The only oppressing and crushing of the Russian people is by the politicians of the USA and Europe. They are pretty well aware of this.
None of what I just said is "propaganda", it is all easily verifiable fact. The only propaganda is the bizarre story that you and virtually everyone else in the USA believes about Russia and its leadership.
“And yet, here in America, there is this bizarre narrative that Putin is a dictator who does terrible things and the people of Russia are oppressed and crushed by him. This is completely wrong.”
You give long comments so thanks for crystallizing your actual stance. Now I know the depths to which you are a Putin apologist and how full of it you are. Thanks.
And this --- right here --- is an archetypal example of blind stupidity. No thought. Little different from a bot. And it is most of most in the West.
Putin bad. Because. Putin bad.
Putin raised the fortunes of his people by a factor of 12 times.
Putin bad. That why Putin bad. Because Putin bad. Because Russia.
I say we take this entire conversation, warts and all, offering vastly different points of view, free speech and all that, and conduct it in Moscow - let's ask Bari for her to open up adjunct office of the FP there so that she can host it. And we can invite Navalny supporters and Ukraine dissenters to join in.
How long do you think we would last?
There is a six-part documentary film about this period called Trauma Zone, which I strongly urge everyone here to watch - as depressing as it is.
And yet…immigrants are dying trying to get to our freedom, and citizens of Russia are dying trying to leave for freedom.
I'm not reading about Russian refugees. Are you?
And what's not to like about free housing, food and money, after you break our laws and are unlikely to be prosecuted for anything?
America is richer than most of the world. There is more money here. Of course people want to come here. But your comment in no ways addressing the creeping fascism which can only be denied through willful and vigorous acts of ignorance.
For the past two years Russians have been fleeing to European democracies. All immigrants I know in the Houston area are working difficult low paying freeway, housing, restaurant, and cleaning jobs. I’ve never heard about free food, housing, or money. They are comparing their country’s political and economic situation to ours, and like I said, some are dying trying to make a better life for themselves and their children. The ones I hear about from the kids in school are not freeloaders. But I will tell you this, they love our opportunities for hard work in a relatively safe environment. Even in Texas of all places. I do not know or see the “fascism” you are referring to. I guess it depends on what is your comparison country. I’m really not scared right now of the centrist left. Moreso of the far left and the fascist right, so I’ve been told.
What centrist left? Give me an example of someone who matters, in a position of power. I see no evidence of anything but batshit crazy.
And of course America in general is better than Russia in general. But there are no guarantees it will stay that way. It clearly won't on the path the Democrats and their Republican fellow travelers have laid out for us.
Fascists are firmly on the left. Mussolini was a socialist all of his adult life and ran things like a socialist.
I tend to call the lot of them Collectivism. Fascism and Communism are just rival street gangs that use basically the same methods to achieve basically the same ends. The main difference is that Fascism is somewhat rational, in that it sort of works, whereas Communism is fully psychotic, and runs purely on lies and graft.
Good retort. I am coming to believe that since most people do not know the true meaning of Fascism, Socialism, Communism, etc. the labels are meaningless. The important distinction is are they American Patriots or not.
Yes. And I sat on a beach on a remote island in Fiji a couple decades back, talking to a schoolteacher native of the island. It was incredible. Perfect temperature, light breeze, palm trees, and wavelets inside the reef phosphorescing. It was breathtaking. And she wanted to go to Texas. She carried on about Texas as the promised land of fables.
Fijians come here, and... some regret it. Some go back. Most don't even if the regret it.
That's a grass is greener situation.
Yeah. And familiarity. To her the gorgeous world around her was just the world. It was boring. It was small. It was, to her, provincial. She knew everything about everyone and they knew everything about her.
I personally know a guy hiding overseas from the Russian draft. It's real.
209,000 Americans dodged the draft during Vietnam. 100,000 deserted from the Armed Forces. At least 30,000 hid in Canada.
And lived to tell the tale. I was in the army in the late 50s, and if I would have been called up in the Vietnam era, I would have done what the 339,00 thousand did. There was no reason to go to war in Vietnam, just like there was no reason to go to war in Iraq, or Afghanistan.
Early on we thought fighting in Viet Nam was noble, to stop the advance of communist China taking over southeast Asia, the same way communist Soviet Union took over Eastern Europe.
The cause to stop the domino effect of nations falling was just, but it escalated into a war we could not and chose not to win.
In addition to meeting Ukrainians, you may want to meet some of the many, many russian refugees (more in Europe, but yes, plenty in the US as well). There has been a documented ongoing brain drain even since before the war. When the war started there was an exodus.
Yeah. And I think you are part of that. Yes? So why not go to Ukraine and fight? Hmm?
I have talked to many Ukrainians in the USA. Out of all of them, just one said something positive about Zelensky and the Kiev dictatorship. His wife works for Zelenksy. But still, he is in the USA, and has no interest in fighting in that war.
"I'm not reading about Russian refugees. Are you?"
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65790759
Putin could have killed Navalny at any point in the past 5 years.
But Putin is smart so he waited until the moment it was most advantageous for The Democrat State.
I have zero questions.
So here’s a really weird thought. Clearly Putin could have killed Navalny at any moment he wanted, agreed. I’ve followed Navalny’s story pretty closely (and, Bari, he wasn’t sent directly to Polar Wolf. Initially he was in a prison not far from Moscow and did not turn up at Polar Wolf until Dec 25,2023. I digress.) So, why now? Is there a connection between the Tucker interview and Navalny’s killing? Is DJT seriously considering Tucker for VP? I have no idea and wouldn’t think so, but the killing plus the interview are sure riling people up against Tucker. We also now have the just-released “serious threat” of Russia’s potential weapon in space, which has been known to the US for at least a month. I need someone smart and suspicious to explain the timing of all this to me, because I no longer believe in coincidences!
Tucker lauds Putin, the puppies lap it up, Putin kills Navalny, the puppies say, not my problem. That interview was perfectly stage managed by Putin. Who's next, the Myanmar Generals?
The only puppies who are lapping things up are the dipshit communist seditionists who think that some guy getting killed in Russia is more important than what Democrats are doing to destroy America.
Amen!
One has to ask who benefits from Navalny's death? He certainly didn't seem to be much of a threat to Putin so why would he have him offed now? One might look closer to the west. You make some good points.
Alison-- Great points! I think we tend to think of Putin (and Russia) as in their own slightly backwards sphere, invading Ukraine in a brutal simplistic land grab (because "USA so veak") but we don't think of him a skilled propagandist, and I think that is a mistake. After all- Lenin was the master. I'm sure Vladimir has studied Vladimir extensively!
Putin did just state that he hopes Biden is reelected, "because he's predictable."
Yes. And, Putin is not a moron. He is aware of how the USA works.
Predictable and maleable.
You probably wondered what I did: if the Deep State was capable of getting to him there. It seems unlikely, but who knows?
Still, it's a highly spin-able story. Can't let peace have a chance.
There is no peace and as long as people are making money from war, there will not be peace. As long as someone wants something that is not theirs and belongs to someone else, there will be no peace. That is the history of mankind.
Biden publicly excoriated Putin for Navalny’s death, but Biden, Obama & his buddies are doing the same thing to Trump. It is ironic and very creepy.
Minus the killing of the free press. We can talk about it here.
I worked in real estate finance with several major lending institutions. Trump did what every prospective borrower does—provide an inflated valuation of a property—which is why lenders are required to do their own, as well as obtain an outside MAI appraisal. Valuation is based upon cash flow, so the loan could only have been paid if the cash flow/underlying valuation upon which the lender based its loan had been correct. The banks were paid in full.
This case is an absolute outrage. Every real estate borrower in NY should be charged with a crime if this is the standard.
yup, its a Putinesq tactic and many of the same people who are beating their chests over Nalvany are cheering it on.
Totally agree. I’m not convinced Putin even killed Navalny. Why now? Navalny’s death serves western propaganda interests not Putin’s. However genuine Navalny was as a freedom fighter, he was also an MI6 asset and was working with them to plot a Colour Revolution in Russia. Imagine what the US government would do to a journalist or political operative trying to do the same in the US - oh wait we don’t have to because Julian Assange rots in Belmarsh prison, the J6ers most of who were convicted of trespassing (!) are also in jail and the Democrats and DOJ are running an unbelievable lawfare campaign to try to put Trump, the leading Presidential candidate behind bars as well. Not to mention Biden did not lift a finger to prevent the imprisonment and murder of journalist Gonzalo Lira who was tortured and killed in a Ukrainian prison and is currently funding the Israeli genocide, including the murder of journalists, in Gaza. So I have little time for any moral outrage expressed by the western media in relation to Navalny.
Putin benefits from weak leaders in the West. Since the "western propaganda interests" are supportive of those weak leaders....
There is little or no evidence Navalny was working in Russia to do anything particularly. He got a few people to token protests. Then he traveled in Europe, staying in nice hotels. He was a lawyer without any visible means of support. Navalny was mostly ignored by Russians. He was no threat to the current administration. In fact, Putin intervened to allow Navalny to leave Russia when Navalny was on probation. The communist party is the loyal opposition in Russia.
The more I look into Navalny, the more he looks like an "asset grifter". He said and did enough to get money, quite a bit of it, from the West. Navalny was used. He was mostly protected by the Putin administration. He probably believed that would continue, and he could keep working his grift. Navalny was for US propaganda purposes. He was little or nothing significant in Russia itself.
Amen!
@Unsaint Finbar
What a bunch of words desperately trying to hide how the American Trumpists essentially copy the method and the madness of the American Democrats, concluding that two wrongs make a right. From what I see, the difference is not in tolerance or decency, but simply in who has the power. The people manipulating the senile Biden lie, cheat and abuse the law today; let’s see what Trump and his cultists will do tomorrow.
Sure, Russia is faraway, so it’s perfectly fine to kiss Putin’s feet, repeat his propaganda and praise his KGB state, because if the wokes are a disgrace, it’s OK for everybody to do the same.
How is not sending huge sums of money we had to borrow to a nation that is patently corrupt, ,embezzling large chunks of it, and is clearly losing the war, "kissing Putin's feet"? Why the hell should any of us care about the Ukraine? All this is in Europe. Are there not response-able European nations capable of dealing with this? How in God's name is this our problem? The Cold War is over. We spent the money to win it. Europe still owes us for that.
The rest of that is word salad. It's hard to response intelligently to incoherent rambling. It's actually vaguely comical, because I feel very sure you thought what you wrote was trenchent and on point.
In case you didn’t notice, you are posting a rambling comment to a article by Bari Weiss about the murder of Alexei Navalny in a Russian prison, contrasting it to the shameful but much-admired, in your circles, brown-nosing that Tucker Carlson just gave Putin. You are trying to drown what Bari is clearly saying about this contrast. One might have thought that just on this particular day when a true brave man has been murdered, in a comment to the article that honors his memory, you will have the decency not to pretend that you “are much more worried about our country”. As far as I can tell, you’re not in a penal colony in Alaska.
Tucker Carlson's interview style is to ask questions that allow the interviewed person to explain what they think and what they think they know. He lets the person talk. If you back someone into a corner with "tough questions," you have a cornered person, not a person who talks and tells you themselves where they are at that moment. I think that's a pretty savvy interview style. I think he gets much further with it. That style in no way makes Tucker Carlson a lightweight who is in over his head. We could ALL do much better with listening better. Not listening is how this country got so polarized politically.
Louisa, have you ever listened to an “yellow press” interview, like NPR interviewing some author on “the scourge of systemic racism and white supremacy” in the US, where the “reporter” is simply cheering on the person supposedly interviewed? Do you like that? Do you believe that reduces polarization or it actually infuriates listeners? Now, Carlson giving a softball interview to the murderous dictator who single-handedly started a war that has killed and maimed more than a million on both sides, that’s just the start. After that, Carlson proceeded to provide pure propaganda for the Putin regime, by pretending that life in Russia is so much better there than the US. Please look up Walter Duranty. Is this really the “journalism” that you like?
Andy, Bari made the decision to bring Tucker into the story. And, IMO, it was totally unnecessary to do so. Wonder why she did that?
Gee, Bari’s choice is such a mystery! Yes, why would you want to contrast a brave Russian giving his life to confront the dictator of his country, with an American who, without any obligation, goes to Russia to lick the behind of the same dictator, including idiotically pretending that life in Russia is somehow better than in the US? Maybe, just maybe, Bari wanted to point out that some people still have both spine and brains? We could use something like that today in the US, don’t we?
Well, seems quite odd that Bari, as a self proclaimed ‘independent’ journalist with a blog site literally called ‘The Free Press’ would use another independent journalist in this way. Talking to your adversaries it seems to you/some is ‘boot licking’ because he (Tucker) didn’t ask the questions as you would have. Very poor form. Who’s to say Tucker doesn’t get follow up interviews w/ Putin now that ice is broken?
LOL. I'm not even going to try. Good night!!!
Well said and well done.
It’s a good point Bari - why no concern for the breakdown of the legal institutions in America. You seem to cheer on the injustice here - certainly you protect it and you vote for it. How long are we supposed to care about barbarity and injustice in other places spoken of by people who are just fine with the persecution of their own neighbors
I am much more worried about America too. We view ourselves as morally superior. Yet do we know what our CIA does all over the world? Oh no, we prefer not to know, or we tell ourselves whatever they are doing is to advance democracy. Our CIA has done some pretty awful things. We need another Church Commission to air it all out.
People in glass houses….
I used to call us a global force for good, but no longer. The scales have fallen from my eyes. I am still strongly supportive of the rank and file military, and the honest leaders, but have gone to view our REAL motivations in general as money making.
It's odd how the Left and Right have in many respects flipped on this.
Many of us the ‘Right’ have experience in uniform, and some of us in combat zones. We have ‘seen’ the $ insanity, and the damage done. Most (but not all) on the Left have not served, and operate from some video game cocoon. Maybe the Left support of war and militarism fulfills the alpha, testosteronic mode they lack.
I am also more worried about our own country, Unsaint. We all know that the Tsars, Stalin, Putin, whoever follows after him.... are mass (and individual) murderers. It is super sad that this is not new and that history is full of terrible things including slavery dating back to antiquity. I want the best for the people of the world!
But, we have had something special in this country which is under threat by the very people who have been screaming about Democracy Dying in Darkness. These people Always accuse others of exactly what They are doing.
I have been trying to think of what countries the US has successfully "fixed" and the only one I can come up with is Japan. But, we nuked them and wrote their constitution for them. And, we would never have entered WWII/taken on Japan if they had not taken out our fleet in Hawaii with a surprise attack. I was a little pro involvement in Ukraine at the beginning but I think the taxpayer money bleed to that part of the world has to stop absent a clearly explained (to the American people) plan that involves a ceasefire.
Why do we hate ourselves and work to throw away what we have?
I highly recommend James Lindsey's New Discourses episode 130 for anyone interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvgR2MHqucI
Very well said, Bari. May his memory be eternal.
Amen. He was one of the bravest of men in our lifetime.
Memory eternal! ☦️
R.I.P.
Navalny showed the heights a human can actually soar to.
See The Eagle. Lindsey. “Sleep on o wise and brave hearted man. To live in mankind is far more than to live in a name.” Good bye hero. Hope to see you on the other side of the river.
Nah, that was Snowden and Assange. Especially Assange
Assange is a (maybe) double rapist - he never had the courage to face his two female accusers in a Swedish court; certainly a narcissist; a coward; and a dupe for Putin by hacking and releasing thousands of secret files before the 2016 elections. He is not a journalist and he’s certainly not a hero.
Assange is not double rapist, he was accused of having sex without condom. In both cases persons involved never clamed that he raped them and never wanted him to be prosecuted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assange_v_Swedish_Prosecution_Authority#:~:text=As%20of%2019%20November%202019,were%20confident%20in%20the%20complainant.
As of 19 November 2019 all allegations have been dropped because there is literary no evidence for the case.
Wikipedia? Really?
Yeah, you have plenty of references in Wikipedia that will what happend.
Step away from the mainstream media. You have been egregiously misinformed.
Bringing Carlson in this was a low blow and beneath you Bari. You should be ashamed.
Bari speaks plain and evident truth. Carlson has made himself a buffoon.
She should have stopped with praising his courage. The rest was totally unnecessary. She could easily invite Tucker on to Honestly and have a real conversation
Tucker has earned the criticism he is getting over his behavior since the interview with Putin. Interviewing Putin doesn’t give him a pass. Even conservative commentators are calling him out for his cringy anti-American commentary that sounds more like the ramblings of Bernie Sanders than a rational adult man with decades of journalistic experience.
He has utterly lost perspective because aw shucks! dictators may kill dissidents, but wow, those trains and grocery stores! So yes, in the face of Nalvany’s death, Tucker looks positively foolish.
Bari doesn’t owe him an opportunity to explain himself. He has his own show—he can address her criticism and everyone else’s on HIS platform if he so chooses.
Bari isn’t afraid of honest conversation she and Tucker would be a good listen too
This was a polemic, an etude to a fallen (and very flawed) man. Bari is acting out from her roots as a liberal who knows how the world should be.
All men are flawed, should we not honor those who speak for freedom?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8g4QRTyN9E
An interesting report on Navalny. I knew some of this. (Thus the "very flawed" above.)
I alluded to something mentioned here. Putin said about killing Navalny. If Russia's government had wanted to, he would be dead.
Putin waited for the opportune moment to kill Navalny.
That's not credible. There have been so many times that Navalny could be killed. And he was a virtual nobody in Russia. He was never much of an opponent for the Putin group.
Yes. But, when you live in a nation that had one of the highest murder rates in the world, a country in recovery from a mass murdering state that had kill quotas for every police station, a nation fallen I to the grip of sociopathic rat-bastards, pounding your drum for "freedom", when it means dismantling the state again so the nation and its people can be raped and crushed under the boots of utterly sociopathic oligarchs again...
That is not helpful. It's not really a call for freedom. It's something else. Idealist is the most generous term. Blockheaded is also generous.
I have seen very sharp comedy on Russian TV skewering Putin. The picture drawn here by people who mean well, like Bari, who never set foot in the country, haven't learned the language, have read no literature... it's wanting for grounding in objective reality.
Even here on this forum, someone told me to pack my bags because I have been there. WTAF is that? How utterly stupid, even mad, is that?
The USA as a whole is educated about Russia as a cartoon. It's akin to the education Arabs have about Israel.
Will the free press write a tribute to Gonzalo Lira? He was an American journalist who died in a Ukrainian prison.
he was a sex predator and a YouTube pick up artist who traveled to Ukraine illegally. He also conducted espionage on behalf of Russia. He was kicked out of Ukraine twice, and he kept coming back. In the end, he died of pneumonia- because he was a fat pig, and a heavy smoker.
Links to said YouTube channel please
Oh, Lord. "Reality Speaks": says you.
I am a conservative but Tucker is an isolationist anti-Semite. He is also not much of an intellectual or a history buff and he totally got played by Putin. Add to that his maniacal laugh. Yuck!!
It seemed out of context.
Actually most of these comments are out of context. This article is about this particular Russian doing what 100% of these commenters would not do. The article is about raw bravery for a moral cause. And yet, you all pick up where you left off in your last comment thread. We call this “off topic.”
1000% agree. Every f8cking FP article is another opportunity to grind one's pet ax. Rarely is there a cogent comment about the topic of an article, and when there is a relevant response, it rapidly deteriorates the into the same old sh!t.
The TFP comments are a MAGA sewer. It’s one of the reasons I cancelled my subscription, and I told Bari that. Unfortunately, the way Substack works, when you cancel, they don’t give you a refund. They just don’t renew the subscription when the time period you paid for runs out. So I guess I can lurk here from time to time until summer. But omg, does this place smell bad.
The truly interesting thing is that I also complained to Bari about the contents of TFP, and poof! The tenor of the articles changed overnight. And so much outrage in the comments as a result……
To Ann P: You are absolutely right about the comments here. I find myself stunned sometimes. I'm not sure how The Free Press gained such a following (???), but I wish folks like you would stay. There are plenty of us who hope to be more thought-full and intellectually engaged, testing out our ideas, listening to others, learning, but not to be heckled by what you call the Maga sewer. Anyway, you are appreciated by TFP readers!
Thanks, JR. Ray told me something similar in a different thread. But unless there’s a dramatic and consistent change in both content and comment, summer will be the end for me. It’s truly bizarre how TFP has evolved. Over at The Bulwark the writers are also puzzled by TFP’s evolution. One of them recently said, “If you want to know how far off the rails Bari Weiss has gotten, just read the TFP comments and see the kind of weirdos she attracts.” Now, I don’t think Bari meant for any of this to happen. Instead it seems like a certain cohort relished the idea that a “flaming liberal” left the NYT in a dramatic fashion, had finally “seen the light” and was leaving the dark side for the righteous right. Bari and Nellie are regarded as if they were recovering alcoholics who just haven’t spent enough time in the rooms yet. Whenever Bari, Nellie, Oliver, or anyone else on the staff isn’t sufficiently conservative, the comments get their panties in a twist. The comments consistently fail to understand that THIS is who these people ARE. They are never going to cross that invisible middle line. They’re center left, and they will always be center left. So. We’ll see what the future holds.
A MAGA sewer. Wow. Telling metaphor.
Another explanation might be that many of those who post have significant relevant experience on a given subject that may be foreign to some readers, especially those who haven't had much int'l experience and surround themselves with sycophants.
However I have to agree with DWL that people often do get off track and into their own familiar rants. It's a human condition. We all need to work on it.
The minute the pejoratives (e.g., MAGA sewer) come out, the poster loses all credibility. And their hubris prevents them from ever seeing it, which ultimately is what sits at the core of our escalating division. Deplorables much, anyone?
Well, I have tons of international experience. I’ve studied abroad in France, and my husband studied abroad in Moscow (during the 70’s H smuggled a letter out of Russia for Andrei Sakharov). My daughter studied math in Budapest. My son teaches English as a foreign language in Spain (he did the same in France). I spent last month in Australia and New Zealand. I am out of the country roughly every other month, generally Europe, but also Latin America (Chile and Argentina). I’ve been to Tallinn, Estonia several times, the last time we stayed in the same hotel my H stayed in when he was a student, the Hotel Viru. They have a KGB museum on the top floor where you can see the stuff the KGB left behind when they fled the building as the Soviet Union fell. Our tour guide the last time was from Lithuania; she had some interesting stories.
So are you including me in your description/veiled insult?
Certainly the comments here usually do not reflect the opinions of Weiss or her staff. I think conservatives gather here because it is one of the few places they are allowed to express their views. I commend TFP for allowing open expression.
Oh, I have no doubt that the opinions expressed here are not shared by Bari and her staff. There’s a noticeable disconnect between the contents and the comments. But the TFP content has become more commentary/opinion over time than it has become “news”. What news is printed is usually just stuff they found somewhere else and they repeat it here. A lot of it is either banal, or I can read it in something else I already subscribe to. So there’s nothing of value for me here anymore. Nevertheless, I do find the disconnect bizarre.
"MAGA sewer" lol.
This gives off an unflattering impression. You probably did not intend or would wish for that.
The Free Press has one of the most thoughtful and intelligent comment sections that I have interacted with in 20 years. The lean here is simply "not crazy". That's pretty much it. I think many are here because they have been severely disaffected by legacy media sources and the corruption and rot in both political parties. I have spent a lot of time here and have seen respectful disagreement, witty repartee, but not abuse.
I would love for you to define MAGA. Does MAGA include me, who voted for Trump twice as a lesser of two evils choice, who has never owned a red cap, and who finds much of Trump's behavior immature, boorish, unnecessarily cruel, and beneath what I would consider the standard of behavior of our public leaders, but whose policies I mostly agree with?
I think this probably more accurately describes what you derisively describe as a MAGA sewer.
Do you believe the 2020 election was stolen? Are you an anti-vaxxer? Do you believe Victoria Nuland and the CIA planned the Maidan Revolution in Kiev in the winter of 2014? Do you believe Epstein was assassinated and didn’t really commit suicide? Most of the comments that I regularly see here believe in all the popular conspiracy theories. They think the “MSM” lies to them on a regular basis. Do you? Are you an isolationist?
Those are the kind of things I think of when I think MAGA. It’s more than just “I’m voting for Trump because I think he’s the lesser of two evils” (which I can respect but also disagree with). It’s the whole conspiracy theory/isolationist bubble that MAGAs seem to live in. It’s “the Biden crime family” when the FBI informant admits he’s lying. It’s “Jan 6th was just a peaceful protest and the people in jail are hostages”. If you believe all that, then you too are MAGA.
FWIW, I’ve had a lot of positive feedback on the “MAGA sewer” remark. You may not know who “liked” it, but I know.
Bari made a knee-jerk reaction of juxtaposing Navalny w/ Tucker. She cast shade on what many of us consider a seeker of truth. And it was completely unnecessary. Dish it out, then be okay to take it in return.
Fair comment, Matt.
That was simply a beautiful tribute. I hope that Navalny's sacrifice and your words help us find the courage we need to reverse humanity's terrible slide.
We won't.
Alexei Navalny was a man of great courage who had the respect of the entire world. May he rest in peace.
He is a martyr.
Carlson = Walter Duranty. A useful idiot.
How about pretending that Joe Biden isn't a senile imbecile who is stupendously unfit to be our president? I prefer a Tucker Carlson who has the courage to question over the fawning fools who comprise the US media and lie everyday that we're not being led by jokers and fools.
One can be critical of our mainstream media while also not falling for Tucker Carlson stunt... where is the courage there? a classic example of "useful idiot" for Putin. his picture should be in a thesaurus next to "useful idiot"...
What was bad about granting a person who is being villified in our press the ability to make his own case? Only idiots think they need to believe everything they hear. I certainly didn't believe everything Putin said, and unlike Americans am historically literate enough to know most of the history he left out.
But would we not have fewer wars if we spent more time humanizing our enemies? Are fewer wars not a good idea? Would it affect any of you who have no connections to the Ukraine in any way if Putin kept the Donbass? Why do you care? Why is this idiotic conflict worth large amounts of American money that could and should either be spent here, or not added to our staggering national debt?
Only idiots can take anything coming out of Putin's mouth as truth. I have some first hand experience with Soviet/Russian propaganda.
Do you, or should we all, care about anything taking place outside our own country? Middle Easr? Far East? I certainly would not argue that fewer wars is better, of course it is. But how does giving a platform to Putin gets us closer to that?
As Mel Brooks said in "To Be Or Not To Be":
I don't want war. All I want is peace. Peace. Peace!
A little piece of Poland, a little piece of France
A little piece of Portugal and Austria perchance...
And, in case you wondering, I am very skeptical of our mainstream media. And I really like Bari Weiss.
Did you watch the interview?
I think only idiots take anything coming out of Biden's mouth as truth. But the fact is, he only lies when he needs to. That is a lot, but not all the time. Why would Putin be any different?
I don't drop everything to watch or listen to Biden either. I expect very little from politicians in general.
All of this “but did you watch it” is such utter nonsense. There is no point in watching a dictator whose prose is compulsory lies. It’s like watching the latest cancer cure chiropractor on YouTube. You bring up the fact that it doesn’t matter what they say, wrong is wrong, fact is fact, and these people still say “but did you watch it”
Fair point.
So why do the news networks constantly show Biden and comical flack?
Mel Brooks quotes are always welcome!!
Why is it ok to invade another country, desroy it's infrustructure and kill it's inhabitants?
It isn't.
But it isn't OK to stir up such wars either. We did it in Georgia, as well, to no good effect. Am I'm also old enough to remember that we were constantly trying to stir up the Poles and Hungarians and leaving them out to dry when the Soviets reacted. Until finally we had a president with the balls to face them down instead of temporizing with them. I also remember the very same latte slurping leftists attacking Reagan as a warmonger and "an amiable dunce."
“unlike Americans am historically literate”
And where did you gain this wonderful literacy?
Probably by avoiding Zinn, under whom you obviously studied.
How is it a stunt? Is it a stunt to learn that Biden & Putin haven’t spoken in 2 years? That’s what I heard in the interview that disturbed me the most. And from the White House on that statement, crickets. They (the White House) know not to address the substance of the interview. Because then those ‘useful idiots’ who support forever war might waver in support.
Yury, is that how you treat your own family? Do you give them the silent treatment? If so, how’s that working out?
I have no mass murderers in my family... can't answer your question...
So, how about the other question. Why hasn’t Biden & Putin spoken in 2 years?
Why are you asking me?
Putin, himself, marveled that Carlson only tossed him softball question What kind of courage was THAT?
Greater courage than any other American journalist has shown.
And do you deny that Joe Biden has never been tossed anything BUT a softball question? He would have no hope of answering any other kind, would he? And he screws up even the easy ones pretty consistently. The guy is not fit to run a gas station, much less a country.
We all know, of course, that he isn't in charge. But that logically means people are in charge we didn't vote for, and whose names we can't even be sure of. It's not Obama: he's not smart enough, and he didn't run his own Presidency. But who is it? Sane people want to know, but we have no good way of finding out.
And what other American journalist was invited to a long form interview? I think that most would jump at the chance to take Carlsons place! And don't bother telling me that because Carlson ASKED that he was allowed to do the interview. He was CHOSEN by Putin.
The journalists in Russia who wanted to ask Putin some questions are in jail or dead. The journalists Putin wants to interview him, go to the opera and grocery store and marvel at how pretty Moscow is.
You completely ignored the substance of my response, which amounts to the observation that we should be talking about Biden, not Putin, and that regardless of his motivations, Carlson increased the amount of information in the world, which is a journalists job. Figuring out what to make of it, traditionally, is YOUR job. You don't want to do your job. I get it.
You want journalists to tell you what to think, and the mere possibility they may not be in perfect ideogical conformity with you creates the real risk of intellectual malfunction. Independent journalists and unspun information are like the risk of fentanyl in most other drugs nowadays.
Me, I watched the interview. I believed some, thought some silly and self serving, and overall left with a much better personal impression of Putin, for good and for bad, and felt the time well invested.
We are so unworthy of you...not only are you a repository of pungent and correct analysis, you also can suss out a persons whole thought process from just a few lines!
Lol. Putin is trending up in your book. I guess that’s mission accomplished for Putin, for Carlson, and for all the bootlickers out there.
The most hilarious thing is that these halfwits have a fit when Carlson asks Putin questions but sit by passively with a doddering imbecile leading our own nation.
Greater courage than Evan Gershkovich?
Is this your alias, TC? If not the man himself, you’re certainly a fanboy!
And no, I’m not watching “the interview.”
I yearn for an America where the educated viewed the willfully ignorant with disdain. In our America the educated ARE the willfully ignorant. They have so little practice interacting with opposing and differing views they in general lack the ABILITY to even try.
And if you HAD watched the scary, scary interview, you would have heard Carlson ask for Evan's freedom multiple times. On Putin's account he was caught red handed with Russian secrets. He may have been lying, but it seems more likely to me he was telling the truth.
Asking a dictator multiple times to set someone free in the middle of the Kremlin, in the middle of Russia, was pretty ballsy. But you know, to know anything about that, you would have to put your BIG BOY pants on, stick a pacifier in your mouth, and sit through that terrifying interview. As you say, that ain't gonna happen.
Exactly. And his fellow bootlickers suggest that he’s the ONLY one who has thought to ask Putin for an interview. How stupid are these people?
Seems much more likely that Putin has refused all western interviews until he could get one with a dependable and useful idiot, who also has an exclusive audience of useful idiots and sycophant-wannabes.
What Duranty did, as a Communist, is cover up Soviet crimes. What Tucker did is air a two hour interview which anyone can watch and interpret for themselves. It is interesting that none of the people regurgitating anti-Putin/anti-Russian propaganda have the interest and integrity to actually watch the interview for themselves. Seemingly, they lack the stomach for ideas which have not been selected for them and predigested by someone else.
None? How do you know?
Carlson raving about how wonderful Moscow is reminds me of some ministers I know of in the 1950s being taken on a tour of Moscow and coming home and raving about how the USSR had all these active churches and freedom of religion. Useful idiots on a Potemkin tour, squired around by government propagandists.
It's possible to hold two separate ideas which seem in opposition to each other but in fact are not. One is that Russia has never been free, and the current ruthless kleptocracy rivals that of North Korea and Iran. At the same time, their subways are much better than ours, and they don't tolerate the sort of street crime and indolence that we look away from in the name of of equity, reparations, brotherhood, whatever you want to call our public cultural failure.
That’s how I think of it, too. About five months ago —LONG BEFORE Tucker went to Moscow — I had an HVAC business owner in my home for system maintenance, and we happened to discuss some of the issues plaguing our “blue” city, such as crime, homelessness, drugs, etc. He said, “How is this tolerated”? And it hit me that we have lost all ability to run a civil society.
For me, the point of Tucker’s praise of the safety/order/cleanliness of Moscow is not an implication that Moscow’s politics are to be emulated; rather it raises the question of why the USA, one of the richest and “democratic” nations on earth cannot manage something as simple as providing a safe environment for our children (that even corrupt, authoritarian Russia can!).
Yes, dictators get shit done. You talk about this like it’s some revelation. During the Roman republic, there was a clause that allowed any democratically chosen leader to become supreme dictator for a period of 6 months in times of crisis. The idea was that, unencumbered by bureaucratic constraints, one person could make decisive moves that yielded swift results. But dictatorship was limited to 6 months only, because the Romans hated the thought of a King and supreme power. Caesar served as Consul for 5 terms and then declared himself supreme dictator for life - we all know what happened to him. Putin has now been dictator for nearly 5 terms with no reasonable view of stopping. We don’t have that because the American people would never tolerate living on their knees under a dictator. We would riot and overthrow and refuse. Freedom is in the American genetic makeup. Not so for the Russians.
But yes, if we had a dictator, our streets would be super clean and the homeless would be dead.
You have completely misunderstood everything I said. Rather than praising dictators, I asked why our political system (with freedom, checks and balances, etc.) has resulted in a complete loss of civility and graciousness. It didn’t have that effect in the past. If you have an answer to that, I’d be happy to hear it.
Tucker could have been clear about that and wasn't.
I would take political freedom and the knowledge that if I publicly voice dissonance against my government, I don’t have to fear myself or my family falling out of a window, over clean subways any day. Our country is not perfect - but anyone who has fled the Soviet Union will tell you immediately what matters more.
Tell that to the hundred or so folks rotting away without trial in a DC gulag for simply protesting at the capitol on 1/6. And no, it wasn’t an insurrection. If they were being vandals or otherwise disturbing the peace they, like anyone else, should have been charged and tried. Yet they sit rotting without due process. So I’d question your assumption that you can still dissent without threat of repercussions. These folks are the canary in the coal mine.
I’m not a lawyer, I don’t know what they legally did that warranted that extreme of a sentence. I admit that it doesn’t sound legal to imprison someone with no court date in sight, but I don’t know enough about it to comment. As for their sentence, I’m sure it’s different from that of vandals and trespassers. Is it possible that breaking into the capitol building where our government houses important classified information, is sentenced differently than trespassing into say a Sears parking lot?
Totally agree with this. But you do realize that our government is trying to take that away? Not by brute force (as the first ammendment still needs to be contended with) but they are using every mechanism they can to push their agenda from the inside (e.g., MSM cooperating to push COVID, Russia hoax, and Hunter laptop narratives).
The fact that you know about these efforts means you got that information from somewhere. You consumed some source of media that told you about what was happening - which is great. Consider that proof of life, that our countries media freedom is functioning. Because here as a journalist you can run any story you want - you can even go on a nationally available platform and say the slain sandy hook children are all fakes. And you stay alive and out of jail. That’s the difference. Our government might be pushing some narrative, but you know all about it, you talk about it, you comment on it, you just wrote of it here, and you are not in prison.
Well, did YOU watch it? Let's start there.
And seemingly I need to state the amazingly obvious, which are that the interview, and Tucker's subsequent reports are completely separate. It's pretty obvious to me that what he is trying to argue is that all this ginned up Russia hatred is pathetic, unnecesary, stupid and dangerous. There are no doubt many worse dictators on Earth, such as Kim Jung Un. This is all pure manipulation. You would have no opinion on Russia, if you were not told what your opinion is.
Ok Mr Useful Idiot.
Explain to me why Biden released bipartisan sanctions on Putin's oil by executive order as one of his top priorities as president, and why no Democrat I've ever spoken to has any issue or even curiosity about that.
Then explain to me why that's less "useful" than Tucker giving an interview.
Then I'll tell you that you're the useful idiot.
In fact Biden on his first day in office signed an order to stop construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. It would have brought 800,000 barrels of oil per day from Canada to the U.S. We were at the time importing 600,000 barrels of oil a day from Russia. Most of those imports would have been wiped out. So Biden did something very positive for Putin and Russia.
One can reasonably say that that action, plus the awful withdrawal from Afghanistan, encouraged the Russians to invade Ukraine. The Russians saw that Biden was incompetent.
Of course that monumental decision (solely by Biden) is completely scrubbed from the discourse. It's like it never even happened. Not to mention Nordstream. We are so lucky there was not any blowback on that. If Putin wanted to attack a NATO country he would have had reason to over that. That's why I never bought in to that narrative that Putin was actually a threat to NATO.
So you have been to Moscow? It is a rather beautiful city in parts. And Russians, ordinary ones, don't abide by people vandalizing of anything else common in America. I once was tired, and I put my foot up on a seat on the Moscow subway for a short stretch. Found out that was not ok in a hurry. Their subways are in great shape because of that.
Do any of the things reported on youtube in NYC subway, and ... doubtful that person would live to see the next station.
Different culture. Not yours. Deal with it.
Dude, just because you’re uncultured and would do a ridiculously American thing like putting your dirty foot up on a seat where people sit, doesn’t mean the people around you are somehow special. You are special. I’m all of Europe and Asia, no one would think that’s a normal thing to do. People take their shoes off indoors and don’t put their feet where others sit. In Japan, kids take their shoes off even for school and have special home slippers. You say this like Russians are extraordinary, when really it’s just you were being gross
Russians have a saying: " Проблема Москвы состоит в том, что она со всех сторон окружена Россией (The problem for Moscow is that it is surrounded on all sides by Russia)". Over the course of the last 30 years Moscow has become a gigantic vacuum cleaner that sucks all the financial resources form the rest of the country. I remember Moscow of the Soviet era and I've had a chance to visit it a few times in early 2010s. I'll admit that the difference is startling. Yet, it was accomplished via an immense wealth concentration at the expense of the rest of the country. Had Carlson ventured outside of MKAD and visited nearby towns in the Moscow Oblast', ha would've encountered people freezing in their apartments because the Soviet-era infrastructure has become completely dilapidated while whatever meager funds that were allocated to repair and maintenance had been embezzled long ago.
Putin wouldn’t take Tucker to the mud floor huts in the Деревня, where Russian soldiers stole toilets and washing machines from Bucha to take back to their homes. People think Russia is Dostoevsky and ballet - but in reality, only St Petersburg and Moscow are that. The rest of the vast county is worse than the developing third world - and it’s people are happy for it. They want to be slaves. That is the Russian history. Even when they had no king, they dropped to their knees and begged for one. Meanwhile
Putin has a billion dollar palace and russias poor dirty masses see no issue with this.
@Dasha, can you expound upon why the Russians are happy for it and want to be slaves? Realize that’s prob a very long essay, but I’m curious to hear a bit more.
It's truly inexplicable... Even a long essay would not do it justice... But I'll throw my 2 cents in... Until Putiin came to power Russia was a has-been in the world affairs, a shadow of how it once perceived itself in the Soviet days, exposed for what it was, a paper tiger, by the aggressive policies of Reagan's administration. Putin's saber rattling made the world pay attention to Russia. And, speaking from experience, Russians are very prideful (and not in its best interpretation of the word). If you asked an average Russian if they would prefer to be a Swede or a Norwegian, with much better quality of life, yet "insignificant" in global affairs, they would decline, and choose to continue to live in squalor but not ignored by the world. I fully realize the limitations of my overgeneralization, but...
Yury answered well. It’s very difficult to capture russian culture - but in short, it’s contentment with suffering. Their history is of such bloodshed, from the Bolshevik revolution to famines to WW1 to WW2 where they lost upwards of 30 million people. Russians are accustomed to despondency. Even all of their fairy tales end in someone dying. So when they are greeted with more suffering, they don’t ask for more - they just agree to it. Moreover, the most educated and cultured among the Russians have been eliminated. The thinking population, the nobility, they were all killed in the Bolshevik revolution.
A small anecdote about how this went about that captures what Russians are like - Tsar Nikolai and his family, as you know, were all brutally bayoneted to death by the communist revolutionaries. These people were poor, uneducated, living in meager huts (not unlike the vast majority of Russians today outside of the cities). They shot at Tsar Nikolai and his children in a dark basement, randomly bayoneting at whatever bodies they could find. They expended many more rounds than there were people to be killed. It’s written that some even cut up each other by accident, so ineffective were they at even this task. Afterwards they wrote profanities on the walls and a cartoon of someone raping the princess. In the middle of all of this, on the wall was written a quote of Heine’s, a German poet, in its original German form - something along the lines of Balthazar was slain by his slaves. Only someone educated could have written that - the rest of them only knew graffiti and profanity. Likely the Tsar had written in, in the dark, before he and his family died. That is the contrast between the people whose lineage survived in Russia and yielded the thieves, dictators, kleptocrats of today and their willing underlings. The cultured among Russia were all killed - there is no use for educated people when you try to maintain power.
Consider this now - Putin has a billion dollar palace (just one, of many of his properties). Navalny was able to film it with drones, you can still watch on YouTube what he found. Gold gilted molding, a full theater, spa, sauna, beef farm, helipad, etc. It’s the size of Versailles. The people he rules over find NO issue with this. Putin is not a businessman - he didn’t create Amazon or Tesla or anything that would warrant that ungodly wealth. It’s stolen right from the mouths of his constituents. And they DONT CARE. Imagine that happening in the US. People here riot when there’s a single police shooting - he has had parents arrrested when their children draw “no war” in art class. The amount of egregious theft, political murdering, absolute lack of freedom that the russian people tolerate is astounding. Russia is just a bad player - they dope their athletes at practically every Olympic game. They’re taught that lying and cheating is acceptable if it gets you ahead. They’re impoverished, wretched, morally bankrupt sheep. The best among them have left and will never return. Not unlike China and Maos revolution - when you kill the educated, the intellectuals, then you are left with a pliable class of people who won’t question and will blindly comply. The few who find this intolerable, the smartest people, will leave (no surprise why we have the best Chinese researchers and doctors here in the US). Once in generation someone extremely brave will speak out. But in Russia like in China, that person will be killed, and hopefully “flowers will grow on the blood he spilled into the earth” (a quote from a famous Russian WW2 singer).
You and Yuri are making me fervently wish I’d majored in Russian studies. (That, and making me want to build a bunker asap.).
Maybe he can go back over and cover the Funeral for Pravda
Couldn't disagree more. Seems to me that Carlson's biggest critics are Duranty apologists of the Lillian Hellman variety, who still think the so-called "red scare" reaction to the atrocities of Communism posed a greater threat to civilization than Stalin himself. One can acknowledge Putin as evil without reducing Navalny, a true hero and patriot, into a mascot for a war in Ukraine financed primarily by America, whose demented dummy of a commander-in-chief not only failed to take the least step to deter it (remember the "minor incursion" invitation?), but indeed paved the way for Russian aggression by undoing the effective deterrence policies of the Trump administration, which opposed the Nordstream II pipeline, imposed sanctions on Russian oil sales, and vaulted us to near total energy independence. Navalny deserves better than this. So do FP readers.
more complex. Duranty a crook. Carlson a “useful idiot” driven by his own hubris on a few things while quite brave and courageous on others. Deeply wrong here because he knows/cares about only half the Ukraine /Russia story. Much like the otherwise decent reporters who covered only how Hitler had the trains running on time circa 1936. See for example the original printing of Inside Europe by Shirer compared to later editions. Tragically Carlson’s mind frozen circa 2005.
This is a time for great sadness. Navalny is the best of humanity. Brave to a fault. A Russian patriot to the end. This is also not a time to use this for cheap criticism of anyone who stands up to tyranny and lies in our own land. Tucker Carlson has a view which he is free to express and questions that he is free to ask. And which he should ask He was fired from Fox for stating what he believed. Bari has decided to take a cheap shot at him for going to Moscow and asking uncomfortable questions. That's her right, too.. But if people such as Bari were asking the questions that Tucker raises maybe we'd have a real free press. Or do you still believe that Russia blew up its own pipeline? Or that the CIA and FBI were not behind Hillary's ridiculous Russian collusion fantasy?
Tucker didn't ask hard questions... That's your first mistake.
Tucker asks hard questions of our government. That's what I care about.
Then don't equate the two.
Tucker Carlson is a first-rate a—hole.
Well that's a worthy addition to the discussion.........
It sure is.
Tucker was fired from FOX because he defamed Dominion Voting Machines on air for months and it cost FOX $787.5 million to get rid of the defamation lawsuit. During the settlement negotiations Tucker sent a series of racist emails to FOX management that he thought were conversations but management thought, “Jesus Christ, this guy is psycho!”, so they cut him loose.
Patent lies.
Huh? Look, I LOVED Tucker during the Kavanaugh hearings/shitshow, and he was must-see TV for me every night at 8, but I thought he started wobbling on his axis about when he got his streaming show and was pretty much off his rocker / unwatchable towards the end. I thought it was the Dominion Voting Machine settlement and the texts that sealed his fate at Fox News.
Cleary you believe Vanity Fair. Did you read his text about the beating of the Antifa stooge? It wasn't racist, at all. It was human. As far as the Dominion voting machines, isn't there commonality of ownership with Fox. Tucker was fired for saying uncomfortable things about the people in power. Such as the Epstein "suicide" and Russia blowing up its own pipeline.
Not just Variety.
Also the WSJ https://www.wsj.com/articles/tucker-carlson-is-leaving-fox-news-db31f2fa, where they spell out at length more than just the emails, but also text messages during the Dominion Voting Machine lawsuit, urging management to fire a female colleague who dared to fact check things Tucker said on air, and no doubt being one of the main reasons FOX was going to get nailed for defaming Dominion Voting Machines by repeatedly accusing them of being part of alleged election fraud (in addition to Tucker’s private views on Trump coming out during the discovery portion of the lawsuit):
“ Before the Dominion suit was settled, Superior Court Judge Eric Davis had already concluded that Fox News and Fox Business did in fact broadcast false claims about Dominion, voiced by both network hosts and Trump associates. In a statement announcing the settlement, Fox acknowledged the judge’s findings.”
“ Court documents also revealed Mr. Carlson’s feelings about Mr. Trump. In a text message exchange from January 2021, Mr. Carlson said the network was “very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights,” and said “I hate him passionately,” referring to the former president.”
Tucker Carlson is not a useful idiot, he’s just an idiot….
Tucker Carlson has the courage to fight totalitarianism here. That's what matters. Nothing we say or do changes a thing in Russia.
Totalitarians don't hold elections. Calling the US govt totalitarian is the same kind of misuse of words who call the Israeli govt genocidal.
Totalitarian s rig elections. And have fools who believe otherwise
Totalitarians would have you killed or sent to the gulag for implying they rig elections on the internet comment section of what would be a banned news source. Thank god you live in the US.
Tell that to the hundred or so folks rotting away in a DC gulag without due process for being at the capitol on 1/6
Sure. They did a little more than comment on the internet, though.
We are trending in that direction. Everything we say on the internet is tracked. Much of what we say in person to people, if our phones can hear it, is tracked. Where we go is tracked. Detailed databases on all of us are being compiled. Everything is in place for a nearly perfect surveillance state.
And the FBI is corrupt. They are the Political Police for the Democrats and Uniparty. They will protect you from the consequences of ANY crime if you play ball, and you will be prosecuted to the extent possible for crimes you did not commit, or worse, as is the case with Jan. 6th, for crimes they manipulated you into committing.
No, we are not YET a totalitarian state. But only an idiot would deny we are heading that way, and doing so quickly. Even now, our only real hope of avoiding it is honest people in the government.
The USA is not totalitarian, but certainly not the classical liberalism we always hoped the USA would be with election interference from the Fed and the push to jail political opposition.
You're wrong. Totalitarians ALWAYS hold elections. Kim Jong Un is elected with 100% of the vote every cycle. The same for China. Elections are a tool of totalitarians just as much as they are a tool for any other regime.
If you think we're in a totalitarian state, you've lost touch with reality. Kind of in the same way as the woke
We are edging there. It is not normal for a government to censor American citizens. Or contemplate information czarinas
Look. As somebody who grew up in USSR, I am far better equipped to recognize such threats than somebody like you. And I very much recognized Soviet style repression during the Covid and BLM craziness. But what I'm also witnessing is extremely robust fight back - we didn't just go quietly into the night.
And I have to say the best quality feedback came from the center left. While a big portion of the right just spiraled into insanity.
Nonsense. The left donned their obedience masks and shuffled to get the jab.
Yes it is "normal" and has been, in our time, since Joe McCarthy found Communists hiding in every closet.
Yeah... gonna call this one BS Bruce. You literally can't print any dissenting things, or even run an opposition campaign within Russia or any of the other countries that Tucker Carlson seems to think are so great. The USSR was obvious even worse, but rather than ascend into a functional capitalist democratic state like we all hoped for back in the 90s, Russia has descended over the last 2+ decades into a corrupt parody.
Tucker is an embodiment of 1984... freedom is chains, good is bad, etc.
We know Putin is a thuggish autocrat. But when we have an entire political and corporatist class pretending Biden is fit to be our president we are the laughingstock of the globe.
Such a laughing stock that the worlds brightest people from China, former Soviet Union, Iran are flocking here. Wonder why.
A typical non answer.. First Biden and his minions can't destroy America in a day, no matter how hard they try.
Second, millions are flocking here illegally. Intelligent people know the difference.
Yes! You know why Biden can’t destroy the US? Because we live in a democracy where he can be voted out. Putin is about to be “elected” for a fifth term, running essentially unopposed as his last serious contender has just been murdered. Surely you see the difference. All those legal and illegal immigrants and migrants certainly do.
The globe's laughter is irrelevant, we are the laughing/crying stock of 1/2 of the US.
…and of the other half, too.
Do you leave the US much? I’m gone for 2-3 weeks every other month, and I can tell you that it’s the MAGA love affair with Trump that baffles the rest of the world, not Biden. Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Estonia, England, France, Spain, Chile, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, none of them can understand why anyone in their right mind would vote for Donald Trump to be the head of their government. Not one single person ever asks me why Biden is President, but they all want know who the crazy people are that vote for Trump.
Do you think the the people in the countries you list are hearing about stories like the one NY Times finally reporting that the Hunter laptop was legit and not Russian disinformation? And our own DOJ finally admitting there was no actual evidence that Trump was a Russian asset? Why is it not possible that the opinions of these people in other countries are also not victims of the disinformation the US MSM is pushing out to the American people? Why do you give so much value to the opinions of people that don't even live here? Your hubris is showing again here.
When Bruce Miller says that Biden has made us “the laughing stock of the world”, and I show him that in fact, the opposite is true, that’s not hubris. And so what if maybe they have a bad impression of Trump from their news media? The fact is that Biden is not making us the laughing stock of the world, Trump is. Is it really that difficult for you to follow an argument?
Bruce says the world is laughing about us having Biden as president. My experience IRL with real people in other countries is the opposite. The world thinks Trump is the problem and we are crazy for voting for him. Why they think that isn’t relevant. What’s relevant is that Bruce is wrong. What is Bruce’s experience with “the rest of the world”? What is YOUR experience with “the rest of the world”? What is your experience/knowledge of the media in other countries? Do you read BBC News? The Times of London? Le Monde?
It’s not that I value the opinion of people who don’t live here more than the opinion of the people who do live here, it’s that I am aware of the opinion of the people in other countries, and Bruce, apparently, is not. If you and Bruce don’t care what the rest of the world thinks or what their POV is, that is what I call hubris. Do you think we can, as a country, really just dismiss the rest of the world? They don’t have to dictate who we elect as our president but we do need to be more cognizant of world affairs than what I see exhibited in these comments.
Neither Trump nor Biden is fit for office albeit for different reasons That a country this big and diverse have these 2 , is a testament to the Uniparty control over the entire political process. That RFKjr a lifelong Dem was belittled and tossed aside, that Vivek did only a bit better on the Rep side is a testament to how dangerously corrupt our political system has become.If 2 wealthy idealistic, smart men are treated this way , the smart but not wealthy don’t have a chance.Maybe we are getting the “ leaders “ we deserve.
And every step of the way it Was W who looked into Putin's soul, Hillary with a reset and Obama asking for flexibility. But Tucker, he is the bad guy!
When is it courageous when there is no consequences for your actions? If Tucker were REALLY courageous he would have asked Putin some hard questions, but Putin was amazed at his kid gloves handling!
Oh please, when is the last time Biden , Harris, Hilary, or Obama have been asked a hard question by a journalist?
This was about Tucker and Putin. Please stay on point.
Biden gets all the questions ahead of time, and calls on them in order on the rare occasion when he does have a press conference. So i guess that makes the Washington press corps useful idiots.
He (Tucker) asked Putin why Austria didn’t still have claim to Western Ukraine, in same way Russia makes same claim to that land area. He also requested release of imprisoned American WSJ Evan Gershkovich. Did you not catch those parts?
Tucker, like many of us, feel the conflict was egged on by the West.
Did he ask why Putin felt justified in killing children and women? Why he was moaning on and on about a history thousands of historians would contest, when he also stated the expansion of NATO was the only reason he invaded Ukraine? Or did he just make his mouth breathing face and allow Putin to yap for an hour about things he isn’t educated enough to even question? The fact that he was there to begin with, mouth half open, at the ballet and nice grocery store, is an insult to America. When you interview a tyrannical kleptocratic dictator so reverently and say his cities are so much cleaner than your own, you’re un-American. And make no mistake - Russians hate you. They hate the west. They hate Americans. They hate our country, people, freedom, ideals, all of it. They would all parade for joy if a war started and your children perished. Think about that for a second before praising the mouth breather.
Wow, you paint with a very (very) broad paintbrush. You speak of Russians as a monolith. Why do you do that?
Dasha, please also share with us your credentials to sit in judgement of who is and who isn’t ‘Un American.’ What does that even mean?
Looks like Dasha and I both grew up in USSR and know what we are talking about
Matt I don’t know where you came from, but my parents where among those who risked their lives to leave the Soviet Union, for the dream that somewhere, you could believe whatever you wanted, and live with the freedom to pursue happiness. Sometimes I look at Americans and wonder if immigrants are the only ones left who love this country unconditionally. I believe this is the greatest country in the world - here, you can put a “F Biden” or “F Trump” lawn sign at your house, and you won’t be seized to go to a gulag in Siberia to freeze to death. Your children don’t need to fear for their lives if you tell your neighbors your believe your president is a criminal. The fact that this country is so politically divided is actually a sign of incredible political health - you could never be a president who systematically executes your opposition, when your opposition is half the country. But Tucker didn’t ask Putin about any of that. He just walked around amazed at how clean the streets are in the hometown of one of the worlds greatest propaganda machine (next to russias own best friends of North Korea, China and Iran).
I do it because I lived through it and anyone who also did would say the same. Tucker is a millionaire living in (is it NYC?) the most free country in the world, making his money pandering to those who luckily will never experience what goes on in a brutal political dictatorship like russia.
I don't care what he asks Putin. He was fired by Fox for asking hard questions of our government
He was fired for getting caught in too many lies. If you watch his podcasts, you can hear him doing the same thing. He tells a few truths, then slips in a lie, then goes back to some truths. Very clever.
He was also fired for being a racist slob. Apparently the FOX management thought that was an act Tucker put on to attract a certain audience, but then he sent some rather explicit emails to members of management that were worse than anything he’d ever said on the air, and they decided over a weekend to fire him. Somebody called him on Monday morning and told him not to bother coming to work that day. This was during the Dominion Voting Machine lawsuit against FOX and management decided keeping Tucker was too much of a liability and if the emails ever got out (which they did eventually) it was going to cost FOX way more than Tucker was worth. And settling with Dominion cost them a bundle, almost $790 million, and mostly because Tucker kept lying about their voting machines.
Exactly.
What question should he have asked? Did your thought sources give you any examples?
If Putin thought that they were softball questions, then who am I to contradict him?
So which part is propaganda? The part where he answered Tucker's questions, or the part where he talked about Tucker's questions.
You cannot have it both ways.
Putin is either a liar and propagandist, or he's not.
I didn't say either way! I just repeated what Putin said. Softball questions. But Putin DID show that he is a demagogue with his rambling "history" lesson.
How exactly is Tucker fighting totalitarianism here??
By increasing his personal wealth and hanging out with the movers and shakers.
asking questions?
Courage involves pushing back and asking difficult questions. Not letting a dictator drone on for forty minutes,
While Bari was in her LA apartment sucking down wine, Tucker was in Moscow pleading for the release of Evan Gerskovich. Describing journalists as unpatriotic for failing to toe the establishment line and conducting interviews of highly relevant geopolitical figures exhibits a level of immaturity of thought that is unattractive in adults. And his trip was not without significant risks to himself, although it is difficult to determine if the greater risk is from Putin’s administration or Biden’s.
He wasn't "pleading" he was apologetically asking.
He wasn’t pleading, he was desperately trying not to BE the next Evan Gershkovich.
Ignorant comment
Tell me why President Joe Biden wrote an executive order cancelling bipartisan sanctions on Putin's oil industry as one of his first actions as president.
I'm sick of Democrats ignoring this and then blaming Republicans of supporting Putin. Nobody in this country has directly supported Putin's war effort more than President Joe Biden.
Of course this very important point will be ignored in the comments. Don't you know, Anthony, this was officially scrubbed from the narrative!!!!! You ignorant, uneducated prole....
Why? If I were to accuse you of being nothing but a parrot for left wing talking points you spout out of habit, how could you defend yourself?
What Tucker did was go over there and ask Putin, who are being trained to view as our enemy, the questions "why did you go to war?" and "what will it take to stop it?"
How effing stupid would all Americans have to be not to want to stop this war? We are sending hundreds of billions of dollars over there that are being embezzled and used on weapons that are promptly destroyed. How is it not obvious the part of the money not taken by Zelensky and his gang is being redirected back to crooked people here both as graft and as weapons contracts? It's nearly open and naked theft.
I get it that that is not what you were told. Why would you be told? If stupidity is funny--and here I have mixed feelings because this is also sad--then you are funny.
No, he's making a bundle as an entertainer at our expense. He has been mentioned as vice-presidential candidate.
Several people have been mentioned as a vice-presidential candidate, it's meaningless. Trump would never pick someone who would share the spotlight, he wants a Pence type yes person.
Pence wasn't a yes person. He was picked to sure up religious support and the Establishment GOP.
It's sad but proves again the greatness of the West. When the woke decry our history, the abolitionists were able to talk. Anti-War were able to talk, The Civil rights movement was able to overcome. Ghandi was able to protest till he drove change. Many were killed but not by the government. We are by no means perfect but looking at the alternative, I am so thankful.
I too am thankful. And we should be.
At the same time we should be very attentive to those who try cancel and shut down the voice of people they refuse to hear. BLM, DEI, Political Correct We are not safe any longer.
That crowd is closer to Putin than they care to admit. One is a former communist and the rest are present ones
Navalny is an inspiration. Sadly, that's not enough to make a real difference in Russia.
It may be politically incorrect to say a country has a character profile, but surely Russia suggests otherwise. For centuries the population has succumbed to autocrats, lies, incalculable hardship, Potemkin villages and the daily inhumanity of being forced to say what you don't believe and stay silent about the truth.
The Navalny's of Russia can't inspire the masses to do the right thing -- rise up and revolt -- because the masses are, epigenetically, too passive. Almost bovine.
This is not borne of rational fear. A broad majority popular movement in Russia could easily topple the current dictatorship. But this won't happen.
So, apart from the attention in the West (and from all serious people who respect Navalny's bravery), the moment will likely pass with no tangible results. Very sad.
Putin has a billion dollar palace (Navalny did a YouTube tour of it with drones - it’s still available). He gets Botox. He’s one of the richest men in the world while having no official business dealings, being a lawyer by trade. The Russian people outside of Moscow and St. Petersburg live in mud floor huts, in abject poverty, each family gets a Soviet production garbage car for their donation of a man to the special military operation - and they’re his strongest supporters. Think about that. The American public won’t even tolerate the arrest of a gun toting lunatic of certain demographics without rioting and burning buildings, and these people are content and fully supportive of a kleptocratic maniac stealing from their children and sending their sons as cannon fodder. These are a people who wouldn’t know what freedom is if it shit in their hair.
I think you just aptly described where the US is headed.
Some of the US.
Russian leaders have been killing and exiling its brightest citizens for many generations. Russians with spark and drive leave. What's left are those who seem resigned, or to be incapable even of thoughtful, melancholy resignation.
But then there was Alexie Navalny. He came from somewhere.
The cost of freedom is paid for in blood. People have to first want to be free, they must demand it, fight for it, and sacrifice greatly. Instead, these people sit on their behinds watching propaganda and blaming the West and America for all of their problems. When you have systematically murdered all the educated, cultured people in your nation, you will be left with sheep.
Our country has many flaws, but our robustly arguing, chronically questioning, ever suspicious population are descendants of a bunch of Navalnys. Americans are the result of the brave few who demanded more, and look at what a fantastic result we have - the most powerful, free, and prosperous country in the world. By God, do I love this land.
Too simple. Many great free intellectuals in Tsarist Russia. Some of mankind’s greatest free thinkers/writers.
A few, not many, and today isn't Tsarist Russia it's much worse.
Ah, no more. The Bolsheviks took care of that. The greatest and most cultured, slain by illiterate brutes.
Some unknown to history like the true author of the Don trilogy
What does a tribute Navalny's bravery in fighting Russian tyranny have to do with an American journalist helping others cut through censorship? If you can't write an article without putting a spin on it, and worse, using the death of someone who is a hero to denigrate someone you don't like, then you're no better than the corporate media. After reading this trash I'm considering dropping my subscription. We need journalism, not cheap opinion pieces.
I agree with you. The Tucker bit was completely unnecessary and denigrates the tribute to Navalny. I am also considering dropping my subscription. I am tired of these juvenile attacks…as if Tucker Carlson would trade American freedom for Russian tyranny. Give me a break, Bari. You’re better than that.
In the state of the world today, we need both. Tucker Carlson is an opinion ‘journalist’, if you can even call him a journalist. He is ‘talent’. He performs. He opines.
please do...
Gee, Bari....no article about the GOP FBI informant about all the Biden-Burisma corruption?
Been in the news.
We can dislike Putin and his tactics while still admiring aspects of Russian society and lifestyle (e.g. cleanliness of cities). No doubt Tucker Carlson’s visit was “curated” a bit and he wasn’t followed/harassed (as far as he knew) to the same level the FSB would follow lower-level American government employees they wanted to remind of the country they were in.
While on active duty, I had the opportunity to visit Hanoi in Mar/Apr 2008 timeframe. I had never been to a communist country before and the first thing that struck me was the sight of Ford vehicle when we left the airport (followed shortly thereafter by a multitude of Hannah Montana billboards). While I was hesitant to take anything at face value from the Communist Vietnamese Government, I did find that I felt extremely safe walking the city (either by myself or at night). I even told my wife that I’d have no qualms bringing her and our 3-yr old for a visit. There were few American cities the size of Hanoi in 2008 that I would have given that assessment, even fewer now.
Later in my career I had the opportunity to speak to some young adults who pursued graduate degrees in China. When they asked Chinese citizens about the social credit system linked to the near ubiquitous monitoring by cameras everywhere, the Chinese seemed agnostic about it but were willing to tolerate it given the level of “safety” they enjoyed. Want to walk around at 2 am in a major city? You don’t have to worry about being robbed or murdered.
I’m no fan of Putin. I lament Navalny’s death. I can also admire the cleanliness of Russian cities and wonder why we can’t get our sh!t together.
Knowing several Russians (both friends and coworkers) and those who have visited there, I can attest that they do not have a universal view of Russian cities being clean.
I travel a lot. I'm amazed (meaning saddened) when I go to other countries and see their major cities free of drug-addicted homeless, the stench of pot, or piles of trash/human feces on the sidewalk. I certainly expect every city to have its clean/dirty parts. Except Copenhagen; it is my favorite city...i have yet to find its dirty area. Even Christiana where the hippies hang out is more orderly/clean than major US cities. I respect the Germans a great deal from my travels there and how orderly things were. I have never been to Russia. Even Mexico City when I walk the streets, the sidewalks are clean ... workers are out in the morning sweeping up leaves from the trees that have fallen ... no one is hassling me or looking at me through dead eyes. Our major city mayors could learn a thing or two about how a public park/area should look from Mexico City.
Then I fly into California ... absolutely stunning from the air. Stay in Hollywood, complete shit hole...crazies, literal human poop on sidewalks, Walk of Fame with all the stars looks more like Walk of Shame with boarded up buildings and mentally unstable people in doorways and crevices. Go to San Francisco, tent cities and stench of piss/poop as you try to walk to dinner (nope, guess I'll turn around and go the other way). Even San Diego while mostly clean has (had) its own tent city sprawled out across the sidewalks. All I can think is you've got everything advantage here California ... just get your freaking act together politicians and stop ruining it!
Even if they did - are clean cities worth getting sent to a Siberian gulag if you call this conflict a war? Or getting killed for running for the office of your political opponent? Or getting put in jail for being gay?
Like yes, I bet Moscow looks nice. I’d rather be free and alive.
Free (for now).
There are two clean cities, Moscow and St. Petersburg, and even those cities are clean in selective areas. The rest of the country is a shithole.
No, you can’t. The cost of the veneer you see is on the backs of millions in abject servitude without freedom to choose and freedom to live well.
Not sure I’m ready to believe it’s one extreme or the other. It IS possible to have freedom and clean cities…I mean seriously…are you kidding me?
Never said freedom was an extreme. What seems to have become an extreme is the expectation that leaders we put in charge of major population cities actually run the SWAT (shit, water, and trash) in their cities effectively.
…are you kidding me? 🙄 you didn’t need to add that emphasis. Anyway, you miss the point entirely. Freedom is not an extreme.
He deserves credit, actual resistance and risk . In the end it’s Russias loss he fought with what little power he had and suffered for it.
Standing on principle doesn’t make him an idiot. He chose the battlefield he wanted to compete on, as did MLK and others. Violent revolt or underground resistance are other choices no less legitimate depending on the facts on the ground and the nature of the combatant. But they are all combatants. The motivations and courage required do not spring from idiocy.