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Dan Rodricks: Spring arrives, reminding us why we live, why we hate war | COMMENTARY​


Dan Rodricks, Baltimore Sun
Fri, March 18, 2022, 9:20 AM


Spring arrives with war in Ukraine, and I’ve hardly been able to think of anything besides the horror unfolding before us: An army of Russians ordered to bomb apartment buildings and hospitals, Ukrainians gunned down while waiting to buy bread. The Russians have killed children. God almighty — is there a God almighty? — how do people born with brains, hearts, hands and souls manage to inflict such cruelty on others?

What century is this? We’ve had thousands of years to learn peace and “study war no more.” When do we arrive at the end of the long history of human evil?

I cannot turn away from Ukraine. I could go to Netflix for a “Seinfeld” marathon and watch that “show about nothing” for four hours.

But I’m watching Ukraine. Though by now immune to shock, I find it shocking — killing and destruction on an old-world scale, coming to us within minutes on cable and social media, a blitzkrieg in a wired world, multiple Guernicas in high def.

And the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, pale and blank-faced, sitting alone at that long table in a white Kremlin room, locked in the last century. Why all the fuss about President Biden calling him a war criminal? He is that, and worse.

Polls suggest that most of my fellow Americans feel the same shock, anger and frustration at this moment in history. We stand with Ukraine.

But, while I find myself amazed that men in suits can still be so violent, I remind myself that we are surrounded by violence. We are suffering through an epoch of violence in the United States, and here in Baltimore it’s been around us for years, homicides made possible by an endless supply of guns.

We have grown accustomed to it by now. We all carry the knowledge of human cruelty with us, and it’s quietly traumatizing. You might not be acutely aware of it, or work hard at avoiding thoughts of it, but violence, however distant — down the street, miles away or across an ocean — wears on the mind and body like a six-month winter without sunlight.

And now this war on Ukraine.

I see men and women, seated across from Wolf Blitzer and other cable hosts, commenting on the war. They speak confidently in terms of military strategy and geopolitics; they try to explain Putin, try to predict his endgame in Ukraine. I couldn’t do it. I would make a lousy analyst of war. To be sure, we need analysts, we need think-tankers. But I just see horror and despair — innocent people killed, wounded, left homeless. Everyone talking on TV about Ukraine should be weeping. Why are they not weeping?

I want to believe spring makes a difference. Its arrival should soften the conditions of those who would inflict pain and death on others. In reality, in old wars, spring was when the killing started again after the relative peace of winter. So here we are, with Putin’s spring offensive, and women with children crying as they board trains for Poland.

Imagine killing others while the daffodils are smiling at you? I came across some the other day along a road in Baltimore and immediately felt guilty for having a single negative or self-indulgent thought. That’s not something Putin would understand. Not a stop-and-smell-the-daffodils guy. He’s a hardened criminal with many accomplices, trying to destroy an emerging democracy led by a heroic president.

At this point, I ask forgiveness for these meandering and despairing thoughts. And yet, as an American watching from a distance, I have to believe I am not alone.

I have to believe that others are also lost in trying to understand Russia’s breathtaking cruelty.

And I have to believe that others are adrift in the wishful right now. Against the present realities, we want a spring of dreams — a quiet world with people taking long walks with their dogs or spouses through the streets of Kyiv on a Sunday afternoon, classical music drifting from open windows of the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, people peaceably playing chess in Sokolniki Park in Moscow.

If I don’t express this, I’ll regret it.

I want a spring of simple peace everywhere, all around the world. Farmers, artists, designers, printers, pastors, rabbis, photographers, doctors, nurses, teachers, carpenters, masons and minstrels left alone to do their work. Left to plant, grow, create, treat and heal, build and sing. Living without fear, heads held high, content with the world or working to make it better.

Why can’t every man, woman and child on the planet agree with that? There are only 7.9 billion of us.

I know: It’s impossible and probably forever thus. There are too many differences, too many men seeking absolute power, too much greed, too many missiles.

I do not know the cure for humanity’s greatest ailment — the hate and violence and cruelty.

But I still believe in spring, the annual emergence of new life — foals on a horse farm, blossoms in fruit trees, the aroma of fresh air, land tilled for planting, a warming sun, shad running from the ocean to the rivers, children at play in new grass. The poets say spring brings promise and hope and love, and they’re right about that. Spring comes along to remind us why we live, why we hate war.
 
Bet he won’t mail order his vote again lol.
wait till he goes back, it’s $12 now.
 

Russian soldiers warn Putin 'we'll RISE against you' after they were made to carry out 'terror acts' in Ukraine and label Mariupol hospital bombing 'a perverse neo-Nazism'​

  • Captured Russian soldiers have warned Vladimir Putin 'we will rise against you'
  • Claimed they were made to carry out 'terror acts' against population in Ukraine
  • Troops labelled Russia's bombing of Mariupol's hospital 'a perverse neo-Nazism'
  • Claims echo those made by several other Russian soldiers captured in Ukraine
 

Russia 'might not be able to take Kyiv': Western officials say desperate Putin is trying to recruit mercenaries from Syria and Chechnya to replace up to 7,000 dead soldiers, with Kremlin's senior generals killed as they are forced to the front​

  • Two videos show Ukrainian soldiers ambushing Russian troops with strikes
  • The first, in Mariupol, shows a Russian tank coming under aerial bombardment
  • Multiple missiles make direct-hits on the tank as Russian soldiers tried to escape
  • One Russian soldier was able to narrowly escape death between the strikes
  • In a second video, a Russian personnel carrier is broadsided by rocket in Kharkiv
  • The rocket was fired by a Ukrainian soldier just yards from the vehic
 

'Depressed' Vladimir Putin has moved his family to a 'secret underground city' and is 'set to hold a nuclear evacuation drill' with the Kremlin's doomsday plane, 'insider' account claims​

  • Questions have been raised over health and mental state of Russia's president
  • Fears of nuclear conflict increased when he threatened NATO with 'consequences' if it intervened in the war, and put his nuclear forces on standby
  • Now, a source has claimed he has told his close allies to prepare for nuclear drills
  • An element of Russian plans for a nuclear war are a fleet of 'flying Kremlins'
  • The doomsday planes would allow Putin to fly above an atomic catastrophe
 
www.yahoo.com

'A psychopath': Chechen warlord Kadyrov raises prospect of more brutal phase to Ukraine war

When Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov announced earlier this week that he was in Ukraine to support Putin’s invasion, it seemed as if the past had caught up with the present.
www.yahoo.com www.yahoo.com

WASHINGTON — Launched by Moscow in 1999, the second Chechen war elevated the stature of Russia’s new and then little-known prime minister, a former intelligence officer named Vladimir Putin. Intended to bring the mountainous Islamic region back under the Kremlin’s control, the exceptionally brutal campaign endeared Putin to Russians nostalgic for a show of strength from what was considered by much of the world to be a fading nuclear superpower.

“The bandits will be destroyed,” Putin said at the time, in an echo of how he would talk of the “Nazis” he now claims to be purging from Ukraine’s government and military. “We must go through the mountain caves and scatter and destroy all those who are armed.”

So when Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov announced earlier this week that he was in Ukraine to support Putin’s invasion, it seemed as if the past had caught up with the present. Even though Kadyrov’s journey to the front — he claimed on social media to have nearly reached the capital, Kyiv, which is still under Ukrainian control — may have been fictitious, amounting to little more than a publicity stunt, some say his involvement could lead to an even bloodier conflict.

"Kadyrov is a psychopath who personally tortures his political prisoners,” Russia expert Michael Weiss told Yahoo News, alluding to Kadyrov’s well-known human rights abuses. Weiss and others say the apparent presence of Kadyrov’s soldiers in Ukraine could signal a new phase of fighting, one in which the rules of conventional warfare are discarded as Putin becomes more desperate for victory.

Kadyrov, 45, rules Chechnya under Putin’s supervision. And if Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is the conflict’s leading man, Kadyrov is the more colorful counterpart to chief villain Putin, given to brandishing a golden gun and trotting out a pet tiger. And even as he was supposedly preparing for war, Kadyrov engaged in a social media feud with Tesla founder Elon Musk.
==============
more gruesome details at the link

where/when is this going to end?
 
275535203_10158114841402651_3970569137468463635_n.jpg
 

Trump’s ex-chief of staff Mark Meadows investigated for voter registration fraud​

North Carolina authorities are investigating claims Mark Meadows did not reside, visit or own the address he is registered at
Mark Meadows speaks to the media at the White House in Washington, DC

Mark Meadows speaks to the media at the White House in Washington, DC Photograph: Olivier Douliery/AFP/Getty Images



Mark Meadows, who served as former President Donald Trump’s final chief of staff and has echoed his false claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, is being investigated in North Carolina over his voter registration, state authorities said.
North Carolina’s state bureau of investigation was assigned to lead the inquiry after a district attorney referred the matter to the state department of justice special prosecutions section, a department spokeswoman, Nazneen Ahmed, said in an email.
 
cany said:
www.dailywire.com

Megyn Kelly Slams Lia Thomas: This ‘Is Not The Women’s Champion’ And Has ‘Some Nerve’ Pretending To Be

Megyn Kelly criticized Penn swimmer, Lia Thomas, a biological male who identifies as a female, after Thomas took first place in the NCAA Women’s Swimming Championship 500 yard freestyle race on Thursday. “This is a farce,” the host of the Sirius XM “The Megyn Kelly Show” podcast tweeted Friday...
www.dailywire.com www.dailywire.com
Click to expand...
I don’t care what you identify as. If you where born with male genitalia your a a man. This should never have ever been allowed ?
 
Totally embarrassed I was ever associated with the woke NCAA. Whatever you think of college athletes now allowed to be paid, letting a six foot wacko (who evidently still has its original penis!) parade and enter contests as a female is beyond ridiculous. Let these wackos have their own contests. Could fit the audience in a couple of old phone booths but that's their issue, not mine.
 
Chevy1 said:
I don’t care what you identify as. If you where born with male genitalia your a a man. This should never have ever been allowed ?
Click to expand...

at the very least transgender females should not be allowed to compete against natural women - you can identify as a door knob if you like - but - compete against other door knobs whether you do or do not still possess a penis
 
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