a fan wrote: ↑Mon Feb 14, 2022 8:54 pm
old salt wrote: ↑Mon Feb 14, 2022 8:13 pm
It's not a matter of right or wrong. It's not a matter of what you think the downsides are.
Like you, I can bloviate about that endlessly.
Yet you haven't done that. Not once in ten years+ of being here, and discussing Putin.
In short: I don't believe you. I don't believe you understand the downsides for Putin. You've never once listed them.
Neither do the policy wonks who think he's brilliant, and that every leader in the EU and the US has made horrible decisions across the board.
All for a country that we have ZERO responsibility for.......
Afan, you like Vonnegut correct? This display reminds me of Campbell and the reality of his efforts as described by Werner Noth (Father in law and high up nazi)
'Is there anything I can do to help?' I said. 'Yes,' he said. 'You can shoot Resi's dog. It can't make the trip. I have no interest in it, will not be able to give it the care and companionship Resi has led it to expect. So shoot it, please.' 'Where is it?' I said. 'I think you'll find it in the music room with Resi,' he said. 'She knows its to be shot, You will have no trouble with her.' 'All right,' I said. 'That's quite a uniform,' he said. 'Thank you,' I said. 'Would it be rude of me to ask what it represents?' he said. I had never worn it in his presence. I explained it to him, showed him the device on the hilt of my dagger. The device, silver on walnut, was an American eagle that clasped a swastika in its right claw and devoured a snake in its left claw. The snake was meant to represent international Jewish communism. There were thirteen stars around the head of the eagle, representing the thirteen original American colonies. I had made the original sketch of the device, and, since I don't draw very well, I had drawn six-pointed stars of David rather than five-pointed stars of the U.SA. The silversmith, while lavishly improving on my eagle, had reproduced my six-pointed stars exactly. It was the stars that caught my father-in-law's fancy. 'These represent the thirteen Jews in Franklin Roosevelt's cabinet,' he said. 'That's a very funny idea,' I said. 'Everyone thinks the Germans have no sense of humor,' he said. 'Germany is the most misunderstood country in the world,' I said. 'You are one of the few outsiders who really understands us,' he said. 'I hope that's a compliment I deserve,' I said. 'It's a compliment you didn't come by very easily,' he said. 'You broke my heart when you married my daughter. I wanted a German soldier for a son-in-law.' 'Sorry,' I said.
'You made her happy,' he said. 'I hope so,' I said. 'That made me hate you more,' he said. 'Happiness has no place in war.' 'Sorry,' I said. 'Because I hated you so much,' he said, 'I studied you. I listened to everything you said. I never missed a broadcast.' 'I didn't know that,' I said. 'No one knows everything,' he said. 'Did you know,' he said, 'that until almost this very moment nothing would have delighted me more than to prove that you were a spy, to see you shot?' 'No,' I said. 'And do you know why I don't care now if you were a spy or not?' he said. 'You could tell me now that you were a spy, and we would go on talking calmly, just as we're talking now. I would let you wander off to wherever spies go when a war is over. You know why?' he said. 'No,' I said. 'Because you could never have served the enemy as well as you served us,' he said. 'I realized that almost all the ideas that I hold now, that make me unashamed of anything I may have felt or done as a Nazi, came not from Hitler, not from Goebbels, not from Himmler — but from you.' He took my hand. 'You alone kept me from concluding that Germany had gone insane.' He turned away from me abruptly. He went to the oyster-eyed woman who had almost dropped the blue vase. She was standing against a wall where she had been ordered to stand, was numbly playing the punished dunce. Werner Noth shook her a little, trying to arouse an atom of intelligence in her. He pointed to another woman who was carrying a hideous Chinese, carved-oak dog, carrying it as carefully as though it were a baby. 'You see?' Noth said to the dunce. He wasn't intentionally tormenting the dunce. He was trying to make her, in spite of her stupidity, a better-rounded, more useful human being. 'You see?' he said again, earnestly, helpfully, pleadingly. 'That's the way to handle precious things.'