Sorry, No Good Guys in Ukraine

The most important thing for Americans to know about the Russia-Ukraine War is that 

THERE ARE NO GOOD GUYS!

It's easy to hate Putin. Too easy, really, because it hides ugly facts of the war, like:

There really are Ukrainian Nazis. Not sympathizers, not kinda-like Nazis, real freakin' Nazis. They are front-line troops and senior commanders and policy makers. They are waging war with the money and things we give them. God DAMN them. What does that make US? Their enablers?

The cute, comic, puppet leader is only for show. He cleans up nice and he is the face of Ukraine. His is a face of TV make-up, reading lines written by someone else. His pretty face and pretty wife confuse us into thinking, "Oh, we have to help that poor guy, don't we?" 

So we do. $130 billion that we know of and no end in sight. And no accountability for our assistance. No auditing whatsoever. "It's a war against RUSSIA! Trust us."

Mind you, there are good men and women in Ukraine and, yes, in Russia. They are Tevye and his village in Fiddler on the Roof. They are farmers and builders and workers and makers who are kept from innovation and production because so many others get a taste of their hard work, just a taste, along the way. 

That's the way the Mafia runs things, with one big exception. Only the local Mafia bag man gets a taste and he passes it along. In Russia, every person in authority gets a taste. That's why huge projects fail. Like the Olympic Village in Sochi, GEORGIA. Like missing submarines. Like lost manned space projects. So many of the last, but you don't get to hear about them. That news is forbidden.

Good people are being killed or marginalized. Men and women with good hearts, good goals, lovers of peace and good will. They are terrorized into silence. I can't blame them.

And Russia, I'm looking at YOU now. Deranged, muddled thoughts of the past are made national policy by one twisted, unbelievably rich sicko. Just one. Rich simply because he stole everything. He is cautiously supported by a lunatic fringe of blood-sucking, self-enriching, would-be dictators who want to be him. That's how Russia under Putin works.

There are many good men and women in Russia and the former Soviet Union. They are terrified. 

I know because I lived among them and I love some of them, fine people, ex-Communists all. I have a friend who spent time in the gulags for harboring anti-Soviet sentiments. That came with plenty of beatings. Good man, though.

Putin is rounding up the usual suspects after Prighozin's folly in fake-attacking Moscow. 

Really? Attack Moscow? Executions will follow, of course. Lots of them. No defense will be allowed. There will be show trials, just like in the 1930s. Prigozhin will die. There is no dissent in the Russian military or civilian life. If you think you see some, you are seeing a lie.

But that's not enough. Putin has to further terrorize the average Russian citizen. Just like in Fiddler. His citizenry already has nothing. They feel themselves well off if they have things that every American takes for granted. Food, for instance. Clothes. An apartment. Detergents. Medicines. A car. 

All while Putin has the biggest and best of everything. Because it doesn't cost him anything, except the money he stole.

Have you seen Putin's 463-foot yacht? It has gold toilet paper. 

Think of Tevye again. Bidi bidi bum.