It is Saturday morning (6/24/2023) and CNN is on in the background bringing news to me of yet another Russian Revolution. The last thoughts I had before going off to sleep last night were on this same subject as I reviewed Twitter. I’d like to summarize them for you.
I have no idea what is going on. I find myself shocked by what I’m seeing, even though I’ve thought the Ukraine war would end in one of two ways—Russian victory and Ukrainian subjugation, or Putin’s overthrow. Both are on the table.
When you come at the King (Czar), you’d best not miss. It is unclear whether Wagner has the manpower and material to pull off a coup, while it seems at least logical to assume that a civil war probably works to Ukraine’s advantage. I do think that if Putin is forced to remove meaningful power from Ukraine to combat this internal unpleasantness, the war there is over. At least this war. Morale in the Russian trenches is going to plummet, that’s for sure.
It has been a while since an international event has brought me to this point—TV on to a cable news channel in the background while I do other things. This is mostly because the internet is (generally speaking) a more efficient way to get news than the drone of repetitious cable news. But because I have some writing and thinking to do this morning and really cannot divide attention, the news in the background is providing information by osmosis. Listening to the “experts” who are brought in for comment in order to fill dead air reinforces in me the practice of being really, really judicious about when I go on TV or comment to the media at all.
24 Hours Later…
Well, you run off to Lowe’s to grab some garden soil, eat dinner, and go to bed, and then you wake to “well no, it really wasn’t a revolution, it was a mutiny, and they’ve made peace with the mutineers”.
If anyone is LESS confused with this outcome, I congratulate you. Mr. Prigozhin apparently gets “safe haven” in Belarus, which means it is only a matter of time before he has an unfortunate fall from a balcony. It is hard to see how Putin comes out of this anything BUT weakened, but truth is stranger than fiction.
Abortion (cont.)
A year ago, the great judicial stains that were Roe and Casey were dispatched, and the matter of abortion—never a matter for the Supreme Court to decide in the first place—was returned where it belongs, to the people and the voting booth. Since then (as expected) places where abortion was unpopular with voters have restricted it, and places where abortion was popular have enabled it. This is how we do things, here, mainly. With the one year anniversary o Dobbs, all manner of kvetching has arisen in the pro-abortion media (but I repeat myself), with Biblical plagues reported across this great land. This one caught my attention:
Fifty years after the wholesale slaughter of human life with legal sanction began, it was restricted, and we are to shed tears for the great sacrifice of a hour of driving to obtain one as a result? Oh, here’s another:
This was in response to the New York Time’s in-house ultraliberal Supreme Court watcher having made the startling claim that she didn’t think the Supreme Court justices were “sorry” for their decision. Never mind that their decision was far more coherent than the two that were overturned. Never mind that—as the Economist tells us above—two-thirds of American women can obtain a legal abortion after a journey amounting to less than half my usual commute. No—Linda Greenhouse believes they ought to be “sorry” for their decision. “Quite explicit in washing their hands of the consequences”? Perhaps because they believed the consequences were preferable to the double barrel evils of human slaughter and profoundly flawed legal reasoning?
I’m pretty sure abortion played a role in the 2022 midterms, and that is a good thing. That’s how politics works. But now that the question has returned to the people and the people are sorting it out, hopes of the liberal intelligentsia that 2024 will turn also on the question are in vain. Outside the echo chamber of abortion on demand dead enders, the country is moving on.
I admire this statement:
I have no idea what is going on.
One fellow who might have something to say based on his knowledge of Ukraine and Russia, his ability to speak both languages and have spent a lifetime studying Russia and Ukraine and having friends in both countries: https://snyder.substack.com/p/prigozhins-march-on-moscow?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=310897&post_id=131068399&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email
I don't like abortion, it should always be an absolute last resort. But I think it's worthwhile to imagine the consequences of banning it, which go way beyond the inconvenience of traveling ( something not possible for many lower-income women).
Consequences such as aborted schooling, child neglect/abuse and harm to the mother ( especially in the cases of rape/incest). Banning it was a simplistic solution, a partial solution.
How about adding funds to make adoption cheaper, efforts to not only educate boys and young men about their responsibility but adding consequences such as having to work after school to support the child they fathered. Add to that wage garnishment or prison labor for those who've shown they won't shoulder the responsibility.
Prophylactics available in high schools? Child care subsidies for mothers carrying unwanted children to term? Someone might feel they shouldn't be taxed for the mistakes/problems of another, but an upcoming generation of neglected children is going to affect such a person whether they like it or not.