THE ABSURD TIMES

Illustration: Just a quick history lesson

RUSSIA,, UKRAINE, AND DRAG QUEENS

BY

HONEST CHARLIE

We have lost track of what the entire Ukraine situation is. How did all this start? Some of this had already been published, but it is time to bring it all together.

We must go back to Secretary of State Hillary and the Obama administration. Now, let’s agree that Obama has been the best President for at least five decades and has a quick sense of humor. He was also the most conservative of all the candidates that year. That doesn’t change things.

During that time, Ukraine experienced the Maidan uprising designed to eliminate the then current President who was very positive towards Putin and Russia. Ukraine had been a part of Russia for a very long time and you can see that from the novels of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, and of course earlier. Control over Crimea by Kruschev who came from there.. (Other Russian leaders came mainly from Georgia.) Until the time we are talking about, most of the eastern half of Ukraine (mainly divided by the river) was more Russian than “Ukrainian” and the people seemed oriented toward Russia. When they took a vote, 80% chose to be with the Russian Federation that “Ukraine” and in one interview that was put on our media a man said “I’m glad to join the Federation. I will do the same work for four times the salary.” No such interviews were ever aired again. Someone made sure.

This, after Putin went to the United States and sang BLUEBERRY HILL, I kid you not.

The attackers at Maidan, actively supported by Hillary were being called “Neo-Nazis” and they protested. Nothing “Neo” about it, they said. Hillary discussed who should become President with the Head of the European Union, saying she liked “Yaz”. It had been taped and distributed. No copies seem to exist now and they seem to have gone the way of that interview mentioned above. There were incidents after that, but Crimea stayed with Russia and the rest had to fend for themselves. It is important to remember that saying that Soviet aircraft were used in some attacks means nothing as all of the Ukrainian aircraft came from the Soviet Union.

All of that does not justify what is going on now, in 2023. Things have changed with time and that should be clear to everyone. Unfortunately, it is not.

Now, I have to break here to comment on how gloriously insane things are today. It used to be fairly easy to know the truth about things I knew little about as I am often too busy to give them attention. I only needed to see what a known conservative columnist said and realize that the opposite was true. For one example alone, George Will could always be counted on to be wrong on everything (except baseball where he was uncannily right all the time). We just need to take the opposite position and be confident about it. That is no longer the case. Nothing can be relied on today. You really have to do your own thinking and fact-gathering in order even to hope to be correct most of the time. Keeping that in mind, we can proceed. You could try to substitute Fox for that, but they are on Russia’s side, their most highly-rated announcer is regularly featured on Russian state-controlled media, but it just doesn’t work. I just don't [‘t think sticking a fluorescent tube up my ass would get rid of Covid.

When was the last time Russia abandoned a port? It still has one in Syria and that is probably the reason they defend Syria against us. We are definitely the ones who tried to overthrow Assad. Assad never did want to run Syria as he preferred to remain an eye doctor in England. It was the death of a close relative who was intended to take over that made his rule inevitable. Some mainly white collar workers tried to overthrow him during the so-called “Green Revolution” (which seems to have benefited nobody in the end, but they failed. Trump had told his Secretary of Defense to assassinate Assad and several other insane things, and he, nicknamed “Mad Dog”, told his staff “we’re not gonna do any of that shit”.

The other incident we should remember is the rash of pirates off the coast of Somalia. There were many crafts stopped and held for ransom and the business was flourishing. Then these fools got the idea of capturing a Russian ship. Putin bombed it and since then the pirates disappeared. Perhaps a violent move, but it did work. It should at least give us an idea of what Putin is capable of.

As to his character, we could mention again that while Bush I and his gang promised the Soviets that NATO would not move “one inch” East, he was in East Germany after the wall fell, bluffing or manipulating hundreds of Germans while all other functionaries of the Soviets had gotten the hell outta Dodge, and burning documents until the end. He then left, called a hero by those same Germans!

Well, the Maidan uprising did succeed, and the pro-Russian leader left for Russia, but Putin never forgot that. He did take Crimea and it will not go back without a bloody mess – we should know that. I’ve heard of threats of a military coup against Putin. Well, think about that and consider how effective the military has been so far. Do you really think we gain dealing with one of the Military leaders over there/

So now, we hear about him invading Ukraine. We started hearing tales of rape, also of soldiers leaving their tanks and living in the woods. That was supposed to get us on Ukraine’s side. Now, how did Ukraine manage to last this long?

Well, Ukraine finally had the leader with the best possible qualifications for the kind of situation we have. No other person has the perception of the absurd, and quicker and impromptu mind, and general background than a stand-up comic and that was what Zelenski had been. If you don’t believe me, try to imagine George Bush facing a nightclub heckler. Hillary? Forget it. Only Obama had that degree of wit. (He was once asked “do you have a ‘bucket list?’ and his response, quickly, was ‘No, but I have something that rhymes with it.’”

Now, consider the current Republican party. The big issue of the day was a big Chinese balloon. These 2^nd Amendment fools took photos of themselves shooting at it with rifles. No one seemed to point out that the balloon was 60,000 feet in the air and that the gun maybe had a range of 10,000 feet. On a Wednesday, Biden told the military to shoot it down. Of course, there was over a ton of metal there and the crash would spread over 15 square football fields, so they waited until it got over the Atlantic while jamming its signals. Even as an earthquake in Turkey killed 5,ooo, Israel kept killing unarmed Palestinians, dictators around the world continued the oppression of their own citizens, Russia was being prosecuted at the Hague, while all this was going on, we were treated with nearly 24/7 coverage of a balloon in the sky. A drag Queen (Anthony Desoto – as good a name as he has used so far) is the Republican representative from New York, and Fox decided the time was ripe to announce that the balloon scatters spy stuff down on us. Oh, it also turns out that three times a Chinese Baloon flew over the U.S. during Trump’s misrule, and once during Biden’s. Joe said “Malarky, no more balloons!”