Category Archives: Conflict – Culture – Language – Psychology

The Teflon Don’s Company

08 Saturday Oct 2022

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Spychology, United States of America

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

I know this blog seldom presents first-hand (primary) reporting and that the reference lists I create (drudgery!) hardly represent “writing”, but having gone to the very minor bother of looking up and thinking up names as well as coming up with related articles, what’s an old blogger to do?

Chris Zillizza’s piece for The Point (July 21, 2021) provided some helpful reminders, but I didn’t simply copy and list for not recognizing the names Tom Barrack or Elliott Broidy. I’ve added reference for each. I was also sorry about having to list Michael Cohen in the gallery of rogues although as Trump’s fixer I’m sure he was no picnic either. Nonetheless, as an instantly transformed witness and apparently recovered Trump goon, mention feels like throwing a perfectly good carrot back into a festering stew of rotten vegetables.

If the “festering stew” of Don’s rogues were to take hold and one were to ask about the gelatinous substance holding all of them in the same pot, there might be just the two ingredients: greed and a most American vainglory that would bring all back to the here familiar “Malignant Narcissism“.

Related Online

I’ve remained loose with BackChannels as regards discipline and style . . . perhaps it’s been an old hippy’s blog…. Nonetheless, the entries are alpha but from time tot time I present one or two (or more) as a quotation with reference. Among the enduring themes to be associated with Donald John Trump in history will be those pertaining to character, criminality, errant political psychology, integrity, loyalty, and trust both in relation to himself and in relation to his country and America’s national character.

Cillizza, Chris. “11 Trump associates have now been charged with crimes. 11!” The Point, CNN Politics, July 21, 2021.

Clark, Dartunorro, Michael Kosnar, Dareh Gregorian, and Tom Winter. “All four Roger Stone prosecutors resign from case after DOJ backpedals on sentencing recommendation.” NBC News, February 11, 2020.

Hoffman, David. “Paul Manafort: Handmaiden to dictators.” Op-ed. The Hill, December 24, 2020.

Millhiser, Ian. “The 4 major criminal probes into Donald Trump, explained.” Vox, September 21, 2022.

O’Brien Rebecca Davis. “Trump Adviser’s Trial May Shed Light on Foreign Influence Campaigns.” The New York Times, September 19, 2022.

Oppenheim, James S. “Trump Lawyer Christopher M. Kise, Registered Foreign Agent.” BackChannels, September 19, 2022.

Shamsian, Jacob. “Rober Stone and his wife are trying to settle the Justice Department’s lawsuit over $2 million in unpaid taxes.” Business Insider, July 12, 2022.

Schmidt, Michael S., Maggie Haberman, and Katie Benner. “Justice Dept Is Said to Believe Trump Has More Documents.” The New York Times, October 6, 2022.

Smith, David. “‘The perfect target’: Russia cultivated Trump as asset for 40 years’ – ex-KGB spy.” The Guardian, January 29, 2021.

Shaw, Conor. “President Trump’s staggering record of uncharged crimes.” Crew, September 27, 2022.

U. S. Department of Justice. “Elliott Broidy Pleads Guilty for Back-Channel Lobbying Campaign to Drop 1MDB Investigation and Remove a Chinese Foreign National.” October 20, 2020.

Defendants PAUL J. MANAFORT, JR., (MANAFORT) and RICHARD W. GATES Ill
(GA TES) served for years as political consultants and lobbyist’i. Between at least 2006 and 2015,MANAFORT and GATES acted as unregistered agents of the Government of Ukraine, the Party of Regions (a Ukrainian political party whose leader Victor Yanukovych was President from 2010 to 2014), Yanukovych, and the Opposition Bloc (a successor to the Party of Regions that formed in 2014 when Yanukovych fled to Russia). MANAFORT and GATES generated tens of millions of dollars in income as a result of their Ukraine work. 111 order to hide Ukraine payments from United States authorities, from approximately 2006 through at least 2016, MANAFORT and GATES laundered the money through scores of United States and foreign corporations, partnerships, and bank accounts.

U.S. Department of Justice. PDF. “United State of America v. Paul J. Manafort, Jr. and Richard W. Gates III.” Case 1:17-cr-00201-ABJ Document 13, October 30, 2017.

Nader has had several run-ins with the law over the years related to sexual abuse of children. He was convicted in the 1990s of transporting child pornography publications, and imprisoned in 2003 for sexually abusing ten boys in the Czech Republic.[6] He pleaded guilty in early 2020 to flying a 14-year-old boy from Europe to the US for sex, and transporting pornography depicting child sexual abuse and bestiality.

Wikipedia. “George Nader”.

Wikipedia. “George Papadopoulos”.

Wikipedia. “Michael Flynn”.

Wikipedia. “Paul Manafort”.

###

Kerch Strait Bridge Fire Puts Russian Backs to the Wall

08 Saturday Oct 2022

Posted by in 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Russia, Ukraine

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

CNN, October 8, 2022.

David Arakhamia, the head of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s party in parliament and a member of Kyiv’s negotiating team with Russia released a Telegram statement about the incident, saying: “Russian illegal construction is starting to collapse and catch fire. The reason is simple: if you build something explosive, sooner or later, it will explode. And this is just the beginning.”

Mykhailo Podoliak, who serves as an adviser to Zelensky echoed the sentiment. “Crimea, the bridge, the beginning. Everything illegal must be destroyed, everything stolen must be returned to Ukraine, everything occupied by Russia must be expelled,” Podoliak said.

Voitovych, Olga, Kostan Nechyporenko, Josh Pennington, and Hannah Ritchie. “‘Air defense of the Russian Federation, are you sleeping?’ Ukrainian officials respond to Kerch bridge explosion.” CNN, October 8, 2022.

Ukraine, perhaps, has announced its full intention to divorce Russia from its sovereign territory without exception. Today’s explosion and fire on Kerch Strait Bridge, the lengthy causeway linking Russia to Crimea by road and rail, will slow Russian resupply to Russian-speaking Ukrainians, Russians, and Russian soldiery recently delivered to Crimea for training.

Given Ukrainian President Zelensky’s determination to remove the last Russian armed presence from Ukraine’s sovereign territory, the contest is bound to lead to the elimination of Russian Naval Base in Sevastopol. The base had been started in 1772, finished eleven years later, fought over in the 19th Century, abandoned by Russia in 1855, occupied by the German Imperial Army in 1918, again lost to Nazi Germany in 1942, and leased by Russia for its Black Sea Fleet since the end of the Cold War.

As noted in a France24 video in 2019, a tour guide says to the reporter, “It’s a fleet that was armed two years ago. Everything we see in this bay is weaponry that appeared over the past five years” (1:55).

Related Online

Cragg, Gulliver and Elena Volochine. “The Crimean port of Sevastopol, a strategic link between Russia and Syria.” France24, March 20, 2019.

France24 English. “The Crimean port of Sevastopol, a strategic link between Russia and Syria.” Video. YouTube, March 20 2019.

Nechyporenko, Kostan. “Crimea authorities seek to reassure public on fuel and other supplies.” CNN, October 8, 2022.

Reuters. “Moscow says truck explosion destroys part of Russia-Crimea bridge.” October 8, 2022.

Reuters. “New Russian recruits train in Crimea and near Ukrainian border.” September 28, 2022.

Sky News. “Ukraine latest news: Explosion on key bridge linking Russia to Crimea; Putin sends ministers to scene.” October 8, 2022.

Wikipedia. “Russian-Ukrainian Friendship Treaty”.

Wikipedia. “Sevastopol Naval Base”.

Yuhas, Alan and Raya Jalabi. “Ukraine crisis: why Russia sees Crimea as its naval stronghold.” The Guardian, March 7, 2014.

Times Radio analysis, posted to YouTube, October 8, 2022.

BackChannels concurs with perhaps less subtlety: Russia has clearly overplayed its position, and in the say of “soft power”, it has sacrificed any cultural or peaceful benefits it may have brought with its presence in exchange for bullying willful destruction and terror and nothing else. Russia has nothing to offer Europe or Ukraine at this time, and with Putin’s criminal enterprise–that’s all it has been since the early-mid 1990s–it has no place to go in history and has only sealed its fate in Ukraine.

###

Putin’s ‘Kremlinals’ Find Disfavor Over War

02 Sunday Oct 2022

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Psychology, Russia, Serbia, Ukraine

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

With regard to east-west rivalry, timing, perhaps has been everything as post-Cold War Russia “invited” western cooperation with and investment in Russia as part of post-Soviet reform. To our misfortune, some disaffected KGB, all products of the Bolshevik mentality, pried themselves back into power to become what one might call “Kremlinals”. Okay. Ouch. In any case, and based both on Litvinenko’s experience and Zawahiri’s “detention” in Russia (1996/7), the criminals were set for kleptocracy by the early-mid 1990s.

The west may have been played.

Vladimir Putin has never been a rational state actor but always a piratical “malignant narcissist” engaged in the cover of a projection of an heroic self with impression enforced by the many methods of perceptual control. As his fear of being “found out” becomes realized, he doubles-down in defense of image and becomes more surreal by the day. As he has never authentically served Russia but plundered her by developing his mafia-style monopoly on power, one may only hope that his own “tire” of him post-haste and with ambition to return to modernity, which some have quite enjoyed, will take the reins in the direction of reform.

This image may tell what is also at hand.

RFE/RL. “Pro-Ukrainian Protesters Rally in Belgrade.” YouTube, October 2, 2022. 0:43.

For the time being, the world surrounding Putin’s Imperial Russian Kleptocracy would seem stuck with containment, defense, and deterrence. For Russians who would be modern and well dressed with a Modern Political Mentality: despair, flight, lethargic cooperation, passive resistance; and for some close in with the little monster grown fat, one might hope for treachery.

The end-state desired would seem a modern responsible-responsive Russian state, not Putin’s criminal feudal-medieval monstrosity loaded up with 2,000 tactical nukes (advanced hypersonic missiles and stealthy submarines) x hate, ignorance, and fear to match, not to mention the leader’s criminal — and politically criminal — narcissism.

RFE/RL. “Pro-Ukrainian Protesters Rally in Belgrade.” YouTube, October 2, 2022.
UATV, October 2, 2022.
UATV, October 2, 2022.

Some of us are just waiting to see Robert Kraft’s Superbowl ring returned to him. And all of this over that? Could be as that ring is symbolic of the criminal, piratical, and unhinged nature of Putin’s increasingly naked regime.

Related Online

Anderson, Hans Christian. “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”

###

Nordstream Explosions: Putin’s Probable False Flag

28 Wednesday Sep 2022

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Psychology, Political Spychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

Putin probably ascended to office on the excitement, fear, and hope associated with the “Moscow Apartment Bombings”, quite probably a KGB/FSB false flag operation to produce his presidency. Best paired supporting reference: Satter, David. “The Unsolved Mystery Behind the Act of Terror That Brought Putin to Power.” National Review, August 17, 2016; Politkovskaya, Anna. A Small Corner of Hell, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003–create violence ascribable to Chechen Rebels; promote the war by unleashing the same now familiar Russian Army barbarism on Chechen villagers; “win” the war (by putting in place an Islamist warlord–Ramzan Kadyrov–to contain it; and become a national “hero” thereby. Call it Putin’s modus operandi and linked firm to his “malignant narcissism“–(related process)–and related penchant for political theater and the perceptual control of others from which he derives power.

Call it madness too.

September 28, 2022.

Chances are Putin will “slow walk” on repairs, forcing Europe to intercede in stopping the leak while investigating it.

Russian President Vladimir Putin neither advances Russia’s conventional interests nor defends them: what he does is indulge in his own “messianic delusions of grandeur”, which ties to his malignant narcissistic psychosis, to project and sustain his own heroic image, cover and fend off personal humiliation, and in the end obtain unlimited “narcissistic supply”, i.e., the adoration of a mob too ignorant to comprehend either his evil or his sickness (essentially Narcissistic Personality Disorder).

Related Online

Bertrand, Natasha and Katie Bo Lillis. “US warned European allies this summer that Nord Stream pipelines could be attacked.” CNN Politics, September 28, 2022.

Pronczuk, Monika, Melissa Eddy, Oleg Matsnev, Johanna Lemola. “The top E.U. diplomat says the Nord Stream Leaks resulted from a ‘deliberate act.'” The New York Times, September 28, 2021.

Addendum

Addressing the Helsinki Security Forum on Friday, 30 September 2022, the NATO Deputy Secretary Mircea Geoană said that the damage to two pipelines in the Baltic Sea this week are of “deep concern” and noted that all “currently available information indicates that this is the result of deliberate, reckless, and irresponsible acts of sabotage”. He said that NATO supports the investigations underway to determine the origin of the damage; and that “allies have been exchanging information including with Finland and Sweden in this sense”.

NATO. “Deputy Secretary General at the Helsinki Security Forum: Finland and Sweden will make our Alliance stronger.” September 30, 2022.
AP, from September 27, 2022 and posted to YouTube October 2, 2022.

###

#DJT The Success! (At Failing): Two Tweets

27 Tuesday Sep 2022

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Spychology

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

, , , , ,

Ain’t he neat?/ See him working up a tweet/ Hasn’t had his breakfast yet/ That helps with workin’ up Donald’s debt/ ain’t he neat?

🙂

Humor helps.

And it’s evident (old bachelor, empty apartment), sigh, that I must say so myself (attaboy)!

Sad story, this guy “The Donald”.

Possibly, from Donald Trump’s perspective, he only loses or takes other people’s money (without return), and rather like the feudal-medieval king he’d like to be in the still revolutionary and evolving modern United States of America, he expects the ginormous junkyard of disappointments left to others to just go away.

How did we get here?

It appears to me that Moscow had a revenge story for the bankrupting of the Soviet Union: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2022/07/19/detecting-post-soviet-russias-black-narrative-of-revenge-for-89-and-91/ .

I has appeared to The Guardian that Moscow had also a “Manchurian Candidate” in Donald John Trump: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/29/trump-russia-asset-claims-former-kgb-spy-new-book .

It has occurred to BackChannels (sometimes I growl and whine after saying “ChewbaccaChannels”) that KGB, FBI, TS/SCI boxes, folders, and whatnot may have a bridge with Registered Foreign Agent and Trump’s lawyer Christopher M. Kise via his relationship with the Russia friendly Maduro regime in Venezuela, happy host in the Western Hemisphere to Russian nuclear warhead ready TU-160 jets.

Addendum

I tweet this page from time to time to underscore Donald Trump’s character and personality issues in a way that proves helpful to authentic patriotic and traditional Americans as opposed to his generally easily manipulated or emotionally unhinged base of greedy and power hungry monsters or just plain innocent (generally white Christian) zealots. Sadly for America, neither the action, attention, and coverage linked to “#DJT” seems to diminish–I don’t think the base is growing but may be transforming into a vacuous American cult with legitimate gripes turned into off-the-wall explanations and conspiracies that never end.

In any case, and keeping with the above two tweeted packages of Trumpian disasters, here’s another on the way: Harwell, Drew. “He blew the whistle on Trump’s Truth Social. Now he works at Starbucks.” The Washington Post, April 29, 2023.

###

Putin Embarrasses Russia Worldwide

26 Monday Sep 2022

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eurasia, Political Psychology, Russia, Ukraine

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

Following the war — Russia v. Ukraine — news?

This is a day not to be missed as it features Russian allies (at least one–Serbia) refusing to recognize Russia’s bogus annexation referendums, shoot-’em-ups at recruitment centers (well, just one, so far), a magnificent show of confidence, love, and respect for Putin while fleeing for Russia’s borders and security elsewhere, presumably provided by some other state that knows what it’s doing, and the show most popular now across Russia, Putin and His Black Clad Oprichniki AKA Omon (formerly known as thugs and recently referred to as “Cosmonauts”) as depicted in action here:

Posted September 26, 2022.

Can’t get enough?

“This is cool that we have all gathered here today because we came here not on party or state orders, which is also sometimes necessary, but because we all wanted to be together, here and today,” Putin told the crowd, calling them “brothers”.

He ended by shouting “long live Russia, long live Ukraine” and “long live bike” in Ukrainian before heading off to a meeting with President Viktor Yanukovich.

Bryanski, Gleb. “Black-clad Putin roars into Ukraine biker fest.” Reuters, July 24, 2010.

Well, doesn’t that make plain what all the chaos, death, destruction, and suffering come down to?

Posted to YouTube, August 30, 2011.

Now the deluded, deranged, and tyrannical Vladimir Putin wants to restore his biker party no matter how many Ukrainians and Russians prove themselves willing to die for him without their cooperation or consent.

The clip appears to have come from the 2011 Sevastopol Bike Show, and it would appear to show how much Putin loves the Russians and Ukrainians that were his to plunder with impunity before Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity that had the corrupt Viktor Yanukovych skedaddling north to Mothering Russia (as Putin would have her) for reassurance, a kind of “That’s alright, my blubberous little buddy. We’ll get it all back the way it was. Or we’ll destroy it.”

Probably, Putin has been always a malignantly narcissistic, petulant, and posturing little boy.

Related Online

Maynes, Charles. “Russians protested in dozens of cities against Putin’s military draft.” NPR, September 24, 2022.

Murphy, Matt and Merlyn Thomas. “Ukraine war: Protests in Russia’s Dagestan region against new draft.” BBC, September 26, 2022.

Reuters. “More than 730 detained in anti-mobilisation protests across Russia, rights group says.” September 24, 2022.

Reuters. “Ukraine mocks Russia’s partial mobilisation on Twitter.” Deccan Herald, September 25, 2022.

###

Trump Lawyer Christopher M. Kise, Registered Foreign Agent

19 Monday Sep 2022

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Psychology, Political Spychology, United States of America, Venezuela

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , ,

On January 24, 2020, the Foreign Agents Registration Act unit of the National Security Division of the Department of Justice received from Christopher M. Kise, now the lawyer representing Donald John Trump in his defense in relation to the FBI’s investigation of Trump’s holding documents stamped as Top Secret/Secure Compartmented Information (TS/SCI), FARA registration #6787. In the form, Kise had listed as his principle Reinaldo Munoz Pedroza, the Attorney General of Venezuela appointed by the dictator Nicolas Maduro. At that time, Pedrozo had been sanctioned by the U.S. Department of the Treasury for undermining democracy in Venezuela and related election interference.

News of Kise’s registration as a foreign agent broke two days ago, and as interesting as that may be, the development of public and official interest in both the Conflict of Interest implied and the breathtaking scope of potential national security compromises–all those boxes of TS/SCI data!–appears slow. However, this by Ben Meiselas showed up on YouTube this morning:

Posted by MeidasTouch to YouTube, September 19, 2022.

For Trump’s base, the idea of achieving patriotic honor in association with his support appears belied and eroded by not only the former president’s authoritarian, belligerent, and obstreperous character but his connections–and one step removed is not far enough–to the tools, literally, so it would seem in the case of Mr. Kise, of at least one dictatorship. While it would seem fair for President (for Life) Maduro to have representation in the United States, the same would seem more than heinous for Trump to share with him the same lawyer.

Should the Kise-Trump story take down almost-candidate-(again) Trump, it would make a nice bookend for Trump’s first big yellow caution flag: Paul Manafort.

To make sense of the president’s pardon of Paul Manafort, it helps to understand the man Trump selected to run his 2016 campaign. On one hand, it seems inconceivable that an American presidential candidate would choose as his campaign manager someone whose last job was political strategist to a dictator in Ukraine who had recently been overthrown in a popular revolution. On the other hand, it makes perfect sense. Paul Manafort made a fortune helping tyrants and would-be tyrants appear legitimate. He was the ultimate symbol of the corruption of democratic political systems. His evolution from establishment wonderkid to handmaiden to dictators is a story of how corruption perverts democracies.

Hoffman, David. “Paul Manafort: Handmaiden to dictators.” The Hill, December 24, 2020.

With his latest hire in lawyers, Trump has only confirmed what all Americans, much including his base, must now see, i.e., the darkest of fallen real princes by contemporary business and class standards, a man who cannot keep himself separate from America’s enemies, Russian criminals, and assorted (other) dictators.

Note: since publishing this post, Trump has been reported as removing Christopher M. Kise from the leading role in Trump’s defense before related Federal investigation:

Kise is expected to remain on Trump’s legal team but is not leading the work related to the federal government’s investigation into how the former President handled 11,000 documents seized from his Florida home in August following a lengthy effort by the government to retrieve them. The reason for the shift in Kise’s role remains unclear and he may instead focus his efforts on the other investigations Trump is facing, which range from his business practices to the January 6 insurrection.

Collins, Kaitlan. “Newest addition to Trump’s legal team sidelined in Mar-a-Lago search case.” CNN Politics, September 27, 2022.

Addendum, February 17, 2023

Feb 16 (Reuters) – A lawyer for former President Donald Trump retained an attorney to represent himself as prosecutors step up their inquiry into the handling of sensitive documents at Trump’s Florida residence, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday.

Evan Corcoran, who has represented Trump in interactions with the government over presidential records taken to his Mar-a-Lago resort, has turned to Michael Levy, a prominent white-collar lawyer in Washington, according to people familiar with the matter.

Goudsward, Andrew. “Exclusive: Trump lawyer hires own attorney in classified documents probe.” Reuters, February 16, 2023.

Related Online

Cohen, Marshall, Oliver Carcy, and Zachary Cohen. “How Team Trump used Fox News as a laundromat for unverified Russian information about top Democrats.” CNN Politics, October 12, 2020.

Davis, Wynne. “TS/SCI: What an abbreviation reveals about the files seized from Mar-a-Lago.” NPR, August 16, 2022.

Gans, Jared. “Save America PAC advances $3M to Trump lawyer to cover legal fees.” The Hill, September 16, 2022.

Goudsward, Andrew. “Exclusive: Trump lawyer hires own attorney in classified documents probe.” Reuters, February 16, 2023.

Hoffman, David. “Paul Manafort: Handmaiden to dictators.” The Hill, December 24, 2020.

Myers, Steven Lee and Andrew E. Kramer. “How Paul Manafort Wielded Power in Ukraine Before Advising Donald Trump.” The New York Times, July 31, 2016.

Nicol, Ryan. “Attorney Christ Kise to help Nicolas Maduro administration fight U.S. sanctions.” Florida Politics, January 28, 2020.

Oppenheim, James S. “Trump’s America in Retrospect: Russian Real Estate Entanglements.” BackChannels, October 9, 2021.

Smith, David. “‘The perfect target’: Russia cultivated Trump as asset for 40 years – ex-KGB spy.” The Guardian, January 29, 2021.

Unger, Craig. “Trump’s businesses are full of dirty Russian money. The scandal is that it’s legal.” The Washington Post, March 29, 2019.

Unger, Craig. “Trump’s Russian Laundromat”. The New Republic. July 13, 2017.

U.S. Department of the Treasury. “Treasury Sanctions Maduro Regime Officials for Undermining Democratic Order in Venezuela.” September 4, 2020.

Wikipedia. “Reinaldo Munoz Pedroza”.

–33–

FTAC: Recent

13 Tuesday Sep 2022

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Links, Notes On Reading BackChannels

≈ Leave a comment

I haven’t been writing much here of late, and I have been wasting time every day with the following of the #RussiaUkraineWar and passing along assorted articles YouTube video to the BackChannels page on Facebook and Twitter. For the sake of a missed (mis-tracked) or insufficient education, I’ve opened (and have made it to the fifth notebook) Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, and for old ambitions involving creative writing, have been moseying through Ian Fleming’s For Your Eyes Only (Kindle version). For brevity, in the end, I thought to share here a little bit of the daily engagement (due for diminishment in the cause of personal change and perhaps restoration) with the “awesome conversation” online.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/…/a-note-on-the…/ Russia–Russians–need a modern state, not a barbaric feudal-medieval monstrosity. Of course, Putin’s not well in the head, not rational. As a malignant narcissist, he defends his projection of a courageous heroic self as cover for the weakling he really worries about. Until that pernicious psychology is understood in Russia–I believe the psychology of dictatorship (and related aggrandizement, manipulation, and theater) is well understood in the west–the world will simply suffer through with it and wherever it leads.

Facebook, September 12, 2022. Note: Facebook, unlike Twitter, doesn’t seem to have an exact and impersonal location-sharing feature, so just trust me: I wrote the above in response to an appropriate prompt.

I have reached a point where becoming absent from “social media” feels a little bit (a lot) like death and its isolation, so small has my world become offline and so ephemeral at the desktop. Nonetheless, and with advancing age, getting on to other things–reading Aurelius, reading fiction, playing guitar and singing, housekeeping (oh, the neglect!), driving around, perhaps, or settling down to learning French, say, or just finding that place that lends itself to taking a long walk in the countryside appears to require absence (a wag would have written “Absinthe”, and that would have been fair too).

So it goes?

Time disappears as we breath.

–33–