Crimea Shiver, by Mike Gold – Brainiac On Banjo #358 | @MDWorld
March 17, 2014 Mike Gold 3 Comments
This whole situation in Crimea is a pain in the ass.
We Americans view politics exactly the same way we view football. We are the heroes, and if we are not the heroes, we should be. The problem is, every hero needs an arch-villain. We virtually wed ourselves to our favorite villains in a vain attempt to create historic rivalries. The Great Muslim Menace doesn’t have a face, their threat to us is diasporic and we have a hard time going to war over anything other than material gain.
Enter the Russians.
Lordy, lordy, we used to love to hate the Russians. Clearly, many people – certainly many people north of 50 – have this sentiment hard-wired in our DNA sequencing. People look at me as though I’m goofy when I refer to Red China (and, yeah, I occasionally do), but they see no problem using the phrases “Russian,” “Soviet,” and “Communist” interchangeably as though they all meant the same thing. Them Russians even sound evil – there’s a reason why the dictator of Pottsylvania has a Teutonic accent but his chief agent Boris Badenov sounds like Yakov Smirnoff on a hyperglycemic crash.
By the way, Yakov Smirnoff was born in the Ukraine which, as of this writing, houses the Crimea.
If Russia is America’s Latveria, then its ruler Vlad Putin is our Doctor Doom. Or, at the very least, our favorite Doctor Doom wannabe. Now that their sculpted Fearless Leader and Homophobe-in-Chief is trying to annex the neighboring Crimean portion of the Ukraine, we’re reading a lot of comparisons between him and Adolf Hitler. Whereas there are some historical parallels and Adolf has earned the position of being our favorite go-to bad guy metaphor, Vlad really isn’t Hitler. He’s a politician who lobs grenades onto the international landscape to force everybody to scatter. I think he does it for fun. In practice, Vlad Putin is just one white pussycat away from being Ernest Blofeld.
But… on the other hand… 58% of the Crimean population is Russian. Not “of Russian roots” but actually Russian. They’ve only been part of the Ukraine for 23 years, and it wasn’t their idea. The Crimea was annexed to Russia by Empress Catherine the Great in 1783 and it remained that way until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Those Crimeans have been Russian about as long as we Americans have been Americans.
So if the root of democracy is self-determination by the majority, then we of the self-proclaimed greatest democratic nation in history should support the will of the people, shouldn’t we? The real question we should be asking ourselves is not whether Putin is willing to go to war with us, but how are we protecting our national security by going to war over an area that is on a reunification bender.
Mike Gold performs the weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking rock, blues and blather radio show on The Point, www.getthepointradio.com and on iNetRadio, www.iNetRadio.com as part of “Hit Oldies” every Sunday at 7:00 PM Eastern, rebroadcast three times during the week – check www.getthepointradio.com above for times and on-demand streaming information. Gold also joins MDW’s Marc Alan Fishman, Martha Thomases and Michael Davis as a weekly columnist at www.comicmix.com where he pontificates on matters of four-color.
Rick Oliver
March 17, 2014 - 2:22 pm
While it was arguably mostly a symbolic gesture at the time, Krushchev ceded Crimea to the Ukranian SSR in the 50s, but as you note the population remained largely ethnic Russian.
While the Crimean vote to join Russia is technically unconstitutional, I think it’s mostly a done deal. There are no clear cut good guys or bad guys in this one. Many of the “rebels” that have taken control of Kiev are not exactly people we would proudly align ourselves with, and there’s not really much we can do to pressure Putin to back down without committing to some kind of shooting war. The EU is not likely to fall in line behind economic sanctions that threaten their oil and natural gas supply.
Mike Gold
March 17, 2014 - 3:00 pm
I’ve read a lot about this “unconstitutional” stuff, and I don’t get it. The (somewhat) United States split from Britain and the British considered that illegal. The Confederate States split from the United States and the North considered that illegal.
Land grabs go back to the time of Conan the Barbarian. My favorite — smaller scale but more financially lucrative — was when Chicago major Richard J. Daley annexed a wide path of land leading from the city to what was then Orchard Field airport. His buddies bought up much of the land in that path. Then they expanded the airport and changed the name to O’Hare Field. (In case you ever wondered why “ORD” is the designation for O’Hare).
Russia also exports a lot of grain. Food and fuel trumps everything. Whereas I don’t trust Putin as far as I can throw both him and his horse, he ain’t no Hitler, he ain’t no Stalin, and the place is indeed largely ethnic Russian.
Neil C.
March 17, 2014 - 4:09 pm
And, also, it doesn’t seem to be a threat to us directly (except maybe our precious bodily fluids). It would be like Russia getting involved if South Carolina had seceded and we wanted it back.
Mike Gold
March 17, 2014 - 4:32 pm
As I’ve said before in this space, when the sundry Confederate States split off, they were not breaking any laws. Despite his commitment to abolition — not to mention that of his wife and her family, and that of his party at that time — slavery wasn’t front and center in Lincoln’s mind. He was out to save the union. The tide of the time was washing against slavery — in the U.S. much later than the rest of the so-called civilized world. He could have imposed the type of sanctions that Obama is starting, but northerners were making too much money off of slavery to sit still for that.
Rene
March 17, 2014 - 6:04 pm
What I do find funny is how the American Right is in love with Putin despite themselves. I think Jon Stewart depicted it on his show.
It just get them hot, the sight of a leader that is a bare-chested manly man that rides a horse, like Conan the Barbarian, if Conan were middle-aged, balding and slavic.
One thing I long realized about Conservatives in general is that they’re in love with “manliness”, sometimes for manliness’s own sake. (But it must be a white man. Blacks and browns showing off their manliness is threatening at an atavic level, I suppose)
Doug Abramson
March 17, 2014 - 7:50 pm
Rene,
Don’t forget, there’s NOTHING homoerotic about their love for Putin. Honestly.
Mike Gold
March 17, 2014 - 8:08 pm
Everybody loves the bad guy. We need that villain in our lives. We focus all our problems, mindlessly, on the bad guy.
What I’m enjoying is that both the left and the right are both “hating” Putin and/or Russia. Vlad’s united us in our hatred. We articulate it differently, we may see solutions differently, but damn it, we;re all behind dissing Putin the Merciless, a putz who can only harm his people. He’s not Chairman Putin, he’s Tsar Putin.
Thankfully, it seems like right now the only person who wants a physical war is Mr. McCain. His senility is astonishing.
Reg
March 17, 2014 - 8:30 pm
Yeah..John’s saber rattling has been disconcerting to say the least. Thanksfully, at least for right now, cooler heads SEEM to be prevailing.
R. Maheras
March 19, 2014 - 12:18 pm
Mike — If, as you imply, the integrity of a country should simply be determined by a democratic poll of its inhabitants, then, by your logic, there never should have been a US Civil War. “The majority of Southerners want to secede? Oh, well. I guess that’s all she wrote for the good ol’ USA.”
That does touch on something many world leaders have had to struggle with over the centuries: When is getting into a war worth the civilian, military, and monetary capital it will no doubt cost?
In some cases, when the invading armies swoop in regardless of what you’re planning to do, it’s a moot point. Other times, when war is an OPTION, what do you do? What do you do?
Mike Gold
March 19, 2014 - 4:04 pm
I agree. By my logic, there never should have been a Civil War. Particularly when, at the time of succession, there were no constitutional sanctions against states leaving the Union. I’ll go one step further. The concept of preventing succession is anti-American. Were it not, we’d have Queen Lizzy on our five pound notes.
It’s easier to answer your other question. Getting into a war is worth the total price when we are physically threatened with violent takeover. War shouldn’t be an option. It should only be an absolute necessity.
R. Maheras
March 19, 2014 - 5:32 pm
Mike — Well, then we shouldn’t have been in any war since the War of 1812.
ALL of them since have been optional — except arguably the Afghanistan war against the Taliban, when they refused to turn over their in country al Qaeda allies following the totally unprovoked attack against the US on 9-11.
Even when it came to World War II, the attack against us by Japan, and Germany’s declaration of war against the US a short time later, was not unprovoked. Prior to the Pearl Harbor attack, we blatantly ignored our neutrality in the case of Europe, sending huge sums of money and war supplies (including 50 ships) to England. On the other side of the globe, we not only had “volunteer” air combat pilots fighting the Japanese to a standstill in China, foiling a complete takeover of the country, we did our best to cut off or cripple their access to natural resources that were critical to their economy and war machine.
Why did we do this? Because we were dealing with some really bad people. Leadership felt it was worth the risk.
But the bottom line is WW II was, in fact, optional.
R. Maheras
March 19, 2014 - 5:50 pm
Mike — And to put into perspective those 50 destroyers us “neutral” Yanks gave England prior to our entry into WW II, Germany only had about 30 destroyers in their entire navy
Mike Gold
March 19, 2014 - 7:06 pm
Yep. You can’t separate war from politics. If we hadn’t started a trade war with Japan, would Pearl Harbor have been attacked? Maybe, maybe not. It’s a bitch, ain’t it?
Whitney
March 23, 2014 - 11:32 am
Golden Boy –
Any smart Russian ruler tries to figure out a solution to being land bound / ice bound in order to participate in international trade. Catherine the Great was one smart ruler…
Putin is smart. And focused. I would not want to play poker against this guy. Or chess. Or Jeopardy.