“If it is not possible to end the war in Ukraine, we need to move on,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio. "The president is getting bored," David Ignatius on the war in Ukraine.

 

Our top diplomat, Marco Rubio, says U.S. will decided in days if the end to the war in Ukkrain is “doable.” On MSNBC David Ignatius said he thinks “the president is getting bored” with the war.

“If it is not possible to end the war in Ukraine, we need to move on,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said as he departed meetings in Paris. The following is from The New York Time’s article on this:

“It is not our war. We didn’t start it,” Mr. Rubio said. “The United States has been helping Ukraine for the past three years and we want it to end, but it’s not our war.”

He added: “If it’s not possible — if we’re so far apart that this is not going to happen — then I think the president’s probably at a point where he’s going to say, well, we’re done. We’ll do what we can on the margins." He described Mr. Trump as feeling “very strongly” about this.

This is the subtitle of The Washington Post article on the same subject: “Rubio’s remarks appear to reflect the president’s frustration with the difficulty of achieving peace in Ukraine after Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion.”

The president is frustrated. Poor baby! We dare not have a presdient who is frustrated.

I wish someone would remind Rubio, who I assume knows a bit of history, that we didn’t start World War I or World War II either. Rubio says he wants to see if winning the war is “doable.” Doable!?!? 

While two other presidents must have had dark days of uncertainty during wars we were fighting to save the democratic world, the country never heard Woodrow Wilson or FDR going public saying that they wondered whether winning either war was “doable” and say they would stop helping our allies because it wasn’t.

On MSNBC David Ignatius1 interpreted this as “the president is getting bored.”

The Washinton Post doesn’t have proof that Trump is frustrated. David Ignatius doen’t know for a fact that the president is getting bored, but I think both are making educated guesses based on an accurate assessment of Trump’s personality.

The war in Ukraine, while obviously not a world war, is the closest war to a world war we’ve been engaged in since World War II. It is a proxy war between the forces of democracy and the forces of totalitarianism. It is a war against the most powerful evil country in the world which invaded its neighbor. 

Russia invaded Ukraine to overthrow its pro-Western government and reassert control over Ukraine, which President Putin views as part of Russia's sphere of influence. The invasion aimed to "demilitarize and denazify" Ukraine, reflecting a distorted view of Ukrainian identity and history. (Reference) Putin’s goal was more modest than Hitler’s, but that shouldn;t make a difference. 

Even so, the president of the United States is getting bored with it the war and doesn’t want to be bothered thinking about it. 

Add to this, to the extent he cares about being called “Putin’s puppet” and having people suggest another strongman is pulling his strings, if the United States pulled out of the war he wouldn’t have to deal with this.

At least he wouldn't unless Russia defeated Ukraine and instituted a reign of terror and revenge there which Trump would be blamed for. Then again, Trump probably wouldn’t care because he’d be consulting with Putin at the White House about how to dump our traditional allies and become a partner with Russia.

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1

David Reynolds Ignatius (born May 26, 1950) is an American journalist and novelist. He is an associate editor and columnist for The Washington Post. He has written eleven novels, including Body of Lies, which director Ridley Scott adapted into a film. He is a former adjunct lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and was a Senior Fellow to the Future of Diplomacy Program from 2017 to 2022

When I read news like this I imagine seeing Trump literally as Putin's hand puppet. By Hal M. Brown

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It's as if his KGB ringed finger is protruding from his mouth.

A marionette is a puppet controlled from above by someone pulling its strings. A hand puppet is a type of puppet that is controlled by the hand that occupies the interior of the puppet. (Wikipedia)

I am not a cartoonist so I couldnt draw the illustration for today’s Substack. Of course, cartoonists often depict Trump being manipulated by Putin as both kinds of puppets.

Trump’s threats against NATO, alienating Europe, his claiming Russia didn’t invade Ukraine, how he’s treating Zelensky and pausing aid to Ukraine were without a doubt delighting Putin. Then we had not allowing Ukraine to use Starlink, Add to this Hegseth ordering our cyber command to stand down on Russia. Taking DEI to extremes, he’s forcing the military to lose talented personnel. He’s banning members from serving in the US armed forces and gutting the military’s diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Now we have this news:

The climate change move could be seen as a small thing compared to the other actions, but it is yet something else which will please Putin. 

Imagine what the generals and admirals leading our armed forces think of all of this.

I have absolutely no doubt that Trump wants to rule the country unrestrained by the annoying constraints of the Constitution. No matter what one wants to call someone who does this, a king, emperor, dictator, or overlord, it all amounts to their being the absolute ruler. He is well on his way to achieving this goal. 

Can he be stopped?

This is what I wrote yesterday:

I see our only hope being for the military to decide to intervene to save our democracy. This could come if Trump declared a national emergency and martial law to put down protests using violence if protesters refused orders to disperse. It should not be open to debate that Amercians have the right to peacefully protest, that pesky First Amendment, but it would be easy to rationalize a lethal attack against civilians. We could easily have another Kent State Massacre.

I see two ways the military could save us. One I call effecting a soft coup. This would involve barring Hegseth and whoever he’s elevated to power from entering the Pentagon. The patriotic generals would announce that they would no longer obey illegal and unconstitutional orders. The other alternative would be a hard coup. It would begin with tanks around the White House and soldiers removing its occupants. A general would take over as acting president. It would be announced that free elections would be held once the country was stabilized. By then I want to believe the majority of voters would decide they wanted the country to be a democracy and not a dictatorship.

Putin wants to see the United States descend into chaos. He wants it beset by internal warfare, whether peaceful or violent. In his dreams he’d like to realign the world’s powers so the United States joins Russia, North Korea, and possibly China. I am not sure about the latter since they depend so much on us for trade.

There’s no way I can see Putin wanting to see our top military leaders running the country. I certainly can see him wanting Trump ruin the United States, but for all those West Point, Air Force, and Naval Academy graduates to be actually running not only the military, but the country as well, that would be a bridge way too far.

It is very possible that Putin still hasn’t figured out what he wants from Trump aside from helping him win in Ukraine and for him to destabilize NATO and Europe, as well as weaken the country as a military threat. The notion of new world order, an actual alliance with the United States is probably just a fantasy. He knows how that worked out for Hitler and his Third Reich. He knows what happened to the Holy Roman Empire when their reach exceeded their grasp. 

Of course Putin wishes he could restore the old Soviet Union, but likewise he knows this would be unrealistic because, with or without the United States as a member of NATO, attacking any member of the alliance would trigger Article Fivefor the only time since the September 11 attack. I can’t see any way that Putin wants to be engaged in World War III. Putin is a realist. If he can’t have a five course meal he knows he may have to settle for Ukraine, or parts of Ukraine, as a tasty appetizer.

Let’s say for the sake of argument that Putin, who we know talks to Trump from time to time, if not on a regular basis, really has his hand up his butt as far as it can go and is able to order him to do his bidding. Putin says “jump” and Trump asks “how high?” 

Putin wants what is in his own interest when it comes to the United States. To this end he has to understand American society and American politics at least as well as our most brilliant historians and other academics. I am not saying he doesn’t think he does, but does he really?

Maybe Putin is controlling Trump and is both brilliant and is narcissistic in believing he knows exactly what he is doing. He’s also reportedly extremely superstitious, has an obsession with the occult may believe in reincarnation. (Article)Maybe the I Ching (the ancient Chinese book of divination) or his Magic Eightball is telling him what to do.

This all boils down to one of two possibilities. Trump listens to Putin but doesn’t take orders from him or he is truly a Putin puppet. Either way, unless our military saves us, our democracy is well and truly fucked. We have a mentally unstable president who wants to be king or we have a Russian dictator who believes in the occult as defacto president.

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What do they think of Trump's cozy relationship with Putin in the other Manchester? By Hal M. Brown

....

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You know that we have a Manchester in New Hampshire. Fans of Ted Lasso know there's a Manchester in England too.

I was going to unpack everything that was wrong in Trump’s post (above) about why nobody should waste time worrying about Putin. Then I read the first article a web search turned up. It happened to be in the Manchester Evening News (here). 

This was covered in the American media, in Newsweek for example, but it was also reported on in other countries. I came across an article about this in the Manchester Evening News. At first I didn’t think much about this because I assumed it was Manchester, New Hampshire. Then I noticed “MAN UTD” on the top of the page. 

As a fan of the series “Ted Lasso,” I knew this referenced Manchester United, one of the best soccer teams not only in Great Britain but in the world. 

Donald Trump couldn’t couldn't give a rat's ass about what anyone in England, Europe, or Lower Slobovia for that matter, thinks about his cozy relationship with Putin, his abandoning Ukraine, and his shitcanning Amercia’s role as leader of the free world. As I wrote yesterday, Trump only wants revenge for being treated like crap for the previous four years. 

He wants to bask in the warm glow of a sun that shines only on his magnificence. If that level of narcissism was the only psychopatholgy he had it wouldnt be all that bad. He might just be a modern day Caligula.

Unfortunately, it isn’t enough for him to be powerful and to enjoy the trappings and privileges of the presidency. He has to have people cower in fear of him and to bow down to him. It isn’t enough for him to be emperor, he has a driving need to be an evil emperor. When he says “off with their heads” he wants to have the execution televised from the White House lawn.

Trump still believes he has to feign empathy. This may change. Repeatedly he has expressed how it saddens him to know about the death and suffering in Ukraine. He says that he want it to stop. He tries to look and sound sincere. This is all performative. He says the words and people, if they are gullible, just might think he actually feels something. 

Trump never acknowledges that it is Putin who is aggressively targeting civilians and destroying powerplants so people freeze. This because that undermines his narrative of casting Russia as the hero and Ukraine as the villian. If Trump admitted this it would lay bare the lie that he cares about the suffering of Ukranians.

Trump is incapable of experiencing empathy. The only one he ever feels sorry for is himself. The last time this happened was when he had to endure sitting in a hot courtroom during the E. Jean Carroll trial. He’ll think he has to fake it as long as he believes that his grip on absolute power is unassailable. 

Once he believes nobody can ever dethrone him I think he’ll say to himself “fuck putting on the act I’d rather be golfing.”

Addendum:

Trump isn’t particularly good at method acting, but he’s been good enough to convince millions of voters that he cares about them despite not caring about anybody but himself. Perhaps ironically, this is the acting technique developed by a Russian, Konstantin Stanislavski. This seeks to encourage sincere and expressive performances through identifying with, understanding, and experiencing a character's inner motivation and emotions. Actors trying to go beyond getting into the character’s head and get into their hearts. You don’t have to really have empathy to do this well, but it helps. 

Here’s a list of the best American method actors. The one that is generally considered the inspiration for all of them is Marlon Brando.

When I think of what has been happening to America I often flash in my mind to the final scene in “Apocalypse Now” which is simply known as “the horor, the horror” scene. You can view it here.

I must have Brando on my mind since I concluded yesterday’s Substack with this:

I want to thank all of my readers and my Substack subscribers. You can read all of my Substack posts here. If you subscribe you will recieve an email every time I post. Respectful comments are always welcome even if you disagree with me. I generally reply to comments.

I post on BlueSky though the day, You can read my posts here.