11 April — The Medvedev Map, the Sanjak of Novi Pazar, Mike Johnson, Moscow Marjorie, and the Battle of Poltava
No, it’s not a Monty Python sketch, in case you were wondering. That’s Dmitri Medvedev, former president of the Russian Federation, standing before his dream map of Eastern Europe. It’s only a matter of time. Soon Ukraine will be no more, and all the people living in the red territory will be tossing flowers at Putin’s motorcade and shining Medvedev’s boots. They will be the new czars of an expanded Russia, and little girls will bring flowers to war memorials, as they give speeches and revel in state media.
I hope you understand that this basically showcases everything that’s wrong with the Russian Federation. But it has deep roots. The actual Russian Empire of the czars and all of the bureaucrats that kept that machine greased for centuries, it was done away with. And the Soviet nomenklatura that developed in its wake, that was all done away with too. And the oligarchs that developed following privatization in 1991, they are also gone. There basically is no Russian intelligentsia left, or “policy community.” They have all been run out of the Federation or murdered.
What’s left with is a bunch of riffraff yes men. Medvedev’s parents were teachers. Putin’s grandfather, Spiridon, was a cook! This is who is now steering the new-born Russian imperial state, but they lack both pedigree and legitimacy. Putin inarguably has been illegitimate from Day One. I remember 31 December 1999 quite well, as I was inebriated and in the company of a young woman who had just returned from visiting Black Panther exiles in Africa. And on that day, Yeltsin bequeathed Russia to Putin. He was tapped for the job. It was a handover. And anyone who has ever seriously challenged him since has been eliminated. Some czar.
So, as I said, you are left with these idiots, basically, arguing over the lines on maps like a bunch of second year, drunk international affairs students. That’s not Kosovo! That’s the Sanjak of Novi Pazar. It’s ancient Pazar land! Because of Putin’s imperial dreams, there have been 500,000 casualties in Ukraine. All so that joker man Dmitri Medvedev can stand up there in front of his map. The Russian Federation’s leadership cannot be taken seriously.
In terms of others who cannot be taken seriously, I am not sure where to start, but why not with Mike Johnson of Shreveport, Louisiana, the imperilled speaker of the US House of Representatives, who faces discord within his rankled party of Donald Trump sycophants, and who this week turned down a visit from the British foreign minister, Lord Cameron to try and twist his arms over Ukraine. He’s more worried about one Marjorie Taylor Greene of Milledgeville, Georgia. So this is what we are left with. But I see it as an opportunity for real Republicans to take back power from Trumpers, who only stand for lining up behind him, and trying to get his voters to support them. Should Mike Johnson put the Ukraine bill to a vote, while facing bullying from the loud but actually minority Trump faction, he will have called their bluff and they will be shown to be who they really are. A political minority in the United States, no matter how much their media echo chamber inflates their egos, and makes them think they are more powerful than they actually are. Greene is a congresswoman from Georgia. You ain’t the boss, lady. You’re like one step above a high school principal.
Speaking of smaller potatoes, you won’t find more ardent Ukrainian supporters than the Nordics and Baltics. The Baltic Rim countries — Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland — have an existential threat of tiny dictators standing before big maps. But Sweden? Then I recalled that actually, way back in the 18th century, Ukraine was actually contested by the Swedes, who lost rather famously to Peter the Great at Poltava. For me, the defeat at Poltava has always been a great example of how countries can be too ambitious, and get embroiled in conflicts mostly out of greed that are far away from their core territory not to mention their supply lines.
A lesson to keep in mind for both the West and land-hungry Russians.
