Tuesday, January 3, 2023

"Any Day Now...": Delusional Psychosis, Part 313

 

Pro Tip: "delusional" ≠ "people smarter than you
with better analysis and more accurate sources"











Case in point:

19th Ward chicago: "Today there is propaganda, some of it so absurd that it is laughable."

He's absolutely right about laughable propaganda, but not in the way he thinks.

E.g.:

"Until recently, Putin left the Ukraine alone except for the Donbass area."

And the guy who wrote that, sourced at the OP, is calling those who disagree with his crackpot analysis "delusional"? It is to laugh.

Other than illegally seizing Crimea outright in 2014 (because he could) amidst the chaos of the Ukrainian uprising, and then immediately afterwards doubling down, and sending Spetsnaz and airborne troops into the Donbas in wholesale batches, minimally camouflaged in civilian clothes, and then claiming they were "popular uprisings" against Kiev, Putin left Ukraine alone.

Which would be like saying that "Except for seizing California and Texas, and annexing them back into Mexico, Mexico has left the United States alone."

Anyone who can support that level of psychosis can rationalize anything.

"the newspaper's delusional writers claim that Russian attacks are no longer effective as Ukraine's Western allies have shored up Ukraine's air defenses. Why then is half of Ukraine without electric power?"

This is like me saying I have a credit card, and then you asking me why my tires are flat.

One statement has nothing to do with the other, and ignores the obvious.

For the terminally clueless, I'd go out on a limb and say it's because before Ukraine's Western allies shored up their air defenses, Russian saturation missile attacks, with only 25% effectiveness at the height of the bombardments, still managed to knock out a lot of Ukrainian power grid infrastructure. In other news for the criminally stupid, water is wet, and fire burns.

Thus half of Ukraine is without power because prior Russian strikes hit electrical infrastructure that's hard to replace (the fragility of the world's power grids has only been covered in Ukraine's specific case, and for the U.S., about a million times in the last ten years, from Hell to breakfast by everyone in creation), and necessary replacement parts are available from a very limited number of sources. Much of which is Russian itself. Gee, let me think why it's still dark in the areas of the Ukraine where Russia has landed drone and missile strikes...

Meanwhile, that effort has affected Ukraine's battlefield campaigns...how, exactly?

Talk turkey, not b.s.: Is the front moving towards Kiev, or towards Moscow?

And in which direction has it been moving, inexorably, since late August?

Get back to us, and tell us who's really being delusional.

How it ends remains an open question (Retards, Pay Attention: Russia nominally has 10 times the military and resources of Ukraine, and yet, they continue to flail endlessly to no good result), but failure to acknowledge the currently obvious situation is the textbook definition of outright insanity.

You want to argue Russia will make a comeback? That's fine. 

First, explain why they need to, and on the way there, own up to their serial failures to date.

Then explain how they've learned from their colossal blunders thus far, and made needed reforms, and from what bodily orifice they're suddenly going to pull a military that's powerful, competent, motivated, and intelligently led, rather than a bunch of drunken buffoons led by prevaricating nitwits who keep falling out of windows, or shooting themselves in the head six or seven times, back at HQ.

That would be a fascinating read, if it's not all fairytales running on pure hopeium.

Russia's going to win? Already won?? Show your work.

Buuuuut, that necessarily requires an explanation of why they're still they're if they've already won, why they're moving towards Moscow and not Kiev if they're "winning", or barely breaking even, why they keep scraping the bottom of the barrel for more conscripts and convicts if they're slaughtering the Ukrainians in job lots, and owning up to everything that's gotten them where they are, which is back-pedalling towards the Rodina in haste, leaving their dead and wounded behind in droves, and how they're going to pull off this hitherto impossible military triumph in order to get where you think they're going to get.

I repeat: Show. Your. Work.

I get that Emperor Poopypants egged this on to cover his clan's criminal corruption there. I get that you think Zelensky's just as crooked. (But undeniably, whatever else he is, he isn't Putin's bitch, unlike every prior Ukrainian leader since 1990, and that's what rankled Putin the most.) I'll even give you a pass on your delusion that Putin's anything but a jumped up KGB thug and mass-murderer with delusions of grandeur. That's nice, but I don't give a fuck about any of that in this context, and it has no bearing on the topic under discussion. IDGAS about what you fondly wish would happen, I care about objective reality. If thinking is hard for you, this is where you're going to trip on your dick, and step all over it with sharp cleated spikes.

Bluff and bluster in service of your narrative is just so much bullshit and spin. Try facts. Verifiable sources. Actual data. If only for the novelty. Hyperbole and horseshit in equal measure is selling in Moscow at ₱2/metric fuckton. Actual evidence is pretty thin on the ground, largely because it's non-existent. Bring us a Bigfoot carcass, or a unicorn skull, and we can talk this out like grownups.

Can't do that? (And that would be the entire Rootin' For Putin contingent, web-wide, since March of last year to date, just to be accurate.) Letter grade of F. Obviously.

The narrative from the Rootin' For Putin side since August has been "Any day now, Russia is going to do...something!"

It's January. It's been 300+ days already. In seven weeks, this will be a full year of military debacle for Russia. 

For a war Putin was going to win in three days.

And for nearly half of which, Russia's military has been in full-scale retreat. And still no "something".


Russia's been the Black Knight to Ukraine's King Arthur in this conflict for ten months. Sorry, but there it is. Suck on it.

Please explain how you can be "winning", and yet take 10,000% longer than initial expectations. The rough equivalent would be WW II lasting until the year 2345. I'll wait while you work that out.

Just saying.


FTR, We'll leave this topic alone when people stop spewing bullshit with snowblowers.

19 comments:

  1. Why would any student of history be surprised at the utter rot at the core of the Russian military? This has been the case for centuries. Their whole society is the equivalent of Chicago government.
    Look at WWII, the Russians had gutted their officer core prior to the German invasion and got rolled over like the story of the ant and the bulldozer. The only thing that prevented the total collapse was Hitler's erratic strategies. The other agenda item is that the Russians pretended just how much material they fought with was supplied by the West.

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    1. Actually it had more to do with Germany’s generals and Franz Halder than Hitler. Hitler intended to focus on the southern Ukraine/Caucus region first, but Halder and most of the generals thought capturing Moscow would win the war. So they wasted a year trying to capture the wrong region, and blundered both staff work and logistics the whole way there. Heck, the German Army even screwed up the railroads!

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  2. I got as far as

    As Putin said over and over, the purpose his limited military operation is to drive the Ukrainian forces out of the Donbass republics, not to invade and conquer Ukraine.

    before my brain started hurting too much from the burning stupid (and I used to read Soviet Military Review for entertainment),

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  3. "You cannot use facts and logic to argue some idiot out of a silly position that he didn't use facts and logic to get himself into."

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  4. I still don't get how making up pretend victories for an incompetent tyrant is supposed to make the USA a better place.

    If you have to continuously alter obvious reality to make an ideological point, maybe- just maybe your ideology is wrong?

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  5. Eh. This whole thing stinks on both sides if you will. Ill grant one thing that people draw similarities to the US invasion of Iraq (Hey I was there a couple times for that shit show) and that it was to jump start the Neocons and the war industries. Sure. And that's a similar thing that I'd wonder if Putin was not also gambling on. Quick easy victory! The folks welcome us with open arms! Military expendature (Or showing the need to spend moar money as the obselete tatics and equipment are ripped apart by insurgent style warfare.) Maybe. Then again harkening to the Iraq comment, there was those issues with Saddam having invaded Kuwait to push for the resources there. I am sure pride is a big part of this as well as just resistance to admitting this is not working and we've a bigger problem than we guessed we would have. I also don't think for one second Putin is doing this of anything other than malovence. That and perhaps he thought with a change in the white house he'd be able to bully his way where he pleased. (Same party was in office for the Crimera invasion in 2014 after all, coorelation is not causation, I know I know but it sure runs in patterns.) I don't think anyone disputes the amount of corruption going on in Ukraine. But that's hardly cause to invade, if so why have we not been invaded from a unified force? Also it's hardly a reason to invade someone and start slaughtering civilian apartment complexes from afar with artillery.

    Honestly I'd guess one of two scenarios were generally at play, the first being Putin was told by his staff that this would be a cake walk evidenced by the the events in 2014 with Crimera. (Anyone remember the Russians or Russian equipment blowing a jumbo jet out of the sky that year by the way?)

    The Second is that he just figured himself this would be easy, we have a retreating America embroiled with a lot of ills and that, well this would continue to be a cake walk since it was a D in congress. And his war staff gave him either no resistance/too afraid to and just placated him to the tune of thousands of Russian troops dead and masses of equipment fully destroyed or captured.

    And this won't stop till the last of the old Soviet guard in the Kremlin and the "businessmen" that are billionaires have those links severed. Remember kids it was only 30 years ago that the USSR disolved and there were a lot of their .gov agents still quite young then. The USSR disolved yes but I'd bet nearly every single one of those commie agents in the .gov remained there. There's a odd commentary that while everyone may want to make Russia good now there's been a slew of movies from the 1990s well in to the 2000s (Bond movies, The Saint, etc) that make direct references to "Old Hardliners" wishing to restore Russia to the USSR years in many levels. If we believed this to not be true no one would have watched those movies or given them any credit should they say something so wild and it be unbelievable.

    I'd say the legand of the Russian War machine against a low grade peer to be utterly dismantled at any rate. I mean it would be so strange to see someone with a on paper war history to be uncapable of performing right? Meanwhile for example the US Navy can't stop hitting their own ships togeather so... Totally unrealistic someone would have pensil-whipped military capabilities right?

    Totally crazy that a Military/Country would bluff about it's capablities to seem stronger than they really are right?

    Right?

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  6. Apparently some people don't understand air defense... They think it is 100% perfect and has 100% coverage...
    Air defense doesn't cover everything all the time, especially power grids and pipelines which extend for long distances - in particular when your enemy sends saturation attacks there
    (I bet the Ukrainian military is glad Russia wasted lots of missiles there instead of against troops, logistics, etc).

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  7. Russia has a big military, much of which is being kept in reserve for when the dragon (China) makes it's move. With "friends" like those.......

    That will never be mentioned in the media. The Russian reserve isn't for NATO. The dragon senses weakness. Both have nuclear cards to play if it comes to that. The "farm team" (Ukraine) has enough Tu-141 drones ro block the Don, Volga and the Don-Volga Canal with wreckage and to disrupt the rail lines along those rivers. Action there would make things difficult in Russia's Southern District along the Azov and Black Seas. When the Ukraine and its allies get tired of the blood match, there are alternative things that they can do.

    The US has vulnerabilities but they are small potatoes compared to Russia's problems. The Tu-141s are obsolete but can get a payload from here to there. The Ukies are creative, adaptable and determined. As soon as Western supplies slacken, they will have no choice. The brief flurry of fires and explosions inside Russia might just be the opening notes of a real production.

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  8. "Russia has a big military, much of which is being kept in reserve"

    Citation needed.

    Russia CLAIMED to have a big military. It turned out that a big chunk of that was officers lying about how many men they had under arms and pocketing the extra paychecks. Not a bad scam, for as long as it lasts.

    If Russia had a big military they wouldn't have needed to conscript criminals. If Russia had a big military they wouldn't be mobilizing 60-year-olds. If Russia had a big military they wouldn't have needed to strip St Petersburg and the Baltic borders of all the troops that were previously stationed there. If Russia had a big military they wouldn't be reassigning nuclear technicians from Karelia to infantry units in the Donbass. If Russia had a big military they should've been able to walk shoulder to shoulder across the plains and just swamp the Ukrainians with numbers, back in the first two months. If Russia had a big military - oh, never mind, I could go on for pages but what's the point.

    The overriding lesson of this war is that anything the Russians say is likely to be a lie until proven otherwise, no matter how much you want to believe in somebody who'll take your side in your pet peeves against Uncle Sam.

    And anybody who uncritically repeats Russian claims is a dumbass.

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  9. "And anybody who uncritically repeats Russian claims is a dumbass."

    Russia did give us the concept of the Potemkin Village after all.

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  10. Again, Russia makes a hamburger and Aesop declares it the worst pizza ever made.

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  11. Actually Phelps, Russia shit its own pants, but they're trying to sell it as steak.

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  12. Is it wrong to wish that neither the RUS and UKR prevail?

    It is wrong to wish the the bankster/pols protagonists would be the ones defeated in the end?

    All the bobbing for apples hoping for a winner and a vanquished, in this war's cesspool is unhealthy.

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  13. Explain what that would look like, and how it would happen.
    I'm not concerned with who should win. I've been telling you who is winning, and who cannot win. Wishful thinking for its own sake isn't productive, ignoring reality even less so.

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  14. Perhaps my thinking is shallow compared to what the question expects, but here goes:

    Ukraine's war effort depends tremendously on foreign supply, ammunition, equipment, fuel, finance, the whole shebang. After one year the foreigners are getting restless. Three, four, five years go by, the foreigners decide they don't want to supply anymore.

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  15. Ryan,

    We covered this.
    Eight months ago.
    https://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2022/05/who-run-bartertown.html

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  16. i get it...you're rooting for the despot who outlawed opposition political parties, journalists who question his honesty, integrity, and motives; and shut down the churches. putin doesn't want the imf sucking, lgbtq worshipping, globohomo nwo for russia; and i hope he's successful

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  17. No, you don't get it, and clearly haven't read anything I've written prior to 5 minutes ago. I'm rooting for the average Ukrainians who're shooting Russian invaders in the face, because they think they should have the right to determine their own destiny, and don't wish to trade their current status for becoming Russia's vassal bitch, yet again. Look up the Holodomor, and get back to us. Considering Zelensky didn't invade and annex any parts of Russia three times since 2014, I'd say he's still ahead on points in this discussion, but apparently you're fine with rooting for the guy who's made half a dozen different ruthless wars on neighbors to subjugate them, for nearly every year of his reign of terror. Well-played.

    If you "got it", you'd probably have kept your asinine comment to yourself, and listened while the grown-ups were talking.
    Better luck with that next time.

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