After a week full of surprise twists (the #TwitterFiles exposing a lot more than anticipated), not-so-surprise twists (Leftists being wrong again about Twitter being dead), and some disappointing-but-not-surprising twists (Herschel Walker couldn’t cross the goal line to win the Georgia Senate runoff election against Raphael Warnock), we finally have a story worth discussing that doesn’t involve Elon Musk.
Brittney Griner is coming home!
Now, if you’re like me (and if you are I’m so very sorry), you have little or no idea who Brittney Griner is. I will admit I had to do a bit of digging to get the facts behind why her release is such a big deal, and I agree it is. Just not for the reason the Left wants us to believe it is.
Brittney Griner
What the Left thinks it means – a brave woman freed after being imprisoned in Russia for no reason
What it really means – a prisoner released solely due to the social justice hierarchy
When Joe Biden took over as President, I knew there would be some bad decisions coming down the pike. I mean, he picked Kamala Harris as Vice-President, a woman so unpopular with Democrats that I got the same number of delegates she did and I didn’t even run. Sure enough, there were no supply chain issues with Puddin’ Head Joe’s bad decisions, as they kept coming in like a LGBQT+ wrecking ball.
Even with incredibly low expectations, I knew somehow the Biden Administration would find a way to limbo under them with room to spare. And that’s exactly what we got with the Griner release.
Brittney Griner is a WNBA player who played in Russia during the off season (which is not that different from the regular WNBA season) and was detained after a search found vape cartridges with hash oil in them. Although what she had was legal in Arizona where Griner plays, it isn’t legal in Russia. As a result, she was sentenced to nine years in prison. Griner appealed the verdict, but was denied. Now, less than a year after she was arrested, Griner is free. A feel good story, right?
Yeaaaaah…not so much.
The terms of Griner’s release included a prisoner exchange for Viktor Bout, who just happens to be an arms dealer with the cute little nickname “the Merchant of Death.” Aside from the laundry list of activities for which he became infamous, he was also the inspiration for a Nicholas Cage movie. That alone should have kept him locked up indefinitely.
Then came Puddin’ Head Joe, who thought it was a good idea to trade Bout for Griner with the hopes of getting another American prisoner detained in Russia, former Marine Paul Whelan. Whelan has been detained since 2018 amid allegations of espionage. Although the charges seem a bit shaky, America has let him sit in a prison camp for far longer than Griner.
So, why are we getting excited over a WNBA player getting released in exchange for an arms dealer? A lot of it has to do with Griner’s identity. Not only is she a basketball player (that maybe 0.00000000001% of the population knew prior to her arrest), but she is black and a lesbian. In social justice terms, that’s practically a “Get Out of Gulag Free” Card! Throw in the fact she lobbied the WNBA to not play the National Anthem during the 2019 season to protest police brutality, and you might as well make her a Leftist Saint. You know, if they believed in that sort of thing.
Even if you strip away all of that, anybody with a lick of sense can see trading an arms dealer for a basketball player while leaving a retired Marine on the table is a bad idea. For one, it’s a fucking arms dealer! For another, it shows the world just what America values these days. If you’re an albino transsexual paraplegic Inuit midget with AIDS, you’ll get the Biden Administration working around the clock to get you home. If you’re a white guy, well…let’s just say you’re going to have to wait a while.
Like, say, the 43rd of Never.
Not to put too fine a point on this, but Bout is also a Russian fucking arms dealer! Now, who are we currently in c0nflict with on the world states? If you said Russia, congratulations! You’ve been paying attention. And if you’ve been paying attention, you can also see where this is going, but for you Leftists reading this, let me spell it out for you: Joe Biden just gave Vladimir Putin an arms dealer, all while funneling money to Ukraine…who is currently fighting Putin and Russia.
Either Griner is one hell of a basketball player, or Puddin’ Head Joe got played. And I think you know which way I’m leaning on that one.
Regardless of how you feel about Griner’s detainment (I think it’s bullshit) and release (it’s great she’s coming back home), the fact the only way it makes sense is through the lens of social justice should be concerning. We should not be making these kinds of major decisions through social justice because of the way social justice operates.
Leftists have devised a hierarchy of oppression through which they view different scenarios to determine how to react. Put another way, it’s a checklist to see how oppressed you are based on superficial factors like gender or race. Check enough boxes and, voila, you’re oppressed! But wait! There’s more! Not only will the hierarchy of oppression tell you if you’re oppressed, but it will show you how oppressed you are! And if your oppression score is lower than someone else’s, the other person gets the support because…oppression!
This makes Calvinball look like chess.
Needless to say, when you prioritize oppression by who allegedly has more of it, some people are still going to feel oppressed which doesn’t help the situation any. Then again, if Leftists were critical thinkers, we might not have Puddin’ Head Joe as President.
As it stands, Brittney Griner is coming home to a hero’s welcome while Russia gets a fucking arms dealer back and a former Marine remains in custody. Even before now, the Left has been writing pieces damning America for various aspects of our prison system or why our government should be supporting Griner because patriotism or what it says about America’s current social issues or how black women are treated in prison. Expect this trend to continue with more frequency and ever higher decibel levels.
But always keep in the back of your mind the Leftists cheering at Griner’s freedom have given zero fucks about Paul Whelan, as evidenced by a) how they haven’t talked about him before now, and b) how slowly the Biden Administration has been working towards getting him home. But when social justice overrules geopolitics and common sense, you’re bound to find yourselves in situations where the obvious answer gets rejected in favor of a worse deal than the Minnesota Vikings trading for Hershel Walker.
Oh, and one last thing. Viktor Bout is a fucking arms dealer.
Damn. Now I need some of the good eggnog…
Tag: vladimir putin
Leftist Lexicon Word of the Week
Unless you’ve been living under a rock this week (and given the housing situation in California, it might not be a bad housing choice), the big news of the past week was Russia attacking Ukraine. Come to think of it, maybe living under a rock wouldn’t be a bad alternative to what we’re seeing now. As reports come in from the area, the world is shocked at Vladimir “I Am Former KGB and All I Got Was This Lousy Country” Putin’s actions and are urging Russia to stop its aggressive actions against Ukraine.
You know, seeing all these Leftist embrace freedom from tyranny is great, but that’s a post for another time. Instead, let’s turn our attentions to our on-again, off-again frienemy, Russia.
Russia
What the Left thinks it means – a foreign power with whom we have a complicated relationship
What it really means – a foreign power whose leadership wants to restart the Cold War and win it this time
It seems weird that within many of our lifetimes we were on the brink of nuclear war. At any moment, Russia or the US could launch missiles at each other and blow us all to hell. (On the plus side, it would have increased property values in New Jersey.) Those fears were dashed when Ronald Reagan, Patron Saint of Preventing America from Becoming USSR West, ended the Cold War by…and this is a radical strategy…treating the Soviets as the bad guys instead of treating them like an annoying brother-in-law who is staying with us until he can find a job even though it’s been 4 years and he’s been fired 43 times from the International House of Food Poisoning and he’s dumber than a bag of shi….
Sorry. Got a little too close to home there.
Anyway, as you might expect, there were some Russians who weren’t too keen on America winning the Cold War, one of them being Putin. And as a former member of the KGB, he had a vested interest in bringing back the Soviet Union. Then, he became President of Russia twice with a Putin puppet in office in between so he could keep tabs on the country (oh, and to exert his power to get what he wanted). And he didn’t even have to become a lobbyist to do it!
It’s safe to say he hasn’t gotten over his desire to bring about Soviet Union II: Electric Boogaloo, and his latest excursion into Ukraine is the latest move in that direction. Of course, the Left, who has been treating Russia in a manner that would make Sybil look stable, has been utterly mystified by Putin’s actions to date. Good thing we have President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on the case or we’d be really fucked! Remember when the President used his foreign policy expertise to make the country better and safer?
Neither can I.
Considering President Biden was at the helm when the Afghanistan withdrawal shitshow happened, let’s just say I have more faith Joy Behar says something sensible than I have in Biden’s diplomatic prowess. This was only strengthened after listening to the speech he gave last week announcing what NATO (i.e. our military) would be doing or not doing and the approval of economic sanctions, including freezing Russian assets in America. In other words, CNN and MSNBC might be in financial trouble soon.
Seriously, these steps make sense, but only if you apply a Cold War mentality to the modern world. Sanctions only work if they cause actual economic pain for the ones being sanctioned. Freezing Russian assets and going after their banks only goes so far, thanks to the advent of cryptocurrency. For any of the Congresscritters reading this, let me break it down for you. Cryptocurrency can circumvent the sanctions because a) the transfer of currency doesn’t go through banks, thus rendering the sanctions against the Russian banks meaningless, b) the Russians have a decided technological advantage over America, which translates to real power in the real world, and c) I’m pretty sure I’ve lost you by this point and I don’t have the patience, crayons, or hand puppets to explain it. Let’s just say it doesn’t end well.
Then, there’s the oil. Russia is sitting on a sizeable oil reserve, possibly enough to impact global oil prices. And if I remember correctly, oil is pretty useful in America. OPEC tolerates us, as long as we keep buying their oil at whatever price they set. On the other side of the equation, we have oil reserves and the ability to drill for it, but we lack the will, or more precisely the current Administration lacks the will. It’s not all Joe Biden’s fault, but the Left has some ‘splainin’ to do on the oil front.
There’s a third element not many people I’ve heard talk on the subject so far has broached: China. Over the past decade or so, Russia and China have started getting chummy again. For those familiar with history and, thus, doomed to watch it be repeated, that’s a bad thing. With the current situation, China stands to make some serious geopolitical bank the longer the situation in Ukraine goes. China needs oil to keep building its global stature while still being allowed to pollute the world because of their status as a developing country in the eyes of the global climate change cult. And who might just have a surplus of oil they might be willing to sell to China? That’s right, kids. It’s Russia. Sanctions or no sanctions, Russia and China will figure out a way to keep the oil flowing in a favorable direction.
On top of that, China holds a significant chunk of our national debt. Although “experts” tell us China wouldn’t use this as a weapon in this situation, the fact is we can’t completely rule it out. (Then again, these same “experts” were caught by surprise by Putin invading Ukraine in spite of the obvious red flags, so we might be able to take their expertise with a Mount Everest sized grain of salt.) It’s not that far-fetched to think China would sell or even trade some of our national debt to Russia for oil or cryptocurrency because they share the same basic opinion of America.
They hate us.
Outside of the economic sanctions, which appear to be as meaningful as Bill Clinton’s wedding vows, there’s the kinda-sorta-maybe-but-not-really threat of military action if Putin doesn’t straighten up and fly right. Of course, we as in America won’t be going to war. Oh, no! It’s going to be NATO…which means America will be going to war, but under the NATO flag. So…what are we hoping to accomplish here?
To hear the Left talk about it, it’s to deter Russia militarily. After all, who would want to go to war with America and its allies? Well…Russia and China might. And with the rest of NATO aside from us being more cheerleaders than military leaders, it’s pretty much us as in the US against them, and I’m not liking our chances. Sure, we have the tools and the talent, but we still need oil and our political leaders were stupid enough to sell national debt to China, creating a perfect storm of dumbfuckery second only to Twitter.
This idea is strengthened by how our NATO allies have stepped up to the plate. And by stepped up, I mean ran the other way by and large. And, yes, I’m looking at you, Germany. Seriously, finally coming through with helmets for Ukrainians, but expecting them to go get them? I long for the days of the quiet competence of Jimmy Carter’s handling of the Iran hostage crisis after seeing the parade of idiocy at work here.
And all because the EU wants Russia’s oil.
Maybe it’s my Gen X cynicism talking here, but I don’t exactly trust Russia and Putin here. Years of living under threat of a nuclear winter that would make Ice Station Zebra look like Rio will do that to you. And with Putin wanting to get the band back together again to do a Cold War reunion tour, I think we need a lot more of my cynicism when looking at the Ukraine situation here and abroad.
Look at the number of Leftists coming out in support of Ukraine. To listen to them (and, really, I wouldn’t recommend it for long), Ukraine has a right to exist and their citizens need to be armed to protect themselves and fight for their freedom against the evil big bully Russia. President Biden himself even said America stands up to bullies! Yet, these same Leftists don’t apply the same sentiments to, oh I don’t know…gun owners, the Freedom Convoy, conservative speakers on college campuses, Israel, and so on. These Leftists are the very definition of sunshine patriots, who will stand up for our principles and freedoms at times like this, only to abandon them when they get in the way of their goals. And when you consider these same Leftists accused Russia of interfering in our elections for 4+ years with evidence so flimsy Scooby and the gang would figure out the mystery before the opening credits finished, I’m not willing to let them wrap themselves in the Ukrainian flag and lead the freedom parade.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, I have maintained the idea that Russia is a fair weather ally that needs to be scrutinized at regular intervals before taking them at their word. As Saint Ronald said, “Trust, but verify.” He was right then, and he’s right now.
Look, I know I’ve thrown a lot of information at you with this one, but it’s important to understand the various moving parts in this ever-changing situation. We can only hope our political and military leaders take the time to see the whole field and extrapolate viable strategies to mitigate loss.
So, we’re fucked.
Time to queue up “Two Tribes” by Frankie Goes to Hollywood.