Mad Dogs And Englishmen

What Putin has done is going to be an absolute catastrophe for the Russian economy. I have no idea how he expects to withstand the fallout. Repression can only achieve so much. I think they somehow imagined winning quickly & easily, avoiding the harshest Western sanctions. https://t.co/Y1Mob7igEf

— Michael Kofman (@KofmanMichael) February 27, 2022

5am and the run on ATMs begins in Russia https://t.co/uYqADASMrI

— Olga Lautman 🇺🇦 (@OlgaNYC1211) February 27, 2022

The panel on MTP mostly agreed even the SWIFT sanctions won’t be swift and won’t be absolute enough.

Somebody forgot to tell the Russians.

The same panel said there was nothing the Allie’s could do to stop trading in rubles. Well, maybe not directly:

Again, a decade ago, the rate was 30 rubles to the dollar. It's set to open 171 to the dollar tomorrow. https://t.co/yXdVX6b4Xk

— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) February 27, 2022

Meanwhile, we are proving we don’t need Russian help to be stupid, conspiratorial, and weak. Compare and contrast with Ukraine at your leisure. (And no, it’s not all of us; but it is a major political party. And here’s where I remind you some of those yahoos were in office before Trump.)

All of it mixes into a toxic stew of discourse online that @lisackaplan told me could “further legitimize false or misleading claims” about the Ukraine conflict “in the eyes of the American people.”https://t.co/3gypy016oQ pic.twitter.com/Fhm9fzTnzP

— Davey Alba (@daveyalba) February 25, 2022

I think “the American people” is a vague and glittering generality there, meant to mark “us” off from “them” without any fury evidence except the implicit “Trump won in 2016!” Yeah, not the explanation for all of Americans it’s supposed to be. Yes, it’s a “toxic stew,” but if it literally wasn’t for Twitter, I’d be wholly unaware of it. And being aware of it now, I discard it.

And as @etbrooking told us: “Putin embodies the strength that Trump pretended to have... For these individuals, Putin’s actions aren’t a tragedy — they’re a fantasy fulfilled.” https://t.co/3gypy016oQ

— Davey Alba (@daveyalba) February 25, 2022

Yes, that’s how they see Putin. That’s also how we know who the crazies are. They aren’t exactly hiding in plain sight, IOW.

I just come back to this:

Zelensky puts to shame the American politicians who cowered for years in fear of being called silly names in incoherent, subliterate tweets. https://t.co/M2wWjLSnBn

— George Conway🌻 (@gtconway3d) February 27, 2022

It’s another way to keep the pro-Putin American faction (there were those who argued Hitler wasn’t that bad in America and England) down to the howling of mad dogs. Which is really all it is.