Fascinating.
Our progressive friends seem to be crystalling their narrative – the evil neocon cabal has goaded Georgia into an unprovoked attack on Russia’s reasonable peacekeeping occupation of Southern Ossetia.
Granted that some of the reflexive anti Russian sentiments expressed here have been silly and facile, it is nevertheless possible to make some kind of objective judgement as to which side in this connflict better represents the progessive ideal.
Putin’s Russia is a society in retrograde. The embryonic freedoms won after the fall of Communism are being extinguished one by one. Volodya Putin has instituted an authoritarian regime with fascistic tendencies. It is now an informal crime to run for political office in Russia without the blessing of the kremlin. Independent media is frightened into silence. Even gay rights parades are disallowed.
I am reminded of the curious policy of the women’s rights movement. Knee jerk opposition to any vestige of the domestic patriarchy, as represented by the current US administration, prevents any statement of solidarity with oppressed muslim women.
So, our progressive friends seem to be poised to bless Russian militarism because it seems to be oppossed to what they perceive as US militarism.
Fascinating.