Come on, you know it too. Of course it's Putin. This is just attack #1 and Vladimir Putin has twenty surprise attacks planned - each more surprising than the next(!).
War may come, but for now, it doesn't mean bombs, it means IT. Somewhere out there is a dimension we stare at eight hours a day, and in there, we're at war. Friends go to war with us online, why wouldn't enemies declare war too?
We came online before we understood the internet. Now the internet understands us better than we do. We've put everything online: power grids, banking, missile defense, private lives... All it takes is a team of hackers and everything we are becomes a weapon against us.
Biden has a 63% approval rating, the highest after 100 days since Reagan. Just enough time for a stratospheric rise before oil makes him plummet. No oil? Blame Biden. No cybersecurity? Blame Biden. It's Russia's fault? Blame Biden. "Why did we get rid of Trump? Trump can reason with the Russians!"
Russia is standing Obama's 'talk to your enemies' philosophy on its head. Obama's philosophy presupposes that enemies came to conclusions in good faith; but if enemies did, they'd let us know: Mitch McConnell didn't, Donald Trump didn't, Vladimir Putin REALLY didn't.
If Russia grinds recovery to a halt, Trump claims he can reason with Russia; and he certainly can because he's the candidate Russia picks.
Why Trump? Because Trump's stupid. Every decade a dumber Republican has an agenda more radical than the last, and once Democrats get power back they spend presidencies undoing the damage, damage made worse by the next Republican President; but there's no time for new Democratic policies, so a progressive generation grows up believing Democrats and Republicans are the same.
Democratic policies only work when they're applied with the same realism Republicans apply to everything. Republicans win because they know human beings: humans are gullible, scared, and lazy - everything about the Republican party plays to that.
But the best Presidents: Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, knew that about human beings too, but they knew that in spite of it, humans deserve better than they get, and through superhuman effort and bloody struggle, humans might get better.
Good faith is not blind faith, and in history, leaps of faith are always exploited. A President may believe the right things, but if his faith in humans is too pure, it's as if he has no faith at all.
Woodrow Wilson and Thomas Jefferson were considered acmes of Progressivism for their time, but what looks like progress always changes. Why? Because we don't dictate progress to reality, reality dictates it to us.
Thomas Jefferson doubled America's size. At the time the Louisiana Purchase seemed a historic alliance between two powers who'd thrown off monarchy. To who's benefit? Native Americans? Slaves in new slave states? A country so large it had a civil war with a million casualties?
Woodrow Wilson negotiated peace after World War I, broke empires up, bound the world together in a league of nations, 'made the world safe for democracy'. To who's benefit? People of color he thought unworthy of democracy? Small nations invaded by Nazi Germany? 85 million casualties? Jews?
Obama's faith was nowhere near that blind, but eight years after Iraq he did nothing for or against Arab Spring democracy's potential chaos. When Putin helped Assad stop it in Syria, Obama folded his arms again. It's wrong to influence foreign nations.... Putin annexes Crimea, carves up the Ukraine, and Obama shrugs. It's Russia's sphere of influence...
It's suspected Putin ordered 14 assassinations in the UK, neither Obama nor Cameron budged. A movement arose for Britain to leave the EU... similar movements pop up in every European country... no reporter knows where their money's coming from. What does Obama do? Sanctions that hurt the European economy much more than Russia's...
And then 2016...
Putin was testing Obama the whole time: what would it take for Obama to respond? What would it take for him to arm allies? The answer was... he never would. Interfering in other countries is morally wrong... it causes wars... and even if they interfere with us, people will eventually see that we're the good guys.... The moral arc of the universe bends toward justice....
In spite of being his opposite in so many ways, Obama was a Teddy Roosevelt, not a Franklin: mostly good, sometimes great, but he believed what he believed a little too much. Biden's now tested on a level beyond Obama, and he has a choice: an FDR who arms allies and fights covert wars which risk bringing us in, or a Wilson, who makes policies by ideals in the faith that people are better than they are, and thereby causes wars.
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