The Runback: 2 Minutes to Midnight
The Runback: 2 Minutes to Midnight
If you aren't at least worried about Russian aggression, you haven't been paying attention
Welcome to another week of The Runback. Have you been enjoying The Duckpin? Do you have comments or suggestions? Do you want to write for us? Let me know at theduckpin@gmail.com. And please be sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Thanks in advance.
News and Politics
Brian Griffiths on TheC4 and Bryan Nehman Show: I went on WBAL Radio to discuss my recent Baltimore Banner column that got everyone in a tizzy.
Cox Getting Clobbered In Latest Poll: There is no other way to describe it: Wes Moore is kicking Dan Cox’s ass in the latest publicly available poll.
October 2022 Republican Presidential Power Rankings: All eyes are on Ron DeSantis
Words Have Meanings: Words Like "Genocide" Can't Mean Whatever You Want Them to Mean
Shore Times Does It Again: Schifanelli-linked Publication Doing The Only Thing It Can Do: Snark and Obfuscate
ENDORSEMENT: The Duckpin has endorsed Muir Boda for Wicomico County Executive.
Sports
The Importance of 62: Aaron Judge is in rarified air. With one more home run, most will recognize him as the single-season home run king.
Let's Have a Real Playoff, Week 6: Even in this expanded field, the big boys get the big spots
The Monday Thought
Do you remember when Ronald Reagan said this?
The Soviet Union may have fallen. Russia may no longer be communist. But they remain the Evil Empire.
Ever since Donald Trump became President, his infatuation with Russia has driven policy on the right. The side of politics and policy most traditionally supportive of American exceptionalism and American leadership in the world has become the side that has unnatural deference to Vladimir Putin and an overwhelming skepticism of Russian aggression.
That CPAC tweet was a bridge so far they actually deleted it, a rare win for common sense from the ACU these days.
These and other figures of the right have become modern-day Walter Durantys, sympathizers to enemies of our country and parrots of their propaganda. They have publicly supported Putin’s methods. They have also publicly questioned the need to support our ally in Ukraine and have spun wild conspiracy theories about why we are defending themselves from Russian imperial aggression.
It is not a new phenomenon either. How many people on the right parrotted talking points that excused Edward Snowden and Julian Assange for their crimes?
Russia is, and remains, one of our two most relevant geopolitical adversaries, the other being China. And yet, so many people who once touted American exceptionalism defer world influence and relevancy to non-American actors, strongmen like Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán, who are the antithesis of the American system of governance.
If you think this is going to get better, you’re wrong.
This situation keeps seemingly keeps getting further and further down the path of no return, as Paul Miller points out for The Dispatch:
The deepening crisis on the battlefield and the open involvement of America and Europe mean that Putin will have a hard time finding an acceptable exit short of victory. He is victim to sunk costs: Having lost so many Russians, and lost so much personal and national prestige, he must vindicate their blood and Russian honor and his own legacy by trying to push on to victory. He has repeatedly told his people that this is a conflict not against Ukraine but against the United States and the West. Backing down would be an acknowledgment that the United States defeated Russia—without losing a single soldier. For Putin, losing a major war will cost him his legacy, his power, and likely his life. The war is not existential for Russia, but it is for Putin: He wins or dies.
Ukrainian intelligence thinks that the likelihood of Russian introduction of nuclear weapons into the war is high.
If the Russians truly let the genie out of the bottle, then all bets are off as to what happens next. The Biden Administration claims that they have a plan that will not escalate the war1. But how do you make that guarantee once nuclear weapons, strategic or tactical, get used?
The U.S. duty to respond will only escalate when and if Ukraine’s accelerated application to NATO, which has been formally submitted, is accepted.
The point of all of this is not to get you thinking about nuclear annihilation to start your week2, but to merely point out that the threats the United States faces right now are real and are consequential. And much like before World War II3 or during the Cold War, we will face threats both foreign and domestic; foreign in the way of Russia's armed forces and domestic from the plethora of enemy sympathizers polluting our body politic.
We may really be at two minutes to midnight4.
Possibly wiping out the Black Sea Fleet. Though how that doesn’t generate an esclatory response is beyond me. Of course, some are arguing that World War III has already started and if you buy into that theory then what’s the difference?
Happy Monday!
That crew also loved screaming “America First!” except they were Nazi sympathizers instead of the generic strongman sympathizers of today.
Ironically, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has us at 100 seconds to midnight on the Doomsday Clock. We’re here because of nuclear weapons and climate change, which is pointless considering that the entire point of the clock was to gauge the likelihood of nuclear war. Considering that Jerry Brown is the Executive Chairman of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, that probably isn’t all that surprising is it?