“Winston, you have to stop with this warmongering, do you hear me? The Nazis just want your little island. And all of Europe. And to enslave millions. And to murder, rape and loot. And you come here, make a fuss about that inconvenience, and smoke your stinking cigars in my garden. How dare you??”
The Happy Hermit 
👍🏻
…and did you ever say thank you for all the guns and wepons we se send you by our lend and lease agreement for which your country will pay till the end of the 1970ies.
Andreas, this is very clever but not very accurate, in my opinion.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy is no Winston Churchill, and Vladimir Putin is no Adolf Hitler, he’s not even Joseph Stalin. Putin may well be the Antichrist with nukes, and Sir Winston would never have disrespected our President Franklin Roosevelt, especially before all the world, even if Roosevelt had been someone as unlikeable as our President Donald Trump. And if nobody has noticed, the United States of America is broke, and the Communist Chinese own the mortgage on our country.
We’re all in deep trouble, my friend. It’s an especially good time to pray.
Prayers don’t work.
And if they did, they wouldn’t work either, because then our foes would be praying too, for exactly the opposite of our prayers.
Prayers work, Andreas. I’m living proof of that. They just don’t work the way we selfish souls think they do, as if God were a genie in a lamp and our prayers were wishes that He has to grant. Prayers don’t change God, they change us. Anyway, prayers are all we have left . . . or they soon will be.
By the way, I wish that you would leave politics out of your very nice travel and history blog. No good EVER comes from discussing politics. Politics keep getting injected everywhere and it’s bringing the stress level up so high. At times I almost consider not having a computer or cell phone anymore and only watching 1960s rerun shows on TV.
Many years ago, I started having one day of the week without internet, without news, without a phone: https://andreasmoser.blog/2019/06/25/shabbat/
It’s always the most relaxing and most rewarding day of the week!
And when people ask me what I would do if I had a million dollars or euros and would never need to work again, I know exactly what I would do: Delete my Facebook, Twitter, BlueSky and similar accounts, and pretty much withdraw from the interweb. I would just go outside and talk to real people. Or go into the forest and not talk to anybody at all.
Sadly though, as long as I still need to toil as a lawyer, I need the interweb not only to communicate and research, but also for clients to find me.
My first observation is (nearly) all the former rich, powerful countries are ruled by authoritarians to various degrees. They all want to control speech and thoughts and enrich themselves and their friends, with little regard to normal citizens. Now I will proactively reject the Dishonest Debaters, and certainly am not arguing they are all the same. Putin is objectively more evil than any of the western European leaders.
Second, people like Putin with all his wealth and power of a huge country with vast natural wealth and innately brilliant people, expends that power on brutality instead of building technology that can improve Russia and the entire world. Likewise the western leaders have Zero grand plans or ideas. How about eliminating microplastics or perfecting cheap unlimited energy, instead of enriching themselves and their friends.
Humans today could have great vision and we waste it on valueless trappings of material wealth.
You touch on an interesting point that always puzzles me about Russia.
There is a country that can easily enchant the world with its nature, its music, its literature, its art, its ethnic variety, its scientific achievements, chess, and a certain mystique, which – never having been to Russia myself, but to other countries of the former Soviet Union – is not merely a fabrication of the imagination.
Yet, the same country thinks it must impress the world with brute force and cheesy displays of manliness, like some lovesick guy in puberty.
Your mentioning of Putin’s wealth reminds me of the thorough research done by Alexei Navalny.
I still watch those videos from time to time, in awe of the meticulousness and the courage: https://andreasmoser.blog/2021/03/04/navalny/
I have seen some of the Russian oligarch videos and wonder how they can be made. Western countries lack this much detail of their leaders.
In the USA, so-called conservatives insult protestors and claim they must be paid.
While the same so-called conservatives insist Billionaires are in the White House doing God’s Work for free.
Most of the world seems lost and incapable of logical thought. So many contradictions and so much hypocrisy.
I Think Donald Trump Is a Convicted Rapist