Didn't You mean to write: "couldn't" ?
We've already seen, during the spring 2022 Minsk-Istambul peace talks, that Zelensky doesn't have have a final say on this - the deal was already made between Russia and ukraine, but then Boris Johnson came to Kiev and canceled it.
I mean that in the strict literal sense that I believe Putin is taking it. While DO I agree the concept of "democracy**" is simply a way of having ultimate dictatorial control over a people, even Democratic leaders have SOME sort of authority, to the degree there is any authority in the world. I mean, we all understand the US president is mostly a figurehead, but at the same time when they call him "The Leader Of The Free World" they are referring to *some* type of authority that individual holds.
(**Democracy possibly was a legitimate way of government in the ancient Greek times but that is so different from today it shouldn't even be called by the same name. Pornography in that time was carving something like 8==> into a rock, and it probably wasn't harmful either)
What Putin is saying is that Zelensky can choose to come to the table right now and stop the fighting. He doesn't. Putin is a very pragmatic man. He doesn't waste time wringing his hands over "but why doesn't he tho?", pondering contradictions or wondering about possibilities, the way so many of us, myself included, do. He doesn't speculate on "is it the Jews?" or "is the UK controlling him" or "did Kushner control Trump" or "why did Ukrainian Christians let an atheist Jew run their country?" or "why would a pretty Russian girl want to become an ugly Pussy Riot degenerate?" he simply looks at the facts and interprets them directly. What we used to call Holding Frame. Zelensky can end this war tomorrow. He chooses not to, for whatever reason.
That's actually the proper way to answer the question. The alternative would be some type of 4chan answer of "No, Zelensky is just the porn star in the green t shirt that the blood worshipping demonic cabals send to beg for money from the west, what I would really need to do to achieve peace is to infiltrate the secret societies running the world and stab them through the heart with a blessed crucifix, thus freeing the enslaved populace, and then allow the Light of Christ to spread across the Ukraine and ride bareback atop my bear proclaiming victory against evil, while I await Christ's return to earth". That just comes across as insane and provides no real path to victory.
This war will end on the day the Ukrainian leader surrenders, and that is how Putin views it.
My brain really struggles to square how they have a complete Jewish dictatorship in Ukraine, and again and again I see videos of uniformed Ukrainians throwing nazi salutes. How are you a nazi fighting for a Jewish dictator? Maybe they're joking because Putin keeps calling them Nazis, so they just run with it? Wouldn't be the first time people appropriated an insult or slur and wore it with pride.
What is actually going on? Can someone with more understanding of Ukrainian culture explain this to me?
The "Nazi means an existential evil person who fundamentally hates Jewish people for no reason whatsoever and wants to genocide them" is a complete ret-conning of the actual German Socialist regime of the 1930s. In fact, no one really believed this anywhere until around 1980, when they began shaping this Holocaust narrative.
Winston Churchill, who was essentially the face of the Allied force opposing Germany (even moreso than Stalin who was the actual victor of the war, but didn't oppose Germany to the rhetorical degree England did)
never mentioned the term Holocaust once in his memoirs. Because it simply didn't exist, or to the degree it did, it was just a part of the normal killings that went on everywhere, including the Allied terrorist bombings on Dresden or the nuking of civilians in Japan.
The German movement was one of nationalism and a "Germany for Germans" movement and while it is undeniable that Jews were doing truly awful things in Germany to the Germans, and you can hunt and find people making angry statements at their outrageous actions, the rejection of the Jews from Germany was, relatively speaking, one of their more mild ejections compared to the other 108 historical instances.
Historians reported that Hitler was upset by the Kristalnacht retributions against Jewish businesses as being too violent and extreme, and really just wanted to send them somewhere like Madagascar where they couldn't hurt Germans, but you are not allowed to say anything other than "Nazi was existentially evil" today so unless you find some older printed books, you won't read that.
To the degree the German National Socialist movement was an anti-Jewish movement, it was really anti-communist, without most participants (or possibly without even the leadership) understanding that anti-Communist *is* essentially and implicitly anti Jewish.
So it is completely possible to have a nationalist plus Jewish movement, or a National Socialist plus Jewish movement. I mean, that is essentially what Israel is. Israel = Nazi, although it is weird to use those terms to define it, as NAZI refers to a specific period of time and was a strictly German movement, but otherwise the statement is true.
Now, one can criticize those "Ukrainian Nazis" as not being true socialist / nationalists, but just refer to the answer below. The masses, particularly in democracies, are not logical, and are completely controlled, and have no ability to recognize cognitive dissonance.
Zelensky is still popular in the west, NPCs continue to swallow whatever slop the mainstream serves them with no questions asked, and the boomer-conservatives idolize him. If something would to happen to him, even a genuine accident, it would be immediately used to push another $100 billion package. That's the downside - what would be the upside ?
This kind of stuff did really used to bother me, but then I accepted that you cannot expect the masses to apply logic.
If the past 5 years taught me anything (BLM/Covid/Ukraine) it is that people will accept any narrative, and, as Orwell said, will quickly accept the opposite position when that becomes the new narrative. There is zero cognitive dissonance.
Just yesterday, there was some sort of brief phone outage with AT&T cell service. I don't use my telephone every day, and wouldn't have even noticed this, and even if I did, First World Problem, so what. But a friend at lunch mentioned "the Big AT&T outage" to me and I saw an MSN article on it later that afternoon. I clicked on the story and the comments were FULL of completely absurd "
Russia or China did this" cringe comments. Of course, it turned out to be some sort of equipment upgrade problem (probably tied to the long term competency problem in the west) but the fact that
the masses were coming up with the propaganda answers without even being fed them shows how incredibly stupid they are. All I could imagine was the guys sitting around at the CIA and laughing thinking Look! We didn't even need to spread any disinfo! The Fatmericans just organically create it on their own! (10 years ago it would have been "
Mooslims are terrorizing our telephone services").
Yeah, Xi wants you to have trouble making a phone call today.
It's all so ridiculously stupid.
The mere fact that "conservatives" could like a character like Zelensky tells you everything you need to know. I mean, you can use your "logic" and ask them what is any single position he holds that appeals to you as a conservative? And of course they will have no answer other than emotion, but really
you don't need to know anything about their positions to answer the question.
Here's a thought experiment. Assume you know nothing at all about their positions. Explain to me how someone who claims to be "conservative" could "like" the person on the left over the person on the right. I mean, playing devil's advocate, even if Zelensky instituted some policies that were "based" how could somewhat take that person seriously as a leader?
