Long lost DUer BrentWil, whoever you are, wherever you are, you nailed it back in 2014.

[Tommy Carcetti]

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10024598940

Right after Putin moved his “little green men” into Crimea.

So sorry many of the DUers at the time were so quick to mock you and laught at you about Russia's intentions and actions back then.

But you were right, and they were wrong.

[Delphinus]

1. Wow.

I was around at the time but must admit the post wasn't on my radar. It sure brought out a lot of talk.

[blue-wave]

2. He was spot on correct

and if I would have read his post I would have agreed with him. Some people are cruel and don't like different opinions. This is just another lesson in "keeping an open mind."

[LiberatedUSA]

3. The thread comments didn't age well for sure. N/t

[Phoenix61]

12. No they didn't. Not at all. nt

[themaguffin]

85. Nope, not so much.

[hunter]

4. That was fun. I usually click on these sorts of links to see if I made an ass of myself.

Once again, I was pleasantly surprised. I did not. (No, I'm not linking to old threads where I did make an ass of myself...)

Anyways, I'm still here. Many people in that thread are gone.

I will say that Germany's hopes that Russia would magically transform itself into a reasonable and modern 21st century economy were disastrously misguided.

[DFW]

27. Many of those hopes are Gerhard Schroeder's doing

After he lost the election, he went to work for Putin's energy conglomerate. As an ex-chancellor, he was expected to have excellent connections, and have his hand on the pulse of the Russian nation, including Putin. Obviously, it was in his personal interest to send back messages that Putin was a slightly ruthless, but serious businessman, concerned with money, not conquest.

This was, of course, the message that Putin wanted him to convey. It's exactly the message Putin's American stooges were told to convey. After all, he wasn't going to start the re-conquest of the Soviet Union if western armed forces were staring him eyeball to eyeball.

Germany is the last country in western Europe that wanted to hear any mention of armed conflict anyway. After the Second World War, the destruction it brought Germany, and the successful raising of generations of pacifists (at least in the West), one of which I married, the Germans were the last country in the est that wanted to be told that they might need to defend themselves against an armed aggressor. They reacted as our grandfathers taught them to: we aren't interesting in fighting anybody! YOU (America, NATO) do it! Germany hoped that Russia would see things the way they did. After all, Russia suffered mightily in that war, too, didn't they?

But Germany should have listened to someone they thought they were through having to listen to: Hitler's pal and Luftwaffe boss, Hermann Göring. From his prison cell at Nürnberg, Göring laid it all out word for word. Putin took it to heart, while the west just left it as the rantings of some old ex-Nazi. What we forgot, or ignored, was that this ex-Nazi was telling the world EXACTLY how they managed to get as far as they did. Read it carefully, because he is telling the story of his rise to power, and how he started an unnecessary war:

“Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or fascist dictatorship, or a parliament or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peace makers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

By the way, my father-in-law WAS that "slob on a farm." Literally. He did NOT come back in one piece.

[hunter]

78. Schroeder wanted to believe and his personal wealth depended on it.

If you believe your ship is unsinkable you skimp on the lifeboats and don't look out as you should for icebergs.

Maybe he thought Russia would become an authoritarian technocracy like China.

[Crunchy Frog]

89. I recall seeing that quote here a LOT at the start of the Iraq invasion.

It has a universality to it.

[DFW]

91. It has a particular meaning to my family, of course.

My father-in-law was a 17 year old German farmer in 1941, when he was drafted. He returned to his farm in 1943 minus a leg that he left in Stalingrad. He literally WAS Göring's "slob on a farm."

Useless as a farmer after the war, he took dourses in banking, and joined a small rural bank that made loans to farms. He stayed there for the rest of his life. When he died, I went with his daughter (by then, my wife) to his funeral. I was blown away by how many people came. There were FOUR HUNDRED or more people, ninety per cent of which were other farmers he had helped stay afloat after the war.

Germany had compulsory military service for men during his lifetime. His most fervent wish was for all his grandchildren to be girls, so that they would never be drafted into the military. It was a wish fate was to grant him.

[unc70]

5. So many of those DUers have been banned

I just checked the profiles of those posters, and a majority have been banned, revoked, flagged, or otherwise removed from the DU community. Includes a lot of old familiar names.

[Bev54]

8. But some are still here....

[MerryHolidays]

6. That was eye-opening to say the least. nt

[wnylib]

26. I had the same kinds of responses in 2020.

During the summer of that election year, I posted my concerns in a few threads (But not in an OP of my own) that Trump would not only refuse to concede if Biden won, but would take physical action to hold onto the White House and prevent Biden from being inaugurated. I said specifically that he would call on his militia thugs to attack the process in some way and then declare a national emergency to invoke martial law and deny the election results.

I was not idly speculating on that. My warnings were based on several indications from Trump - his repeated comments that he could be president for life and that he was "owed" additionalb years due to the Mueller investigation. My concerns were further based on Trump's personality disorder and demonstrated character (or lack if it), on Madeleine Albright's book, "Fascism, A Warning" about how democracies die, on books and articles about the growth of militias from former (and sometimes current) military and police.

I got responses from people who said, patronizingly, that I needed a break from the Internet, that my posts were hyperbole, that Trump was all talk but basically a coward, that MAGAs were all couch potatoes who would not respond to a call to action. My favorites were the posts that said that Trump could not do any of the things that I feared because that would be illegal, as if that mattered to Trump.

I had read pertinent books and articles. I had listened to what Trump said. I had watched his behavior. I could have drawn wrong conclusions from those sources and wish that I had been wrong. But it was an informed opinion. How much information did the ridiculers have?

[Tommy Carcetti]

30. Not to toot my own horn here, but...

I posted this in June 2020:


https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213640143

[wnylib]

36. As we know, you were spot on.

There were also several media outlets warning people that the outcome wouldn't be known by morning because of the mail in votes. They said that it would look initially like Trump won because most of the mail in ballots were from Democrats. Some media, like NPR, warned that Trump would take advantage of that delay to try to declare a win for himself.

So on election night, I we posting reminders of that to people here who were getting discouraged by the early returns.

The warning signs were there. Some of us saw them and some didn't. Some saw them and rejected them because they were too scary to accept.

[eppur_se_muova]

68. So, so sad that you could not be completely right -- RBG did not get her retirement.

Think of how different things would be right now if she had.

[Crunchy Frog]

90. Challenging the prevailing DU narrative is always a risky business.

Lots of groupthink on here, and a tendency to shout down anything that dissents from it.

[senseandsensibility]

92. Exactly.

MANY years ago, I wrote something mildly critical of Keith Olberman, and you would have thought I'd called the Pope a heretic or something.

[wnylib]

93. So I've noticed.

[oldsoftie]

7. It was always frowned upon by many to criticize President Obama in any way

Inaction on Crimea & the Syrian "red line" were 2 cases it was warranted

[The Magistrate]

9. There Was Some Serious Trollery About Then, Sir

The jury system wasn't quite equal to it. People were citing openly neo-nazi types like The Saker, circulating dummied up pictures, even managing to piggy-back support for Putin's codification of hate for homosexuals onto their reputations gained by 'opposing imperialism and Clinton's manipulation in Ukraine'.

Not our forum's finest hour.

[Hekate]

47. KnR your post, Sir

[Celerity]

57. The Saker - Blind Loyalty, Disguised as Defiance

https://euvsdisinfo.eu/the-saker-blind-loyalty-disguised-as-defiance/



A Network of the Kremlin’s Obedient Followers

The Saker of the Vineyard is a blog by a retired Swiss Red Cross officer, residing in Florida and defending Russia against an enigmatic Empire. The Saker has become a franchise for an international network of pro-Kremlin outlets, with branches in German, Italy, Latin America, and Russia. A Saker is a sort of falcon, falco cherrug, endemic to the steppes of Eurasia. The name of the blog is an anagram of the blogger’s name.

The Saker connects Russian nationalist groups and outlets with North American anti-Semite groups; Russian communists with French and Italian right-wing activist. Devote Christians with aggressive thugs. It’s a successful franchise in disinformation.

So what is The Saker? Let’s start with the original, English language version of the site. It’s registered in Iceland. The blog started as a humble Blogspot site in 2007 and developed slowly into an international brand. The site’s tagline is “Stop the Empire’s War on Russia”. The author describes himself:

Disrespectful of social dogmas and norms, oppositional and defiant towards authority, rebellious and aggressive by nature, deeply contrarian on an almost knee-jerk level, libertarian in outlook.

The Saker sounds like a really impressive guy; with integrity. “Defiant towards authority”. Wow. We all want to be like The Saker. His defiance is, unfortunately, very much one-sided. He is devotedly aligning himself with anything that the Kremlin says. Ukraine is ruled by Nazis; The Baltic States are Aggressive; Russia is bringing peace to Syria. Virtually anything the Kremlin lies about is repeated, faithfully, by The Saker: MH17, Skripal – even the Eurovision Song Contest is narrated the Kremlin way.

snip

[Harker]

10. The map in question isn't available.

I'd like to see it.

Regardless, that's a pretty nasty bandwagon in response, even if Russia was depicted as having an Atlantic coast.

[Tommy Carcetti]

13. The DU Ukraine-Russia Wars of 2014-15 were something else.

Many of the participants are long gone. A few are still here.

Those with the proper foresight then were able to identify the hallmarks of Russian disinformation and recognized its use immediately during the 2016 election.

[Harker]

17. I couldn't help but wince.

I see occasional vitriol here, but can't recall anything such as that.

[Tommy Carcetti]

18. It came out in other places, too, but mostly in the Primary Forums during election years.

This was one of the few issues that I can recall where there was such vitriol in General Discussion.

[bigtree]

11. wow-oh-wow

...the replies which made out like the poster was trolling.

Not their finest hour either, although the trolling was very real. Broken clock or prescient?

[Pluvious]

76. Including William Pitt, H2O Man, and our dear malaise

To be fair, Hindsight is an exact science

It’s easy to get things wrong when predicting the future,
when what seems so obvious at the time proves to be based on
underpinning assumptions and circumstances which can radically change.

I never, ever believed the Groper would be elected.

Lost a Benjamin over that, heh.

[bigtree]

80. it was a massive troll era

...without a whole lot of awareness of that fact.

I notice the ones no longer here most. Not passing a bunch of judgment on friends I know well here. I mean H2O man? Good dude. Definite pass.

[Tommy Carcetti]

83. In general, being anti-war is a very good thing to be.

I consider myself a pacifist in general. I protested the Iraq War, and I have zero regrets about protesting the Iraq War because the Iraq War was 100% unjustified. I believe in diplomacy over first-strike military action at all times.

And so, I totally get not wanting to get rah-rah over the thought of war or military action. Even with Ukraine, I've resisted the urge to treat it like a video game. Real people are getting hurt and dying, and that's always going to be a very somber and tragic thing no matter what, regardless of context.

Of course, being anti-war does not mean you should be anti-unchecked aggression, or that you need to refrain from supporting or even assisting a country that has been unjustly attacked and trying to defend itself. And that's what's been happening with Ukraine since 2014.

Now, not everyone got that fact in 2014. A few were slower on the uptake than others. It happens.


But everyone--and I mean everyone--who was here in 2014 and still here in 2022 should understand that now.

[bigtree]

86. yeah. just a few years after Pres. Obama's 'reset' efforts

...being anti-Putin was the denizen of some unsavory republicans, then and now.

Rapprochement with our nuclear rival was also conversely seen as a measure of peace by many notable liberals, so I get the anti-war bent in rejecting suggestions that Russian aggression toward its border neighbor was something which should derail a softening of that repairing relationship with the U.S..

As NATO was trying to curtail Russian troop movements into Ukraine in response to elections in Crimea, the 2010 'reset' initiative of the Obama administration had to basically stop in its tracks and reverse.

I think that caught some folks in between aspirations for peaceful relations with Russia (ie. nukes) and what looked like the potential resumption of the Cold War. Pres. Obama agreed to expand missile protection to several former USSR occupied territories and states, and Russia simmered and sulked.

It wasn't hard to be caught up in the new detente, and have misjudged Putin's reneging on those understandings the U.S. had been working to get agreement on. After all, NATO was in a period where questions had surfaced about it's post Cold War purpose.

Many thought the new oppositional stance was opportunistic to keep NATO in place, ostensibly threatening Russia (remembering the virtual ring of missile defenses around Russia which they said threatened them) or perhaps, that's what the propaganda was pushing at the time.

Easy to lose the thread of the anti war sentiments of the past in the face of renewed Russian agression toward its former captive neighbors.

[elleng]

14. Oh my GOODNESS, DUers were not only not kind, were

FOOLISH!

[Harker]

15. Always an ugly combination. n/t

[RussellCattle]

25. The name calling is remarkable, as is the questioning of his democratic bona fides.

We must have been thicker skinned back then or the alerts would have blossomed.

[Sympthsical]

16. I like the flag avatars with the responses

That's darkly amusing.

But yeah. That's kind of the thing. Immediate political necessity isn't generally great for gauging likelihood of outcomes. I remember at the time in other political spaces, people perceived any warnings about inaction in the face of Putin's moves as an attack on President Obama in some way.

The politics of the moment required a misreading of the moment.

There are lessons in that.

[yaesu]

19. A blast from the past. Well deserved shoutout for sure. Definitely should have done full scale

sanctions back then but don't think it would have gotten the support it has now. Crimea was like the annexation of Austria, this invasion is like the invasion of Poland as far as the Wests response in the past, though sanctions are the weapon in a post nuke age.

[rainin]

20. That was interesting. How did you find that post?

There must be many of these that get lost to time. Well done for bringing it back. It doesn't look good for those hostile commenters.

[Tommy Carcetti]

21. Occasionally something will spark a memory of back in the DU Ukraine wars of 2014-15.

There are plenty of others like that.

[MontanaMama]

22. Kick.

Some of those comments are awful...and unnecessary. Wow.

[ismnotwasm]

23. Holy shit

Disturbing

[gab13by13]

24. All propaganda works,

99% of people don't know the difference between a fence and a wall.

There is actually a motive for calling the southern border fence a wall.

A blast from the past, that's a reminder to always debate the issue and not the person.

[spudspud]

28. Wow. Lot of asshole responses to BrentWil back then. /nt

[Thtwudbeme]

29. Interesting-

Thanks for posting.

I don't even remember reading that.

[roamer65]

31. Spot on.

[BlackSkimmer]

32. Fascinating.

[Warpy]

33. I didn't weigh in, I thought it was 50-50 at that point

but that the Russians would likely try to creep over the eastern half of the country because back then, that part of the country was very pro Russian.

The annexation of Crimea and attempted theft of Donetsk changed that. People realized over the next few years as the war in Donetsk raged on and the Russians were pushed back that Putin was expansionist and that he'd steal everything.

Ukraine wasn't a united country in 2013. It was in 2015. Putin's first invasion featuring soldiers with no insignia so he could claim they were Ukrainians loyal to Yanukovych and Mother Russia did what years of rapprochement, diplomacy, and shared governance had not. Now there are vids of ethnic Russians from eastern Ukraine speaking in halting Ukrainian and refusing to speak Russian.

So congratulations, Pootie, it's a new, strong and united country on your doorstep and now they all hate your guts.

[DFW]

34. I was subjected to a very heavy dose of that treatment in the summer of 2008.

There was rampant (and varied) speculation as to whom Obama was going to pick for his VP. The morning of the day of the announcement, slated for the late afternoon, came, and I was in the USA that day.

Through a strange set of circumstances, I happened to find out early in the morning, and posted about it. I suspected it would not please everyone, so I couched it in the form of "has anyone else heard, by any chance, that Obama has picked Joe Biden?" Well the board came down on me like a ton of bricks:

"What makes you so special?"
"Is that you, Barack?"
"Eating shit instead of cereal for breakfast again?"
"Your choice has less chance than a snowball in hell!"

That kind of thing. It showed me a somewhat darker side to DU than I was used to, but then that was my first primary season at DU in the first place. I saw afterward, especially again in 2016 and again 2020, how ugly DU can get during primary season. In 2016, I even left DU for half a year after a particularly ugly attack from a group of Sanders supporters. Management sided with them, and I said, fair enough, your board. Most of them soon left to form JPR anyway, and things gradually returned to what they were before. So, then, did I.

After the announcement was made that Obama's choice WAS, in fact, Joe Biden, ONE, count 'em, ONE poster came back to my thread and said, "wow, you were right! I hope you get a few apologies." I didn't.

In case anyone isn't familiar with the story, what happened was this: I did not find out because some deeply placed contact at the DNC or the Obama campaign had called me at 8:00 in the morning to let me in on the secret. It was far more banal than that. My younger nephew, living in northern Virginia, used to go swimming at a local indoor pool almost every morning. He was 18 years old, and working for some Texas Democrats outfit's Washington office that summer. He is half Japanese, and was at that age still somewhat diminutive and has strong Asian features. He was alone in the pool at 7:00AM except for two office workers from Biden's Senate office. They were supposed to keep quiet, of course, but all they saw was this "Asian kid," quiet and reserved, as the only other person in the pool. They just assumed that he was much younger, and spoke no English. They jabbered on and on about how excited they were for Senator Biden, blah, blah, having no idea that they were leaking it all to a very politically savvy 18 year old from Virginia. He came home, told his dad, who immediately called me at around 8:30 in the morning.

I figured I'd share it with DU, make us the coolest kids on the block, though I couldn't reveal HOW I knew. That wouldn't have been fair to the Biden office workers, who thought they WERE keeping the silence they had been sworn to. I didn't reveal HOW I knew for over 5 years. But OOPS. What a bad move! I got roundly punished for giving the board the scoop before the rest of the country.

It sure taught me a lesson!! Be careful to whom you do a favor. They might not like it.

[Elessar Zappa]

39. Primary season is horrible here.

2008 and 2016 especially. I actually thought the 2020 primaries were fairly civil, believe it or not. Most of us recognized the end goal, which was the ousting of TFG.

[Tommy Carcetti]

45. A lot of the troublemakers left mid 2016 by refusing to agree to the terms of service.

A few were tombstoned a little before that time.

Not so surprisingly, they were also the people who were so often taken in by Russian disinformation on issues like Ukraine.

Funny thing is, while they claimed it was a Sanders thing in 2016, looking back it really wasn't. There were still plenty of Sanders supporters in 2020 who were overwhelmingly civil and respectful and didn't throw a fit when he didn't get the nomination.

I think it was much more about dividing and trouble making and ulterior motives at play than actually supporting their favorite candidate.

[Boomerproud]

43. Grateful you gave DU a second chance after the uncalled for nastiness.

We are richer for your presence.

[DFW]

62. Thank you for that

There are still those who disagree!

[Hekate]

46. KnR your post

[Thtwudbeme]

52. What a great story! I don't recall reading that- I DO have a question for you though

Are you the DUer that let your dog poop on Dick Cheney's yard in Houston, or was that DemoTex?

I remember laughing so hard at that- but can't remember who it was!

[DFW]

60. I'm afraid I can't claim credit for that one

I didn’t even know Cheney had a house in Houston. I only knew about the ones in Dallas and Iran, and have visited neither.

[mahina]

35. Amazing how many people who challenged through that assertion did not agree to the terms of service

,have been flagged for review or had their posting privileges revoked. Including someone I liked.

Maybe the OP came back with another name. We can hope.

—

Aaand now I read the responses above in which I see my comment was not needed. Ah well.

[Meowmee]

37. Good for him

I certainly would not have laughed at him. It has been obvious for many years what p's intentions were even before this.

[senseandsensibility]

38. Wow. WillPitt

responded, and not well. Anyone remember him? I usually liked him.

[tenderfoot]

41. I think he's still around but I never see him cited by anyone. LOL.

eom

[Hekate]

48. His account is still up, but Admin notes he never agreed to sign the new TOS, so he can't post.

[tenderfoot]

61. I've yet to see anyone share one article of his on any progressive site, twitter, etc.

Which tells me no one other than himself takes him seriously.

[Hekate]

49. He went a wee bit over the top with his ...

…POSUCS rant. Memorable.

[StevieM]

66. Could you clarify what POSUCS means? (eom)

[Hekate]

67. Shortest possible version. ...

He married a woman with a serious chronic disease. ACA passed. He and his new wife moved to another state without checking anything about how that state handles ACA. He signed up for a new health insurance provider without checking anything about what medications were in their formulary of approved medications. Did I mention her disease was serious and chronic?

He never did like Obama. Troubles with the insurer and their formulary were somehow all Obama’s fault. He went absolutely apeshit here, he went ballistic. He called Obama a Piece of Shit Used Car Salesman (which we have abbreviated to POSUCS) because ACA did not live up to his single-payer fantasies of how the world ought to be.

The thing is, there were literally hundreds of DUers who replied to his rant in an attempt to assist and to inject some reality. I was one of them — every single year my husband goes thru this routine regarding medications, and it’s just what you have to do if you have some kind of chronic ailment.

Fellow DUers offered sympathy and some pretty valuable ideas, but all to no avail. I hope that ultimately it all worked out for Will and wife.

[BlackSkimmer]

51. I remember him, and I didn't like him.

If I remember correctly, he threatened another DUer.

[niyad]

74. You remember quite correctly. That DU'er is no longer here.

[Cha]

55. Look who's talking..

💙💛

[senseandsensibility]

56. ?

Am I missing something?

[Cha]

58. Not You! But who

you were referring to in your post.

Sorry, I thought it would be clear.

💙💛

[senseandsensibility]

59. Okay, sorry if I was slow on the

uptake. It's all good!

[Cha]

65. lol.. No worries!

💙💛

[tenderfoot]

40. I'm happy to see that many of the mockers are long gone

[demmiblue]

42. He did. I am also amazed at the pettiness of DUers responding in that thread...

eight years later! Lol!

[senseandsensibility]

44. BrentWil still has an active account.

Hope he reads this.

[Takket]

50. wow.........

i wonder why so many people were so quick to dismiss him and basically call him stupid? Especially after Crimea? Very strange. I know at the time there was a lot of talk that Crimea was mostly russian anyway and they want a black sea port, and this is no big deal so we'll just let it go... maybe we all just bought into putin's propaganda???????

[Hekate]

53. Amazing that about 30 of those posters are gone. That said, if there was one Obama decision ...

… that I really did not agree with, it was his decision to turn his back on Ukraine.

When the USSR broke up, it was a big news item that the new country was persuaded by the US and our NATO allies to give up their nukes in exchange for promises to protect Ukraine from any aggressive enemies. It was a big deal because the USSR had used Ukraine as its launch pad, so to speak, and there were myriads of nukes there — so great opportunity to do some clean-up, which as a child of the Cold War really thrilled me.

But the other part that I never forgot was our promise to protect them. How did that get forgotten so soon?

Which left it to Trump to really betray Ukraine by blackmailing Zelensky.

[BlueLucy]

69. +100000

[Cha]

54. And, Check the Profiles..

What to make of that and their views on the thread?

💙💛

[MustLoveBeagles]

63. K&R

[moondust]

64. Puzzled by Germany.

One might think the Europeans with the closest ties to Russia would have been following Putin's behavior most closely. I don't know if the White House and Congress assumed Germany or some other NATO member would sound the alarm if they sensed any danger ahead.

In March the current German Foreign Minister acknowledged Germany's mistake:

~
Despite Russia's annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014 and a Russian-influenced armed conflict in eastern Ukraine in the following years, Germany increased its dependence on Russian energy imports and also approved the construction of the controversial Russia-to-Germany Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.

"We knew, or we could have known, that it was not only stupid to place all our security policy cards on just one country, but that it also wasn't a smart idea to put them on that particular country," Habeck said. "We have to acknowledge that we acted wrongly in the past."
~
https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-annalena-baerbock-russia-energy-risk-2014/

I got Putin wrong, says chastened German President

[Kaleva]

70. UKR didn't have the military then that it has today

After Crimea, UKR adopted western military doctrine and the US provided considerable help in training the new force. You see the results of that aid today.


One can't aquire a cadre of experienced and competent NCOs in just a few weeks. It takes years.

[orangecrush]

71. 100% TRUE

Last edited Thu May 12, 2022, 12:50 PM - Edit history (1)

And I am embarrassed, but honest.

At that time, I had heard of disinformation, but refused to believe the level russia had taken it to, I just didn't think it was possible.

Case in point, the doctored photos of "nazis" in Ukraine.

Trump's election quickly pulled back the curtain and revealed Putin as the little man at the controls.

My apology is useless.

My donations to Ukraine relief and body armor are not.

[chia]

72. You have to have character to be embarrassed, courage to apologize, compassion to donate.

You have goodness in you, be kind to yourself.

[orangecrush]

77. Thank you

[chia]

81. You're welcome :)

[senseandsensibility]

84. Unless I'm missing something, you

didn't respond in that thread. Are you apologizing for your feelings at the time about Russian propaganda? It's gracious of you to do so. I have to admit that I was pretty clueless about the whole thing back then. The only thing I can say in my defense is that I was aware of my ignorance (and apathy) and knew to keep my mouth shut.

[orangecrush]

87. I did not realize

It was russian propaganda.

A lot of us thought Snowden was a hero at first.

And Julian Assange.

I was most unpleasantly surprised.





.

[intrepidity]

73. What a disgusting thread (not this one; the linked one)

KnR

[niyad]

75. KNR and bookmarking.

[BlackSkimmer]

79. K and r.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

82. Interesting how many responders in that thread are now ...

... showing the Ukrainian flag as their avatar.

[Tommy Carcetti]

88. Just noting again, the handwriting was on the wall...

Eight years ago.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10024919678