When Getting Up Isn't a Win

My foot is way more swollen for no reason at all. I'm up most of the night due to charley horses in both my feet. The other neuroma is acting up now too. The second cortisone shot doesn't seem to be doing anything positive.

I did start taking magnesium. I've gotten away from my vitamin regimen, but I've been low on magnesium in the past so I started that up again in the hopes it might be helpful.

And I'm taking Advil and Tylenol at night again. I might try taking some during the day as well to see if that makes a difference with what happens at night. 

Ironically, I'm fine during the day.

When I lay down, it destabilizes everything and makes it worse. Same for swimming. Weight on my foot is actually better than being weightless. But I can't handle a lot of weight bearing either. 

I'm so tired. 

I don't know. I might try sleeping sitting up between now and surgery. I'm trying to picture how that would work and how to make it comfortable...

Geopolitics again...

So what's going to happen? No one knows, but the risks are concerning.

I keep hearing this war is an existential fight for survival for Russia.

But the thing is, it's an existential fight for survival for the West too.

No one can afford to lose in Ukraine now.

Which means we have a very dangerous conflict, much more dangerous than I think most people realize.

And, again, if you look at global leadership as a continuum with one end being leaders of functional democracies and the other being ISIS or Hitler, we have more and more leaders, most of the leaders with nukes in fact, moving toward radicalization.

Nukes in the hands of people who don't have to listen to anyone is a big problem.

If Russia loses, we can try to solve that problem. The West could pull back from the brink of being an autocracy like China or Russia and actually stabilize the world. There's a chance, at least. The amount of Russian and Chinese fueled corruption in Western governments is definitely a heavy thumb on the scale. We'd need a lot of grassroots energy coming in to counter that corruption, but do the people of the West have it? Eh. We'll see. Still, it's a better scenario than the West losing.

If Russia wins, we will eventually see some kind of nuclear exchange somewhere because autocratic states will be the norm in a world run by BRICS, and once autocracies run out of resources to plunder within their own borders, they go a pillaging with a side of genocide. It's just a question of time.

Given that Russia can't afford to lose, it's unlikely we'll see them withdraw unless there's a major change somewhere in their sense of reality. That leaves our best hope as a negotiated end to the war where everyone gets enough something to commit to a new status quo. At that point, whether we publicly admit it or not,  and if we're smart (which who knows!), we switch to a Cold War style footing and covertly work to destabilize autocrats with nukes.

This means, Ukraine may have to cede Crimea and perhaps other territory for now. And potentially Ukraine may be barred from joining the EU or NATO, although I think that's a dumb move on Russia's part. Limiting Ukraine's options will just result in them being a loose cannon. They have too much military experience and are far to interested in fucking up Russia to leave them at loose ends.  At least if they join NATO, they are a known quantity and you know the rules they have to operate by. But hey, it's Putin's mistake to make.

But it's all around mostly bad news. I am looking for whether we have better outcomes on the table but I'm not finding them so far. Sorry. I know it's distressing. Give what energy and support you can to democratic institutions where you live. That's one way to feed the world's better angels in this mess.

I think I'm about done with geopolitics right now. I've got more on AI and medicine in the wings and then psychedelics and feminism....which ought to be interesting. At the rate I'm going, I just might combine psychedelics with feminism. We'll see.

PS: Someone asked me if Clinton as president would have made a difference. I doubt it. A President Hilary Clinton might have done less damage overall, but I don't know that she would have outperformed the chaos machine on PCP that was President Trump. Clinton was Secretary of State under Obama, a president who was exceptionally weak on foreign policy. Trump was also weak, but was such a wild card that he accidentally landed some wins because people had no idea what he would do next...it was a weird presidency, more like a psychedelic fever dream than anything else. One that directly fed into Putin's fever dreams.

However, no president since the Cold War 'ended' was clear eyed enough about Putin to actually invest the political capital to deal with him proactively. Our leadership has largely been lacking on the geopolitical front for the last 30ish years. It's not any one president who did us in. It's all of them.

 (There's a conversation to be had about how we can improve our geopolitics. We have more guardrails on domestic policy than foreign, but given what we're facing now, I'm not feeling that has served us or the world so well. Trumps shouldn't be able to come in and just blow up policy because he feels like it. Bushes can't be allowed to get distracted by one issue. Clintons and Obamas can't be wilted wallflowers.)

Love him or hate him, Biden is probably the best man (of the choices we had) for this moment in history. He not only remembers the Cold War, he actually had a seat in the front row. He knows the game and that knowledge will serve us well. He's also less corrupt than other options and generates very little drama (I mean, they can keep trying to make senile and Hunter's laptop happen, but it's pretty hollow), which means national interests can lead over other, more self serving agendas.