Purging and Dragging

 I think we have covid again, but I'm not sure. Live in parent came home sick and my head has been banging and my GI tract has been purging ever since and my bones and organs are on fire. If I just had the stomach stuff, I wouldn't think Covid, but the pain and aggravation of all my structural weak spots is very Covid.

The teen is grappling with it now. Fever of 102.

We're all dragging.

So I've been forced to take some sick days and I've been watching the news.

You did see that nuclear plant is set to blow? Russia sabotaged it. I was surprised they didn't try harder to muddy the waters on who did what but perhaps that wasn't possible. But they haven't blown it yet. Wonder what they're waiting for?

It is interesting how slow the timing of war is. I mentioned that plant months ago. War moves way slower than viruses. You can't set any watches by it like you could covid's doubling rate.

Now we have a potential coup. Interesting. I don't know wtf is going on. I don't think anyone does really. Maybe not even Putin. War is a lot of you know something big happened but you have no idea what.

However, it's been pretty obvious that the Russians have a lot of infighting. I'm guessing the Wagner group got fed up by being attacked by their own side and lost their shit about it.

There's one camp of thought that thinks this was all orchestrated to flush out traitors in the ranks. In which case, we should see some polonium poisonings, murder suicides, and falling out of windows shortly. Although, this would be an outcome no matter the root cause, because whatever the true intent, this would be an event that reveals loyalties and disloyalties either way.

I like Heather Cox Richardson's point from her newsletter this morning:

"U.S. observers don’t appear to know what to make of this development yet, although I have not read anyone who thinks this is the end of it (among other things, Putin has not been seen today). What is crystal clear, though, is that the ability of Prigozhin’s forces to move apparently effortlessly hundreds of miles through Russia toward Moscow without any significant resistance illustrates that Putin’s hold over Russia is no longer secure."

This gets to something I've thought about since the beginning. Part of what's happening with this conflict is a renegotiation of nuclear doctrine for an increasingly multi-polar world. 

If Putin dropped a nuke on Ukraine, Cold War era nuclear doctrine would have us go straight to MAD (mutual assured destruction), but if it's one nuke, do you need MAD? Especially if the people giving the orders can't control their own border or interior? 

No one wants to go nuclear except Russia. So MAD seems to be overkill here. Why not just send teams into Russia and cut the many heads of the hydra off? 

I'm guessing if Putin crosses the line, we'll be at his doorstep and that of his cronies and summarily remove them from power to prevent a global nuclear exchange. We know where he is, where his enablers are, and that does the least harm and the most good. I don't think gaining global or NATO consensus to do that will be difficult.

Putin has such a weak position in many ways, that I'm less concerned about a planet wide nuclear exchange than I would be otherwise. There are options beyond nukes. Ukraine though, Ukraine I worry about. They are in the crosshairs.