Patreon Full episode China Supports this Invasion - Episode #97

Okay next topic suggestion while I'm watching this: can you make a video of why the exchange rate for USD to CNY is going down? Recently I've been tracking the cash exchange rates of several countries because of the Russian sanctions. But the CNY is going down somehow out of the 10+ countries I compared USD with.

Paul Hidalgo

Damn, just what I was looking for!

Paul Hidalgo

Everybody is entitled to their opinion. Even those that dismiss any opinion or person that doesn't match their own. You know, like Putin.

Grady Gillis

Putin is playing poker with a bunch of nitty fish. He knew the west wouldn't do jack to save Ukraine. So he threw in some nuclear rhetoric for populism's sake and to further flex on the West. He sows fear in his enemies like Trump sows outrage in anyone who will listen. And Putin knows how much we love to listen. He's pretty terrifying. Sanction him all you like, he shares the longest International border in the world with China. Good luck to the people of Ukraine, but they are on their own and Putin wouldn't fight a war he couldn't win.

Calling Putin barking mad is reductive and obscures reality. Is Xi Jinping barking mad? What about the former president Trump? Or how about your ex-girl or boyfriend? Calling an ideological adversary crazy shuts down avenues you might otherwise have found to uncover reality and pull toward a positive outcome through understanding and compromise. It's also a great way to take power from a powerless situation, placing yourself above the crazy one with actual power so that you feel better and won't hurt your head trying to wrap your mind around a person who might in fact be an extremely intelligent person. And Vladimir Putin is an extremely intelligent person. He is also KGB, pure and simple. He was raised a thug and will never see the world differently. Combine that with his intelligence and you get a man who is worthy of respect, deserving of fear and who demands the rest of us not write him off/simply denounce him.

Not long before Russia started this war, I thought I’d try and find out why Russia is so hostile toward NATO, and why it doesn’t want any of its neighbouring countries joining. I’m not trying to justify what Russia is doing. And I hope this is the end of Putin and Russia becomes a democratic country. But what this professor of international relations has to say is worth considering. https://youtu.be/JrMiSQAGOS4

There is some credibility to the concept that Putin is barking mad. That he has been suffering from real and perceived slights (sound familiar) against Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. An alleged statement from him indicates that if Russia doesn't have place in the world, the world doesn't need to exist. Not what you want to hear from someone with control of nuclear weapons. One evaluation: he is a rational man in day-to-day decisions, but with completely irrational big ideas. One mistake made by the west is to assume he thinks like other people. He's a totalitarian state fanatic. Maybe this is why so many people in China like him and support him (according to Simon Yu in his latest video). Sending a link in Patreon messages to a video with a ton of details in it.

Grady Gillis