Pt. 1 --Hey Harold (and we ain't doin' this damned long-assed shit again unless it's private 🤣🤣)!!! I SO, SO apologize for my delay in replying to you!! I’d copied your response to a Word document so I could respond point-by-point and then life just kept happening and I forgot the Word document! As I read some other folk’s stuff to which I responded, your response just kept moving down the Notification list and this old mind just blanked out! Anyway…

From birth to my twenties, I was “Debi” – a ”Lady of the 80s” as my friends and I used to call ourselves. Today, Deb or Deborah’s fine (sounds more like I’m a grown-assed woman of a certain age)!!

You’re very welcome and thanks for your response as well. It made me think, a lot. Still looking for your poem by the way.

Sadly and inarguably – Given the fact there’ve been several attempts at a diplomatic solution, I don’t think they give a shit about it “getting close to blowing up in the whole world’s face.” Winning against Russia is the only answer -- though they’ve not won shit in my whole 66-year lifetime!

And yeah, I read Rand’s dastardly plan on a post by @Deborah L. Armstrong on Medium. Check her out, she’s a REALLY, great journalist and writer of Russian origin whom you might be interested in following!

Full disclosure, I ain’t got shit for Obama. According to him, he’s far more, pragmatic – on which I call bullshit. And we must remember, Biden was his VP, present for all the goings-on during his two terms. Hell, Maidan was also his, white-supremacist-led, wet-dream! If it weren’t, he’d have honored Putin’s request to abide by the Minsk Protocols on the neutrality of Ukraine as a red line issue not to be crossed, not to mention the demand to stop troop and armament build-ups on Russia’s western border and the biolabs.

Ditto for tRump. While I agree with is wanting to “rein the global policeman dynamic,” he’s a grifter, a racist, con man to whom that dynamic is only important as it benefits him and his. And yes, the ever-pragmatic, Obama knows from whence he speaks on that quote on Biden – after all, HE set him up to be the “fuck up,” so he (Obama) wouldn’t have to take the fall.

As to your answers to, “Why Europe is following along with the US in its power games very much to its own detriment”:1) Liberal hegemony/hegemonic liberalism. This is John Mearsheimer's phrase for it but it really could be called many things.I love John Mearsheimer -- cuz he’s right!

I disagree, however, that the only reason, IMHO, “essentially that it isn't worth it to the US to fight directly with R, or Turkey, or even Saudi Arabia or maybe even China to a degree, although that is a different case, when one of these states cares about something a lot and the US doesn't.”

As we’ve discussed, for the US – it’s all about hegemony. And I promise you, there may not be “boots on the ground” but there ARE ADVISORS on the ground – same shit, different day.

I disagree the US really only cares about it as a means of antagonizing and weakening Russia . Trust, as is the wont of hegemonical entities – they want to OWN Putin and ALL his territories (pardon my language, but this is merely a gigantic, “d*ck-measuring contest” on the part of the US/West). And as for the not getting “dragged into long intractable wars when the prize means little to you,” Can we say Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam – just to name a few?? Smart? I think not.

“Pushing all its enemies together and making things far more difficult for itself” does indeed make it more powerless, but “d*ick measurers can’t, nor wil,l see it that way. Hopefully, but not sure that's where we're headed. I'm giddy for this multipolar world -- minus" the international politics with the US as judge, jury and executioner."