It must be delightful if you’re in league with Satan, to pretty much do whatever you want and laugh at the consequences. Even the most comically evil Bond villain had to contend with, you know, some kind of competent opposition.

I get the feeling that this political, diplomatic, and military struggle is so one sided that Vlad dictates instructions drunk, in a huge bathtub, surrounded by his many naked mistresses, while all his tools nod aggressively in their pristine military and civilian clothing. At least Bond villains had charm. There’s nothing charming about this. It’s just Vlad beating upon the free world with a broken pipe as he foams at the mouth, eyes wide, screaming.

We’ve blogged here before about the baffling behavior of men who possess a distinct inability to think about the future. Maybe I just don’t understand the power of ethnic ties because I possess the blood of about twelve different races in my frail human meatbag body.

Maybe if I was 73% Russian and 27% Ukrainian I’d be on the streets shooting at poor Ukrainian cops alongside FSB agents too. Honestly, I have no idea. But it seems to me that if you had your choice to live under a brutally incompetent Ukrainian government, or a pipe swinging lunatic? I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t choose the lunatic.

And meanwhile our all-star limp-wristed Western diplomats toil on in their never-ending quest to prove who’s more useless: them, or their 1914 & 1939 predecessors. I hope the West realizes what this level of weakness is doing to the psyche of the remainder of the world. From Africa, to Syria, to Burma, to Philippines, well, why would anybody throw their lot with the West? They’re not serious like the Iranians, the Chinese, or the Russians. So you go with the cruel asshole because, asshole that he is, at least he’ll have the guts to back you when you need it.

I’m not trying to go overboard here and propose a nuclear exchange or main-battle-tank steel trading in the streets of Donetsk. But if all the West has to offer is minimal personal sanctions against minor Putin flunkies, and to kick them out an international talking shop? Yeah, I’m pretty sure you can just write off Eastern Ukraine. Oh, and our values and souls too.

These four distinguished future Russian citizens will one day have to meekly explain to their grandchildren why they were so very, very fucking stupid