Saturday, February 26, 2022

The cool, relentless, Irish lilt of justice

Well, I mean, of course they vetoed the resolution to "deplore" the invasion of Ukraine. Look, I don't fully understand how the U.N. works, but it seems like if you're mid-invasion--that is, if you're in the midst of invading another U.N. country--it seems like you shouldn't be allowed to have a veto power on the organization saying that it's a dick move. And yes, I appreciate the irony of that coming from an American.
"Nyet! We veto! Instead I propose new resolution: Russian invasion is
smart move and President Putin is handsome, virile man, and everyone knows it."
-The Russian Ambassador to the U.N.
Above: Russian police heroically arresting
an elderly woman who had the gall to
protest their totally justified invasion.
Anyway, in case you some how missed this, or still read newspapers, Russia, spent the last couple of weeks putting its entire army on the Ukrainian border for "military drills." Everyone in the world was like bullshit, they're about to invade, but Russia was all, "Whaaat? No way! You're the ones making the situation worse." And then they invaded. Because of course they invaded. Because Vladimir Putin is a small, small man, still living in some weird, Cold War mindset and putting the rest of us through his boomer-nonsense.

Pictured: Joe Biden predicting every
move Russia was about to make.
Not Pictured: a crystal ball, because he
doesn't goddamn need one. No one does.
Sorry, I'll stop pretending that I know anything about geopolitics and just say that I think there have been two important takeaways here. The first is that the best thing you can do when someone like Vladimir Putin is spouting his borshtshit about how we're crazy for thinking he's totally about to invade the country he's massed his troops along the border of, is to go on TV and expose his plans--which the President did. And like I know he's probably our boringest President ever and his poll numbers are super-low, but that was pretty great. No matter what anyone says about him, you can't deny that he's now on record as having predicted exactly what was going to happen. 

Sure, everything was a scoop with these
people, but they asked hard questions
and didn't take any guff. Or sass.
Except that's what Republicans are going to do which brings us to the other takeaway: calling bullies on their bullshit. Did you see this? It's fine, you don't have to click on it, I'll sum up. Like I always do...sigh. Anyway, it's about an Irish RTÉ reporter called David McCullagh who interviewed Russian Ambassador to Ireland Yury Filatov yesterday. And by interviewed, I mean interviewed in the way that I think reporters used to do before the profession, as a whole, was reduced to out-of context tweets brought to us by Febreze Fade Defy Plug Air Fresheners.™

"Yes Mr. ambassador, could you please explain to
me, an Irishman, how invading another sovereign
nation is justifiable. And again, I'm Irish."
-David McCullagh, just warming up
Actually no, do click on the link. Here it is again. McCullagh's first question was when is Filatov's country going to stop it's aggression against Ukraine and then went from there. Filatov tried, he really tried to control the narrative and make this about Russia's hurt feelings, but McCullagh was all "Amnesty International" this and "Why should we believe you?" that. And the Ambassador, flat footed and sounding for all the world like Kellyanne Conway trying to make the phrase "alternative facts" happen, got his жoпa handed to him. Yeah, that's Russian for ass. I looked it up and anything. 

Pictured: Filatov seen here with his lying
mustache moments before it' was smacked off.

So then, McCullagh realizing that no matter how many verifiable facts--like there is footage of Russian bombs blowing up neighborhoods. I mean, has he not heard of the internet? Anyway, no matter how many facts Filtov was confronted with, he was still going to blame the Ukrainians for forcing them to fire rockets at civilians, so McCullagh ended the interview with:

"Ambassador Yury Filatov, Ambassador of Russia to Ireland. For the moment at least."

-David McCullagh, smacking the lying 
mustache off the Russian Ambassador

So what I would like, more than anything (except maybe for Russia to turn around), is for David McCullagh to cover our next election and bring his cool, relentless, Irish lilt of justice to bear on the Donalds Trump and the Rons DeSantis of the world. Yeah, I know that the habit, like the momentum right now is about letting liars and aggressors get away with their lying and aggressor...aggressor-ing, but at the least, the very least, they should get called on it to their lying, aggressor faces. It's just so satisfying. 
Above: David McCullagh, doing journalism.

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