The weekly Screed (#684)

The semantic conundrum
of the war in Ukraine
by David Benjamin

“I haven't got a brain... only straw.”   
                                 — Scarecrow, The Wizard of Oz

MADISON, Wis. — War is always more about semantics than ideas. 

This principle applies bleakly to the mess in eastern Ukraine, where an unruly mob of “rebel separatists” playing with grown-up war toys bears a sickening resemblance to the SA.

Before Adolf Hitler had the Wehrmacht and the Waffen SS, before he even had much of a reich, he had the sturmabteilung, a vast national army of slobs and dead-enders so misbegotten and anti-social that most would have required an industrial-strength makeover to qualify as trailer trash. The SA brownshirts were the true storm troops of the regime, immune to the law, terrorizing middle-class Germany and planting the bloodthirsty anti-Semitic seeds of the Final Solution.

The SA were dredged from the muck of society, an ugly hodgepodge of thugs, dopes, mopes, convicts, substance abusers, sex offenders, sadists, sociopaths and low-grade morons whose first response to any misfortune or insult was to lash out. Their Feuhrer was a man with “ideas” and a goal, and the eye-gougers of the SA were ideal for implementing that goal because they were fundamentally incapable of thought. Few, if any, had ever read Mein Kampf, nor would they have recognized the names of the Judeophobe philosophers who inspired Hitler, among them Arthur de Gobineau in France, the German Heinrich Trietschke, and the granddaddy of all Jew-baiters, Grand Inquisitor Tomas de Torquemada.

The SA boys just wanted to hurt people and they were generally too twisted or too stupid to resist the urge.

Today, I look at photos of so-called Ukrainian “separatists” guarding the killing fields where 298 innocents died on Flight 17, and I conjure old black-and-whites of drunken SA thugs posing over the mangled remains of a Jewish schoolboy like great white hunters with a trophy rhino.

The “pro-Russian rebels” have been called, among other terms, “terrorists.” But the word flatters them, implying an ideology, a purpose, a legitimate struggle. But, like the SA before them, these lifelong shmucks are too dumb to perceive any method in their own mayhem. Indeed, if they thought about what they’re doing, they’d grasp not only the futility of fighting the government of greater Ukraine, but also the fecklessness of serving as the pawns of a narcissist autocrat. Russia’s self-crowned tsar, Vladmir Putin, will forsake them as soon as they become politically inconvenient — a turning point that’s coming soon.

In sum and in all simplicity, these “rebels” — whether because they’ve read (or had read to them) too many issues of Soldier of Fortune, or they were deprived of oxygen during childbirth, or they were sexually abused before puberty, or they ate too many of Mom and Dad’s cigarette butts off the floor, or because they’re just plain, butthead stupid — are hopeless, irredeemable goobers.

The international media, following the PC protocols ingrained in access journalism, refer to these skells as “separatists” and “insurgents,” terms grossly inadequate to characterize a bunch of yokels, psychopaths and fugitives who couldn’t organize one cogent thought even if you hooked all their brains together with DieHard eight-gauge jumper cables.

If we could get the press to unshackle their descriptive nouns for the war in Ukraine — and similar gangster-based conflicts (think ISIS) — we could strategically degrade the status of these gory barbarians, rendering them toxic to any possible sane sponsor (and even the not-so-sane ex-KGB torture-masters who exploit them as proxy cannon fodder).

For example, here are a few passages from the weekend’s Times, in which I’ve replaced, in brackets, candy-ass euphemisms like “rebel” and “militiamen” with synonyms more direct and accurate. See how nicely this casts the perps in the naked, glaring light that they richly deserve.

The Times, Sat., 19 July: “…Sorting out the [morons’] earlier braggadocio from their current denials will now be the task of investigators, who began arriving at the crash scene… only to find their access blocked in some cases by the [crotch-rubbing dumbasses] who control the area…”

The Times, Sat., 19 July: “…One commander of a [nincompoop] unit in Donetsk acknowledged that [imbecile] forces possess a Russian-made antiaircraft system…”

The Times, Sat., 19 July: “…Katya Ivanovna, 62, who was milking her cow when the plane came down, scoffed at the idea that the [village idiots] had done it. ‘Ha, they barely have clothes,’ she said…”

The Times, Sun., 20 July: “…the Ukrainian government also charged that [slobbering throwbacks] had moved at least 38 bodies… to a morgue in Donetsk, a regional capital and [inbred meathead] stronghold…”

The Times, Sun., 20 July: “…Mr. Borodai, a Russian citizen who is a leader of the [drooling cretin] movement, has denied that [gap-toothed halfwits] were interfering with the recovery operation…”

The Times, Sun., 20 July: “…The missile ‘is a sophisticated piece of technology,’ said Admiral Kirby, who added that ‘it strains credulity to think that it could be used by [an incontinent cluster of numbnuts neanderthals] without at least some measure of Russian support and technical assistance.’…”

You see how a little editorial clarification can alter the complexion of this tragedy? I’m tempted to suggest that a campaign of journalistic candor might embarrass some of the antagonists into thinking…

Oops.