Yesterday’s winter
It amazes me how prescient Garry Kasparov was. His book on how the United States and the collective free world should deal with Putin was published all the way back in the Obama Administration. Winter is Coming came out late in 2015, and the title played on the popularity of HBO’s Game of Thrones fantasy series, still in its earlier seasons.
The lessons Kasparov taught then were not only insightful, but unfortunately went largely unheeded. At the time, Russia had begun its invasion of Ukraine after attempting to subvert the government in Kyiv, using the failure of that ruse as a premise for its silent invasion—an invasion carried out by “little green men” in the Crimea and “separatists” in the Donbas. It’s easy to forget that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been an ongoing affair for at least nine years.
Kasparov spoke in Philadelphia about his book near the time of its publication. What I find interesting is that his analysis seems just as pertinent now as it did then, even if the current administration has been forced to act more aggressively than the Obama administration, which at the time seemed determined to read peaceful solutions into a situation where a show of strength and force was called for. As Kasparov says.
There’s some déjà vu in there, since the 2016 presidential primaries had just gotten underway. Trump was not the presumed nominee, although Secretary of State Clinton was. Kasparov’s advice went unheeded by the Trump administration, too, since Trump clearly had a great and shameful admiration for dictators.
As Kasparov has said elsewhere many times, the cost of acting later rather than sooner only continues to rise.
So, either the Weather Channel changed it's forecast after the last time I saw it last night, or the weather itself decided to do it's own thing...because they didn't project several inches of snow and poorly or unplowed road in the rural part of my county, through which I have to drive to work...sigh...it was a mess till about halfway to work where I get to the roads that are well maintained, and not a mess...a bit stressful, I am sure I am either going to end up in a ditch or someone idiot driver is going to put me there every time it snows and I can't stay home...lol
Snow showers off and on, and the sun has been out, so hopefully those bad roads will have cleared up by the time I leave....tomorrow is SUPOSSED to be a high of 44 and cloudy, I can live with that
I think we have actually had more snow in these first two weeks of March, than we did in Jan & Feb combined this year...
Happy "PI" day y'all.
I like Gary Kasparov, I haven't read his book, but, everything I have ever heard or read him saying impressed me.