Opinion: Where Putin goes from here

“It is a stab in the back of our country and our people,” Russian President Vladimir Putin told his nation Saturday as he faced an unprecedented challenge from his former ally, Yevgeny Prighozin, head of the Wagner mercenary group.

“This was the same kind of blow that Russia felt in 1917, when the country entered World War I, but had victory stolen from it. Intrigues, squabbles, politicking behind the backs of the army and the people turned out to be the greatest shock, the destruction of the army, the collapse of the state, the loss of vast territories, and in the end, the tragedy and civil war. Russians killed Russians, brothers killed brothers.”

As often happens, Putin’s version of history wasn’t fully accurate. For one thing, Russia entered the war in 1914, but the convulsion he described did begin in 1917, with the overthrow of the Tsar and the outbreak of a revolution and eventually a civil war. The Soviet regime that emerged from the chaos would rule Russia and its empire as a totalitarian state until 1991.

The events of the past few days represented a shocking escalation of the simmering conflict between Prighozin and the defense ministry, which accused him of attempting a coup while he contended that military brass ordered an attack on his soldiers. When Putin declared in his speech that the revolt was a betrayal and must be put down, Prighozin replied that the president was “deeply mistaken,” though he later said he was turning around his troops rather than march to Moscow. And the Kremlin said the standoff was resolved through discussions with the president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko.

Whatever happens now, the episode was a striking sign that, as the nation grapples with its losses in Ukraine, Putin’s hold on power may no longer be unquestioned.

“The Russians were not stabbed in the back during World War I, as Putin suggested during his remarks on Saturday,” wrote Peter Bergen. “In fact, they fought a ruinous land war in Europe that was characterized by the extreme incompetence of Nicholas II and his senior leadership. As Russian losses on the battlefield mounted, Russian soldiers mutinied, helping to instigate the 1917 revolution. Sound familiar?”

“A keen student of Russian history, Putin is aware of the stakes here. His invocation of the events in 1917 shows that he knows that the Wagner group mutiny may pose an existential threat to his regime. He has expunged pretty much all resistance by any civilian organizations, so he only faces a real threat from Russian military forces.”

Prighozin was a menace Putin himself created, wrote CNN’s Nathan Hodge. The Wagner force served the Russian president as a useful tool he could control for foreign adventures. But, Hodge noted, “by giving Prigozhin free rein to raise a private army, Putin both unleashed the political ambitions of the businessman and surrendered the state’s monopoly on the use of force.” He pointed out that “the ‘stab in the back’ narrative around Germany’s defeat” in World War I “was one of the myths that helped propel the Nazis to power.”

Putin’s weakened position was not a complete surprise. When Putin met recently with war correspondents and bloggers, wrote Mark Galeotti,  “he was implicitly acknowledging three things: that the Kremlin is having trouble spinning its war in Ukraine, that unofficial commentators are in their own way as powerful as the state media machine and that the confident official narrative is failing to get much traction.”

“At times, Putin seemed unaware of the details of the war he so notoriously tries to micromanage, and at times keen to distance himself from it.”

“Whatever might be going wrong was, of course, always someone else’s responsibility.”

Supreme Court strikes out

Like baseball umpires, the nine justices of the US Supreme Court wear black. It sets them apart and sends a message. When John Roberts was awaiting confirmation as chief justice in 2005, he promised, “I will remember that it’s my job to call balls and strikes, and not to pitch or bat.”

Justice Amy Coney Barrett said at her confirmation hearing, “I think the black robe shows that justice is blind.” Justice Neil Gorsuch has written that “donning a robe doesn’t make me any smarter” but reminds him of “what’s expected of us – what (Edmund) Burke called ‘the cold neutrality of an impartial judge.’”

That vision of rigid impartiality has been sorely tested in the year since the court overturned Roe v. Wade, the 50-year-old case that established a national right to abortion. Critics have accused the court’s majority of acting like a political body rather than judicial one. And only three in 10 Americans approve of the court, according to a recent Quinnipiac University poll.

In the latest of a series of revelations about the undisclosed gifts some justices have accepted, ProPublica reported Tuesday on a 2008 trip Justice Samuel Alito took to a fishing lodge in Alaska, flying on a private jet courtesy of billionaire Paul Singer. Alito and Singer were photographed grinning as they held hefty king salmons. The justice later voted in favor of Singer’s company’s in a case that helped the hedge fund manager reap billions.

Clay Jones

Hours before ProPublica published its story, Alito unleashed a pre-emptive strike: placing an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal saying he had done nothing wrong – and describing the fishing lodge as a “rustic” place with “homestyle fare,” not including wine that costs $1,000 a bottle, as one member of the fishing group reportedly bragged.

But if you have to quibble about the cost of the wine on an undisclosed trip, you’re arguably already losing. In law professor Erwin Chemerinsky’s eyes, the whole episode was completely unnecessary.

Ann Telnaes

“I think Alito misjudges how people might view this situation,” he wrote. “Justices are to avoid even the appearance of impropriety and that is violated when they accept gifts and then participate in cases involving those who bestowed them. That a justice believes that he or she can remain fair and impartial just isn’t a convincing enough defense.”

Such revelations are undermining the court’s legitimacy, Chemerinsky argued. “The solution is to apply a code of ethics to Supreme Court justices, just as exists for state and federal judges. It makes no sense that the most important and powerful judges in the nation are not held to the same standards that other judges are.”

For more on the court:

Samuel Dickman: A year since Supreme Court’s abortion ruling, there’s a real human cost

Allison Hope: Ten years ago, the Supreme Court gave my wife and me a wedding gift

Hunter Biden and Donald Trump

Lisa Benson

President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden reached a deal with the Justice Department, agreeing to plead guilty to two tax misdemeanors and to resolve a felony gun charge. Republican defenders of former President Donald Trump had long argued that the absence of charges against President Joe Biden’s son demonstrated that federal prosecutors were being “weaponized” only against members of the GOP. Now that argument has lost its force, wrote Julian Zelizer.

“The Justice Department investigated and reached a plea deal with the president’s son, a decision that will surely be politically explosive for President Biden as he heads into the 2024 election cycle.” Still, Republicans argued that Hunter Biden was being let off lightly and Trump likened the plea deal to “a traffic ticket.”

But Norman Eisen defended the outcome as a fair deal both for Hunter Biden and for the Justice Department. “Make no mistake, entering this plea deal is also the right thing for the government to do. Charges would have been unusual in these circumstances. As a defense lawyer who has handled both firearms and tax cases, it is uncommon for someone to be prosecuted for possessing a firearm if he did not go on to commit some further crime with the weapon obtained.”

Alberto Gonzales, who served as US attorney general in the Republican administration of President George W. Bush, said Trump has the right to defend himself against the Justice Department’s indictment for allegedly mishandling classified documents, but “it is wrong and dangerous to undermine public confidence in the rule of law itself by calling the case a ‘witch hunt,’ and, as he has previously done, fomenting the baseless conspiracy theory that there is a government-controlled plot to bring him down.”

“Attacking the process and all connected with it is a tried-and-true tactic of individuals burdened by unfavorable facts, as Trump is. Distracting from these unfavorable facts with whataboutism is another. But these disingenuous approaches threaten the very foundations of our country, which are predicated on our citizens’ belief in the rule of law…”

For more:

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Joel Pett/Tribune Content Agency

The sub

From OceanGate/File

For five days, the story of a missing submersible watercraft that was headed toward the wreckage of the RMS Titanic captured the world’s attention. The search ended sadly Thursday with news that the five people on board had died in a catastrophic accident.

“It’s interesting to watch the national fascination with this story,” wrote Jill Filipovic, “especially compared to, say, the attention paid to the sinking of another boat, this one full of desperate migrants in the Mediterranean last week; dozens were killed, and hundreds of men, women and children are still missing. Many migrants, mostly from Syria, Egypt and Pakistan, may be dead…”

“But human interest, we know, does not at all run proportional to human suffering, and often has little to do with who or what is deserving of significant attention. And the story of a vessel occupied by wealthy curiosity-seekers, lost in the depths of the ocean in its search to find a vessel occupied by wealthy curiosity-seekers lost in the depths of the ocean, has all the component parts of an addictive story: irony, suspense, potential tragedy, potential glory, lifestyles of the rich, aspiration and hubris.”

Mike Reiss, a writer for “The Simpsons” and a travel podcaster, recalled his journey in the Titan submersible last summer.

“Diving to the Titanic was a thrilling, awe-inspiring, once-in-a lifetime experience, but catastrophe was never far from mind,” he wrote.

“Before I boarded the sub, I signed a lengthy waiver detailing all the ways this trip could kill me: asphyxiation, electrocution, drowning, crushing — death was mentioned three times on the first page. I kissed my wife goodbye before I left, thinking I might never see her again.”

She had originally planned the trip for the two to celebrate her birthday, but tested positive for Covid-19 and had to drop out. During the trip, Reiss noted, “I quickly became aware that we were in the middle of a crisis: We were lost on the ocean floor. Our compass was spinning erratically. Directions we were getting from the surface crew monitoring the movement of the vessel didn’t correspond to what we were seeing. The Titanic, the biggest ship of its time, was just 500 meters away, but we couldn’t find it in the inky darkness.”

“Instantly, the five of us onboard — a pilot, three scientists and me, a man with no particular skills or training — became a team. We studied maps, plugged data into the laptop, stared out the porthole for clues to our location. It was calm, it was focused and it worked — it took us three hours, but we found the Titanic.”

“I’m certain that that was the mood of the five people onboard the Titan’s last journey. There would have been no panic onboard, no tears or recrimination — just pure focus on the crisis at hand. And if all that failed, I believe there was peace.”

Scott, Haley and Obama

Two Republican presidential candidates of color have disagreed with former President Barack Obama, who faulted their view of race in America. As Sophia Nelson wrote, both former UN ambassador Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scott “deny that systemic racism exists.”

“On the stump, Scott offers himself as evidence that even those on the bottom rungs of society can climb to the top, often regaling us with the story of his grandfather who dropped out of school in the third grade to work in the cotton fields of his home state.”

“The message from Haley and Scott that racism is not a major factor impeding the ascent of Black and brown Americans is designed to appeal to a large number of White Republicans. But many Black voters take a dim view of the party’s view on race… Obama got it right. Racism was always and remains what divides us as a nation and what prevents many people of color from achieving their full potential.”

The Wall Street Journal editorial board sided with Scott. “You’d think Mr. Obama of all people would be pleased to see minority candidates with serious credentials compete as Republicans for the White House,” they wrote. “If both parties compete for the votes of minorities, that could make race less of a polarizing force in American life.”

“But Democrats can’t abide that or it might upset their advantage among minority voters.”

For more on politics:

SE Cupp: The hypocrisy of censuring Adam Schiff

Drew Sheneman/Tribune Content Agency

Modi and China

Dana Summers/Tribune Content Agency

In place of steak, the main course at the state dinner for India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi was a stuffed portobello mushroom.

It was the White House’s first vegetarian state dinner, in honor of Modi. “It’s hard to believe that the man for whom Washington is rolling out the red carpet is the same one it banned from entering the United States in 2005,” wrote Frida Ghitis. “His diplomatic visa was denied after the state he led, Gujarat, became the scene of anti-Muslim riots that left hundreds dead. An investigation cleared Modi, and he later became prime minister, a position he has held since 2014.”

“Modi remains controversial – so controversial that more than 70 congressional Democrats wrote Biden a letter urging him to bring up human rights abuses with Modi – but a meaningful strengthening of the relationship between the US and India could create a powerhouse of an alliance, precisely in the place and at the time when it is most needed.”

“Indeed, Biden will likely be accused of hypocrisy for playing down issues of human rights and democracy erosion under Modi, both accusations that Modi claims are false. But the times – with Russia’s raging invasion of Ukraine and China raising its anti-western military profile – call for a measure of realpolitik,” Ghitis observed.

In the Financial Times, Edward Luce said “realistic fear of an aggressive China” would naturally make the US and India eager to pull “closer together.” But “behaving like a supplicant to the world’s most ruthless democratic backslider — the strongman who Donald Trump would love to emulate — is both crude and unnecessary. To Modi it will look like a green light.”

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AND…

A particular kind of romcom

Jennifer Lawrence in "No Hard Feelings." - Macall Polay/Sony Pictures

“No Hard Feelings,” the new film starring Jennifer Lawrence, is in the tradition of “Irma La Douce” (1963), Ron Howard’s “Night Shift” (1982) and “Pretty Woman” (1990), in Noah Berlatsky’s view: they are all sex worker romcoms.

The movie “revolves around a sex worker who, like the film, doesn’t want to admit what she’s doing. Maddie (Lawrence) is a 32-year-old Uber driver who starts the movie never having been paid for sex. But her hometown, the Long Island summer beach community of Montauk, New York, is gentrifying, and Maddie’s car is repossessed when she’s unable to pay her taxes. Without the car, she can’t work and is likely to lose her house.”

“Desperate, Maddie answers a Craigslist posting from concerned parents Laird (Matthew Broderick) and Allison (Laura Benanti). Their 19-year-old son Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman) is neurotic, shy and very inexperienced. Laird and Allison offer Maddie a Buick Regal in return for ‘dating’ Percy. And by ‘dating,’ they mean having sex with him.”

The movie, Berlatsky writes, “has a witty script and two very charismatic leads with wonderfully awkward comedic chemistry. It’s an entertaining movie.”

“But when you build your entertainment on the supposed edginess or sexiness of marginalized people, you do have some minimal responsibility to acknowledge the discrimination and danger they face.”

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