Eyeless in Gaza. And Just About Everywhere Else.
Zelenskyy, Trump, Putin...you think you know what's going on? Well, here's a newsflash: no one does.
The actor Joe Pesci in Oliver Stone’s love letter to the not-Dead Kennedys in his film JFK said it best. With a hairpiece that was never supposed to be anything other than a hairpiece, migrating as it did when he spoke, Pesci played David Ferrie, a mystery man in the midst of the Kennedy assassination investigation.
His signature line, as referenced above, set the tone for a revolving cast of criminals, characters and criminal characters all circling the essential question of “who to believe?”
According to Mike Golden, investigative journalist whose last interview with James Earl Ray, the then-still alive “assassin” of Martin Luther King, appeared in the magazine I was editing at the time, “No one,” he once said to me after the King Family had sided with him and Ray in the belief that Ray was way too drunk to have made the shot that purportedly killed King. “And possibly everyone.”
It was the paradox that Pesci/Ferrie was hinting at and it came to mind while viewing the kayfabe of this week’s past events. Specifically, the Trump-Vance v. Zelenskyy dust-up. Brought to you live and in public by the few news organizations that had not been banned by the notoriously sensitive Trump.
It devolved into something rarely seen in the world of political gamesmanship, unless you’re part of one of those parliaments that’s prone to fistfights on the floor: screaming, finger pointing, fighting words and a distinctly impolitic kind of posturing. Much more suited to the professional wrestling or MMA realm where Trump, his MasterBlaster Musk, and Zuckerberg have been spending so much time as of late.
“Ok,” he said. We were running, and he was speaking, slowly, and not shouting. “The reality is that governments…countries, “ he went on to explain, “…have interests.”
Repeated entreaties to apologize, the unsettled and unsettling event panicked the market, for at least a day, and sent the Fourth Estate, from who much more should be demanded, spinning to strike the right tone and posture. Unless it’s the Bezos run Washington Post, in which case the right posture is ass up.
Conspiracy theories, which I’m especially prone to have an ear for, abounded. It was a set up, with Putin’s fingers on the puppet’s strings. It was a set up, with Susan Rice and the Dems egging on Zelenskyy with NATO promises. It was a set up since Zelenskyy could have signed a peace accord weeks ago. It was a set up, with Trump kowtowing to the global strongmen he has a pronounced affinity for.
“Stop being so fucking childish.”
The speaker was a guy who never speaks a whole hell of a lot, making his comment much less than offhand and much more likely to have some weight to it. That and his deep, and shadowy, military connections.
“Childish? Ok, I’m listening, really. Explain ‘childish’ to me.”
“Ok,” he said. We were running, and he was speaking, slowly, and not shouting. “The reality is that governments…countries,” he went on to explain, “…have interests.” He stressed the word again, “interests.”
“So you’re suggesting that my focus on personalities…like Putin being a shithead and Trump being his running dog is me missing the forests for the trees?”
“Yes,” he said. “They have interests and they pursue those interests and they must pursue those interests.” He pulled off, leaving me behind, but leaving me thinking. And it reminded me for all the world like the bunco teams I saw outside trade shows in the trade pavilions on the outskirts of Tokyo.
Harried businessmen, on their way out of stomping around a trade show floor all day, and feeling, maybe, some small measure of guilt for time not spent with their families, were the target audience. The targeters were attractive women shilling little dancing puppets. With tiny shoes made of wood, the puppets danced to the propulsive beat of some shitty techno, as the gathered businessmen bobbed their heads and wondered at the wonderful dancing puppets propelled by some mysterious force which, for what amounted to $20, they could take home to their children.
“Well he’d [Putin will] never win this,” said a War College historian I’d interviewed. “Poland of today is not Poland of 1939…”
Like McGruff the Crime Dog says though, if something is too good to be true, it probably isn’t and having had friends in the 3-Card Monte game I watched. Not the marks, but the co-targeters. The cheap-suited businessmen manqués. Dressed like businessmen they started the rush, running up with cash in hand. But no brief cases. Once the buying started, others were drawn in.
Then I saw the sleight of hand that made it all make sense. They had set up in front of a low gray wall, which concealed the fishing line tied to the dancing puppet and that ended up wrapped around the finger of some nondescript guy on the edge of the crowd. He wasn’t watching the sexy woman targeter. Or the dancing puppet. He was watching the marks, the rubes, as his finger tugged the doll in time to the music and the suckers lined up to do what suckers do.
This is who my military attache was suggesting I not be.
So who to look to, in order to explain not the trees, but the forests, of what we had just witnessed, for the first time ever. How about a Ukrainian ex-pat…but an ex-pat whose father still lives outside Kiev? So, in other words, with deep ties to the country he’s left and a specific interest in not seeing his father vaporized but also a fan of realpolitik.
“It’s fucked up.”
“As in we’re headed to World War 3?”
“As in: there’s no way Putin can win this. But that’s not even the question. The question is how long and how many will die on his way to figuring this out?”
“Even with the US sitting this one out?” A question which lit up the room of former military types, not all MAGA-ites either.
“Putin either makes a deal now,” one of them said. “OR waits until they remove him for not having made a deal.”
“On what kind of time line?”
“Three years.” That would be, after the US midterm elections, and well into the campaign for the beginning of the next presidential cycle. Presuming King Trump thinks this makes sense.
“What Zelenskyy should have done,” said the Ukrainian, “is make a deal wherein he gives up the Donbas region. There’s nothing there and most of the population there speaks Russian already. Being Russian that is.”
This, it seems, would have allowed Putin to declare “victory” and get the fuck out. But maybe Zelenskyy had figured out what the IRA, the Palestinians and others had figured out a long time ago and that’s that there’s a lot of cash to be had out of the gullible coffers of well-meaning Americans?
“Man, I don’t know.”
“Who does?”
“No one,” his smile, if you could call it that, was nothing if not…sad? “Not even Putin I bet. It’s all about money.”
And when asked who would be the “they” who’d remove Putin to avoid a World War 3 in Europe, oligarchs or…?
“Well he’d never win this,” said a War College historian I’d interviewed. “Poland of today is not Poland of 1939. And the same could be said for a majority of the Baltic States. Plus add in French nuclear power…” he trailed off.
But the “they” who’d be making real changes while the puppets danced on both sides of the Atlantic?
“Who are ‘they’ ever?”
Yeah. That’s the mystery, the riddle and the enigma. Until then though? Probably best to find a place to hide, convert your cash into real estate, and stockpile canned goods.
Isn’t that great? Again?
Returning to SUPERSONIC in B’ham, England at the end of August this year, BUNUEL returns. Get your tickets NOW.
ALSO if books are still your thing and you still do books, please do this one…the memoir A Walk Across Dirty Water and Straight Into Murderer's Row, from Amazon…Or the Bookshop.Org dealie: Here?
Bring them along to SUPERSONIC…I will sign them. Gladly.
Great piece as ever, Eugene. The world is shady as fuck.