“Congratulations, Americans! You choice for “the leader of the free world” is between a senile old coot whose son is a drug addict and who has stolen millions of government money via the Ukraine, China, and, who can doubt, a host of other countries yet to be named and another old coot, not senile but now a convicted felon for having his attorney (who is, by the way, a self-confessed thief) give a bit of money to a porn star to have her keep her filthy mouth shut over having had sex with said old coot (she didn’t keep quiet either) and — here’s the actual crime — having his staff label the payment to his attorney as “legal fees” rather than “political campaign spending.” Meanwhile, what America really needs is someone willing to do the truly heroic: strip naked, smear himself from head to toe in his own feces, roll around in freshly plucked chicken feathers and run through the streets of Washington screaming “I am your president!” I think that at this point most Americans would agree with him because he’d fit the bill.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to all, martial law has been imposed on the land of the free. Scott Ritter, a popular blogger whose resume includes lengthy stints as a US Marine, a CIA agent and a UN weapons inspector, was stripped of his passport, on orders from the US State Department, while attempting to travel to St. Petersburg, Russia, to attend the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. He then expressed his opinion that the world is a step away from a nuclear catastrophe and that the US strategy in causing such a catastrophe is to inflict maximum damage on the rest of the world — friends, allies, enemies, everybody! — just to remain as the proverbial last man standing. Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst, chimed in with a very alarming video in which he comments on the latest from Ryabkov and Lavrov of Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and calls on his compatriots to demand that their congressmen deescalate the situation. Of course, Larry, write your congressmen! Why didn’t I think of that? More importantly, Larry did look worried, so perhaps he knows something: perhaps Washingtonian patients-who-think-they-are-doctors are up to something.

Here is my take on the situation. The transoceanic clown show is reaching its peak and makes damned good watching, so do tune in as much as your busy schedules allow. Russia will continue to shoot down whatever is thrown at it; the damage it is sustaining at the moment it can go on to sustain for centuries. But it won’t have to: in a year or three the Ukraine will no longer exist and NATO will need to go looking for some other herd of victims to sacrifice on the altar of Russophobia — except that they won’t find one. Nobody is stupid enough to exclaim “We want to to suffer and die for nothing just like the Ukrainians!”

Thus, Russia sees no reason to go nuclear — unless the US goes nuclear first — in which case good-bye US, it will no longer exist. Russia will still exist regardless — it is much too huge and quite thoroughly defended against anything that the US has (antiquated Cold War junk, mostly) — but might sustain some very nasty damage.

The noise you may have been hearing about this or that NATO member approving the use of this or that weapon against Russia itself — that’s just noise. They’ve been shelling Russian territory for two years now — same NATO weapons, same NATO crews. What is changing is NATO’s reach — they are being pushed deeper into former Ukraine, away from internationally recognized Russian territory. Meanwhile, Russia’s reach now includes anything in the world that it feels like blowing up without even necessarily getting caught in the act. Surely you noticed all the munitions and weapons factories in places such as Pennsylvania, London and in Berlin and elsewhere, spontaneously exploding? That’s too many coincidences.

In this situation, there is just one thing for the US to do: chicken out. Sure, it will cluck and crow and preen and strut just the same, making it hard to tell that it’s chickening out — but it will.