I took a spin through babe's comments, but honestly it's a mish-mash of disconnected ideas that is so comically off base that it would take hours to respond to. It zig zags wildly from stray comments about Stalin, to conspiracy theories involving Lyndon Larouche, to accusations that Zelensky is somehow a Russian plant (?). It's just not an efficient time investment to treat this like it's informed commentary that's worth responding to.
I think the easiest way to demonstrate that babe is shooting from the hip is to note that he doesn't even seem sure about the country's name - alternatively referring to it as "Ukraine" and "the Ukraine." This is a tell for the informed about the region that Rudy Giuliani often also engages in.
(Below is a bit of self plagiarism from something I wrote elsewhere)
This is both a linguistic and diplomatic faux pas. Neither the Ukrainian nor Russian languages have definite articles. There is no practical way, when talking about Ukraine, for the natives to call it "The Ukraine." It cannot possibly be how Ukrainians refer to their own land.
Further, the terminology in calling it "The Ukraine" is a holdover from how western writers referred to the area when it was a Republic of the USSR, and was used to refer to the large borderland area of the country. "Ukraine" etymologically, shares roots with the term "borderland." So during the Soviet period, referring to the "The Ukraine" was the equivalent of talking about "The Outback" in Australia. It designated a region rather than an independent nation.
Since 1991, Ukraine has been its own nation and state. The name of the country is "Ukraine." It's written "Украина" in their Declaration of Independence and their Constitution. The abandonment of the definite article by Westerners is hugely symbolic to native Ukrainians - it's an acknowledgement that Ukraine is its own place and not just a region of Russia.
So babe writing about "the Ukraine" gives you a sense of the era his thoughts are locked in, and how informed the sources he's reading and listening to really are. This is truly just the tip of the iceberg that I can respond to quickly. Babe can say that he "sees things differently" than me in Ukraine but at the end of the day the only thing that he said that I unequivocally agree with is:
babe said:
I don't know enough to specifically debunk a dedicated, fairly well-based account like this in specifics.
Babe's posts have a tribal epistemology problem - the only "facts" he's willing to accept are those that conform to his pre-existing worldview. He's reasoning backwards.
Everything I "know" about Ukraine (not enough) is the product of a very specific effort to understand them as they see themselves. That's why I default to their newspapers, watch their tv shows, and try to read their books and fairy tales. Our processes for understanding this controversy have different starting points, and he can't really engage with what I'm doing given the tools he's using.
*Shrug*
