An expression one hears on the subject of romance is "the heart wants what the heart wants".
It's an expression to address the whole why of a romance when it really doesn't make any sense.
"I'm in love with the daughter of my father's greatest enemy!"
"I'm a scientist yet I'm in love with a guy who only cares about sports!"
That sort of thing.
It's a go-to expression when a romance defies logic or reason.
It also seems to be a go-to expression for things beyond romance.
As we head into another week of the ruthless assault of Russian forces on Ukraine, the overriding question is why is all this happening? How did we get here?
As I have written in two previous posts on Vladimir Putin's motivations for invading Ukraine are as follows:
- Ukraine is right there next to Russia.
- Vladimir Putin wants to invade it.
- There is no point three.
I think one misstep in the Biden administration's approach in the lead up to Russia's invasion was a prevailing idea that Putin could be negotiated out of doing that. This was based on the assumption that Putin was engaged in some kind of detailed cost/benefit analysis on the positive and negatives of invading Ukraine. The assumption was if Putin could be convinced that the cost of invading Ukraine would be greater than any benefit he received, he would not do it.
I think that from jump that was a flawed assumption. Putin has certain ideas about how he sees the world which can be boiled down to "Putin is strong, the rest of the world is weak". Therefore he can do whatever he wants in service to that idea of bolstering his strength and making everyone else look weak.
Never mind that everyone else can slap a shit ton of sanctions on him, his country and the rich oligarchs who support him. Putin wants to look strong, invading Ukraine will make him look strong so he's gonna do that.
After all, "the heart wants what the heart wants".
And this mind set is also at work in domestic politics.
Republican Arizona Governor Doug Ducey will not mount a campaign for the US Senate to challenge Democratic incumbent Senator Mark Kelly.
Many Republicans consider Ducey the strongest potential candidate to defeat Kelly and help the GOP retake control of the Senate.
But Ducey's name is mud to a lot of other Republicans because Donald Trump has spoken out against Ducey for not doing more to overturn the 2020 election results in Arizona that gave the win to Joe Biden.
Never mind chasing Ducey away from a Senate race would be bad for the Republican Party. Trump doesn't like him because he didn't do enough for Trump and so Trump is happy that Ducey's not running.
Well,"the heart wants what the heart wants".
Which is a stupid, self destructive strategy.
If you want to get anything done that is helpful and productive.
If your objective is what only what you get out of it, then...
"The heart wants what the heart wants".
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