OK, I realize that this is an inflammatory title and that many of my Dear Readers don’t really like The Golden Don. But really. What else can we gather from the great nothingburger that is the Mueller report?
Only this: that there there is an Orthodox angle to all this. Also, that there was collusion between a foreign power and an American political party. Trouble is, it was the Ukrainian government which colluded with the Democrats, not Putin with Trump.
How’s that for irony? Don’t believe me? then read it for yourself: Report: Ukraine Probing U.S. Election Interference by Local Officials on Behalf of Hillary Clinton.
So now, high level prosecutors in Ukraine are going to find out what, when, where and why this happened in the first place. Or maybe try to find out why this happened.
Now I realize that one cannot divorce the internal politics of what’s going on in Ukraine from this investigation. Their national election is in just six days and I imagine that the Prosecutor General may very well be a political opponent of Petro Poroshenko, the current president who is up for reelection (and who seems to be trailing badly in all the polls.)
Wow. Politics is going on. In Ukraine. Color me startled.
Anyway, it’s impossible for me (or anyone) to untangle the horrible mess that is electoral politics in that or any other nation. So I won’t try. What is important, at least for those of us who are Orthodox Christians, is that one of our Orthodox primates –you know which one–chose Ukraine to flex his newly-found papal powers. Unfortunately for him, he ignored his basic Macchiavelli, which is, don’t get involved in the internal politics of a nation which is undergoing a civil war. The risk is too high.
So now, Patriarch Bartholomew has placed his See in an unenviable position. If Poroshenko loses, his project of an “autocephalous” Ukrainian church will likewise fail with him. If he somehow manages to win, then the eastern reaches of Ukraine (where the majority of the parishes of the canonical church are located) will be forever cleaved from the schismatic body created by Bartholomew.
Even worse for Bartholomew, he didn’t consolidate his power among the Greek-speaking churches. I’m fairly confident that he thought that “us Greeks would stick together” simply because “hey, we’re Greek; it’s what we do”. Well, as can be gathered from a recent gathering of bishops from the Church of Greece and Russians, it looks like that Hellenic solidarity is an oversold commodity.
The EP put his eggs in the globalist basket. Why? I imagine because the State Department played up to his papalist pretensions. Regardless, Bartholomew violated one of the cardinal tenet of international diplomacy: foreigners shouldn’t get involved in an ongoing civil war. The reason is simple: if your side loses, then you lose as well. If they win, then the losers will feel nothing but bitterness to you.
In other words, instead of creating an “autocephelous” Ukrainian church, all that will be accomplished is a rump body located in and around Kiev. And during this time, the legally recognized Metropolitan of Kiev (Onuphriy) will continue to operate as always.
In the meantime, Patriarch Bartholomew’s untenable belief that Istanbul is “the New Rome” continues to erode before our very eyes, as President Erdogan of Turkey is making Islamic noises regarding St Sophia: Hagia Sophia might be reverted to a mosque, Erdoğan says.
It’s possiblethat his meddling in Ukraine may have prompted Erdogan to knock him down a peg or two. Regardless, provocations such as this continue to highlight to Orthodox Christians everywhere that Phanariote delusions are unsustainable.
More to follow.
This just in from GS (also posted elsewhere): http://orthochristian.com/120135.html
One could look at this spiritually and say that even Romanian-speaking churches in Ukraine realize that this new chimera created by Poroshenko and Bartholomew is illegitimate. One can also look at this politically as well, in that Ukraine is far from a settled polity given the fact that these Romanian-speaking parishes feel uncomfortable about the trajectory which the revanchist, chauvinistic (and Nazi-sympathizing) regime in Kiev has embarked upon since 2014.
George, the great risk in Ukraine is that thousands more Ukrainians will potentially die as a result of an ongoing proxy war between the U.S. and Russia, and that has nothing to do with anything Patriarch Bartholomew has done. Before the EP did anything, the Ukrainian “civil war” narrative was touted by Russia as a battle between the canonical Church and the schismatics. That “civil war” narrative still remains the same.
Yes, we know the U.S. democrats were provoking Russia, but since U.S. Democrats are no longer in full power, and we’ve established there’s no “collusion with Russia”, then why don’t the “pro-family” and “pro-life” Republicans try to put a stop to this nonsense in Ukraine? I mean really, I hope President Donald Trump would make peace with Russia. Perhaps he will. So, if he’s going to validate the illegal Israeli annexation of Golan Heights, then I suppose he might just validate the illegal Russian annexation of Crimea also. The only problem is, that would just be short-selling the Ukrainians for “world peace”. Not a good idea.
Joseph, like you, I too want President Trump to make nice with Russia. However thanks to the Deep State, this has been nigh-impossible thanks to the Peegate witch hunt. Now, that it’s been proven to be a nothingburger, perhaps the US and Russia can come to peaceful terms and we can start treating the Russians like human beings instead of devils incarnate.
Unfortunately, the EP is in his own more limited way, also impeding such an irenic outcome. The last thing he wants is for the Russian Orthodox Church to be viewed as anything other than “anti-Western”, “retrograde”, etc. It’s not part of his game plan.
This witch hunt has been the most serous attack on a sitting US President since the assassination of John F. Kennedy. As former federal prosecutor Joe DeGienov has stated,” this was a coup d’état against a sitting US President. These were acts of sedition and treason against the US.”
President Trump has been completely and totally 100% vindicated.
The traitors to our country must be brought to justice and charged with felonious, criminal acts. We can start with one James Comey whom Joe DeGenova has said, “is the dirtiest cop in America.” Hillary Clinton, Hussein Obama, Bill Clinton, Loretta Lynch, Andrew McCabe, John Brennan, and many more traitors to our country must also be prosecuted, convicted, and sent to prison. This must never again be allowed to happen to our country – EVER!
More on Ukrainian/Obama-Democrat Party collusion:
http://www.thehill.com/opinion/campaign/%5B435906-us-embassy-ukraine-to-drop-probe-of-george-soros-group-during-2016.
Basically, the State Dept leaned on heavily Ukraine to fire their Prosecutor General at the time because he was actually trying to fight corruption.
I always thought that Trump being a puppet of Putin was silly since on many issues they disagree. Trump doesn’t support Venezuela while Putin does.