On February 16, the Russian Federation’s Federal Penitentiary Service announced the death in custody of a prisoner at its FKU IK3 “corrective colony.” The prisoner — one Alexei Anatolyevich Navalny — “fell ill after a walk, almost immediately losing consciousness,” according to an official statement, and could not be resuscitated by medical staff.

US president Joe Biden’s blunt statement fairly summarizes western regimes’ political responses to Navalny’s death: “Make no mistake, Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death. Putin is responsible.”

Navalny spent the final years of his life in and out of prison.

According to the Russian regime, he was incarcerated for crimes ranging from embezzlement to fraud to money laundering.

According to his supporters in Russia and elsewhere, he was a political prisoner whose anti-corruption work and campaigns for public office represented a threat to Vladimir Putin’s rule.

Maybe he was one or the other, or both, or neither. But I’ve always found his status as a darling of western Putin opponents puzzling.

Navalny’s rise to prominence in Russian politics came from his support for a Russian nationalism to the right of Putin’s, starting with his advocacy of the 2006 “Russian march,” an annual far-right gathering banned that year in Moscow, and his opposition to freedom of immigration to Russia.

He supported Russia’s intervention against Georgia on behalf of, and supported Russian recognition of, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, in 2008.

As late as 2012, at the height of his public influence, he preached that “Russian foreign policy should be maximally directed at integration with Ukraine and Belarus.”

His stated views moderated later on, but seemingly more as a function of courting western support and styling himself “the anti-Putin” than as a genuine change of belief. There’s no particular reason to believe that, had he replaced Putin as president at some earlier point, we’d have seen much difference in Russian foreign policy going forward.

Which of course, tells us nothing about whether he was 100% genuine political prisoner, or 100% criminal con man who cast his prosecution as political persecution in an effort to avoid punishment, or some mix of those things.

But it does raise the question of why the US regime chose him as the face of a nascent Russian opposition to support in its foreign political meddling. Were there no other opposition figures with more personal credibility and with, or willing to adopt, sufficiently “pro-western” views? Was it just about who could be most loudly “anti-Putin?” Inquiring minds want to know.

I don’t welcome Navalny’s death. I don’t welcome anyone’s.

But I do hope that a genuine, organic, anarchist or near-anarchist political opposition, rather than yet another west-backed ringer, can fill the vacuum his death leaves.

We could use such an opposition in America, too.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

“What’s crazy,” Jon Stewart noted in his February 12 return to Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, “is thinking that we’re the ones as voters who must silence concerns and criticisms. It is the candidate’s job to assuage concerns, not the voter’s job not to mention them.”

The concerns in question revolve around the two major parties’ likely 2024 presidential nominees’ public and obvious displays of seemingly severe cognitive impairments.

The parties, the candidates’ public relations flacks, and their media co-partisans dismiss those concerns and refer to off-camera medical opinions and exams as “proof” that there’s no there there, screaming “ageism!” and “fake news!” respectively in hope of making the matter go away.

Not gonna happen. When presidents and presidential candidates can’t seem to hang on to important thoughts or remember key names and dates well enough to deliver their messages in complete and coherent sentences, voters WILL notice.

The candidates have two choices: Address it, or accept that not addressing it will cost them votes.

Joe Biden and Donald Trump — and any other presidential candidate who wants to establish his or her mental fitness as a matter of public record — can set it all to rest quickly, cheaply, and easily, if the public perception is unjustified.

Each of them should agree to undergo the Montreal Cognitive Assessment. Live. Streamed to and/or archived for America and the world via any and all Internet platforms that support live/recorded video.

The MoCA tests short-term memory, visuospatial ability, executive function, attention, concentration, working memory, language, abstract reasoning, and orientation to time and place … and it does so in about 10 minutes. A bit of a stretch for TikTok, but well within most platforms’ video length guidelines.

It’s a 30-point test. Score 26 or more and you’re golden, even if you’re in your golden years. Less than that, maybe you’ve got some issues that bear on your ability to do things like evaluating legislation for signature or veto, launching nuclear strikes, etc.

What say you, candidates? When the news cycle hands you cognitive impairment lemons, why not make campaign event lemonade?

Collect donation pledges per point, or conditional on making the 26-point cutoff, or for a perfect score of 30.

Line up potential endorsers to talk you up after — if — you ace the thing.

Schedule a “Full Ginsburg” round of the Sunday morning news shows to show off your clock-drawing chops and ability to remember the hosts’ names.

Maybe you can even get Stephen Colbert to bring you on The Late Show (if that’s not past your bedtime) and give you a list of five naughty nouns to remember.

Or you can deny, minimize, and evade the whole thing. Maybe you won’t even remember how that worked out for you.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On February 13, the US Senate passed a bill including $95.3 billion in taxpayer handouts the Ukrainian, Israeli, and Taiwanese regimes.

Inter-, intra-, and bi-partisan wrangling  in the Senate,  House, and Biden administration will likely change the exact size and composition of those handouts right up to the moment of final passage and presidential signature, but let’s accept that $95.3 billion as a starting point for how it’s going to get marketed to you and how much it’s going to lighten your wallet.

The answer to the latter question is: About $287 per American. Keep that in mind, because we’ll be coming back to it.

The marketing points will include items like “only 1.5% of what the federal government spent last year!” and “only 11.6% of last year’s US military spending!”

And, of course, the old perennial: “We’re not just giving them the money — they have to spend it in the US, creating jobs by buying weapons and ammunition from American military contractors! It’s like we’re giving it to ourselves!”

No, it’s not like we’re giving it to ourselves — it’s like politicians are giving it to politically connected corporations, minus an “administrative” rake-off for the various involved regimes, at our expense.

What could you do with $287 — or, if your family is average size (3.13 persons), what could you do with about $900?

How about a brand new set of four high-quality tires for your Toyota RAV4 (I’m assuming you own the most popular SUV in America), and a 75″ ultra-high-definition TV for your living room, with enough left over to take the family out for a very nice dinner and a movie on an even bigger screen?

How about a month or two in gas, grocery and utility costs for your household?

Or something in between?

I’m guessing that $287 per person, $900 per family, represents a reasonably big chunk of money, not chump change, to you.

Having it means a better life than not having it.

And it would go further if those “defense” contractors were competing to make things YOU want instead of to make things the Ukrainian, Israeli, and Taiwanese regimes want.

If you want those regimes to have your money, you should be allowed to give it to them. That should be your choice, not Joe Biden’s or Mitch McConnell’s or Mike Johnson’s.

Don’t let them dazzle you with political marketing. They’re just taking your money and giving it to their friends, and that’s all they’re doing.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY