But the real question is: does Putin even WANT to end this war? The fact that Trump wants the killing to end speaks to his heart, and also the American ethos that we value human life.
Welcome to Politics by Faith. Thanks for being here. So we had our wonderful Breitbart World Editor on the SiriusXM show the other day and she brought forward an analysis that I've never heard before
and checks out and it's dark, but it's probably more realistic than what I've been considering. I made a flippant comment because it would have been on Friday show that this meeting with Putin
and then today we had all the world leaders or a bunch of world leaders from Europe join the president at the White House, never a gathering like this at the White House ever with all these European leaders and they got there in like a day.
Like Trump called the meeting and everyone dropped everything and showed up and it was great. And a wonderful sign of Trump's power and strength and prestige and influence. And they all talked about how Trump made all this happen. It was great.
So it was all good. But, and I said a comment, I was like, you know, this is all good developments if you want the war to end. If you don't want the war to end, then I guess it's not very good. And then I just moved on. But Frances came in and she said, there's a high likelihood that Putin
does not want this war to end. And I was like, well, what do you? Maybe Russia, maybe Putin doesn't want the war to end. See, I'm doing this analysis on the ending of this war from a very, and you and I, we're doing it from a rational perspective. As if there's rational actors, like,
oh wow, a lot of people are dying, that's terrible. Therefore, we should end the war. Well, how can we do that? Well, we'll give up a little land, we'll get a security guarantee. Let me slow that down.
Ukraine gets a security guarantee from all of Europe, sort of like a NATO section five, that says if Ukraine's attacked, then you're attacking the whole world, and we'll all attack you back. So a little preventative measure there, Ukraine could get that, and then Russia gets a little bit of land. They'll get Crimea,
and they'll get maybe some of eastern Ukraine, called the Donbas region, and everyone's a little upset, everyone's a little happy, and we can stop the killing. That's a rational actor perspective of it. And we look at that, we're like, oh yeah, that makes sense.
But Putin's not, he's not a rational actor. It's a murderous dictator. Like what makes us think that he would come at this rationally at all? Okay, fine. So why does Putin want the war to go on?
Or why does Putin want more young Russian men to go be slaughtered? Because maybe killing young Russian men solidifies his power by eliminating a potential opposition. Oh, that's dark. That is a dark thought.
Probably right.
Probably right though. There's something in politics we've talked about a lot. It comes up from time to time called the Curley effect. It's named after the former mayor of Boston whose name is something Curley. I'm looking it up right now. James Michael Curley, four time mayor of Boston early 1900s.
His stated goal, articulated goal, was to kick out all non-Irish people and all wealthy people and leave Boston with poor Irish people, not because it was in the best interest of the people of Boston, but because it would strengthen his constituency
and increase his chances of re-election. Black mayors have done this in cities as well, explicitly. Gavin Newsom has done this in California. I don't know if he's explicitly done it, but it's certainly been the effect of it. Mayor Coleman Young in Detroit
was probably the most obvious black mayor who did this. He was in 1973 and he talked about, like, this is a black city now. If you're not black, you better get out. The former Oakland County prosecutor, just straight outside Detroit, so the former Oakland County prosecutor at the time
said, Coleman Young has made it very clear that honkies are not welcome. And he was in power for 20 years. Now, again, I mentioned Newsom. Newsom, I don't know if Newsom is explicitly kicking the opposition out, maybe, but no question that the results of his policies
is that his power is further solidified. Now, that's a very, that's a political analysis of American politics, like Newsom, Coleman Young, and John Michael Curley, not murdering people murdering the opposition. But Putin would. Same effect, same idea. Send young men from his country off to die. And you think, well, that's impossible. So that's a that's the darkest thing I've ever heard. Such an absurd accusation., it's Russia. So it's an it's getting said a state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.
There's a woman, her name is Marilyn Murray. She's a therapist and a professor, her family's from Russia, and she has dedicated her life to understanding the Russian psyche. And two things, first, on a lighter note, helping American businessmen do work in Russia, try to understand Russian culture,
if you want to do business there, but also helping the victims of Russia and the Soviet Union understand that their life matters and that they're a real individual with dignity and a soul. Here's what she said, she said,
my Russian students have shared with me that under the Soviet system, they had no worth as a person, that they were only a cog in the wheel that made the system run, made the state run. One of the most important issues
that we constantly address in our classes is to help each participant realize that they are unique and valuable. She said she asked her dad about his childhood when he was growing up in Russia, and he would always say, I don't wanna talk about it.
And she found out that her family, his family, just this decades and decades of trauma and neglect and abuse and just horrific Subjectivity to the Soviets and then you know, and then just communism basically and this is how Russia has for a long time viewed their people She talked about talking to a child in Russia
who drew a dot on a piece of paper. And she said, I'm only a spot, a tiny little spot. I have no worth at all. If you, the people have grown up in Russia and they've grown up to have this mentality for a reason. This is how their leaders have taught them
to think about themselves. We don't do that in America. In America, every person has value and worth. It's crazy to think, but Trump may care more about the young Russian soldiers than Putin does. We value life in America.
The Soviets and the Russian state, they don't. They just don't. We want people to live. This comes, and here's my biblical turn, this comes from our Christian worldview, that everyone is made in the image of God. Everyone has inherent value and dignity.
And other cultures do not share this concept. It's just so important. We've grown up in it, so we don't realize how different it is. We don't understand how special and important this is. We value human life.
Not every other country does. So where did this value of human life come from? It comes from the Bible, Genesis 127. Now, let me say one thing about Russia. I don't know much about the Russian Orthodox Church. In my brief research, there's a few doctrinal differences, some pretty big ones. This is Stephen Nicholas.
He ends his analysis with the other distinction, and I want to be careful here, but I think it's a fair assessment, is that in many cultures where the Eastern church is dominant, it's more of a cultural religion than a heartfelt, convictional religion, especially as the Eastern church has evolved over the centuries. Now, that can be said about some Americans too. Some Americans in the South who are just like culturally Christian just because their parents were and there's a lot of churches everywhere.
It's not like that. But if you read the Bible and understand the Bible, which people who are founding who created the culture that we've lived in for a long time obviously did, they understood Genesis 127. So God created man in his own image. And in the image of God, he created him.
Male and female, he created them. There's nothing else in God's order, God's created order, that is made in a reflection of his image. This is a status only for humans. And then the Bible says we are fearfully and wonderfully made. That's Psalm 139, 14. The word fearfully is a very interesting word here. What does that mean, fearfully and wonderfully made? The translation from Hebrew means with great reverence, with heartfelt interest, with
respect. We are not mass-produced. We're not churned out in an assembly line, which is how the atheist and the communist view is of people here on earth. But God does not have that view of us. And he never has not even when he made us, when he knitted us in our mother's womb. One translation of this word fearfully, uh, means to cause astonishment and
awe, to be held in awe, to inspire reverence or godly fear or awe. We're not cogs in a machine. We are made in a most intricate, intentional, and beautiful way. But when you're in an atheist, communist worldview, then obviously you're not going to come to that same conclusion that we have in America. Now this ideal that we had in America has been eroded over the last few decades here. The rise of evolution, which says we're just slightly more evolved than monkeys, and of course abortion, which says that babies in the
womb are just a clump of cells. These two things have really done a number on this idea that everyone is, you know, a beautiful creation of God knitted in the womb, but the fact that these are two attacks on this ideal prove the ideal right that the Satan has had to actively attack this idea that we are created in God's image and have inherent worth, value, and dignity. I love 1 Samuel 16, seven, but the Lord said to Samuel,
do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees. Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.
There's a lot of cultures that don't do that, that don't care about the heart of people, that don't care about the soul of people, they don't care about human life. Life is cheap. And that could be either a, from theology, so like Buddhists believe in karma and reincarnation. So if you're poor, then it's your own fault
from something you did in a previous life. And I'm not gonna get involved, I'm not gonna help you because that is unjust towards the karma that you have to pay the consequences of. So I'm not gonna lift you up because you're here for your own fault.
It could be cultural that people think life is cheap. I mean, there's,, let's say India, there's a billion people, there's like people as far as the eye can see. So it's easy to come to the conclusion that people are just expendable pieces of flesh,
but not in America. In America, every life matters. Dare I say all lives matter. So to bring it back to this war, Trump wants to end it. People are dying. He keeps saying over and over and over and over and over. Let's stop the killing. So he says over and over. He says, let's stop the killing. And
that speaks to us. But in Russia, perhaps there are some people there who are like, I kind of like it. I kind of like all the killing. And if that's the case, okay, like we can't help you guys. So at least can you maybe stop killing civilians? How about we just give you guys a little piece of land you can fight over forever.
You Putin can kill a bunch of young men, opposition, put them in a meat grinder, they die. You Zelensky, you can remain dictator forever because you don't have elections during a war and you guys can both stay in power and just do this little game forever and that's fine. But don't move beyond that area. Don't engulf all of Europe in it. Don't bring us into it anymore. Just keep killing each other all
you want, but keep us all out of it. And don't make it bigger than outside of this little bubble. Maybe that's the best we can do. Trump wants more. And as Americans, we should too. But that desire that we have in this country for peace and for life, not every country shares that.
Not every culture shares that. We need to lean into it more in this country. Celebrate it. And thank God for it. Mike Slater dot Locals dot com. Transcript commercial free on the website.
Transcript commercial free on the website. Mike Slater dot Locals dot com.
