Well, I’ve been doing a bit more research and I’m not finding the difference I thought I remembered reading about after I saw the film, but I’m not sure I’m remembering the film ending properly. I don’t think Ken Miles was particularly upset about the way things ended in real life and was onboard with the plan, but don’t quote me on any of this. It’s been a while since I saw the film and researched it.

The Lovely Mrs. Firefly and I saw “Ford v Ferrari” in theaters. We both enjoyed it. You forgot to mention the great portrayal of Ken Miles’ wife, Mollie. She had the right stuff also. The very image of the “behind every great man” adage.

The film caused me to do some research, to see how closely it matched reality. Most of it was accurate, including some parts I assumed were dramatized, or sensationalized, but the race ending was reconfigured.

*** spolier alert in next comment ***

Red-blooded American men putting it on the line, taking it to the next level and hang the bureaucrats and political players.

The Right Stuff Goes to Le Mans.

Yep. Especially when it comes to enriching himself. A KGB agent rags to riches story. Meantime the average Russian’s life has not improved much in the last twenty years. And why? Because, although Russia is potentially a wealthy country rich with natural resources and educated people, it’s ruled by greedy oligarchs and thugs who care nothing about improving the average Russian’s life. Putin isn’t woke. That’s in his favor. But he is a billionaire who mourns the demise of the USSR. That seems to be his obsession.

There’s a fascinating website I discovered this morning which has had me tickled all day, something calling itself the Observatory of Economic Complexity. Among its features is a set of nifty visualizations of import-export data for a bunch of the higher-end countries. The one for Russia indicates, for example, that of the $4B USD total exports of raw nickel exported from Russia in 2019, a little over half went elsewhere in Europe, and of that portion, a bare majority went to the Netherlands.

(I also learned that in that same year, a grand total of $2 (!) worth of blankets were exported by Czech concerns to each of Mauritius and South Africa. I figured it was probably one internet customer in each of those places looking for blankets of a very particular pattern for twin children or something. The granularity of the data sets is awe-inspiring for nerds. 🙂 )

He’s not necessarily irrational, either. He has a considerable history of satisfactory decision-making.

I didn’t say it was a great idea. Putin is not necessarily rational when it comes to his ambitions. His sense of the history of the Russian Empire and the breakup of the USSR as a cataclysmic disaster is not that of a rational observer.

The troops and their families might beg to differ, as well as the families taxed to finance this escapade, as well as business interests who benefit from commodious living.

You mean reconquer and area which has a population which equals that of Russia and a productive capacity that might equal about half of Russia’s? An area where the share of the population which is Great Russian is in the low single digits? An area populated stem-to-stern with people who’ve acquired the idea that sovereignty is their birthright? Sounds like a plan.