Always a Bridesmaid: Ukraine Will Never Join NATO.

Uncle Volodya says, “I don’t want everyone to like me; I should think less of myself if some people did.”

I think you like to be their simple toy
I think you love to play the clown
I think you are blind to the fact
That the hand you hold
Is the hand that holds you down

Everclear, from “Everything to Everyone”

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

George Orwell

The sun is setting on the conflict in Ukraine, and the west has arrived at a fork in the road. This way lies escalation, throwing good money after bad and the pursuit of diminishing returns, and that’s looking at it purely in economic terms – it should be remembered that these ‘diminishing returns’ represent fewer and fewer Ukrainian soldiers available to desperate efforts to hold the line, more young Ukrainian men dragged off to abbreviated military training and straight to the front because they walked down to the corner store for a loaf of bread, or got off the bus without looking around first.

That way lies putting a smile on losing and making believe it’s winning, accepting that we took on a task that was too big for us and let people who were all mouth and no brains do our talking for us, what the fuck were we thinking? There are no other options, and taking the first fork means ending up at the second fork again – just in a little while longer. Kicking the can down the road, pick your metaphor. Like Larry Hite said once; if you don’t bet, you can’t win – if you lose all your chips, you can’t bet.

Now some of the same crowd that is long on mouth and short on brains are peddling the argument that we can still win this, if we rush Ukraine into NATO – just give them membership, and the war will quickly end. I don’t know why, it just will, why do you have to bog the whole plan down with questions?

How stupid is this? Somewhere between putting the head of an immersion blender into your mouth and turning it on, and…well, I can’t think of a stupid enough example, I guess. You sort of have to ask yourself, how’s the western economy doing? Real good? Now ask yourself, how would it be improved by taking on responsibility for the poorest country in Europe, which has lost its domestic tax base to war casualties and frantic emigration, and had its overall poverty exacerbated by taking on a bunch of loans from the IMF that it can never pay back.

In a similar fashion to the way public health rewrote its reference material on vaccination during and after COVID, NATO periodically ‘updates’ its proud tenets and admittance criteria to reflect changing realities. Not all that uncommon, really – the IMF changed its lending rules in 2023 so it could keep ‘lending’ Ukraine fantastic amounts of money even though the probability it will be repaid is about the same as the likelihood John Belushi will be voted Sexiest Man Alive for 2025. So few may be surprised that NATO keeps the rules loose and vague, going hard on the harps and trumpets as it blathers about freedom, but allowing lots of loopholes so that pretty much nothing it does could be said to be strictly against the rules. In the same sense that the IMF insists it stands for the promotion of financial stability and discourages policies that would harm prosperity even as it scoops cash into big bags and hands it to a country that is completely dependent on foreign aid, NATO pretends to be strictly a defensive alliance which ‘ strives to secure a lasting peace in Europe and North America, based on its member countries’ common values of individual liberty, democracy, human rights and the rule of law’ even as it continues to play gunrunner to a country which is (a) not a member country, and (b) getting the shit knocked out of it for being a western proxy, all while baiting the world’s biggest nuclear-weapons power. Not to mention the ‘democratic values’ displayed by a wanna-be member whose President has twice refused to call an election even though his mandate expired more than six months ago.

So let’s take a look at some of what NATO officially claims are Best Practices, with a view to how Ukraine fits into them.

Destabilizers, Inc.; NATO will Squeeze Ukraine to the Last Drop.

Uncle Volodya says, “Most human endeavours, unless checked by public dissent, evolve into monocultures. Money seeks out a region’s comparative advantage, the field in which it competes most successfully, and promotes it to the exclusion of all else”.

Another park, another Sunday;
Why is it life turns out that way?
Just when you think you got a good thing
It seems to slip away…
Another park, another Sunday;
It’s dark and empty thanks to you
I got to get myself together,
But it’s hard to do…

The Doobie Brothers, from “Another Park, Another Sunday”

“Only the dead have seen the end of war.”

Plato

For my money, the Doobie Brothers never delivered a finer performance than the one recorded at the Wolf Trap Center for the Performing Arts in Vienna, Virginia in July 2004, from which the lead-in track is excerpted. For one thing, the sound and cinematography were superb, as it was being recorded for a film; concert videos are frequently filmed on a cellphone with a speaker the size of Kamala Harris’s brain, which virtually guarantees the playback will fall far short of live sound’s richness of depth and tone. But also, the Doobies were a mature band here; not as old as they are now, obviously, but as far from their biker-band beginnings as a peanut from a peacock. The sax solo at the end of “Another Park, Another Sunday” is a standout, as well. Although this track does not feature Tom Johnson’s lead-guitar work, others – like “Clear as the Driven Snow” – showcase the lazy, syrupy bends, endless sustain and melodic mastery of a vastly-underrated guitarist. Although the band has never been embarrassed for originals, carefully curated performances of cover versions like Sonny Boy Williamson’s, “Don’t Start Me Talkin'” lend strut and polish to what was already a pretty good song. I highly recommend the whole performance. Alternatively, if you can get YouTube, most of the concert is available here for free, although the fidelity is hit and miss because the recordings are from different sources.

Johnson is plainly singing about a lost lover, but it occurred to me – yes, there’s the segue, you knew it was coming, I’m so predictable – that similar grief and dislocation might accompany the loss of power you might once have casually exercised, and that here it is allegorical with the west’s inability to bend Russia to its will. Just when you think you’ve got a good thing, it seems to slip away…I’ve got to get myself together, but it’s hard to do. Yes, I imagine it is, and just like in love, I imagine it is harder to get yourself together if what you lost was something you felt yourself entitled to, that it was yours by right.

And NATO has been the entitled manager – some would say ‘dictator’ – of global stability for a long, long time. When it sees something it doesn’t like, it takes whatever steps it believes necessary to re-balance things to its satisfaction; options like revolution, regime change and human-rights investigations are like comfort food for the west. When these are deemed necessary, it is always because the target population yearns for the freedom and democracy only the west can bestow.

Who’s Running My World?

Uncle Volodya says, “Nearly all men can stand adversity; but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”

There’s a rise in the waterline;
people get swept away…no doubt
Well I’m not goin’ down.

Who’s runnin’ my world
Who’s runnin’ my world
Who’s runnin’ my world, anyway?

Thundermug, from “Who’s Running My World?”

“We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”

George Orwell, from “1984”

Thundermug was a Canadian rock act formed in London, Ontario in the early 70’s. Critics said they were good but not great, and that for their style they were competent. Anyone remember the music magazine ‘Circus’? I used to buy it whenever I could, and devour it from cover to cover; I was crazy about music and idolized those who could make it. Anyway, their music critic had a code of symbols which designated his rating – a heart, unsurprisingly, meant ‘Loved It!’. The symbol for ‘Don’t Waste Your Money’ was a little boot.

The release by the Doobie Brothers of ‘The Captain And Me’ in 1973 received a ‘boot’ rating by this dork, I can’t remember his name now; Terry something. The album went double platinum, and was rated number 835 of the Top 1000 Albums of all time. Critics don’t know everything. Sometimes they don’t know anything.

Thundermug’s founding member, guitarist and main songwriter, Bill Durst, is – incredibly – still going. The band was active in the early 70’s, and I saw them live during that period at the old Halifax Forum; one of the best concerts ever in spite of the building’s legendary awful acoustics. I was there also for this concert in July 1977. Thundermug started up again around 1990, and that iteration produced “Who’s Running My World?”, which was a killer album, better than their early material. Durst’s clever use of pick-through hooks and suspended chords yields infectious melodies without descending to pop, while retaining a crunch like stepping on coarse-ground glass on a concrete floor.

Well, as you doubtless suspected, we are not here to talk about Thundermug or defunct Canadian rock bands; I just borrowed their song for the title, and the overall tone. Because most of us must be wondering, possibly several times a day, who is running this orbiting death star, this…this spinning shit sandwich. If I were wise at all, which I clearly am not, I would stay away from the news altogether, because every reading offers up a new revelation which makes me incredulous – I simply cannot believe that people behave as they do, right out in public or in print, and are not locked up. Every time I think, that’s it; people will just never stand for that…they do. In fact, it never seems to amount to more than a speed bump, as the great flaming tarball wrenches itself into another eccentric circle around the sun. Those who have maneuvered themselves into leadership positions and offices of influence over policy have reached a zenith of unassailable power where they could make you wear the ring of a toilet seat around your neck all day if they told you it would ‘keep you safe’.

There are a lot of things I’d like to get through today, because there’s a lot going on, and I wanted to start with the arrest of Pavel Durov, in France. Let’s be clear: Durov is the very image of a spoiled liberal dilettante, and it’s not my intention to rant about his cruel treatment – he is also a billionaire with the wherewithal to blast the French government’s petulant complaints to sand. The angle that interests me, as I suspect it does you, is the west’s determination to get control of his Telegram app, and thereby another outlet for ‘disinformation’, just another service by Government Incorporated to help keep you safe by regulating what you are allowed to see in your personal process of decision-making.

For their part, the Ukrainians are iffy on the Durov Affair; they love the idea of the west pulling the rug out from under another wealthy and influential Russian and frog-marching him off to cells…on the other hand, Durov has been as contemptuously anti-Putin as Khodorkovsky ever was, and the Telegram app itself was developed to facilitate communications out of reach of the Russian government and as a corridor for opposition. Listen:

“The controversy surrounding the messenger stems from its confidentiality. This was precisely Durov’s aim: to prevent state intervention and regulation.

He mentioned that the idea for the platform emerged during searches by Russian security forces due to his refusal to remove opposition groups from VKontakte. Pavel realized there was no secure way to communicate, so developing a program with encrypted communication seemed like a good solution.

In 2018, Russian security services threatened to ban access to Telegram in the country if Durov did not hand over the encryption keys. The court even fined the platform’s management 800,000 rubles for refusing to cooperate with the FSB. For a time, the messenger was blocked in Russia, but in 2020, Russians regained access to the app.

I imagine you saw right away that Durov’s brainchild was perfectly okay with official Ukraine, and with its western partners, as long as it was defiantly refusing the efforts of the Russian government to regulate and snoop upon its content.

“Overall, Telegram has become a convenient platform for tracking news and communicating with users from around the world, but it is also considered potentially dangerous due to its anonymous channels, where propaganda, calls for violence, and illegal activities can spread.

The British news agency The Telegraph describes the platform’s confidentiality as its “dark side,” making it a “safe haven for criminals.”

The Telegraph cites warnings from researchers that Telegram is a sprawling ecosystem of illegal and violent content linked to far-right conspiracy theories, extremism, terrorism, and child abuse.”

I don’t think I would be too far off the mark, then, in suggesting that what makes western governments nervous is Durov’s apparent unwillingness to treat them differently from the Russian government. In order for Durov to police the messenger service the way the west wants him to do, he would have to accept their guidelines on what constitutes ‘far-right conspiracy theories, extremism and terrorism’. The child-abuse item is just thrown in there to make the whole package sound wholesome and forthright. The accusations, then – I don’t think we can call them ‘charges’ just yet – against Durov are that by not agreeing to police his messenger service in accordance with western diktat, he is complicit in the allegedly illegal activity that occurs therein.

The Bitter Lees of Overreach

Uncle Volodya says; “Before you attempt to beat the odds, be sure you could survive the odds beating you.”

Lees: Sediment settling during fermentation, especially in wine; dregs.

American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, from ‘Ulysses’

Something ere the end – some work of noble note. Scholars who parse epic poetry for meaning agree ‘Ulysses’ portrays an aging adventurer who yearns for one final experience before he dies, in the belief that it is better to die trying to do something great than to sit and wait for death in boredom. It is in ‘Ulysses’ that Tennyson offers the expression, “to drink life to the lees’, meaning to drain the last drop of existing, so that death robs him of only the dregs.

Zelensky’s madcap Kursk adventure marks Ukraine’s last ‘something ere the end’ – its last frantic hand-waving for attention before its head slips under the waves. And in that effort, it is wildly successful: the western media is giddy, euphoric, it cannot stop talking about Zelensky’s bold stroke, Putin’s abject embarrassment and humiliation.

But these are just words; words from past masters of ‘framing the narrative’ so the story you get out of happenings is the one they want to tell. The west is the self-declared sworn enemy of Russia: of course anything which discomfits its leader and its government is an occasion for celebration and high-fiving. It hand-picked Ukraine to throw it against Russia, so it is unsurprising that any exhibition of aggression on its part is received with cheers and approval.

Yet under the buzz of generated excitement runs an undercurrent of uncertainty; of measuring. What, exactly, is the action expected to accomplish? Zelensky’s spokesholes have implied the goal was to destabilize Russia, to rock it on its feet, and to improve Ukraine’s negotiating position. But in order to achieve the latter, Ukraine would have to hold and occupy the territory. Surely nobody believes it can do that. The attacking forces lost most of their armor and vehicles in the initial orgasmic rush, and must have run out of fuel by now for those remaining, since they cannot be resupplied – it’s hard to fly in enough fuel for a Stryker on a drone. Instead, Ukraine is now looking down the barrel of losing two brigades it cannot spare, since many soldiers were drawn from the eastern front line. That line is now two brigades understrength, while those soldiers are not going to be allowed to simply stroll home, and they are unlikely to make it out of Russia. Syrsky makes noises about ‘controlling’ this many towns and villages, but there is considerable dispute over the real meaning of ‘control’, and even if he were completely right, how is the Ukrainian army going to continue to ‘control’ this territory without logistic resupply?

But if You Try Sometimes, You Just Might Find, You Get What You Need. Or, Alternatively, What You Deserve.

Uncle Volodya says; “You are responsible for the predictable consequences of your actions.”

She was practiced at the art of deception
Well I could tell by her blood-stained hands…sing it;

The Rolling Stones, from “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”

“Failure is really a matter of conceit. People don’t work hard because, in their conceit, they imagine they’ll succeed without ever making an effort. Most people believe that they’ll wake up some day and find themselves rich. Actually, they’ve got it half right, because eventually they do wake up.”

Thomas Edison

You can’t always get what you want; my, yes, that’s true, isn’t it? If you like your analysis in two-chord chunks, you can’t do much better than that – thank you, Doctor Jagger. Mick Jagger himself claimed that “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” – which made the 2004 list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time at number 100 – was written on an acoustic guitar in his bedroom. An interpretation of its deeper meaning was offered by Richie Unterberger of AllMusic:

“Much has been made of the lyrics reflecting the end of the overlong party that was the 1960s, as a snapshot of Swinging London burning out. That’s a valid interpretation, but it should also be pointed out that there’s also an uplifting and reassuring quality to the melody and performance. This is particularly true of the key lyrical hook, when we are reminded that we can’t always get what we want, but we’ll get what we need.”

If we buy the interpretation that it was about the end of an overlong party, and the burnout of Swinging London, then Thomas Edison and Mick Jagger might have played in the same band. At least they may have shared a cynical appreciation for the withdrawal that accompanies the dying of entitlement, and the conviction that certain things will accrue to you because you deserve them, and that you deserve them because the country you live in cannot help but succeed in whatever it tries.

Nothing wrong with optimism, and it can get you through some rough patches. But can-do must be tempered with realism, and there’s no room for realism in entitlement. However, it is perfectly capable of proceeding independent of entitlement – I think that ought to be a proverb, like “History does not repeat itself; but it rhymes”. And the reality suggests the NATO empire, headed by the United States, is in a downward spiral of decline; I know that’s not what they said at the recent self-laudatory birthday-celebration ‘summit’. But the party is over. As Hunter S. Thompson philosophized in “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”,

“…Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”

The momentum is gone – like the Red Queen, NATO is expending all its energy trying to remain in the same place, constantly running faster and expending more effort against a hard wall in the reality it affects to disdain.

Several sources claim that ‘studies show’ the average length of an Empire is 250 years. None of them cite any actual studies. I did find it recorded as a statement of fact at World Population Review – but that source might well have relied on the same ‘studies’, and just didn’t say so. Be that as it may, taking the year of its Declaration of Independence as its birthday, the United States is 247 years old this year. Now, you might be able to jiggle that window to the right a considerable distance by taking as your starting point the year you believe the USA got too big for its britches, and started to order the rest of the world around, because it certainly started out considerably more modest than it is now, although even statements by the Founding Fathers suggest they thought the place was …well… exceptional.

I chose to think the USA became an Empire at the point it declared itself a ‘superpower’, but well before that it was clear its government believed its influence extended far, far beyond its own borders. Similarly, we might exact a penalty of years for egregious examples of overreach, such as the Vietnam War, which would shorten the window of Empire. Interestingly, the US government used the exact same reasoning, in public fora, for fighting the war in Iraq as it had done in the case of Vietnam – we have to fight them over there, because if we withdraw they will follow us home. Well the USA demonstrably did not beat the Vietnamese – although it wrecked their country – and it did unquestionably withdraw. But it must have at least tired the Vietnamese out, because none of them followed the Americans home.

Anyway, I don’t want to get too far from my overarching theme that ties everything together, which is…crime doesn’t pay? No, that wasn’t it, Jesus Christ…oh, yeah, I remember! You deserve to fail if you are warned ahead of time of the likely disastrous consequences of your actions, and you press on in your arrogance and pride, and exactly what was forecast to happen does happen.

Well, let’s look at an example, what say? 2003, only 21 years ago; most of us can remember that far back. On February 14th Dominique de Villepin, French Minister of Foreign Affairs (from back before France turned into a giant talking asshole named Emmanuel Macron) delivered an address to the assembly at the United Nations Security Council, laying out France’s position on the question of using military force against Iraq. The Minister argued that a precipitate decision to use force “would be so fraught with risks for people, for the region and for international stability that it should only be envisioned as a last resort”. France’s principled position was that UN inspections were having an effect, but that not enough time had been allowed to conclude positively that Iraq was committing serious violations, or any violations. The country was cooperating, nothing like a weapons-of-mass-destruction program had been found, Iraq had agreed to verification overflights and to allow UN inspectors to question Iraqi scientists without witnesses.

NATO Keeps Rubbing the Lamp, Hoping Victory Will Appear.

Uncle Volodya says; “We are not rich by what we possess, but by what we can do without.”

“In the end we all come to be cured of our sentiments. Those whom life does not cure, death will. The world is quite ruthless in selecting between the dream and the reality even where we will not.”

Cormac McCarthy, from “All the Pretty Horses”

“I dreamt I was whole once. I flew above the world on wings of snow and sugar and everything was beautiful and I was flawless and perfect.

When I woke my pillow was wet.”

Colubrina, from “Sublimation”

It’s up to each of us, of course, to set and maintain our own social comfort level. But I don’t think I am comfortable with journalism that lies to me all the time, or governments who pull their own stories – upon which they base the formulation of national policy on this or that- from journalistic products which are mostly if not all lies, or to falsely project the state of the world upon statements which are lies. And journalists who uncritically quote those who have an established record of lying are only one step removed from liars themselves – shadow liars, if you will.

I suppose you could just assume everything in the news which is the product of certain journalists will be lies, and safeguard yourself from it by a kind of pre-disbelief. But an unconscious something inside you will wonder if others believe it, and to what extent the bullshit generated is receiving uncritical acceptance – you can’t help yourself.

It’s just possible that some people tell you things they actually believe are true, but they’re not, because the speaker is an idiot – as it happens, I have an excellent example; Hamish de Bretton-Gordon’s “Putin’s nuclear arsenal is crumbling. Ukraine can take it out for good”. I don’t want to get into this concept too deeply, because it’s not the precise journalistic technique I wanted to highlight here. But my God; it simply cries out for someone to challenge its foolishness.

You probably know Hamish de Bretton-Gordon from such warfare classics as “British-made tanks are about to sweep Putin’s conscripts aside”. Here’s a short teaser; that’s all we can afford, because this author’s overconfident swaggering is so prolific that we could easily spend all day and thousands of words creasing ourselves up over his ignorant havering.

“As a former tank commander, I can say one thing for certain: Putin’s demoralised conscripts are utterly unprepared for the shock action now hitting their lines. Ukrainian armoured formations are beginning to meet Russian forces in battle, and they are going to pulverise Russia’s defensive lines. I am confident for one simple reason: Ukraine will follow the Western ideology of manoeuvre warfare in a combined arms context, while the Russians will follow Soviet doctrine, relying on attrition and numbers. The Russians will find that the armour of Western tanks is far more resilient than flesh and bone, they will die in great numbers, and they will lose.”

Dear me; is that what’s been happening? It sure as fuck is not. There are so many things wrong with it, it’s hard to know where to start, but we can start with ‘Putin’s demoralised conscripts’. There is no evidence at all to date which suggests the Russian army in Ukraine is ‘demoralised’, and no conscripts as we know them have been fighting since the early days of the war more than two years ago, when a handful of conscripts were mistakenly sent straight into action. As soon as it was pointed out the error was rectified, and it has never been repeated. Fresh conscripts go straight into progressive training cycles, and the 300,000 ‘call-ups’ were all previous-service military personnel who were recalled because their areas of specialization were needed. Since that time there have been more than enough volunteers to replenish the ranks.

There’s Never Been a Better Time for NATO to confront Russia. As Long as You are Russia.

Uncle Volodya says, “All my misfortunes come of having thought too well of my fellows.”

Masquerading as a man with a reason,
My charade is the event of the season;
And if I claim to be a wise man, well
It surely means that I don’t know…

Kansas, from “Carry On Wayward Son”

“I ended my time in Intelligence convinced that my country’s operating system—its government—had decided that it functioned best when broken.”

Edward Snowden, from “Permanent Record”

There are no great thinkers left in the west.

Well, maybe that’s not entirely accurate – but if there are, they are not in national leadership positions. Instead NATO nations are led by simpletons like Liz Truss, who did not know that Rostov and Voronezh are part of Russia, or perhaps thought that if Britain did not recognize Russia’s sovereignty over these regions the Russians might become confused, and give them up. This issue came up in February 2022, when Truss was Britain’s Foreign Secretary, and showing off her talking-tough chops by ordering Moscow to pull its forces back from Ukraine’s borders. The forces which were the subject of their discussion were inside Russia, which is a completely unsurprising place to find Russian forces.

Or Annalena Baerbock, who insisted Putin could completely change the unfolding of events in Ukraine if he would ‘turn by 360 degrees’ from his present course, which would of course put him exactly back where he had been.

Or Jens Stoltenberg, who claims it is ‘still not too late for Ukraine to win the war’ when Russia is pounding it with as much as a ten-to-one advantage in artillery and has more than three times the population. I don’t suppose I have to tell you that Jens Stoltenberg not only was never in the military, but never made any serious study of military history, or he would know that none of the realities of Ukraine’s present military situation argue in favour of anything that might look like success. But when reality might be too scary, you can always listen to the patter of happy talk coming from the Ukrainian government, which convinced US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo that Russia, in the opening stages of the war, had fallen so short of the semiconductors used to build precision-guided missiles that it was taking them from dishwashers and refrigerators. She heard that from the Ukrainian Prime Minister, Denis Shmyhal, who must have laughed his ass off to see such evidence of gullibility.

“She said she has heard anecdotes from the Ukrainian prime minister that some of the Russian equipment left behind contains semiconductors from kitchen appliances because the defense industrial base is having a hard time producing more chips on its own and is facing export controls that limit its ability to import the technology from other countries.”

Electronics at the level of precision-guidance systems is fairly exacting, which leads us naturally to the question of how the Ukrainians knew semiconductors in Russian military equipment came from kitchen appliances. Was ‘refrigerator’ coded into the circuit board somewhere? If not, are certain semiconductors perhaps common to both? The whole concept is bizarre – if high-level and hard-to-find chips needed to build missile-guidance systems are contained in home refrigerators, how are sanctions ‘working’? Couldn’t Russia simply import hundreds of thousands of refrigerators and dishwashers? They’re not sanctioned. Listen to what is coming out of your stupid mouth, how about? And while you’re being quiet, think about next time picking allies who are not clowns from a comedy show, although that doesn’t necessarily imply you need to repeat whatever they say without reflecting upon whether it might sound as if you are suffering from early-onset dementia.

Whatever You Have to Tell Yourself

Uncle Volodya says; “You are not permitted to kill a woman who has wronged you, but nothing forbids you to reflect that she is growing older every minute.”

“We seem to be unable to resist overstating every aspect of ourselves: how long we are on the planet for, how much it matters what we achieve, how rare and unfair are our professional failures, how rife with misunderstandings are our relationships, how deep are our sorrows. Melodrama is individually always the order of the day.”
― Alain de Botton, from Religion for Atheists

“Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.”
― Jane Austen, from Pride and Prejudice

A Captain I occasionally work with uses the title phrase to suggest the person he is speaking to is getting a little above himself – that he might be getting an inflated view of his importance and worth. An updated version, I guess you might say, of Pascal’s “Do you wish people to think well of you? Don’t speak well of yourself”, although I think we can agree that would be an unwieldy phrase in an era where nobody talks like a 17th-century French philosopher. But in that context, it is an extremely useful and utilitarian means of conveying subtle mockery without being openly insulting. And on a national scale, the United States – or at least its government – has elevated getting above oneself to an art form.

Consider this recent example: on the occasion of the ‘retirement’ of Victoria Nuland, principle neoconservative architect of The Glorious Maidan and the Revolution of Dignity – and, to a large extent, the subsequent hot war between Russia and Ukraine – US Secretary of State Antony Blinken offered this tribute via X:

“Russia is weaker militarily, economically and diplomatically. NATO is bigger, stronger, and more united than at any time in its nearly 75-year history”

All, presumably, attributable at least in part to the selfless pick-and-shovel work of Victoria Nuland, who made it a lifelong project to fuck over Russia by any means necessary, at any cost and using every resource at her disposal. Including, obviously, the lives of Ukrainians, the American government’s proxy army. By Mr. Blinken’s reckoning, her tenure as the US Department of State’s Big Anti-Russia Boxing Glove has been a rousing success.

Has it?

We Come Not to Praise Zelensky, but to Bury Him.

Uncle Volodya says, “Some people are in such utter darkness that they will burn you just to see a light. Try not to take it personally.”

Old adversaries, when they meet again,
Are as familiar as two old friends…

Wide Mouth Mason, from “Sugarcane”.

“I hate stupidity, but what I hate even more is when people actually brag about it.”

Bill Maher, from “When You Ride Alone You Ride With Bin Laden”

There’s a sort of stink that surrounds Volodymyr Zelensky these days, and follows him wherever he goes. The miasma of failure, surely, since The Great Counteroffensive of 2023 turned out to be a military success like…well, like playing the President on television is like being the President in real life. Which is to say, not at all like a military success. But it’s more than that. What accompanies Zelensky these days is the stink of the walking dead, politically speaking.

And you could actually see it coming pretty far out; first there were gentle criticisms of what a grifter he is, not only always asking for money but downright acting as if he was entitled to expect it from you, as if he believed that guff about Ukraine being the front line of defense of western democracy. Ukraine is actually about as much like a functioning democracy as a…I can’t actually think of an appropriately ridiculous comparison, but suffice it to say a country that puts off elections with the absurd excuse that elections inspire disunity and the country really needs unity right now, even s’posing it is enforced unity, is not a democracy. That’s not really as stinging a criticism as it might appear, because the western countries which are supposed to be the models of modern democracy are actually not much like democracies, either, to be fair.

Anyway, after another of his public appearances, in which he grunted like Vin Diesel with a speech impediment and demanded more money and ever-more-exotic weapons, a few skeptics might say, “You know, every time I see that guy, he’s demanding more money. You’d think he would be a little bit grateful for the billions we’ve already given him.” But the mainstream media continued to lavish uncritical attention on him, and his critics mostly held their tongues.

Just as an aside, Zelensky comes across as a steroid muscle-head for a couple of reasons; one, he’s an actor, and he’s playing a role. Two, his English is laboured and not very good. He was not only eloquent, he was compelling when he spoke Russian – would you like to see? Here he is, introducing a couple of guys from the popular Russian TV series ‘Kadyetsva’, singing a completely forgettable pop song while accompanied by leggy eye-candy girls pretending to play guitars. Russian is Zelensky’s mother tongue, although now he affects to hate everything Russian. And leaving your roots behind is perfectly okay, provided you are successful at reinventing yourself. Zelensky is not.

Anyway, let’s not wander too far. So, first gentle criticism. Then, a dramatic drop in public appearances with foreign leaders. Zelensky was the public face of Ukraine, and apparently willing to travel anywhere, anytime so he could get hold of the microphone and advertise the country’s need for more money to thrash Russia. The I’m-so-over-Zelensky moment most remember is that photo from the NATO summit, in which Zelensky was left completely alone by all the dignitaries, standing around in his Fidel Castro fatigues and looking like a spare prick at a wedding. I’m still trying to be fair, and it’s likely he was just unoccupied for a minute or two while his missus was chatting with some other dignitary’s wife about where to buy a diamond-crusted back-scratcher or some other essential item. But there was definitely a backing-away from the previous Zelenskymania, in which he was compared favourably to Churchill and his countrymen were rated the fiercest warriors since the Aztecs, and venues such as the UN General Assembly, the US Congress and the UK Parliament vied for the honour of being addressed by his anthropoid monotone, washing him in the comforting waves of ovation after ovation. How are the mighty fallen!

Incompetent Russia Hilariously Fails to Prevent Ukraine from Losing.

Uncle Volodya says, “Mockery and derision have their place. Usually, it’s on the far side of the airlock.”

“Nonsense has taken up residence in the heart of public debate and also in the academy. This nonsense is part of the huge fund of unreason on which the plans and schemes of optimists draw for their vitality. Nonsense confiscates meaning. It thereby puts truth and falsehood, reason and unreason, light and darkness on an equal footing. It is a blow cast in defence of intellectual freedom, as the optimists construe it, namely the freedom to believe anything at all, provided you feel better for it.”

Roger Scruton, from, “The Uses of Pessimism: And the Danger of False Hope”

“Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about. Thus the production of bullshit is stimulated whenever a person’s obligations or opportunities to speak about some topic are more excessive than his knowledge of the facts that are relevant to that topic. This discrepancy is common in public life, where people are frequently impelled — whether by their own propensities or by the demands of others — to speak extensively about matters of which they are to some degree ignorant.”

Harry G. Frankfurt, from, “On Bullshit”

The title probably made you scratch your head for a second, because it’s what Steely Dan called ‘Pretzel Logic’ – an attempt to stick to a chosen storyline regardless the inability of assembled facts to support it. According to the Pop Culture dictionary, “…used to describe inconsistent, illogical thinking that, once scrutinized, doesn’t stand up…frequently appears in political contexts, used in an effort to call out opponents’ logical fallacies or to characterize someone’s twisted line of reasoning or justifications.”

Unless, perhaps, you work for British Intelligence, or the British Ministry of Defense. In which case it will make perfect sense – even have about it an air of immutable prophesy. Speaking of prophesy, here’s one: in the years or even decades to come, as analysis of the Russo-Ukraine war is filtered, the contribution to an accurate picture of the situation offered by the combined staffs of the establishments just mentioned will be assessed to have been as effective as if it had been provided by an equivalent number of pithed frogs.

Here’s a relevant example. “Ukraine’s counter-offensive has failed for now – the West needs a new plan”. I’m bound to ask, right out of the blocks, what makes the author assess that the failure of Ukraine’s counteroffensive – which would be comical were it not for the awful cost in human lives – needs the qualifier, ‘for now’? Is there something about the steady, spiraling downward non-progress of Ukraine’s efforts which inspires the belief that it will reverse, and turn into success? If it foundered while transfusions of money and western equipment reached a crescendo, what is the likelihood that burnout and disillusionment among Ukraine’s allies will inspire a reversal of its fortunes?

I guess I was forgetting that we are talking about the UK media, for whom loopy prognosis is as natural as moral superiority and cheap gossip. Demonstrations abound; Britain’s ‘spy chief’ – Richard Moore, head of MI6 – interpreted in the summer of 2022 that Russia was ‘running out of steam’ in Ukraine. He elaborated that Russia was increasingly having trouble finding enough soldiers, perhaps due to Putin’s policy of sending the poor and underprivileged kids from blue-collar Siberian towns to be mowed down by Ukraine’s ruthless efficiency.

“Moore also provided an estimate on the number of Russians killed in the war thus far — 15,000. He said that’s “probably a conservative estimate” and marked a “very bloody nose” for President Vladimir Putin, who expected a quick victory.

He noted that it is about the same number that Russia lost in 10 years in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

“And these are not middle-class kids from St. Petersburg or Moscow,” he said. “These are poor kids from rural parts of Russia. They’re from blue-collar towns in Siberia. They are disproportionately from ethnic minorities. These are his cannon fodder.”

Disproportionately from ethnic minorities. Perhaps he is thinking of the US Army, where blacks and Hispanics made up 37.4% of the active-duty component as of end-June 2022, according to the US Army’s own statistics. Do blacks and Hispanics comprise 37.4% of the general population in America? Mind you, that’s what pretzel logic is for – if you are a mostly-white progressive western market democracy, and have a high proportion of ethnic minorities in your ground forces…you score high marks for ‘diversity’! If you are Russia – which is also predominantly white – no matter how many ethnic minorities you have in your ground forces, they are ‘cannon fodder’ and you recruited them so as not to throw away white lives needlessly. For the record, over 80% of Russians identify as ‘ethnic Russians’ – which does not necessarily mean they are white Europeans – and the Army’s internal documents do not include ethnicity, which makes me curious what Richard Moore is using for references. Then again, he is Britain’s ‘spy chief’, so maybe he just ‘knows’. With those whole-‘nother-level instincts which made the British so good at forecasting when ‘Putin’ was going to run out of missiles.