It is an excellent rule to be observed in all disputes, that men should give soft words and hard arguments; that they should not so much strive to vex as to convince each other.
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.
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!
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.
Uncle Volodya says; “What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.”
There’s a battle ahead, Many battles are lost; But you’ll never see the end of the road While you’re traveling with me…
Hey now, hey now Don’t dream it’s over; Hey now, hey now When the world comes in: They come, they come To build a wall between us We know they won’t win…
The recent attack by Hamas militias against Israel – quite apart from unleashing a barrage of pro-Israel propaganda which expresses astonishment that the barbaric Arabs should once again set upon such a benign and philanthropic peacemaker as Israel, and moreover to attack the most liberal and peaceful of its citizens when they were only harmlessly dancing and singing – has knocked Ukraine and Zelensky off the front pages. As we have seen repeatedly in recent history, once the messaging becomes conflicted, those who depend on the narrative expressing a coherent drumbeat of unflinching unity have cause to worry. Even before the blowup in the Middle East, the question of open-ended funding for Ukraine was causing a bit of a wobble, and differing priorities at the highest levels of the US government resulted in the unprecedented firing of the Speaker of the House. Kevin McCarthy sent mixed messages, but when your country is completely dependent on foreign aid to continue a war the donors led you to believe was unlikely to even happen, Russia would surely back down…anything other than partisan commitment sounds a warning. Additionally, the US government ‘discovered’ a $6 Billion ‘accounting error’ which would sound ludicrous if it hadn’t happened to an entity that pays little attention to accounting, since it can just print more money if it needs to. Perhaps the adjusted message could best be encapsulated in the subtext of this paragraph:
“The more this drags out and the more it looks like a stalemate and a war of attrition,” the less support it gets,” said House Foreign Affairs Chairman Mike McCaul, R-Texas. “And that’s why it’s going to be very important for Zelenskyy to talk about what is your plan for victory, what do you need? So we can go to the administration and say this is what they need in a supplemental.”
What is your plan for victory, Mr. Zelensky? Because the days of jaunty rhetorical flourishes and standing ovations, the days of ‘Zelenskymania’…are over. What is your plan for defeating an enemy that now – thanks to staggering combat losses – outnumbers you to a significantly greater degree than it did at the outset of hostilities, an enemy ramped up and humming at wartime production levels? An enemy that does not rely on international allies for any of its ammunition, aviation, artillery or armor, if you will permit a little alliteration?
I’d be interested to hear it. Because thus far ‘the plan’ appears to have been ‘stage a dramatic event whenever foreign dignitaries visit, or whenever it has again become necessary for the Ukrainian head of state to travel abroad on a fundraising tour’. This has not escaped notice, and while the accuser in this instance is Russia, even The New York Times acknowledged that a missile which plowed through a busy marketplace in Konstantinovka – killing 17 people and wounding another 30 or so – was probably Ukrainian based on evidence. As usual, though, western media did not wait around for ‘evidence’, but went into its customary shuck-and-jive pro-Ukrainian stenographic recitation of Ukrainian accusations – “Horrendous attack”, screamed Sky News: “Heinous evil and brazen wickedness”, moaned Zelensky. “Despicable” UN humanitarian envoy for Ukraine Denise Brown yodeled, like a hog caught in a gate, while the European Council of Bobbleheads chorused “heinous and barbaric”. “There will be retribution”, threatened Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, through his UK mouthpiece, the BBC.
The brazen, heinous, wicked and barbaric, despicable attack took place co-incident with an unannounced visit to Ukraine by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.
There was nothing – repeat, nothing – even-handed or driven by journalistic integrity in the Times report: it simply was first to acknowledge what could no longer be credulously denied. Once the probability of the missile having been fired by Ukraine was introduced, a magical transformation occurred, and it was no longer heinous, barbaric, wicked or despicable: no, it was ‘tragic’, a ‘mistake’; a ‘missile that failed to find its target’, although the fact that of the more than 10,000 civilians killed in Ukraine and the former Ukraine since The Glorious Maidan, Revolution of Dignity, the overwhelming majority were killed in Eastern Ukraine by shelling and Tochka missile strikes by the AFU…suggests the missile went exactly where it was sent. But I suppose we must allow grudging recognition of advancement on the deliberate idiocy which prevailed following the strikingly-similar attack on the Kramatorsk train station on April 10th, 2022. That attack, according to Wikipedia, left 63 dead and 150 wounded; the BBC published “What we know” about the attack. While it was, in retrospect, careful to point out that each side blamed the other, it announced that “The US, EU and UK have condemned the incident and have since announced additional military support for Ukraine.” Who does that look like they blame? Some guy who worked at a warehouse claimed to have seen a Ukrainian air-defense missile intercept another incoming missile like the one which struck the train station grounds; no such intercept took place. The appointed-by-Zelensky ‘Governor of Donetsk’, Pavlo Kyrylenko, immediately reported that the weapon had been an Iskander ballistic missile (which only Russia has) with a cluster-munitions warhead. He later retracted that and agreed with the abundant evidence that it was a Tochka-U, considering the smoking casing remained where it landed and the serial number of the missile was shown on European television. Never mind – I’m just surprised he didn’t say the warhead was filled with hatchets, or the skulls of murdered Ukrainian children or some similar poppycock.
You could certainly be forgiven, if it is your habit to trawl through the mainstream western news media to see what’s going on, the emergence of a certain…optimism. A certain general feeling that paradigm shifts are taking place, that tectonic plates, figuratively, are on the move and the world is shuddering, changing. And it is; no denying that. But a simple manipulation of language is fostering the belief – as it was designed to do – that the nature of the battle for Ukraine is altering; that the Ukrainians are focusing on something other than frantic mouselike jumping against the walls and that something…something long anticipated is at last emerging. There is a great sussuration of whispering throughout the west, led by the state media outlets, and the word they are whispering is ‘breakthrough’.
Once again, optimism raises its battered head.
And what did Hemingway teach us about optimism? Come on; it’s not hard, it’s right there at the top of the page. Yes, that’s right – optimism can keep a fool from accepting failure.
I think most of us would agree that optimism, in and of itself, is a good and necessary quality. If we can’t foresee a good and timely end to messy and unpleasant affairs, fewer efforts to conclude them would even be attempted. But optimism packaged by itself is like sausage that is all filler – optimism must be viewed together with reality, which is the meat, in this instance.
And the ongoing efforts by the western media to steer the narrative are all optimism…zero reality. Let’s look at some of them, shall we?
Uncle Volodya says; “A team is where a boy can prove his courage on his own. A gang is where a coward goes to hide.”
“How happy had it been for me had I been slain in the battle. It had been far more noble to have died the victim of the enemy than fall a sacrifice to the rage of my friends.”
Alexander the Great
“Good guys don’t always win, especially when they are divided and less determined than their adversaries. The desire for liberty may be ingrained in every human breast, but so is the potential for complacency, confusion, and cowardice. And losing has a price.”
Madeleine Albright, from, “Fascism: a Warning”
I imagine all of us, at some time in our lives, have been the winner in a competitive event; something from your school days, perhaps – a foot race, arm wrestling, some minor test of skill or strength…only to have the loser confide, “Of course, I wasn’t really trying”. The obvious implication is that you didn’t really win; if your adversary had invested a serious effort, you would have been left in the dust, and so the thrill of victory should be hollow for you.
I imagine most of us, also, have some experience with the American Culture Of Winning, probably from major sporting events such as the Olympics. Everybody wants their team or player to win, and we all cheer for our own, but American fans frequently take it to a whole other level, screaming “USA!!!USA!!!” from the sidelines until their blood pressure must be measurable in gigapascals, and their vision greying out at the edges. Magnanimous to a fault in victory, America likes to help up its opponent, dust him off and buy him a beer – but it is imperative to beat him first.
Grasping this, it is still astounding to see the “I wasn’t trying” defense employed at a national level, in an apparent attempt to snatch victory from defeat. But it gets worse. America is apparently taking the position that it could have beaten Russia in Ukraine…but pulled its best punches because it was afraid a too-big Ukrainian victory could cause the collapse of the Russian state, with its attendant consequences for the world.
I’ll give you a minute to wrap your head around the enormity of that. But what else are we supposed to infer?
“There is, of course, another American anxiety; one that is perhaps greater than the fear of drawn-out battle. That is a level of Ukrainian victory that could lead to collapse in the Kremlin and possible fragmentation and chaos across the country with potentially catastrophic geostrategic consequences and untold global economic harm. This immediate vision of doom may or may not be right – but it endures in the back of the minds of White House officials.
It also goes some way to explaining why the US has been generous only up to a point on military aid for Ukraine. Far more could and should have been provided and much more quickly. Instead the administration has supplied just enough to achieve a certain level of success but not sufficient to inflict outright defeat on Putin’s regime.”
I know, right? Hard to interpret that any other way than ‘we totally could have waxed their asses, but we backed off because we were afraid they couldn’t handle losing’.
I expect this revelation will come as something of a surprise to the Ukrainians. Who have, you know, burnt through a couple of hundred thousand lives in increasingly hopeless assaults on Russian defenses as they turn ‘counteroffensive’ into a punchline. What an eye-opener it must be to learn that America only gave them billions in cash and tons of weapons to put a scare into Putin – but it was never in the plan that Ukraine would win, because they couldn’t handle victory. Probably cause a bit of a wobbler in Europe, as well, when they learn they lost over €100 Billion from closing out western businesses in Russia, but their lord and master never intended that Russia should be defeated. Considering, you know, that Jens ‘Mister Leadership’ Stoltenberg not only said that Russia must be defeated on the battlefield, he claimed that if Ukraine did not win, there could be no more talk of NATO membership. So if we connect the dots, we go from December 2021 where Russia said that Ukraine must never be a member of NATO to where the collective western alliance said pound sand, Russia, Ukraine will do as it pleases and the door is always open. Then to February 2022 where Zelensky – thinking America had his back – started a military push to take back the Donbas, inspiring recognition of the DPR/LPR as independent entities and a subsequent Russian military response to their request for urgent assistance to prevent their being overrun. To ‘peace talks’ in Istanbul in March 2022, where Boris Johnson and Antony Blinken talked Zelensky out of an agreement based on their appraisal that Russia – having ‘failed to capture Kiev’ – was just blowing smoke and hoping to steamroll Ukraine into a precipitate signature…to now, where (1) Ukraine has lost almost a third of its previous acreage, and (2) the United States never intended that it should win, because believe me, if America was really trying, Ukraine would have kicked their ass ’til it rang like a bell.
What do we extrapolate from this? America must have known, all through the time it was blabbering about an imminent Ukrainian breakthrough, that it couldn’t allow that to happen, because it might lead to a Ukrainian victory and a Russian collapse. So it held back a little…just enough to make sure Ukraine continued to squander the lives of its soldiers for a victory it had no chance of achieving. Because America mustn’t let it happen. America and its undernourished-but-pugnacious sidekick, England, talked the President of Ukraine out of a potential agreement which would have seen his country about a third bigger in square miles and 200,000 higher in population than it is right now, all the time knowing they could not allow Ukraine to win, and that any sacrifices it made subsequent to refusing the peace terms would be (a) irrecoverable, and (b) for no purpose. The only possible alternate explanation is that they are just making up that ‘we weren’t really trying’ explanation to avoid embarrassment. And, I mean, who would do that?
Uncle Volodya says, “Fear of the unknown and the other is the root of almost all hate. It is born of ignorance and fed by those who would keep us divided.”
I’m sick and tired of hearing things from Uptight short-sided narrow-minded hypocritics; all I want is the truth, just give me some truth. I’ve had enough of reading things By neurotic psychotic pigheaded politicians: all I want is the truth, just give me some truth…
“If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change.”
Ray Bradbury, from, “Fahrenheit 451”
There’s a lingering hint of Santayana in NATO’s recent Gathering Of The Elites in Lithuania; Santayana, who told us, “Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.” NATO has not precisely forgotten its aims, which are to first frame Russia as an enemy although they were once allies, and then to overturn and smash it; in fact, those aims remain crystal clear. What we have lost sight of is how far we are willing to go to attain the goal. And the answer, offered and repeated and echoed like catechism by all the NATO bobbleheads assembled, is “as far as it takes”. The Law Of Holes – which states that if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging – has been repealed, and trial balloons which have fallen to earth farting self-righteous sincerity are dusted off, reinflated and sent aloft again.
Sanctions, we were told, would wipe Russia off the board. Bear with me for a moment, if you will, while we review just how abysmally that has failed.
This is the Moscow Central Bank’s current balance sheet. The latest figure has fallen off a little, but I ask you – does this look like the picture of a nation in the grip of a fiscal crisis? May’s figures are 53,839,357 million rubles, off from April’s 54,758,811 million rubles. But look at the gain in values over the last year that Russia has been engaged in a bitter war against NATO’s resources in Ukraine. The key interest rate has remained unchanged at 7.5% since October 2022.
Per-capita GDP adjusted for purchasing power parity has likewise slipped a little, but to get a feeling for whether this is a disaster for Russia, note the difference between the most recent figure and 2015, when the Russia vs. Ukraine and the west crisis began.
How ’bout that price cap on energy exports, though? That certainly screwed Putin to the wall, right? Not exactly. Here’s what it did do.
The price cap was designed to keep Russia oil flowing and prevent a global supply shock, while crimping the Kremlin’s revenue and its ability to fund the war in Ukraine. Importers are unable to use Western services such as insurance and shipping if crude is purchased above the $60-a-barrel limit. That’s led to the emergence of a large fleet of shadow tankers to bypass sanctions.
A large fleet. Of ‘shadow tankers’, to bypass sanctions. Tankers which pay no fees to western shipping firms, and no premiums to western insurers. My, that was clever, wunnit? In fact, it kind of sounds…like disobedience to me. Oh, look; there’s more.
Asian buyers regularly use this flotilla to import crude from Russian and other nations such as Iran. Officials from two Chinese refiners said their purchases of Russian oil over recent months have mostly been executed without the use of Western financial, insurance and shipping services.
Do correct me if I am on the wrong track, but what I see is a widening gap between the overdeveloped western nations and their target emerging markets, especially given the price difference between western-defined ‘black-market’ energy and America’s own overpriced LNG. You know what else I see? An increasing willingness to do business outside the western currency market.
Indian refiners have tested the use of other currencies such as dirhams, rubles and rupees for Russian crude cargoes. More recently, Russian sellers of crude to India have been increasingly interested in using yuan.
Yuan; that sounds familiar. Isn’t that the currency of the nation NATO intends to humble once it’s completed its destruction of Russia? Yeah – I thought it was. Isn’t that just like those dirty Russians, to not even help with their own ruin? I have to say, I’m not very optimistic about NATO ruining China, if what we have seen so far is cutting-edge ruin.
“The greater the gap between self perception and reality, the more aggression is unleashed on those who point out the discrepancy.”
“A leader is a dealer in hope.”
Napoleon Bonaparte
“It is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not sufficient to exhibit the true; it is also necessary to expose and denounce the false. To admit that the false has any standing in court, that it ought to be handled gently because millions of morons cherish it and thousands of quacks make their livings propagating it—to admit this, as the more fatuous of the reconcilers of science and religion inevitably do, is to abandon a just cause to its enemies, cravenly and without excuse.”
H.L. Mencken
A big part – perhaps the biggest part – of remote-managing another country through a suborned leader is thinking several steps ahead to where that leader (a) will have crashed and burned; (b) can no longer carry on in your service due to diminishing returns, or; (c) decides for himself that he really is all that, like you say he is, and decides to strike out on his own without your sponsorship. Having successfully engineered the installation of your man in the driver’s seat, or – as happened with Zelensky – bowing to the inevitable when your own man is revealed to be a gold-plated turd, and instead working on capturing the new guy and making him your own, the very next thing that must occupy your thoughts is his successor. Having seized the country’s destiny and bent it to your own ends, you must continue to exercise control through future leaders, to forestall influence from outside interests which do not coincide with your own, or even – God help us – independence.
In the provocative “Zelensky’s Fight After the War”, Foreign Affairs magazine appears to give voice to the thoughts of the Beltway planners and schemers to a day when Zelensky will no longer be running the show. It also appears to do this from an imaginary state of Ukrainian victory – which would suggest it is not worth pursuing further – but let’s try to be objective and stick with it for now.
“Russia’s war against Ukraine has transformed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s image. Before Russia launched its full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022, many regarded him as an untested figure whose former career as an actor and comedian did not inspire much confidence. After it began, however, he became—in former U.S. President George W. Bush’s judgment—“the Winston Churchill of our time.”
I think you’ll agree with me that’s very modest of the authors, to attribute to Russian action what was entirely the work of western image-management through media control; the characterization of Zelensky as the living embodiment of Churchillian principle was and remains an exercise in fiction. As was the shaping of Churchill as a military genius, really, which he certainly was not, although the real Churchill would have been as likely to pomade his hair with strawberry jam as he would be to throw succeeding formations of desperate and ill-equipped soldiers against Wagnerian forces in Bakhmut. Something Zelensky’s generals advised against, although that has been quietly expunged from memory in favour of stories that they were all ‘united in their resolve’, and even western think-tankers expressed alarm at the grim cost of holding on. No worries, though; the perception was adroitly refocused to where Russia was ‘obsessed’ with taking it, and Zelensky stubbornly insisted it was still anybody’s ball game long after Russia had taken all but a couple of streets of the town. Water under the bridge, now.
Uncle Volodya says, “Death is a beautiful woman, with wings and one breast almost bare; or is that Victory? I can’t remember.”
“If there really had been a Mercutio, and if there really were a Paradise, Mercutio might be hanging out with teenage Vietnam draftee casualties now, talking about what it felt like to die for other people’s vanity and foolishness.”
Kurt Vonnegut, from “Hocus Pocus”
“When every little bit of hope is gone, You know sad songs say so much.”
Elton John, from “Sad Songs (Say so Much)”
Something dramatic happened to Stephen Bryen on the road to Damascus; the scales fell from his eyes, and he could see again. And, taking stock further of his extremities, organs and capabilities, he discovered he had developed an immunity to bullshit. That’s as good an explanation as any for the miraculous conversion that sees him now so far off the reservation that he’s almost in a different postal code.
Just to establish a baseline – mostly for new or sporadic readers, because The Bryens are fairly well-known to regulars here – Stephen Bryen is a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy, and at The Yorktown Institute. The former has as its mission statement, “…to secure America’s founding principles and freedom through forthright national security analysis and policy solutions.” It is funded by “…generous contributions from individuals, foundations, and corporations.” To be perfectly fair, it does claim a history of ‘challenging establishment orthodoxy’, and if it really does that we should wish for it to do so more loudly and effectively. The latter is similar in its mission: “… securing American liberty, prosperity, and self-governance under the U.S. Constitution. These blessings have always confronted challenges: predation at sea, violent internal strife, and foreign continental hegemony, both armed and ideological. Preserving such blessings requires appreciation and protection.” Foreign continental hegemony…say, is there a mirror in that place anywhere? If you needed another clue, the Yorktown Institute has as one of its several objectives, “To enable American leadership”.
Once upon a time the world might have been okay with the uniquely American quirk that it must be ‘the leader’ in everything, like nobody else has enough smarts to find their way out of Children’s Wear at Wal-Mart without guidance, never mind solve global problems. I think it would be fair to say that time is past now; America’s example of managing global affairs has been…well…there have been a few stumbles, not to be too judgmental. Vietnam was an eye-opener to all but the dullest, but America could still have recovered; made an honest confession of clumsy execution in the blatant pursuit of self-interest, and it might have been accepted. But then came Afghanistan. Iraq. Libya. Syria. Hotspots around the world where the USA invited itself as leader and arbiter, judge and jury, despite breathtaking incompetence seasoned with bitter political infighting over who (in America, naturally) should be mostest in control. And America has enough problems of its own. Such as poverty: “…more than one in 25 people in America 65 or older lived in deep poverty in 2021, meaning that they’d have to at minimum double their incomes just to reach the poverty line.” Not so urgent that America could not send Ukraine $76.8 Billion, though.
Highest incarceration rate in the world, by a comfortable margin – We’re Number One!!! Boo-yah. Hey, there’s an interesting little factoid that kind of puts that embarrassing reality in perspective: the U.S. Department of Education noted in 2016 that the spending in corrections across the country increased at a rate three times the spending increases for education.
Anyway, let’s get back on track; it was not my purpose to rag on the United States – my point was meant to be how it invites such criticism by consistently putting itself forward for global leadership. So we won’t go too deeply into the other Bryen; Stephen Bryen’s wife, Shoshana. Mrs. Bryen is Senior Director of The Jewish Policy Center and former Executive Director and Senior Director for Security Policy at JINSA. She has worked with the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College and the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, and lectured at the National Defense University in Washington. That’s all lifted straight from her bio, and as I once remarked on the old blog, you could move the entire US Armed Forces to Israel and she would still fret about whether Israel was sufficiently secure. As a power couple in US politics, they are…umm… somewhat conservative in their worldview.
Which makes the recent writings of Mr. Bryen the more surprising – he sounds like Ukraine is…going to lose, or something.
“The problem with dreams is that they are always futuristic and gives a deceptive impression that there is still enough time to actualize them. The tragedy, however, is that you soon realize that the time you thought you had to fulfill the dreams has melted away before your very eyes.”
Sunday Adelaja, from “How To Become Great Through Time Conversion”
The music quote for today’s post is from Toronto, an eighties rock act from – surprise! – Toronto, Ontario. It featured lead vocalist Holly Woods, and with a girl guitarist as well (Sheron Alton), they were a shameless ripoff of American rock icons Heart. Their sound was similar to that of Heart, and in another of those bizarre coincidences that litter the archives of popular music, it was Toronto who wrote “What About Love”, which was a top-ten comeback single for Heart after a lengthy period of musical decline. I saw Toronto perform live a couple of times, and they made an energetic and compelling show. Holly Woods in particular (real name Annie) stood out; while she did not have a great vocal range, she exercised tremendous power throughout it; she could sing, and she owned the stage.
Well, of course we are not here to talk about Toronto, or even music; Toronto was kind enough to set the theme, which is how you and I and everyone in the west is being led down the garden path to international bankruptcy by a collection of lying bags of shit. “Start telling the truth” is a meme mostly included for sardonic amusement, because it’s too late for that in every way – too late for it to make a difference, too late to earn some grudging respect for abandoning the policy of bullshitting us right to our faces…too late. Decisions taken by those entrusted to take them have set us on a course to grappling with the ‘new normal’, in which prosperity plays an increasingly diminished role except for the usual protected class.
If you were looking for a representative face for that class, you couldn’t do much better than Chief Fool of the European Union, Josep Borrell; in this piece he describes the western sanctions which are supposed to ruin Russia as a ‘slow-action poison, a little like arsenic’. In that assessment, he was not entirely foolish – it was in his attribution of that desirable fate that he erred, because it is not Russia which is being ruined by sanctions. It is us.
Oh, I know the tone of the article suggests ordinary Russians yearn for the western products that made their slatternly hovels bearable and their miserable lives less grim – if you nose around a bit, as a journalist, you can usually find a liberal in Moscow, some disadvantaged hipster whose lunch is ashes in his mouth if it is not garnished with French cheese. Like Holly told us, it’s time to get real, so let’s do that – I live in a country that is not touched by western sanctions, and I often go months without tasting French cheese, and Brie or Camembert from the Comox Valley tastes just as good to me. The writers of the referenced article – and Josep Borrell and other assorted Euromorons – would like you to believe that if Russian oligarchs cannot get access to baby-soft calfskin briefcases from Italy, they will fall into a fit of pique and start the ball of revolution rolling. To get a conceptual grasp of how stupid that was, and is, let’s review a definition of the term ‘oligarch’. Oh, look at that – Merriam-Webster has a special category of oligarch, called ‘Russian oligarch’. If you’ll permit me a brief digression, do you know why that is? It’s because the privileged who control great wealth and political power in western countries and their allies are never referred to as ‘oligarchs’ – that term has negative connotations. So although they are functionally oligarchs, they are labeled ‘entrepreneurs’, or ‘tycoons’.
Anyway; oligarch:
…in Russia and other countries that succeeded the Soviet Union : one of a class of individuals who through private acquisition of state assets amassed great wealth that is stored especially in foreign accounts and properties and who typically maintain close links to the highest government circles.
Great wealth, stored especially in foreign accounts. Well, the latter is less true as we go along, because when the west runs up against a law that prevents it from doing what it wants to do, it simply removes or rewrites it, or announces it is not a law at all in special circumstances such as those which arise when it wants to do something but a law would prevent it from doing it. This let-me-do-it re-imagination of the term ‘law’ has seen the west confiscate great swaths of Russian assets stored in foreign banks, so ‘oligarchs’ are increasingly careful where they locate their deposits and assets. But all of that is beside the point, which is whether western sanctions inhibit me, as a very wealthy and powerful individual, from getting my hands on a handmade calfskin Italian leather briefcase. Ha, ha! As if. Did you miss the part where it says ‘very wealthy’? I can call up a pal in Italy, maybe that nice Enzio guy who maintains the gardens at my villa, and send him a picture of the briefcase I want. I’ll have it almost as quickly as if I ordered it from Jeff Bezos.
Very Wealthy People, even when they have attracted the ire of the west by being Russian, can still get things done because they have money – in a strange way, the article in question, whether a leather briefcase or a Mont Blanc Meisterstück Glacier Solitaire Fountain Pen (a great deal, because the personalization is free!!) – takes on added cachet because they had to outsmart the west to get it.
The New Kremlin Stooge 
