When it becomes clear that Russia is not only not losing the war, but that the demoralized and deindustrialized West cannot defeat Russia either via a proxy or in a direct confrontation, that's when the real fun begins.
Imagine a drunk who picks a fight at the bar and gets stomped. Clearly, he can't beat the guy at the bar. So what does he do?
He goes home and beats his wife and kids.
To be clear: in this analogy, we're the wife and kids.
We have a generation of ‘leaders’ and populations who have never gone through or fought in a war (or lived in the aftermath) that threatened their Country/way of life. Our recent wars have been faraway TV/Video wars.
So cheering on ‘plucky’ Ukraine and hissing and booing Putin like a cartoon villain as if it’s a TV reality show is such fun… and infantile.
But most seriously, we have a generation of politicians in governments who simply do not/cannot consider cost and consequences of any of their actions beyond the immediate 24 hour news cycle. And worse. I am entirely convinced they just do not care about their citizens because moral hazard applies, and anyway they are intellectually and morally corrupt hypocrites.
Here in UK, energy companies are reporting record numbers of customers defaulting on their bill payments, in the US there is a serious shortage of baby formula, but what is top priority? Sending billions (from where, we’re broke?) to Ukraine, climate change and on-line censorship to prevent ‘Disinformation’ like the article above that dares, DARES! question ‘the narrative’ and shine a light on the hypocrisy and dangers.
Well, after the hygiene-themed authoritarianism and fear of contamination by the impure, I suppose invading Russia is the next logical step. "The second time as farce" indeed...
But seriously: at least in the United States, Covid fanatics always had a creepy fondness for (glib) military metaphors and wartime historical examples. There's been a clear segue from Covid hysteria to Russia war fever, even beyond "Current Thing" fashion-chasing . One gets the sense of a prior psychological and emotional impulse simply finding a convenient outlet.
Perhaps if I were smarter, I'd be able to exploit those emotional impulses, but instead I make futile efforts to get people to stop and think things through.
May 12, 2022·edited May 12, 2022Liked by eugyppius
The ones that think Russia is losing insist the goal was to seize all of Ukraine. These people strictly, the Alex Berenson types, are diehard readers of western propaganda. Because that's the only place where that objective was ever stated. In the west. Russia has been extremely clear, precise, and consistent in their stated objectives.
If they capture and hold Donbas, and they almost definitely will, then they have achieved the only objective that Ukraine has not conceded yet. It seems like prolonging the war will cost Kherson+ as well considering it is strategically important for water supply in Crimea, it makes sense. There won't be many internal stressors after. The people won't be fighting a geurilla war for decades after making it "worse than the new Afghanistan" as Berenson claims. Frankly, the idea of Ukraine barely exists in the east, and the idea that Donbas is part of Ukraine barely exists in the central and western parts of the country. Spend enough time in the Ukrainian community and this becomes evidently clear.
When I realized that the powers that be want this war, no matter what we do, and will convince the masses once again that this that they are doing is good, I realized that it’s important to continue to speak out, but not let it get to my soul. This is what it’s like, awake, to once again watch my fellow humans march right into madness.
I have skin in this game, my only son is in Poland with the UK army, so forgive me for speaking my mind here.
Who the he'll do the U.S. Government think they are!?! THEY along with western govts have been a major cause of this by letting Ukraine flirt with NATO for years. What did they expect Putin to do on his border?
Now they send $50 billion to support Ukraine. Money they don't have - either borrowed or newly printed.
Meanwhile, your US currency is SHOT! Your country is BANKRUPT! You can never pay back the $$ TRILLIONS you owe - yet your stupid POWER MAD government still thinks it can rule the whole MF world.
I truly pity the ordinary American citizen who is hostage to this INSANITY - Putin has NUKES! This is NOT a game!
And somehow by brilliant beautiful boy is directly caught up in it!
Maybe the west should have kept the promise made to Russia on NATO containment. But no, we continue to poke and prod the bear on his back porch and then wonder why he is so angry and frustrated. Russia is not our enemy. We should trade with them and create a mutually beneficial relationship. American foreign policy is ridiculous and incredibly short sighted. Bad things are coming soon across the globe. Get rural, get prepared and get serious about it.
I agree with everything you have written. There has been painfully little introspection among Western commentators over our role in creating this catastrophe, or indeed any real attempt to even understand its antecedents.
But I would nuance the discussion with a key - though obvious - point: Whatever the antecedents, it was Putin and his generals who invaded another sovereign nation. They started a war, and doing so almost always opens a Pandora's Box of unintended consequences and unpredictable outcomes.
This is not to say the West couldn't be doing better, nor is it to excuse the West's atrocities in Iraq, or the double standards in supporting Saudi's brutal campaign in Yemen.
But one cannot escape the reality that Putin is a detestable unscrupulous character, and that we would be much better off were we not dependent on his fossil fuels.
As a kid in the 70s, I chuckled when Iran's Ayatollah Khomenei used to refer to the United States as "The Great Satan." Now I think he was a prescient fellow.
Thanks for joining. Although I cannot yet see the connection, I strongly feel that there is one, between this war and the clot shot. We have fallen down the Rabbit hole, the Mad Hatter is in charge, the Cheshire cat is laughing on the sidelines, while the Queen of Hearts is shouting "off with their heads" at anyone who thinks it is lunacy. Not exactly the world that I had anticipated in my dotage.
So much in this post to comment on, so little space. I'll confine myself to this: "press narratives of Russian war crimes are a monumental hypocrisy. They proceed from the American empire, which since World War II has demonstrated ruthless, near-total indifference to the civilian victims of their air campaigns."
This is the neo-cons' war, aided and abetted (and maybe orchestrated) by the CIA. The CIA are perennial "bad actors" dating back to their metamorphosis from the OSS of World War II.
The Ukranian "actors" are not blameless in all this. The Azov contingent is the remnant of the Ukranian subsidiary of the Nazi Schutstaffel (SS) that was never disbanded and tried for war crimes, as Nazi SS were everywhere else. Because this Azov version was virulently anti-Russian, the CIA was willing to look the other way and let them continue. There are pictures of Ukraine's national hero Stepan Bandera (to whom a statue stands in Kyiv) in his shiny SS uniform during WW-II. Zelenskyy is their puppet.
The future looks grim, with the probability if open international war peaking between 2024 and 2027. For all intents and purposes, we're in 1936-37 right now ... lots of talk and concern, none taken really seriously, but moving inexorably forward. Bad mojo a-comin' ...
great piece. it's astounding how dismissive the average american (forget about the media) is of the possible catastrophic outcome of the way we are handling this mess.
The only rational argumant I have heard to support western involvement in dragging this war out is the (supposed) havoc it is wreaking on the Russian-China "friendship". Although I am sure this plays a distance second fiddle to arms interest etc.
I have come to the conclusion that the west - spearheaded by Americas oligarchy - just looks to capitalise on and/or manufacture giant crisis situations, and then build vast corporate-government platforms on which to transfer public money into private hands.
Afghanistan was nothing if not a huge money laundering scam.
Covid is/was the same.
Now we have Ukraine.
Afghanistan and the complinat pro vax populations didnt have nuclear warheads though, so this could end badly. Being nuked probably wont be high on bureaucratic modellers rick calculations yet.
This is probably the most sane commentary I have read thus far. It occurs to me, however, that this war may not have been the war that either the United States or Russia expected or wanted. I remember in the early days when both the US and Russia seemed to expect Ukraine to quickly capitulate. This was evidenced by the odd behavior of Russian troops around Kiev and by the United States' offer to set Zelensky up in Poland with a government in exile. There was also the United States' open admission that its plan for Ukraine was to support it in a "long insurgency" against the Russian occupiers. Then the Ukrainian propaganda blitzkrieg began, kicked off by Zelensky's ridiculous 'I don't need a ride, I need ammunition' soundbite, which was so transparently manipulative and stupid it could only have been aimed at credulous producers and consumers of western media.
From then on, it has been Ukraine calling the shots, first pleading and then demanding more and more weapons and "aid" and finally threatening the west like a boorish, petulant child when they don't get what they want quickly enough. It is puzzling to consider how Ukraine came to wield such power over the west. Surely it can't be the case that Ukraine is so beloved by its European confreres that they are willing to commit economic suicide out of sheer goodwill toward it. Six months ago Ukraine was not even a blip on the US media screen and now we are decimating our economy supposedly out of a mere paternalistic instinct to protect a fledgling 'democracy' thousands of miles away. Perhaps hatred of Russia, ginned up by Democratic conspiracy theories over the last six or seven years can explain some of it, but by no means all of it.
I wonder if the explanation for the sudden and enormous power wielded by Ukraine has anything to do with the fact that the American President, along with many of his fellow oligarchs, is severely compromised by dealings in Ukraine over the years? Remember when he bragged about getting the prosecuting attorney who was investigating the energy company his son was working for fired? Let us not forget that Ukraine has long been known as the most corrupt country in Europe, and a well known haven for money laundering. The Biden family members, along with the families of other Democratic elites, have many direct ties to Ukraine. Then there is the fact of the many bio labs discovered in Ukraine and their respective ties back to the US. How much dirt does Ukraine have on our globalist overlords I wonder? These people stick together, and all of them likely have access to spacious, well stocked bomb shelters, should things get too hot above ground. Perhaps this is why we are now on our way to WWIII or, God forbid, a nuclear holocaust.
Ukraine and Western Geopolitical Mythology
As an American citizen, I strongly believe my government is at war WITH ME.
When it becomes clear that Russia is not only not losing the war, but that the demoralized and deindustrialized West cannot defeat Russia either via a proxy or in a direct confrontation, that's when the real fun begins.
Imagine a drunk who picks a fight at the bar and gets stomped. Clearly, he can't beat the guy at the bar. So what does he do?
He goes home and beats his wife and kids.
To be clear: in this analogy, we're the wife and kids.
We have a generation of ‘leaders’ and populations who have never gone through or fought in a war (or lived in the aftermath) that threatened their Country/way of life. Our recent wars have been faraway TV/Video wars.
So cheering on ‘plucky’ Ukraine and hissing and booing Putin like a cartoon villain as if it’s a TV reality show is such fun… and infantile.
But most seriously, we have a generation of politicians in governments who simply do not/cannot consider cost and consequences of any of their actions beyond the immediate 24 hour news cycle. And worse. I am entirely convinced they just do not care about their citizens because moral hazard applies, and anyway they are intellectually and morally corrupt hypocrites.
Here in UK, energy companies are reporting record numbers of customers defaulting on their bill payments, in the US there is a serious shortage of baby formula, but what is top priority? Sending billions (from where, we’re broke?) to Ukraine, climate change and on-line censorship to prevent ‘Disinformation’ like the article above that dares, DARES! question ‘the narrative’ and shine a light on the hypocrisy and dangers.
Well, after the hygiene-themed authoritarianism and fear of contamination by the impure, I suppose invading Russia is the next logical step. "The second time as farce" indeed...
But seriously: at least in the United States, Covid fanatics always had a creepy fondness for (glib) military metaphors and wartime historical examples. There's been a clear segue from Covid hysteria to Russia war fever, even beyond "Current Thing" fashion-chasing . One gets the sense of a prior psychological and emotional impulse simply finding a convenient outlet.
Perhaps if I were smarter, I'd be able to exploit those emotional impulses, but instead I make futile efforts to get people to stop and think things through.
‘What’s happening in the Ukraine is nothing compared to the brutal shock and awe tactics that killed hundred of thousands of ordinary people in Iraq.’
But… but… but that’s different, Saddam was a brutal dictator - so what we supported him two decades earlier when he invaded and went to war with Iran.
The ones that think Russia is losing insist the goal was to seize all of Ukraine. These people strictly, the Alex Berenson types, are diehard readers of western propaganda. Because that's the only place where that objective was ever stated. In the west. Russia has been extremely clear, precise, and consistent in their stated objectives.
If they capture and hold Donbas, and they almost definitely will, then they have achieved the only objective that Ukraine has not conceded yet. It seems like prolonging the war will cost Kherson+ as well considering it is strategically important for water supply in Crimea, it makes sense. There won't be many internal stressors after. The people won't be fighting a geurilla war for decades after making it "worse than the new Afghanistan" as Berenson claims. Frankly, the idea of Ukraine barely exists in the east, and the idea that Donbas is part of Ukraine barely exists in the central and western parts of the country. Spend enough time in the Ukrainian community and this becomes evidently clear.
When I realized that the powers that be want this war, no matter what we do, and will convince the masses once again that this that they are doing is good, I realized that it’s important to continue to speak out, but not let it get to my soul. This is what it’s like, awake, to once again watch my fellow humans march right into madness.
I have skin in this game, my only son is in Poland with the UK army, so forgive me for speaking my mind here.
Who the he'll do the U.S. Government think they are!?! THEY along with western govts have been a major cause of this by letting Ukraine flirt with NATO for years. What did they expect Putin to do on his border?
Now they send $50 billion to support Ukraine. Money they don't have - either borrowed or newly printed.
Meanwhile, your US currency is SHOT! Your country is BANKRUPT! You can never pay back the $$ TRILLIONS you owe - yet your stupid POWER MAD government still thinks it can rule the whole MF world.
I truly pity the ordinary American citizen who is hostage to this INSANITY - Putin has NUKES! This is NOT a game!
And somehow by brilliant beautiful boy is directly caught up in it!
Maybe the west should have kept the promise made to Russia on NATO containment. But no, we continue to poke and prod the bear on his back porch and then wonder why he is so angry and frustrated. Russia is not our enemy. We should trade with them and create a mutually beneficial relationship. American foreign policy is ridiculous and incredibly short sighted. Bad things are coming soon across the globe. Get rural, get prepared and get serious about it.
I agree with everything you have written. There has been painfully little introspection among Western commentators over our role in creating this catastrophe, or indeed any real attempt to even understand its antecedents.
But I would nuance the discussion with a key - though obvious - point: Whatever the antecedents, it was Putin and his generals who invaded another sovereign nation. They started a war, and doing so almost always opens a Pandora's Box of unintended consequences and unpredictable outcomes.
This is not to say the West couldn't be doing better, nor is it to excuse the West's atrocities in Iraq, or the double standards in supporting Saudi's brutal campaign in Yemen.
But one cannot escape the reality that Putin is a detestable unscrupulous character, and that we would be much better off were we not dependent on his fossil fuels.
Great essay.
As a kid in the 70s, I chuckled when Iran's Ayatollah Khomenei used to refer to the United States as "The Great Satan." Now I think he was a prescient fellow.
Thanks for joining. Although I cannot yet see the connection, I strongly feel that there is one, between this war and the clot shot. We have fallen down the Rabbit hole, the Mad Hatter is in charge, the Cheshire cat is laughing on the sidelines, while the Queen of Hearts is shouting "off with their heads" at anyone who thinks it is lunacy. Not exactly the world that I had anticipated in my dotage.
So much in this post to comment on, so little space. I'll confine myself to this: "press narratives of Russian war crimes are a monumental hypocrisy. They proceed from the American empire, which since World War II has demonstrated ruthless, near-total indifference to the civilian victims of their air campaigns."
This is the neo-cons' war, aided and abetted (and maybe orchestrated) by the CIA. The CIA are perennial "bad actors" dating back to their metamorphosis from the OSS of World War II.
The Ukranian "actors" are not blameless in all this. The Azov contingent is the remnant of the Ukranian subsidiary of the Nazi Schutstaffel (SS) that was never disbanded and tried for war crimes, as Nazi SS were everywhere else. Because this Azov version was virulently anti-Russian, the CIA was willing to look the other way and let them continue. There are pictures of Ukraine's national hero Stepan Bandera (to whom a statue stands in Kyiv) in his shiny SS uniform during WW-II. Zelenskyy is their puppet.
The future looks grim, with the probability if open international war peaking between 2024 and 2027. For all intents and purposes, we're in 1936-37 right now ... lots of talk and concern, none taken really seriously, but moving inexorably forward. Bad mojo a-comin' ...
great piece. it's astounding how dismissive the average american (forget about the media) is of the possible catastrophic outcome of the way we are handling this mess.
The only rational argumant I have heard to support western involvement in dragging this war out is the (supposed) havoc it is wreaking on the Russian-China "friendship". Although I am sure this plays a distance second fiddle to arms interest etc.
I have come to the conclusion that the west - spearheaded by Americas oligarchy - just looks to capitalise on and/or manufacture giant crisis situations, and then build vast corporate-government platforms on which to transfer public money into private hands.
Afghanistan was nothing if not a huge money laundering scam.
Covid is/was the same.
Now we have Ukraine.
Afghanistan and the complinat pro vax populations didnt have nuclear warheads though, so this could end badly. Being nuked probably wont be high on bureaucratic modellers rick calculations yet.
This is probably the most sane commentary I have read thus far. It occurs to me, however, that this war may not have been the war that either the United States or Russia expected or wanted. I remember in the early days when both the US and Russia seemed to expect Ukraine to quickly capitulate. This was evidenced by the odd behavior of Russian troops around Kiev and by the United States' offer to set Zelensky up in Poland with a government in exile. There was also the United States' open admission that its plan for Ukraine was to support it in a "long insurgency" against the Russian occupiers. Then the Ukrainian propaganda blitzkrieg began, kicked off by Zelensky's ridiculous 'I don't need a ride, I need ammunition' soundbite, which was so transparently manipulative and stupid it could only have been aimed at credulous producers and consumers of western media.
From then on, it has been Ukraine calling the shots, first pleading and then demanding more and more weapons and "aid" and finally threatening the west like a boorish, petulant child when they don't get what they want quickly enough. It is puzzling to consider how Ukraine came to wield such power over the west. Surely it can't be the case that Ukraine is so beloved by its European confreres that they are willing to commit economic suicide out of sheer goodwill toward it. Six months ago Ukraine was not even a blip on the US media screen and now we are decimating our economy supposedly out of a mere paternalistic instinct to protect a fledgling 'democracy' thousands of miles away. Perhaps hatred of Russia, ginned up by Democratic conspiracy theories over the last six or seven years can explain some of it, but by no means all of it.
I wonder if the explanation for the sudden and enormous power wielded by Ukraine has anything to do with the fact that the American President, along with many of his fellow oligarchs, is severely compromised by dealings in Ukraine over the years? Remember when he bragged about getting the prosecuting attorney who was investigating the energy company his son was working for fired? Let us not forget that Ukraine has long been known as the most corrupt country in Europe, and a well known haven for money laundering. The Biden family members, along with the families of other Democratic elites, have many direct ties to Ukraine. Then there is the fact of the many bio labs discovered in Ukraine and their respective ties back to the US. How much dirt does Ukraine have on our globalist overlords I wonder? These people stick together, and all of them likely have access to spacious, well stocked bomb shelters, should things get too hot above ground. Perhaps this is why we are now on our way to WWIII or, God forbid, a nuclear holocaust.