Enjoying the view from Limbo
Listen to Elon Musk talking about the “tragic loss of life” in Ukraine that could be ended if only the Ukrainian government would concede its losses and sit down to negotiate with Russia, because a happy Russia is a profitable Russia. Listen to Senator Mike Lee, a former freedom-pitching politician who, having sold his soul to Donald Trump’s cult of populist demagoguery for...
Geert Wilders, an anti-Muslim-immigration activist, who, like all activists, is easily susceptible to the foolish weakness of reducing all reality to his favorite cause, has led his Freedom Party to victory in the Dutch election, and will be the country’s next prime minister. That might be favorable news if you were viewing the situation entirely through the lens of concern over Western civilizational...
The populists of the world today, eager above all causes to bury Ukraine, though sometimes euphemizing the death they are willing as “fiscal responsibility” or “not getting mired in others’ problems” or “an end to endless wars” — whose interests do these populists seek to serve? It is not their own to be sure. For in abandoning a large and courageous nation to...
No war strategy is rational which does not include a sober accounting for how you will live next to your former enemy after the fighting has ended. How will relations be normalized? How will past conflicts be put aside under the new post-war conditions? How can some measure of good faith and good will be achieved in the aftermath of the extreme measures...
It is fairly obvious now that President Biden’s administration (not Biden himself, who of course has no idea what is happening or why) wishes to help Ukraine stave off Vladimir Putin’s unjustified invasion just well enough to inflict severe damage to Putin’s military, but not well enough to defeat him outright or restore all of Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty. In other words, the goal...
Matt Gaetz, U.S. congressman and living proof that Trump-level strategic thinking is alive and well in American government, has responded to a media question about Ukraine’s bid for NATO membership by suggesting that he would prefer to see Russia rather than Ukraine joining NATO, in order for the alliance to be more effective against China. So that would mean a globally aggressive, West-subverting...
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appears to be the most serious, the most rhetorically eloquent, the most naturally curious, and the most well-read person to run for U.S. President in recent memory. On the rare occasions when I have heard him speak, the experience has been almost jarring. Here is a man running for elected office who can think on his feet, who expresses...
Tucker Carlson, cut loose from the, ahem, moderating tether of Fox News, has taken his Putin fantasy world propaganda to yet another level, with the help of British comedian cum better-red-than-dead peacenik fool Russell Brand, and with the amplifying support of the populist right’s new god of free speech, Elon Musk. Carlson does this because he is a craven, power-loving attention-seeker who has...
Yet again, Jordan Peterson, the energetic academic psychologist cum profiteering alt-right blowhard, has put his mouth where he believes the money is. That is, since most of his paying audience — believe me, he has no interest in any audience that is not paying, and by god they certainly will pay — is comprised of young males who believe Donald Trump is infallible,...
Vladimir Putin is not Russia, nor is he “the Russian people.” He is a ruthless dictator who murders or imprisons his most popular opponents and critics, propagandizes his subjects out of any clear alternative perspectives on life and the global political situation, and exploits the poverty and hopelessness that he himself has fostered to cajole the weak and desperate “masses” into viewing him...
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