Thoughts On Current Events
Democratic Surrender.– A headline in The Wall Street Journal, the newspaper of record for Americans with a milquetoast’s craving for the status quo and a middle class investor’s innate aversion to risk, announces that European leaders, by which the WSJ means the particular leaders they wish to highlight, are showing “growing acceptance” of Donald Trump’s “plan” (what plan?) for a negotiated settlement over Ukraine, citing Russia’s recent advances as grounds for…saving money and admitting they lack the courage or substance to carry on defending their collective security without the support of their artificial backbone, aka The United States. Meanwhile, the U.S., as usual, is preparing to run away and fail shamelessly, as it has done in almost every military enterprise of significance since the end of the Korean War. America, post-1953, has become a perpetual big talker and predictable surrender monkey masquerading as a bulwark of freedom. Leaving aside the brief respite of the Reagan presidency, when has the U.S. embarked on a military or quasi-military engagement without ultimately skulking away meekly and ignominiously, or reneging on commitments by way of pragmatic “negotiated settlements” signed at the expense of broken nations and emboldened tyrannies. (Well, let us grant the partial exception of “the first Iraq War,” which as that informal title suggests was not an unqualified victory, but now looks like the first salvo in a war the ultimate outcome of which remains very much in doubt.)
Losing ugly.– When a cause is truly lost, a brave man, having fought as long as his strength and resources allow, surrenders resignedly but with dignity. Democracies, by contrast, wishing to shrug off unpleasant distractions for sheer lack of seriousness, have the luxury, by way of electoral politics, of euphemizing their weakness of will and moral vacuity as a mere “change of policy.” The luxury of the indolent.
No easy way.– Every path in life entails some struggle, some difficulty, some risk, some potential disaster. One must decide one’s priorities rationally, which is to say with the understanding that the choice is never between ease and pain, but rather between those struggles which must be accepted as the necessary price of living well, and those which may be rejected as energy wasted on frivols.
Materialism alert.– What is a current event? Normally, this term is used to refer to political matters or their adjacent trivialities. But does this not limit the meaning of “current” to something more like “public”? As though what is current, i.e., of the moment, can only be what is widely observed or rather widely reported. Would it not be more accurate to say that if the word “event” in this context may be understood to refer to relevant or important events, then the happenings most deserving of the name “current events” are likely those which are, at least in their present form, least public, and therefore least amenable to reportage or accessible to the general hubbub?
