Diagnosis of Western Elites: Nihilist Lunatics

An excellent article I discovered at Small Dead Animals. The comments there reflect the thing mentioned in the article.

So, Professor Brenner, tell us what buzzsaw you ran into when you dared raise some serious questions about a foreign policy matter.

MB: Yes, it came only partially as a surprise. I've been writing these commentaries and distributing them to a personal list of roughly 5,000 for more than a decade. Some of those persons are abroad, most are in the U.S.; they're all educated people who've been involved one way or another with international affairs, including quite a number who have had experience in and around government or journalism or the world of punditry.

What happened on this occasion was that I had expressed highly skeptical views about what I believe is the fictional story line of what has been happening in Ukraine, back over the past year and most pointedly in regard to the acute crisis that has arisen with the Russian invasion and attack on Ukraine. I received not only an unusually large number of critical replies, but it was the nature of them that was deeply dismaying.

One, many—most of them came from people whom I know, whom I knew as level-headed, sober minds, engaged and well informed on foreign policy issues and international matters generally. Second, they were highly personalized, and I had rarely been the object of that sort of criticism or attack—sort of ad hominem remarks questioning my patriotism; had I been paid by Putin; my motivations, my sanity, et cetera.

In other words, he was getting the Trump treatment!

Third was the extremity of the content of these hostile messages. And the last characteristic, which really stunned me, was that these people bought into—hook, line and sinker—every aspect of the sort of fictional story that has been propagated by the administration, accepted and swallowed whole by the media and our political-intellectual class, which includes many academics and the entire galaxy of Washington think tanks.

And that's an impression that had been growing for some time, that this was not a dialogue. It was, in effect, to launch one's thoughts into a void. A void, because the discourse as it has crystalized is not only uniform, but it is in so many respects senseless, lacking any kind of inner logic, whether you agree with the premises and the formally stated objectives or not.

In effect, this was intellectual and political nihilism. And one cannot correct that simply by conventional means. So I felt for the first time that I was no part of this world, and of course this is also a reflection of trends and attitudes that have become rather pervasive in the country at large, sort of over time. And so beyond simply disagreeing with what the consensus is, I had become totally alienated. And I decided there was no point to distributing these commentaries. That's essentially it, Robert.

This is essentially what one sees broadly across social media/blogs etc. on a wide variety of subjects from self defense to energy to foreign policy. There is The Approved View of the day/week/month/year, and then there are all the other views, which are to be deplored. Thus we get to the place where American (and European!) foreign policy is playing chicken with the Russians when the Americans have no interests at play. They're doing a wheelie while playing chicken.

 

Would Russia have invaded Ukraine if Trump was still president? Maybe? Or more likely, Trump would have brokered a deal with Putin. Just like the other deals he made all over the place. He made deals with everybody. It worked.

One of the things most alarming about the DemocRat Blue-Check media crowd is the way they keep screaming for the USA to get in there and end that war right now. No wondering how it started, just screaming they want a US imposed No Fly Zone. They want the US to send tanks and artillery and lots of stuff to the Ukrainians. They want Germany to armor up and face down those Russians. Not one of them seems to be thinking about making a deal with the Russians. The Russians who have nukes.

Yes, the Russians have nukes. They have short-range artillery fired nukes, they have mid-range truck-mobile missile nukes, they have ICBM nukes that can reach out and touch Nebraska from the middle of Siberia. They have suitcase nukes, from what I recall after the Soviet Union fell. Defectors talked about them.

Rule Number One of diplomacy used to be "Do not fuck with the guy who has nukes." But here they are, fucking with him. Daring him. As if it doesn't matter what the Russians want, or what they do. As if they don't care that Putin might nuke Kiev just to show the Americans that they better smarten up and stop screwing around.

He could really do that. Like, right now. Hell, he could nuke the USA. Just like in the old days, when the air raid siren would blow, and you'd wonder if you were going to die in 15 minutes. I remember one time the siren went off, and I went to sit out in the park. I figured if the Soviets were going to blow us to Hell, I'd be better off vaporized than dying of radiation poisoning after a month or a year of suffering.

You assholes are cheering for this to happen. I can see you doing it. If I don't die in a nuclear war, I'll remember.