The Sadness of War

It’s quite a sight, across America, Americans waving Ukrainian flags, boycotting vodka, petitioning universities to cancel courses in Russian lit, and so on, while the MSM feeds us a daily stream of pro-Ukrainian propaganda. This is not to discount the massacres perpetrated by the Russian army; all that is horribly real. Although the US also continues to massacre civilians (via drones) on a daily basis, in the name of “fighting for democracy.” Americans have no objections to those massacres, and are happy with the military euphemism for the slaughter of innocents: “collateral damage.” So Putin is Hitler, a madman, a butcher, etc.; no further analysis of the situation is required.

What the MSM, especially the social media, also does is block out (i.e., censor) empirical studies and alternative narratives. Keen political analysts like John Mearsheimer, Scott Ritter, Glenn Greenwald, and Michael Brenner are not welcome on its sites. And what do these scholars and journalists point out? Among other things, that Putin was trying, for 15 years, to sit down with the US and discuss its concerns regarding Russian border safety. After all, when JFK discovered that Khrushchev had planted nuclear missiles on Cuba in 1962, 200 miles from Miami, he displayed no Putinesque restraint: he rightly hit the ceiling. So now, NATO and the US want to do the same in the Ukraine, near the Russian border, and America refuses to discuss it. Only our concerns count, apparently. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that America, and Biden, prefer war to peace, détente, and negotiation. A black-and-white, Manichaean narrative is much easier to grasp, and, in fact, much more satisfying. Why would that be the case?

The typical American carries a huge load of sadness within him/her. For reasons I have explained in various articles and books, s/he is pretty miserable. Their lives did not turn out as planned, and they are bitter, angry, and hurting way deep down. In such a case, what would be the sensible way to deal with this terrible constellation of emotions? You go to a therapist, you admit your pain, and you learn how to work through it. But this is not what the typical American does. Instead, he or she turns to opioids, alcohol, suicide, cell phones, television, food, drugs of all kinds—and especially, the self-righteous energy of war. This is not an original observation on my part; many writers have pointed it out. War mobilizes tremendous energy, such that all of that internal pain gets repressed, and deflected into rage against a cartoon ‘enemy’ who is barely understood.

So today, the mistake of the Cold War, which devastated both sides of the fight in so many ways, is now being resurrected and replayed. Americans are certainly not open to Mearsheimer’s argument (for example), that it is the US that bears responsibility for what is happening in the Ukraine. Americans barely know what facts are, and in any case are not interested in them. What gets their attention are emotions, which they stupidly confuse with ideas. And when the dust settles, their inner pain will still remain, because repressing it through war finally will not work. This is the immense sadness of war, and one thing is guaranteed: we will not pursue a different path. Hiding out, so to speak, whether on a microlevel or a macrolevel, can only work against us; it is the latest development in the ongoing, and inevitable, disintegration of the US.

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So, Wafers, what can I tell you. This is from the last thread:

https://www.newsweek.com/karl-marx-study-room-name-changed-due-ukraine-russia-war-officials-say-1690072

College students, no less! Does it get any dumber? You know, when Toynbee did his assessment of collapsing civilizations, he was not able to name one that went under because it had turned into a joke. Honestly, I love this stuff. What next? Students burn an effigy of Tolstoy in Harvard Square? Don' laugh! A nation of clowns.

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Eminent Post-Victorians

Wafers-

It is with some joy that I can announce the publication of my new book, Eminent Post-Victorians. I'm very happy with this; it was a labor of love, and (I think) represents some of my best writing to date. It's similar to my book on the Italians, Genio, except in this case it deals with the galaxy of British writers and thinkers prominent during the first half of the 20C: Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, Graham Greene, Isaiah Berlin, and the like. I hope you enjoy it.

https://www.amazon.com/Eminent-Post-Victorians-Portraits-Morris-Berman/dp/B09TYW8HXY/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1647180715&sr=1-26

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When I was an undergraduate at Cornell, I studied Russian for 2.5 years. The first year was so rigorous that by the end of it, I was able to read Pravda without a dictionary. It was, however, rather boring, because the daily headline was always some variant of MILLIONS ENSLAVED BY CAPITALISM. (No mention of how many were enslaved by communism, for some odd reason.) I think at this point it's time the NYT did an American version of this: MILLIONS HAVE HEADS RAMMED IN RUMPS. Variants could include AMERICANS WILL BELIEVE ANYTHING, 332 MILLION IDIOTS, COULD WE BE ANY MORE STUPID?, ETC. Wafers are encouraged to contribute potential headlines for our outstanding flagship newspaper, whose true motto is "All the News that Fits Our Views." The editorial page and the front page have effectively merged, and they don't even seem to realize it. Maybe the best headline for the NYT would be WE ARE A JOKE.

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We drift toward Nov. 8, when the Dems will have their rumps handed to them on a platter. This could then pave the way for Trumpaloni in 2024, or perhaps some Trump-like candidate. On a daily basis, the nation seems more stupid, more violent, and more full of rage. Schmiden's resurrection of the Cold War, complete with America's eternal unwillingness to see the other side's point of view, is all of a piece. Arnold Toynbee's observation, that in the final phase of empire, the empire will double down on precisely those behaviors that were eroding it in the first place, is there for all to see. Bill Maher continues to try to wake the country up; talk about a wasted effort. Meanwhile, millions of Americans worship Kanye West, whose face closely resembles a horse's ass. This even more so now, when Kim's buttocks are in other hands. Covid deaths are moving toward the 1 million mark; entire communities are being wiped out by suicide, alcoholism, opioid abuse (fentanyl especially), and numerous other drugs. The rich fly off to Mars (or wherever); the poor are ground into the dirt. What is left of the middle class now reads cell fones instead of books (except for diet and self-help books). Randomly stopped on the street and asked elementary questions (e.g., What does Y-E-S spell?), Americans haven't the foggiest idea. The data of our demise comprise a very long list; our citizens more closely resemble jokes than human beings. Meanwhile, Jewish Space Lasers circle the globe, inoculating gentiles with covid, and probably collecting blood from little Christian boys to bake in matzoh; while Whoopi Goldberg tells us that the Jews are not a race. Yet another high-IQ moron, but then the US has millions of them, dutifully reading the NYT every day to be reassured that all will be well. Honestly, what left is there to say?

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Well, we've had a good time discussing Tulsi, Tulsism, chicken sandwich suppositories, and the staunch refusal of Dems/progs/wokes to stop beating off. As we slowly crawl toward Nov. 8, the inevitability of the 'left' (there's a joke for ya) getting creamed at the polls looms clearly on the horizon. At the conclusion of the last thread I posted an article suggesting how the US could, or 'should', do something intelligent (which is to say, counter-intuitive) during its twilight years. But this is where savvy historians know better, because the historical record, as Arnold Toynbee clearly demonstrated, is that this is not what dying empires do. What they do is keep on with what brought them to the point of self-destruction in the first place, because that's really all they know. And as 'exceptional' as America likes to regard itself, it will not escape its fate. It will even accelerate its self-destructive trajectory. Declinists just shrug.