'Slava Ukraini!' Said Steward On Titanic
First Thoughts On The House's Crack-Brained Support Of Forever War
That is 87-year-old Congressman Bill Pascrell, Jr., Democrat of New Jersey, in a photo he included with this tweet:
That elderly lawmaker, born five days after FDR’s second inauguration, standing outside the US Capitol wearing the kitschy Americana tie — what a depressing symbol of America today.
The House of Representatives has now passed a $91 billion aid bill that includes $60 billion for Ukraine. Here’s the NYT report. From the story:
Don’t ever let anyone tell you that Washington learned its lessons from the Iraq War. We have the same idiotic rhetoric. Evil is on the march. History is calling. Am I Chamberlain or Churchill?
A Republican said that, but because the enemy is Putin, the Democrats bought it too. Watch:
We threw trillions at Iraq and Afghanistan to turn them into liberal democracies. Didn’t work. Libya? Naw. But this time, the neocons are going to get it right. Trust them.
Fools. And now they’re going to sell off frozen Russian assets, which is theft. Good luck with foreigners backing the dollar as the world’s reserve currency after that.
Donald Trump was behind this bill, incredibly enough. As Michael Tracey points out, MAGA people who think Trump is being a straight shooter here have been bamboozled.
This will do nothing to win the war for Ukraine. Remember the spring offensive that flopped? That was Ukraine’s best shot. Now we are amping up the risk of nuclear war with Russia. They still have nukes, you know. A Romanian cab driver in Brussels this week said to me, “Why do you Americans think Ukraine can beat Russia? It’s crazy!” His point was not pro-Russian, but pro-reality. Russia is so much bigger, has so much more manufacturing capacity, and so much more will than the West does to win. Keeping Ukraine out of NATO is a vital Russian security interest. Viktor Orban said all this from the beginning, in pressing for peace. The Global American Empire (GAE) and its cheerleaders in the media denounced him as a Putin stooge. Still do. Watch Orban’s response at NatCon on this topic, and tell me he doesn’t have a more realistic handle on this war than the US House majority today.
Meanwhile, Ukraine, which could have had a negotiated peace in April 2022, but according to a senior member of the Ukraine ruling party, Boris Johnson talked them out of it. Now the country is devastated, and the war will be prolonged, until it reaches its inevitable conclusion.
The GAE stalwarts of both parties are willing to spend money America doesn’t have, to achieve a goal that is impossible, rather than face the stark reality of America’s decline as the world’s unipower. China is going to challenge us over Taiwan, and soon. Having spent our weapons cache on Ukraine, we are going to lose.
And then what? Will the American people then wake up out of their imperial dream? When I go back to the US and get into conversations with people about the Russia-Ukraine war, I am often astonished by how little people know about what’s really happening there. Seriously, I’m not talking about people who draw different conclusions than I do; I’m talking about folks who don’t really understand the dynamics of the war at all. I’ll bring up this or that — e.g., US policy post-2008 for expanding NATO — and they have clearly never heard it. Some of them, I regret to say, upon hearing these things, still support US aggression, because (it seems to me) the expansion of US power is always and everywhere right.
Sen. Paul is right:
To hell with these people. This week in Brussels, Viktor Orban said that Hungary’s border security policy is simple: stop people who have no right to be in Hungary from coming in. Yet it is an unsolvable mystery to the uniparty stalwarts in Washington, regarding the southern US border. They don’t care. Slava Ukraini!
This week, Joe Biden announced new Title IX rules fully in line with gender ideology, gutting the rights of women and girls. If you do not bow to gender ideology — that is, if you refuse to live by its lies — your institution could be in violation of federal civil rights law.
But hey — slava Ukraini!
Bishop Barron, have you ever heard of the Law of Merited Impossibility? It says, “It will never happen, and when it does, you bigots will deserve it.”
Most Americans aren’t interested in fighting for the country anymore. You might say that this is a sign of decadence; you might be right. On the other hand, might it not make sense? I’ve told you many times about the conversations I keep having with retired military people, who say they have urged their children not to enter the armed forces. It’s because they are sick of the way the Pentagon cares more about social engineering than winning wars, they say. But beyond that, we are ruled by elites who are destroying the moral structures of this country, pitting us against each other racially, and strengthening a system that treats dissenters as problematic at best, and “domestic extremists” at worst.
In Brussels, I spoke on a coffee break to someone at NatCon, a non-American foreign policy expert who said more and more, the world despises the social and cultural revolution that the US and the EU try to enforce on it. I was the one who coined the phrase “Queer The Donbass” to describe the ultimate goal of US policy towards Ukraine. I didn’t mean it literally, but I do mean that elites in the US and the EU want to extend post-Christian cultural revolution worldwide. Hell, I don’t want them to do it in the United States, much less in Ukraine or anywhere else! But our leadership in Washington — Republicans and Democrats alike — don’t give a rat’s ass about America. They care about a false vision of America as global hegemon, not the America that actually exists.
You think I’m overstating it? Take it to a micro level. I was talking the other day with someone, a fellow American, about the Benedict Option. My interlocutor said it’s so telling that American Christians can only think about cultural rebirth and cultural defense in terms of gaining and holding on to political power. This is why so many of them sneer at the Benedict Option: because they cling to the illusion that holding political power is sufficient, and even necessary, before doing anything else. Similarly, I think many Americans cannot bear the thought of America being anything but the world’s leading superpower — even if we can’t afford it anymore, and even if our own country is decaying from within. This is where that vomitous ersatz Churchillian rhetoric comes from in the mouths of the Congressmen.
I’m with Orban: Russia shouldn’t have invaded Ukraine, but this is not a fight we can afford. It never was, but it certainly isn’t after two years. Meanwhile, a bunch of ragged Yemeni tribesmen have more or less stopped up the Suez Canal, and the US is not able to do anything about it. American universities, companies, and key disciplines like law and medicine are destroying themselves by surrendering to what Eric Voegelin called parousiastic gnostics. Justin Lee taught me that concept today, quoting Voegelin here:
“The aim of parousiastic gnosticism is to destroy the order of being, which is experienced as defective & unjust, and through man's creative power to replace it with a perfect & just order.”
Our Parousiastic Gnostics in Washington think they are going to replace this broken world order with an attempt to pretend like the 1990s never left us.
Meanwhile:
Here are some strong words from a leading Parousiastic Gnostic of his era:
We have seen our vulnerability - and we have seen its deepest source. For as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny - prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder - violence will gather, and multiply in destructive power, and cross the most defended borders, and raise a mortal threat. There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants, and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom.
We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.
America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one. From the day of our Founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value, because they bear the image of the Maker of Heaven and earth. Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government, because no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave. Advancing these ideals is the mission that created our Nation. It is the honorable achievement of our fathers. Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation's security, and the calling of our time.
So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.
That, of course, is from the Second Inaugural Address of George W. Bush. Nobody thinks much about ol’ Dubya now. We’re all kind of embarrassed by the failed Iraq War. But not so embarrassed that we actually learn from our limits.
Instead, America is like a doddering octogenarian who wears a kitschy tie, flies a foreign flag on the House floor after voting to send $60 billion to that foreign power, because Hitler, or something. America’s president is a doddering octogenarian who … well, watch this:
And people like me are going to be forced to vote in November for a 78-year-old grifter who is untrustworthy and barely competent, because whatever his flaws, at least he doesn’t hate us. That’s what we are reduced to in America.
Sorry I was all over the map tonight. It’s just so damned discouraging. I love my country and want her to be good, and strong. This lot that governs us, and the imperial Ruling Class, are like Late Ottomans. America has been on top for so long that they can’t imagine anything other than that we have the Mandate of Heaven. That’s our leadership class … and, alas, a lot of the followership class too.
At the time I thought this famous quote from (most likely) Karl Rove was stupid and deranged, but now it seems quite apt and prescient (if too long to fit on a national tombstone):
"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out."
That arrogant blather was blurted in defense of the Imperial adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, which (tellingly for our moment), were 1) total disasters that achieved none of their stated aims, wrecked millions of lives for no real purpose, were mostly forgotten in a few years and yet; 2) had zero negative consequences for any of its architects, whose lies and mistakes were swept under the rug by the press (aka the Empire's PR/propaganda wing), and were more or less treated by Americans as if they were a slight speed bump on our road to the glorious future.
But just as apt here is the novel that best explains how Americans see the world and are seen by the world, Graham Greene's "The Quiet American", where no possible reality-based incident could ever dent the bulletproof self-regard of the crusading proselytizing American, who believes in his blood and brain that he is God's chosen vessel, the literal embodiment of the Superman slogan (Truth Justice blah blah) and who can walk away from any and every disaster saying and believing: How can I be held responsible? I meant well, and my good intentions are all that matters....
But I think more a more apt analogy here is a rich kid who's never had to suffer a single consequence from a bad decision bc he has a wealthy papa and a bunch of older brothers who beat the snot out of anyone who hurts his feelings: Americans, but really our rulers and parasite class inside the Imperial City, have never once had to face the ugly results of their reckless behavior, if anything endless war provides endless opportunties for graft, promotion and re-election, and every one of our supposed leaders will die in their gilded beds imagining themselves as some cross bw Churchill, the French Resistance and the Freedom Fighters, and nothing can change or dent their monumental self-regard.
Like all other Empires, we will just have to wait for the inevitable cataclysm up ahead, whether that's an environmental or financial collapse or the loss of a war, but it will take a straight, hard shot to the head for Americans to at last give up their/our fantasy life and return to reality.
Right on target, Rod.
It is what it is. There's a sense of inevitability...destiny even.
The Regime is serving up its client state Ukraine to be sacrificed on a Wokeist altar for the sake of this insane proxy war with Russia.
Zelensky and his friends in the Regime's Kiev sub-chapter aren't worried. They know they'll be handsomely rewarded with tickets out of town no matter what happens. But what if the temple is pulled down on their heads too?
I'm often reminded of some words attributed to an ancient Greek playwright: "Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad."
The madness is now far advanced.