No, there is still art. What you are talking about is what the corporates put cash and effort up to promote. With very few exceptions, the inspiration and creativity is out there with the indies. You have to exert a little effort to find it, but today's wonder is that it is much easier to find, if you bother to look. The corporates are politically landlocked, culturally exhausted and completely risk adverse, so you have a gruel of simple, decadent trash, combined with cultural strip mining of the world of old.
I will not send my kids to fight and die to make the world safe for transgenderism. But then, even those who insist the leftist cultural revolution is the pinnacle of morality won't fight for this empire.
Meanwhile via the Washington Times, a piece on military hazing which includes these sentences:
"The active-duty military officers assigned to the individual cadet or midshipmen units were often seen more as disciplinarians than mentors, the Pentagon researchers said.
“They didn’t know when or how to prioritize a cadet or midshipman’s well-being over discipline,” Ms. Tharp said.
Gee - how would it have been if on Iwo Jima the Marines took time out to "prioritize a cadet's well-being over discipline?"
So it's not just that we're unwilling to defend the empire - increasingly, we're actually going to be incapable of doing so.
I know what you are trying to say about our military academies, but they weren't all about discipline in the past either. For example, Douglas MacArthur was a liberalizing influence on West Point when he was superintendent just after WW1. Eisenhower and Omar Bradley were quite appreciative of the classical liberal education they received there just a few years earlier.
My suspicion is that, to dovetail the Washington Times article with what Rod wrote about here, Ms. Tharp may have a different (more woke?) view of well-being that the 'active-duty military officers' have. There is likely much more to the story.
Ya know, proper discipline reduces casualties in combat, and so discipline itself is part of well-being. It appears Ms. Roth is ignorant of that fact.
As I stated, I know what you are trying to say. I would just state that "entire" might be too broad a brush, I am certain there are silent resisters.
As a matter of fact, one reason the Japanese military's performance was lower than it should have been in WW2 was due to an over-emphasis on discipline that inhibited initiative, something that MacArthur constantly noted. One British officer said the Japanese "were the best soldiers in the worst army," a catchphrase with a lot of truth.
I think that the dying part may be a lot greater in the next war. China has 232 times the shipbuiliding capacity of the United States. When a ship sinks they can't just rebuild and refit like during World War 2 because the business community got rid of the working class.
A war between the US and China-- or the US and Russia-- should such a thing happen, will feature dying on a scale that will put every other calamity in history, even the great plague pandemics, in the shade. See: nukes. Which is why such a thing is very, very unlikely as a good nuclear war concentrates the mind wonderfully. But that probability is not all the way down to zero.
The nuke would be the infantryman's best friend. It would tend to sail far above the battlefield toward the rear, way, way on back, all the way back to where they are eating, drinking, going shopping at the mall (as dubya urged), making merry, and calculating the gains to be gotten from war. Back there it would explode, ruining their whole day. Possibility of that happening would put a rather large and important variable and unknown in pre-war benefit calculations, to the extent that it might cause the titans of the rear to conclude, "You know, maybe we ought not have a war."
When the US pushed to end the use of scatter bombs, we declared that they would never be used again. A few weeks ago, Biden started giving them to the Ukrainians? Why? Because, he said, "we are out of weapons." I'm sure that's about right.
9/11 proved that we are no longer willing to fight long-term wars. Neither are we willing to lose anything we value to China.
Combine all these things together, and it says that a war with China will use nukes fast and on a large scale.
Not to be defeatist but I've reached the point of saying I can't do anything about anything. I used to share articles on Facebook about the decline of the culture, the betrayal of the institutions and the corruption of the government. Nobody cares! A few years ago, I purchased a little Amish-built backyard chapel and that's where I take my worries and concerns now.
Good for you, Betsy. What you have found, in a way, is what we on the Eastern Orthodox side have had in our tradition for centuries. The Desert Fathers (and Mothers) did that- taking to prayer in solitude, not to hide, but to immerse- only with God and His nature as companion.
Right there with you. Dreaming of being able to have some land and live in peace.
You hit the nail on the head, nobody cares! I had to blow up some friendships because of the fact that they just don’t care. Anything that is labeled progress or makes their busyness easier and allows for even more busyness is good and who cares about cost or consequence. So, now, I devote all energy to my little family and my spiritual family. I’ve found I don’t need anyone or anything else.
I don't think it's that nobody cares, it's that those of us who do are all aware of the tentacular grip The System has on everything, and most people see no hope of changing anything.
This is quite dark, because while political obsessiveness will destroy souls, the opposite will degrade the quality of life to standards few of us who are Baby Boomers imagined we'd ever see. That's where we are. And just consider the childishness of Trump supporters who think, "Let's Go, Brandon!" should be our equivalent of "Vive la France!" Lots of reason to hope there.
I agree, no one cares is definitely too much of a blanket statement. However, in my experience, I’ve encountered generally 3 broad categories of people (mostly women) Evangelical fundamentalists (never encountered any other kind of Christian until I became a Catholic Christian this past Easter), the progressive woke fundamentalists of the kindness club variety that routinely kick those of us with a different perspective off the playground, and the progressives that are just too darn busy to care.
In CA and CO, I mostly encountered the first 2 general categories, here in my small truck stop town in OH, it’s mostly the latter variety. The ones who are all about careers and busyness above all else and want even more career success and busyness for their daughters and who cares about their sons. In my limited experience, exactly none of them care about costs and consequences. It’s like the cost part of the cost benefit analysis is just gone.
Perhaps a bit of a tirade as I’m dead tired of attempting to have friendships with women outside of my church. I never imagined I’d retreat into church at all, but, here I am. Here I am, dead tired of caring.
And although not quite on topic, perhaps also, I just had dinner with my family at a sushi place (yes, you can get good sushi in a flyover state!) and watched a table of girls on their way to homecoming doing nothing at their table but take selfies completely unaware that the way they were sitting I had a great view of their unmentionables. Zero awareness, zero care, zero self respect. I felt like an alien.
Never mind UAP and our mundane open borders, we Christians are the true aliens these days, but then the Bible does tell us that we are strangers and pilgrims in the world, and that the degree to which we are friendly with the world's system is the measure of our remaining hostility to God.
I don't have a friend who isn't a Christian, and am blessed to be in a church which has an unusually high percentage of devout people. The fact that many of them are highly intelligent and talented, as well, is a blessing. I have been in churches where it was hard for me to talk with many people, at all. I'm sure that there is such a thing as "chemistry" between an individual Christian and a church which that person might attend.
Your ending tableau about the young women would make me consider seppuku if I weren't Presbyterian. Why has it become the default position in our society for women to be photographed trying to look provocative as they stare into their phones? Well, we know why, self, self, and only self is the reigning preoccupation.
"...zero awareness, zero care, zero self respect." Yes. Do you know that it's become such a rarity that I can remember the last young woman whom I thought really had a sense of how to present herself casually in public? It was at a Walgreen's on the Friday before the Memorial Day weekend in 2015.
It’s a tragedy! They don’t know what they’re missing. When the Knights of Columbus at our parish routinely call me honey and occasionally one of the really older ones will kiss my hand at an event, I feel like I’m walking on air and that I’ve done something right. My husband loves it when I’m treated this way. Caveat, with a literal handful of exceptions all of these men could be my father or grandfather.
One of the good things about Defacebook are the innumerable opportunities it offers for an aging gentleman to look at American life from seventy five years ago.
One of the weird historical factoids ( I'm using the word as Norman Mailer coined it to be used, to stand for something which everybody thinks is true, but which isn't ) which almost no one questions is that the 1950s were dull, dull, dull. They were the opposite. Almost everything having to do with American culture reached its peak in the 1950s. This is certainly true of fashions, for men as well as for women. At least, thank God, we were a photo snapping people even then. We have a record of what we've lost. I know there are young people who lurk in the various groups devoted to these things on Defacebook, and other, similar venues online, because I see their comments. They wail about their unhappiness that they didn't live then.
Anemoia: the Greek word for nostalgia for a time and a place which you never experienced.
I remember the beatnik chicks from the early 1960s. They looked wonderful. They killed off any danger I might have been in of ever going gay.
And yes, I’m very much realizing that we Christians are indeed the aliens. Many of us may need to rise above our differences our theological differences (though, I wouldn’t want a faith where we couldn’t in good faith argue certain points with each other) and help each other in the Benedict Option. No idea how that would work, but, if Christianity itself is to survive, we perhaps should be Christian first and our denominations second.
True conversion of the heart is more unsettling than I imagined. I had no idea, but, I’m so happy. I’m happy to be an alien!
Your attitude is wonderful. Sometimes, I reproach myself for not being more disgusted with things than I am, but then, my ties to the Earth are cultural ones, and my life has tended to keep me separate from trends, anyway. I am repelled by true worldliness, but a few minutes ago, I heard a gorgeous lullaby which may have been written for Ella Fitzgerald, but which, in any case, she recorded. I know that Heaven will overwhelm any nostalgia we might have for the good and worthwhile things of this life, but I can't help wishing we could take a lot of the great things of the world with us, as people fleeing into permanent exile would want to take artifacts of their earlier lives with them.
I do think there is an ecumenism of orthodoxy, but I, too, am unhappy that it hasn't gone any farther than it has. As I've said to JonF here, he, an Orthodox, and I, a classical Protestant, could recite the Apostles' creed and the Nicene creed in happy unison.
I once attended an Orthodox Church where the congregants were very cliqueish and unfriendly to outsiders. It wasn't even an ethnic thing-- it was just a bunch of middle to upper middle class people who seemed to have an attitude of "We're the cool people-- who's that new guy? Does he belong here?" (The priest by the way was not like that-- but he was a lone standout. Even his wife was not a friendly person). After two years, during which my attendance grew very sporadic, I finally got out of there and found a smaller and much more welcoming church.
There are Evangelical churches which are like that. I'm extremely grateful that I'm not in the church I attended twenty years ago, and am in the one I have been in for the last decade.
I have notice a decline in callers for talk radio shows. Hosts have to fill more air time. Topics that seem like they should generate many callers lead to one or two. There could be many reasons for this (if true).
My theory is in the height of talk radio, many listeners believed that they could help nudge the direction of the country by contributing to the public discourse. Who believes that anymore?
I’ve read all the Roth novels I could get ahold of. Yes people should read him. The Emperor’s Tomb is my favorite. The Calvino comments on empire are interesting. We are lead by people who don’t grasp the facts and have no imagination. In other words they fail on both fronts. I urge anyone who reads this to listen to Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirns pod cast of the week which spends some time on Justin Trudeau’s pathetic performance in parliament where he helped honor Ukrainian SS veteran on the basis of his fighting the Soviet Union in WW2. Parse that one for a minute.Apparently it didn’t occur to most of the Canadian parliament that a Ukrainian soldier who fought against the Soviet Union had been fighting with the NAZIS against Canadas the ally. Thinking about this leaves me virtually speechless. This performance comes from someone who rather likes calling opponents Nazis and seems to have a problem with free speech
That's the way postmodern liberals roll. During the 1970s-1980s Dutch debates over legalizing euthanasia the opponents were labeled Nazis by the media, even though many of them fought Nazis in the Resistance. People like Trudeau have no shame.
I suppose. I'm a Trump supporter and have no problem voting for him. But have issues and understand others who do and don't fly into a rage at those who prefer another.
Just between you and me, I consider TDS sufferers just as weird as Trump cultists.
Trudeau probably doesn't know who Canada fought with in World War Two. History isn't taught any longer. His daddy never made it out of Canada in World War Two.
Point more or less taken but like Poland Finland was an independent country that had been invaded by the Soviet Union . It’s in the second war that their conduct became more problematic.
And then there's Churchill saying "If Hitler invaded Hell I should find something nice to say about the Devil." We Americans think of WWII as The Good War, but in fact there was evil all over the place. I something fear that karma will yet come for us over our misdeeds then too.
And that's just it. TS Elliot gets the proper Christian approach to the transcendant. We are spiritual beings and we brush the spiritual realm in ways. But we are not to pursue it through our own pagan means. For it is a frustrating waste of time at best and an invitation to mischief and oppression at worst. God has made it abundantly clear in His Word, those things are not the way we are to experience that here. We are to go to Him. Saints in the Bible did get glimpses of that realm, but ALWAYS under the auspices of God revealing something to them. This is one of those "trust God" things. Trust him to reveal such to us, in His way, when we need them. Acknowledge them and move on. If we try to pursue with these other means, it will avail you naught.
I disagree with Bishop, at least in part. He is correct in observing the various atomizing effects of modern trends. However, these institutions are not distrusted because of them. They are distrusted because of things they have said and done and continue to do. And we live in an environment where such things said and done are harder to hide and easier to track. And the fact that many in modern leadership positions do seem less honest, competent, and not even believing in the system and society they are raised to their positions to serve. Yet they expect the public at large to pretend they do. And they rage and excoriate the public for not just falling in line for whatever whim takes them. This is why the center cannot hold.
I would counsel caution about the "it cannot last" perspective. As Adam Smith famously noted, "there is a great deal of ruin in a nation", meaning that things may not simply collapse because it seems like they must collapse. It's more complex than that, and there are many confounding factors.
Unlike the Habsburgs, the US, even alone, is far more powerful, by all measures. It becomes even more so when taken together with the rest of the similarly-minded "West". It is not comparable to previous empires because the bases for its power are multiple -- economic, military, cultural (yes, there are aspects of American culture that are rejected now around the world, but Hollywood, pop music, Taylor Swift and video games are largely American, and if not American then Western, in origin, and together exert a massive cultural influence globally because they are popular globally still in many ways despite the pushback around the marginal edges of US cultural imperialism/evangelism). Nobody is close to the degree of power here, and never has the gap been greater in history for any prior "empire". It is a unique situation to say the least.
Of course none of that means that it will last forever, or that it is not subject to vulnerabilities (typically framed in terms of things like energy crisis, a collapse of the global reserve currency, etc) -- it is. But it does mean that Smith's phrase, as applied to the US and the broader contemporary West as a whole, is particularly apt. There really is a LOT of ruin here ... it will not be easily unraveled barring some unforeseen extenuating circumstance which forces a new reality upon it in a way that cannot be resisted with the existing forms of power. In other words, a metacrisis that precipitates a new paradigm. By its nature we have no idea what that would be, and the likeliest candidates in people's minds today (climate crisis, nuclear war, AI becoming Skynet, a much more deadly global pandemic, etc) are all fairly unlikely in terms of being an order-destroying or reshuffling metacrisis that resets things by virtue of the old levers of power becoming irrelevant in the new circumstances. Barring something like that, the train of the West will keep rolling for some time, I think.
And therein lies the problem for conservatives. There is no light at the end of the tunnel, because the tunnel is really long, and who knows when it ends, and who knows what the conditions will be on the other end.
--
To me, the lesson of Radetzky for contemporaries, and especially for people who are temperamentally inclined to be conservative in one way or another (which is likely most readers here) is that change is inevitable and that there are fulcrum points in history during which substantial changes occur and sweep away the old way of doing things. There is tragedy and sadness in that, perhaps depending on your point of view, but it cannot be reversed any more than the Habsburg Empire can be resurrected. One can ponder on what was lost in the changes, but the changes are real, and the only way forward is, well ... forward. You can't undo these things. What comes may be "worse" than what came before, or it may not -- it will be different from what came before, either way.
The real problem facing conservatives in this era, I think, is precisely that dilemma. How do you let go of what cannot be retrieved after society has undergone a fulcrum like shift point akin to the collapse of the Habsburgs (which I think is what has, in effect, happened in society in the West in the last 50 years or so), and articulate a new way of being "conservative" that makes sense in the current era, given that the past cannot be retrieved. The right is not close to resolving that, at present, and is still focused on retrieving the past that cannot be retrieved (the whole idea of "making America great again" is about retrieving a past greatness). The past needs to be put to rest and a new politics developed for a new era. That isn't happening properly yet (and I'm pretty unconvinced of the current attempts to do it under the rubric of national conservatism, which is another attempt to retrieve things from the past -- albeit from a somewhat more distant past than the more recent libertarian-tinged past of the political right), and until it happens the political system will be adrift because it is will be smothered by nostalgia, still.
Agreed. The U.S. has a founding myth, so it is subject to the same danger of demythologizing that all other nations have. One thing I got out of Rod's take here is that it is a mistake to tightly tie a national myth to prosperity.
Thank you for this. I woke up this morning with something of the same thoughts. So, as scared as I get sometimes about the changes around me, I think, somehow, we’ll manage.
Time is moving faster now. Imagine if Trump wins the presidency again. Alternately, imagine if Biden/whomever replaces him wins, and the Dems see it as a validation of their policies and approach.
If Trump wins, the protests and attempts to undermine him this time around will make the shenaningans of last time look tame. I mean - imagine the nationwide protests the day after the election; imagine them turning violent, the media excusing it. That's before Day One!
Alternately, if the Dems/the Left wins, the chaos in our cities intensifies. Flash mobs? We're only just beginning. Retail flight from cities? It'll all be called "racist" but the exodus too will intensify. The border crisis? The fight over parental rights and the sexual revolution in schools? All of this and more gets kicked up about 5,000 notches if Dems win.
Oh, and what if the Dems begin pushing the "new strain of Covid" line, mask up and close the schools and you lose your job if you refuse the jab business? That tuns into open armed warfare, right there.
If it were possible that we had a period of relative tranquility with no new skirmishes breaking out, that would be one thing. But the US is one big flashpoint at this point. Rot can persist as long as no one or nothing's kicking hard at the door. Our door is getting swift kicks from every angle imaginable.
Re: Barring something like that, the train of the West will keep rolling for some time, I think.
Bingo
Re: And therein lies the problem for conservatives.
If conservatives have to found their hopes on some world-riving catastrophe that would make the word "gigadeath" useful then they have lost their way too. Christians especially have no excuse for such nihilism.
America is much more divided today than ever before. The America that defeated Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan was pretty united. It was led by self-confident white men. Most white women married young, had children, kept the home, and were content to let the men lead. Blacks were an unimportant minority who were looked down on by many whites. America had a population of 175 million.
Today's America has a population of 330 million and is very atomized. America is wealthier than it has ever been but more discontented than perhaps the 1930s Depression or the labor tumult of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Somewhat like the Hapsburg Empire, America is now made up many different interest groups, some of them ethnic and some sexual in origin. The two main political parties gather up these interest groups into large political cauldrons and engage in political battle. The Left political party dominates almost all important institutions in the country which is why the institutions are so widely despised. The Right, if it had its wish, would return to the old America that won World War Two. But the Left's interest groups hate that America. Which leads to our venomous political debates in the midst of material wealth.
Don't forget, the WW2 unity in America was in part an accident: leftists were on board because Germany had attacked the Soviet Union. They might have been subversive had Stalin and Hitler remained allies.
The US wouldn't have gotten involved at all if the Japanese had not attacked Pearl Harbor; and we wouldn't have gone after Germany if Hitler had declared war on the US after the attack. It's still one of Hitler's more puzzling decisions - he had to have known that the US would finally climb out of its isolationist stance and get cracking.
Roosevelt was figuring out how to get America in the war. Hitler made it easy on Roosevelt. Hitler made many blunders but that was probably the most stupid.
Yep. Some also think that the British provoked an anti-German coup in Yugoslavia to force the Germans to invade and so delay the USSR invasion by 6 weeks
He should not have attacked Russia, period. Or if he was going to, wait until the UK is conquered and subjugated. He was a fool of fools to try to do both at once.
Hitler need the oil only available to him from the Soviet Union due to the British naval blockade. Secondarily, he needed the wheat from the Ukraine also due to the blockade. Otherwise, Germany would be slowly ground down.
Once the R.A.F. saved Britain and the British navy, Hitler really had no reasonable choice except to attack the Soviet Union..
I used to teach history. I gave the three keys to allied victory as the R.A.F., the U.S. Navy, and Detroit.
Not true. You forgot about the USS Reuben James, which was sunk by a German U-Boat on October 31, 1941. We were already in an undeclared naval war and after that incident most Americans thought more was coming -all the WW2 vets I knew said so. Hitler just sped up the inevitable.
Mmm. But there were still isolationists, hoping against hope that we would not send troops. Just limited U.S. aid to the Allies short of actual intervention in the war. And then came Pearl Harbor.
Lukacs is usually right. Roosevelt would have figured out a way to get us in against Germany, which he wisely realized was a much greater foe than Japan.
It was pretty much inevitable that the US and Japan would go to war: the US positions in the Philippines were right in the way of Japanese expansion. And Japan's alliance with Germany obligated the Germans ti declare war on us when war with Japan came.
Just like Austria-Hungary; it was the intellectual class which provided the ideas for weakness and self-hatred. Their proud babies are the tyrants like Hitler or Lenin who sweep all away to institute their utopias.
Ordered The World of Yesterday just now, hoping to find it as compelling as the work of Patrick Leigh Fermor (who inspired a lot of my European travel). I'll save Redetzky until after that. Curious as to your opinion: Budapest vs Vienna. Vienna is a contradiction: it comes off too perfect in a Disney way, yet with a residual energy that was foreboding. I much prefer the gritty overlay of Budapest. Is it fair to compare them? Maybe not, but I do.
In my running around Europe, I only ever spent about 18 hours in Vienna. It is something else, to say the least! I ran around the places one is supposed to visit and took pictures; I had just come from Prague and Bratislava, and was dead tired. My camera - which had been on its last legs - died, and I rescued the film out of it and headed back to the hostel which was not really close to the city center. I spent the rest of the evening chatting with a woman from Taiwan and an Austrian girl who was in Vienna for the night as she had an interview there to be an airline stewardess in the morning. The three of us talked for hours, and it was the most amazing thing. It also helped drive home the point to 20-year-old me that as much as it's a privilege to be able to take in the sights and sounds and culture of other places, at the heart of all of it is people and connecting with them.
I was just in Vienna a few weeks ago, and I don’t really see the Disneyish aspect though a lot of it is close to perfection. Like many European cities now, it is inexplicably scarred by pointless graffiti, so there’s a little grit for you. We stayed outside the main tourist zone, and it was very real and very cool. The early 20th century art, the architecture, the food, the cafes and bars, the people, the heurigen (local wine cafes), the public transit (which is perfect but not in a bad way), the music, we loved it all. I’m fond of Budapest also (and I don’t think it’s especially gritty these days); either city puts any modern American declining city of disorder to shame.
I share your sense of foreboding. My life is drawing to an end, and I may be spared seeing the advent of the rough beast that is slouching toward our world to be born. But as in the days of the falling Roman Empire, faith in Christ endures, and the community He founded endures, with all its faults. Small communities that preserve and pass on the faith will keep the flame burning until a new order can grow.
The lack of knowledge of even modern history in our populace and elites is astonishing. Apparently not many students in Great Britain know which countries were allied with Great Britain and which were enemies. The Canadians didn’t remember that anyone who fought against the Soviet Union in World War II must have been on the German side. And Ukrainians, having had millions starved by Stalin, thought that Hitler was a lesser evil – and he might have been, at least for ethnic Ukrainians, whom he would have enslaved rather than killed.
Our elites are determined to get us involved in a war with Russia and entangle us in the bitter disputes of Eastern Europe, which they do not understand or even know exist.
Rod, I’m looking forward to the next instalment of your culture trilogy.
Have you read Tara Isabella burtons strange rites? I seem to recall you mentioning it somewhere but I don’t remember if it was you or someone else that got me to pick it up.
It fits into the new religions category mentioned at the top of the article. Calvin point out that the heart as an idol factory. She shows that in living color. It seems to fit with the theme you’ve been touching on the last few days. That said, the demonic layer of the ufo phenomenon takes it to a whole new level (and as a pastor, I have long believed that the ufo phenomena is demonic manifestation to fool the lost).
I loved The Radetsky March. I haven’t read The Emperor’s Tomb, but that quote from the book perfectly describes what it was like for me to live in NYC from 2005- maybe 2012.
Another work of fiction that can be read in tandem with Roth's book is di Lampedusa's 'The Leopard.' It doesn't have to do with the death of empire, but rather with the death of the old order and the emergence of the nation-state, more precisely with the unification of Italy in the mid to late 1800's. While the time/place are different from Roth's, the themes are similar.
<<<Who wants to defend a social order that is busy destroying the integrity of its normative institutions to implement a radical left ideology that has captured the elites? >>>>
I am not sure I take the meaning of the two or more paragraphs in this vein. No one wants Americans drafted and fighting in Ukraine. So I read it as "What is in the European Nato countries is so bad it is not worth fighting for - just let the Russians come."
Maybe I got it wrong and more than one paragraph of the essay was about opposing draftees going to Ukarine. - - Or maybe it was about opposing funding for Ukraine even though young American men dying were mentioned - I don't know.
But I do know the world of horror that is being visited on Ukraine and would be visited on Europe if Russia attacked. Look at the wholesale slaughter of Ukrainians. It would not stop if Russia went into Nato countries. And of course, we'd be lucky to avoid nuclear war at that point. - - Yes, no matter how bad Europe is, it is worth fighting for should it be invaded. (Certainly, by Europeans, and we are obligated to fight under Nato.)
Again....sorry if I misread....but I just could not take this as opposing draftees to Ukraine - no one wants that. It was hard to take it as opposing funding for Ukraine - ****such funding can be opposed for other reasons, gosh let's not get into that **** but not for "implementing a radical left ideology" since that has not happened in Ukraine. Remember the charges from a few days ago? Only14 percent of Ukrainians even believe "homosexuality should be accepted by society".
Not al all. My post was about Euros fighting Russians, and how that was justified. The substack post seemed to be saying that it was not worth it to the West to fight Russians because there are so many degenerates in the West. - - I also asked if i could have misread the substack post. (Was it saying USA should not fight despite NATO but Europe should fight? I didn't get that, if that was the meaning.)
I did not, to any extent, get into the fact that Americans are obligated to fight due to NATO. People will object to that fact. I'm not expressing an opinion there because I don't want to get into it.
IF Russia sweeps into Europe, I don't think Europeans will just let them (I also doubt the Russians can actually sweep. Their performance in Ukraine reinforces those doubts.) What I am certainly saying is that we absolutely should be reticent about non-NATO Euro fights, and absolutely distrustful of the leadership and their motives. If anything, this may cause a necessary reevaluation of NATO, if not it's dissolving. Our treaties should not be suicide pacts tying our young men and women to the whims of degenerate leaders.
Well, I did not want to get into it. Bur forsaking our European allies, the people of Europe we have obligated ourselves to protect. Because **some** of them have supported degeneracy. (It's even getting more reasonable on some fronts, see the pull back of Sweden and England on surgery for minors - surgery most countries didn't have in the first place.)
It would be good if Europe could completely "handle it". I suspect they need us. What happens to us, to our economy, if Europe falls? What happens to the world if the China-Russia Axis has so much or the world?
Oops....I guess I got into it. I am not the world's best informed person on War. I do know that almost every war is really about money. And about power because it takes power to get money. My concern hereL despite the corrupt people who started this war, we can't afford to have Russia take Europe. Most definitely against American interests for that to happen.
Ukraine was never part of the deal. And we are not obligated to lay our blood on the line for every square foot of Europe, especially that which most definitely is not covered by treaty. And it does not matter, the power/money equation. We are not obligated to shed our blood for the money of our overlords, which is what Ukraine comes down to. And certainly not for sexual degeneracy, whose rainbow banner they now fly. That is an order that cannot, should not hold. And appeals to the red, white and blue, since it does not involve that either, and our current degenerate leaders have repeatedly expressed contempt for, that is also a nonstarter.
The world you describe does not exist anymore, LInda. It is time to face the world as it is now. Including what we are wiling to ask our sons and daughters to die for.
Are there US interests we should go to war for still? Yes. Is Europe that? Depends.
Huh? I specifically said this was not about boots on the ground in Urkaine. I specifically said it was about NATO countries. Once they are invaded it is not "blood for Ukraine" anymore.
No need to apologize. You did't misread it. 'Americans will be forced to fight in Ukraine' gets brought up frequently as if it is actually being proposed by our elected leaders. To read Rod, you would think Americans are already on boats crossing the Atlantic and Dylan Mulvaney will be installed as Ukraine's president by the European Union any day now.
That is very interesting. I know Lindsey Graham made some "way out" remark but I was not sure they were about boots on the ground. Could you say which elected leaders proposed American forces -boots on the ground - fighting in Ukraine? I'ver totally missed that, and I'd like to be better informed.. (sincere remark)
No, I can't, and that was my point. My sarcasm got the better of me!
Rod and some others are convinced that any pushback against Russia will lead to Americans getting drafted to fight in Ukraine. They speak of it as though it is being proposed and that is just not true. Also, the idea that Ukraine is becoming some sort of woke nirvana is sometimes brought up. I'm not a fan of woke politics but this is just nonsense. Along with that is that 'The West' via the US government and the EU is going to turn Ukraine into the next San Francisco. I understand the concerns regarding our government's behavior and that of the EU as well. But, I think this view is more than a little over the top
Another thing is the constant predictions of almost certain nuclear war unless we force Ukraine to sue for peace and give up territory. Yes - there are concerns any time you are confronting a nuclear power. But, I was around in the '80s and this sounds like the people who were declaring President Reagan was going to start WW3 for challenging the USSR. It is very similar. And thank God Reagan had the courage to confront the obvious threat that was the USSR (Russia).
Oh, come on, really? We (the US, NATO) are getting more and more involved in that war. Now Biden says he's sending Ukraine missiles capable of reaching deep into Russia. Why? I completely understand why we aren't happy with Russia attacking Ukraine (though it annoys me that nobody on the Western side pushing the war understands the West's role in provoking it); what I don't get, and don't like, is this almost religious belief that this thing couldn't spiral out of control. Moreover, I don't see that Russia is planning to attack NATO countries. Ukraine is not in NATO!
"Now Biden says he's sending Ukraine missiles capable of reaching deep into Russia. Why?"
Why? Because Russia continues to bomb the snot out of Ukrainian cities, Rod, and the Ukrainians are actually fighting back. They don't want to be a Russian servile state. Ukraine has all sorts of historic knowledge regarding how Russians treat them. But, I don't think you're right about 'deep into Russia'. I think these will be used (if they actually make it there) to destroy military targets in Russian-held territory, including Crimea to cripple Putin's ability to keep his troops (invaders) supplied.
But, I think I am right in pointing out that you would have seen Reagan as a warmonger and way out of line to risk WWIII. Was Reagan right to fight the expansion of the Soviet Union and communism? Was he right to call their bluff and challenge them? Was he wrong to call them 'the evil empire'? Before that, was The West right to do the Berlin Airlift after Stalin decided to try and choke the life out of all of Berlin? Of course, there are risks. And there are rewards for pushing back against tyranny, especially when the underlying political dogma is that of totalitarianism.
Of course Reagan was right to do those things. But you know what? Ukraine is on Russia's border. I don't blame the Ukrainians for fighting back. But this is a war that is a very high risk for the US, and for what? What is the reward that makes the risk of Russian cities being bombed with US missiles worthwhile? If we have to fight World War III with Russia, well, then we have to do it -- but this is a war of choice for NATO. Do you really think it is America's obligation to fight tyranny anywhere in the world? Do you think Russia has no legitimate security concerns about NATO bases in Ukraine? Do you think the US would have legitimate reasons to go to war to stop Mexico from welcoming an alliance with China that would put Chinese bases in Mexico, which is Mexico's sovereign right? I do.
I think it terrible that Tibet does not have its independence and that its culture is being slowly dissolved. But I don't think any sane person advocates war with China. Tibet is somewhat similar to Ukraine in that both were rarely independent of the large states they border.
Your Mexican example is correct. If China or Russia or North Korea built bases in Matamoros and made an alliance with Mexico, we'd have to act. Yet, as an independent country, Mexico has the right to ally itself with any country they wish.
Here we go again with the "Mexican" analogy-- which totally ignores the fact that we actually faced a neighboring country becoming an ally of a hostile power and did not invade it with slaughter and rapine, though, no, we weren't nice to Cuba either.
"And for what?" Exactly!! If we presume to posture that our concerns are for Russia quickly creeping further beyond Ukraine into NATO countries, that means we (the US specifically) are already fighting a war we've only imagined. Imagination and 'possibility' are mighty weak reasons for which we seem to be pledging our financial resources and military readiness (arms and weapons capacity - and if spooled out, troops, which we may as well go on and add in to our imagined scenario). Good (read: effective) geopolitical strategy is not (or should not be) a guessing game of whack-a-mole, which, for those defending our assistance in Ukraine as 'restraining' Russian ambition, is all this amounts to at the moment. BUT good geopolitical strategy is also not what we did to Iraq or even, I believe, to Afghanistan - or to Vietnam. Etc. The way I see it, and I am not a military history scholar or a political science savant by any means - mea culpa: our gov & military mistook our ultimately triumphant performance in WWII for a national purpose into infinity. Simple as that - with very little acknowledgement, the further from that war that we get, of the very specific strategic and national reasons/purpose from which we ultimately chose to re/act. We've pasted that purpose over everything that has come up in the meantime, between then and Ukraine, and we've accomplished very little in regards to 'safeguarding' our country or resources from ultimate decline on the world stage. Where we have gotten it right was where Kennedy and Reagan read the tea leaves of the precise moment and acted - or did not - and preserved what was in our actual, immediate interest to preserve. But this galavanting all over to rattle sabers and crush other cultures because we feel like they're, essentially, wrong somehow (because they aren't us?) is neither useful nor sustainable. Failure of imagination, indeed! That Biden & Co have grasped this 'imagination of purpose' and are using it as a cudgel with which to beat the US into ignoring the sweeping corruption that they've installed in or allowed to proliferate in Ukraine is just beyond the pale - and yet, that's exactly what I see happening. Russia bad; must defeat to prevent possible more bad - with a wink wink to protect the US 'interests' (labs, money laundering) in Ukraine. So cynical, I know, but from my very uneducated view, exactly what we're doing. Excuse the rant! Carry on...
" Do you really think it is America's obligation to fight tyranny anywhere in the world?"
No. But, this is not just 'anywhere in the world'. You know that. The 19th and 20th centuries showed just how sideways things can go in Europe and we have legitimate reasons to try to prevent that happening again.
" If we have to fight World War III with Russia, well, then we have to do it -- but this is a war of choice for NATO."
I think that's hyperbole. Putin wants no part of an all out war with NATO. He's not stupid or crazy. He wants to begin the reconstitution of either the Soviet Union or some form of the old Russian empire. He's throwing threats around to see just how much he can get away with.
"... but this is a war of choice for NATO."
Well, first - Russia invaded! Putin will not stop with eastern Ukraine and Crimea. I'm certain of that. You disagree. Even pacifist Germany finally sees what is in store for itself in due time. It's also why both Sweden and Finland wasted no time asking to join NATO. They all fear Russia and its intentions. Nothing good will come from a revanchist Russia and everyone in that neck of the woods knows it.
"Do you think Russia has no legitimate security concerns about NATO bases in Ukraine?"
I think Putin and Russia are a direct threat to anyone in its vicinity. There's a reason so many countries that are on Russia's border want to join NATO - Putin is a despot who murders his political enemies wherever he can find them and Russia has a long history of trouncing all over the rights of its neighbors. As far as I am concerned, Putin's behavior (including murdering people on foreign soil) makes his claims illegitimate. He's a thug.
"Do you think the US would have legitimate reasons to go to war to stop Mexico from welcoming an alliance with China that would put Chinese bases in Mexico, which is Mexico's sovereign right? I do."
Actually, I don't think we would be in the right to do that. Mexico, as you say, is a sovereign state. But, I am aware of the Monroe Doctrine and I aware of the history regarding the Cuban missile crisis. But, you know what? We should not be dictating our position in the world based on what a third rate failed communist dictatorship with a murderous autocrat in charge demands of us. Russia is a miserable, failed state and we should not let it dictate how we make our way in the world and who we decide are our friends. (Agree to disagree here, I know!)
Regarding China, they have claimed ownership of much of the South China Sea in clear violation of international law. Bases in Mexico? I can't see Mexico doing that. That's a tough one. But, I'm pretty sure we will be in conflict with China for some time to come just like we were with the USSR. I believe the world has always be a tough place and it will continue to be for the foreseeable future. I think the philosophy of talking softly but carrying a big stick (making sure it is the biggest stick of the bunch) is the right way to approach our security as well as the security of our friends.
I have a 'Demon' question for you, Rod. I know you see possible links between some of the truly despicable people within the far left who are, as I see it, trying to prey on children and actual religious demons as Christians may define them. I don't believe in religious demons but I do believe there is real evil in the world.
I kinda see Putin as a demon, or at least embodied evil. He has so much blood on his hands, not just in Ukraine but elsewhere. It's really something when you have a guy on your payroll called 'General Armageddon' (and he truly earned that title). His troops rape and torture people - that's not disputed. He has overseen the snatching away of Ukrainian children to Russia. And - here's the thing that sticks with me: He has co-opted the Russian Orthodox Church and claimed, via Kyril, that his actions are, effectively, approved by God. He's perverted the Church. He's perverted the idea of Christ, I think. That claim of religious righteousness is sickening. I'm OK with you likening some of the worst among us as perhaps being actual demons in this world. But, doesn't Putin deserve some consideration?
Tyranny, no. Expansionism, well, yes. The surest path to nuclear war is a return to the free-for-all of the 18th century when powerful nations grabbed whatever territory they could, ultimately sending Europe into the maelstrom of revolution and Napoleon.
Why is it our concern? I think Putin has every intention of expanding his territorial holdings. I am certain that if he remains in eastern Ukraine and the war ends with Russia there, it will only be a matter of months until the Wagner boys or some other little green men begin making mischief and pushing westward into the rest of Ukraine. I believe Putin wants to re-establish some measure of the Soviet Union. He has basically stated that and written about it. I think he will look to destabilize the Baltic countries even though they are part of NATO. If little green men start showing up and causing issues there (kinda like what is happening in Moldova) and NATO makes threats he will just declare that if NATO pushes back he will nuke someone.
So, I think him having picked a fight with Ukraine was a huge mistake and this is an opportunity to severely deplete his ability to make mischief for nations that want no part of Russia's 'friendship'. But, the most important part is Ukrainians wants to shove him out of Ukraine. Nobody has a gun to the head of the Ukrainians. They WANT to fight.
1) They voted in a pro-Russian government. We didn't like that and engineered a coup which brought another government in to power.
2) This was AFTER Georgia, in which Putin demonstrated AGAIN what he is made of. It is not pleasant, but he is not afraid to show it.
3) Lavrov 19 months ago came out with hard but not impossible terms for the Donbass, which Zelinsky either temporized over or ignored.
4) So Putin acted.
I don't like seeing dead babies in the street, so opting for war under these conditions is immoral to begin with. But we are up to our necks in this, and it's time we blew the whistle. Even Kagan concedes there is no U.S. national interest in Donbass, or all of Ukraine for that matter. As far as the "international order" cult, where the U.S. runs to the rescue of anybody who whines loud enough, that's a fantasy.
Sean Penn says that we can't be afraid of nuclear war. Take it from Sean Penn, things won't spin out of control. Say the possibility is "extremely low", so there. You - or anybody - know better than Sean Penn? Huh, huh?
And Sean Penn has more props than anybody commenting here, 10,000 times more props, so we're going in. Oh, yeah. This is the big one.
The ONLY thing that will 100% rule out direct conflict with Russia at this point is the election of Donald Trump to the Presidency in 2024. Think on that.
No, because I do not read National Review, it is trash. So you will have to inform me. Did it happen while he was in office? Or was it when he left. Because when he left, new people were put in charge. That is what happens when admins change.
Though what that has to do with what we are talking about, I have no idea.
Didn't see the link, so I had to go hunting for the article myself. Closest I could find was this one. https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/09/something-is-going-to-break/ One sentence was dedicated to it, and it indicated it did it in defiance of him, not because of him, which is all the more reason for a hatchet to be taken to DoD leadership, not an indictment of Trump. Trump exposed the deep corruption of the Deep State, of which for many years, many had been in denial of. It took Trump to reveal it.
I'm voting for the Republican, whoever it is. But if it is Trump who comes out on top, I'll be perfectly happy with that. And if he wins, the screams from the Left will be delicious. And the chainsaw TRump will take to that rotten set of institutions will be glorious.
I think most Americans will be OK with revolutionary political change if the economy remains something that allows them to continue to bank, to work, to watch YoutTube or Netflix or TikTok. To eat at a restaurant or go on holiday. Most young Americans seem commited to Wokeism. As they assume more leadership in society, it will be easier to junk the constitution, bulldoze Mt rushmore, do away with citizenship, etc. But as long as they maintain the ability for people to participate in consumer society, a new woke totalitarianism will be (in time) acceptable to most.
Probably true, sadly. It likely would be like a Brave New World situation. As long as people follow the narrative of those in control, they can live their life within those "soft" constraints. People that object to that narrative will experience something closer to 1984.
Most older people don't know (or want to know) how deeply and naturally the young and educated have been baptized into the Soc Just religion.
And like you said, as long as the Wifi stays on and the food is still plentiful, the 1968 dispensation will gradually yet totally conquer and subsume the 1776 dispensation and very few will notice or care, esp as those of us raised in the 20th century die off.
Exactly correct. Bread and circuses. I often thought during the covid tyranny here in Canada "why don't people rise up and resist this?" As long as they could work from home and buy stuff on Amazon and watch Netflix and smoke their legal pot, they didn't give a care.
Interesting and thoughtful piece. One thing that is important is that consumerism and the pursuit of comfort replaced any concepts of discipline, evolution of thought, and spirit of progress. The limits of any sort of advancement are spiritual, in that advancement is only a good as long as it doesn’t outrun our ability to bring it into a larger moral or ethical philosophy. That is, of course, exactly what is happening with the AI “religion,” transcenderían, and so on.
In the larger picture, though, when people in the 60s and 70s began to view comfort as more important than discovery and progress, any support for those ended. The planned NASA missions to Mars and beyond were scrapped because no one saw any direct connection to that as a route into their personal lives. Instead, dollar after dollar was stripped from NASA and given to welfare programs that did nothing but line the pockets of those who figured out how to grift them. Yes, NASA has been problematic at times, but the point is that supporting it is supporting the idea of exploration.
It is a turning inward that destroys a culture, not an expanding outward. In late Rome, the state was mostly concerned with trying to hang on to what they had. An empire with what were essentially limitless resources did not build strength in terms of progress after perhaps Hadrian. Augustus himself wanted to put an end to Roman expansion, as he felt the empire was large enough at that point. Unfortunately, that also meant preserving a status quo, not advancement. Rome stagnified and was ultimately lost because stagnation prevented any path to change the broken model. What would have been the effect if the Romans had embraced progress instead of comfort?
We are there now. We look for comfortable experiences and ideas. The thought of getting into a small metal capsule and going to another world would horrify most people, even though thousands upon thousands of lives were lost in the simple crossing of old world to new. We also cannot fix our broken models, because change requires effort and discomfort to benefit in the long run.
Best example is trying to come up with one stupid idea or another so that everyone can continue to engage in happy motoring (thank you, pre-alt right JHK), rather than recognizing that our living arrangements need to change by both necessity and also because we can truly make our lives more efficient and productive by doing so. The suburbs, each house an island, is a terrible idea.
On the larger scale, America benefitted from rejection of the old world ideals of class structure, etc, but also from a continent full of unexploited resources that the American Indians had no clue how to use. In time, it led to the assertion of American economic power, then military power. America could not outright defeat Britain even for a time after the revolution, but America had already overtaken Britain in economic potential by 1776. Once the Monroe Doctrine was developed, and America was left standing after the Second World War, the need to adapt and change was lost. We could sink someone’s economy or undermine them militarily. This was harder when the Soviet Union existed, but is still a shiny idea to those in power, even if it usually less than successful.
But what now? Nations chafe under American control, and look to the day when the dollar isn’t the lifeblood of trade. Everyone knows it is worthless, but no one can get off of it, because they hold so much of it that rejecting it would break the bank. Everyone is tired of Washington’s militarism, and sees it as a paper tiger in many ways, but no one really wants to poke the tiger and find out if it’s teeth are still sharp. It won’t last, though. At some point, events driven by the thermodynamics of the human race, will take on enough form to test one or both of those things and we will watch the empire, then the nation, collapse. Complex systems are resilient until they are not.
I think this is why there is so much angst over China, India, and Russia. Each of those nations, even with their shortcomings from the perspective of the individual citizen and in terms of human rights and political freedom, are not afraid to push and change. Russia threatens the West’s hegemony over its neighbors, India threatens the complacency of lazy Americans, and China threatens the technological status quo. We are forced to keep up with the Jones and know we cannot. If you prefer a Roman analogy, these are the barbarians who threaten the empire, precisely because they have the nature of what we used to be and don’t have any longer.
The Germans posed a threat to Rome by being unwilling to see their borders pushed back father from the Rhine. That is Russia, unwilling to have NATO colonize every inch of ground around them. The Goths and others wanted to be part of Rome’s society and be plugged into the riches, but did not really wish to become Roman. Those are Indians. Last, the Persians (using this as a blanket term) were always a persistent military rival that would never stay down and stop challenging the Empire. This is China.
What is always interesting to me is the parallel between how the Romans spoke of barbarians, and how the beltway elite does now. Being compared to a barbarian didn’t mean that a person was being called that in a near-literal sense, but that it was a pejorative because of the association with negative characteristics of that type of barbarian. To the elite, calling a person a Russian plant or troll is implying that they are dishonest, stupid, and backwards. Also, that they are old fashioned in their views. To other elites, suggesting that a person is in the pocket of the Chinese is taken to mean that person is underhanded, sneaky, and willing to sell the nation out for money. So far, the Indians mostly fly under the radar, but a challenge to America hegemony will change that. (I will ignore all the stupid and lazy lower class Americans who whine relentlessly about the Indians taking over all the convenience store where those same complainers can’t figure out why they pay five times a markup on things they could buy at the grocery if they had enough discipline to) At the same time, no matter how cruel and corrupt a foreign nation is, as long as they play ball (like Ukraine), they are embracing America’s true values.
I would say it is depressing to live in such a broken and failing model, but I don’t think that it is, unless you are emotionally invested in that system. America now, no matter how many rainbow flags are waved in some sort of bizarre victory march, is no longer vital or worthy of respect and support. Politics has long ceased to be any platform of leadership but now is a sport. I quit supporting the Greens or the Blues a while back and have not regretted it. The real red pill is not some sort of alt-right fantasy of racial consciousness, but just realizing that a political prostitute begging for your vote or a corporation selling you a bigger TV is all part of the same passing system. Building your own body and mind, setting a spiritual course in your own life, refusing to let bad ideas colonize your worldview, these are all a response. The Romans who could no longer tolerate the high taxes and early serfdom were able to escape beyond the limes. We don’t really have that option, but at least books are cheap and prayer is free.
"The Germans posed a threat to Rome by being unwilling to see their borders pushed back father from the Rhine. That is Russia, unwilling to have NATO colonize every inch of ground around them. The Goths and others wanted to be part of Rome’s society and be plugged into the riches, but did not really wish to become Roman. Those are Indians. Last, the Persians (using this as a blanket term) were always a persistent military rival that would never stay down and stop challenging the Empire. This is China."
This paragraph, and the one that follows it, are simply wonderful (even to a historian like me that tends to jib at historical "repetitions" or analogies) as, indeed, is the comment as a whole. A doff of my doctoral bonnet to you, "John of the West."
Ultimately the Germans were assimilated to late Roman culture in the lands they conquered (Britain excepted). Romance languages are spoken in Gaul, Iberia and Italia today, and the late Roman religion, under a hierophant based in Rome, long dominated those lands too.
No, there is still art. What you are talking about is what the corporates put cash and effort up to promote. With very few exceptions, the inspiration and creativity is out there with the indies. You have to exert a little effort to find it, but today's wonder is that it is much easier to find, if you bother to look. The corporates are politically landlocked, culturally exhausted and completely risk adverse, so you have a gruel of simple, decadent trash, combined with cultural strip mining of the world of old.
I will not send my kids to fight and die to make the world safe for transgenderism. But then, even those who insist the leftist cultural revolution is the pinnacle of morality won't fight for this empire.
Meanwhile via the Washington Times, a piece on military hazing which includes these sentences:
"The active-duty military officers assigned to the individual cadet or midshipmen units were often seen more as disciplinarians than mentors, the Pentagon researchers said.
“They didn’t know when or how to prioritize a cadet or midshipman’s well-being over discipline,” Ms. Tharp said.
Gee - how would it have been if on Iwo Jima the Marines took time out to "prioritize a cadet's well-being over discipline?"
So it's not just that we're unwilling to defend the empire - increasingly, we're actually going to be incapable of doing so.
I know what you are trying to say about our military academies, but they weren't all about discipline in the past either. For example, Douglas MacArthur was a liberalizing influence on West Point when he was superintendent just after WW1. Eisenhower and Omar Bradley were quite appreciative of the classical liberal education they received there just a few years earlier.
My suspicion is that, to dovetail the Washington Times article with what Rod wrote about here, Ms. Tharp may have a different (more woke?) view of well-being that the 'active-duty military officers' have. There is likely much more to the story.
Ya know, proper discipline reduces casualties in combat, and so discipline itself is part of well-being. It appears Ms. Roth is ignorant of that fact.
The concern is, the entire military is ignorant of that fact.
Although that would make a good comedy routine: Japanese soldiers standing atop Mount Suribachi yelling incorrect pronouns, turning back the invasion
As I stated, I know what you are trying to say. I would just state that "entire" might be too broad a brush, I am certain there are silent resisters.
As a matter of fact, one reason the Japanese military's performance was lower than it should have been in WW2 was due to an over-emphasis on discipline that inhibited initiative, something that MacArthur constantly noted. One British officer said the Japanese "were the best soldiers in the worst army," a catchphrase with a lot of truth.
I think that the dying part may be a lot greater in the next war. China has 232 times the shipbuiliding capacity of the United States. When a ship sinks they can't just rebuild and refit like during World War 2 because the business community got rid of the working class.
A war between the US and China-- or the US and Russia-- should such a thing happen, will feature dying on a scale that will put every other calamity in history, even the great plague pandemics, in the shade. See: nukes. Which is why such a thing is very, very unlikely as a good nuclear war concentrates the mind wonderfully. But that probability is not all the way down to zero.
The nuke would be the infantryman's best friend. It would tend to sail far above the battlefield toward the rear, way, way on back, all the way back to where they are eating, drinking, going shopping at the mall (as dubya urged), making merry, and calculating the gains to be gotten from war. Back there it would explode, ruining their whole day. Possibility of that happening would put a rather large and important variable and unknown in pre-war benefit calculations, to the extent that it might cause the titans of the rear to conclude, "You know, maybe we ought not have a war."
When the US pushed to end the use of scatter bombs, we declared that they would never be used again. A few weeks ago, Biden started giving them to the Ukrainians? Why? Because, he said, "we are out of weapons." I'm sure that's about right.
9/11 proved that we are no longer willing to fight long-term wars. Neither are we willing to lose anything we value to China.
Combine all these things together, and it says that a war with China will use nukes fast and on a large scale.
Not to be defeatist but I've reached the point of saying I can't do anything about anything. I used to share articles on Facebook about the decline of the culture, the betrayal of the institutions and the corruption of the government. Nobody cares! A few years ago, I purchased a little Amish-built backyard chapel and that's where I take my worries and concerns now.
Good for you, Betsy. What you have found, in a way, is what we on the Eastern Orthodox side have had in our tradition for centuries. The Desert Fathers (and Mothers) did that- taking to prayer in solitude, not to hide, but to immerse- only with God and His nature as companion.
Sometimes I think I missed my calling as a hermit.
Right there with you. Dreaming of being able to have some land and live in peace.
You hit the nail on the head, nobody cares! I had to blow up some friendships because of the fact that they just don’t care. Anything that is labeled progress or makes their busyness easier and allows for even more busyness is good and who cares about cost or consequence. So, now, I devote all energy to my little family and my spiritual family. I’ve found I don’t need anyone or anything else.
I don't think it's that nobody cares, it's that those of us who do are all aware of the tentacular grip The System has on everything, and most people see no hope of changing anything.
This is quite dark, because while political obsessiveness will destroy souls, the opposite will degrade the quality of life to standards few of us who are Baby Boomers imagined we'd ever see. That's where we are. And just consider the childishness of Trump supporters who think, "Let's Go, Brandon!" should be our equivalent of "Vive la France!" Lots of reason to hope there.
I agree, no one cares is definitely too much of a blanket statement. However, in my experience, I’ve encountered generally 3 broad categories of people (mostly women) Evangelical fundamentalists (never encountered any other kind of Christian until I became a Catholic Christian this past Easter), the progressive woke fundamentalists of the kindness club variety that routinely kick those of us with a different perspective off the playground, and the progressives that are just too darn busy to care.
In CA and CO, I mostly encountered the first 2 general categories, here in my small truck stop town in OH, it’s mostly the latter variety. The ones who are all about careers and busyness above all else and want even more career success and busyness for their daughters and who cares about their sons. In my limited experience, exactly none of them care about costs and consequences. It’s like the cost part of the cost benefit analysis is just gone.
Perhaps a bit of a tirade as I’m dead tired of attempting to have friendships with women outside of my church. I never imagined I’d retreat into church at all, but, here I am. Here I am, dead tired of caring.
And although not quite on topic, perhaps also, I just had dinner with my family at a sushi place (yes, you can get good sushi in a flyover state!) and watched a table of girls on their way to homecoming doing nothing at their table but take selfies completely unaware that the way they were sitting I had a great view of their unmentionables. Zero awareness, zero care, zero self respect. I felt like an alien.
Never mind UAP and our mundane open borders, we Christians are the true aliens these days, but then the Bible does tell us that we are strangers and pilgrims in the world, and that the degree to which we are friendly with the world's system is the measure of our remaining hostility to God.
I don't have a friend who isn't a Christian, and am blessed to be in a church which has an unusually high percentage of devout people. The fact that many of them are highly intelligent and talented, as well, is a blessing. I have been in churches where it was hard for me to talk with many people, at all. I'm sure that there is such a thing as "chemistry" between an individual Christian and a church which that person might attend.
Your ending tableau about the young women would make me consider seppuku if I weren't Presbyterian. Why has it become the default position in our society for women to be photographed trying to look provocative as they stare into their phones? Well, we know why, self, self, and only self is the reigning preoccupation.
"...zero awareness, zero care, zero self respect." Yes. Do you know that it's become such a rarity that I can remember the last young woman whom I thought really had a sense of how to present herself casually in public? It was at a Walgreen's on the Friday before the Memorial Day weekend in 2015.
Isn't that sad?
It’s a tragedy! They don’t know what they’re missing. When the Knights of Columbus at our parish routinely call me honey and occasionally one of the really older ones will kiss my hand at an event, I feel like I’m walking on air and that I’ve done something right. My husband loves it when I’m treated this way. Caveat, with a literal handful of exceptions all of these men could be my father or grandfather.
One of the good things about Defacebook are the innumerable opportunities it offers for an aging gentleman to look at American life from seventy five years ago.
One of the weird historical factoids ( I'm using the word as Norman Mailer coined it to be used, to stand for something which everybody thinks is true, but which isn't ) which almost no one questions is that the 1950s were dull, dull, dull. They were the opposite. Almost everything having to do with American culture reached its peak in the 1950s. This is certainly true of fashions, for men as well as for women. At least, thank God, we were a photo snapping people even then. We have a record of what we've lost. I know there are young people who lurk in the various groups devoted to these things on Defacebook, and other, similar venues online, because I see their comments. They wail about their unhappiness that they didn't live then.
Anemoia: the Greek word for nostalgia for a time and a place which you never experienced.
I remember the beatnik chicks from the early 1960s. They looked wonderful. They killed off any danger I might have been in of ever going gay.
And yes, I’m very much realizing that we Christians are indeed the aliens. Many of us may need to rise above our differences our theological differences (though, I wouldn’t want a faith where we couldn’t in good faith argue certain points with each other) and help each other in the Benedict Option. No idea how that would work, but, if Christianity itself is to survive, we perhaps should be Christian first and our denominations second.
True conversion of the heart is more unsettling than I imagined. I had no idea, but, I’m so happy. I’m happy to be an alien!
Your attitude is wonderful. Sometimes, I reproach myself for not being more disgusted with things than I am, but then, my ties to the Earth are cultural ones, and my life has tended to keep me separate from trends, anyway. I am repelled by true worldliness, but a few minutes ago, I heard a gorgeous lullaby which may have been written for Ella Fitzgerald, but which, in any case, she recorded. I know that Heaven will overwhelm any nostalgia we might have for the good and worthwhile things of this life, but I can't help wishing we could take a lot of the great things of the world with us, as people fleeing into permanent exile would want to take artifacts of their earlier lives with them.
I do think there is an ecumenism of orthodoxy, but I, too, am unhappy that it hasn't gone any farther than it has. As I've said to JonF here, he, an Orthodox, and I, a classical Protestant, could recite the Apostles' creed and the Nicene creed in happy unison.
I once attended an Orthodox Church where the congregants were very cliqueish and unfriendly to outsiders. It wasn't even an ethnic thing-- it was just a bunch of middle to upper middle class people who seemed to have an attitude of "We're the cool people-- who's that new guy? Does he belong here?" (The priest by the way was not like that-- but he was a lone standout. Even his wife was not a friendly person). After two years, during which my attendance grew very sporadic, I finally got out of there and found a smaller and much more welcoming church.
There are Evangelical churches which are like that. I'm extremely grateful that I'm not in the church I attended twenty years ago, and am in the one I have been in for the last decade.
I have notice a decline in callers for talk radio shows. Hosts have to fill more air time. Topics that seem like they should generate many callers lead to one or two. There could be many reasons for this (if true).
My theory is in the height of talk radio, many listeners believed that they could help nudge the direction of the country by contributing to the public discourse. Who believes that anymore?
It's every man for himself!
I’ve read all the Roth novels I could get ahold of. Yes people should read him. The Emperor’s Tomb is my favorite. The Calvino comments on empire are interesting. We are lead by people who don’t grasp the facts and have no imagination. In other words they fail on both fronts. I urge anyone who reads this to listen to Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirns pod cast of the week which spends some time on Justin Trudeau’s pathetic performance in parliament where he helped honor Ukrainian SS veteran on the basis of his fighting the Soviet Union in WW2. Parse that one for a minute.Apparently it didn’t occur to most of the Canadian parliament that a Ukrainian soldier who fought against the Soviet Union had been fighting with the NAZIS against Canadas the ally. Thinking about this leaves me virtually speechless. This performance comes from someone who rather likes calling opponents Nazis and seems to have a problem with free speech
That's the way postmodern liberals roll. During the 1970s-1980s Dutch debates over legalizing euthanasia the opponents were labeled Nazis by the media, even though many of them fought Nazis in the Resistance. People like Trudeau have no shame.
No conscience, either. It has been seared away by his continued iniquity.
I'm just hoping more Canadians can see that and stop reelecting this Low-T fop.
Based on my Canadian relatives, assuming facts not in evidence. Trudeauism is a weird cult. At least as weird as the cult around Trumpism.
I suppose. I'm a Trump supporter and have no problem voting for him. But have issues and understand others who do and don't fly into a rage at those who prefer another.
Just between you and me, I consider TDS sufferers just as weird as Trump cultists.
I do not understand Trudeau cultists at all.
FWIW, I voted for Trump one time and not the other.
The Liberals have a combination to stay in power. Montreal+Toronto+Ottawa+Vancouver+the Maritime provinces. That's a tough code to break.
Trudeau probably doesn't know who Canada fought with in World War Two. History isn't taught any longer. His daddy never made it out of Canada in World War Two.
Oh, wow. I missed this story and had to read your comment twice.
Finland was a Nazi ally too in WWII. In that part of the world there were no generic good guys, just a choice of evil empires.
Point more or less taken but like Poland Finland was an independent country that had been invaded by the Soviet Union . It’s in the second war that their conduct became more problematic.
And then there's Churchill saying "If Hitler invaded Hell I should find something nice to say about the Devil." We Americans think of WWII as The Good War, but in fact there was evil all over the place. I something fear that karma will yet come for us over our misdeeds then too.
Well the good news is Karma doesn’t exist. The bad news is it’s already come for us.
"As ye sow so too shall ye reap".
We have several harvests out there that haven't been brought in yet.
Regarding the interest In UFOs and such in your new book, you should mention this passage from TS Eliot’s “Four Quartets”:
To communicate with Mars, converse with spirits,
To report the behaviour of the sea monster,
Describe the horoscope, haruspicate or scry,
Observe disease in signatures, evoke
Biography from the wrinkles of the palm
And tragedy from fingers; release omens
By sortilege, or tea leaves, riddle the inevitable
With playing cards, fiddle with pentagrams
Or barbituric acids, or dissect
The recurrent image into pre-conscious terrors—
To explore the womb, or tomb, or dreams; all these are usual
Pastimes and drugs, and features of the press:
And always will be, some of them especially
When there is distress of nations and perplexity
Whether on the shores of Asia, or in the Edgware Road.
Men's curiosity searches past and future
And clings to that dimension. But to apprehend
The point of intersection of the timeless
With time, is an occupation for the saint—
No occupation either, but something given
And taken, in a lifetime's death in love,
Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender.
And that's just it. TS Elliot gets the proper Christian approach to the transcendant. We are spiritual beings and we brush the spiritual realm in ways. But we are not to pursue it through our own pagan means. For it is a frustrating waste of time at best and an invitation to mischief and oppression at worst. God has made it abundantly clear in His Word, those things are not the way we are to experience that here. We are to go to Him. Saints in the Bible did get glimpses of that realm, but ALWAYS under the auspices of God revealing something to them. This is one of those "trust God" things. Trust him to reveal such to us, in His way, when we need them. Acknowledge them and move on. If we try to pursue with these other means, it will avail you naught.
I disagree with Bishop, at least in part. He is correct in observing the various atomizing effects of modern trends. However, these institutions are not distrusted because of them. They are distrusted because of things they have said and done and continue to do. And we live in an environment where such things said and done are harder to hide and easier to track. And the fact that many in modern leadership positions do seem less honest, competent, and not even believing in the system and society they are raised to their positions to serve. Yet they expect the public at large to pretend they do. And they rage and excoriate the public for not just falling in line for whatever whim takes them. This is why the center cannot hold.
I would counsel caution about the "it cannot last" perspective. As Adam Smith famously noted, "there is a great deal of ruin in a nation", meaning that things may not simply collapse because it seems like they must collapse. It's more complex than that, and there are many confounding factors.
Unlike the Habsburgs, the US, even alone, is far more powerful, by all measures. It becomes even more so when taken together with the rest of the similarly-minded "West". It is not comparable to previous empires because the bases for its power are multiple -- economic, military, cultural (yes, there are aspects of American culture that are rejected now around the world, but Hollywood, pop music, Taylor Swift and video games are largely American, and if not American then Western, in origin, and together exert a massive cultural influence globally because they are popular globally still in many ways despite the pushback around the marginal edges of US cultural imperialism/evangelism). Nobody is close to the degree of power here, and never has the gap been greater in history for any prior "empire". It is a unique situation to say the least.
Of course none of that means that it will last forever, or that it is not subject to vulnerabilities (typically framed in terms of things like energy crisis, a collapse of the global reserve currency, etc) -- it is. But it does mean that Smith's phrase, as applied to the US and the broader contemporary West as a whole, is particularly apt. There really is a LOT of ruin here ... it will not be easily unraveled barring some unforeseen extenuating circumstance which forces a new reality upon it in a way that cannot be resisted with the existing forms of power. In other words, a metacrisis that precipitates a new paradigm. By its nature we have no idea what that would be, and the likeliest candidates in people's minds today (climate crisis, nuclear war, AI becoming Skynet, a much more deadly global pandemic, etc) are all fairly unlikely in terms of being an order-destroying or reshuffling metacrisis that resets things by virtue of the old levers of power becoming irrelevant in the new circumstances. Barring something like that, the train of the West will keep rolling for some time, I think.
And therein lies the problem for conservatives. There is no light at the end of the tunnel, because the tunnel is really long, and who knows when it ends, and who knows what the conditions will be on the other end.
--
To me, the lesson of Radetzky for contemporaries, and especially for people who are temperamentally inclined to be conservative in one way or another (which is likely most readers here) is that change is inevitable and that there are fulcrum points in history during which substantial changes occur and sweep away the old way of doing things. There is tragedy and sadness in that, perhaps depending on your point of view, but it cannot be reversed any more than the Habsburg Empire can be resurrected. One can ponder on what was lost in the changes, but the changes are real, and the only way forward is, well ... forward. You can't undo these things. What comes may be "worse" than what came before, or it may not -- it will be different from what came before, either way.
The real problem facing conservatives in this era, I think, is precisely that dilemma. How do you let go of what cannot be retrieved after society has undergone a fulcrum like shift point akin to the collapse of the Habsburgs (which I think is what has, in effect, happened in society in the West in the last 50 years or so), and articulate a new way of being "conservative" that makes sense in the current era, given that the past cannot be retrieved. The right is not close to resolving that, at present, and is still focused on retrieving the past that cannot be retrieved (the whole idea of "making America great again" is about retrieving a past greatness). The past needs to be put to rest and a new politics developed for a new era. That isn't happening properly yet (and I'm pretty unconvinced of the current attempts to do it under the rubric of national conservatism, which is another attempt to retrieve things from the past -- albeit from a somewhat more distant past than the more recent libertarian-tinged past of the political right), and until it happens the political system will be adrift because it is will be smothered by nostalgia, still.
Agreed. The U.S. has a founding myth, so it is subject to the same danger of demythologizing that all other nations have. One thing I got out of Rod's take here is that it is a mistake to tightly tie a national myth to prosperity.
Hi Brendan:
Thank you for this. I woke up this morning with something of the same thoughts. So, as scared as I get sometimes about the changes around me, I think, somehow, we’ll manage.
-Elizabeth
Time is moving faster now. Imagine if Trump wins the presidency again. Alternately, imagine if Biden/whomever replaces him wins, and the Dems see it as a validation of their policies and approach.
If Trump wins, the protests and attempts to undermine him this time around will make the shenaningans of last time look tame. I mean - imagine the nationwide protests the day after the election; imagine them turning violent, the media excusing it. That's before Day One!
Alternately, if the Dems/the Left wins, the chaos in our cities intensifies. Flash mobs? We're only just beginning. Retail flight from cities? It'll all be called "racist" but the exodus too will intensify. The border crisis? The fight over parental rights and the sexual revolution in schools? All of this and more gets kicked up about 5,000 notches if Dems win.
Oh, and what if the Dems begin pushing the "new strain of Covid" line, mask up and close the schools and you lose your job if you refuse the jab business? That tuns into open armed warfare, right there.
If it were possible that we had a period of relative tranquility with no new skirmishes breaking out, that would be one thing. But the US is one big flashpoint at this point. Rot can persist as long as no one or nothing's kicking hard at the door. Our door is getting swift kicks from every angle imaginable.
You're correct, cultural/social/political changes occur faster today. The scenarios you outlined are very likely. Neither would be good.
I know this is a negative attitude but as has been said before, our best days are behind us.
With what you describe, I might wish that Biden is re-elected.
Re: Barring something like that, the train of the West will keep rolling for some time, I think.
Bingo
Re: And therein lies the problem for conservatives.
If conservatives have to found their hopes on some world-riving catastrophe that would make the word "gigadeath" useful then they have lost their way too. Christians especially have no excuse for such nihilism.
America is much more divided today than ever before. The America that defeated Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan was pretty united. It was led by self-confident white men. Most white women married young, had children, kept the home, and were content to let the men lead. Blacks were an unimportant minority who were looked down on by many whites. America had a population of 175 million.
Today's America has a population of 330 million and is very atomized. America is wealthier than it has ever been but more discontented than perhaps the 1930s Depression or the labor tumult of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Somewhat like the Hapsburg Empire, America is now made up many different interest groups, some of them ethnic and some sexual in origin. The two main political parties gather up these interest groups into large political cauldrons and engage in political battle. The Left political party dominates almost all important institutions in the country which is why the institutions are so widely despised. The Right, if it had its wish, would return to the old America that won World War Two. But the Left's interest groups hate that America. Which leads to our venomous political debates in the midst of material wealth.
Don't forget, the WW2 unity in America was in part an accident: leftists were on board because Germany had attacked the Soviet Union. They might have been subversive had Stalin and Hitler remained allies.
The US wouldn't have gotten involved at all if the Japanese had not attacked Pearl Harbor; and we wouldn't have gone after Germany if Hitler had declared war on the US after the attack. It's still one of Hitler's more puzzling decisions - he had to have known that the US would finally climb out of its isolationist stance and get cracking.
Roosevelt was figuring out how to get America in the war. Hitler made it easy on Roosevelt. Hitler made many blunders but that was probably the most stupid.
And he should have waited until spring to attack Russia.
Bailing out el Duce in Greece got in the way of Hitler's plans. Hitler made mistake after mistake after 1940 fortunately.
Yep. Some also think that the British provoked an anti-German coup in Yugoslavia to force the Germans to invade and so delay the USSR invasion by 6 weeks
Where were Guy Burgess and Kim Philby at the time?
He should not have attacked Russia, period. Or if he was going to, wait until the UK is conquered and subjugated. He was a fool of fools to try to do both at once.
I absolutely agree. There's really only been one successful invasion of Russia, and that was from the East, the Mongols.
Hitler need the oil only available to him from the Soviet Union due to the British naval blockade. Secondarily, he needed the wheat from the Ukraine also due to the blockade. Otherwise, Germany would be slowly ground down.
Once the R.A.F. saved Britain and the British navy, Hitler really had no reasonable choice except to attack the Soviet Union..
I used to teach history. I gave the three keys to allied victory as the R.A.F., the U.S. Navy, and Detroit.
He came damned close to winning.
Not true. You forgot about the USS Reuben James, which was sunk by a German U-Boat on October 31, 1941. We were already in an undeclared naval war and after that incident most Americans thought more was coming -all the WW2 vets I knew said so. Hitler just sped up the inevitable.
Mmm. But there were still isolationists, hoping against hope that we would not send troops. Just limited U.S. aid to the Allies short of actual intervention in the war. And then came Pearl Harbor.
John Lukacs says he had no choice. Hitler, I mean.
Lukacs is usually right. Roosevelt would have figured out a way to get us in against Germany, which he wisely realized was a much greater foe than Japan.
It was pretty much inevitable that the US and Japan would go to war: the US positions in the Philippines were right in the way of Japanese expansion. And Japan's alliance with Germany obligated the Germans ti declare war on us when war with Japan came.
Hitler believed in his own ideology. The US was an inferior "mongrel' nation which could never defeat an Aryan reich.
Yep. When ideology takes the place of tactics, tactics will always win. (Unless the ideology becomes mass suicide, as in Masada.)
And before the Germans invasion , they were!
re
Just like Austria-Hungary; it was the intellectual class which provided the ideas for weakness and self-hatred. Their proud babies are the tyrants like Hitler or Lenin who sweep all away to institute their utopias.
Ordered The World of Yesterday just now, hoping to find it as compelling as the work of Patrick Leigh Fermor (who inspired a lot of my European travel). I'll save Redetzky until after that. Curious as to your opinion: Budapest vs Vienna. Vienna is a contradiction: it comes off too perfect in a Disney way, yet with a residual energy that was foreboding. I much prefer the gritty overlay of Budapest. Is it fair to compare them? Maybe not, but I do.
In my running around Europe, I only ever spent about 18 hours in Vienna. It is something else, to say the least! I ran around the places one is supposed to visit and took pictures; I had just come from Prague and Bratislava, and was dead tired. My camera - which had been on its last legs - died, and I rescued the film out of it and headed back to the hostel which was not really close to the city center. I spent the rest of the evening chatting with a woman from Taiwan and an Austrian girl who was in Vienna for the night as she had an interview there to be an airline stewardess in the morning. The three of us talked for hours, and it was the most amazing thing. It also helped drive home the point to 20-year-old me that as much as it's a privilege to be able to take in the sights and sounds and culture of other places, at the heart of all of it is people and connecting with them.
I was just in Vienna a few weeks ago, and I don’t really see the Disneyish aspect though a lot of it is close to perfection. Like many European cities now, it is inexplicably scarred by pointless graffiti, so there’s a little grit for you. We stayed outside the main tourist zone, and it was very real and very cool. The early 20th century art, the architecture, the food, the cafes and bars, the people, the heurigen (local wine cafes), the public transit (which is perfect but not in a bad way), the music, we loved it all. I’m fond of Budapest also (and I don’t think it’s especially gritty these days); either city puts any modern American declining city of disorder to shame.
I share your sense of foreboding. My life is drawing to an end, and I may be spared seeing the advent of the rough beast that is slouching toward our world to be born. But as in the days of the falling Roman Empire, faith in Christ endures, and the community He founded endures, with all its faults. Small communities that preserve and pass on the faith will keep the flame burning until a new order can grow.
The lack of knowledge of even modern history in our populace and elites is astonishing. Apparently not many students in Great Britain know which countries were allied with Great Britain and which were enemies. The Canadians didn’t remember that anyone who fought against the Soviet Union in World War II must have been on the German side. And Ukrainians, having had millions starved by Stalin, thought that Hitler was a lesser evil – and he might have been, at least for ethnic Ukrainians, whom he would have enslaved rather than killed.
Our elites are determined to get us involved in a war with Russia and entangle us in the bitter disputes of Eastern Europe, which they do not understand or even know exist.
Rod, I’m looking forward to the next instalment of your culture trilogy.
Have you read Tara Isabella burtons strange rites? I seem to recall you mentioning it somewhere but I don’t remember if it was you or someone else that got me to pick it up.
It fits into the new religions category mentioned at the top of the article. Calvin point out that the heart as an idol factory. She shows that in living color. It seems to fit with the theme you’ve been touching on the last few days. That said, the demonic layer of the ufo phenomenon takes it to a whole new level (and as a pastor, I have long believed that the ufo phenomena is demonic manifestation to fool the lost).
Sorry that was supposed to be a standalone comment and the app won’t let me delete it.
"an idle factory"
an idol factory
This is the problem with talk to text. Yes. Fixed it.
I loved The Radetsky March. I haven’t read The Emperor’s Tomb, but that quote from the book perfectly describes what it was like for me to live in NYC from 2005- maybe 2012.
Another work of fiction that can be read in tandem with Roth's book is di Lampedusa's 'The Leopard.' It doesn't have to do with the death of empire, but rather with the death of the old order and the emergence of the nation-state, more precisely with the unification of Italy in the mid to late 1800's. While the time/place are different from Roth's, the themes are similar.
The Leopard is such a great novel!
That’s very perceptive. That’s a good twin read.
<<<Who wants to defend a social order that is busy destroying the integrity of its normative institutions to implement a radical left ideology that has captured the elites? >>>>
I am not sure I take the meaning of the two or more paragraphs in this vein. No one wants Americans drafted and fighting in Ukraine. So I read it as "What is in the European Nato countries is so bad it is not worth fighting for - just let the Russians come."
Maybe I got it wrong and more than one paragraph of the essay was about opposing draftees going to Ukarine. - - Or maybe it was about opposing funding for Ukraine even though young American men dying were mentioned - I don't know.
But I do know the world of horror that is being visited on Ukraine and would be visited on Europe if Russia attacked. Look at the wholesale slaughter of Ukrainians. It would not stop if Russia went into Nato countries. And of course, we'd be lucky to avoid nuclear war at that point. - - Yes, no matter how bad Europe is, it is worth fighting for should it be invaded. (Certainly, by Europeans, and we are obligated to fight under Nato.)
Again....sorry if I misread....but I just could not take this as opposing draftees to Ukraine - no one wants that. It was hard to take it as opposing funding for Ukraine - ****such funding can be opposed for other reasons, gosh let's not get into that **** but not for "implementing a radical left ideology" since that has not happened in Ukraine. Remember the charges from a few days ago? Only14 percent of Ukrainians even believe "homosexuality should be accepted by society".
You act like Russia is this unstoppable monolith and Euros simply cannot fight.
Not al all. My post was about Euros fighting Russians, and how that was justified. The substack post seemed to be saying that it was not worth it to the West to fight Russians because there are so many degenerates in the West. - - I also asked if i could have misread the substack post. (Was it saying USA should not fight despite NATO but Europe should fight? I didn't get that, if that was the meaning.)
I did not, to any extent, get into the fact that Americans are obligated to fight due to NATO. People will object to that fact. I'm not expressing an opinion there because I don't want to get into it.
IF Russia sweeps into Europe, I don't think Europeans will just let them (I also doubt the Russians can actually sweep. Their performance in Ukraine reinforces those doubts.) What I am certainly saying is that we absolutely should be reticent about non-NATO Euro fights, and absolutely distrustful of the leadership and their motives. If anything, this may cause a necessary reevaluation of NATO, if not it's dissolving. Our treaties should not be suicide pacts tying our young men and women to the whims of degenerate leaders.
Well, I did not want to get into it. Bur forsaking our European allies, the people of Europe we have obligated ourselves to protect. Because **some** of them have supported degeneracy. (It's even getting more reasonable on some fronts, see the pull back of Sweden and England on surgery for minors - surgery most countries didn't have in the first place.)
It would be good if Europe could completely "handle it". I suspect they need us. What happens to us, to our economy, if Europe falls? What happens to the world if the China-Russia Axis has so much or the world?
Oops....I guess I got into it. I am not the world's best informed person on War. I do know that almost every war is really about money. And about power because it takes power to get money. My concern hereL despite the corrupt people who started this war, we can't afford to have Russia take Europe. Most definitely against American interests for that to happen.
Ukraine was never part of the deal. And we are not obligated to lay our blood on the line for every square foot of Europe, especially that which most definitely is not covered by treaty. And it does not matter, the power/money equation. We are not obligated to shed our blood for the money of our overlords, which is what Ukraine comes down to. And certainly not for sexual degeneracy, whose rainbow banner they now fly. That is an order that cannot, should not hold. And appeals to the red, white and blue, since it does not involve that either, and our current degenerate leaders have repeatedly expressed contempt for, that is also a nonstarter.
The world you describe does not exist anymore, LInda. It is time to face the world as it is now. Including what we are wiling to ask our sons and daughters to die for.
Are there US interests we should go to war for still? Yes. Is Europe that? Depends.
Is Ukraine? Unquestionably no.
Huh? I specifically said this was not about boots on the ground in Urkaine. I specifically said it was about NATO countries. Once they are invaded it is not "blood for Ukraine" anymore.
Much of the non-Western world views Russia - Ukraine as a White Man's Civil War. Even Mexico is not on-board.
Russia is stoppable. Ukraine proved that. And the Euros won't fight.
If they won't, then we cannot support NATO. There is no way in hell we can or should try to justify our sons and daughters dying in place of theirs.
Yep.
No need to apologize. You did't misread it. 'Americans will be forced to fight in Ukraine' gets brought up frequently as if it is actually being proposed by our elected leaders. To read Rod, you would think Americans are already on boats crossing the Atlantic and Dylan Mulvaney will be installed as Ukraine's president by the European Union any day now.
That is very interesting. I know Lindsey Graham made some "way out" remark but I was not sure they were about boots on the ground. Could you say which elected leaders proposed American forces -boots on the ground - fighting in Ukraine? I'ver totally missed that, and I'd like to be better informed.. (sincere remark)
No, I can't, and that was my point. My sarcasm got the better of me!
Rod and some others are convinced that any pushback against Russia will lead to Americans getting drafted to fight in Ukraine. They speak of it as though it is being proposed and that is just not true. Also, the idea that Ukraine is becoming some sort of woke nirvana is sometimes brought up. I'm not a fan of woke politics but this is just nonsense. Along with that is that 'The West' via the US government and the EU is going to turn Ukraine into the next San Francisco. I understand the concerns regarding our government's behavior and that of the EU as well. But, I think this view is more than a little over the top
Another thing is the constant predictions of almost certain nuclear war unless we force Ukraine to sue for peace and give up territory. Yes - there are concerns any time you are confronting a nuclear power. But, I was around in the '80s and this sounds like the people who were declaring President Reagan was going to start WW3 for challenging the USSR. It is very similar. And thank God Reagan had the courage to confront the obvious threat that was the USSR (Russia).
Oh, come on, really? We (the US, NATO) are getting more and more involved in that war. Now Biden says he's sending Ukraine missiles capable of reaching deep into Russia. Why? I completely understand why we aren't happy with Russia attacking Ukraine (though it annoys me that nobody on the Western side pushing the war understands the West's role in provoking it); what I don't get, and don't like, is this almost religious belief that this thing couldn't spiral out of control. Moreover, I don't see that Russia is planning to attack NATO countries. Ukraine is not in NATO!
"Now Biden says he's sending Ukraine missiles capable of reaching deep into Russia. Why?"
Why? Because Russia continues to bomb the snot out of Ukrainian cities, Rod, and the Ukrainians are actually fighting back. They don't want to be a Russian servile state. Ukraine has all sorts of historic knowledge regarding how Russians treat them. But, I don't think you're right about 'deep into Russia'. I think these will be used (if they actually make it there) to destroy military targets in Russian-held territory, including Crimea to cripple Putin's ability to keep his troops (invaders) supplied.
But, I think I am right in pointing out that you would have seen Reagan as a warmonger and way out of line to risk WWIII. Was Reagan right to fight the expansion of the Soviet Union and communism? Was he right to call their bluff and challenge them? Was he wrong to call them 'the evil empire'? Before that, was The West right to do the Berlin Airlift after Stalin decided to try and choke the life out of all of Berlin? Of course, there are risks. And there are rewards for pushing back against tyranny, especially when the underlying political dogma is that of totalitarianism.
Of course Reagan was right to do those things. But you know what? Ukraine is on Russia's border. I don't blame the Ukrainians for fighting back. But this is a war that is a very high risk for the US, and for what? What is the reward that makes the risk of Russian cities being bombed with US missiles worthwhile? If we have to fight World War III with Russia, well, then we have to do it -- but this is a war of choice for NATO. Do you really think it is America's obligation to fight tyranny anywhere in the world? Do you think Russia has no legitimate security concerns about NATO bases in Ukraine? Do you think the US would have legitimate reasons to go to war to stop Mexico from welcoming an alliance with China that would put Chinese bases in Mexico, which is Mexico's sovereign right? I do.
I think it terrible that Tibet does not have its independence and that its culture is being slowly dissolved. But I don't think any sane person advocates war with China. Tibet is somewhat similar to Ukraine in that both were rarely independent of the large states they border.
Your Mexican example is correct. If China or Russia or North Korea built bases in Matamoros and made an alliance with Mexico, we'd have to act. Yet, as an independent country, Mexico has the right to ally itself with any country they wish.
Here we go again with the "Mexican" analogy-- which totally ignores the fact that we actually faced a neighboring country becoming an ally of a hostile power and did not invade it with slaughter and rapine, though, no, we weren't nice to Cuba either.
"And for what?" Exactly!! If we presume to posture that our concerns are for Russia quickly creeping further beyond Ukraine into NATO countries, that means we (the US specifically) are already fighting a war we've only imagined. Imagination and 'possibility' are mighty weak reasons for which we seem to be pledging our financial resources and military readiness (arms and weapons capacity - and if spooled out, troops, which we may as well go on and add in to our imagined scenario). Good (read: effective) geopolitical strategy is not (or should not be) a guessing game of whack-a-mole, which, for those defending our assistance in Ukraine as 'restraining' Russian ambition, is all this amounts to at the moment. BUT good geopolitical strategy is also not what we did to Iraq or even, I believe, to Afghanistan - or to Vietnam. Etc. The way I see it, and I am not a military history scholar or a political science savant by any means - mea culpa: our gov & military mistook our ultimately triumphant performance in WWII for a national purpose into infinity. Simple as that - with very little acknowledgement, the further from that war that we get, of the very specific strategic and national reasons/purpose from which we ultimately chose to re/act. We've pasted that purpose over everything that has come up in the meantime, between then and Ukraine, and we've accomplished very little in regards to 'safeguarding' our country or resources from ultimate decline on the world stage. Where we have gotten it right was where Kennedy and Reagan read the tea leaves of the precise moment and acted - or did not - and preserved what was in our actual, immediate interest to preserve. But this galavanting all over to rattle sabers and crush other cultures because we feel like they're, essentially, wrong somehow (because they aren't us?) is neither useful nor sustainable. Failure of imagination, indeed! That Biden & Co have grasped this 'imagination of purpose' and are using it as a cudgel with which to beat the US into ignoring the sweeping corruption that they've installed in or allowed to proliferate in Ukraine is just beyond the pale - and yet, that's exactly what I see happening. Russia bad; must defeat to prevent possible more bad - with a wink wink to protect the US 'interests' (labs, money laundering) in Ukraine. So cynical, I know, but from my very uneducated view, exactly what we're doing. Excuse the rant! Carry on...
" Do you really think it is America's obligation to fight tyranny anywhere in the world?"
No. But, this is not just 'anywhere in the world'. You know that. The 19th and 20th centuries showed just how sideways things can go in Europe and we have legitimate reasons to try to prevent that happening again.
" If we have to fight World War III with Russia, well, then we have to do it -- but this is a war of choice for NATO."
I think that's hyperbole. Putin wants no part of an all out war with NATO. He's not stupid or crazy. He wants to begin the reconstitution of either the Soviet Union or some form of the old Russian empire. He's throwing threats around to see just how much he can get away with.
"... but this is a war of choice for NATO."
Well, first - Russia invaded! Putin will not stop with eastern Ukraine and Crimea. I'm certain of that. You disagree. Even pacifist Germany finally sees what is in store for itself in due time. It's also why both Sweden and Finland wasted no time asking to join NATO. They all fear Russia and its intentions. Nothing good will come from a revanchist Russia and everyone in that neck of the woods knows it.
"Do you think Russia has no legitimate security concerns about NATO bases in Ukraine?"
I think Putin and Russia are a direct threat to anyone in its vicinity. There's a reason so many countries that are on Russia's border want to join NATO - Putin is a despot who murders his political enemies wherever he can find them and Russia has a long history of trouncing all over the rights of its neighbors. As far as I am concerned, Putin's behavior (including murdering people on foreign soil) makes his claims illegitimate. He's a thug.
"Do you think the US would have legitimate reasons to go to war to stop Mexico from welcoming an alliance with China that would put Chinese bases in Mexico, which is Mexico's sovereign right? I do."
Actually, I don't think we would be in the right to do that. Mexico, as you say, is a sovereign state. But, I am aware of the Monroe Doctrine and I aware of the history regarding the Cuban missile crisis. But, you know what? We should not be dictating our position in the world based on what a third rate failed communist dictatorship with a murderous autocrat in charge demands of us. Russia is a miserable, failed state and we should not let it dictate how we make our way in the world and who we decide are our friends. (Agree to disagree here, I know!)
Regarding China, they have claimed ownership of much of the South China Sea in clear violation of international law. Bases in Mexico? I can't see Mexico doing that. That's a tough one. But, I'm pretty sure we will be in conflict with China for some time to come just like we were with the USSR. I believe the world has always be a tough place and it will continue to be for the foreseeable future. I think the philosophy of talking softly but carrying a big stick (making sure it is the biggest stick of the bunch) is the right way to approach our security as well as the security of our friends.
I have a 'Demon' question for you, Rod. I know you see possible links between some of the truly despicable people within the far left who are, as I see it, trying to prey on children and actual religious demons as Christians may define them. I don't believe in religious demons but I do believe there is real evil in the world.
I kinda see Putin as a demon, or at least embodied evil. He has so much blood on his hands, not just in Ukraine but elsewhere. It's really something when you have a guy on your payroll called 'General Armageddon' (and he truly earned that title). His troops rape and torture people - that's not disputed. He has overseen the snatching away of Ukrainian children to Russia. And - here's the thing that sticks with me: He has co-opted the Russian Orthodox Church and claimed, via Kyril, that his actions are, effectively, approved by God. He's perverted the Church. He's perverted the idea of Christ, I think. That claim of religious righteousness is sickening. I'm OK with you likening some of the worst among us as perhaps being actual demons in this world. But, doesn't Putin deserve some consideration?
Tyranny, no. Expansionism, well, yes. The surest path to nuclear war is a return to the free-for-all of the 18th century when powerful nations grabbed whatever territory they could, ultimately sending Europe into the maelstrom of revolution and Napoleon.
"They don't want to be a Russian servile state."
The word you're looking for is "client". And they don't have a choice. Why is it our concern?
Why is it our concern? I think Putin has every intention of expanding his territorial holdings. I am certain that if he remains in eastern Ukraine and the war ends with Russia there, it will only be a matter of months until the Wagner boys or some other little green men begin making mischief and pushing westward into the rest of Ukraine. I believe Putin wants to re-establish some measure of the Soviet Union. He has basically stated that and written about it. I think he will look to destabilize the Baltic countries even though they are part of NATO. If little green men start showing up and causing issues there (kinda like what is happening in Moldova) and NATO makes threats he will just declare that if NATO pushes back he will nuke someone.
So, I think him having picked a fight with Ukraine was a huge mistake and this is an opportunity to severely deplete his ability to make mischief for nations that want no part of Russia's 'friendship'. But, the most important part is Ukrainians wants to shove him out of Ukraine. Nobody has a gun to the head of the Ukrainians. They WANT to fight.
Bully for them. My concern is with this country.
1) They voted in a pro-Russian government. We didn't like that and engineered a coup which brought another government in to power.
2) This was AFTER Georgia, in which Putin demonstrated AGAIN what he is made of. It is not pleasant, but he is not afraid to show it.
3) Lavrov 19 months ago came out with hard but not impossible terms for the Donbass, which Zelinsky either temporized over or ignored.
4) So Putin acted.
I don't like seeing dead babies in the street, so opting for war under these conditions is immoral to begin with. But we are up to our necks in this, and it's time we blew the whistle. Even Kagan concedes there is no U.S. national interest in Donbass, or all of Ukraine for that matter. As far as the "international order" cult, where the U.S. runs to the rescue of anybody who whines loud enough, that's a fantasy.
Deo gratias.
Sean Penn says that we can't be afraid of nuclear war. Take it from Sean Penn, things won't spin out of control. Say the possibility is "extremely low", so there. You - or anybody - know better than Sean Penn? Huh, huh?
And Sean Penn has more props than anybody commenting here, 10,000 times more props, so we're going in. Oh, yeah. This is the big one.
The ONLY thing that will 100% rule out direct conflict with Russia at this point is the election of Donald Trump to the Presidency in 2024. Think on that.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sean-penn-face-the-nation-transcript-09-17-2023/
Well, you're talking about Spicoli.
" What Jefferson was saying was: If we don't get some cool rules.... pronto, we'll just be bogus ourselves.'
I still laugh about the scene where Spicoli orders a pizza to be delivered but the teacher (Ray Walston) takes it away from him.
Actually 'Spicoli' is not the idiot he played. View his documentary "Witch Hunt".
If the US isn't getting dragged into "boots on the ground", who are these US soldiers being treated at Landstuhl (Germany)? https://www.stripes.com/theaters/europe/2023-09-25/americans-injured-ukraine-treated-landstuhl-11484763.html
"Easily defeated?" C'mon, Rod. TDS is not good for you.
You really think Trump beat them? Come on.
I'm taking issue with your use of the phrase, "easily defeated."
Who actually won the election is another conversation entirely. But even if Biden won, it was not "easily."
Did you read the Michael Brendan Dougherty piece? Trump said "no trannies in the armed forces". The Pentagon did it anyway. Stuff like that.
No, because I do not read National Review, it is trash. So you will have to inform me. Did it happen while he was in office? Or was it when he left. Because when he left, new people were put in charge. That is what happens when admins change.
Though what that has to do with what we are talking about, I have no idea.
You can click on the link I provided in the essay above. It happened when he was in office.
Didn't see the link, so I had to go hunting for the article myself. Closest I could find was this one. https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/09/something-is-going-to-break/ One sentence was dedicated to it, and it indicated it did it in defiance of him, not because of him, which is all the more reason for a hatchet to be taken to DoD leadership, not an indictment of Trump. Trump exposed the deep corruption of the Deep State, of which for many years, many had been in denial of. It took Trump to reveal it.
I'm voting for the Republican, whoever it is. But if it is Trump who comes out on top, I'll be perfectly happy with that. And if he wins, the screams from the Left will be delicious. And the chainsaw TRump will take to that rotten set of institutions will be glorious.
I think most Americans will be OK with revolutionary political change if the economy remains something that allows them to continue to bank, to work, to watch YoutTube or Netflix or TikTok. To eat at a restaurant or go on holiday. Most young Americans seem commited to Wokeism. As they assume more leadership in society, it will be easier to junk the constitution, bulldoze Mt rushmore, do away with citizenship, etc. But as long as they maintain the ability for people to participate in consumer society, a new woke totalitarianism will be (in time) acceptable to most.
Probably true, sadly. It likely would be like a Brave New World situation. As long as people follow the narrative of those in control, they can live their life within those "soft" constraints. People that object to that narrative will experience something closer to 1984.
Most older people don't know (or want to know) how deeply and naturally the young and educated have been baptized into the Soc Just religion.
And like you said, as long as the Wifi stays on and the food is still plentiful, the 1968 dispensation will gradually yet totally conquer and subsume the 1776 dispensation and very few will notice or care, esp as those of us raised in the 20th century die off.
Exactly correct. Bread and circuses. I often thought during the covid tyranny here in Canada "why don't people rise up and resist this?" As long as they could work from home and buy stuff on Amazon and watch Netflix and smoke their legal pot, they didn't give a care.
And for us older folks our Social Security and Medicare.
Interesting and thoughtful piece. One thing that is important is that consumerism and the pursuit of comfort replaced any concepts of discipline, evolution of thought, and spirit of progress. The limits of any sort of advancement are spiritual, in that advancement is only a good as long as it doesn’t outrun our ability to bring it into a larger moral or ethical philosophy. That is, of course, exactly what is happening with the AI “religion,” transcenderían, and so on.
In the larger picture, though, when people in the 60s and 70s began to view comfort as more important than discovery and progress, any support for those ended. The planned NASA missions to Mars and beyond were scrapped because no one saw any direct connection to that as a route into their personal lives. Instead, dollar after dollar was stripped from NASA and given to welfare programs that did nothing but line the pockets of those who figured out how to grift them. Yes, NASA has been problematic at times, but the point is that supporting it is supporting the idea of exploration.
It is a turning inward that destroys a culture, not an expanding outward. In late Rome, the state was mostly concerned with trying to hang on to what they had. An empire with what were essentially limitless resources did not build strength in terms of progress after perhaps Hadrian. Augustus himself wanted to put an end to Roman expansion, as he felt the empire was large enough at that point. Unfortunately, that also meant preserving a status quo, not advancement. Rome stagnified and was ultimately lost because stagnation prevented any path to change the broken model. What would have been the effect if the Romans had embraced progress instead of comfort?
We are there now. We look for comfortable experiences and ideas. The thought of getting into a small metal capsule and going to another world would horrify most people, even though thousands upon thousands of lives were lost in the simple crossing of old world to new. We also cannot fix our broken models, because change requires effort and discomfort to benefit in the long run.
Best example is trying to come up with one stupid idea or another so that everyone can continue to engage in happy motoring (thank you, pre-alt right JHK), rather than recognizing that our living arrangements need to change by both necessity and also because we can truly make our lives more efficient and productive by doing so. The suburbs, each house an island, is a terrible idea.
On the larger scale, America benefitted from rejection of the old world ideals of class structure, etc, but also from a continent full of unexploited resources that the American Indians had no clue how to use. In time, it led to the assertion of American economic power, then military power. America could not outright defeat Britain even for a time after the revolution, but America had already overtaken Britain in economic potential by 1776. Once the Monroe Doctrine was developed, and America was left standing after the Second World War, the need to adapt and change was lost. We could sink someone’s economy or undermine them militarily. This was harder when the Soviet Union existed, but is still a shiny idea to those in power, even if it usually less than successful.
But what now? Nations chafe under American control, and look to the day when the dollar isn’t the lifeblood of trade. Everyone knows it is worthless, but no one can get off of it, because they hold so much of it that rejecting it would break the bank. Everyone is tired of Washington’s militarism, and sees it as a paper tiger in many ways, but no one really wants to poke the tiger and find out if it’s teeth are still sharp. It won’t last, though. At some point, events driven by the thermodynamics of the human race, will take on enough form to test one or both of those things and we will watch the empire, then the nation, collapse. Complex systems are resilient until they are not.
I think this is why there is so much angst over China, India, and Russia. Each of those nations, even with their shortcomings from the perspective of the individual citizen and in terms of human rights and political freedom, are not afraid to push and change. Russia threatens the West’s hegemony over its neighbors, India threatens the complacency of lazy Americans, and China threatens the technological status quo. We are forced to keep up with the Jones and know we cannot. If you prefer a Roman analogy, these are the barbarians who threaten the empire, precisely because they have the nature of what we used to be and don’t have any longer.
The Germans posed a threat to Rome by being unwilling to see their borders pushed back father from the Rhine. That is Russia, unwilling to have NATO colonize every inch of ground around them. The Goths and others wanted to be part of Rome’s society and be plugged into the riches, but did not really wish to become Roman. Those are Indians. Last, the Persians (using this as a blanket term) were always a persistent military rival that would never stay down and stop challenging the Empire. This is China.
What is always interesting to me is the parallel between how the Romans spoke of barbarians, and how the beltway elite does now. Being compared to a barbarian didn’t mean that a person was being called that in a near-literal sense, but that it was a pejorative because of the association with negative characteristics of that type of barbarian. To the elite, calling a person a Russian plant or troll is implying that they are dishonest, stupid, and backwards. Also, that they are old fashioned in their views. To other elites, suggesting that a person is in the pocket of the Chinese is taken to mean that person is underhanded, sneaky, and willing to sell the nation out for money. So far, the Indians mostly fly under the radar, but a challenge to America hegemony will change that. (I will ignore all the stupid and lazy lower class Americans who whine relentlessly about the Indians taking over all the convenience store where those same complainers can’t figure out why they pay five times a markup on things they could buy at the grocery if they had enough discipline to) At the same time, no matter how cruel and corrupt a foreign nation is, as long as they play ball (like Ukraine), they are embracing America’s true values.
I would say it is depressing to live in such a broken and failing model, but I don’t think that it is, unless you are emotionally invested in that system. America now, no matter how many rainbow flags are waved in some sort of bizarre victory march, is no longer vital or worthy of respect and support. Politics has long ceased to be any platform of leadership but now is a sport. I quit supporting the Greens or the Blues a while back and have not regretted it. The real red pill is not some sort of alt-right fantasy of racial consciousness, but just realizing that a political prostitute begging for your vote or a corporation selling you a bigger TV is all part of the same passing system. Building your own body and mind, setting a spiritual course in your own life, refusing to let bad ideas colonize your worldview, these are all a response. The Romans who could no longer tolerate the high taxes and early serfdom were able to escape beyond the limes. We don’t really have that option, but at least books are cheap and prayer is free.
"The Germans posed a threat to Rome by being unwilling to see their borders pushed back father from the Rhine. That is Russia, unwilling to have NATO colonize every inch of ground around them. The Goths and others wanted to be part of Rome’s society and be plugged into the riches, but did not really wish to become Roman. Those are Indians. Last, the Persians (using this as a blanket term) were always a persistent military rival that would never stay down and stop challenging the Empire. This is China."
This paragraph, and the one that follows it, are simply wonderful (even to a historian like me that tends to jib at historical "repetitions" or analogies) as, indeed, is the comment as a whole. A doff of my doctoral bonnet to you, "John of the West."
Ultimately the Germans were assimilated to late Roman culture in the lands they conquered (Britain excepted). Romance languages are spoken in Gaul, Iberia and Italia today, and the late Roman religion, under a hierophant based in Rome, long dominated those lands too.
Excellent commentary and conclusion!