PMC Commentary

Brutal reality has caught up with Europe; its military shortages mean shortages for Ukraine

Highlighting the lede, below, to a NY Times article on "just how unprepared European militaries" have been in arming Ukraine against Vladimir Putin's naked aggression poses a problem for the non-jingoistically inclined writer, which I most definitely am. Unlike some men, I have never been fascinated by things that go boom; I wrote for 10 years of the imbecility of Bush II's militarily adventurous neoconservatism; and I see large military expenditures for what they are: a waste of national resources.

But I'm also a realist, as well as one who believes the West should offer military assistance to any free, democratic nation under the oppressive belligerence of despotism. Large military expenditures are a waste — until they're not; that is, until the hard realities of twisted, authoritarian thinking morphs into war and the murder of tens of thousands of innocents. Hence large military expenditures also reveal themselves as a grossly unfortunate reality — the written defense of which can be misinterpreted by readers as the thinking of just another moronic armchair general who loves vast spending on things that go boom — and loves the even more moronic "thrill" of war. I'll risk such misinterpretation.

The Times' lede:    

Nearly a month after Berlin gave European allies permission to send German-made tanks to Ukraine, the flow of tanks so many leaders vowed would follow seems more like a trickle.

Some nations have discovered that the tanks in their armory don’t actually work or lack spare parts. Political leaders have encountered unanticipated resistance within their own coalitions, and even from their defense ministries. And some armies had to pull trainers out of retirement to teach Ukrainian soldiers how to use old-model tanks.

The struggle to provide Leopard tanks to an embattled Ukraine is just the most glaring manifestation of a reality Europe has long ignored: Believing that large-scale land war was a thing of the past and basking in the thaw of the Cold War, nations chronically underfunded their militaries. When Russia launched the largest land war on the continent since World War II, they were woefully unprepared.

The Times' reporters note that the "irony of this situation is not lost" on Germany's Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who for weeks "resisted an intense public pressure campaign from Ukraine’s leaders, European politicians and security experts to supply Kyiv with tanks, and to permit other nations to send some of their own Leopards." Yet after relenting, Poland has offered Ukraine only 14 Leopard tanks; Finland has offered three "Leopard mine-clearing vehicles — but none of its estimated 200 Leopard main battle tanks; Sweden, merely "up to" 10 tanks; and Spain, six. "Germany has offered 18" — the total of which falls pathetically short of the 300 to 500 tanks that the Ukrainian military requested.  

"The trend across the board in European armies has been cutting, cutting, cutting," said defense expert Christian Mölling, of the German Council on Foreign Relations. "But at the end of the day, many were on the same track as Germany: War is a theoretical thing. So we have theoretical tanks."

Germany, of course, had good historical reason to initially demur. Its 20th-century hypermilitarization still haunts, to make a very long story short. So Germany rejected the redevelopment of hard power, which, observes the Times, "offered sometimes comical glimpses of [its military's] shortages. Commandos conducted water training at local public pools, because their own facilities were shut down. Planes could not fly. Soldiers trained with broomsticks instead of rifles."

In 1919 and throughout the 1920s, Army Major Dwight Eisenhower would have recognized not modern Germany's irony, but the U.S.'s similarity. In that decade he was assigned to assess America's defensive capabilities, and he too saw "comical glimpses" of military shortages. In 1919 he participated in the Army's Transcontinental Motor Convoy, a traveling circus of organizational mishaps and execrable road conditions for numerous military vehicles and nearly 300 officers and enlisted men.

The convoy started its engines at the White House and completed its transcontinental journey two months later, in San Francisco. Memories of just how impossibly awful was the swift movement of war matériel in a potential time of international crisis compelled President Eisenhower to propose the construction of today's interstate highway system. In the U.S. Army's 1920s training maneuvers, Eisenhower was also forced to supply recruits with wooden rifles at the "firing" range, so short was the army of actual weapons.

All this official shortsightedness — brought on by America's disgust with having expensively involved itself in a European war to end all wars, but which actually ended in other victors' squabbling and grab of colonial territory — caught up to the United States in the late 1930s, when President Roosevelt had to beg Congress to rearm the country and, for starters, supply Great Britain with the military means to retard Nazi Germany's aggression.

The U.S. never stopped its often-extravagant military spending, but Western Europe came to nearly a full stop. Now it hasn't the war matériel that Ukraine needs. The free and democratic continent became complacent. It ceased imagining the kind of Hitlerian ghastliness that had decimated Europe decades earlier.

And I shall never cease recalling British-American poet W.H. Auden's poignant reflection of the 1960s: "We shan't, not since Stalin and Hitler, / trust ourselves ever again: we know that, subjectively, / all is possible." But Europe did trust itself again; it trusted in the extreme unlikelihood of another Stalin or Hitler. Europe didn't see Vladimir Putin coming, even though centuries of despotism's oppressive belligerence is but a hard, immovable fact of worldly reality.

And Ukraine is paying the price. 

DeSantis' "The Courage to Be Free" - a blueprint for American authoritarianism

This review of Gov. Ron DeSantis' The Courage to Be Free, a presidential resume that reads more like a job application to the S.S., is, as the book reviewer notes, "scary."

I thought about writing a review of the review — I have not read the book, nor do I intend to squander a day doing so — but that would have robbed you of book critic Jennifer Szalai's gently written disembowelment of the Florida governor's scribbling ego. So rather than offer a review's review, I have decided to pluck a few representative passages from her labors. (Note: I have not excised any favorable comments about DeSantis' book, which even the worst of works sometimes earn. Fact is, Ms, Szalai had nothing favorable to say.) Here you are:   

"All the culture war Mad Libs can’t distract from the dull coldness at this book’s core."

"The Courage to Be Free is courageously free of anything that resembles charisma, or a discernible sense of humor."

"[It] reads like a politician’s memoir churned out by ChatGPT."

"Much of it is given over to laying out what he calls 'Florida’s blueprint for America’s revival' ... looks an awful lot like thought policing." 

"All the bland platitudes do serve a purpose. DeSantis’s blunt-force wielding of executive power might sound like a good time for hard-core social conservatives, but ... you can see the gears turning as he tries to make his message palatable for the national stage."

"His 2011 book contained numerous tributes to 'limited government.' Now, he says, in his typically windy way, anything he does that looks suspiciously intrusive is in fact a cleansing measure, purging public life of excess politicization."

"Fewer than 20 pages later, DeSantis proposes making about 50,000 federal employees — currently apolitical civil servants — into 'at-will employees who serve at the pleasure of the president.' By any measure, this would amount to politicization on steroids."

"What DeSantis seems to be doing in The Courage to Be Free is to insist that Americans should just stop worrying and let him do all the thinking for them."

"Any criticism of his policies gets dismissed as 'woke' nonsense cooked up by the 'corporate media.'"

"The bullying sense of superiority is unmistakable, even when he tries to gussy it up in a mantle of freedom."

"He may have been able to 'withstand' the 'indoctrination' of being exposed to ideas he didn’t like, but he doesn’t seem to believe the same could be said for anyone else."

"Take out the gauzy abstraction, the heartwarming clichés, and much of what DeSantis is describing in The Courage to Be Free is chilling — unfree and scary."

Bold mine.

In short, what Gov. DeSantis proposes in "Florida's blueprint for America's revival" is nothing more than the authoritarianism that demagogues have proposed for centuries.

When he writes that he is merely fighting "political factionalism," one is reminded of Hitler's early 1930s agenda; what was needed was a nation of One Voice — all those communists and social democrats were but muddying a true, clear vision for Germany.

Only one-party rule could impose order and progress, added henchman Hermann Goering. On the Nuremberg witness stand just days before his suicide, he was still arguing that National Socialism's singular state power — and its brutal repression of all other parties and ideologies — was not only necessary but logical. After all, since only Naziism had all the correct solutions for his troubled nation, he testified, why would it permit any other political faction to survive?      

One can say this much for Goering. Unlike DeSantis, he never bothered with "gussying up" his bullying or obscuring it with "gauzy abstractions" and "heartwarming clichés." He was straightforward and honest about National Socialism's authoritarianism.

If DeSantis possessed "The Courage to Be Frank," he would do the same about his brand of Republicanism.      

"Back off, man. I'm a scientist."

A climatologist speaks, and other thoughts

Lauren Boebert: "Nothing against climate change. I totally believe in it. It happens four times every year." pic.twitter.com/evUoeNw5fM

— Republican Accountability (@AccountableGOP) February 27, 2023

Boebert describes climate scientists and those who believe in climate science as "cultists." With Republicans, projection is ceaseless. I'd like to think that's because of a guilty conscience, but ascribing a conscience to modern Republican pols would, I suppose, be something of a projection itself.

The Republican Accountability Project is co-led (along with Bill Kristol) by the brilliant Sarah Longwell, who is also the publisher of The Bulwark. I would like to add that she, and her publication, are formidable voices in the Never Trump movement. But both "formidability" and "movement" would be misnomers. The Republican rank and file remains emotionally, psychologically and anti-intellectually attached to either Trump himself or his rancorous clones, such as Gov. Ron DeSantis.

A U.S.-concerned Canadian friend and I hold regular correspondence sessions about the GOP's future — and ours, us Americans. Will, as the cliché goes, the Trumpian fever ever break? Will the United States ultimately collapse to its wobbling knees in an unvaccinated plague of authoritarian, nihilistic and incoherent madness?

My friend leans toward yes; I boldly, and perhaps ignorantly, persist in nos. My justification rests in American history, which has weathered other Know-Nothings, human bondage,, civil war, potentially ruinous Gilded Ages, world fascism, McCarthyism, a series of half-baked New Rights ... and Trump. Weathered, as in, We have always rebounded.

On history I hang my hat. My friend, however, might say that America's history is but one damn thing after another, and eventually the accumulation of its crisis-riddled past will catch up with it. And when one sees brainless harpies such as Rep. Lauren Boebert still captivating the news, one begins to see my friend's point.           

The Russian offensive is a bust, big time

Last September, tired of losing the war, the Kremlin announced the conscription of 300,000 men who would flood the already barren fields and destroyed villages of Ukraine's Donbas in a massive offensive and capture both of its provinces, Luhansk and Donetsk. 

The Kremlin did, in fact, conscript 300,000 men. The Donbas' fields are now more scorched and its villages more obliterated. But Russia's massive offensive has gone missing. Countless Russian troops have been killed and thousands of tanks and armored vehicles have been destroyed or taken by Ukraine.

In a series of reports, the Institute for the Study of War has noted that in and around several Donbas towns, the highly anticipated and supposed, cataclysmically crushing Russian assault has sputtered, stalled, and squandered immense amounts of war matériel. In the ISW's reports, the phrase "Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations" in town after town occurs time and again. 

In its inaugural attack — an assault on Vulhadar, a coal mining city — Russian failure quickly ensued, "with dozens of tanks and armored personnel carriers blown up by mines or abandoned in fields," observes The NY Times. To this, adds the ISW, Russia’s offensive will "very likely culminate well short of its objectives." 

Early thrusts along the Donbas' front lines were initially interpreted by Ukrainian forces as "exploratory." Now the Ukrainian General Staff has concluded that the forays were "the best the exhausted Russian forces can manage," and they "likely [lack] sufficient uncommitted reserves to dramatically increase the scale or intensity" this winter. 

The monthslong Battle of Bakhmut may be the exception. The city is Vladimir Putin's most eagerly pursued prize — although if achieved, it will be more of a symbolic than strategic win. The vicious Wagner Group has taken the lead in Bakhmut, abetted by large infusions of men shanghaied from Russian prisons. Assaulting from the north, Wagner is threatening to close Ukrainian forces' resupply route and thus isolate the defenders. "But even there," further observes the Times, "the Russian military has failed to take the city after months of bloody fighting."

Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine's military intelligence, told Forbes magazine last week that "Russia’s big new offensive is underway, but going in a way that not everyone can even notice it." 

In a crucial caveat, analysts have observed that "it would be a mistake to dismiss the Russian military as a completely spent force." It's still in possession of thousands of tanks and artillery shells — and, to date, artillery barrages have defined this war. The Russian command could also be holding thousands more troops in reserve for a more seasonal spring offensive. 

But the Russians themselves have to be wondering about the cautious Ukrainian caveat. For a year their military has reset, regrouped and replanned, only to fizzle in its latest strategy or reworking of tactics. To death or wounds it has lost 200,000 men and, as noted, thousands of tanks, artillery units, artillery shells and cruise missiles — all of which have been hard to replace, given sanctions.

Whatever the Kremlin's future plans for Ukraine — or elsewhere, for that matter —  this informed assessment from military experts must have Putin's advisers in a state of deepest despair: "Many of [Russia's] most elite, best-trained and experienced units have been decimated, left in a shambles ... [and] will probably take years, rather than months, to recover from." 

Still, thousands more Ukrainians will die because of Vladimir Putin's deranged obsession. 

The perils(?) of online "information": Scott Adams & Elon Musk, a case study

What struck me about the recent kerfuffle over "Dilbert" creator Scott Adams and Twitter's Elon Musk was how easily both men are lured into crappy online postings.

Adams reacted to a right-winging Rasmussen poll, which asked the really dumb question: "Do you agree or disagree with this statement? It’s OK to be white." I have no idea what that question means, and neither did 21% of black respondents. Another 26% of blacks said no, possibly because they preferred being black?

Anyway, those results compelled Adams to rush to social media and declare that "If nearly half of all Blacks are not OK with white people ... that's a hate group. And I don't want to have anything to do with them. I'm not saying start a war or anything like that. I'm just saying get away."

Maybe he was drunk. I don't know that, either, but in the world of shoot-from-the-hip assumptions, anything goes — right?

Major newspaper reaction to Adams' reaction was swift. The Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the USA Today-affiliated group and other newspapers canceled "Dilbert." Said Cleveland's Plain Dealer editor, "This is not a difficult decision."

Then came some monumental sniveling from Adams, who is reportedly worth $75 million: "By Monday, I should be mostly canceled. So most of my income will be gone by next week. My reputation for the rest of my life is destroyed. You can't come back from this" — this being his own actions.

All of which prompted Elon Musk to add his ill-considered opinion, at which he excels.

Later he posted:

That post was in reaction to a post about police shootings of whites vs. blacks by something called "Monitoring Bias," which on Twitter describes itself as "Independent and data-driven and unwoke. Monitoring hyperpartisan thinking, culture wars, and institutional bias against white and Asian people in America."

Any guesses as to what a site that calls itself "unwoke" and a fighter of "bias against white" people had to say about police shootings? 

In 2021, Pew Research found that "a little under half (48%) of U.S. adults say they get news from social media 'often' or 'sometimes.'" That figure is eerily close to the percentage of the Trump and Trump-leaning crowd.

There may, in reality, be no connection. But both Adams and Musk have gotten rich by spouting utterly unfounded opinions based on grossly unreliable sources, so I'm giving it a try, too.     

With China, so far, so good - but the world has changed, for the worse

According to U.S. intelligence, China remains in the "considering" stage of sending weapons to Russia.

So said CIA Director William Burns yesterday on CBS News' "Face the Nation." There is intelligence "suggesting" China is "considering" supplying lethal aid, but "We also don’t see that a final decision has been made yet, and we don’t see evidence of actual shipments of lethal equipment."

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on CNN's "State of the Union" that "China has not moved forward, as far as we can discern."

Burns also noted that Chinese President Xi Jinping has been surprised not only by Western unity in support of Ukraine, but "by the weaknesses of the Russian military, which had been expected to conquer the Ukrainian capital in a matter of days after last year’s invasion," in the words of The Washington Post. "All of that," said Burns, "has sobered Xi Jinping to some extent."

Xi himself might say that he's been shocked by the Russian military's weakness. His closest partner, Vladimir Putin, had been touting the might of his armed forces for years, only to watch them be bottled up and repelled in Kyiv by "a nation of shopkeepers," as Napoleon would have put it. 

Appearing on ABC's "This Week," the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Michael McCaul, was a bit more pessimistic, saying that intelligence suggested China might send drones — 100 of them — to Russia. Added McCaul: "We haven’t seen anything like this since my father’s generation, World War II."

It is McCaul's second observation that is bracing — in its sad truth. Yesterday, The NY Times' Roger Cohen wrote his reflections on how the "War in Ukraine has Changed Europe Forever" — "and there is no going back now." Cohen was visiting the Finnish-Russian border, crossings at which have largely come to a halt, devastating the local Finnish economy. But it was the columnist's quotes of European leaders that unsettle the mind by hurling it into this new old age of historical tensions, international angst, and a return not to militarism, but to military means. 

"Many of us had started to take peace for granted," said Finland's President Sauli Niinisto at the Munich Security Conference after leading his nation to an "abrupt push over the past year to join NATO, an idea unthinkable even in 2021," wrote Cohen. "Many of us had let our guard down," said Niinisto.

"We have to come to terms with the fact the world has changed," said Petri Hakkarainen, the chief diplomatic adviser to Niinisto. "The change in us must be material and mental. We need to make it quickly and sustain it."

"European politicians are not familiar with thinking about hard power as an instrument in foreign policy or geopolitical affairs," said Rem Korteweg, a Dutch defense expert. "Well, they have had a crash course."

It was, however, the words of a Finland-visiting, Netherlands-residing Russian woman that were the most bracing — and saddest:

"I have no idea when the war will be over. All I know is that it is such a waste."

Ron DeSantis' attempt to outright Nazify Florida's higher education

Let's be clear about this. Throughout the 1930s, Nazi officials increasingly tailored Germany's higher education to fit the tenets of national socialism. Course curricula were reordered from on high and recalcitrant professors were sacked (or worse). Now Florida's governor, Ron DeSantis, a presidential candidate in all but name, is attempting the same in his state (or worse).

Introduced by state Rep. Alex Andrade and previewed by the flag-surrounded governor last month, Florida House Bill 999,  which can be read here, "is a dangerous expansion of the unconstitutional 'Stop WOKE Act,' putting entire majors disfavored by legislators on the chopping block," reports FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. 

The organization is presently battling the "Stop WOKE Act" in federal court as a violation of the First Amendment. As FIRE writes in its headline on HR 999: "[If You] Thought the 'Stop WOKE Act' was bad," this "new Florida bill is worse." Its provisions are breathtakingly similar to Nazi Germany's seizure of higher education.

The bill defines the teaching of "identity politics" as the teaching of Critical Race Theory, which the bill does not define. Hence professors of all the humanities and social sciences would be made "to guess what political appointees might label as identity politics, even when such material is unavoidably relevant to their courses. 

HB 999 would also require that the teaching of early U.S. history be confined to that of "a new nation based on universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence." And once again, faculty would be made to guess what political appointees meant about "suppress[ing] or distort[ing] significant historical events."

The bill would further prohibit the teaching of "unproven, theoretical, or exploratory content" in general education courses. As FIRE notes: "A broad range of academic content — including quite literally all scientific theories — is contested and theoretical." Nevertheless, political appontees "would have unfettered discretion to determine which views are 'theoretical'" and therefore banned. 

Why do keep referencing "political appointees"? Because DeSantis would be naming the state's university and college boards of trustees, who would go on to conduct all faculty hiring. The bill allows for universities to "review" a faculty member's tenure "at any time with cause." but authorizes the board of trustees to "review any faculty member’s tenure status" without cause. 

Such interference by political hacks was presumed forever forbidden by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1967 case of Keyishian v. Board of Regents, in which Justice William Brennan wrote for the majority: "Our Nation is deeply committed to safeguarding academic freedom, which is of transcendent value to all of us and not merely to the teachers concerned. That freedom is therefore a special concern of the First Amendment, which does not tolerate laws that cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom." 

And yet DeSantian orthodoxy is demanded in Florida's House Bill 999 — a measure of no significant departure from steps taken by Nazi officials in the 1930s. Just as worrisome is that today's Supreme Court, with its Trump appointees, is no longer the philosophically enlightened Court of the 1960s. It's closer to the Reichsgerich of 1933-1945. 

"Instead of Nuremberg - to sign an agreement with [Russia] and shake hands?"

After "signal[ing] that they won’t be delivering new types of weapons to Ukraine as the fighting continues in the coming weeks," the leaders of France and Germany, President Macron and Chancellor Scholz, have told Ukrainian President Zelensky that he must "start considering peace talks with Moscow," reports The Wall Street Journal.

Joined by Britain, Germany and France are dangling a carrot in front of Ukraine: a NATO security pact. Yet their urgings for peace talks and promises of a security guarantee are measures grounded only in doubts about Ukraine's ability to retake its territory from Russia, including Crimea.

The European leaders fear that Zelensky's determination to do so means an enduring, even endless, war. Which leads one to ask: What war have they been tracking for the past year, as well as events before the outbreak of war? 

Zelensky — who happens to be winning the war — noted on Friday that, prior to 24 Feb. 2022, he had repeatedly asked these leaders to meet with Vladimir Putin, who declined. The ensuing barbarity of invading Russian forces have made such talks impossible, just as the Allies in WW II rejected all suggestions of talks with Hitler's bloody regime. "Now it is us who cannot do it," said Zelensky of talks. "There is nothing to talk about."

In December, a high-ranking Ukrainian national security official also despaired of any wrongheaded, WW II suggestions of a premature peace. Said Oleksiy Danilov: "Instead of Nuremberg — to sign an agreement with [Russia] and shake hands? Ukrainian blood on Putin’s hands will not bother business as usual?"

Putin's return promise of peace would be as valid as Hitler's in 1938. If his lies before the invasion failed to prove this to Europe's leaders, what of his demonstrably truthful comments since? The Russian dictator, again and again, has assured the world that Ukraine will be re-engulfed by his Greater Russia — a year and 200,000 killed or wounded Russian soldiers have made Putin's guarantee the only reliable promise in this war.  

As for France, Germany and Britain's "security" guarantee for Ukraine, it would come with no foreseeable NATO membership, and thus no Article 5 protection. Nothing legally binding in their proposal would require Western Europe to come to Ukraine's military aid once Russia inevitably reinvaded. 

What's more — and far more critical — is this, as proffered by a senior French official. Said he to the Wall Street Journal: "We keep repeating that Russia mustn’t win, but what does that mean? And no one believes they will be able to retrieve Crimea." 

The official's question has indeed been repeated tirelessly by many others, which is deeply perplexing. Because the answer is as simple as it is straightforward: Russia will have lost once all its forces have been repelled from Ukrainian territory. Period. There is nothing obscure or recondite about the proposition, and yet the question about it perseveres in a less-than-subtle, underhanded way. It's the West's manner of saying that it shall not finance and arm Ukraine much longer.

Furthermore, the French official was dead wrong when he posited that "no one believes [Ukraine] will be able to retrieve Crimea."

Just six days ago, the former commanding general for the US Army in Europe, Ben Hodges, laid out a step-by-step military strategy for the taking of the peninsula. The retired general opened his plan with these words: "For Ukraine, the road to victory runs through Crimea. It is the key." Hence "our focus should be on helping Ukraine liberate Crimea; it should be the main effort."

You can read Hodges' proposal here.

The first bullet — or in this case, missile — fired, would likely alter Hodges' plan. But he is unmistakably correct in advancing the conviction that Crimiea "is the decisive terrain," and liberating it, "this year, will change everything in this war." 

If there's a major flaw in Hodges' strategic proposal, it's in writing will rather than would. Absent the proper military supplies from the West, Ukraine's retaking of the east, let alone its invasion of Crimea, will, almost certainly, be impossible. Zelensky's forces require the West's unity in shipments of war matériel, but France, Germany and Britain appear to be backing away.

Which, in the longer run, would be catastrophic — for Ukraine, and all of Europe. The three Western European nations can stage all the peace talks they like; they can, perhaps, even arrange a peace. But after they have backed away, Russia will be back. And it won't stop at Ukraine.       

A fleeting thought on the eternal gods

Today, from Norm Sibum's Ephemeris: 

"It occurs to me that when Circe says to Odysseus (in T E Lawrence’s prose translation of The Odyssey): 'The evil of your wanderings', she euphemizes the passage of time, defines what time is, as it were.... It seems to me we analyze the old stories (the myths and ancient poems) so as to bend them to our liking and service – understandable enough, but we rarely analyze those stories so as to know the gods for themselves (if that were possible) as well as the minds of the men and women who believed in them or, if they did not, accepted them as making up their 'culture', as if what pasta is to Italians and hot dogs to Americans explains everything."

Mr. Sibum's contemplation about the probable impossibility of "know[ing] the gods for themselves" relates to Kant's logorrheic exercises in proving the impossibility of knowing "the thing in itself" — i.e., anything in itself. Hence two centuries of German Idealism and eons of tortured college students in philosophy courses, an epoch that may, most regrettably, be closing. Kantian musings may be are aggravating in their obscurantism, but aggravating in a rather joyful, heuristic way, if that's not too ironic. As literary critic Harold Bloom so often observed, difficult reading is the most rewarding — only by working for the meaning of a written work is there a payoff in once-unimagined revelations.

To "know" anthropomorphic gods? Or the Christian or Judaic God? Or Allah, or Buddha's whatever of nirvana? A fundamentalist of any such belief system conflates knowing and epiphanic feeling, which is, to use an overused word, problematic. The human mind is abundantly capable of self-convictions, some of which can be sheer fantasy. Thus my agnosticism. I cannot know the unknowable, which, by definition, includes the supernatural — that is, something outside the human experience. I do not deny the possibility of such, which would trail off into the religion of atheism; I simply can't know it.

Odysseus had the advantage of meeting, and interacting with, gods. But contemporary gods — why just One? — are evidently as shy as they are mischievous. If they wished for us to know them, would they not present themselves, rather than requiring us to play mind and guessing games? I'm sorry, but 2,000-year-old, endlessly transcribed manuscripts penned by patriarchal "influencers" (in modern parlance) just don't cut it for me.

Homer, however, does. And Shakespeare, And Proust. These are the gods we can know. They lived and live among us just as Circe did in Odysseus' time — and they are just as eternal. I suppose Mr. Sibum would say they're my cultural hot dogs.                             

Meet Michigan's new GOP leader (before someone throws a net over her)

Among other triggers perilous to her general well-being — and possibly that of others — the logo on the right has the new chair of Michigan's Republican Party, Kristina Karamo, in a tizzy, reports MLive.

Rather propitiously for a rusting industrial state, the US Centre for Advanced Manufacturing is located in Michigan. But it's supported by the World Economic Forum, which has convinced Ms. Kamaro that her state's auspicious initiative is, in reality, part of a global plot to establish a single government of one world order.

Further evidence of this, says Kamaro, can be seen on some of Mich. counties' letterhead, which sports another ominous logo, this one referencing the United Nation's sustainable development goals.

All this she explained a few days ago on Steve Bannon's "War Room" podcast. I've not listened to that particular airing, so I am left to wonder if Kamaro also shared her belief that sex can transmit demonic possession. (To repeat, this person is now the leader of Michigan's GOP.) This almost makes her belief that President Biden is a “known traitor" and "illegitimate president" seem normal.

But back to the one world order. "What prompted me to run for chair of the Michigan Republican Party is the fact that Michigan has become ground zero for the globalist takeover of the United States of America," she told Bannon. 

She felt the urge to clarify. "This is not me being emotional and dramatic and trying to just rally the troops — these are facts. These are facts that these people’s actions are consistent with people who have one agenda, and that is to intentionally implode the United States of America." 

Here's the thing — it's not just Michigan's new party leader spewing such derangements. In his departing speech from the Senate floor last December, Republican Majority Leader Mike Shirkey also chimed in: "The intent behind these little-g gods is to achieve one world governance, one world religion, one world healthcare, one world currency and one world control and the elimination of sovereignty."

As veteran GOP consultant Dennis Lennox rationally observed: "Institutionally, the Republican Party at the county level and state level is dead. The people in the asylum have taken control of the institution."

Lennox added another key point, which applies to many progressives as well: "Most of the people here don't want to win elections." They're far happier agitating the rabble and bouncing the rubble of unchanging rhetoric. Lennox somewhat contradicted himself by saying further that "they have no idea how to win elections." That's true, but winning has never been the point. Virtue-signaling is. 

The news outlet Bridge Michigan notes that "with Karamo’s election, [other] veteran Republicans predicted the party will become increasingly 'irrelevant' in future elections as big-money donors fund their own preferred candidates outside the party apparatus."  

And that, gentle reader, is the much larger point of this story. As more GOP organizations and Republican pols voluntarily commit themselves to the asylum, the old-school Chamber of Commerce types will look elsewhere to invest their boodle. No sane businessperson or head-scratching billionaire is going to sink millions into a Kamaro-styled assemblage of War Room wackos, U.N.-fearing nutjobs, and conspiracy-theory crackpots.

Assuming the GOP fails to get a grip, what ultimately will emerge will be a well-financed, competently organized alternative to the Trumps, Greenes and Kamaros.    

McCarthy goes to the highest low bidder

Should we bother with counting Trump's campaign lies?

Donald Trump responds to Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg pointing out that his administration rolled back regulations on the rail industry:

"I had nothing to do with it." pic.twitter.com/0VT4zgVU8k

— The Recount (@therecount) February 22, 2023

The New Republic:

"Trump overturned an Obama-era rule that required more adequate braking systems for trains carrying highly flammable and hazardous materials (instead of the Civil War-era brakes trains use now). He pulled a stalled Obama-era proposal that would have directed companies to have at least two-man crews on trains and banned states from instating such a requirement themselves. He also halted an auditing program of railroads that has since been revitalized by the Biden administration.

"Much of these regulatory slashes were made at the behest of special interests like the Association of American Railroads, which represents massive corporations like Norfolk Southern and heavily lobbied for the deregulatory cornucopia that Trump provided."

Connecticut's Sen. Chris Murphy's memory also differed. "I was there. For the four years of the Trump presidency, there was a 'How Can We Serve You' sign on the door for corporations," he tweeted. "Oil, railroads, banks…whatever these guys wanted, they got. That order came from the top. Help the big guys."

(How did Connecticut Republicans respond in the comments section to the Democratic senator's tweet about Trump's railroad deregulation? By inaccurately bashing Biden on the border situation. You just can't keep a good Republican focused.)

Trump's typically mendacious remark that he "had nothing to do" with rolling back rail regs compels a much bigger question, though, than any surrounding this one instance of a Trumpian lie. If the man opens his mouth, a falsehood is sure to follow. That much we already know.

The Washington Post famously kept track of his presidential lies, which totaled 30,573. "On Nov. 2 alone, the day before the 2020 vote, Trump made 503 false or misleading claims as he barnstormed across the country in a desperate effort to win reelection." The 30,000+ total excluded the thousands of lies he told before the 2016 election and the thousands he has told since the 2020 election.  

And now we're in for two more years of Trump's tireless, unremitting lying on the campaign trail. Can the republic withstand this merciless onslaught, and so soon after the last? Can the body politic clear-mindedly profit from the immensity of his mendacity? That is, can the electorate be subjected to Trumpian lie after lie after lie and derive from them the stupendous damage he continues to do to the American political tradition?

Or will people simply say, "Oh, that's just Trump talking."

For starters, it's not just Trump talking. It's the entire Republican Party talking, for Nikki and Ron and all the other presidential wannabes will parrot his fabricating ways about Biden, inflation, the border and covid etc., not to mention Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell and the whole of the GOP congressional conference.

For decades the Republican Party has mauled and molested Truth to the point of its murder within the party. Its rhetorical manner is no longer mere political spin: it is outright lies, 24/7.  

Moreover, what the party's relentless mendacity has done to American politics is both incalculable and inconceivable. We're stuck in more than a post-truth, post-reality nightmare. We're trapped in an endless loop of Republican pols' otherworldly pride about lying. They don't conceal or excuse or rationalize it any longer. They're fucking proud of it because their base laughs about it, enjoys it, and joins in it.

Roughly half of the American electorate is at last "all in" on blatherskiting about nothing, like a bad "Seinfeld" episode. How can the other half respond when there's no there there? How can American politics mean anything when the headlines are full of nothing but lies? Where do we go from here? Where can we go from here?  

China's great pleasure: "Having the West being bogged down with a conflict with Russia." China's quandary: Will Russia need its help?

Today, on the grim anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a much-anticipated paper titled "China's Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis." If you wish to know what China's position was a year ago, or six months ago, or last week, the document is helpful. If you wish to know what China's position is going forward, good luck — because the paper is nothing more than a mishmash of diplomatic boilerplate.

It outlines 12 components essential to peace in Ukraine, beginning with:    

"Respecting the sovereignty of all countries. Universally recognized international law ... must be strictly observed. The sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all countries must be effectively upheld. All countries, big or small, strong or weak, rich or poor, are equal members of the international community. All parties should jointly uphold the basic norms governing international relations and defend international fairness and justice. Equal and uniform application of international law should be promoted, while double standards must be rejected."  

Those last five words, one gathers, were something of a tease — proffered with a cynical smile. Ukraine's "sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity" were smashed by Russia in a brutal onslaught beginning one year ago today, and yet China's "position" on this very war in relation to its black-and-white principles is nowhere to be found in the document.  

China's foreign affairs ministry encourages other commonsensical steps to peace, from "2. Abandoning the Cold War mentality" to "12. Promoting post-conflict reconstruction," in which "China stands ready to provide assistance and play a constructive role." Until the "post-conflict" period is reached, however, China stands ready only to keep the West guessing as to its intentions.

The NY Times notes that "the document was not the blueprint or bold initiative that some in European capitals appeared to expect." It also bodes doubleplusungood for those expecting a boldly enlightened "peace speech" from Xi Jinping today.

Discerning the Chinese president's true designs for Russia's Vladimir Putin — clearly the junior partner in the East's misconceived conflict with the West, which must be vastly humiliating for him — and his sovereignty-robbing war in Ukraine will perforce remain in the wheelhouse of U.S. and European intelligence agencies. Such intel is unlikely to be kept secret — an ingenious development uniquely fashioned by the Biden administration. The diplomatic innovation holds that should the U.S. publicly reveal China's plan to exacerbate the Russia-Ukraine war — via fresh arms and ammunition for the aggressor — China might think twice, given condemnatory world opinion. In fact, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has already leaked the administration's planned maneuver to The Wall Street Journal.  

Some Western analysts believe that China will pass on arming Russia, despite recent intelligence suggesting the possibility. Still, it remains just that: a possibility and no more. Other analysts believe that China will indeed risk sanctions and a painful disruption of its trade with the West so that Putin's forces can continue competing with Ukraine's influx of Western-supplied weapons — a belief backed by one exceptionally simple bit of reasoning.

Speaking to The Straits Times, Dr. Benjamin Ho, a China expert at Singapore's School of International Studies, explained that "having the West being bogged down with a conflict with Russia clearly works to Beijing’s advantage." Yet at the rate Putin is expending his sanctions-impeded arms and ammunition, Ukraine and the West might not be bogged down much longer. Russian soldiers' most common complaint on the front is the scarcity of munitions. Hurling bodies against Ukraine's forces does little good in advancing Russia's cause without the firepower to back them up. The result: massive losses in human life — while Putin lacks replacements for the tens of thousands of dead soldiers.

Added Dr. Ho: "Whether that requires China to send lethal weapons or not, I leave it to others' imagination." 

Never imaginatively disappointing is the Global Times, the Chinese Communist Party's English-language outlet. Its position on Russia's position vis-a-vis the decadent West is that the war in Ukraine is an attempt by the U.S. and NATO "to subvert the Russian regime." This, however, "is likely to end in a lose-lose scenario," said foreign-affairs professor Li Haidong to the Global Times: "In the future, war of any kind cannot be ruled out, which means that the US is likely to be hit by its own boomerang." 

The CCP's Times headline alone (or its editorial cartoon) is sufficient to explain China's unmodified, public position: It seeks "a constructive solution against US war incitement" — whereas, continues the Times' story, "the atmosphere and willingness to negotiate are seemingly still far from being mature given the US and NATO’s interference." 

These are neither hopeful nor helpful words. They mirror those of Vladimir Putin's on Tuesday in his unbearably long, Castrolike speech broadcast domestically: "It's they who have started the war. And we are using force to end it." The intent of "Western elites," which they "aren't trying to conceal," he added, is "to inflict a 'strategic defeat' of Russia." They further "intend," he said, "to transform the local conflict into a global confrontation." 

Which, paradoxically enough, is Putin's only hope of winning his lost war. Only by engaging China materially — that is, accomplishing his goal of a global confrontation by sucking China into the war — can Putin possibly triumph in his extraordinarily disastrous, Ukrainian misadventure. If China's President Xi is looking for a showdown with the West, this is it. For now, though, all we have to go on is sketchy Western intelligence — and our imagination.  

Putin still has friends around the globe - lots of them

President Biden has hailed the "global coalition" aligned against Russia and its war on Ukraine, and American officials have praised the 141 of 193 U.N. countries that voted to condemn Vladimir Putin's invasion. Left unspoken by U.S. officials is that only 33 of those 141 counties have leveled sanctions on Russia.

Based on discussions with people in Brazil, Kenya, Egypt, India and other residents largely south of the globe's Brandt Line, The Washington Post's Liz Sly reveals "a deeply ambivalent view of the conflict, informed less by the question of whether Russia was wrong to invade than by current and historical grievances against the West — over colonialism, perceptions of arrogance, and the West’s failure to devote as many resources to solving conflicts and human rights abuses in other parts of the world."

In the past six weeks, as Russia has intensified its unrelenting terrorist war against Ukrainian civilians, its foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, "has been welcomed in nine countries in Africa and the Middle East." notes Sly. In India, she talked with a clerk, Bhaskar Butta, in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta). The West is "hypocritical," he said. "These people colonized the entire world. What Russia has done cannot be condoned, but at the same time, you cannot blame them wholly." 

This attitude permeated Sly's many conversations with people in the Global South, including South Africa, whose navy will join Russia and China tomorrow in Indian Ocean military exercises, and whose foreign minister, Naledi Pandor, has said he had a "wonderful" meeting with Lavrov. Sly also reports on this encounter with Clement Manyathela, "a popular and influential talk show on South Africa’s Radio 702," who

remembers the outrage he felt when Russian troops first surged into Ukraine. He had believed Russia’s insistence that it wasn’t planning to attack and felt cheated when war broke out."

"We were lied to," he said.

But as the fighting continued, he, and many of those who call in to his show, began to ask questions: Why had President Vladimir Putin deemed it necessary to invade? Was NATO fueling the fire by sending so many weapons to Ukraine? How could the United States expect others around the world to support its policies when it had also invaded countries?

"When America went into Iraq, when America went into Libya, they had their own justifications that we didn’t believe, and now they’re trying to turn the world against Russia. This is unacceptable, too," Manyathela said. "I still don’t see any justification for invading a country, but we cannot be dictated to about the Russian moves on Ukraine. I honestly feel the U.S. was trying to bully us."

For years, people in the Global South have watched the Northern West overlook the many problems plaguing their regions. Then came the covid pandemic, when Western countries grabbed so much of the vaccine for themselves. And of course there was Donald Trump's talk of "shithole countries," meaning all of Africa. "As the West pulled back," observes Sly, "both Russia and China stepped into the vacuum, aggressively courting developing nations and capitalizing on the disillusionment with the United States and Europe by presenting an alternative to perceived Western hegemony."

Sly spoke with African Shakes Matlhong, 33, who conceded he knew little about the Russia-Ukraine war, but was more confident in his opinion of the U.S. as an "imperialist" power. "Now Russia is fighting back,"  he said. "Africa’s attitude to the war is that Russia is defending itself against NATO. Russia never participated in any colonialism. It might be that Russia is wrong, but people’s attitude is determined by history."

Liubov Abravitova, Ukraine’s ambassador to South Africa, noted Putin's exploitation of Soviet history. The U.S.S.R. never colonized Africa and it supported the continent's liberation movements, she said. So it's been difficult to persuade Africans to sympathize with Ukraine. "[Russia’s] only card is that they never colonized Africa," she observed. "But this is also true of Ukraine."