“As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.”
Carl G. Jung
“There are no solutions, there are only trade-offs; and you try to get the best trade-off you can get, that's all you can hope for.”
Thomas Sowell
A long time ago someone gave me some unusual advice: if I were to ever find myself walking alone on the street at night and a dangerous-looking individual came in my direction, I should start acting crazy. “You can be sure they will not mess with you then”, he told me. Despite feeling uneasy about it, the idea stuck in my mind, though fortunately I have not yet had to try it out. But when I heard Donald Trump proclaim this week that Russia’s attack on Ukraine would not have happened under his watch, part of me wondered: would Vladimir Putin have dared to challenge Western allies so overtly in the last several weeks had an erratic and impulsive person been sitting in the Oval Office? (note: some argue that NATO is the one to haphazardly have “poked the bear”)
Perhaps this is one of those strange moments in which ‘crazy’ would have been better than ‘numb’, which is how many Western leaders are behaving. They appear more committed to waging war on their own citizens than standing up to tyrants with nuclear arsenals who resent the West and fantasize about territorial expansion and global domination. Heads of State on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as Down Under, have found every possible tool in recent years to discredit, ostracize, threaten and otherwise punish people who want to protect their bodily autonomy, exercise their basic right to work and move freely, retain oversight over their children’s education, defend the notion of biological sex, or reject the premise that their country is inherently evil. Public demands for freedom of speech, law enforcement, intellectual honesty, strength of character, controlled immigration, competent leadership, corporate accountability and respect for the working class are increasingly met with contempt and ridicule by ruling elites. And what can we say about The Great Narrative (see my previous post), which rests on the core assumption that humans are akin to a plague on the planet (except for members of the Davos Royalty pledging to save it, of course)?
Geopolitics is a complicated chess game and I would not claim to fully understand it. Neither would I dare to predict whether the brutal invasion of Ukraine is just a one-off that will occupy the news cycle for a couple of weeks, or the start of a cascading global crisis. However, it would seem extremely naive to expect that economic sanctions imposed so far will deter Mr. Putin from trying to fulfill his nation’s destiny - by the way, last time I checked, Russians are quite masterful at chess. My broader concern, though, is that Western culture is becoming ever more fragmented, both economically and ideologically. It is steadily surrendering its democratic foundations and increasingly determined to crush all forms of peaceful dissent. It is starkly divided between those who get their goodies delivered to their doorstep and those who deliver them. It is perfectly willing to banish those who are perceived to ‘step out of line’ from functioning normally in society - by freezing their financial assets, blocking their social media accounts and/or firing them from their jobs. It is obsessed with reducing human beings to letter-soup categories, supposedly in the name of equity and inclusion. It is distracted with utopian fairy tales in which any sort of hierarchy is considered evidence of systemic oppression and injustice. Last but not least, it has been severely crippled by movements of political correctness, self-hatred and nihilism, as well as a false dichotomy between prioritizing domestic policy versus foreign intervention. Stories of climate apocalypse, patriarchal heteronormativity, moral relativism and victimhood have consistently been eroding our most essential institutions for several years now - amongst them journalism, academia, public health and scientific research. And the Covid regime has only helped accelerate the descent into collective madness. As a result, the Free World is traversing a major identity crisis, not knowing what to do with its own history and failing to craft a vision for the future that is unifying and up-lifting.
Can this trend be reversed? I surely hope so. But we need to ground ourselves in reality again, reinvigorate our liberal ideals and save the tough words and actions for our adversaries, not our fellow neighbors. Because regardless of how imperfect our way of projecting confidence, exerting authority and maintaining order might be, we should always ask ourselves whether the alternative would be any better.
Acting crazy may work tactically, and occasionally. But it’s obviously not a long-term strategic plan. Neither is numbness. The best path forward is to get our act together and show a united front. China is watching.
PERSPECTIVE: This clip offers a comprehensive analysis of how the conflict involving Russia, Ukraine and NATO members across Europe has been unfolding over the years. The interaction of energy supply and demand, the tug of war of territorial security, demographic shifts and even climate change have all created a complicated and delicate situation, putting all the key players on edge.
PAYING THE PRICE: Famous Russian chess grandmaster, Garry Kasparov, explains to Walter Isaacson how the “weakness of the Free World” has enabled a dictator to continuously test the boundaries and meticulously advance his game over the the past couple of decades. “He succeeded in buying Western politicians of the highest caliber like Gerhard Schröder and many others […] and he thinks that the Free World is badly divided”, says Kasparov, referring to Putin.
HUGS, NOT SMUGS: An incisive and strategic take on U.S. domestic and foreign affairs with Bill Maher. Check it out.
FLICK OF THE WEEK: Based on real events and real people, Mr. Jones portrays the journey of Welsh journalist, Gareth Jones, whose exposé of Soviet atrocities leading up to World War II pissed off so many higher-ups that he never lived to see the age of 30. The film covers the ascendency of Adolph Hitler in 1933 while many turned a deaf ear, the efforts of Mr. Jones to blow the whistle on the Holodomor - the famine engineered by Joseph Stalin that starved millions in the Ukraine while grain was sold abroad to stuff Soviet coffers - and how these events inspired George Orwell to write Animal Farm, a 1945 allegorical fable aimed at the toxic core of Stalinist totalitarianism. The film speaks to today’s problems and concerns in a very powerful way, not just because of recent developments in Ukraine, but also the importance of truth-telling in an era of rampant political obfuscation and media manipulation all over the world.