Vladimir Putin, who former President Trump rhapsodized at the outbreak of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as savvy and a genius, isn't looking all that savvy, and not so much a genius either. Putin's army has acquitted itself as no more than second-rate, with his limited advances in Ukraine a function of indiscriminate artillery barrages often targeting civilian dwellings and infrastructure, relatively unchallenged air capability, and his willing slaughter of Russia's ill-trained human conscripts and former prisoners as cannon fodder. Small wonder that an estimated 200,000 draft-age Russian men have fled to neighboring Kazakhstan, while tens of thousands of others have fled to Georgia, Argentina, and Western Europe and, according to US Customs and Border Protection data, 22,000 Russians (men, women, and children) have made their way to our southern border.
Delusions die hard, especially those fortified by the relentless narratives of power elites. Spend a few minutes reading Alastair Crooke's essay, "A Bonfire of the Vanities," that examines the persistence of delusions that must be maintained in the face of unacceptable realities.
Alastair Crooke is a former British diplomat. He is founder and director of the Beirut-based Conflicts Forum. Following are the final paragraphs of his post:
The EU Political Class have made so many disastrous decisions in deference to U.S. strategy – decisions that go directly against Europeans’ own economic and security interests – that they are very afraid. If the reaction of some of these leaders seems disproportionate and unrealistic (“There is no other way than a total win – and to get rid of Putin”) – it is because this ‘war’ touches on a deeper motivations. It reflects existential fears of an unravelling of the western meta-narrative that will take down both its hegemony, and the western financial structure with it.
The western meta-narrative “from Plato to NATO, is one of superior ideas and practices whose origins lie in ancient Greece, and have since been refined, extended, and transmitted down the ages (through the Renaissance, the scientific revolution and other supposedly uniquely western developments), so that we in the west today are the lucky inheritors of a superior cultural DNA”.
...Their hubris resides in the implicit presumption: that the West somehow always wins – is destined to prevail – because it is the recipient of this privileged genealogy.
Of course, outside of general understanding, it is accepted that notions of ‘a coherent West’ has been invented, repurposed and put to use in different times and places. In her new book, The West, classical archaeologist Naoíse Mac Sweeney takes issue with the ‘master myth’ by pointing out that it was only “with the expansion of European overseas imperialism over the seventeenth century, that a more coherent idea of the West began to emerge – one being deployed as a conceptual tool to draw the distinction between the type of people who could legitimately be colonised, and those who could legitimately be colonizers”.
With the invention of the West came the invention of Western history – an elevated and exclusive lineage that provided an historical justification for the Western domination. According to the English jurist and philosopher Francis Bacon, there were only three periods of learning and civilization in human history: “one among the Greeks, the second among the Romans, and the last among us, that is to say, the nations of Western Europe”.
The deeper fear of western political leaders therefore – complicit in the knowledge that the ‘Narrative’ is a fiction that we tell ourselves, despite knowing that it is factually false – is that our era has been made increasingly and dangerously contingent on this meta-myth.
They quake, not just at a ‘Russia empowered’, but rather at the prospect the new multi-polar order led by Putin and Xi that is sweeping the globe will tear down the myth of Western Civilisation.
Equating a few Congressional representatives with all Republicans is simply name calling propaganda. I know a few who consider themselves to 'lean right' or to be longtime Republicans. None of them are in the pro-Putin or pro-Russia camp as regards their invasion of Ukraine.
Delusions die hard, especially those fortified by the relentless narratives of power elites. Spend a few minutes reading Alastair Crooke's essay, "A Bonfire of the Vanities," that examines the persistence of delusions that must be maintained in the face of unacceptable realities.
https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/07/17/a-bonfire-of-the-vanities/
Alastair Crooke is a former British diplomat. He is founder and director of the Beirut-based Conflicts Forum. Following are the final paragraphs of his post:
The EU Political Class have made so many disastrous decisions in deference to U.S. strategy – decisions that go directly against Europeans’ own economic and security interests – that they are very afraid. If the reaction of some of these leaders seems disproportionate and unrealistic (“There is no other way than a total win – and to get rid of Putin”) – it is because this ‘war’ touches on a deeper motivations. It reflects existential fears of an unravelling of the western meta-narrative that will take down both its hegemony, and the western financial structure with it.
The western meta-narrative “from Plato to NATO, is one of superior ideas and practices whose origins lie in ancient Greece, and have since been refined, extended, and transmitted down the ages (through the Renaissance, the scientific revolution and other supposedly uniquely western developments), so that we in the west today are the lucky inheritors of a superior cultural DNA”.
...Their hubris resides in the implicit presumption: that the West somehow always wins – is destined to prevail – because it is the recipient of this privileged genealogy.
Of course, outside of general understanding, it is accepted that notions of ‘a coherent West’ has been invented, repurposed and put to use in different times and places. In her new book, The West, classical archaeologist Naoíse Mac Sweeney takes issue with the ‘master myth’ by pointing out that it was only “with the expansion of European overseas imperialism over the seventeenth century, that a more coherent idea of the West began to emerge – one being deployed as a conceptual tool to draw the distinction between the type of people who could legitimately be colonised, and those who could legitimately be colonizers”.
With the invention of the West came the invention of Western history – an elevated and exclusive lineage that provided an historical justification for the Western domination. According to the English jurist and philosopher Francis Bacon, there were only three periods of learning and civilization in human history: “one among the Greeks, the second among the Romans, and the last among us, that is to say, the nations of Western Europe”.
The deeper fear of western political leaders therefore – complicit in the knowledge that the ‘Narrative’ is a fiction that we tell ourselves, despite knowing that it is factually false – is that our era has been made increasingly and dangerously contingent on this meta-myth.
They quake, not just at a ‘Russia empowered’, but rather at the prospect the new multi-polar order led by Putin and Xi that is sweeping the globe will tear down the myth of Western Civilisation.
Equating a few Congressional representatives with all Republicans is simply name calling propaganda. I know a few who consider themselves to 'lean right' or to be longtime Republicans. None of them are in the pro-Putin or pro-Russia camp as regards their invasion of Ukraine.
Your point is well taken Rick. While I did write “and others” I should have listed more of the anti-aid to Ukraine members of Congress.