We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
Samizdata quote of the day It is important to be open minded, but not so open minded that one’s brain falls out. This is one of those rare moments in the affairs of states where the moral and geopolitical realities are as clear as night and day.
– Perry de Havilland, seen lurking in the Daily Telegraph comment section (£)
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
Tell me about it! The number of people I thought were on “my side” but proved to have no moral compass kind of shocked me. Not the majority, thankfully, but still far too many. At least most have STFU after the Bucha pictures came in, and the ones still parroting the RT line have “self identified” as worthless nutters not worth engaging with at this point.
But you don’t come back from something like that, not in my books, so I’ve made a point to remember who the Putin arse-sniffers of yore were.
Quite so, Bell Curve. What worries me is a certain section of the ‘right’ have made themselves politically radioactive over Ukraine, people I thought were useful in the culture wars we need to fight but who turned out to be idiots incapable of non-tribal thinking, mirror images of the twats I thought we were all fighting.
It is creepy as hell to find myself on the same side as the likes of Sean Penn and similar viles on this, but whatever.
As Perry de Havilland (London) (April 21, 2022 at 12:18 pm) and Bell Curve (April 21, 2022 at 12:11 pm), have doubtless already noticed, Niall-optimist-Kilmartin tends to take a happier view (and, my God, we have cause to take a happier view today than seemed likely at the end of the third week in February, when, in relation to Ukraine, my optimistic hopes had to fight against grave doubts!).
So as regards the specific subject of their comments:
– I am pretty happy with the posters on my principal feeds here and in the US – both as regards their support for the Ukraine and as regards their seeing through Biden and suchlike’s ‘support’ for the Ukraine.
– As regards some commenters here, I do not regret any of the long comments I wrote in reply to the kind of people they describe. Quite apart from the general free speech issue, I feel I can explain myself to myself, let alone others, better than if I’d never had cause to write them. And I can now justly say my opinions are not the result of any lack of acquaintance with the arguments on the other side. (I say that while feeling a simple dislike of some, and more complex non-positive feelings to others – see below.)
– I don’t blame people (or perhaps I do just a little, but I am unsurprised) for being very ignorant of the Ukraine and a ton of related issues when this started. I knew before the 1991 Soviet Union collapse made the Ukraine formally a country that the idea of the Ukraine as a country was very weak in the western mind – far, far weaker than Poland, to give a relevant comparison – despite its historical justification. This remained so until the crisis exploded in everyone’s (almost always ignorant) face.
– The union of ignorance and ego can trap people. For example, by pure chance (no special credit belongs to me), circumstances gave me a hint to take Trump seriously (at first, very cautiously seriously! 🙂 ) in January 2016 and that meant I never had a bunch of comments (let alone loud public statements) to blush over, and therefore an ego to handle, as and when it became obviously sensible to take him more seriously. Others, not so fortunate or tight-lipped, dealt with it – or drove themselves to never-Trumper-land, or worked out how to stay sane elsewhere while reacting to a tweet the way some react to mention of the Azov battalion. For such people, keeping things in proportion – discussing sanely – now requires keeping their ego under control, so what once was begun in a good deal of ignorance becomes a vice, as people we might elsewhere agree with show how poorly and how slowly they can do that.
The good news is the C.S.Lewis quote I’m fond of repeating here: that if you argue honestly instead of arguing for victory,
Some will become never-Ukrainians, and stay that way till they die, slaves to their egos’ demands. But others will slowly accept that the Ukraine is a country like any other, historically more wronged than wrongful, and as fully entitled to defend itself against invasion as their own. Some will one day come to see the absurdity of ever doubting that this was “as clear as night and day“. Doubtless they’ll always be less eager to remark it than we are. Perhaps they will always claim that Zelensky was an over-promoted comic with a mistake-filled past who by happy chance turned out to have qualities the emergency needed. (I remember Paul Marks admitting he would have voted for the other guy in 2019.) But it will be a useful test whether or not they can make themselves remark it once.
(For some, the STFU that Bell Curve noticed is the start of that slow process.)
Just my 0.02p FWIW.
Yes, Perry, I have found it truly strange to agree with Sean Penn. But then we live in peculiar times. We live in a time when the leader of a failed state with a terrible comb-over and a penchant for Bond villian antics (lives in a bunker, has an enormous fucking table – where’s the Persian cat and Mao suit? – and openly threatens nuclear war).
So… on the basis of something so fucking ludicrous as the The Gremlin in the Kremlin being the Big Bad I guess thinking Sean Penn is on the side of the Angels is like OK. I mean in the context.
The Sunday Sport got it bang-on.
https://www.pressreader.com/uk/sunday-sport-1098/20220410/281711208180509
An ounce of mockery is worth a squadron of F-15s.
Classic 🤣
@Bell Curve @Perry I have noticed this as well. Previously reliable voices seem to think that invading someone else’s country is all fine and dandy. That moral compass got broken along the way. Oh, but Ukraine is corrupt – as if that’s an excuse. Oh, there are Nazis – so what if there are, doesn’t justify invading. The government was put in place by the CIA and so on – as if the Ukrainians have no agency. I’ve stopped even trying to reason here. I don’t care what concerns Russia had – legitimate or otherwise – once troops crossed the border, they were in the wrong. Invasion of someone else’s country is no more legitimate than breaking into someone’s house, murdering the householder, raping his wife and making off with the family silver.
This is descending into jingoistic crap. Without judging the merits of R vs. U – which said merits I’m not qualified to judge – if I see a guy beating his wife in his own yard, I’m never justified in invading his yard to stop him? If I see a leader imprisoning and killing Jews in ovens in his own country, I ought to leave it be? BS.
“once troops crossed the border, they were in the wrong.”
Glad that this important issue – who is right and who is wrong – was resolved.
Next question: which country got wrecked, totally fucked up? Russia or Ukraine?
There is a tale in “Don Quixote”. Don Quixote sees a man beating his wife in their backyard. Very indignant, Quixote jumps in to try to save the wife. Whereupon both both wife and husband turn on him and administer a good beating with the clubs they used on each other before. With great effort Quixote extracted himself from this adventure with only a couple of ribs broken.
So, you see, opinions on this subject vary.
If you want to use this equivalence, then fine – you would have to kill them to save them. Sounds just dandy to me.
I’d have to agree with bobby b (April 21, 2022 at 6:25 pm) that the abstract idea that invasion is never right is not always right – if you see what I mean. 🙂
Invasion of Afghanistan followed swiftly upon the destruction of the twin towers. The Taliban refused to extradite their Al Quaidan friends, so we invaded.
As regards the Ukraine, I wrote a a post or two and many comments that I would not have felt the need to write if I could simply have treated invasion as like rear-ending someone else’s car – so automatically making the rear-ending driver the one in the wrong that the invader’s motive could be simply ignored rather than examined, explained and in this case (swiftly and comprehensively IMNSHO) discredited.
1. Re-reading my comment above, I was a bit strident. Sorry.
2. My point was, invasion isn’t always proof of evil. That really was my only point. There’s no lack of evil to point to in the situation in Ukraine. Don’t need to call it where it isn’t.
3. I don’t understand the “kill them to save them” part. The US clearly invaded Germany. Evil?
I’m going to wait and see what the West’s reaction to China invading Taiwan is before making a judgement about the West’s new found moral compass. Somehow I don’t think that Chinese citizens in the West will be treated like Russian ones currently are, nor will assets owned by Chinese individuals and organisations be expropriated, nor will China be utterly excluded from the West’s economic affairs (mainly because to do so would cause us immense economic harm). After all being nasty to Chinese people would be racist and that would never do……the current moral outrage over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is just because its geo-politically advantageous to be so. In another identical invasion scenario where it isn’t geo-politically advantageous we won’t hear a peep out of the usual suspects, or indeed all those on here who are currently lapping up the manufactured Western moral outrage. After all China invaded Tibet in the 1950s, and still is in occupation of it. I don’t see much moral outrage in the West about that.
If your point is people should have been as outraged about China invading Tibet as they are about Russia invading Ukraine, I am totally with you, even though it must be said from a purely geopolitical perspective, China in Tibet does not threaten ‘the west’ nearby as much as Russia in Ukraine. Likewise, the ability of ‘the west’ to do anything to actually help Tibet in 1950 was close to zero, no matter how outraged people became. The ability of ‘the west’ to help Ukraine on the other hand is a very different proposition.
But if your point is because people were not as outraged about the invasion of Tibet as they are about the invasion of Ukraine, therefore it is all manufactured western moral outrage and should not be happening… then you are actually a Putinist, laughably claiming people in the west not wanting to see a hostile Russia move west is somehow ‘manufactured’.
If you invade a country, there will be civilian casualties. How many civilian casualties do you want to kill to possibly save others? Bearing in mind the people you are trying to save may well be among those casualties. One of the more risible excuses being given for this invasion is the denazification of Ukraine. I’m sure the dead are relieved to have been liberated from the Nazis. Which was my point.
We are no longer living in the middle ages where invading a neighbour was accepted as part and parcel of life. There is no need to go about walking into other people’s countries. We are supposed to be more civilised than that. Evidence, though, tends to contradict that.
As for invading Germany… Germany was the aggressor, not the allies. It had invaded large parts of Europe and was being driven back by the allies who were liberating occupied Europe. Hardly an aggressive invasion of a neighbour, was it? So, no, it wasn’t evil. The original invasion was – as is happening here and that was the context I was talking about.
And we were wrong to do so, just as we were wrong to invade Iraq.
Unfortunately, this seems to be a waste of time. The excuses for this invasion are risible, yet there are still people who think that it is justified – usually because NATO. Then wonder why erstwhile Soviet countries and the Nordics such as Finland now want to join. Actions have consequences and the consequences of this one are going to be more countries clamouring to join NATO and Russia being treated as a pariah. Yet this will be labelled as the west’s fault – nothing to do with aggressive invasion and slaughter in Ukraine.
I’m not sure about that. It certainly doesn’t seem to be plausibly doubted now that Al Quaida were responsible for the 9-11 terrorist attacks (there was some doubt at the time arising from how quickly the US accepted the attacks came from that quarter, without adequate analysis). Nevertheless Afghanistan was safe harbour for an organization that claimed responsibility, and was widely accepted as having conducted major terrorist attacks on the US. If you allow your country to be a safe harbour for terrorists then it is not unexpected nor unreasonable that you will be invaded toward neutralising the threat.
Certainly Perry thought that “the whole reason for the US involvement in Afghanistan was to apprehend or (preferably) kill as many members of Al Qaeda as humanly possible” (November 2001). That was my impression too (preferably with an emphasis on apprehend, in my view). Once the threat was neutralised or greatly diminished then it certainly does become an interesting question on what the appropriate next steps are. The installation of a puppet government and attempt to change Afghanistan’s politics and culture from without was misguided, I think, though well-meaning for the most part.
I do agree that the invasion of Iraq was unjustified.
Britain invaded Iceland during WW2, with the entirely sensible precaution of preventing it from being taken by Germany. The Icelandic government was not appreciative, however. Sometimes the ends at least give context to the means, if not quite justifying them.
For the avoidance of doubt, I am certainly not writing a defence of Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine which is unjustified and wrong.
“I’m going to wait and see what the West’s reaction to China invading Taiwan is before making a judgement about the West’s new found moral compass.”
No need to wait. See the lack of any reaction in the West to the raping of Hong Kong a year ago, despite treaties signed by China that it will respect Honk Kong’s special independent government system for 50 years (after 1999) at least.
I do not doubt Alex in this, and also note that anything sounding like “Putin is as wrong to invade the Ukraine as we were to invade Afghanistan” would strike many as just such a backhanded defence. For the further avoidance of doubt, I do not think what Longrider (April 22, 2022 at 1:20 pm) said claimed such equivalence, but a general argument that ‘the invader is always indisputably wrong and that’s all we need to know’ risks obscuring the very strong specific defence that the Ukraine can make against Putin’s claims, instead conceding to his side such things as the strong argument the west can make for invading Afghanistan.
Longrider’s last sentence seems more accurate to me than the earlier ones. In a merely literal sense, we were not living in the middle ages in the 1930s. Now, as then, the world contains bully boys and plenty of western weakness and folly, foreshadowing a weak western response until the Ukrainians defended themselves far better than the world’s smart set expected. Fighting back before knowing what help the world will give, if any – that could be called mediaeval too.
I don’t mind continuing the discussion, but if anyone feels that those of us who agree that “the moral and geopolitical realities are as clear as night and day” need not spend more time arguing with each other over just which facts make them so, then I’m OK to leave it here.
There was quite a lot of response actually.
“even though it must be said from a purely geopolitical perspective, China in Tibet does not threaten ‘the west’ nearby as much as Russia in Ukraine. ”
So you agree with me, the morality of an invasion depends on its geo-political importance to the person viewing it…….very morally relativist.
“But if your point is because people were not as outraged about the invasion of Tibet as they are about the invasion of Ukraine, therefore it is all manufactured western moral outrage and should not be happening… then you are actually a Putinist”
How so? If country A invades Country B and the West does nothing about it, but when Country C invades Country D they go ape about how terrible it is, what other conclusion can you draw other than the second is a manufactured position? If there is no moral consistency then its just a case of choosing what things to be outraged about and what not. We aren’t banning Saudi oil and sanctioning their citizens and expropriating their Western assets because of Saudi actions in Yemen are we? Yet there are ten times more Yemeni dead than Ukrainian………..
My view is that I despise the Western political elite, and regard them as as morally bankrupt as Putin is, probably more so. I will therefore no more stand shoulder to shoulder with them than I would stand shoulder to shoulder with Hitler on the issue of dog ownership. Some people are so morally bankrupt that standing beside them taints you regardless of the issue at hand, and Western political elites are in that category. And people like you who are licking the Western political elites boots over Ukraine are morally complicit in the West’s general utter degeneracy.
But the issue is not purely moral. Was China invading Tibet as reprehensible as Russia invading Ukraine? Yes. Is the plight of Tibet of as much concern to people in ‘the west’ as the plight of Ukraine? Self evidently not. Similarly, to your other fatuous contentions, there is typically much less ‘the west’ can do about other places. As it is, we have the bizarre situation where some nations sending weapons to Ukraine are actually paying more for gas to Russia than the value of weapons sent to Ukraine to fight Russia. But this is not a ‘moral’ issue, it is an artefact of daft energy policies in ‘the west’.
Then as much as I also dislike the western political elite, you are clearly delusional. Fuck off.
The Russians plan to literally exterminate Ukraine’s intelligentsia, but Jim’s view is the venal arsewipes running the west are “worse that Putin”. That, ladies and gents, is a sign of someone with a poor grasp on reality.
There is no disputing the point of precedence between a louse and a flea, said Dr Johnson, but if one commenter claims western elites are “as morally bankrupt as Putin is, probably more so” (Jim, April 22, 2022 at 4:40 pm) then one may say that is not a safe estimate of the probabilities in this case.
Biden steals elections and so does Putin, and the FBI helped lifelong-corruptocrat Biden with false operations as Russia’s FSB helps ex-KGB-man Putin, but Trump is still alive and still living in the US and still not in jail, and while some aspects of that are no thanks to western elites, I do not think it would be as probable in Russia. There is a real cultural difference between the west and Russia even now – there is a lot of moral ruin in an anglosphere country and we have by no means worked through it (yet).
The woke in the west eagerly groom kids. Yezhov and Beria used their power to gratify their sexual appetites in vile ways back in the day and I do not trust those at the top of today’s Kremlin.
Sensible people embrace the healing power of ‘and’. Putin is very evil, and so are the woke. Ukrainians get to fight the evil of Putin – not exactly a choice for them. We get to send them aid (and to notice how much pleasanter that is than shivering under an open spring sky with a rifle in our hands) and to oppose western woke evil as well.
‘I have found it truly strange to agree with Sean Penn.’
If you agree with someone for different reasons, you don’t agree with him.
@Perry de Havilland (London)
Similarly, to your other fatuous contentions, there is typically much less ‘the west’ can do about other places. As it is, we have the bizarre situation where some nations sending weapons to Ukraine are actually paying more for gas to Russia than the value of weapons sent to Ukraine to fight Russia.
But it seems to me that there is an underlying assumption that the West wants the war over, and should be willing to do what needs to be done to make that happen, and with the winner they prefer. But it seems to me that that is absolutely not true. John Ratcliffe (who was Director of National Intelligence or something like that under Trump) said something on TV today which I thought was interesting, insightful and helpful to understand what is going on. He said that the west wants to help Ukraine, but they don’t want to help Ukraine win.
I am not familiar with what is going on in Britain and other parts of Europe, but this war is a hugely beneficial thing for the Biden administration which is in full blown self destruction. It is something on which to blame all the disasters they caused. It is a slush fund to spend lots of tax payer money on weapons systems from their friends and donors in the arms industry, it is something to occupy the news instead of massive crime spikes, the unprecedented collapse of America’s borders, inflation that is spiralling out of control, a possibly explosive scandal in the President’s family, AND in the Clinton organization, a President who can barely string two words together, or remember what he said five minutes ago, and a hapless, fleckless, vapid, valley girl for VP, a succession chain that goes Biden/Harris/Pelosi — from terrible to worse, and a disaster looming at the polls.
Crises are catnip to politicians, and the LAST thing they want it to do is to end.
It is just a shame that the people of Ukraine are the chess pieces in their disgusting game.
So I’d say your contention that the “west can do something” is correct in one sense — they can fuck the whole thing up — but can they do something positive? Maybe as a side effect, but mostly it is just lots of dead people to advance their political agenda. If you or I were king, perhaps we could, but in the seething pot of Machiavellian intrigue, amorality and mischief, nobody with any say in the matter wants this thing to end.
Hmm, a couple weeks after the war started, I put it to a Ukrainian I know “the sooner this is over, the better.”
His reply was “That’s not what’s important. What matters is we win at any cost, driving Russia back to its pre-war borders, leaving a generation of their men rotting on our steppes.”
Of course not all Ukrainian think that, but once the initial shock passed, do not under estimate the level of sheer hatred in Ukraine now. Maximalist war aims are not a fringe notion.
@Perry de Havilland (London)
Of course not all Ukrainian think that, but once the initial shock passed, do not under estimate the level of sheer hatred in Ukraine now. Maximalist war aims are not a fringe notion.
Ah, in case I wasn’t clear, yes, for sure I am sure everyone in Ukraine wants the war to end with the right winner. But I am talking about the rest of the west[*] to whom Ukraine and this war is a plaything not an existential struggle. The people of Ukraine have acquitted themselves with a dignity, bravery and unyielding character that makes one think of Churchillian speeches. But that doesn’t mean the political cockroaches won’t try to exploit their decency and bravery to get a one point bump in their poll numbers.
[*] We can argue whether Ukraine is a part of the “West” but let’s not waste our time on such semantics, and say “The West minus Ukraine”.
Fraser Orr (April 25, 2022 at 2:19 am), I can well believe that the Biden administration does not want victory to take the war from the news before the mid-terms, if then.
However I can also believe in the immense superficiality with which the Biden administration holds that view. They were clearly expecting a rapid Russian victory, were surprised when that did not happen, and are now behaving in their usual way: farming government activity for political and financial profit regardless of the effect on the ostensible objectives.
If it lies in the power of the US administration to give Ukraine victory in some politically-feasible-to-do-or-withhold way, and the fact is so obvious that the people who pull Biden’s strings can see it, then I can believe they will prolong it. But their own ability to assess what would be enough-aid-to-Ukraine-but-not-too-much is so worthless that I believe their machiavellianism risks being defeated by their stupidity.
I am glad to see US stories titled Why is Biden polling so poorly on Ukraine? It seems the attempted deflection is not fooling as many as they’d hoped.
Perry de Havilland (London) (April 25, 2022 at 2:37 am), I can well believe Ukrainians seek decisive victory. I desire it myself.
All Finland’s heroism in the Winter War only allowed it to avoid total conquest at the price of signing what they justly considered a very harsh peace. At the time, the Russians saw it as a mere postponement of total conquest – and the Finns were well aware of that – but the future had some surprises in store.
Just at the moment, the Ukraine’s chances seem a good deal better. The future of February this year has proved to have had some surprises in store for Putin (and certain western elites).
BTW (h/t Guido) The Fear of Victory speaks to background factors relevant to Fraser Orr’s comment (April 25, 2022 at 2:19 am) and my reply (Niall Kilmartin, April 25, 2022 at 8:25 am).
And, also BTW, both Fraser and I forgot to mention the Iran deal’s Russian involvement. Like Germany’s energy policy, it’s a constraint, over and above being very revealing in itself.
In my mind, this war is not at all a distraction from Biden’s failures. On the contrary, it forces Joe & Kamala to speak in public, when it would be very much in the interest of the Administration, and Democrats in general, for them to remain silent.
Once again: there is something that “Biden” could do that would not only weaken Russia, but also bring lower inflation and better economic conditions. I am speaking about fracking and pipelines, of course.
(Equally of course, that nobody has resigned from the Administration over this issue, is something that i blame on the American diet…)
Indeed. Geography and historical circumstance has been much kinder to Ukraine in 2022 than was the case for Finland during the Winter/Continuation Wars.
I LOL’ed because that is so true 😀
Niall Kilmartin
But their own ability to assess what would be enough-aid-to-Ukraine-but-not-too-much is so worthless
But I don’t think it is all that difficult to assess. Make sure the Russians have partial air superiority then give the Ukrainian’s all the ground weapons they can use. Such a situation is almost inevitably a stalemate. It means that both sides can have many tactical victories and neither side can have a strategic victory.
that I believe their machiavellianism risks being defeated by their stupidity.
This is a great statement Niall. The only reason we are not crushed in a hole by the awesome corruption and power of our governments (and particularly our hidden, unelected oppressors in the civil service) is because the government is such a lumbering troglodyte.
@Snorri Godhi
In my mind, this war is not at all a distraction from Biden’s failures. On the contrary, it forces Joe & Kamala to speak in public, when it would be very much in the interest of the Administration, and Democrats in general, for them to remain silent.
I also LOL’ed at this. The plan isn’t working well at all, that is for sure. But it sure is useful for these scummy politicians to be able to use phrases like “Putin’s price hike” to give them some cover. And in a sense the WORST case scenario for the US administration is for the war to come to a negotiated settlement where someone like Turkey brings about the settlement (or even BoJo, which I am sure is something he would like.) That way they LOOSE the war’s utility and they look like the feckless, irrelevant idiots that they are.
FWIW, with that, and all the other disasters in the US at the moment — I really miss that foul mouthed, inappropriate tweeting Trump.