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Vladophilia
From the head of a think-tank, recent thoughts on Ukraine’s disinclination to be absorbed:
This is not an uncommon view, also expressed the other day by Noam Chomsky: it was unwise for Ukraine to resist invasion. If Russia wants your territory, you assume a supine position while gesturing broadly towards everything that was once yours, and is now theirs to control. If Russia is required to kill your people and level your neighborhoods to get what it believes is theirs, that’s on you.
Freedom is nice and all that I guess, but economic growth is the true metric of a society’s health. Really, those idiots in the tractors, do they care who the boss is? The tech sector of Ukraine – does it matter if they’re making West-facing consumer products, or working for the FSB? What counts is the end-of-the-year balance sheet.
Previously from the same account:
The means by which you add those 44 million are irrelevant. What counts is the world historical accomplishment.
The population of France in 1940 was 41 million, and I suppose absorbing it into the Reich was a world historical accomplishment, but history doesn’t seem to regard it with any particular affection. On the other hand, France did surrender, and while that made things difficult for the eventual defeat of the militaristic statists in Berlin, France was spared additional physical trauma. Except for the Jews, of course, but (bored continental hand-waving gesture)
Another earlier sentiment:
Men of a certain age of Ricochet: did you find a spring in your step after the invasion? Perhaps a sudden urge to make changes, act boldly? Did you feel a strange charge in the older-dude zeitgeist, as though men around the world about to walk over the border of 70 suddenly felt empowered and revivified?
Perhaps, because that Putin guy is a strong leader, and cares for his nation, unlike our guys. Granted, he’s presided over the wholesale transfer of wealth from his people to a select group of elites, and the craptacular state of his military suggests that he was either ignorant of the true state of his capabilities or uninterested in the human cost of shoving his shambolic forces into the meat grinder, and hey maybe the Defender of Christendom shouldn’t have lost a purported piece of the True Cross because his flagship wasn’t refitted because they were broke but the oligarch’s yachts had 5G and Roombas in the master suite. But at least he’s not woke. And it’s ridiculous to think he’s not strong. Just you wait. He’s going to kill a lot of people.
That’s what leaders do.
Published in General
A more challenging task is to not provoke Putin. Choosing a non-existing form of being might be best.
If you make not provoking Putin a goal, he will weaponize it.
That was me.
Thank you — great presentation! Every presentation comes from some point of view, but I rarely enjoy listening to some Eurocrat as much as I enjoyed Mr. Bildt.
And Claire presented convenient, government-approved anecdata while opposition/indy press presented inconvenient facts. The Mayors of Portland and Seattle told us that the crippling riots and rapes were a Summer of Love, or similar.
Claire believed what she wanted to, lectured us liberty yokels mightily, and found plenty of ass-covering government reporting to back it up.
Didn’t make any of it true. It just suited her chosen view.
They made claims, certainly. I found it weird that there was so much emotional and political investment on Ricochet that there be Islamic No Go Zones in Europe.
How about, because we don’t want the same thing here? It’s already been trying, in places like Detroit where as I recall they’ve tried to get “Sharia Law” respected in family courts, etc.
There have also been cases of “honor killings,” and genital mutilation of children and women.
Not wanting them in America doesn’t explain why people got so invested in them existing in Europe.
Pointing out that that kind of thing can happen in supposedly-civilized countries helps alert people to not allowing it here.
This conversation reminds of the “mostly peaceful” riots of the summer of 2020. Those cars in flames in Muslim neighborhoods and people being attacked by members of the “religion of peace.” How dare you believe your lyin’ eyes?
Suddenly, I wondered how Greta Thunberg would like to wear a burqa…
Said Ricochet to Claire.
I found it right and good.
I once heard an excellent piece of advice: “If you want to see France — hurry.”
Islam is not a nation-state, but an over-arching culture. It’s not the same from state to state, but it is loosely unified between its subjugated states.
Islam is exactly comparable to Western Civilization (but I repeat myself). Protestantism is not a threat to a particular Catholic nation, but to Catholicism as a whole. And so with Islam vs Western Civ.
I am talking about levels of analysis, not merit or capacity.
Totally nothing to see here.
Also covered in Mark Steyn’s book “America Alone” and discussed in the Best Interview Of Any Kind That I’ve Ever Heard, with Mark Steyn on the Northern Alliance Radio Network from December of 2006.
Yup, Probably where I heard it. I adore Steyn, and I dearly miss NARN.
Steyn did a lot of interviews about that book, of course, but I think the NARN one was – and still is – the best.