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Goldstein Wisdom
Long, long ago, back just this side of prehistory (measured in internet time) before Barack Obama rewrote the book on being America’s worst president, back in the heyday of blogging when the Vodka Pundit was his own man and not some suit working for the PJMedia mega-corporation, when the drudgereport was conservative (though still a bit shady), and Kim du Toit hadn’t yet quit sharing his particular mix of gun reviews and girlie pics (which, thank goodness, he subsequently resumed) there was Protein Wisdom.
Protein Wisdom was an irreverent, sometimes literary, often bawdy, reliably rebellious, and almost always entertaining blog written by a sketchy English teacher and/or aspiring writer named Jeff Goldstein.
The early bloggers weren’t a particularly stable lot, and my impression even back then was that Jeff fit right in. But I liked his stuff, thought his sendups of Noam Chomsky were terribly amusing, and shamelessly stole his style of recounting fake dialog for humorous effect, something that served me well on Facebook for the decade I spent there. (It was an easy audience.)
I didn’t keep up with the ups and downs of Jeff’s life, but when I discovered him on Substack I happily subscribed. (I don’t pay him for the privilege: Bari Weiss so far remains the only Substacker who gets a dime from me.)
Jeff’s latest piece, The Unbearable Lightness of Being Charlie Sykes, isn’t really about Charlie Sykes, though it does take a swing at him and the other low-hanging fruitcakes of the Bulwark and call them out for being the shallow hucksters and sellouts that they are. I appreciate that.
But mostly it’s about Russia and Ukraine and their importance, or lack thereof, in the grand scheme of keeping America alive, much less making her great again.
When Russia invaded Ukraine I wrote that, while I wasn’t heavily invested in the outcome of the conflict, I liked the idea of bringing grief to Putin, who is a thug, if we could do it without great risk and expense. That remains my position. (John Yoo recently expressed a similar view on the Powerline podcast, though it sounds as if he may be willing to endure a little more expense in that pursuit than I am.)
Jeff’s larger point is exactly right: America faces real existential threats, but Russia is not one of them, and saying that out loud is not, pace the smug pronouncements of dimwits like Mr. Sykes, an expression of solidarity with Putin and a sign that one is in Russia’s pocket. This is true even when President Trump says it, though the mental midgets of the Bulwark must pretend otherwise if only to preserve their brand.
As has ever been the case, our great existential threat is within our borders, as Mr. Goldstein articulates quite well in his piece.
I think opinions about both masking and supporting Ukraine are proxies for deeper alignments. People who mask assiduously are, like people who are passionate about Ukraine but who are not actually personally connected to either Ukraine or Russia, revealing a tell. I think I understand the litmus test where the evermaskers are concerned. The strongly committed Russia/Ukraine folk I don’t quite get. Perhaps I haven’t given the matter enough thought. I don’t think I intend to.
Published in Politics
And if Russia really were a threat to Europe, wouldn’t they be spending a lot more national defense?
Ukraine is just President Gropey Grandpa trying to salvage his foreign policy cred after his disaster in Afghanistan.
Which is what? Public demonstration of the Good Current Thing to align yourself with the rest of the perpetually virtuous? Perhaps for some. I have no personal connection to Ukraine, but I’ve known people in the community for 40 years. I think I’d feel the same it if was Poland, or Estonia.
In the case of masking, I think it has more to do with whether one is a believer in the benevolent expert state and the duty of its subjects to subjugate their own interests to the public good. I suspect maskers tend also to be gun-control enthusiasts.
As I said, I don’t have similarly specific suspicions about those passionate about the Russia-Ukraine conflict. But there are a lot of conflicts in the world that don’t divide normal Americans into strongly opposed camps. It seems unlikely to me that there is anything intrinsic to this conflict that divides us along strong left/right lines, and so I suspect that many or most are mapping some other political division onto this particular war.
But, as I say, I haven’t looked very closely at this conflict.
Agreed, with an exception: while I think your characterization is correct, it’s not how they see it. They are aligning with the experts. There’s no subjugation involved. Any sensible person who trust and believes the Science would behave accordingly, so masking is an all-volunteer project undertaken by the smart people who care.
Because they don’t have pictures of picturesque European cities getting bombed, and white mothers towing little kids with pink suitcases to escape the war.
For a lot of people who don’t pay these things much attention, it was different from the standard strife-footage. There are some visual signifiers that let the casual news consumer consign the troubles to the category of “perpetually screwed places.” Europe is not supposed to be one of those places. Didn’t we fix that?
You could be correct. Who knows, after all, what really motivates others? But I think there’s something else at work here in the evermaskers. I think that, at least for many, there’s a real sense of virtuous submission. I think a lot of them think the compliance itself is a mark of moral superiority — hence their active indifference to growing evidence that theirs is an empty gesture.
My enthusiasm for Trump owed a lot to the fact that the right people opposed him. I think the enthusiasm for masking has, for many, a similar motivation.
I’m willing to concede this point. Honestly, I don’t watch news and I have only a poor sense of what normal people are seeing. Beyond that, I have only a poor sense of how many people are really strongly aligned with Ukraine. It’s entirely possible that this conflict really is sufficiently different in presentation that it has motivated a lot of people to take a strong position.
If that’s the case, I wonder why the Ukraine/Russia split seems politically polarized: don’t people on both sides feel compassion? But, again, I have little information about the actual conflict, nor about how people are really divided about it. I understand wanting to support Ukraine because it seems just and humane — shoot, that was my early take on it as well. I just don’t understand the vehemence, nor the apparent political divide.
But, as I said, I’m willing to question my suspicion that this is a litmus test issue, if people more informed than I am (and that’s a lot of you) tell me otherwise.
However, I’m pretty confident that the Russia-Ukraine conflict is not an existential issue for America. On that point — and that was the gist of the post — I’ll stand.
Maybe I should ask you the same question that I posted elsewhere: is it only an “existential issue” for America if successfully taking over Ukraine leads Russia to attack US – or maybe other NATO members – in 6 months, but not an “existential issue” for America if Russia waits 12 months instead of 6 before attacking US – or maybe other NATO members?
If you’re somehow certain that Russia stops after Ukraine, I think a lot of people would like to see your proof of that.
“Existential threat” is a pretty high bar. If you see Russian incursions into Ukraine as a plausible prelude to a Russian attack against America, I won’t bother trying to argue with you. I simply think you’re being wildly unrealistic.
Maybe not a “prelude” as such but it’s difficult if not impossible to convincingly argue that letting a bully get away with something makes them less likely to be a bully in the future. And it doesn’t need to be an attack on America itself, as mentioned.
😂😂😂
Superb
I know this isn’t your main point, but I really miss those weird early days of blogging. Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish with its ludicrous black background and unreadable font, National Review’s Corner when they were just starting to figure out how “online” worked, any number of randos who somehow built followings posting about what they had for lunch. It was so fun.
Behind Every Mask Is Someone Who Cares
The inverse is the subtext. You, with your bare face hanging out in front of G-d and everybody. Yeah you. You don’t care.
But I do. You can tell I care because my mask is also the Ukrainian flag.
Giving a matter sufficient thought is a good recipe for not getting your opinion out there in print.
It’s not an immediate existential issue for America.
Nor is the habit of letting China have veto power over what NBA people can say about China.
Sorry, but no. The word “immediate” is not a pass to allow everything to become an existential threat.
Otherwise the term becomes meaningless.
That’s certainly true for some people. I have the advantage of being right so often that I can afford to take chances occasionally.
Although it’s true in many cases, I don’t think that’s universally true, that people who wore or still wear masks are virtue signaling in any way or trying to assert their superiority. I know quite a few people for whom masking made simple sense, just as it makes sense to cover your mouth and nose when you sneeze. They didn’t want to give any cold at all to anyone. They also believed it kept them from getting covid–in fact, they still haven’t had the virus. One woman I know worked through the entire pandemic doing people’s taxes. She attributes her avoiding the virus to the mask she wore. In many cases, it’s kind of a superstition.
Was Hitler an existential threat to Germany in 1931? How about Henry Morgenthau, Jr.?
We’re talking about the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the NBA pandering to the Chinese sports market, neither of which is an existential threat to America. Given that you seem to think the latter might be one, I suspect you and probably have very different views on the topic. I think you’re misusing the term to refer to far-off and improbable hypotheticals. I take it you disagree. That’s okay.
I’m thinking that perhaps “existential” isn’t such a useful term.
Charlotte I did not think you are not old enough to recall early NRO or Andrew’s early “online” rants.
The Ukraine has belonged to Russia for hundreds of years. If they wanted to remain free, they needed to do more for themselves. Apparently, “doing more for themselves” is exactly what they did in bribing prominent members of the democrat/communist party.
We are not the world’s policemen. We have treaties with Poland, and others, but not with the Ukraine. I don’t care about them. They need to fight for themselves. We aren’t even treating this as a proxy war. We are overt in our support, we have subverted international law by commandeering private property, and we are in a dangerous position risking a vast expansion of the war into very dangerous territory.
Would it be possible for you to both (1) care greatly about Ukraine, and (2) think that we should stay out of it? Or does (2) require that you don’t care?
It could be possible to care about the Ukraine and that would not change my analysis. But I don’t much care about the Ukraine.
Theoretically it should be possible. But so far I haven’t run into anyone who wants us to stay out and manages to do it without disrespecting Ukraine. It’s a curious phenomenon.
I don’t know where you get disrespect from. Their fate does not impact ours in any degree, that’s all.
You said you didn’t care about Ukraine. How would that be different from disrespect?
Whether their fate impacts ours is a different issue.
That is an odd conclusion.
Skyler’s friend Brad says that Skyler is in trouble. He got caught up in the J6 dragnet, even though he was nowhere near the scene, and is being held without bail.
I say I don’t care what happens to Skyler.
That’s disrespecting Skyler, especially when I feel compelled to say it to his friend.
Not so odd after all, is it?
You have an odd definition of “disrespect.”
So can you say in public that you respect the Ukraine people but don’t care what happens to them?