A Brief Plea for Sanity

Talk about the most transparently obvious advice ever offered regarding a US election (and this one in particular):

VOTE FOR CHANGE:  Stop the Madness (at home and abroad). 

The Maddest Holiness

These past few years have found me complaining, more than once, about what I like to call the growing religiosity of our global politics (pars. 4-6). Meaning that nowadays many of us - but in particular many of our most credentialed and powerful global interests - seem to be approaching age-old political questions in a rather dramatically final way. Almost as if we had Just Today discovered - as never before - the means of firmly resolving various ancient-yet-key political issues. Like, say, the Most Progressive and Enlightened Meaning of Compassion. Or Equality. Or Sovereignty. Or Freedom. 

Again, firmly resolving them. And not just pragmatically, and, say, for the next few years or decades, but ideologically, and for all time (or even all of eternity). Almost as if we all - but we Westerners in particular - had at last got hold of the fool-proof method for not just finding, but staying on, the Right Side of History. And that the better part of keeping to the Right Side consisted of knowing definitively - irrevocably, as it were - its moral weights and balances. But above all, that at the heart of this unprecedented enlightenment lay a discovery unimaginable to previous generations: namely, that the overwhelming share of human history's villainy, injustice, cruelty and oppression lies with the Christian West. As distinct from certain non-Western, and even more so non-Christian, religions and civilizations. 

So let me be clear on this point: It's not that we Global Westerners are against - or even dismissively skeptical of - religion as such.* Indeed I notice how many seem to have an especial tenderheartedness for certain rather militant, activist, and even anti-Christian forms of Confucianism and Islam (Part II, pars. 4-5)  - but more on that presently. In fact so much, it seems to me, has a spirit of religion infected even the methodology of the way we do world politics, that I'm moved to say, with very little exaggeration, that we're starting to "religi-ossify" socio-political questions - and causes - such as were never meant to be religious at all. Much less settled once for all time - in Heaven even as they are on earth, so to speak. Indeed, I notice a "sacralizing" of our answers to such an extent that today, many are prepared to censor or even anathematize all dissenting views on certain broad topics, whether past or present. 

*Although, to be fair, many of our more globally-minded seem have a burning contention with not just the Christian West, but Christianity itself, at least in its more or less orthodox modes.

So whence comes, do you think, this hunger for final, definitive, irreversible answers? And these on previously tentative subjects like not just politics and economics, but everything from global disease control to global gender studies? 

For me, it's as if we were craving a new kind of sanctity, or holiness, or consecration. One that is in fact striking in its novelty: that has its roots in, and draws its strength from, not a world beyond this one, or a life to come, or a God beyond ourselves, but rather in having found the right answers - for all time and everywhere - to various "here and now" questions. Including some that have hitherto been approached with a certain provisionality, a measured caution and suspense of mind. Questions like the final moral status of the historical records of Christianity, and Islam, and even Russia. Almost as if we Global Westerners were in the process of submitting all three entities to some kind of final judgment at the bar of history. A judgment which, so far as we believed ourselves entitled to make it, would be presuming a great deal about our own Western holiness, virtue, righteousness, etc. 

Indeed I wonder if there isn't a kind of, as it were, craving for holiness that somehow unhinges the craver: a yearning for absolute moral clarity even in politics - i.e., for  holding the moral high ground, for being the good guys for all time - that slowly, inexorably makes one mad. And in particular when one doesn't know where to begin to look for holiness, and how to recognize it. 

In any case, I'd like to make a suggestion.

This present globe will understand the point of true religion only when it grasps what it means for any human being to be holy, or set apart, or consecrated: what holiness consists of, and what makes it desirable. The point is that we mere humans cannot consecrate ourselves. We can never, by mere force or act of self-will, make ourselves better than, or better-suited than others to transform or purify, the great mass of unholy mankind. We may succeed, after a fashion, in making ourselves better than others according to our own estimates, and for our own purposes. But never for the purposes of God. Only God can consecrate us; only our Maker can remake us, and lift us up; and if He does so, it will always be for His designs, never ours.

Now this latter point - this business of knowing and doing God's designs - may seem like a straightforward enough proposition, until there comes a time when it isn't. Because no matter how well we think we may be able to know or learn the purposes of God, there is nearly always something about them that's sure to surprise us, that's bound to catch us up short. I may (think I) know a given Divine plan inside out, and yet be surprised, or even alarmed or dismayed, by the person He chooses to implement it, or to be its chief instrument (par. 7). Or even the way He chooses to go about this project, which may seem to show scant regard for the priorities closest to my heart. In short, our capacity to be made holy often involves our willingness to laugh certain things off: including a good many things that we in our wisdom were most rigidly, and in our view rightly, expecting. Or at least expecting to go a certain way. And what is true for each one of us is at least as much true for this busy, ambitious, hungry-for-encompassing-answers modern globe. 

Take, again, our modern globalizing West. It may be passionately "religious" - supremely confident of its ultimate vindication by history - in its ambition to exalt and glorify a "fully sovereign" Ukraine; to punish, destabilize or anathematize a renegade Russia; to understand, condole with, and tenderly conciliate even the most anti-Western, revanchist interpretations of Islam. Or even a revanchist, anti-Christian People's Republic of China (and that for all our perfunctory saber-rattling to the contrary). Our Global West may be no less fervent in its desire for a kind of (secular?) holiness: for a separating, from within its own ranks, of wheat from chaff, righteous from unrighteous, progressive from reactionary, woke from unwoke. But it will never recognize the genuine article except as it understands holiness as something more than just fervor, or zeal, or even righteous anger: until it embraces holiness as a thing inseparable from humility, and humility as something wholly inoperative, indeed a mere dead letter, apart from a certain human capacity for surprise and humor. Yes, even about myself, and my fondest ideals and agendas. And yours.

In other words, this present globe, at the present rate it is going, seems to have very little prospect of acquiring or even understanding real humility. Which means it likely has no hope of ever understanding the point of true, (God-, and not man-) centered religion. Much less true holiness. At least, not any time before the return of Holiness Himself.

A Queen's Legacy (and its enemies)

"My own association with the Commonwealth has taught me that the most important contact between nations is usually contact between its peoples. An organisation dedicated to certain values, the Commonwealth has flourished and grown by successfully promoting and protecting that contact. At home, Prince Philip and I will be visiting towns and cities up and down the land. It is my sincere hope that the Diamond Jubilee will be an opportunity for people to come together in a spirit of neighbourliness and celebration of their own communities. We also hope to celebrate the professional and voluntary service given by millions of people across the country who are working for the public good. They are a source of vital support to the welfare and well-being of others, often unseen or overlooked." [Emphasis mine]

 - Queen Elizabeth II, Diamond Jubilee Speech, Westminster, March 2012

But before I say anything else:

I know it's been a good while since I've posted anything (assuming - again - anyone really cares). I also  know that, lately, I seldom seem to do much of anything post-wise other than to pose what some may dislike as stupid, nitpicking, impertinent questions. Ones usually directed at, or about, our Globally Enlightened American Establishment. Who, as everyone knows, should rarely if ever be questioned about much of anything, under even the direst circumstances. Conditions like, for instance, our country's current frolicking on the brink of what may be an unprecedented abyss: that of a steadily escalating nuclear exchange between our globe's two indisputably foremost nuclear powers. 

Not, mind you, that any of us need be prematurely alarmed just yet. Especially seeing we're in such capable hands. After all, what's the worst that could happen? Even if we should embrace the risk - or skirt the brink - of permanently enfeebling or eviscerating or dismembering vile old Russia, what's the worst we should expect by way of retaliation? I mean, surely old Vladdy's not mad enough (or else too much of a cowardly scoundrel) to do something really desperate? 

But now - if you can - please try and put up and with me and my questions a bit longer. Because I've got a few more.

First off, notice how different were the late Queen's stated priorities from those of our present rulers. She spoke of contacts between not just nations, but those nations' peoples. Including presumably all sorts of everyday simple ordinary folk from all walks of life. In other words, "contacts" should not be confined to those ultra-sophisticated, influential, hyper-credentialed types - corporate, military-industrial, think-tank, NGO, etc - most eager to establish deep connection, if not outright collusion, with their opposite numbers in other countries. (Almost as if these latter together should constitute a kind of global "super-country" far above and beyond the needs, concerns or even the votes of the mere countries of their fellow-citizens.) 

Indeed, she almost seemed to imply - again, taking her literally - that leaders within a nation exist for the sake of their people, and not the other way around. And that even contacts between nations should be assessed by more or less the same yardstick. 

Whereas today it seems the great bulk of the world's leaders approach the same question - how best to ensure the well-being of every nation's citizens - from a rather different standpoint. Today it is widely believed that the most important contacts between nations are those which most reduce the risk of what is technically known as symmetrical war between the globe's major powers. And that the most reliable mechanism for the prevention of symmetrical war is a kind of solidarity of global leaders whose overwhelming power, wealth, prestige, command of technology, and access to private security tend to make them:

 (1) very little invested in the welfare, security and prosperity of their own nations; even as they steadily become 

(2) very much insulated against the fates, troubles, fears and uncertainties of their nations' peoples. 

And all of it for their respective peoples' own good, of course. All so that they can view their own citizens' concerns with less emotion and prejudice - which is to say, more distantly, rationally, dispassionately. Nowadays what we've discovered is that you cannot view the hardships, fears, anxieties, etc, of your own nation with too much distance and dispassion. Whereas you can very easily become blinded by tribal sentiment and prejudice. But especially in what we've come to recognize as the really elemental, nitty-gritty, rubber-meets-road departments of life. As in, of course, matters of Global Aggregate Economic Growth. Along with its accompanying vital questions of profit-and-loss for the really big, vital players in the game. 

Take, for instance, today's more or less Amazonized commercial and workplace culture in many of our Western countries. No doubt it's highly reassuring, for many of our globally-minded leaders, to be able to view even some of the most unpleasant (if not downright ugly) Economic Truths of our Time - e.g., truths about workplace regimentation, or worker motivation and morale - with a coolly dispassionate rationality. After all, that's just the way real, productive Life is. 

Anyhow, my first question is: 

Can our leaders' altogether rational and justifiable removal from the mundane concerns, fears, etc, of their ordinary constituents carry with it some unintended - or even disquieting and destabilizing - effects? And those upon pretty much everybody? In their zeal, say, to make the world safe for the freedom of our various (most rational and necessary) Amazonias, do our otherwise rational leaders run the risk of becoming themselves fanatical - i.e., losing all sense of proportion and restraint? And all the more so in the legitimate pursuit of something good? To the point, in fact, where their zeal takes on an almost religious or even apocalyptic coloration? (final paragraph only) 

But in particular in trying to "bring to heel" certain recalcitrant, backward, reactionary or "fascistic" parts of the globe? Or even - dare I say it - certain countries that simply don't care to be Amazonized to the nth degree?

And so I come to my final set of questions for the world, as we enter, in the wake of the Queen's death, what may more and more prove to be a post-Commonwealth (if not an anti-Commonwealth) Age (paragraphs 6-7). And that not just for Britain but for the world at large. 

Will it also be a more fiercely "convictioned" and ideological Age, at ever higher levels of global power, wealth, expertise and influence? Which is to say, even in our otherwise most rational/pragmatic citadels of real power? 

Will it be an Age in which - in the effort to govern more uniformly and "globally" ever more diverse and disparate regions of the globe - there's less and less virtue to be seen in either patience or restraint? Or even nuance? An Age in which the humility, resilience and conciliation of Compromise are steadily replaced by the arrogance, fixity and intransigence of Principle? To the point where, say, even some of our most credentialed, wealthy, powerful and influential elites contemplate an escalating nuclear exchange as just one of several "unfortunate but necessary" calculated risks? Or  policy options? 

And not just elites in - obviously enough - Moscow or Beijing. But possibly (even more so) in Washington, or post-Commonwealth Westminster? Or Warsaw? Or righteous Kyiv?

American Greatness Revisited

Call me a 4th of July Scrooge. 

No doubt it's simply the national occasion, and my (as usual) excessive sensitivity. Or paranoia, as some might say. It's just that I can't quite get over how often, in even some of our most non-political online media - hobby-and-interest-themed websites, etc - the glory of American exceptionalism somehow manages to creep in. Or, as often as not, comes out screaming in one's face. 

How it is that I can't explore, say, even a jazz review  blog these days, without being reminded of how insufficiently exceptionalist I am. Or how lukewarmly "proud of America." Without being immersed, I mean, in some heart-warming litany to all the countless ways in which the United States is not just an indisputably great country (a proposition I can fully understand and accept), but, in true Muhammad Ali form, THE GREATEST. 

The first question that comes to mind: 

Just how do you believe and profess that statement literally, and with all your heart, and not find yourself - without in the least intending to, of course - mentally consigning all sorts of harmless non-Russian, non-Chinese countries to a growing redundance, irrelevance and invisibility. And especially those that aren't quite fully on the same page with US-driven agendas: that are perceived as not fully sharing, or as indifferent to, our Western Establishment consensus of "market-driven" growth, globalization, regime-change interventionism and radical (i.e., post-gender) self-determination.

Imagine you're a person of real clout - perhaps even global-scale geopolitical power and influence - who fully subscribes to this grand consensus. How do you stop from finding yourself - again, perhaps against your better initial judgment - more and more treating even "important" individuals from these countries in ways which to you may appear entirely reasonable, but to their unenlightened non-Western minds may seem cavalier, callous, disrespectful, demeaning? Or even oppressive? Granted, that exact sort of outcome may be hard to imagine in Today's Enlightened Globe, given the careful humility, deference, patience, etc, with which our globalist Best and Brightest normally conduct relations with non-Western states (/sarc). But if we could try to see farther down the road . . . as opposed to just kicking the can . . . ?

A few more questions, addressing the same issue on a more abstract level, and putting to one side peculiarities of our American history: 

When any nation more and more deems itself, not just a great, but THE greatest nation, culture, civilization, etc, ever to have existed, what might be some probable - albeit unintended - consequences down the road? Is that sentiment likely to make it more tolerant and accepting of other countries notably different from itself (including those countries not trying to undermine that glorious nation's strength, or question its prestige, but simply asking to be left alone)? Or is it just as likely to make it less tolerant and accepting? Is such an attitude most apt to make the Superior Nation more respectful and appreciative of the (non-threatening) differences in other countries, and other cultures? Or more impatient and dismissive? And is its sense of its own vast superiority - but particularly if that excellence is based on some universally-wise-and-applicable Idea - liable to make it more inclined to let other countries go their own way, and make their own mistakes, that they might see the error of their ways (and the truth of ours) for themselves? Or might it make this Superior Nation just as easily tempted - say, for certain humanitarian reasons - to apply this universal Idea zealously, and rigorously, to less fortunate regions of the planet? By various subtle and other means of pressure, wherever possible - but even by force, if necessary? 

Finally (and to get specific again): 

Why is it that the more a Superior Nation (like, say, America) boasts, and swaggers, and congratulates itself on having both MORE FREEDOM, and more unique and cutting-edge freedoms than anywhere else on earth - somehow, the less free it seems to become? And how is it that the same "elite" US interests most deeply invested in advertising, marketing, exporting, perhaps even enforcing these unique cutting-edge freedoms abroad, are also the ones most intent on abridging and circumscribing ("ideologizing?" politically correcting?) the exercise of certain much older, more time-honored freedoms here at home?  

Could it simply be that, in the words of Hamlet's immortal Gertrude:  

"[Methinks] the lady doth protest too much?"

Another Day of Life in PU

UVALDE, TX - Right now, just a couple of issues that I was wondering if someone might help me clarify: 

First off: Just how is it that we got here? (Nice, modest start to the discussion.)

How is it that, in a modern US society that vaunts, parades, brandishes, even weaponizes its compassion as never before (at least in my 63-year lifetime?) - a society that boasts a never-more-laborious concern for the seeming infinitude of possible human conditions, predicaments, choices, self-creations, -revisions and -transformations (gender- and otherwise) facing young people - how is it that, in such a fiercely, strenuously loving America, school bullying is not just alive and robust as ever, but seems to be intensifying its multimedia presence and pressure on a growing number of fronts. And even if we comfortably assume, in this post-Cold War world of Pinkerian Utopia (PU)*, that the bullying of today is not only less frequent, but actually far less cruel and more humane than it was, say, a generation ago, a question remains: why does it continue to provoke such horrific extremes of compensatory reaction - whether of rash suicide or, worst of all, of carefully orchestrated suicide/mass homicide?

*I.e., a place where - to use a very broad brush - basically everything is better, because practically everyone is so much richer (or was, until Trump, Putin, Orban, etc, came along). 

In short, if today's bullying is in fact so much "milder," do its repercussions have to be so much uglier and more tragic? And even if we concede that our advanced, omnipresent media technology is the main driver, what about other, more or less buffering means of recourse and refuge for our young people? Again, in this Pinkerian best-of-all-yet-possible-worlds, there seems to be no shortage of concerned adults eager to smooth our children's bumpiest gender and other identity transitions. Do we really, then, have so few other mature grownups both trained and ready to ease the more conventional passages of adolescence?

Second of all: In a Western world never more loud and vehement in its claims of being the force for peace and stability across the globe, how is it that its principal leader - America - continues to lead the world in entertainment products more or less saturated with violence? I mean here not just horror/slasher vehicles, or the more luridly "amoral" kinds of crime/murder/suspense dramas; in particular I'm thinking of stories - often working from a rather brutally stark good-vs-evil premise - that at times seem to celebrate an especially intensive and ugly kind of violence. And even where "celebrate" is too strong a word, how often is large-scale horrendous carnage made not just one of the main problems of the storyline, but far too often (and usually in the form of a spray of firepower) the one most decisive and effective resolution? 

All of which constant barrage of images and themes has - we can safely assume - virtually NO effect on the ways our already-troubled youngsters learn to "resolve" issues of loneliness, insecurity, rejection, media manipulation, harassment and (more and more these days?) even organized persecution. 

Right, so that's settled. But I do have a third question. Is it possible that, in spite of all our state-of-the-art, customized-as-never-before Global Compassion, our children are really no happier than their counterparts of  twenty-five years ago? But if anything, rather more confused, isolated, frustrated, adrift, angry? Or even simply less happy? 

Then again - somebody else might argue - it never really was about happiness, was it?

(Meanwhile, continue to pray for the parents, siblings, schoolmates, teachers and others who are mourning the victims, and in particular for their mutual prayer, support and availability to each other.)

Demonizing Simplicity

A going-away reception. 

"Yes sir, and it's all quite simple really [me talking to myself, at least initially] . . . you just get a gift . . . oh but don't forget the card (hey, what's a gift without a CARD - but remember, it's gotta be the RIGHT card) . . . and don't forget it's a buffet, so, again, a NICE bottle of wine . . . but what's wine without dessert . . . preferably something you made yourself . . . I mean, you do CARE about this person, don't you?!! . . ."

But if that's just Neurotic Me (who's merely attending) getting all bent out of shape, imagine what it may be like for even the more or less sane hosts/organizers?

It has got to be, I think, one of the more brilliant ingenuities of that Other Spiritual Realm, to take what might otherwise be - by Divine grace - a simple, kindly, unaffected human act or event of appreciation, and somehow grind it into something grimly intense . . . and perfectionist . . . and operationalized . . .  and  even oppressive . . .

In short, to take what might easily be a light (and yet strangely deep?), joyful, unburdening occasion, and make it into something awkward, pompous, over-cluttered and miserable.

Of course, again, that's just Neurotic Me talking. Along with that more or less tiny percentage of folks just like me. Because it can't possibly have anything to do with this never-more-laid-back, graciously diplomatic, loath-to-take-offense Global Age we're living in . . .

Indiscreet Confession of a Drunken (or otherwise de-inhibited) American Blobster

Well anyhow, here we are into the fourth week of Eastertide (Western calendar). With not so much as a glimmer of light at the end of the Russo-Ukrainean tunnel (assuming anyone important is actually looking, of course). So, knowing me as you do, you know I can hardly help but think: 

How brutally, dismally ironic. I mean, that our liturgical feasts of our Lord's Resurrection - both Catholic and Orthodox - should coincide with the ongoing crucifixion of Ukraine. (Or is it really more like the utter self-humiliation, and soon-to-be self-crucifixion, of Russia? It's getting a bit hard to tell these days.) 

And yet - in its own way, do you think - also fitting? Fitting, that this same overweeningly overconfident globe of the past 25 years, that somehow could not begin to muster a coherent, unified, unpolitical, rationally proportionate global response to global pandemic, should be no less cluelessly unable to preserve its own peace. But instead, and I suppose in keeping with its ever-mounting overconfidence, should insist on playing an unprecedentedly "chicken" game of brinkmanship with not just with Russia and Ukraine, but World War III. Almost as if we had learned - what, NOTHING? - from Covid? Nothing of our own - even our own Western - utter littleness, helplessness and vulnerability to vast events that, most of the time, we can only presume to control. And even then, mostly to our own immeasurable peril.

So now what? So far - and assuming I'm reading our mainstream media narrative correctly - we're using Russia's spiraling madness and moral disgrace as proof, if anything, of our own invulnerability, and impregnable moral high ground. Or maddest of all, as proof of our own unique moral fitness to rearrange and rule an increasingly un-ruleable world. Talk about breathtaking, if not suffocating, ambition. 

Golly. And here I'd imagined that, by now, our smarter-than-all-previous-history, globally-sensitive overlords would be dancing whole circles of diplomatic brilliance round everyone from Metternich and Talleyrand, to Bismarck and Salisbury, to George F Kennan and John F Kennedy. (Then again - one might argue - when you have already for a generation been managing a global economy of near-seamless just-in-time co-ordination, who needs diplomacy anymore? Who says the most hamfistedly arrogant corporation isn't ten times more clever than the subtlest, shrewdest country? And if so, then who needs the patience, much less the humility and vigilance, required to negotiate anything with anyone? In short, who needs anything but ever more flawless, seamlessly global co-ordination, technique and procedure?)

On the other hand, it just might all prove to have been worth it. Yes, even at the glowing risk of global conflagration. What's a little wind-borne radiation compared to the chance of securing, once and for all, a seriously just-in-time-commercially-integrated world empire? But now indulge me, if you can, a bit further: Suppose that the one missing centerpiece of that empire should be the once-and-for-all devolution/dissolution of Russia. For my part, I've long held the notion that the soundest cornerstone of a unified globe was a seamless, borderless Euro-Asia. Meaning, in plainer English, a greater Eurasian land-mass at least as open-bordered and well-integrated as say, the United States, Canada and Mexico. And that the surest means of securing this blithe utopia was not the renewed expansion and reconsolidation of Russia, but rather its gradual-yet-steady impoverishment/isolation/vassalization: the latter preferably at the hands of a Russia-"friendly," Russia-invested, but overall not really anti-Western China. Which would, I suspect, go a long way towards explaining our Western reluctance to try and isolate Moscow "completely." I.e., by openly teaming up with Beijing - much as we might like to. After all, in this age of still-unfolding pandemic fallout/recrimination, it is one thing to be corporately close to Covid's birthplace; quite another to be openly and politically close. And we'd be still more unwise to dilute what remains of Moscow's own residual trust, however unmerited, in Beijing. 

So what am I getting at? Well, first let's page back a few years. Suppose that, from the very start of the Sino-American "rift" (c. 2012?), our Western global elites had wanted not nearly so much to counter China as to constrain, thwart and "hem in" Russia. But in that case, surely there could be many - perhaps conceivably quite subtle - ways of achieving that result? 

What if our real Western national interests - or rather, and more precisely - our Progressive Global Interest, did not require us placing China and Russia at loggerheads at all? But something quite the reverse? What if the most intimate and trustful collaboration between Beijing and Moscow - or even an advanced degree of eventual symbiosis? - were to prove, in the long run, a far more crippling constraint upon Russian freedom of action than the West trying to effect that outcome directly?

The key, as I see it, was for the US to appear to be as far at odds as possible with China, without seeming to want to get closer to Russia (which latter move, after all, might suggest our wise global elites were really in earnest about getting tough with China).

The real question, so far as I can tell, is how far the Western establishment has been actually welcoming the growing closeness of Beijing and Moscow all along, while seeming to oppose it. And mostly on the not illegitimate assumption that, the closer and more inseparable the intimacy, the more deadly the inequality of power and advantage between them: it being only a matter of time before Dragon entwines, slowly constricts, and (perhaps assisted by the careful ministrations of a "neo-Ottomanist" Sunni pan-Islamica*) eventually crushes Bear. In short, there might be technically no limit to how far the right powers should be encouraged to embrace and one day engulf Russia, so long as the US and Europe continued to maintain their own proper outrage and "principled" opposition to Putinist autocracy. Not to mention the ever-popular economic pressure. Or, as some might call it, strangulation.

*E.g., Erdogan's Turkey, ISI's Pakistan, etc. 

Which brings me back to the otherwise inexplicable title of this little exercise. Another confession, as I indicated. Not mine this time, of course, but rather that of my hypothetical and highly-placed American Blobster, over a period of, say, the past five-to- ten years leading up to Putin's criminally insane invasion. 

And what sort of confession? I wish I could be sure. But maybe something on the order of:

"By all means let the Russians get as close as they like to China - and even to countries like Turkey and Pakistan. In fact, provided we ourselves maintain the most co-operative ties with both Ankara and Beijing (cautiously friendly in the case of Turkey, as covert as possible regarding China), why not gladly drive Moscow into the waiting arms of both? I mean, what's the worst that can happen? Think what rapid progress these two can make with those stupidly trusting Muscovites. And then when you factor in good old Islamabad . . . maybe even Riyadh . . . why, between the three or four of them, lodged as they are in Eurasia, don't they have a much better chance in the long run of making a clean, graceful, efficient 'short work' of Russia?  Or surely, at any rate, better than us Yanks, based as we are in North America?"

The Sheer Excitingness of Obsessive and Indiscriminate Competition (in this Russo-Ukrainean Globe)

Why not take a moment (if you can) just to imagine you, yourself, as you are. And as you might be.

Imagine yourself becoming something very different from what most of us want to be, in our striving grasping hustling, self-promoting everyday lives. Or think we want to be, at all events.

Imagine you could be that rare sort of humble, rich, heedfully attentive Soil - that quietly compos(t)ing, undemanding, unpresuming, pinprick-silent Presence - in which every human soul within the perimeter of your routine life could flourish and thrive, as never before. Could thrive so unprecedentedly, in fact - and so completely, in its assurance of its own nature, giftedness, grace, inmost self - that it had almost no further wish to compete, almost no desire to compare itself to any other human souls, whether "superior" or "inferior." No wish, in short, to be anything but itself. Even as it experienced, too, an all-but-irresistible longing to know just Who it was who was engracing and empowering him or her - or (it may be) you or me - to be ourselves in so strange a Way. A way of being oneself, on the one hand, so utterly and deliciously satisfying: yet one that also draws, entreats, entices, even goads this creature onwards, to become all the real fulness of itself, so to speak (hope I'm making sense). 

Again, all its real fulness, as only its Maker can know and make it. Or yours, or mine. Almost as if this same God knew this creature's inmost soul unsearchable oceans of time before it knew it even had a soul. Even to the point where this human individual - of whom you are the soil, mind you - felt practically no need, no compulsion, either to be co-diminishing ("competitive") of others, or to feel diminished, or threatened. Or even defensive and "insecure"?

Imagine yourself, then - just as you are - becoming that same strange soil, in which this strange God can take root, and in which your neighbor can flourish. 

I know. How boring. Not to mention how deplorably inefficient. In contrast to this most excitingly competitive, murderously efficient Russo-Ukrainean globe of ours.

Magdalene at the Tomb (in the wee small hours . . .)

"Whom seek you here, sweet Mistress Fell?"

"One who loved me passing well.

Dark his eye, wild his face -

Stranger, if in this lonely place

Bide such an one, then, prythee, say

I am come here to-day."

"Many his like, Mistress Fell?"

"I did not look, so cannot tell.

Only this I surely know,

When his voice called me, I must go;

Touched me his fingers, and my heart

Leapt at the sweet pain's smart."

"Why did he leave you, Mistress Fell?"

"Magic laid its dreary spell. -

Stranger, he was fast asleep;

Into his dream I tried to creep;

Called his name, soft was my cry;

He answered - not one sigh.

"The flower and the thorn are here;

Falleth the night-dew, cold and clear;

Out of her bower the bird replies,

Mocking the dark with ecstasies,

See how the earth's green grass doth grow,

Praising what sleeps below!

"Thus have they told me. And I come,

As flies the wounded wild-bird home.

Not tears I give; but all that he

Clasped in his arms, sweet charity;

All that he loved - to him I bring

For a close whispering."

 -  Walter de la Mare

A Confession

Ughhhh. So this "graduated" Russian invasion is turning out to be the bear hug from Hell. Big surprise that, and God help us all, starting with Ukraine, of course. And in the name of everything holy, pray as you've never prayed for anything in your whole life. 

Mind you, as psychologically prepared as I tried to be for all-out war, I wound up stumbling on a discovery that actually surprised me. I never thought I'd find myself feeling seriously, wistfully nostalgic for much of anything about the Cold War Soviet Union. As distinct from our exciting post-Cold War Russia.

Except that, come to remember it, I did feel very much that way, and was very nostalgic. Especially for the post-Khrushchev Soviet Union. 

Not too many years ago, I laid it all out very explicitly in a single post: how much I missed the - for want of a better word - predictability(?) of the later Cold War era. Along with the seemingly more measured, cautious rationality of its principal actors and operatives. Though, looking back on it, a better phrasing might have been the greater political secularity of the era.* And in particular one highly secular assumption, that seemed to be widely shared among both East and West: 

Namely, that there is NO place on earth, and in time, that is so holy, so utterly joined to heaven and eternity, as to be worth risking nuclear war in "defense" of.  Or worse yet, in order to possess it exclusively. Perhaps not even Jerusalem? But certainly not Kyiv. (At all events - as I've posted elsewhere [last 4 paragraphs] - one really has to ask what kind of love is it anyway? that loves most fervently by hovering, clutching, choking, destroying.)

*As opposed to the greater political religiosity of our era, actors, operatives, etc.

My point, in sum, being that Heaven is Heaven, and earth is earth, and it's not that the twain shall never meet; however, that fruitful consummation must always be understood as being in the hands and at the discretion of God, never of Man.

Again, a post-Khrushchev Soviet Union. Neither did I envision it as continuing indefinitely in that pitiful-yet-toxic Brezhnev-through-Gorbachev state. Rather, what I imagined was a Russia "duly de-Communized and de-toxified," as I wrote in the same post (par. 4). In other words, no longer even remotely or aspirationally Marxist; yet still hardheaded, pedestrian and secular enough to grasp that, in this exciting, excitable globalized world of ours, no country can afford to be too sentimental - much less hysterical and confrontational - about some holy ancestral hearthland like Ukraine (Russia's Kosovo?). 

Anyhow, what I felt most nostalgic about was the (best I recall) relative simplicity, clarity and straightforwardness of a bipolar world in which, in any case, nuclear proliferation was certainly far less easy than today. Or so it was made to be, on one of the two sides - the Soviet - if not both?

Still, and however much I'd prefer it otherwise, the fact is that today we live in self-anointedly apocalyptic times (par. 9). Ours is a Great Global World in which, as often as not, the most secular differences of opinion can take on an epically religious, or even sacredly end-time, "heaven-and-hell" solemnity and ferocity. And then we wonder why it's so cussedly hard to control the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

So of course even now we have those who, whether they love or hate it, regard Putin's Russia as an almost Biblically-fated tool of Babylonian chastisement of a wayward - or at least feckless? - Modern West. And you know, in all fairness to them I can think of no time in history, like the present, when we in the West have been more Biblically wayward. If not apostate in the Christian sense. At the same time, it would be hard to imagine a modern Nebuchadnezzar more brutally blundering than Vladimir Putin, or one more likely to teach the exact opposite of what we Westerners are supposed to learn. Or a despot better designed, if anything, to reinforce and confirm the stubborn waywardness, smugness and sense of moral superiority of the "Israel" - aka America - in question.

In any case, assuming it really is a steadily tightening, and deadly, ring of encirclement that Putin sees himself as breaking out of, he could hardly have chosen a method of breakout more conducive to the self-vindication - if not self-righteousness - of his encirclers. Or a means of "escape" more horrifically dangerous to the peace and security of his own country (to say nothing of the rest of us). In fact I suppose I couldn't have done better myself, if my intention had been to "blacken permanently" the name of Russia in the eyes of the world.

Meanwhile, it appears we Global Moderns have well-nigh reached the limits of a certain nothing-if-not-ambitious, post-secular, post-Cold War project of our own: one we've been engrossed in, if memory serves, for roughly the past generation. I mean the project of trying to bring Heaven down to earth, as it were, by forcibly anchoring it to some place, people, ideology, or Idea-masquerading-as-country of our own idolizing (whether the idol be Washington, Beijing, Mecca, Jerusalem, Brussels, Moscow, etc). But is it really too late, do you think, to do something quite the opposite? 

What if we fervently prayerful Catholics, and countless other Christians, were to turn a decidedly different page in our devotional lives. Suppose that we were to become rather less heavy and solemn, less full of our own hard-won importance, less weighted down by our own works, achievements and sacrifices. Such that, like any child, we almost seemed to have no past at all? (3rd, 4th and 5th pars. from bottom) 

What if we were to become so light and buoyant, so humble and childlike and unselfconscious - yes, even of our great and good deeds - as to be able to float right up, as it were, to Heaven? So that our own feeble prayers might at last be joined inseparably with those wisest and most potent of all human intercessions - those of Jesus' own Mother, and ours? That same Mother of the Church who pleaded with us, in Portugal more than a century ago, to pray - not for the humiliation, devastation and judgment of Russia, however "deserved" - but for its complete consecration to her Immaculate Heart, and therewith its full conversion to her Son. And likewise to believe her, and to trust in Him, for the "period of peace" that would surely follow. Our persistent Catholic disregard of that appeal over these past 100+ years - can we honestly say we've been satisfied with the results? Is not the present spiraling disaster more or less exactly what she foretold? And are we so sure that this same Mary, who so accurately prophesied the conclusion of one war (1918) and the conditional-but-likely onset of another still worse (1939), is utterly powerless to mitigate and defuse, to subdue and cleanse and heal both Russia's present madness, and our own folly?

All I Can Say Is

Well, it's begun to happen. Russia is now officially invested in the full separation of the Donbass region from the rest of loving, caring, supportive Ukraine (talk about wrenching a child from the arms of its mother). And mostly,  from what I gather, at the instigation not of Putin himself but of a majority of that beastly, dastardly Russian Duma. And here I was thinking he was the globe's most absolute autocrat outside of North Korea.

And yet . . . I continue to hope, pray and even fast - however foolishly (wouldn't be the first time) - for . . 

What? 

I pray - you guessed it - that poor beleaguered, besotted, befuddled Vladimir doesn't take the real bait. I mean, of course, the bait of launching a full-scale invasion of non-separatist Ukraine.

"And why pray, idiot?" you ask. Because I also continue to suspect that - whatever may be Putin's real impulses, fears, ambitions, hysterias - there are some Seriously Progressive and Enlightened Folks here out West, too, who don't just want him to launch all-out war (any moment now?), but so badly, they can all but smell and taste it. Which is to say, at least as much as he (supposedly) does. 

I'm thinking of venerable foreign-affairs icons like Chatham House, the Atlantic Council, the German Marshall Fund and God knows how many other hand-wringing, pearl-clutching congregations of souls who no doubt would howl in outrage at the mildest imputation of being Russophobic. And yet who still, from everything I can determine, really believe that not just Putin but Russia herself is beyond redemption. At least for the foreseeable future. I.e., so long as she remains recognizably Russian.* And who further reason that, Moscow being the last geopolitically serious holdout of barbarism in our Gloriously Unfolding Sino-Western Corporatopia, why not goad her into "finishing the job" by doing something really stupid and nasty? Thereby confirming both our worst "we-knew-it-all-along" expectations of Muscovy, and our noblest vindications of ourselves? To say nothing of further hardening, solidifying, but above all ideologizing NATO. And in particular its most devoutly anti-Russian elements.

*As opposed to her becoming Progressively more and more Chinese, or Islamic, or Germanocentric (depending on the Russian region in question).

After all, can a truly Progress-Infatuated Globe (PIG) ever have enough reasons for loathing, despising, frustrating, isolating, anathematizing such a wicked old vestige of empire (Long live the POST-imperial West!) as Russia?

And who knows? The eagerly-awaited invasion may be taking place even now, as I write. 

More on this later . . . possibly even within the same post . . .

The Gospel of Amazonia; or, What We're Fighting to Defend (against those beastly Russians)

No virtue without efficiency, of course, no question - who could deny it? Ah, but just what do we mean by "efficiency"? There's the rub (to coin a phrase).

After all (as I've tried to suggest in other places*), there are some kinds of work that are so flowingly quiet, so unturbulent, both in their outflows and in their wellsprings - so Spirit-embanked the whole length of the stream, one might say - that they hardly seem to suggest the word "efficiency" at all.

*Chiefly Part IV, last three paragraphs. 

So maybe we ought to rephrase it thus:

No MODERN, mechanized, digitalized efficiency without the Bezosian virtues: without, not just ardor and intensity, but vehemence and even (a kind of) anger towards the work to be done. And mutual competitiveness among the workers (aka one-upmanship). And of course - last but never least - terror of management.

A Serious Proposal

Continue to pray - and FAST, of course. 

But not just for the peace of Europe and Russia. But in particular - as absurd, naive and unconspiracist as it sounds - for the mind, heart and soul of Vladimir Putin. And especially right now - that he find the grace and courage to re-open channels of direct communication with Ukrainean President Zelenskyy. As preface, I mean, to an extremely cautious, measured and tentative de-escalation. As improbable as such an outcome might seem. 

Because I have the mounting sense that - however justified Putin may be in his long-term fears of a militaristic, self-infatuated, over-ideologized West - he simply has no idea what volatile lunatics he is dealing with. And not just "down the road," but right at this moment. And again, not nearly so much within Ukraine as well beyond her western borders.

A Russo-American Tragedy

O the needless, senseless tragedy of it all. 

I mean, seriously: that any country - no matter how otherwise worthless and incorrigible - should be afflicted with a leadership as bad as that of present-day Russia. A set of rulers not just wholly uncomprehending of the real needs, preferences and dignity* of its own people, but so incurably ignorant and distrustful of the real motives - of the honesty, transparency and benevolence - of its so-called enemies. 

*Assuming they have any, of course.

And who are these tragically misperceived "enemies" of Russia? Who else - but precisely those same elites, here in the West, who exercise the most decisive and determinative sway, power, influence, manipulation, etc, over the lives of us common folk? In short, when we look at today's progressive Western political and business leaders, what do we see? 

Look real hard now. 

That's right: nothing less than the most talented, efficient, driven, productive, visionary and forward-looking individuals - American or otherwise - ever to have achieved success and power on this planet. I ask you plainly, then: If they can't be trusted - aye, even with our very lives! - who can?

And all that giftedness - just think of it! - not for themselves, but for our sakes: all for the most generous uplifting of us unworthy, unwashed Western masses. And we're just an appetizer.

My obvious next question is this: As kindly, patient, supportive, reassuring and re-educating as our Western elites have been with us, surely they can only prove twice as understanding of the main entree those poor benighted Russians? Or at least of that relative minority of Russians who aren't deplorably homo/trans/xeno/Islamophobic? 

The Real Point of Our Inextricable US Involvements

Wise men, we are told, have been engrossed in some rather strange hobbies over this past generation. Apparently, they like nothing better than to wrangle far into the night over the reasons for America's seemingly incurable habit of self-entrapment in foreign quagmires. 

The assumption seems to be that our foreign-policy elites, almost for no other motive than the goodness of their hearts and a love of global humanity, somehow enjoy rather an awful lot of dangerous risk-taking. (Or dangerous, at any rate, to other people's [enlisted] sons and daughters.) But in particular, they seem to enjoy the risk of wading ever deeper into the sort of overseas problems that not only admit of no clear solution, but offer no simple or easy exit. As if this, if you will, unintended instability - and sometimes even anarchy - that follows our projects in various (often strategic) parts of the world was all part of a sincere attempt, by our wise foreign-affairs experts, to promote the directly opposite result. Or, in the riveting words of Britain's good old reliable Chatham House (Royal Institute of International Affairs), "to help governments and societies build a sustainably secure, prosperous and just world." (Bottom right-hand corner of page.)

And of course what they claim may be so. Though at first glance it does strike me as a pretty complicated explanation. I mean, why is it lately - as in the past 20-odd years - that almost nothing we do abroad turns out as purportedly intended? Are we really, for all our great wealth, power, influence and vaunted "efficiency," that consistently stupid and blundering? 

And what if, as is sometimes the case, the simplest, least convoluted explanation contains the deeper truth? What if the real point, by and large, of all our deepest, messiest, inextricablest US involvements all over the world is not to ensure ongoing stability at all? But rather the reverse? Suppose, in fact, that what all our best national (in)security experts have been trying to do, in all sorts of regions across the globe, is to ensure whatever degree of local/regional instability is optimal for "our" premium economic interests.

But maybe I can illustrate better by way of a direct contrast. So I ask you to imagine a very different, if not opposite kind of globe. Show me, then, a world in which most of its regions - but in particular those that are most resource-rich (oil, gas, minerals, etc) - in which these same regions are steadily becoming more DE-frontierized. Which is to say, steadily more and more unlike our Old American Wild West. Steadily more settled and stable, and law-abiding. And thus more and more capable of their own political and economic self-direction, autonomy, prosperity. You know, rather like the way Singagore, or Japan, or even Costa Rica, has functioned over the past 60 years. (As distinct from, say, Yemen over the past 5 years, or Libya or Syria for the past ten; or for that matter, Afghanistan over the past twenty.)

Show me a world that has more and more places like Singapore, etc, busting out all over. And I will suggest to you a globe that can never, of its own accord, EVER hope to meet our (to put it mildly) exacting 21st-century US standards of open commerce. I.e, it can never be sufficiently open to, and penetrable and manipulable by, our US commercial interests. To say nothing of those of our allies . . .  plus Saudi Arabia . . . plus (and despite our present seeming estrangement) mainland China . . .

My point is not that other countries of very different posture and alignment - like, yes, Russia - aren't also engaged in fomenting various kinds of instability in sensitive parts of the globe. And often for reasons similar (if not exactly identical) to ours. My question is why so many, not just of our US but Western and other global elites, insist on singling out Moscow: why they insist on behaving - or at least talking - as if Russia (along with possibly other vile ingrates like Iran and North Korea) was just about the only major power guilty of doing these awful things?

Goose and Gander

It stands to reason: 

Ukraine is every bit as much a part of Russia as Canada and Mexico are parts of the United States. Therefore surely, in the same calm, cheerful spirit with which Washington would gladly accept the loss of both immediate neighbors to an anti-US alliance, shouldn't Moscow be prepared to accept - nay, welcome? - the NATO-dominated, EU-absorbed independence of Ukraine, Belarus, Crimea, Georgia, Chechnya, Circassia, Tatarstan, Kazakhstan, etc? (the list may be endless.)

And to think: it's all for that stupid, paranoid, barbarous Russia's own good. I mean, what else have we been trying to teach her all these years, if not the supreme wisdom of national self-abnegation and sacrifice?

Sign of the Times: A New Year's Meditation

Ever notice how nobody seems to know how to drink anymore?

Here in Righteous America, anyways, the growing trend seems to be to take a huge and highly verbal pride, either in one's regular abuse of alcohol, or in having sworn off the use of it altogether. No doubt another healthy side effect of Life in this Age of Great Conviction, in which nothing should ever be done by halves.

Still, as I believe somebody once said, a country that doesn't know how to drink properly is hardly one that will know how to make peace rationally.

All the more reason, I think, that all of us Yanks - whatever our (mostly foolish or ill-thought-out) convictions - should pray for peace, and most urgently that of the Russo-European borderlands, with all the rationality at our disposal. And humility. And fervor.

Even if we don't ever quite recover the fine art of drinking rationally.