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?