Making Sense of a Weird War (The Outpost):
What’s really going on? What is it about?
Only one thing is for sure: if you hear it in the news, it’s not it.
We’ve talked before about the Russian establishment’s role in enforcing the Global System. They are the bad cop that will help wasted regimes stay in power, protect oil fields, and execute terrorists with extreme prejudice, when it’s unpalatable for everyone else to do it. They did this when brokering peace in the Syrian Civil War, or more recently when they protected their supposed competitor Kazakhstan from political fallout. They’ve been in lockstep with all world leaders throughout the pandemic, enthusiastically participating in all lockdown charades.
They will accept as a reasonable price for these dangerous services the whole of Ukraine, thank you.
Publish in Crowded Places (Our Little Game):
I propose that you are writing in public only if people know your work exists.
It’s scarier but so much more worth it: publish in crowded places.
Kayfabe in Kiev (IM 1776):
There is a retired Southern pro-wrestling manager named Jim Cornett who I like to hear talk about “The Business.” Nobody laments the loss of old-school pro-wrestling like he does. In one such interview he was discussing ‘kayfabe’ or the illusion that once masked their business and caused people to believe what they saw was real. He remarked something to the tune of “once you’ve broken kayfabe, it’s over.” I take comfort in that. I hope as this deadly farce plays out, more and more Americans will come to grips with the fact we are being lied to, and have been for a very long time. And while the loss of that illusion we’ve known and identified with for so long is painful, once free of it, there remains the possibility of building something better. Something real.
On Yardwork: Raking Leaves, or What Threatens Civilization (Athwart)
…if to rake leaves is to build civilization, to guard it from the natural forces that, if left alone, will inevitably unwork its structures and institutions, then we should read any force that gets in the way of this communal ritual as anti-social in its essence. Regardless of whether these obstacles come from novel forms for liquidizing real assets and brutal housing markets or stagnant economic prospects that demand young adults build cross-country resumes. Simone Weil writes that “the soul feels isolated, lost, if it is not surrounded by objects which seem to it like an extension of the bodily members.” It is a part of the pedagogy of being human to be vested in one’s commitment to a thing that is one’s own, as though it were a part of one’s own body. And, in this vested commitment, to find it fulfilled in one’s relationship with others beyond mere convenience alone.