Mark Wauck: I came across this interesting transcript of a conversation between two fairly well known liberals who dissent from the Zhou regime’s policy of aggression against Russia—Robert Scheer, a journalist, and Michael Brenner, an academic. In essence, Brenner maintains that the root cause of the crisis of Russia and the West is to be found in a crisis of the American soul.
Professor Brenner has been caught in the crosshairs of trying to have a debate about what’s going on in Ukraine, the NATO response, and the Russian invasion. I was reading his blog; I found it very interesting. And then he suddenly said, I’m giving up; you cannot have an intelligent discussion. And his description of what’s going on reminded me of the famous Lillian Hellman description of the McCarthy period as “scoundrel times,” which was the title of her book.ter.
So, Professor Brenner, tell us what buzzsaw you ran into when you dared raise some serious questions about a foreign policy matter.
MB: Yes, it came only partially as a surprise. I’ve been writing these commentaries and distributing them to a personal list of roughly 5,000 for more than a decade. Some of those persons are abroad, most are in the U.S.; they’re all educated people who’ve been involved one way or another with international affairs, including quite a number who have had experience in and around government or journalism or the world of punditry.
What happened on this occasion was that I had expressed highly skeptical views about what I believe is the fictional story line of what has been happening in Ukraine, back over the past year and most pointedly in regard to the acute crisis that has arisen with the Russian invasion and attack on Ukraine. I received not only an unusually large number of critical replies, but it was the nature of them that was deeply dismaying.
This is a good read. Grab a coffee.
What a bunch of hogwash. The usual Kremlin talking points.
No, Russia was not promised that NATO wouldn’t expand. Ukraine wasn’t attacked because it might join NATO, it was attacked because it wasn’t in NATO.
No, maidan was not a US backed coup. Go read the real history. Start with Holodomor.
And Joe Biden was elected in the most honest election in US history, with the most number of absolutely non-fraudulent votes. Go away, you Ukrainian propaganda asshat.
Proving you didn’t read it, smart guy.
Congratulations on making his point for him.
How about you go suck some liberal c*ck, you whiny little Canadian shyte?
Hmm. This is where we find out exactly what kind of Leftist sock puppet Allan S is. Doesn’t even read the article, and proves the author’s main premise in the first line.
You know Allan, it -is- possible to disagree with an argument without instantly going to the “Kremlin stooge” thing. Seeing you go that hard right off the bat led me to read the whole thing more carefully. There’s an awful lot of really good points condensed into that one little interview.
I particularly liked this part: “…that’s an impression that had been growing for some time, that this was not a dialogue. It was, in effect, to launch one’s thoughts into a void. A void, because the discourse as it has crystalized is not only uniform, but it is in so many respects senseless, lacking any kind of inner logic, whether you agree with the premises and the formally stated objectives or not.”
That’s the experience I have speaking to the likes of Allan S in a wide variety of venues, on a wide variety of subjects. Immigration. Housing. International affairs. Energy. Freedom of speech. Self defense. Taxation. Vitamins, for God’s sake. Even nerd subjects like The Hero’s Journey in modern SF, what themes guarantee an award nomination, on and on and on. There is no possibility of dialog about anything in the public square. Facts, logic, history, common bloody sense, none of these things matter. Either you toe the official line of the moment or you are The Enemy.
I’m surprisingly good with that. I can -start- every confrontation with “F-You!” and leave all the work with Allan S or whatever sock-puppet is reeeeeing at me. If that’s where its all going anyway, I’ll skip to the end.
Refreshing to read something from an actual foreign policy adult.
I don’t see much to disagree with in the article. There is the systematic destruction of America and the west, by the left, which has to be considered in this entire mess.
and alla unme , weighs in with his usual uninformed bullschitt
The hogwash starts and ends with the pig-fcker making the first comment.
An interesting read whether you agree with all the points, and there are a lot of them, or not.
The Americans have some big-ass losers making policy decisions and yeah, if they’re neo-cons, look the fck out.
Collective psychopathology! That term again! Sounds alot like mass formation psychosis.
I wonder what induces ‘collective psychopathology’; I wonder if there is a test for it. Maybe a way to have it stop.
That would be similar to mass hysteria, mass insanity, and mass stupidity.
Here’s some historical parallels. The Social Hygiene Movement and Herbert Spencer’s social Darwinist theories. Communism/Fascism, which grew out of that. Presently taking the place of those in the Ivory Tower we have Post Modernism and it’s idiot grandchild, Critical Race Theory.
The educated individual will recall that A) the philosophical underpinnings of those three movements are the sorriest sort of humbug imaginable and B) the -results- of them is the same. A disconnected and oppressive state bringing suffering, famine and death in all cases. Hilariously it seems that the most reviled of these at present is Social Darwinism, which seems to have done the least harm of the three.
That may change if the current idiots doing a wheelie while playing chicken with RussiaRussiaRussia!!! manage to get Vlad baby to light off a nuke in Europe.
All you have to do is see all your enemies supporting The Narrative on Ukraine to make you question the crap you’re being fed. This of course makes you a Putin puppet who can be dismissed from polite company.
Notta
Exactly. in a 3 day period the Mass Media Empire went from Covid – Covid – Vax – Vax to Ukrainine good Putin Bad – Ukraine good Putin Bad…..world wide.
Yea, we are supposed to ignore 30 yrs & Trillions of drug/weapons $$ money laundering, deep state intervention & training of defacto NAZI Battlions…Uke Oligarchs, & a “Hollywood” actor contrived PM. Spare me pls.
If the MSM says so, then one knows intuitively, it’s complete and utter Bullshit.
I’ve been watching Patrick Lancasters’ vids – telling big time IMO.
As to Colon/Allen s and the other shit for brained Leftist Zelenskyi cheerleading mouthpieces….?
….they are on IGNORE. (a button we should have here..!!)
“they are on IGNORE. (a button we should have here..!!)”
We do,it is “Scroll on by”.
John, I do that constantly. Don’t need a button, I see the name, gone.
This is just a defence of a Soviet Russia. The Soviet Union is dead. Ukraine belongs to Ukrainians, not Russians regardless of the ethnic mix. The ethnic ties argument for invasion of neighboring countries was made and acted upon by Nazi Germany in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Alsace-Lorraine, etc. The Nazis cared as much for the german peoples outside their borders as Russia cares for russians outside its as we can all see from pics of those eastern Ukrainian cities now turned to ruins.
Putin wants a return of the notorious Soviet Union, he and he alone. If the message that a renewed Soviet empire is forbidden didn’t get through prior to 2014, it certainly is now.
Putin, who looks a year or 2 behind Biden in cognitive decline, and his vile regime is about done.
And don’t forget that Britain and the US gave Ukraine security assurances in return for disposal of Ukraine’s nuclear weapons with Russia’s agreement.
Not a good thing to repudiate those guarantees.
Gary, you need to think more and read more and stop looking for confirmation bias.
So you don’t dispute anything said? Okay.
Almost right. You got your chronology off. Soviet Union was not a beginning of something new, Soviet Union was just a reincarnation of the russian empire. Each reincarnation as vile as the one before, each filled with the same vile russians. Same syphilic whore different lipstick. It has always been like that, since the country was founded by Mongols.
Anyone who has encountered Robert Anton Wilson’s satirical “Illuminatus” trilogy should recognize the urge to immanentize the Eschaton. Fools and scoundrels and useful idiots like Alan S. and his ilk abound and any dissension is now treason. We are truly ****ed and I don’t believe Elon Musk can save us if we cannot save ourselves.
Have you seen what happened to Twitter since Elon -announced- he bought it? They stopped lying about who has how many followers.
Liberal blue-checkmarks lost tens of thousands.
Conservatives gained tens of thousands. Example: https://monsterhunternation.com/2022/04/27/twitter-we-knew-the-game-was-rigged-but-damn/
The libs are a paper tiger. Their numbers are small and shrinking rapidly.
Maybe put down the black pill and get with the program. Why don’t you jump on the team and come on in for the big win?
The main problem with this analysis is that it doesn’t account for the fact that the “collective psychopathology” he speaks of isn’t just an American thing. It has affected all western nations, and it refocuses with every new crisis. So its origin isn’t just some vague nihilistic trend, it happens because various wealthy and connected actors above the level of nation-states are organizing and backing it, with the help of globalist puppet national governments and their media outlets. Putin has rejected these globalist entities in favor of Russian nationalism. His destruction will also be ours.
I think we can extrapolate and include “the West” as infected by this … virus. Nihilism abounds and most people are caught up in it whether they know it or not. The Allen S’s of this world support lockdowns, wearing masks, getting injections that don’t work in order to ward off an unlikely death and at the same time seem to favor rushing headlong towards extinction wearing a Ukrainian flag pin. We live in interesting times.
For what it’s worth: The slaughterhouse otherwise known as the Crimean War was a miscalculation on Russia’s part who resented the Turks treatment of Orthodox Christians in the Middle East which was part of Ottoman Empire back then…they never thought for one moment the British and French would expend blood and treasure for the Islamist Turks but they thought wrong.
Sound familiar???
Speaking of nihilists… where are the “Doomsday Clock” chuckleheads who never miss an opportunity to scare the shit out of everyone with their “we’re only seconds away from total destruction”.
I guess a leader of the free world who has trouble tying his own shoes in the morning and desiring to go toe to toe with another nuclear superpower isn’t a big enough deal for them but whooo boy… that climate change thingy is what’s really going to kill us off.
Their statement in January – ” A more moderate and predictable approach to leadership and the control of one of the two largest nuclear arsenals of the world marked a welcome change from the previous four years.”
Oh, ok. I feel so much better.
// What is there today that really threatens us? At the horizon, of course, there is China, not Russia;
although they now, thanks to our unwitting encouragement, have formed together a formidable bloc.
But I mean, even the Chinese challenge is to our supremacy and our hegemony, not to the country directly. //
This is also Chomsky’s view, with regard also to China, Iran …
But as UN chief Antonio Guterres said in Moscow, after acknowledging the complaints on both sides,
the reality is that Russia invaded Ukraine; Ukraine did not invade Russia.
““The war is in Ukraine, there are no bodies in the streets of Moscow.”
This situation is like the final round of the French elections; people are forced into a binary choice.
Quoting anyone from the UN, at this point, is somewhat farcical.
Are you denying the statement?
Are you verifying it? Is it really that simple or is that a bit of propaganda? Mostly, I was saying UN officials have a lot of nerve saying anything since they are almost totally useless in preventing or ending a war.
How useful the UN is depends on the actions of the states that make it up.
Like the Pope, the UN has no battalions.
And sometimes it really is that simple.
Hannah Arendt was once listening to someone emitting bothsidesisms about WWII.
She responded: “Germany attacked Poland. Poland did not attack Germany.
A war that was once characterized as “Half-truths against total lies”
Except most of those telling you about what is going on half a world away have lied about just about everything. Apparently, unlike you, I’m just not sure what to believe anymore but I AM sure there is more than enough propaganda coming from all sides. Proceed with caution.
So the short version.
“Eat your elites”.
For we are governed(Or is that ruled) by fools and bandits,who see the world not as it is,but how they feel it should be.
The Russian People just escaped such a trap,their leaders cannot afford to play such stupid games.
We are bent on ruling the world,while denying any such “Intentions”,acting as drooling stumbling man/child as we demand all obey..
Exactly what our “leaders” have brought home,to us,these last two years.
So want some peace?
Want some rhyme and reason in your affairs?
Eat your fools and bandits.
Or feed them to the hogs.
None who profess to speak for me,have my consent or blessing.
They have openly declared”All men be slaves” To The State of Thuggery.
OK.
I help them real good.
“It’s dog eat dog, rat eat rat, Kroc style, Boom like that.”*
*Mark Knopfler – Boom, Like That.
The article demonstrated what’s lacking in contemporary groupthink and the failure, corruption, and deceit in leadership. Good article.
I wonder if the Ukrainians are mourning today, on the anniversary of Adolf Hitler’s death.
Ukrainians don’t worship Hitler.
Russians do worship Stalin.
Both Stalin and Hitler killed millions of russians, it was the only good thing either of them did.
“This is a good read. ”
No it is not. Read about two thirds of it before I gave up. “Same old, same old. Russia has a right to tell those east of russia what to do, blah, blah, blah, those west of russia have no agency of their own, sphere of influence, yada yada yada communicate don’t demonize etc, etc, etc. ”
F*ck it, a good Siberian Mongol is dead Siberian Mongol.
Never again.