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.