Empty Gestures and Solemn Prayers

Atlanta, GA

March 5, 2022

Yesterday we trod the long road from the inception of Ukraine a couple thousand years ago to its most recent invasion last week. 

Today, as we try to understand what’s happening now, we take comfort knowing one thing for sure: we can’t. And that the closer we look, the farther we’ll get. 

A Wall Street expression has it that if everyone is thinking the same thing, no one is thinking at all. This phenomenon was obvious the last couple years, as unanimous brains idled in mindless unison. 

It’s as if they lack the power to propel their thoughts, so they rely on “experts” to give them a push. And with Ukraine, as with Covid, there’s only one direction they’re permitted to go.

But whenever politicians, the corporate media, and the cultural elite pump a single perspective, it’s often wise to wonder why. And while we’re asking such forbidden questions, it’s usually safe assume the suppressed opinions are closest to the truth.

This is particularly so when the prescribed opinions are cloaked in unambiguous virtue to camouflage unrelenting vice. 

For two weeks we’ve seen a ubiquitous burst of blue and yellow flags, ribbons, wardrobes, and profile photos. These colors are the new face masks, implying that anyone not displaying them must be insidious, indifferent, or ignorant.

But so what?

About multi-faceted conflicts in distant lands among people we’ll never meet, it’s OK to be indifferent. In fact, it’s probably smart. After all, if incessant meddlers minded their own business most of these problems wouldn’t arise. Had the US government done so, this one certainly wouldn’t have. 

As to being ignorant, regarding foreign affairs we all are…especially those of us who think we aren’t. And because we’re ignorant, it’s hard to know which side is insidious. But it’s reasonable to presume each of them is.

As Kory Booher posted on Twitter regarding symbolic compassion, without action such phoniness is worse than useless. It’s insulting. Those who advertise their hollow concern are merely leveraging other people’s pain to make themselves feel good.

Yet they’re strangely selective in their empty empathy. How many of them spent the last two decades wearing, waving, or posting the colors of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, or Yemen? Were they hoisting Russian flags when the Kiev government bombed Russian enclaves in eastern Ukraine, or when it cut water to Russian residents in the Crimean peninsula? 

And why not support the Russians in Russia? What did they do to anyone? Why would self-righteous Westerners punish innocent people for the actions of a man they themselves call an unaccountable dictator? 

Because of a government they live under but can’t control, Russian civilians are suffering crippling sanctions from governments they don’t live under and can’t appease. These sinister penalties force innocent people to queue around blocks to receive worthless rubles, while wondering if they’ll be able to get food to eat.

They’ve been stripped of their funds, booted from banking, deprived of resources, and ostracized around the world. It’s as if they’ve suddenly become Canadian truckers. Aren’t they suffering enough?

Apparently not. Sanctimonious morons are removing “Russian” products from American shelves. This might harm people who want to buy those things, but has no effect on anyone busy invading Ukraine. In many cases, items being removed are merely branded as Russian, but are actually made elsewhere. 

This is getting even dumber than the “freedom fries” farce during the Iraq War. But not quite. In that instance, the imbecility was directed at a country opposing an aggressive government attacking a hapless country.

But who cares? The point isn’t effect; it’s feelings. As a recurring meme has it, Russians are the new “unvaccinated”…and our moral arbiters are treating them accordingly.

How did we get here, and why did this happen?

Two reasons. In a mirror image of Cuba sixty years ago, the Russians consider Ukraine to be within their sphere of influence. And the Americans think it’s part of their own.

Neither may be right. But the Americans are certainly wrong. The US has no business being anywhere near Ukraine.

Almost twenty percent of Ukrainians are ethnic Russians, and forty percent are culturally Russian. Both those proportions are much higher in the eastern third of the country, especially the Donbass region and the Crimean peninsula, where 90% of the people are Russian. The city of Sevastopol is essentially 100% Russian.

When the Soviet Union was founded, the heavily Russian Donbass regions of Donetsk and Lungansk were appended to eastern Ukraine. A few decades later, Khrushchev added another one when he gifted Crimea. 

At the time, these decisions seemed relatively inconsequential since these were all Soviet territory, and no Soviet leader thought the empire would collapse.

But when the USSR dissolved, Ukraine went free. When it did, the US assured the Russians that NATO would move no further east.

Murray Rothbard once said we can’t be sure a government did something until it’s been officially denied. The same can’t be said of government promises. We know those are lies the minute they’re uttered.

Within the decade, Poland, the Czechs, and Hungary had joined NATO. Five years later, Baltic states were accepted. Despite American assurances, an Atlantic alliance that lost its reason to exist had made its way to Russia’s door. 

This was as if the Soviets had infiltrated not only Nicaragua, but all of Central America. And then threatened to bring Mexico into the pact. The US would’ve been justifiably upset, and would not have been so slow in its response as Putin was with his.

The NATO provocation is obvious, and well-known. But what most Americans summarily dismiss…if they’re aware of it at all…is the US coup d’état in Kiev eight years ago. If American agents hadn’t gone to Kiev, Russian troops wouldn’t be in Ukraine.

In February 2014, CIA agents and State Department functionaries stage-managed assorted militants, radical nationalists, white supremacists, and literal neo-Nazis (not the juvenile appellations applied by “woke” half-wits to people they don’t like) to overthrow the elected government in Kiev. 

The Ukrainian president was ousted after trying to steer a middle path between Russia and the EU. A new puppet was installed, dangling obsequiously from CIA strings. It was after this coup that Russia annexed Crimea to protect its Black Sea base. 

Fighting persisted across ethnic Russian regions of eastern Ukraine. The Minsk Agreements were an intended settlement. But the Ukrainians claimed they were compelled to sign, so refused to implement.

For eight years the US kept pumping illegal weapons to its Ukrainian satraps, who used them to wage war on Russians in the east. Since 2014, Russia and the people of Donetsk and Lugansk have waited for Kiev to adhere to the Minsk agreements. But it refused. 

The west spent a decade poking the bear. Last week, it finally woke up.

To put it down, the US government fired a financial shotgun at the Russian economy. Unfortunately, it was double-barreled, with each one unloading in opposite directions.

The US took the unprecedented step of severing Russia from the SWIFT messaging system. But in depriving Russian institutions the means of transferring funds, have Americans torpedoed a boat tethered to their own ship? 

Western creditors hold hundreds of billions in Russian debt. If the Russians can’t get it, neither can they. And what does it say about the trustworthiness of the dollar if those who need it can be deprived at any time?

What will that mean? Will it ignite a “liquidity crisis”, or provide the Fed a welcome excuse to print more money even as prices keep rising? Why would countries hold dollars in reserve if they can be taken away on a political whim? Did any of these questions cross the “minds” of whichever idiots implemented this policy?

Meanwhile, the prices oil, gold, and most everything else are soaring…and the war rages on.

Yesterday, the Russians captured Kherson, on the Dnieper connecting the Black Sea to Kiev. As Jim Rickards put it, this is roughly analogous to the Yankees taking Vicksburg, choking commerce and supplies to the interior. 

The cities of Kharkiv and Mariupol are under siege. Beautiful Odessa, where my wife grew up, appears to be next. An amphibious landing could come as soon as tomorrow, if it hasn’t already.

We pray for the place, and for its people. And that the US government stays far away, and does nothing to “help”. 

It’s done quite enough already.

JD