A Rough Estimate on Ukraine

 Russia continues to redeploy significant assets in ways that look like it is preparing for war. It has chosen to redeploy dozens of deniable Wagner PMC assets from Africa to Europe, and is today moving its Pacific Fleet through the Suez Canal to take up position somewhere closer to Europe -- the final destination is unclear at this time, but even from the Mediterranean they could provide some support. Like the existing deployments of forces on the border, the Pacific Fleet maneuver is expensive and cannot be maintained for a very long time without sacrificing a strategic asset in a strategic region. 

My personal guess is that the Russians will use Belarus to provoke (or more likely fake) a Ukrainian 'provocation' the Belarussians will respond to, allowing Russia to invade under the pretense of defending its allies from Ukrainian aggression. They will use the overwhelming force they are accumulating behind special operations and aircraft fires to rapidly seize and hold the eastern half of the country only, I estimate, where most of the population speaks Russia and conceives of themselves as Russians. If they then consolidate that position, there will be a long front that can be dug in and defended. Western diplomatic pressure to make them concede it will be exactly as effective as it has been in South Ossetia and Crimea, i.e., not at all.

Russia is in a perfect position to steal a march on the West, take the portion of Ukraine that will be easiest to take and easiest to hold, and to do so at a low cost in lives and resources. It's the most sensible play, and in accord with Putin's past operations. They could do something more aggressive, but it would also be more expensive and be more likely to create a long-term problem for them like an insurgency behind their lines.

I'm guessing Belarus will do it this time because their President just publicly issued a more aggressive statement on Ukraine than Russia has done. They've already allowed Russian military assets onto their territory, and are openly inviting many more 'if attacked.' If they're staging up to take the lead, then Russia gets to come in not as aggressor -- the chief war crime -- but as a defender and savior of its (allegedly invaded) ally. This will also serve as a pretense that the Russians are not aggressively gobbling up territory again, though of course the collapse of the West and of American power under the Biden administration has made such realignments inevitable. 

Expecting a play of that sort is probably also why the Ukrainian government is trying to get the Biden administration and others to lower their tone, as they want to avoid any appearance of provoking or encouraging conflict. The last thing they could want at this time is to give any appearance of being an aggressor in this conflict. (CNN analysts are a good reverse barometer, so if you read this analysis you'll see both that lowering the tone is the wise play and also that the Biden administration is almost certain to go the other way, thinking they are being 'muscular' rather than walking into a trap.)

Anyway, that's my estimate of what military intelligence calls the 'Most Likely Enemy Course of Action' (MLECOA). This differs from the 'Most Dangerous Enemy Course of Action,' (MDECOA), which I'm not going to lay out in public. I doubt most Americans care enough about any of this to want to get involved, but the Biden administration has shown a stark disconnect from being able to care about, or even entertain concerns from, ordinary Americans.

Enchiridion XXII

XXII

If you have an earnest desire toward philosophy, prepare yourself from the very first to have the multitude laugh and sneer, and say, “He is returned to us a philosopher all at once”; and, “Whence this supercilious look?” Now, for your part, do not have a supercilious look indeed, but keep steadily to those things which appear best to you, as one appointed by God to this particular station. For remember that, if you are persistent, those very persons who at first ridiculed will afterwards admire you. But if you are conquered by them, you will incur a double ridicule.

Let us combine this advice with the last chapter’s: sometimes the admiration does not come until after you die. Socrates and Jesus both had a few admirers at their executions; numerous artists knew very little commercial success in their lives. Some committed suicide, even, only to have their works become beloved later — Robert E. Howard is often mentioned here, and Van Gogh was just mentioned at AVI’s place. 

In remembrance of death we remember that all of life’s troubles are passing; in remembering that honors often come after death to those who were true to their divine appointment, we might even face death boldly under difficult conditions and circumstances. 

Yet it is striking that Epictetus, who has heretofore cited honors like admiration as mere semblances to be discarded as ‘not our business,’ would cite them here. Is admiration from others a proper ethical concern, or is it not?

The interested might turn to Aristotle’s discussion of whether honor affects the happiness of the dead beginning in Nicomachean Ethics I.10 and followings. Aristotle asked if Solon was right that you couldn’t judge the happiness of a person before death, or if you could. This leads into a general discussion of happiness as an activity (which presumably only live people can execute), but that leads to a puzzle about whether the dead can be less happy if they are later scorned, or if their children suffer, and so forth. He isn’t quite wiling to say these things can be dismissed as considerations even for the dead, for whom they are no longer even semblances. 

Solidarity - A Blast from the Past

 

A Perfectly Framed Comment

UPDATE: Solidarity, baby. Workers of the World, Unite. 

Enchiridion XXI

XXI

Let death and exile, and all other things which appear terrible, be daily before your eyes, but death chiefly; and you will never entertain an abject thought, nor too eagerly covet anything.

This is a lesson that is definitely found in Zen, in especial in the Bushido tradition (*-do in Japanese generally denotes a Buddhist spiritual approach to finding enlightenment in a practical art). Epictetus was sort-of exiled from Rome as part of a general ban on the teaching of philosophy in the city, although I do not know how terrible he found the Greek countryside in practice. 

There is similarly a long tradition in Christian Europe following this advice, which is called Memento Mori in the Latin ("Remember Death").

Compromise and the Possible in Politics

If you wanted to create a compromise position that would address the concerns of the Freedom Convoy and also the political/managerial class in Canada, would it be possible? The Prime Minister says no (through Twitter and Zoom, continuing not to explain exactly where he is physically located). This is because:

• His opponents cannot be compromised with because they are racist Nazis (the Managers seem to encounter a highly improbable number of Nazis in the world; this time the evidence seems to be that some placards compare vax mandates with the treatment of Jews by the Nazis -- which hardly puts the Nazis in the position of good guys, I notice, oddly for those who are supposedly Nazis themselves); 
• who lie and insult (and apparently threaten, although they assert they will be peaceful he shows no signs of being willing to appear in public anywhere near any of them, regardless of security arrangements); 
• and who desecrate war memorials (this latter apparently referring to a single woman who was dancing at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Canada).

This definitely requires thinking the absolute worst it is possible to think of tens of thousands of your fellow citizens who normally work for a living and pay the taxes that funds your salary. Politics was supposed to be the art of the possible, which meant seeking compromise in spite of differences.

The attitude is nevertheless common among the Convoy opponents. If you ask the Manager whom the Washington Post hired to explain the situation to Americans, there can be absolutely no compromise because opponents are too irrational to formulate a position: instead, the government must be "a strict line of resistance that doubles down" on everything they hate -- which, actually, suggests to me that the author knows perfectly well what they want and could easily compromise with them if inclined. (Is it appropriate for a party allegedly aligned with the common man, in a democratic society, to 'strictly resist' the people while 'doubling down' on everything they hate?)

Weirdly, to me, a compromise position appears to be quite obviously in reach because they both want the same thing. Ottawa's mayor put it this way (quote in first link, above): "You have the right to protest, you've had your protest, please move on. Our city has to get back in normal stead." 

The protest itself is merely a demand to "get back to normal." That's literally all they want: they want the Canada of the last hundred years back. (Cf. "Make America Great Again," which likewise merely demanded a return to the normal condition before we started making trade deals against our interests and policing the global economic order instead of pursuing national interests like defense). You could give them at least some of their normal back, in return for them giving you at least some of yours.

The Managers do not want that normal, which is also very odd. Canada has always been described to me as a pretty happy place, where people are exceedingly polite and the health care system is supposed to be enviable compared to our own. 

That is now how the Managers describe their own society. It's almost as bad as ours, to hear them tell it. 

The convoy speaks of threats to liberty. It would be close to something if the participants weren’t so far off. Threats to liberty are rampant in Canada, but not because of vaccine mandates. Rather, it is income and wealth inequality; worker exploitation; gendered, religious, racialized and other forms of hate violence; ongoing settler colonialism; and other forms of structural marginalization and oppression that compromise liberty. Same as it ever was.

The “Freedom Convoy” is a regrettable movement that offers a reminder that open societies will produce protest movements — as they should. However, when those movements are toxic, they must be denounced and resisted. 

I think I may have to adopt the policy of referring to this class as 'the Managers' on a semi-permanent basis, and to this sort of I-hate-my-country description as "the Litany of Bullshit." Canada is a perfectly nice place that is having some hard times that are self-inflicted by its own government, which apparently hates it, its people, and its history. Such a government cannot have any claim to democratic legitimacy, which at minimum requires loyalty to and love of the demos of which one is a part. 

The plantation

Despite the article of faith embraced by the politerati, it's possible that President Biden's plunging approval rate among not only American voters but black Democrats resulted not from his failure to criminal justice or election "reform," but instead from vaccine mandates and inflation. As Eric Levitz points out, the popularity crash comes from black voters with a less solid attachment to the ideological wing of the Democratic party. By definition, a poll of voters includes people who managed to vote, and therefore don't necessarily feel a voting restriction like picture i.d. requirements as a personal threat. Choosing between a feared vaccine and a job, in contrast, or facing an alarming rise in the monthly bills, is a kick to the gut: more likely to engage the attention than any nattering from political authorities.

Morning Consult’s national tracking poll shows a stark inflection point in Biden’s Black support immediately after the announcement of the mandate. Between September 8 (the day before the mandate’s rollout) and September 20, Biden’s support among Black voters fell by 12 percentage points in the survey. One might write this off as a coincidence, had the pollster not specifically monitored Biden’s standing with unvaccinated Black voters — and found that he had lost 17 points with that segment of the electorate over those two weeks.

As noted above, a post-September decline in Biden’s Black support has been captured in other polls. And there is no analogous inflection point (yet) showing a similar decline in the immediate aftermath of a legislative setback on voting rights.

* * *

[A]s political scientists Ismail K. White and Cheryl N. Laird argue in their book, Steadfast Democrats: How Social Forces Shape Black Political Behavior, the Black bloc vote is a product of “racialized social constraint” — which is to say, the process by which African American communities internally police norms of political behavior through social rewards and penalties. In their account, the exceptional efficacy of such norm enforcement within the Black community reflects the extraordinary degree of Black social cohesion that slavery and segregation fostered.

If this thesis is correct (and White and Laird do much to substantiate it), then it would follow that the erosion of African Americans’ social isolation would weaken racialized social constraint, and thus narrow the Democratic Party’s margin with Black voters. As White and Laird write:

We believe that increased contact with non-blacks and a decline in attendance at black institutions, in favor of more integrated spaces, would threaten the stability of black Democratic partisan loyalty. The result, we believe, would be a slow but steady diversification of black partisanship because leveraging social sanctions for racial group norm compliance would become much more difficult in integrated spaces.

 

Enchiridion XX

XX

Remember that it is not he who gives abuse or blows, who affronts, but the view we take of these things as insulting. When, therefore, anyone provokes you, be assured that it is your own opinion which provokes you. Try, therefore, in the first place, not to be bewildered by appearances. For if you once gain time and respite, you will more easily command yourself.

It is true that ultimately we control how we decide to respond -- and indeed whether we do. One time when I was in school another boy hit me from behind. I did not know him, and to this day don't know why he hit me. Ultimately I just looked him the eye for a long moment, and then went on without a word. It was a very effective strategy, as he'd hit me just as hard as he could from behind -- and failed to do any damage. I'm sure he knew that he didn't want the fight he'd provoked.

Still, I think we can reasonably sever the Stoic point -- that I, and not you, am the master of my inner world and I don't have to let you provoke me if it is not useful to me -- from the general obligations of honor, from which so much of our common peace depends.* In general it is useful to respond to force so that it does not grow bolder, and to quash petty tyranny so that it does not gain mastery. People should be afraid to give blows without good cause, and abuse under any circumstances. Our society is much more pleasant when we conduct ourselves with the mutual respect that comes from knowing that the alternatives are too dangerous to ponder.

* "from which... depends" rather than "on which... depends"? This is one of those amusing places we sometimes discuss where the language is even now changing. We almost always now say 'depend on,' and think of depending as if it were a sort of foundation 'on' which something might be rested. Yet of old 'depends' meant 'hangs down from,' as a watch might depend from a chain. Both usages imply firmness of support, the sense of direction has inverted over time. I take great pleasure in being one of the keepers of such secret fires. 

Our bubble is better than your bubble

Who but a racist could believe that meritocracy was racist? The students at elite Brooklyn Tech are "Bengali and Tibetan, Egyptian and Chinese, Sinhalese and Russian, Dominican and Puerto Rican, West Indian and African American." They're also 61% Asian and therefore not racially balanced.

“Educationally, we don’t need these schools,” said David Bloomfield, a professor at the CUNY Graduate Center and Brooklyn College. “These students cannot be in a bubble. They need to be in a more diverse student body, where you could have advanced classes.”

Only we do very much need schools like Brooklyn Tech "educationally," and there aren't comparable advanced classes in the "diverse" schools they "need" to be in or, at some of the schools, any advanced classes at all. It's almost as if the lessons we are determined that these kids learn had more to do with political indoctrination than science.

Tausifa Haque, a 17-year-old daughter of Bangladeshi immigrants whose father drives a taxi and whose mother is a lunchroom attendant, says:

This is my great chance. It’s my way out. I have classes with students of all demographics and skin colors, and friends who speak different languages. To call this segregation does not make sense.

Ricardo Nunez, who is black, says:

I don’t feel like a minority. We resist being pitted against each other at this school.

But you're not allowed to climb out, and we have ways of making sure you allow us to continue to pit you against your peers, namely, denying you a decent education and a shot at financial independence if you don't agree to stay inside the right kind of bubble. Which is definitely not that bad bubble consisting of gifted and hard-working students.

Wipe that grin off your face and shut up

I understand objecting to highway blockades--at least if they're blockaded by the Wrong People--but it's never a good look to criminalize cheering.

Aren't bike paths the real infrastructure?

Or should we think about using some of the infrastructure boondoggle bills of the last, say, 20 years on bridges that are about to collapse from long-acknowledged rust? Nah, more paternity leave for Transportation Secretaries ought to do it.

Canadian President Flees Country

Now that’s a headline I thought I’d never see. Afraid of a few truckers — his own fellow citizens, the guys who keep the logging and cattle industries on the road. What a spineless coward. 

Miss me yet?

 From a WSJ commenter on a bit of Noonan nonsense, via PowerLine:

Mr. Biden is as rude as any president, and without the success to compensate.

Preference falsification

Do I wish this guy were in office instead of the current disaster?  You bet I do.

Richard Fernandez argues that the dam is breaking.  It does look that way, and has since the Virginia elections.  There's a sense of "We've completely had it, just knock it off."

At Fernandez's suggestion, I'm reading "Private Truths, Public Lies" by Timur Kuran (1998), about the social instability that comes from the repression of dissent and the ritual mouthing of platitudes for which one has more and more private contempt.  People will live a lie for a time if they must, but their support is brittle.  At the right moment they'll jettison the lie without a backward glance.

When Donald Trump speaks, the attraction is that he's saying what he believes, and what much of the audience believes.  They're so tired of hearing nonsense they're expected to take seriously.  Even if he occasionally comes out with something they doubt, the relief of not being fed absurdities is liberating.  "This stuff is ridiculous," they say to each other.  "Why are we putting up with it?  Let's quit doing it."

In Canada, Justin Trudeau and his family have fled the capitol in fear of a "small fringe minority of people who are on their way to Ottawa who are holding unacceptable views that they are expressing do not represent the views of Canadians...."

Enchiridion XIX

XIX

You can be unconquerable if you enter into no combat in which it is not in your own power to conquer. When, therefore, you see anyone eminent in honors or power, or in high esteem on any other account, take heed not to be bewildered by appearances and to pronounce him happy; for if the essence of good consists in things within our own power, there will be no room for envy or emulation. But, for your part, do not desire to be a general, or a senator, or a consul, but to be free; and the only way to this is a disregard of things which lie not within our own power.

Assessing relative risks is hard

 When you've lost the NYT . . . .

Curmudgeons and their music

 

I'm 65, and while I understand in a general way what Spotify is, it's not for me.  Some years ago when we were trying to install a home audio-visual system that would coordinate the internet with the TV and allow us to send music playlists to either indoor or outdoor speakers, I had trouble getting the playlist function to work.  The young AV engineer pointed out that it was trivially easy to hook into Pandora and had a really hard time grasping why I wanted to make up my own list of songs.  I was equally baffled why I'd want to let anyone else choose them.  "But there are lots of different channels with different styles," the little whippersnapper would say, tactfully omitting the implicit "even old fogey stuff" part.  Yes, and none of them are particularly close to anything I'd listen to, old or otherwise.  It's the curmudgeon disconnect, or maybe the disdain of someone with exotic tastes for someone more plugged into popular culture.  Even in my plugged-in youth I disliked listening to 99 pieces of dreck on the radio to hear one compelling song.

Neil Young often figures prominently in my playlists.  Here's hoping he doesn't mind.  Without even listening to Joe Rogan, I still side with him in the filthy censorship wars.

Enchiridion XVIII

XVIII

When a raven happens to croak unluckily, be not overcome by appearances, but discriminate and say, “Nothing is portended to me, either to my paltry body, or property, or reputation, or children, or wife. But to me all portents are lucky if I will. For whatsoever happens, it belongs to me to derive advantage therefrom.”

Chesterton: 

          The men of the East may spell the stars,
          And times and triumphs mark,
           But the men signed of the cross of Christ
           Go gaily in the dark.

          "The men of the East may search the scrolls
           For sure fates and fame,
          But the men that drink the blood of God
          Go singing to their shame.

          "The wise men know what wicked things
         Are written on the sky,
         They trim sad lamps, they touch sad strings,
         Hearing the heavy purple wings
         Where the forgotten seraph kings
          Still plot how God shall die.

          "The wise men know all evil things
          Under the twisted trees,
          Where the perverse in pleasure pine 
         And men are weary of green wine 
         And sick of crimson seas.

          "But you and all the kind of Christ         
          Are ignorant and brave,
          And you have wars you hardly win
          And souls you hardly save.

          "I tell you naught for your comfort,
          Yea, naught for your desire,
          Save that the sky grows darker yet
          And the sea rises higher.

Outlaw's Prayer

Ironically this album, "Armed & Crazy," was considered important by the jury in sentencing our brother Jonny Paycheck to prison for shooting a man in the head while high on cocaine. Prejudice, no doubt, just as he explains here.