Victor Davis Hanson says a real reset is coming

The New Neo Posted on by

Some excerpts:

In truth, we are about to see a radical reset — of the current reset. It will be a different sort of transformation than the elites are expecting and one that they should greatly fear…

In the November 2022 midterms, we are likely to see a historic “No!” to the orthodox left-wing agenda that has resulted in unsustainable inflation, unaffordable energy, war, and humiliation abroad, spiraling crime, racial hostility — as well as arrogant defiance from those who deliberately enacted these disastrous policies.

What will replace it is a return to what until recently had worked.

Closed and secure borders with only legal and measured immigration will return. Americans will demand tough police enforcement and deterrent sentencing, and a return to integration and the primacy of individual character rather than separatist fixations on the “color our skin.”

The public will continue to tune out of the partisan and mediocre “mainstream” media. We will see greater increased production of oil and natural gas to transition us slowly to a wider variety of energy, strong national defense, and deterrent foreign policies.

The prophets of the new world order sowed the wind and they will soon reap the whirlwind of an angry public worn out by elite incompetence, arrogance, and ignorance.

I don’t doubt that there is a widespread backlash of the sort Hanson describes. But for me, the watershed moment in his essay is when he writes “What will replace it is a return to what until recently had worked.” The problem as I see it is that, despite the overwhelming backlash against the original Great Reset, unless elections are non-fraudulent the results may not reflect that backlash sufficiently to kick out the current holders of power. What’s more, even if they are kicked out, look what they did to the administration of the first resetter of the Great Reset, Donald Trump.

I think Hanson is ignoring the depth and breadth of the left’s presence in virtually all of our cultural, legal, financial, and bureaucratic institutions, plus their determination to undermine the will of the people if it goes against their will. This is the problem as I see it. But I sincerely hope Victor Davis Hanson is correct and that my pessimism proves unwarranted.

It takes a biologist to define “woman”…

The New Neo Posted on by

…according to Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Duly noted.

Of course, you might say that’s at least a somewhat more conservative point of view than the usual leftist “you’re a woman if you merely call yourself one” standard.

Quite a while ago we reached the point of the left redefining common words that have had an accepted definition for however long those words have existed, and coming up with new “woke” definitions that deny both common sense and even the idea that there is an objective truth to things.

Unknown factor: the Russian public and the Russian military

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “Kate” writes:

I don’t think anyone on our side of the fence knows what’s really going on in Russia, or whether public opinion there makes any difference. Some military observers are now estimating Russian military deaths so far at 15,000; I had previously seen an estimate near 10,000, and numbers of injured are much higher. Russian leadership may not care about casualties; can they hide the numbers from the families of the dead and injured?

First let’s take the question of how many Russians have died fighting this war. The western military says it’s a lot, and there was also a brief Russian report to that effect

A Pro-Kremlin tabloid on Monday reported that nearly 10,000 Russian troops have been killed in the war in Ukraine — before the publication removed the figure and claimed it had been hacked.

The Putin-friendly Komsomolskaya Pravda, citing the Russian Ministry of Defense, reported that 9,861 Russian troops had died and 16,153 had been wounded in Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion on Feb. 24. It’s unclear whether the tolls were accurate.

Russia hasn’t released any figures since March 2, and even if they had there’s no way to trust their figures. So we just don’t know, but one thing that seems reasonable to conclude is that the figures were higher than expected and will get higher over time.

Russian propaganda has been prepping the Russian people for years with the idea that Greater Russia is a goal, that Ukraine is part of Russia and that it should be part of Russia (in order to rescue the Russians and good Ukrainians there from the bad Ukrainian Nazis), that NATO is trying to destroy Russia, and the like.

How many Russians believe these things? And how many will continue to believe them if and when they discover how many young Russian soldiers have already been sacrificed to this dream? Will they shrug the deaths off as in a noble and worthy cause? Will they think the deaths only prove what Nazis the Ukrainians are?

Or will they blame Putin? And if they blame Putin, will it even matter in terms of his hold on power?

I wish I had the answers, but I only have the questions and the gut feeling that Putin will keep his grip as leader of Russia.

However, I also think that comparisons to the Russian acceptance of the enormous Russian losses in World War II aren’t especially relevant. For one thing, that was a long long time ago and present Russian generations are not the same as those ancestors. For another, during World War II – at least for the phrase of it when the USSR was Germany’s enemy rather than its ally as in the beginning – Russians were defending their homeland from a truly frightening and predatory opponent. They knew without question that it was do or die, and that gives people the will to endure a lot of death and hardship.

That’s more like Ukraine’s position right now than it is like Russia’s today.

And what of the members of the Russian military themselves? If most reports are correct – and I don’t know whether they are, but I certainly think they might be – many of them are conscripts who also were not even told they were going to Ukraine to fight an actual war. They might feel betrayed and confused, which doesn’t add to a military’s fighting spirit. I’m not sure whether there’s been any actual laying down of arms by Russian military – and what is done to those who might do that, which can include being shot by those in charge. But even without outright quitting, there can be more subtle effects on the morale of the military and the vigor with which they pursue a battle. Is this part of the reason the Russian offensive isn’t going quite as smoothly as many think the Russian command expected it to go?

There’s a potential contradiction and confusion when Russian military are asked to kill so many civilians in a country they’ve been assured is populated by people who are their brothers and who will for the most part welcome them – but who are also Nazis. It’s a rather strange argument, if you think about it. And if these young military men were actually not told they were going there to a war of that nature, what then?

I suppose they can tell themselves all the dead are Nazis. I suppose the Russian fighters might be using weapons that distance them from viewing the dead and realizing what’s been going on. I suppose they can tell themselves it’s collateral damage anyway, inevitable in war. Or that the Ukrainians killed other Ukrainians for PR reasons (I’ve heard there’s Russian propaganda to that effect).

But these men are not the Russians of eighty years ago nor are they in a similar fight. Who they are I don’t know, and I don’t know what effect their perceptions have already had – and will continue to have – on the conduct and outcome of this war.

[NOTE: Some of the perception that Russian fighters feel lied to and betrayed comes from the statements given by many Russian POWs on video. I happen to think they sound sincere for the most part, but I also know that it’s a bad idea to rely on statements of prisoners of war because it’s not clear that they are made freely.]

How to format comments like a pro

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday commenter “Turtler” asked this question: “How do I format my posts, such as bolding, making quotes, etc?”

It occurred to me that a lot of people might be interested in the answer to that question. The answer is to use HTML code. You can find tons of websites with instructions, but most of them list all sorts of code that you’ll never need to comment on a blog. So here are just the basics.

To bold something, enclose it between two bracketed codes. The first one would be left bracket, then a b, then a right bracket. Then you write the words you want bolded. Then you write the closing bracketed code: first a left bracket, than /b and then a right bracket. If I were to write it out here properly instead of describing it, the code would disappear and you’d just see the bolded words like this.

[ADDENDUM: by the word “bracket” I mean this symbol for the left/opening one < and this symbol for the right/closing one > .]

For italics, same thing only with an i between the brackets in the first code and a /i between the brackets in the second code, with the word or words you want italicized in between the two bracketed codes.

For quotes you have the same thing, only blockquote is the word in the first set of brackets and then /blockquote is in the second set of brackets, with the words of the quote in-between.

For links, it’s much the same thing only a bit more complex. Before the link you put a left bracket and then a href=”. Make sure there’s a space between that a and the href or it won’t work properly. Then cut and paste the link. Then on the right of the link you put a left bracket and then /a and then a right bracket to close it out.

That’s all most people will ever need.

Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

Once again, I’m resorting to a roundup because there’s so much important news. All of the following are such big stories that I may revisit one or more of them some time in the future:

(1) Please read this Victor Davis Hanson summary of stories pushed by the left since Trump became president. It’s a yeoman’s task, because there are so many, and most aren’t all that simple. You might want to send it to any Democrat you know who retains even a partially open mind.

(2) This chilling article is worth reading for the light it sheds on a seeming contradiction in the administration’s policy on Russia:

The Biden administration has spent the last two weeks publicly censuring and sanctioning Russia over its brutal invasion of Ukraine. Yet even as it engaged in evermore shrill public denunciations of the undoubted evils of Vladimir Putin, it was simultaneously working hand-in-glove with the Russian dictator to finalize a new agreement with Iran over its nuclear program. So how do we make sense of the administration’s public campaign to isolate Putin at the same time as it partners with the vilest man on the planet to cut a deal with a Russian client state? The key to understanding this seemingly erratic set of zigs and zags is the recognition that Team Biden is following the template that former President Barack Obama created in Syria a decade ago. Let’s call it the “Syria playbook.”…

At the heart of Obama’s maneuvering in and around Syria was the practice of strategic messaging, which allowed Obama to hold both ends of the stick while speaking out of both sides of his mouth—or rather, letting cynical or clueless members of his administration strike seemingly contradictory poses, each of which allowed him to advance toward his goal. He could be simultaneously moralizing and a cold realist—whatever it took not to be distracted from his main objective of a deal with Iran…

In August 2012, Obama made the blunder that he has since repeatedly said he regrets most of all out of every decision he made as president, when he boxed himself in by laying down a red line against Assad’s use of chemical weapons—a line Assad would cross repeatedly, all the way to a major chemical attack in August of 2013. Again, Obama turned to Russia to bail him out of a commitment he had no intention of keeping, as the rest of his presidency demonstrated quite clearly…

That Putin fully understood Russia’s importance in Obama’s Iran calculus could be seen by the fact that the Russian dictator immediately pressed his advantage by seeking compensation in Ukraine. In early 2014, he took the first small bite of the sovereign nation, invading and annexing Crimea. The United States’ reaction was rich in rhetorical condemnation and otherwise pointedly feeble…

As the talks with Iran entered their final stage, Putin began his preparations to move on Ukraine. No more amuse-bouches. Now it was time to Syrianize Ukraine—to consume it whole, as Russia’s main course at the Iran deal banquet.

Much more at the link. It explains quite clearly what we pretty much already knew – how the Russian demand to be allowed to be sanction-free in its dealings with Iran works, and why they felt confident that demand would be acceded to by the Biden [that is, Obama 3.0] administration. Note also the prominence of some familiar names from the Obama administration that are maneuvering things now as well.

(3) Okay, so the august NY Times has made a low-key admission that the Hunter Biden laptop was authentic after all. Now how about tackling the apparent crimes and corruption and scandals it describes, as listed by Margot Cleveland? The article deals with eight: pay-to-play in Ukraine; China gets in the game; Moscow, Kazakhstan, and more, Ukraine’s firing of the prosecutor investigating Burisma; Obama-Biden administration ignoring conflicts of interest; the intelligence community’s briefing of Biden (about the loss of Hunter’s laptop); possible collusion to interfere in the 2020 election; Joe Biden is a ‘Lying dog-faced pony soldier’.

(4) There’s a probe going on in Georgia of claims of ballot harvesting fraud in the 2020 election and the 2021 Senate runoffs in that state. The Senate runoffs in Georgia were exceptionally important, and the alleged conspirators had plenty of time to plan and plenty of money to use, money contributed by people who understood the stakes were enormous: control of the US Senate.

It’s a bit late, though. The damage is done, whatever is found.

Siege

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a report from the besieged city of Mariupol. It’s harrowing.

A companion piece to that is here:

Former UK veterans affairs minister Johnny Mercer, an erstwhile artillery officer who did three tours in Afghanistan, visited Kyiv/Kiev, and high-rise apartment blocks as they zero in on some Ukrainian secret military facility. They are landing right on target – often right through the front door – bottom centre of the block.

“These are no mistakes. It is deliberate targeting of civilians in their homes with the deliberate intent of breaking their will and accelerating the collapse of the Ukrainian state.”

In line with that, Rich Lowry has this to say:

An invading army surrounds a European city, cuts off its supplies, bombards it, and demands surrender.

Is it 1346? 1631? 1870? 1941? Or 2022?

The answer is any of the above, and all of the above. The Russian siege of Mariupol is shocking not because it is unprecedented, but because it is so traditional — a form of war that is grinding, brutish, and all too typical in European history…

Russia’s operation in Mariupol, the strategically located port city on the Sea of Azov, has been blatantly bloody-minded. It hasn’t even made a pretense of honoring basic decency, let alone the modern rules and norms around warfare. The Russians have cut off food, electricity and medical supplies, and been reducing the freezing city to rubble.

By some estimates, 80% of the residential buildings in the city have been damaged. The Russians, notoriously, shelled a maternity ward and a theater and a school where people were sheltering. Authorities have been forced to bury the accumulating dead bodies, wrapped in carpets or bags, in a mass grave…

Putin’s brutalizing of Ukraine is a reminder of how essential it is to support the Western order — the alternative is so much worse. It is a reminder of how human affairs can easily slide backwards — the history of civilization is of folly, catastrophe and decline, as well as of enlightenment, achievement and progress. And it is a reminder that when a nation is determined to rule by blood and iron, hard power is the only deterrent and recourse — if anything saves Ukraine, it will be missiles, drones and artillery, not norms or treaties.

I reluctantly agree – although I have no idea if Ukraine’s autonomy can be saved by anything, short of a change of plans on Russia’s part (including a coup against Putin, which I think unlikely but marginally possible). But even back when I was a liberal Democrat I was puzzled by the idea of international law – a subject in which I took a year-long course in law school. The thing I could never understand was how it could be enforced, because it seemed that it only worked among nations that already had reason to get along and to agree on a host of things. And without enforcement, law is hollow. The only thing that enforces international law is agreement or force, and force in international terms means either severe sanctions or arms and often war, or some combination of all of it. Law can only be enforced afterwards – as at Nuremberg – by the victors.

“Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime”

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter John Tyler reminds us of this famous saying by Beria, the notorious head of Stalin’s secret police: “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.” As with some of our current political prosecutors, the idea is that anyone can be framed, prosecuted, found guilty, and put away. Although in Beria’s case the “put away” part often involved murdering them under guise of law or without it, today’s US prosecutors of the left usually settle for imprisoning someone for a long time, perhaps even life if possible.

But let’s put our US prosecutors aside for a moment, because I have another observation on Beria. I strongly believe that Beria was a sociopath (or psychopath; take your pick). That’s one of those words that is merely helpful as a description of a type, because we understand very little about what makes a person that way. However, I have a theory about such people, and that is that two of the things they believe are as follows:

(1) Life is a power struggle in which everyone else is as corrupt and self-centered as they are, and those who seem otherwise are either pretending or are just weak fodder for exploitation by the strong.

(2) The sociopath has determined himself or herself to be that strong, smart, and superior person who will be doing the exploitation.

Therefore when someone such as Beria says “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime,” he’s not only referring to the fact that he, Beria, can manufacture charges against anyone – although that is indeed one of the things he is referring to. But I believe he’s also saying that there is nothing special about Beria except his own power, canniness, and acknowledgement of the amoral dog-eat-dog functioning of all society and all human beings. He believes that everyone is guilty anyway, and that if they’re not guilty of the exact crime for which Beria charges them, they’re guilty of something – if only stupidity and weakness, or thinking the world is a moral one. That’s for chumps.

The ordeal of Brady Knowlton

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s another January 6th defendant story that will chill your blood:

Brady Knowlton entered the U.S. Capitol building at 2:35 p.m. on January 6, 2021. Like hundreds of other people that day, he walked the halls of Congress — first the Rotunda, then the lobby, then the Senate chamber gallery.

A 40-year-old law student, Knowlton and a friend gained access to the Capitol through the Upper West Terrace doors. To do so, they and others passed several police officers walking in their opposite direction, according to footage and discovery materials reviewed by The Daily Wire. Knowlton told The Daily Wire that an officer said, “You can go in, as long as you don’t break anything.” He says he watched police shake hands with protestors. He broke nothing, and left after 18 minutes.

He now faces about 20 years in prison. His law degree has been withheld, his lawyers say, Airbnb has banned him and his wife, and, for reasons that remain undisclosed, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection has stripped his Global Entry access…

“He went to Washington to exercise his First Amendment right to petition the government for what he believed was a redress of grievances,” Alan Dershowitz, an attorney for Knowlton, told The Daily Wire in an interview. “And he’s been lumped together with people who caused damage or who intended to obstruct. He wasn’t intending to do that. He just intended to protest.”

The whole thing is well worth reading. But sadly, it’s a now-familiar story.

What have we become? I think I know the answer, and it’s not good.

Russia’s Ukraine war will probably spark nuclear proliferation

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s hard to conclude otherwise. It seems to me quite obvious that if Ukraine had kept its nuclear weapons, Russia would not have attacked it. Or at the very least, Russia would have been far more reluctant to have attacked it.

This lesson almost certainly is not lost on other non-nuclear countries that face the threat of attack from others – that they need some sort of nuclear umbrella to protect them from a nuclear rainy day. As the world watches Ukraine fight off a more old-fashioned type of invasion from a Russian aggressor unafraid of nuclear retaliation from Ukraine or perhaps even any other country (or NATO) – a Russia whose head also openly says he’s willing to use nuclear blackmail against any significant intervention that would send military or certain types of planes to assist Ukraine – there’s a feeling of impotence.

Nuclear weapons are most useful for deterrence. Putin is certainly using them that way against the west. Ukraine has none. NATO has some but is afraid of using them – or even threatening to use them – against Putin. That takes away much or all of their deterrence value for NATO.

Trump’s brag is that he said this to Putin:

In a recording of the phone conversation with pro-golfer John Daly on Friday, March 4, the former president said: “They’re all saying oh he’s a nuclear power, it’s like they’re afraid of him. You know, he was a friend of mine, I got along great with him. I say, Vladimir, if you do it, we’re hitting Moscow. We’re going to hit Moscow. And he sort of believed me like 5%, 10% – that’s all you need.”

He continued that Putin “never did it during my time John, you know. They were all talking about it, ‘Why didn’t he do this during the last four years?’ Because he knew he couldn’t,” before mentioning that China’s President Xi Jinping is also afraid of him. The Republican added: “Xi didn’t bother me either. I told him the same thing, that that’ll be next. You know that’s going to be next. Taiwan will be next. You won’t have any computer chips. They’ll blow them off the face of the earth.”

Did Trump really say that to Putin and/or Xi? Who knows? The point is that Trump understood the uses of keeping other leaders wondering. Whether or not he said this directly, it was implicit in his persona. That can be valuable. Of course, it could also be argued that it could be provocative.

When I was a child, nuclear weapons were relatively new. Many of us who were very young in the 1950s remember having intense fear of a worldwide nuclear war that would obliterate human life. The 1959 movie “On the Beach” was a fictional representation of that fear, and also quite a good movie. I saw it as a child and it was the stuff of nightmares – nightmares I was already having anyway.

As I grew up – something I hadn’t been sure would even occur – and then got sort of old, the fear receded because we had had these weapons so long and somehow they’d been kept in check. Cooler heads, saner times? It sure doesn’t seem that way anymore, does it?

[NOTE: There’s also the question of Russia’s claim to hypersonic weapons, as well as their possible use already in the Ukraine war. There’s a discussion and some links about this in today’s open thread, and it’s certainly a fit topic for this post’s comments thread as well.]