I saw something rather alarming on Twitter today –apparently, there is a growing belief that the Belarusians are going to attack Ukraine in the west. This is a “not great, Bob” moment because one might make the assumption that such an attack would be directed against the city of Lviv.
What the what?
Add to this that such an attack would hug the border between Ukraine and NATO, holy shit, it makes you think that Putin through his Bealrusian proxies really is in his fuck around and find out phase of the Russo-Ukrainian Winter War. (Which, if it last much longer, I’m going to have to get rid of the “winter” part of its designation.)
It makes you wonder. Is it possible WW3 has started and we just don’t know it yet? Does Putin want a direct war with NATO? Such an idea, on paper, makes absolutely no sense. In fact, it only makes any sense in the context of Russia forming some sort of Axis with China, the DPRK and Iran.
Otherwise, what the what?
We’re reaching a point where we’re sort of in a make or break moment in recent modern world history. Either Putin escalates in a rather dramatic fashion and we see the end of the WW2 liberal order and something akin to WW3, or we punt the structural problems of the modern geopolitical world down the road until the United States answers its autocracy or civil war question in the 2024 – 2025 timeframe.
Thankfully — I guess — we’re probably going to get our answer as to what’s going to happen next with a matter of days or weeks. Things are too unstable. Either Putin loses, or in a desperate effort to win he destroys everything.
What’s interesting to me is how Republicans have so gamed the system that now it’s impossible to talk about some pretty big issues — gun control, global climate change and racism being among them. They’re off the table, never to be addressed or spoke about ever again.
And, sad to say, it’s possible that once Roe is overturned, they will do the same thing with not only abortion rights, but contraception in general. Because that’s the ultimate goal of fascist Republicans — to make it impossible for people to have sex without the risk of pregnancy. Gay rights, too, are probably going to get wrapped up in the Republican politics of nihilism.
Or, in other words — anything Republicans don’t want to talk about will become impossible to talk about.
That will be the last step before we have the existential choice of civil war or autocracy. Another step in that direction will be when someone hurts someone like, say, Dr. Fauci and Republicans talk about how after years of talking about him like he’s the devil, now is not the time for politics, but “thoughts and prayers.”
Anyway, the point is — we’re fucked. We are so completely fucked that you had better enjoy these last few months of normal life before the Republicans regain the House and Senate and all we do is talk about how many times both Biden and Harris have been impeached.
I’m going to shut up about this very soon, but occasionally it takes a few days for one of my ideas to work itself out of my mind. Anyway, the problem with anything like a “New Masculinity” book is because of the woke media narrative we live with, any book that addresses traditional male gender roles in a positive way will be attacked and derided.
The freaky weirdos have won, if you will. (Wink.)
Now, some context. I only even talk about this in this way because I’m growing more and more alarmed by the rise of the fascist MAGA New Right in the United States. One way to slow down — but not stop — the existential choice of fascist autocracy or civil war in the general 2024 – 2025 timeframe is to give one of core elements of the MAGA New Right, alienated Traditionalists men, something to embrace.
In other words, anything to do with traditional male gender roles is a fucking clusterfuck of different groups feeling they have the right to control what that even means. Or, put another way, if someone were to articulate a New Masculinity, then maybe you could walk all Joe Rogan fans off the cliff they’re on where they’re one step away from embracing fascism.
Rather than addressing the issue head on, I think I would hide the notion of New Masculinity in a leadership book. In the male mind, leadership is equated with a traditional male concept. (Even though this is obviously wrong — women make great leaders.)
But the audience for this book would be a college educated Rogan fan. You take something they like — Rogan’s earnest masculinity — and instead of that being a gateway drug into fascism, you give them the option of framing modern masculinity — and leadership — in the context of people like Washington, Lincoln, TR, FDR, Churchill and Zelensky.
So, in a sense, using subtext, you tell these professional men — who should know better about being MAGA New Right -that it’s ok to be a Traditional male in the modern, woke era. You use Zelensky as an avatar, a totem for modern male leadership.
Anyway. Absolutely no one listens to me. And I’m sure if they listened to me with this suggestion I’ll be canceled.
According to the current media narrative, using traditional male concepts as part of traditional male behavior is something to disparage. I’m very empathetic to the crux of this argument.
Zelenskyy
And, yet, just like the slogan “defund the police” is really more about “demilitarizing the police,” so, too, is “slay the patriarchy” really more about the male dominating world being forced to accept the equality of women on a basic level than destroying the world of men in its entirety. (At least, I hope so, for my own sake. Yikes.)
But both slogans are easily corrupted by the MAGA New Right as a bludgeon against a very crucial element of any democracy’s body politic — conservative Traditionalist men.
With this in mind, the conventional wisdom among Blue Check thought leaders in the West at the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian Winter War was that Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, would fold and run away from Kyiv to a more secure location like Lviv in the western part of the country.
But this did not happen.
Instead, Zelenskyy did a very traditional male leader thing — he stood and fought.
That Zelenskyy would do something so basic, so human, so traditional, so masculine without the benefit of a flipping the script in any way came across as something of a shock to Western observers. Zelenskyy was just a traditional male doing traditional things in a traditional way. There was nothing particularly innovative about his leadership style other than it existed and he as just a regular guy doing leading his people in a time of crisis.
This definitely goes against the woke narrative where the only way we can accept leadership is if there is some spicy twist to things. Zelenskyy is not transgendered, nor does he quibble about his pronouns (as far as I know.) He’s just a dude.
So, I propose some discourse over the possibility of what I call New Masculinity. This would be an acceptance that we can both validate and update traditional male concepts without going out of our way to alinate Traditionalist men who are so enraged by the woke agenda that they turn to nothing short of fascism — the MAGA New Right.
It seems to me that there is a possibility that the entire Western world is careening towards a moment when the type of male leadership that Zelenskyy has displayed will be desperately needed. It does not take a soothsayer to notice how unstable the United States is growing and the high risk of a “Great Reset” or “Fourth Turning” around the 2024 – 2025 timeframe.
Maybe we could use Zelenskyy as something of an avatar, a totem that Traditionalists men could imbue with their own, non-woke narrative. I have my doubts that this Hail Mary plot to take the steam out of the misogynistic MAGA New Right will work. But it is something to at least discuss.
The reason I’m doubtful is what I’m proposing is nuanced and subtle. In the extreme polarization of Blue and Red that America currently exists in, the moment Traditionalists adopted my plan, Woke culture would freak the fuck out. Woke people would make fun of the New Masculinity and deride it for not being attune enough to the needs of the modern world. Slay the patriarchy, and all that, don’t you know.
But the New Masculinity of Zelenskyy does produce results. It seems as though Zelenskyy may soon be mentioned in the same breath as Lincoln, FDR and Churchill. He is doing what needs to be done to save his nation from tyranny.
The truly surreal element of all of this is, of course, that because the MAGA New Right is so beholden to the dream of a Russian-style autocratic white Christian ethno state for America, they are wilfully oblivious to the benefits of adopting Zelenskyy as their own.
As I said, I doubt anything will come of this. And if it does, it will probably be corrupted for selfish reasons so it seen as nothing more than the 90s Men’s Movement with a different name or, even worse, some variation of the freaky weirdo Incel movement. But, again, Zelenskyy’s bravery in the face of adversity at least opens the door to some discourse on how he might be an icon for New Masculinity.
An element of the rhetorical political froth within the MAGA New Right is the idea that if “woke” people don’t watch out, the South Will Rise Again and there will be some sort of, I don’t know, Turner Diaries in real life. Now, all of this is very, very dumb.
To me, what really is going on is MAGA New Right people get so worked up whenever their fee-fees get hurt over this or that “woke” policy that they grasp for the worst possible thing they can think of. They babble about a Second Civil War or even Second Revolution. They see themselves as Patriots who will take down the “tyranny” of people who want them to wear masks and quibble out pronouns.
There is so much to unpack here.
First, collectively, the MAGA New Right is made up of racist cock sucker peices of shit. They’re scared of a changing America where women are economically and sexually liberated and white people are no longer the majority. In short, they’re kind of freaking out. Now, on an individual basis most of the conservative people I know — and am related to — aren’t racist. But they are a part of systemic racism. I can’t talk about that, however, because that’s Critical Race Theory and, I don’t know, the Thought Police division of ICE is going to swoop down and murder me in cold blood if I write about it anymore.
The craziest part of all of this is, when it comes to the hard power of the government making laws, the MAGA New Right is ascendant. They control huge swaths of the government and after we finally decide civil war or autocracy in 2024 – 2025, may have autocratic control in the United States for decades, generations, to come.
But there is a chance that there will, instead be a civil war. And it won’t be the MAGA New Right that starts it, but rather the center-Left when Blue States — staring with California — leave the Union because of some sort of Certification Crisis.
THEN, it’s possible the fucking cocksucker MAGA New Right fuckheads will get ot have their revolution in the context of a civil war, though in all honesty, even then it would probably be a COUNTER-Revolution.
Anyway, the point is — we’re fucked. Totally, completely fucked. If the US collapses, then WW3 really would start soon after. Then the issue is how many people die and what the world will look like after the “Great Reset” of a “Fourth Turning” is over.
Is humanity more united, or simply run by a bunch of fucking autocrats? Only time will tell.
When it comes to the notion of a “vibe shift,” one has to look no further than the 1980s. The pop culture of the early 1980s was very, very different of that of the late 1980s. In a way, it seems like the 80s were the last decade to have real personality.
I mean, can you off the top of your head think of what the 90s were “about” other than grunge and the Dotcom Bubble? Compare to what we have now, the 90s were a regular Era of Good Feelings. A lot this, of course, came from how racist White People did not have the looming prospect of scary brown and black people dominating the nation’s demographics.
Both the 00s, the 10s and the 20s (so far) really haven’t been about anything other than vague things like “the War on Terror” or “the Great Recession” or “Trumplandia.” The 80s, meanwhile, had a lot of personality. True Grit.
The 80s were the last decade where everyone in the United States was on the same cultural page. When there was a “vibe shift” everyone did it at the same time.
And, really, it could be that it could take WW3 globally and civil war in the USA for there to be some sense of unity again when it comes to a “vibe shift.” WW3 would force everyone to sit up and take notice that a huge event was happening around them, that history was wide awake again. The fact that a limited nuclear exchange would fry everyone’s electronics might aid in that unity of vision, too.
But, lulz. What do I know. I’m just a nobody in the rural part of a flyover state.
The idea that we consider “WW3” is actually a spectrum of different scenarios, with The End Of The World being on one end and just a big old lulz at the other end. A lot of what would be “WW3” would be something that was marketed as such by the press.
The most likely scenario for something called “WW3” would be two or more regional wars happening at the same time. So, if China attacked Taiwan because it felt Russia was a brother in arms, then, that, legitimately, could be called WW3.
But no matter what, it’s at least possible that WW3 has already begun, we just don’t realize it yet. If Russia used low-grade battlefield nukes on Ukraine, then the slide into an actual fighting war between NATO and Russia would likely accelerate. And given that the 80 year old taboo against using nukes would no longer exist, Taiwan would definitely begin to look far more enticing to China. And, of course, you have the wildcard of the DPRK floating around.
AND — and this is a very important and — you have to take into account that the US is careening towards unprecedented instability starting the moment the Republicans take control of Congress. And that instability will only get worse and worse as we approach the existential choice of autocracy or civil war in the 2024 – 2025 timeframe.
So, it’s possible that in hindsight, 2022 will be seen not as 1939, but as 1937, the year when Japan attacked China in a big way and laid the groundwork for WW2. Or, put another way, you could go so far as to say you can count in months the time we have of lingering “normal” life before all hell really breaks loose.
The real question is what will the world look like once we get through this Great Reset or Fourth Turning (or whatever you want to call it.) Either humanity will be run by a bunch of autocrats or we’ll be even more united and able to deal with Big Issues like global climate change.
A few million (billion?) people may have died to get us to that latter endgame, but hopefully their deaths won’t have been in vain. But let me be clear — the United States is ripe for revolution / civil war in the coming years. If you were looking at America as different nation than ours this would be clear. And, honestly, I think the only thing that’s stopped us from collapsing is interia and the general laid back national personality of Americans. We’re not French, afterall.
The nightmare scenario we face at the moment, of course, is that Putin is no longer a rational actor. As such, the same screwy logic that had him go into Ukraine might cause him to attack NATO in some way. Either by, say, attacking a convoy supplying Ukraine or attacking a Baltic state or states.
That would be when Putin and NATO would face an existential choice. Either they figured out some way to reduce tensions, or they went at it. I read Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising novel when I was a kid and much of what I learned from it way back when it still applicable. Just because WW3 started, doesn’t mean it would have to go nuclear.
What I could imagine happening is some sort of geopolitical tet-a-tet between the Usual Suspects of nations that would have a vested interest in ending the 75 year old Pax America. If Putin was somehow able to get China, the DPRK and Iran to make a full-blow attack against American global dominance, then we’re going to the show.
In a way, I think the DPRK would be the lynchpin of any attempt on Putin’s bonkers calculations. The DPRK is so strange, there is at least a chance they might be leaned on to attack the South Koreans in a big way, without really realizing they were being used as a pawn for Russia and China’s bigger goal of re-arranging the global order.
The DPRK is a unique nuclear state in that it has the means and opportunity to destroy a major American city without ending anything but itself. In other words, the DPRK has ICBMs and H-bombs that it could use to zap LA, NYC or DC…and in the end all that would happen is the USA would, in turn, bomb the DPRK into the Stone Age.
But using a City Killer on NYC or LA would leave a serious mark on the USA, to the point that Russia and China could re-arrange the global political order to their liking without sacrificing any of their own people. This is a real stretch to some extent, but if Putin is no longer a rational actor, then it’s logic that we at least have to mull.
The thing is, once WW3 started, by definition, the peace and prosperity that billions have enjoyed since WW2 would come to a rather abrupt end. There would be no value to it and we would only give it narrative after it was over. So, in short — the bad guys might win. The USA could be left crippled after a limited nuclear exchange with the DPRK and Russia and China would fill the void.
Meanwhile, Iran and Israel might blow each other up, as might India and Pakistan. A real New World Order might emerge, with China, specifically, having a clear shot at dominating the world both economically and politically. Russia might also rise in the context of global climate change that no one seems all that interested in doing anything about.
What’s more, even if we manage to escape WW3 in the near term, around 2024 – 2025, all the conditions are there for it to happen, anyway, since the US is either going to become Fortress Autocratic America or have a civil war. In either case, everything will be scrambled for the first time in around 80 years. It will be The Great Reset or The Fourth Turning, depending on how bonkers or conspiratorial you are.
There’s a lot of talk these days about the possibility of World War Three happening. Well, let’s think about how it might happened and what it would, in practical terms, look like.
The first issue is we don’t know if Putin is a rational actor or not on the world stage. But, then, we didn’t expect him to invade Ukraine and he did that, so we have to take seriously that he might go after the Baltic states who are members of NATO.
If he did that, then, yes, in a legal sense WW3 would begin. But a lot would depend on what happened after that. If Putin just fucked with the Baltic states, that wouldn’t really be WW3 unless there was some sort of limited nuclear exchange. Him just scaring the shit out of the Baltics enough that it was considered an act of war and caused them to invoke NATO’s Article 5…would just be really meaningless – but scary — events.
What Putin would need would be an Axis of some sort. He would need other major powers who wanted to challenge Pax America as well to act in unison with him. This would require, of course, Putin to convince President Xi of China to attack Taiwan — potentially with tactical nukes after Putin had broken that particular taboo himself in Ukraine.
Xi might, in turn, lean on the North Koreans to go after the the South Koreans as some sort of distraction. And, if Putin was REALLY LUCKY, he might be able to rope Iran into this particular clusterfuck as well.
As all of this was happening, you would also probably have India and Pakistan going at it as well. So, there you go. That would be WW3 and there would be no assurances that either Pax America survives or that, well, any of us survives.
One thing that is so interesting is how my Traditionalist relatives are not satisfied with having hard, legal power. MAGA and the conservative movement in general is ascendant.
If they don’t manage to bungle the transition into autocracy and push the United States into a needless Second Civil War, there’s a good chance that they’ll have very hard power for decades to come. But that’s not good enough for them — they want soft power, too.
The Traditionalists in my family are enraged by the soft power of the “woke” movement. Even after I beg and plead with them to see how the woke movement has only soft power, they just don’t care. They hate that “Woke Culture” exists at all and want to destroy it. Period.
I assume this comes from how much they hate the perceived media narrative where they fear they will be “canceled” just for being conservative. While this is a valid fear, sad to say, if push came to shove, I would much rather have hard legal power than the soft power that woke people have.
Mike Pompeo — future autocrat, fat fuck.
So, I don’t know what to tell you. In the end, it’s likely that my Traditionalist relatives will be the backbone of America’s autocracy. My relatives will have only one red line — ME. And by the time I vanish because I cross President Mike Pompeo by constantly calling him out as a fat fuck, it will be woefully too late.
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