Bargaining Doesn't Work Here

I have a good friend who has been trying to convert me to his form of Christianity for 52 years. In his words, he wants me to repent of my sins and welcome Jesus Christ into my heart as my personal Savior.

During the Sacrament of Holy Communion Episcopalians ask forgiveness of their sins and repeat the tenets of faith in the Nicene Creed. Although these are consistent with his faith, that's not good enough for my friend.

To be fair, he is well aware that he and I each have chronic illnesses that will shorten our lives, and he is anxious for me to use his methods for the sake of my immortal soul. (Pascal's Wager comes to mind, i.e., give your all to saving a soul in this world because the reward of salvation is infinite.)

Leo Tolstoy (Zuma/WSJ)

This line of reasoning makes me increasingly uncomfortable, i.e., perform a set of actions in order to get into heaven. Konstantin Levin, the co-protagonist of Tolstoy's “Anna Karenina,” rejects this transactional philosophy. [bold added]

Levin realizes that our fundamental knowledge of right and wrong isn’t derived from theory but is simply “given.” “I and all men have one firm, incontestable knowledge, and that knowledge cannot be explained by reason—it is outside it, and has no causes and can have no effects.”

In saying goodness has no causes, Levin means that why we have come to think certain things are good—say, the way some evolutionary biologists explain altruism as good for group survival—is a different question. What is good is good regardless of why we’re able to think so. By the same token, “effects” are beside the point because to do something good to be rewarded, in this life or the next, would simply be an economic bargain, like saving for retirement.

Do good as much as you can when you can, and expect nothing in return.

For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.----Matthew 16:25

Containment 2.0

George F Kennan (Wilson Center)

In July, 1947, Foreign Affairs published “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” by "X," the pseudonym for George F. Kennan, who was stationed in Moscow by the State Department from 1944 to 1946. The article became the basis for Soviet "containment," the U.S. policy throughout the Cold War:

It is rather a question of the degree to which the United States can create among the peoples of the world generally the impression of a country which knows what it wants, which is coping successfully with the problems of its internal life and with the responsibilities of a World Power, and which has a spiritual vitality capable of holding its own among the major ideological currents of the time. To the extent that such an impression can be created and maintained, the aims of Russian Communism must appear sterile and quixotic, the hopes and enthusiasm of Moscow’s supporters must wane...

the United States has it in its power to increase enormously the strains under which Soviet policy must operate, to force upon the Kremlin a far greater degree of moderation and circumspection than it has had to observe in recent years, and in this way to promote tendencies which must eventually find their outlet in either the break-up or the gradual mellowing of Soviet power.

Containment was the guiding philosophy behind: 1) the Marshall Plan (1948-1951); 2) the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949; 3) the Korean War (1950-1953); and 4) the Vietnam War (1955-1975), with the U.S. taking the lead role from the French in 1964-1965.

Events that seemed to justify containment were 1) the Soviet atomic bomb (1949); 2) the creation of the People's Republic of China (1949); 3) the growth of communism in Latin America, of which the revolution in Cuba and the Cuban Missile crisis in 1962 were the most important historically.

The point of the above is not to rehash the history of the Cold War, but to point out that the Trump Administration's seemingly endless foreign policy disputes over tariffs, Ukraine, energy, technology transfers, etc, may be clearing the decks for a Cold War 2.0 with China under Containment 2.0. [bold added]

Soon after Donald Trump won the presidential election in November, Xi Jinping asked his aides to urgently analyze the Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union.

His concern, according to people who consult with senior Chinese officials, was that as President Trump gears up for a showdown with Beijing, China could get isolated like Moscow during that era.

He’s not wrong to worry. Even though Trump may be the one who currently looks isolated on the world stage—picking trade fights with erstwhile allies like Mexico and Canada, alarming Europe over his handling of the war in Ukraine and vowing to annex Greenland and the Panama Canal—the truth is that China doesn’t hold a strong hand.

With a domestic economy in crisis, Xi is playing defense, hoping to salvage as much as possible of a global trade system that helped pull his country out of poverty. Across the Pacific, Trump is intent on rewiring that very trading system, which he and his advisers see as having benefited the rest of the world—and China most of all—at the U.S.’s expense.

It isn’t just trade. The competing agendas of the leaders of the world’s two largest economies are poised to lead to precisely what China is trying to avoid: a superpower clash not seen since the Cold War, an all-encompassing rivalry over economic, technological and overall geopolitical supremacy.

Seen in that light, President Trump is willing to take the hit for being called Putin's stooge in the matter of Ukraine. The U.S. cannot afford to have Russia and China allied against it in a contemporary version of Monolithic Communism, now regarded, to be sure, as over-exaggeration by historians decades later.

His critics say that he is crazy, stupid, impulsive, and narcissistic. Perhaps the question should be: is Donald Trump that smart?

Stumbling and Bumbling to Armageddon

Tuchman's history of the miscalculations
that led to World War I heavily influenced
JFK: "We are not going to bungle into war."

The insatiable news cycle currently has placed inflation, interest-rate cuts, Israel-Gaza, border control, Harris vs. Trump, and Haitians eating cats and dogs (!) at the top of the pile.

Ukraine is secondary, but it should be moved to the very top. The U.S. and NATO are making moves that could result in World War III. [bold added]

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and President Biden on Friday discussed allowing Ukraine to use long-range European-made cruise missiles to strike targets deep inside Russia, according to U.S. and Western officials.

Until now, Western countries supporting Ukraine have balked at allowing Kyiv to use long-range weapons, such as the British-French Storm Shadow, inside Russian territory for fear of escalating the conflict. Officials are concerned in particular that Russian President Vladimir Putin could retaliate by arming the Yemen-based Houthi rebels, who are engaged in a long-running campaign to attack ships in the Red Sea.

Putin has warned the U.S. and its allies that permitting Ukraine to use Western-made long-range missiles against Russia would mean the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s countries were “at war” with Russia.

61 years ago President Kennedy was willing to go to war to prevent Russian missiles from being installed in Cuba. The NATO missiles are already in Ukraine, minutes away from striking the Russian homeland. We seem to be counting on Vladimir Putin to be less prone to war than JFK.

What makes our foreign policy establishment, so rife with miscalculations since the Korean war, so confident that we won't blunder into World War III?

Henry Kissinger (1923-2023)

Henry Kissinger dated glamorous
celebrities like Jill St. John (NY Post)

When there were only three channels on TV, when every city had two newspapers, when print magazines (Time, Newsweek, U.S. News, Life, Look, etc.) each had millions of subscribers, Henry Kissinger headlined all of them. He was the rock star of the Nixon Administration long before "rock star" became a term of approbation in fields other than music.

Henry Kissinger's Harvard professorship lent an aura of intellectual respectability to Nixon's foreign policy, defusing some of the critics' attacks. His "shuttle diplomacy" brokered the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, peace between Israel and Egypt during the Yom Kippur war, and the historic opening of ties with Mao Tse-Tung's China.

It only added to his stature when he dated some of the most glamorous women in the world.

Henry Kissinger has his detractors from the left (bombing of Cambodia) and the right (detente with the Soviet Union). Nevertheless, it is clear that much of today's geopolitical landscape is the result of actions he took 50 years ago. R.I.P.

Climate Change: Prioritized Appropriately

(Image from Seeking Alpha)

A not-unexpected headline: AI Poses ‘Risk of Extinction’ on Par With Pandemics and Nuclear War, Tech Executives Warn

Tech executives and artificial-intelligence scientists are sounding the alarm about AI, saying in a joint statement Tuesday that the technology poses an extinction risk as great as pandemics and nuclear war.

More than 350 people signed a statement released by the Center for AI Safety, an organization that said it works to reduce AI risks.

Some of the smartest people on the planet signed the statement. Other tech luminaries like Elon Musk and Bill Gates have previously expressed concern about the potential dangers of artificial intelligence.

The AI discussion has been going on for a while and is above your humble blogger's pay-grade, but he did notice a significant omission: climate change isn't even listed as a top-three extinction risk.

Now that COVID-19 (pandemic), Russia-Ukraine (nuclear war), and ChatGPT (AI) have shown everyone what they should really be scared about, the nightmarish projections of teenagers are being prioritized appropriately.

The Best and the Worst

Rabbi Myers and the Rev. Jensen

The church at its best: [bold added]

Much has changed since Oct. 27, 2018, when a gunman stormed the Tree of Life synagogue and killed 11 people from three congregations: Tree of Life, New Light and Dor Hadash. The massacre was the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history and left a deep scar in the Jewish community in Pittsburgh...

[Tree of Life] holds its High Holiday services of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur at [Calvary Episcopal] church and puts on a Purim show there where two priests participate—last year’s theme was the board game Clue.

The collaboration started shortly after the attack, when the Rev. Jonathon Jensen of Calvary sent a letter to Rabbi Myers to offer support, including providing space to worship. “Our home is your home,” he wrote.

Vladimir Putin and Patriarch Kirill (Wikimedia)

The church at its worst:

President Vladimir Putin thanked the Russian Orthodox Church for backing his war in Ukraine as he marked the first Orthodox Christmas since he launched his armies on a full-scale invasion, a conflict he has cast as a kind of holy war against a decadent West...

Patriarch Kirill, leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, said in an interview aired on state TV Saturday that worshipers should see the war as a holy struggle against the West to preserve “the Russian world” and unite Slavic lands under Moscow’s spiritual and political control.

Note: see here and here for previous comments on the conflict within the Orthodox Church over the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The church often exhibits the frailties and wanton desires of men. But it also reminds us of the means of grace and the hope of glory.

Churches and States

Patriarch Kirill (WSJ)

Three years ago the Ukrainian Orthodox church split off from the Russian Orthodox church. "Putin bitterly resented" the separation, which may have been a factor in his decision to annex portions of Ukraine. [Note: in Ukraine "almost two-thirds of Orthodox churches are still formally aligned with the Russian Orthodox Church."]

After it began, Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox church has supported the invasion to such an extent that it threatens a division in the wider Eastern Orthodox church:

In sermons broadcast on dedicated Orthodox TV channels and YouTube, the 75-year-old patriarch, who has led the church since 2009, has portrayed the war as a holy struggle against the West to preserve what he calls the russky mir—Russian world—uniting East Slavic lands including Ukraine under Moscow’s spiritual and political fold. The concept, which the patriarch has espoused with particular fervor since 2012, is an undercurrent to much of Mr. Putin’s rhetoric...

Outside of Russia, the patriarch’s loyalty to Mr. Putin has aggravated splits in the broader Eastern Orthodox community of some 220 million faithful. In the face of criticism, he has doubled down. Returning to the Armed Forces Cathedral on May 8, he gave another sermon dismissing as nonsense the accusations that his speeches are militaristic and calling on Russians to “consolidate all our forces, spiritual and material, so that no one dares encroach upon the holy borders of our fatherland.”

European Union officials said this month that the bloc is considering sanctions on Patriarch Kirill, including a potential asset freeze and travel ban, for his role as a leading advocate of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The war has revived rumors that the Russian Patriarch was a KGB agent:

Born Vladimir Gundyaev, Patriarch Kirill is widely believed by many church historians to be a former agent of the KGB, where the president himself served...

Patriarch Kirill was born in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, in 1946. After he graduated from the Leningrad seminary in 1970, he rose in the church’s ranks and joined the foreign-relations department, a position that allowed him to take frequent trips abroad at a time when fellow Soviet citizens were banned from doing so.

Evidence from Soviet-era files that emerged publicly in the 1990s suggests that Patriarch Kirill was a KGB agent with the code name “Mikhailov.” While he isn’t named directly, several documents refer to a “Mikhailov” who represented the Russian Orthodox Church at the Switzerland-based World Council of Churches, traveled to international church conferences and provided information to KGB handlers. That lines up with the biography of Patriarch Kirill, who was just 24 when he became the church’s representative to the WCC in 1971.

“There’s absolutely no doubt that Kirill was an agent of the KGB,” said Felix Corley, a U.K.-based author who has researched KGB links to church leaders. By the late Soviet era, it was typical for senior leaders of the Orthodox Church and other faiths to work with the secret police, though the degree of collaboration varied, Mr. Corley said.

The separation of Church and State in America is a constant irritant to political activists of all stripes. Church leaders run the gamut of politics, from opposition to the use of American troops to abortion, from preaching against economic inequality to transgender philosophy, from supporting freedom of speech to decarbonizing the atmosphere.

The separation of Church from State can be frustrating, but Russia has shown what can happen if the separation did not exist.

The One Part of Ukraine That Russia Doesn't Want

Chernobyl has been shut down since 2000 (WSJ photo)

Headline: Russia Hands Control of Chernobyl Back to Ukraine, Officials Say

The Russian troops began leaving in phases on Tuesday, and the entire Russian deployment had left the area by late Thursday. That concluded a five-week occupation of the defunct plant that began on the first afternoon of the Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, when Russian troops arrived at the plant, the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident...

The recent situation at the plant has been the subject of intense speculation since the Russians overran it. Ukraine’s intelligence agency claimed that Russia was preparing a false-flag attack on the exclusion zone—the 1,000-square-mile, mostly uninhabited area around the plant—to blame Ukraine as a pretext for escalating the war. Russian state media said Ukraine was close to building a plutonium-based “dirty bomb” at Chernobyl. Neither side provided evidence for its claims.

All of Chernobyl’s reactors have been shut down since 2000, but the plant still employs thousands of staff to keep cool water circulating over thousands of spent fuel rods kept in four-story-deep basins lined with steel and reinforced concrete.

The Red Forest's dead trees have been removed
but the radiation remains (TNR)

According to Ukraine, the Russians didn't leave because of Ukrainian military action:

Several hundred Russian soldiers were forced to hastily withdraw from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine after suffering “acute radiation sickness” from contaminated soil, according to Ukrainian officials.

The troops, who dug trenches in a contaminated Red Forest near the site of the worst nuclear disaster in history, are now reportedly being treated in a special medical facility in Gomel, Belarus. The forest is so named because thousands of pine trees turned red during the 1986 nuclear disaster. The area is considered so highly toxic that not even highly specialized Chernobyl workers are allowed to enter the zone.

News from either side is untrustworthy, but so far there is no negative evidence or counter-argument to the conclusion that the Russians "won" Chernobyl without knowing of its dangers.

But how could they not know of the most (in)famous nuclear accident in history? The degree of organized stupidity in one of the most formidable militaries on the planet is very difficult to believe.

A Strong Religious Element to the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

Vladimir Putin is a practicing Russian Orthodox Christian

The conventional wisdom is that religious wars between Christians are ancient history. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is not a religious war, but there is a strong religious element to Vladimir Putin's attempt to absorb Ukraine into Russia.

Frederick Kagan, former professor of military history at West Point, delves into this motivation when interviewed by Jordan Peterson on February 27, 2022: [bold added]

Putin has carried on the tradition of the czars of subordinating the Moscow patriarchate to himself. The Moscow patriarchate is fundamentally an arm of the Russian government, and so he controls it de facto.

It [the Russian Orthodox Church] is not an independent religious authority in reality, even though it is ostensibly. Its relations with the Vatican are whatever Putin decides he's willing to have them be at any given moment. I don't understand there to be a particularly contentious relationship [with the Vatican].

If you want to get really nerdly on this, there was a big fight a couple of years ago because the Ukrainian Orthodox Church had been a component, or subordinated to, the Moscow patriarchate. The formal leader of all of the Orthodox communities is in Istanbul. A few years ago, I forgot exactly when [note: January, 2019], the Ukrainian Orthodox Church petitioned the patriarch in Istanbul to grant it autocephaly, to make it independent of the Moscow patriarchate. And that was granted. And so the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has become an independent entity directly under the Istanbul patriarchate.

Putin bitterly resented that, hated it, attacked it. It is one of his grievances that that occurred.

The Eastern Orthodox Church is organized into 16 independent ("autocephalic") patriarchates, which now includes the three-year-old Orthodox Church of Ukraine. While each patriarchate is self-governing, Orthodox Christians can take communion in any other Orthodox church.

Note: Professor Kagan apparently misspoke when he said that Ukraine, which had been part of the Russian church, was now "under" Istanbul; Istanbul recognized Ukraine as independent from the Russian Orthodox Church, which is one of the 15 other hierarchies. Note also that the Istanbul bishop is not "the formal leader" but is first among equals; he has no formal authority over the other patriarchates.

Below is the YouTube recording of the interview. The excerpt above begins at 14:20.

A Resolve That No One Expected

Georgio Armani and co: you know it's serious because
none of the models are smiling (WSJ photo)

The war in Ukraine has resulted in a falling stock market, the skyrocketing price of oil, and fear of the big one: nuclear annihilation. But there is another catastrophe:

Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Casts a Pall on Milan Fashion Week:

The disconnect between fashion and the “real world,” always a heated topic, felt particularly extreme on Thursday, when the invasion escalated and brands including Prada staged their fashion shows to audiences of editors and celebrities...

In a tweet last week that was later deleted, the European Union’s high representative and vice president, Josep Borrell Fontelles, appeared to refer to the rich Russians such sanctions would hit. He wrote, “No more: Shopping in Milano Partying in Saint Tropez Diamonds in Antwerp.”

For an industry that is mightily bolstered by the support and investment of Russian money, any sanctions are consequential. (Italy sells about $1.34 billion of luxury goods to Russia each year.)

The Russian oligarchs could not have imagined that they'd be locked out of Milan, St. Tropez, and Antwerp.

Europe has shown a resolve that no one expected.

Where Are the Adults?

From "How did US markets fare during the Cuban Missile Crisis?"

Kennedy always made sure Khrushchev had a face-saving way out. “Every opportunity was to be given to the Russians to find a peaceful settlement which would not diminish their national security or be a public humiliation,” his brother Robert Kennedy wrote. “I am not going to push the Russians an inch beyond what is necessary,” the president said.

It doesn't require too much imagination to envision nuclear weapons going off when the Russian invasion stalls. Yes, defend Ukraine, but stop with the tweeting, taunting, and beating your chests, and offer the Russians a face-saving way out. Americans supposedly elected adults to run the government in 2020. Now act like adults.

It Stinks

The late, great Chronicle columnist Herb Caen called yesterday's paper today's fishwrap.

Events have proved everything about last month's headline ("U.S., Russia Agree", "Talks", "Defuse") as odoriferous as Herb Caen's descriptor. Russia, brushing off threats of sanctions and ignoring the blandishments of diplomats, bombed cities and invaded Ukraine today.

Although I did not vote for him, we only have one President and I suppose we have to support him in whatever action he takes. It's going to be three long, long years.

The Butterflies Return

Santa Cruz Monarch butterfly (Chron photo)

In an unexpected development global warming, the bête noire of environmentalists everywhere, may be responsible for the resurgence of the monarch butterflies in Monterey County:

conservationists estimate the current population that has arrived in its annual wintertime migration to the California coast to be around 10,000 compared with 1,900 last year.

One possible reason for the rebound: this year’s drought, since warm and dry conditions in early spring can help with their migration...

Though the reason for the rebound isn’t known, [biologist Emma] Pelton said scientists such as Arthur Shapiro at UC Davis have found correlations between drought years and a boost in butterfly populations, at least for butterflies at lower elevations like monarchs.

(Photo from Siberia Times)

Opinion is overwhelming that global warming is normatively bad, but impartial analysis makes it clear that there are significant beneficiaries, specifically Russia and Canada, if temperatures keep rising: [bold added]

Let’s state the long-term truth no diplomat would: The world’s two largest countries are also among the two biggest winners from climate change.

They are already among the top energy and food producers in the world, and with warming temperatures they can more easily access even more energy and produce quantum leaps more food. Oil may be getting cheaper, but agrobusiness is a surging asset class. According to New Scientist magazine, a 4 degree Celsius rise in global averages temperatures would decrease agriculture yields in today’s other leading states such as the U.S., Brazil,China, India and Australia. Meanwhile, Canada and Russia’s ramped up industrial farming industries could be the breadbaskets for the planet. They are the hydro and food superpowers of a dry and thirsty planet.

The land area of the contiguous 48 states is approximately three (3) million square miles, while Siberia's is 5.1 million. If only a fraction of the latter becomes arable due to global warming, it will more than offset farmland losses in the rest of the world, and we're not even taking into account the gains from Canada.

And if the above seems too left-brain for you, dear reader, isn't it great that the butterflies are coming back?

The Revolution Eats Its Own

SF School Board VP Alison Collins (Chron photo)

Viewing everything through the lens of race eventually pits non-white groups against each other.

Note: European history teaches how revolutionaries become ever-more extreme, end up killing each other, and inflict greater cruelties on the general population than the regimes they overthrew. The internecine battles of the Girondist vs. Jacobins and the Mensheviks vs. Bolsheviks in the French and Russian Revolutions, respectively, come to mind. I wonder how modern wokes plan to avoid these precedents or whether they even studied them in school.

Speaking of school, SF School Board Vice-President Alison Collins has been called out for her racist tweets against Asian-Americans in 2016:

In the tweets posted in 2016, Collins said Asian Americans had used “white supremacist thinking to assimilate and ‘get ahead.’”

“Where are the vocal Asians speaking up against Trump? Don’t Asian Americans know they’re on his list as well?” Collins had tweeted. Using asterisks in references to the racial epithet, Collins continued, “Do they think they won’t be deported? profiled? beaten? Being a house n****r is still being a n****r. You’re still considered ‘the help.’”

Collins, who is Black, said she wanted to again express her “sincere and heartfelt apologies,” although she didn’t specify further. In a previous statement Saturday, she apologized for the hurt caused by the tweets, which Lam called a “non-apology.”

For the record your humble blogger thinks that Alison Collins should not be removed from her job for tweets made before she was on the school board. And if she still believes that Asian-Americans should stop studying hard, she should say so and not cave to the outrage. If they want to remove her, let them do so by legal means and not bully her into resigning.

Alison Collins is one of the Board members who thinks Lincoln was too racist to name a school after him, so I gotta admit, it's kinda fun watching her squirm.

Recognizing the Enemy

A mobile version was the only update
the 1919 Protestant Union Bible needed

After receiving their MBA degrees, two of my business-school classmates decided the pursuit of filthy lucre wasn't for them and entered seminary. One became an Episcopal priest, and the other, a Chinese-American evangelical, went to Hong Kong. I thought of him when the Chinese Communist Party announced that it was producing its own version of the Bible: [bold added]

the party sees Christianity, which some estimates suggest is the country’s fastest-growing religion, as a unique threat. [Duke Professor Xi] Lian cites three major reasons. First, Christianity is an international religion. Bonds of affection and solidarity link Christians around the world to their brethren in China.

Second, it is congregational: “You have this ability to mobilize a stable, reliable community.” Congregations helped topple dictatorships in South Korea and Poland. Third, and perhaps most important, Christianity’s “transcendent vision, transcendent values” present the Communist Party with an insuperable “moral and ideological rivalry,” Mr. Lian says, because Chinese people largely see the party’s Marxist-Leninist foundation as a spent force.

Over the centuries translating the Bible has required knowledge and dedication far beyond that of your average scholar. Those undertaking the task must not only be fluent in Greek, Hebrew, and the destination language but know when to deviate from a word-for-word translation in order to capture the poetry of Biblical passages. The CCP version will not only be a crude effort, but the language will be bowdlerized to comport with Marxist ideology:

Purging passages deemed incompatible with “core socialist values” while retaining a measure of the original poetry—this would require literary achievement and deep religious knowledge, both of which are lacking in the party’s handpicked experts.

Joseph Stalin thought little of the power of religion when he asked, "How many divisions does the Pope have?"

67 years after Stalin's death the Soviet Union exists no longer, and Christianity has been targeted as a threat by the most powerful Communist government on earth. Xi Jinping may be ascendant today, but the same fate awaits his attempt to suppress and alter truths that have lasted millennia.

The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceeding fine.

What is This Absurdity?

Edward Luttwak (Guardian)

Author and historian Edward Luttwak, 77, is known for his in-depth knowledge and bold predictions, some accurate (Soviet weakness, rise of populism) and some not (Sino-Soviet war, thousands of American casualties in Gulf War I).

He likens China's mishandling of the coronavirus to Chernobyl, which he views as the beginning of the end for the Soviet Union. [bold added]

Along with Chernobyl comparisons, Chinese citizens online started describing the regime as “ridiculous,” Mr. Luttwak says. “Not evil, not bad—ridiculous. Suddenly, they’re ridiculous.”...Mr. Luttwak doesn’t go so far as to foretell the fall of Chinese communism, but he’s bearish on Mr. Xi.

Regimes need respect born out of fear or love in order to rule, and they cannot long abide ridicule. However, the U.S. would be unwise to pin its strategy on his prediction, especially since it's very tempting to believe that Chinese Communism will collapse on its own.

In the Soviet Union of 1984-1985 another source of scorn was the appointment of the sickly Konstantin Chernenko, then 73, to General Secretary of the Communist Party.

“He could barely talk. He could barely walk. However, the requirements of the Soviet system were that when a new general secretary is installed, his colleagues are filmed saying that they swoon with delight, as if it’s a beautiful 19-year-old girl in a bikini coming out of the water,” Mr. Luttwak says. Chernenko “never did anything. His name is associated with nothing. And now, they’re all pretending that they are swooning with delight.”

People throughout the Soviet Union, including party elites, were disgusted with the spectacle. They wondered, in Mr. Luttwak’s words, “What is this absurdity?

It looks like Edward Luttwak has a point to make about U.S. Presidential politics as well.

No Solace

It's just me, but a hammer-and-sickle crucifix is
not a crucifix (WSJ photo)

For centuries the Church, in order to survive, has accommodated itself to tyrants. However, accommodation is futile in the case of Marxists, who destroy all rival ideologies and faiths once they achieve power: [bold added]

Religion may show man’s longing for a better existence, Marx argued, but it also prevents that dream from becoming reality.

Communist regimes put Marx’s principles into practice, starting with the first Marxist state. Between 1917 and 1921, the Soviet Union destroyed nearly 600 Russian Orthodox monasteries and convents. The leaders of the first communist country oversaw the killing of at least 300 Orthodox clergy. This bloodbath eventually became Soviet policy. The Eighth Party Congress decreed in 1920 that “the Party aims at the complete destruction of links between the exploiting classes and . . . religious propaganda, while assisting the actual liberation of the working masses from religious prejudices.”

The scholar Todd M. Johnson estimates that Soviet authorities sent 15 million Christians to their deaths in prison camps between 1921 and 1950. A further five million Christians perished in the following 30 years. The Soviet Union also targeted Muslim communities for mass deportation, killing, for example, as many as 46% of Crimean Tatars. Thousands of Buddhist monks also died at Soviet gunpoint. Where religion survived in the U.S.S.R., it did so secretly—or under the watchful eye and controlling hand of the state.

Central and Eastern European communist states also suppressed religion. Perhaps best known are the Polish communist attacks on the Catholic-driven Solidarity movement in the 1980s. Today North Korea reserves some of its harshest treatment for those found in possession of Christian Bibles. In Venezuela and Nicaragua, satellites of communist Cuba, Christian communities are viewed as a threat to the dictatorships and have been targeted for punishment.

Communist China is today’s worst offender. Since its founding, the People’s Republic of China has tried to control or eradicate every religion within its borders.

The social-justice wing of the Church allies itself with progressives who will kick it to the curb once the latter are in charge. For example, it doesn't take much imagination to envision what will ensue when the wealth-tax movement starts eyeing beautiful church properties in the Bay Area. Or when a priest is "asked" to provide confessional evidence against an enemy of the state.

But there's no solace in I-told-you-so's.

An Old Guy Speaks His Mind Again

Willie Brown with Beach Blanket Babylon Producer
Jo Schuman Silver and scholarship judge Tracy
Chapman. June 3, 2019. (Chron photo)

California Democratic elder Willie Brown, 85, is no fan of President Trump. But he's also not afraid to speak up when he thinks the President is doing something right or when the Democrats are making a mistake.

In a recent interview President Trump was criticized for saying that he would "listen" to Russia, China, or other foreign sources if they said they had damaging information on an opponent.

Willie Brown said he would do the same.

No politician will admit it publicly, but I’d bet they would all say “yes” to a chance to look at any dirt dug up on their opponent from any source, foreign or domestic. I know I would have been tempted. At the very least, they’re going to have someone from outside the campaign, a hired gun, look at it so there are no fingerprints leading back to them.

Then, once they see what they have, they’re going to decide whether to call in the FBI — after leaking the dirt to the media, of course, assuming it’s true.

The curiosity of what the “dirt” may be is just too great a temptation.

Let’s be honest: If someone came to you with a hot inside stock tip, you might not act on it. But you would listen.

You would not say, ‘Hold on, I’ve got to call the Securities and Exchange Commission.”

And that is what Trump was saying.

One Narrative Finally Wins

Two years ago I wrote about the two narratives that preoccupied the nation then and concluded:

the current or the past President is a "bad (or sick) guy!" (or maybe both are).

Now that the special counsel's report has been submitted, we have an answer. But back to the March, 2017 post, which does hold up remarkably and pathetically:

Who's the good guy and who's the bad guy? (WSJ photo)

Narrative One: Trump Stole the Election
President Trump and his campaign colluded with the Russians to hack communications between Hillary Clinton, President Obama, and other Democrats. The release of this information harmed the Clinton campaign, enough to swing the election. Transcripts confirm that meetings and phone calls occurred between key Trump staff and Russian officials. In exchange for help from the Russians, President Trump will make concessions to Russia on a range of issues; he and his staff also will personally profit from their cooperation. The communications continue to this day.

Narrative Two: Obama is Worse than Nixon
After the Obama Administration unsuccessfully applied for a law-enforcement warrant in June, 2016, the FISA Court approved a surveillance warrant in October. The court made its decision because of false or exaggerated evidence, and the eventual scope of the surveillance over Trump personnel was far wider than the warrant allowed. Since October information on Donald Trump and his staff has been feloniously leaked to the media by Obama appointees, some of whom remain in government. The purpose is to derail President Trump's timetable and question the legitimacy of his election. President Obama used the power of his office to damage the candidate of the opposition party much more than Richard Nixon ever did.

There are many details and nuances that the above summaries don't include. However, unless there are other major explanations, the current or the past President is a "bad (or sick) guy!" (or maybe both are).

Because the narratives are so different, and their respective premises are alarming, it behooves us to get to the truth as soon as possible. Per the WSJ ("Washington Goes Nuts"):

Political collusion with a foreign power and the abuse of intelligence collection to smear an opponent threaten the integrity of democratic institutions. Let’s hope the intelligence committees rise above their putative party leaders and tell America what really happened.

On this Sunday, a very old declaration:

And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

2019: unfortunately, we now know that "the intelligence committees [did not] rise above their putative party leaders and [did not] tell America what really happened." America is more divided than ever, people have stopped listening to each other, and arguments are impervious to facts (both sides say that about the other).

Wake me when it's 2021.

Hungarian Mish-Mash

Vladimir and Viktor, 2015 (WSJ photo)

Donald Trump's foreign policy--whether it be tariffs, North Korea, Iran, climate change, you name it---comes under daily criticism from the media, the foreign policy establishment, academics, and Democrats. Meanwhile, not a peep about the performance of Nobel Prize winner Barack Obama.

Case in point: Hungary. [bold added]

When Russian troops poured into Georgia in 2008, [Hungarian now-Prime Minister Viktor Orban] denounced “the raw imperial power politics” of Mr. Putin, expecting a hard line from the incoming U.S. president. Instead, Barack Obama attempted a reset to mend relations with Russia. Meanwhile, the global financial crisis and Europe’s dithering response to it left Mr. Orban skeptical about the West’s attachment to political pluralism and globalization, say former officials.

Kind of reminds me of Chamberlain's "reset" with Hitler in Munich.