This was so well written that I immediately started to think "I really need to pay for a subscription." And when I came to the lines
"It's like US elites finally had the VR headset knocked from their faces and actually had a look around. And what they saw was a roomful of men with faces out of an illustrated bible looking like they’d just pillaged a Cabela’s—that’s how much top-shelf, modded-out AR hardware they captured—sitting down for a super-awkward Zoom meeting announcing a sudden change of plans for American foreign policy."
I immediately grabbed my credit card and signed up.
“ …in the year 2021, the cream of American society and the flower of its finest universities, can only understand the world as projections of the country’s own domestic neuroses.”
I think this bottom lines it pretty well. And Afghanistan is a still a “far away” kind of problem, if I can be momentarily glib. Wait until more veritable problems with closer proximity arise that are unrelated to their pet indulgences. How will our heedless, overweening elites solve the endless hurricane of reality-based problems that are coming our way? It kind of takes your breath away to consider it.
The insane thing here: the _financial_ cost of the war in afghanistan, which lasted deacdes and involved hundreds of thousands of people, and logistical operations spanning the globe, is less than the amount of money we printed in 2020.
So well said! We as a people still don’t see the rest of the world as it really is; we don’t get the middle Eastern mindset that rejects democracy American style and we don’t get the Confucian mindset of Chinese. We think they see the world as we do, so we interpret their actions accordingly. And we’re lost in what conservative Google employees complained of living in “an echo chamber.”
I am perfectly willing to admit that I am unable to describe what an honorable US exit from Afghanistan would have looked like. But I am also certain that what I saw today looked like the opposite.
Estamos comiendo mierda hace 20 años, probably longer, as a veteran my heart goes out to all those who fought these wars, the real question is ‘what do we tell their wives, mothers, WTF was it all for?
Thank you for being the only commentator I've seen so far who identified the weapons in those photos of the Taliban in Kabul as American. There's a point about that I can't quit put my finger on . . .
I just want to be the first to comment because I'm a troll.
Few still believe we should have been there, but the video of people clinging to an airplane were pretty heinous, but not as heinous as bad orange nazi's tweets, right? Or his handling of COVID, which is going so much better now that he's gone! :D
The premise that back in the halcyon days of the cold war the U.S. wrestled with reality is complete nonsense. We as a nation aren't not wrestling with this stuff because "our brains melted like butter in a microwave by four years of Trump and Twitter and everything else." If there had been some change in our behavior, then you might be able to squeeze some causation out of that correlation, but there isn't even a change in behavior! The U.S. has never asked itself those questions you posed at the end. I can't think of an empire that ever has. So, I can certainly agree that U.S. has massive blinders when it comes to it's role in foreign conflicts, but to attribute that to some very recent grip of wokeness or whatever you're trying to do strikes of trying squeeze your pet narrative (and one which I don't disagree with) into a spot where it simply doesn't fit.
Great piece. I was recently re-watching a History Channel mini-series about World War II and it's infuriating to see the petty social battles being waged today, over the smallest indignities, by a population utterly clueless about what real violence and turmoil look like. The demise of the American education system will be the ultimate cause of this country's downfall. We have a populous with no perspective and worse, no appreciation, for what an incredible project the United States has been.
We are no longer a serious people, says the guy who cut his teeth building a browser plugin and digital advertising backends...
Neil Postman predicted this whole cultural mess in the 80s. He didn't live long enough to see the Trump era, which probably would've killed him anyway.
You sorely misrepresented the Tapper/Blinken exchange. Blinken's reply, far from being deer in the headlights, was used to counter the inane narrative being pushed by David French, Jonah Goldberg, et al that the cost for staying was so low because it only took some small number of troops to maintain the status quo. Where was the deer in the headlights?
If we're not a serious people anymore, it's because we choose leadership elites that themselves are not serious enough to plan, develop strategies and execute them towards a well-defined end state.
In these days of Afghan withdrawal and reminders of Vietnam, it's worth remembering that the United States has won a massive land war in Asia: the flourishing democracy in South Korea is proof of that. The Korean War could also have been avoided: the Communist North had conquered all the country except for the port of Pusan. American-led intervention with potentially war-winning operations (the Inchon landings) eventually, after successes and reverses, led to stalemate where the lines are today.
There were no such well-defined end goals in Vietnam or Afghanistan, just the hope that in the distant future local forces, trained and equipped at exorbitant cost in an environment well-know for corruption and nepotism, would take over the mantle.
The leadership elites were happy to rush into war without thinking about how the war should end, maybe because they didn't expect to be in power when the results of their policies came due.
This was so well written that I immediately started to think "I really need to pay for a subscription." And when I came to the lines
"It's like US elites finally had the VR headset knocked from their faces and actually had a look around. And what they saw was a roomful of men with faces out of an illustrated bible looking like they’d just pillaged a Cabela’s—that’s how much top-shelf, modded-out AR hardware they captured—sitting down for a super-awkward Zoom meeting announcing a sudden change of plans for American foreign policy."
I immediately grabbed my credit card and signed up.
this was really, really good.
Americans believe that every problem can be solved.
in reality, many problems can never be solved.
“ …in the year 2021, the cream of American society and the flower of its finest universities, can only understand the world as projections of the country’s own domestic neuroses.”
I think this bottom lines it pretty well. And Afghanistan is a still a “far away” kind of problem, if I can be momentarily glib. Wait until more veritable problems with closer proximity arise that are unrelated to their pet indulgences. How will our heedless, overweening elites solve the endless hurricane of reality-based problems that are coming our way? It kind of takes your breath away to consider it.
The insane thing here: the _financial_ cost of the war in afghanistan, which lasted deacdes and involved hundreds of thousands of people, and logistical operations spanning the globe, is less than the amount of money we printed in 2020.
https://www.newsweek.com/how-much-did-war-afghanistan-cost-1619687
Talk about 'reality being optional' - in the financial markets, it still very much is optional
So well said! We as a people still don’t see the rest of the world as it really is; we don’t get the middle Eastern mindset that rejects democracy American style and we don’t get the Confucian mindset of Chinese. We think they see the world as we do, so we interpret their actions accordingly. And we’re lost in what conservative Google employees complained of living in “an echo chamber.”
I am perfectly willing to admit that I am unable to describe what an honorable US exit from Afghanistan would have looked like. But I am also certain that what I saw today looked like the opposite.
This really captured my feelings. We are unserious. I expect China will call our bluff on Taiwan soon. Thanks for your work - I subscribed.
Estamos comiendo mierda hace 20 años, probably longer, as a veteran my heart goes out to all those who fought these wars, the real question is ‘what do we tell their wives, mothers, WTF was it all for?
Thank you for being the only commentator I've seen so far who identified the weapons in those photos of the Taliban in Kabul as American. There's a point about that I can't quit put my finger on . . .
I just want to be the first to comment because I'm a troll.
Few still believe we should have been there, but the video of people clinging to an airplane were pretty heinous, but not as heinous as bad orange nazi's tweets, right? Or his handling of COVID, which is going so much better now that he's gone! :D
The premise that back in the halcyon days of the cold war the U.S. wrestled with reality is complete nonsense. We as a nation aren't not wrestling with this stuff because "our brains melted like butter in a microwave by four years of Trump and Twitter and everything else." If there had been some change in our behavior, then you might be able to squeeze some causation out of that correlation, but there isn't even a change in behavior! The U.S. has never asked itself those questions you posed at the end. I can't think of an empire that ever has. So, I can certainly agree that U.S. has massive blinders when it comes to it's role in foreign conflicts, but to attribute that to some very recent grip of wokeness or whatever you're trying to do strikes of trying squeeze your pet narrative (and one which I don't disagree with) into a spot where it simply doesn't fit.
Great piece. I was recently re-watching a History Channel mini-series about World War II and it's infuriating to see the petty social battles being waged today, over the smallest indignities, by a population utterly clueless about what real violence and turmoil look like. The demise of the American education system will be the ultimate cause of this country's downfall. We have a populous with no perspective and worse, no appreciation, for what an incredible project the United States has been.
We are no longer a serious people, says the guy who cut his teeth building a browser plugin and digital advertising backends...
Neil Postman predicted this whole cultural mess in the 80s. He didn't live long enough to see the Trump era, which probably would've killed him anyway.
You sorely misrepresented the Tapper/Blinken exchange. Blinken's reply, far from being deer in the headlights, was used to counter the inane narrative being pushed by David French, Jonah Goldberg, et al that the cost for staying was so low because it only took some small number of troops to maintain the status quo. Where was the deer in the headlights?
Best long take of the day.
If we're not a serious people anymore, it's because we choose leadership elites that themselves are not serious enough to plan, develop strategies and execute them towards a well-defined end state.
In these days of Afghan withdrawal and reminders of Vietnam, it's worth remembering that the United States has won a massive land war in Asia: the flourishing democracy in South Korea is proof of that. The Korean War could also have been avoided: the Communist North had conquered all the country except for the port of Pusan. American-led intervention with potentially war-winning operations (the Inchon landings) eventually, after successes and reverses, led to stalemate where the lines are today.
There were no such well-defined end goals in Vietnam or Afghanistan, just the hope that in the distant future local forces, trained and equipped at exorbitant cost in an environment well-know for corruption and nepotism, would take over the mantle.
The leadership elites were happy to rush into war without thinking about how the war should end, maybe because they didn't expect to be in power when the results of their policies came due.