Motus Mentis

Curtis Yarvin. a.k.a. Mencius Moldbug, has posted a pungent item about Ukraine today at Substack. In it, he had this to say:

A foreign policy conducted solely in the interest of Americans would not involve intervening in a civil war against a nuclear power on the banks of the Dnieper, for the reason that there is absolutely no resource of interest to Americans, on the banks of the Dnieper, which could outweigh the risk of a global thermonuclear war… The paradox of US foreign policy is that US foreign policy is best modeled as if it was made first, for the benefit of the US foreign-policy establishment; second, for the entertainment of the US media audience; third, for the benefit of foreigners; and fourth, for the benefit of Americans. Once we see that anything that benefits the establishment and delights the viewers will happen, a key has turned in a lock.

Yarvin also linked to a Twitter thread listing some of the geostrategy Cassandras who have warned us of the colossal unwisdom of our foreign policy regarding Ukraine:

https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1498491107902062592

Yarvin:

No one in the establishment has any business in, or excuse for, ignoring all of these people. And if they do, they have a responsibility for knowing what they are doing.

CY also reminds us of John Quincy Adams’ admonition, two centuries ago, that the United States ought not to be in the business of “seeking monsters to destroy”. Adams wrote:

Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.

The point? That we, comfortably far away and for our own gratification, lust for a war that will ravage a land and people whose real pain we will not feel. Yarvin concludes:

You are doing your best to lynch Putler, right now. No one is making you participate; you are doing it of your own free will; you can just stop.

The key to ceasing this awful, destructive behavior is understanding that it is not about them. It is about you. In fact, you do not know them at all. You know no more than a few kindergarten facts about these faraway people whom you love so much that you consider it your moral responsibility to goad them, at no cost or risk to yourself, into the terrordome of war, for their heroism to excite them. If you loved them more, you would think harder about whether or not you were doing them a favor.

Your “support” for the Kiev regime is about one thing: love. It is about your love for yourself. Its pathological nature reveals a deeper truth: an unfilled need for love and purpose, for a public and collective life which is not a pornographic charnel-house. It is sad, not just in what it does to the Ukraine, but in what it does to you, me, we, us. So, like… please consider the possibility of changing the way you look at this.

There’s more (much more, of course; it’s Moldbug). Read the rest here.

Einstein once said: “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity.” As has so often been the case, subsequent evidence has once again proved Einstein right.