Motus Mentis

A great deal has been going on in America and the world since I last updated this blog with any regularity, so there’s an awful lot of backlog for me to pick up and comment on. Let’s start with Ukraine.

When I left off, the war in Ukraine was still, more or less, the Current Thing. People still had all those blue-and-yellow flags in their lawns; Congress still had no apparent qualms about opening America’s checkbook and armories to the grifter Zelenskyy (despite nobody making any reliable accounting of where all that largesse actually ended up), and normie-Americans still seemed to imagine that with sufficient support plucky little Ukraine (the good guys!) would, somehow, prevail against the barbarous Russians (the bad guys). As some of us knew all along, however, this was utterly delusional, and almost two years in, that appealing fantasy is pretty much over. (I’d be surprised if Ukraine gets so much as a box of .22 LR from this point on.)

The Imperium of the United States has disgraced itself repeatedly in foreign affairs in recent years; from Libya, to Iraq, to Afghanistan, and now Ukraine, we leave behind us a trail of shattered nations and broken lives — bought at an incalculable cost in blood, treasure, and national prestige. As we sat home in comfort, applauding Mr. Zelenskyy, cheering for the war we and NATO (but I repeat myself) ignited, and keeping the meat-grinder working, Ukraine has lost perhaps half a million dead, many more irrecoverably maimed, and has exhausted itself to the point of sending old men and pregnant women off to be slaughtered. Meanwhile the carnage, and mass emigration, have reduced Ukraine’s population by half, and destroyed its economy. The nation’s pensioners are supported, for now, by American taxpayers, but that can’t go on much longer. Meanwhile, with our sanctions and sabotage against Russian oil and gas having backfired, we have managed to drive Russia and China more closely together, to wreck the energy economy of our vassal states in Europe, and to destabilize the U.S. dollar’s position as the world’s reserve currency.

The infamy of this misadventure is compounded by the venality of our First Family’s long and corrupt association with the nation we have so casually destroyed.

With the certainty of failure, those who manage public opinion will turn the page. Already, other shiny objects — the ructions in Gaza, the presidential elections — divert our attention. Ukraine, its international support gone, and standing alone and helpless, will try to offer terms to Russia, but it is far too late for that. Russia will take what it wants, and like Melos so long ago, Ukraine will be gone — and soon forgotten.

The American empire is dying, as empires so often do, of hubris, folly, overextension, and spiritual exhaustion. We should be deeply, bitterly ashamed of what we have done to Ukraine. History will not be kind.