Politics Thou Shalt Hate Perhaps “hatred” is not a great basis for an all-encompassing morality. “Hate the sin, love the sinner” is a concept even devout Christians often find challenging. But what if the sin is hate, the sinner is a hater, and your whole redemption-free religion is based on the hatred of hate? What if we are all sinners in the hands of an angry podcaster? This is the deep theological discourse that can be provoked only by the author and essayist Ta-Nehisi Coates, who made a joyless noise unto the Lord in the direction of the slain conservative political activist Charlie Kirk. “I think Charlie Kirk was a hatemonger,” Coates told New York Times columnist Ezra Klein. “I take no joy in the killing of anyone no matter what they said. But if you ask me what the truth of his life was I would have to tell you it’s hate.” Per the golden rule of punditry, what Coates did unto Kirk was done unto him. The columnist Karol Markowicz replied that Coates was a hatemonger himself. She is hardly the first person to make this claim, or something close to it. Coates himself wrote an essay exploring the subject of whether he hates white people for the Atlantic, where he was then employed. I’ll leave to others to discern the truth of his life. Fortunately, no one has asked me, so I do not have to tell you. But it is embedded into progressive morality, such as it is, that hating those who hate is justified. (Not really as a form of self-defense, psychological or otherwise, though it surely serves that purpose too.) And thou shalt hate not just the hate, but also the hater. The hate cannot be separated from its lowly monger.  Among the hills I will die on is that NYPD Blue was a precursor to the great, movie-quality television shows of the 2000s, like The Wire, Breaking Bad, or The Sopranos. The first program contains a scene where Detective Andy Sipowicz admits to harboring prejudices, but says that he came by them honestly through life experience and would never wield them unjustly against the innocent. Of course, it is a major theme of the show that Sipowicz learns that his prejudices often actually come from misunderstandings that are bad for other people and himself. His lieutenant takes him to a restaurant where he must confront his discomfort with black servers and patrons not appearing overly happy with his presence, even if they are ultimately letting him dine in peace and their racial animus is unconnected to the institutional power that comes with having a badge and a gun. It’s a redemption arc liberals would approve of, back when they still believed in redemption. (We’ve come a long way from Norman Lear to White Fragility.) But there is a little bit of Andy Sipowicz in advanced progressives. They are simply not open to the idea that any of their own prejudices stem from misunderstanding. To whatever extent there is any hating going on, it is a righteous hatred of the oppressors’ and their allies’ hate, safely denuded of the institutional power that would qualify it as racism, sexism, antisemitism or anything like that. As it happens, people who run elite newsrooms and universities or receive MacArthur fellowships do have a certain amount of institutional power. And you don’t need much institutional power to throw a brick through a window, assault someone on the street, or fire a bullet into Charlie Kirk’s neck. None of this is to say that all people who espouse Coates’s views on this subject are advocating or in any way responsible for violence (although some do and are). You should be free to call out what you see as hatemongering without fear or favor. We no longer live in a country where such opinions will gain universal acceptance, if we ever truly did. But there is enough polling to suggest that the belief some hatreds are more righteous than others is becoming more common at the sub-elite level in progressive political circles, and there are enough shocking and depressing headlines to suggest this might have consequences. Maybe a little more introspection is in order as to why the supposed hatemonger was assassinated in a climate of hatred. Until then, we can only consider the words of the third pillar of Western civilization, alongside St. Augustine and Ta-Nehisi Coates: And the haters gonna hate. The post Thou Shalt Hate appeared first on The American Conservative.

Foreign Affairs Pressuring Putin: A Play in Three Acts The war could be headed toward a catastrophic finale.  Before they were a government, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and many of the people who have surrounded him, including his chief of staff and closest adviser, Andriy Yermak, wrote and produced TV shows and movies. Writing scripts may be what they do best. Recently, they have teamed up with the White House to coproduce a script designed to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table. It is an attempt to alter the war by altering the narrative. The narrative is not based on intelligence but, like their previous shows, seems to be a fiction that is only loosely based on reality. Act One, Motive: Drones Over Poland, Planes Over Estonia On September 10, at least 19 Russian drones violated Polish airspace. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that “a line has been crossed” and that the “situation brings us the closest we have been to open conflict since World War Two.”  Nine days later, three Russian jets violated Estonian airspace. Estonian foreign minister Margus Tsahkna called the violation “unprecedentedly brazen.” In both cases, multiple NATO countries took part in the response, including Poland, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Sweden, and Finland. Interestingly, neither NATO response included the United States. Poland and Estonia requested consultations under NATO Article 4, which calls for meetings and discussions on next steps when a member country is threatened.  Zelensky called the incursions “a systematic Russian campaign directed against Europe, against NATO, against the West” and said “it requires a systemic response. Strong action must be taken—both collectively and individually by each nation.” He warned that Putin will “not… finish his war in Ukraine. He will open up some other direction” by attacking another European country. Zelensky told the UN General Assembly that “Ukraine is only the first. And now, Russian drones are already flying across Europe.” President Donald Trump said that NATO countries should shoot down Russian aircraft if they violate their airspace. The only challenge to the airspace incursion narrative came from reality. Though Russian drones crossed into Poland, no targets were hit. Polish prime minister Donald Tusk says that none of the drones were armed with warheads. “There is currently no evidence,” Tusk says, “that any of these drones posed a direct threat. So far, none have been identified as combat drones capable of detonating or causing harm.” And Poland says that “Belarus, whose territory the drones were launched from, also sent warning that off-course drones were headed for its airspace.” General Wiesław Kukuła, Chief of the General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces, says that “The Belarusians warned us that drones were heading towards us through their airspace.” He added that the advance warning was “helpful for us.” Poland was not being attacked by unarmed drones. Russia may have been sending a warning to Europe not to send troops to Ukraine as part of a peace settlement, or the drones could have been sent off course by defensive Ukrainian GPS interference. Despite the public narrative, the private intelligence estimate is that the odds are “50–50” that the drone incursion was intentional. Intelligence about the drones’ flight pattern suggests “they had simply been knocked off course by Ukrainian jamming.” And, though it is not unanimous, a senior Western intelligence official told CNN that “they were ‘leaning’ towards an assessment that the incident was unintentional.” As for public official and media claims that Russian military jets entered Estonian airspace, that, too, is only loosely based on reality. They did not fly over Estonia. On a flight from Karelia, in the northwest of Russia, to Kaliningrad, the jets deviated by five miles or less from their internationally recognized route over the Baltic Sea along the middle of the Gulf of Finland. They passed near, not mainland Estonia, but Vaindloo, an uninhabited island that belongs to Estonia and that sits 16 miles off its coast. The known factual account is, at least, as close to the account Russian gave the Security Council as it is to the Western narrative. On September 13, a Russian Geran drone entered Romanian airspace. The Romanian Ministry of National Defense called the incursion “a new challenge to regional security.” Two F-16 fighter jets were scrambled, but the drone exited Romanian airspace. The defense ministry says the drone “did not fly over populated areas or pose imminent danger.” It is not unheard of for Russian drones to pass through Romanian airspace on route to Ukraine. That this drone orbited for about 50 minutes, though, suggests that this incursion could be consistent with a possible pattern of Russia warning European countries not to send troops to Ukraine.” The narrative of aggressive Russian actions taken against European nations seems to be a reckless attempt to draw Europe, the U.S., and NATO more fully into the war.  Act Two, Opportunity: A Window to Win the War After being briefed by U.S. officials, including Special Envoy for Ukraine Keith Kellogg and U.S. Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz, about current battlefield conditions and a planned Ukrainian counteroffensive that will require U.S. intelligence support, Trump posted that “Ukraine… is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form.” All that is required is the “support of Europe and, in particular, NATO.” But, here too, there are problems. First, there have been reports that the Trump administration is telling Moscow something different than Trump is posting on Truth Social. The second is that, though Zelensky says that Trump now “clearly understands the situation and is well-informed about all aspects of this war,” it is not clear that he does. Though Trump is being told that Russia is failing to make significant territorial gains, his briefings miss that Russia is making gains faster than at any point in the war and that the thinly stretched Ukrainian army is becoming porous and vulnerable along the lengthy frontline. A Ukrainian offensive would require the Ukrainian armed forces to outnumber the Russian forces. But the balance is going in the other direction: Ukraine is running out of troops while the Russian armed forces are growing substantially. And while Ukraine is being depleted of weapons, Russia is now producing more arms and ammunition than it needs. Ukraine is not going to win back all of its territory while on the back foot. Rather, it will continue to slowly lose more. And it is likely not capable of going on the offensive, because it lacks the necessary manpower and weaponry. Though Trump posts about a window to win, the truth is Russia’s advantage will likely grow as the war drags on. Worse, though, is that the media gave all the attention to Trump’s statement that “Ukraine would be able to take back their Country in its original form and, who knows, maybe even go further than that!” It ought to have given more attention than it did to the lines that followed. While promising to “continue to supply weapons to NATO” to give to Ukraine, he referred to NATO as “they.” He said NATO can do “what they want with them.” That sounds like the U.S. will continue selling weapons to Europe for Ukraine but that the U.S. is getting out, an impression made stronger by Trump’s “wish[ing] both countries well” before signing off with “Good luck to them all!” The news was that Trump thinks Ukraine can win. That’s a change in belief, and one that he may not really even hold. But it may not represent a change in policy. The U.S. will still limit its role to selling weapons while it continues to step back. Act Three, Means: The Tomahawk Missiles In an interview with Axios, Zelensky said he had asked Trump for a new weapons system. He said that just having this specific weapon would force Putin to come to the negotiating table even if Ukraine didn’t use it. Heightening the drama of the narrative, Zelensky said he would only reveal what weapons system it was once they were off camera. That system, it turns out, are Tomahawk missiles that have a range of 1,500 miles. If Ukraine gets the long-range missiles, Zelensky says, then targets in Moscow, including the Kremlin, are very much on the table. This week reports surfaced that Trump is considering providing the cruise missiles to Ukraine. But again, reality poses an obstacle to the narrative: The U.S. has a low stock of the missiles and produces less than 200 a year, meaning Ukraine is unlikely to get many of them, if any at all. Moreover, Ukraine does not have any of the platforms necessary to launch Tomahawk missiles, so Kiev is unlikely to get them either. What’s worse is that Russia knows that Ukraine could not utilize the cruise missiles without U.S. intelligence locating targets and guiding the missiles, a potential red line that could draw the U.S. into direct conflict with Russia, something Trump has been loath to do. It is for that very reason that the Tomahawk had been the only weapons system Trump refused to sell to NATO countries to pass on to Ukraine. Moscow may doubt that the U.S. would send Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine and that the weapons system would be a game changer for Ukraine—but it also needs to take the threat seriously. The play in three acts appears produced to draw the U.S. more fully into the war and to scare Putin into believing that the American position is now that Ukraine can win and that Washington is prepared to provide the weapons until that aim is reached. But since Moscow knows the narrative is only very loosely based on reality, instead of pushing Putin to the negotiating table, the more likely outcome is a reckless and irresponsible flirtation with escalation. The post Pressuring Putin: A Play in Three Acts appeared first on The American Conservative.

Foreign Affairs Can Iran Diplomacy Be Salvaged? A deal remains the least messy way to solve the biggest problem in the Middle East. Credit: Borna_Mirahmadian The Iran problem continues to fester for the administration. It is common but not official knowledge that the American strikes on Iranian nuclear sites stopped well short of the “obliteration” touted by President Donald Trump—indeed, that only one of the three targeted facilities even came close to being destroyed and the other two were not significantly damaged, not to mention the survival of the stockpile of enriched uranium. Forget mowing the grass; our S140 rolled over into a drainage ditch before it got to the back yard. Non-proliferation remains the American doctrine of the day, and, as these things go, it’s a pretty good one, so it remains in our interests to keep Iran from crossing the nuclear threshold. As predicted, a diplomatically brokered agreement with a monitoring program remains the only reliable way to do that. But it takes two to dance the diplomatic tango. What are the Iranians going to do? Most of their hard conventional leverage is destroyed or degraded: the proxy militias, their ballistic missile program. Years of diverting resources from the conventional military to missiles and the nuclear program found them barely contesting Israeli air supremacy during the June war. (A warning, perhaps, for those who would put all the hope for American arms into developing next-generation gizmos.) It remains unclear whether the Americans gave the Israelis their blessing for the Iran strikes and, later, the Qatar strikes; the official line is yes on the former, no on the latter, but the reporting is contradictory. In either case, negotiating with the United States right now looks like a very good way to get blown up while your guard is down. That’s not a very durable platform on which to set your negotiating table. The problems run deeper. Even if the Iranian leadership wishes to come back to the table, despite the reservations they doubtless feel, the domestic politics are tricky—very tricky. President Masoud Pezeshkian’s electoral victory was relatively close; he used significant amounts of political capital to engage in negotiations with the U.S., and the returns on investment were something short of inspiring. The hardliners’ fundamental assertion, that it is impossible to negotiate with the West and that such negotiations are fundamentally oriented toward weakening or entrapping Iran, looks pretty correct from the Iranian perspective. Surveying public opinion in the Islamic Republic is basically impossible, but if support for nuclear armament is soaring in a bystander country like Turkey, it is difficult to imagine that the sentiment of the citizens in the actually targeted country is appreciably more equanimous. Nor does the Supreme Council seem terribly inclined to give Pezeshkian play to negotiate more. American actions have constrained the Iranians’ room to maneuver, which, in turn, constrains our own. So what’s left? One assumes that further military intervention is on the table—finishing the job of finishing the job. There’s no reason to think this will be easier than the first pass, but let’s assume that it is in fact successful. If Iran remains intransigent, we’re back to the expensive and unstable model of mowing the grass, flying in and bombing things when Iran makes progress on nuclear or conventional arms. If Iran makes an “unconditional surrender”—a national humiliation it is difficult to imagine the public or all elements of the ruling regime swallowing—it will be a difficult peace to enforce. If the U.S. finally follows through on retrenchment from the Middle East, the analogue will be to Germany in the First World War: a humiliated power that will feel significant pressures to rearm in the absence of American police power. (Issues of scale, armament, and unfriendly neighbors make it unlikely that Israel unaided can be the permanent police power enforcing disarmament.) The alternative is abandoning retrenchment and resigning ourselves to a permanent American presence in the Middle East, as happened in Europe at the conclusion of the Second World War. (NATO is in fact primarily a 75-year project for preventing German rearmament—“the Germans down, the Russians out, and the Americans in”—and only secondarily an anti-Russian pact.) So we’re back then, at least in potentiality, to mowing the grass.  This looks like an impasse, and not a very nice one for those who would like to see less American involvement in the Middle East, not more. One tactic that is worth considering is unilaterally relaxing American sanctions against Iran, implicitly or explicitly as a condition for Iran coming back to the negotiating table. This goodwill gesture would do little to harm American interests—sanctions have proven supremely ineffective at accomplishing American strategic objectives in Iran, anyway—and it will give Pezeshkian and the government a way to sell negotiations to the Iranian public and the Supreme Council. It might not work, but the options on the menu right now are few and unappealing. George Kennan writes that one of the distinguishing features of postwar diplomacy, especially American diplomacy, is the conflation of military goals with political goals. Bombing operations, even when actually successfully executed, do not themselves produce a political settlement, and as often as not undermine it. American national interests in the neighborhood remain the same: retrenchment, the prevention of a Middle Eastern hegemon, and the suppression of Islamic terrorism. Short of a massive program literally to colonize the area, the use of force must be supplemented by or, indeed, yield pride of place to diplomacy.  The post Can Iran Diplomacy Be Salvaged? appeared first on The American Conservative.

The perils of the rock star. The post “Kicked and screamed”: The tragic moment Uriah Heep were forced to sack David Byron first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

from DollarVigilante: TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/

by Martel Maxim, Joe Hoft: While I cry for Tina’s situation, I similarly cry for how American ‘leadership’ sank so low to allow the vast proliferation of election fraud infrastructure to steal our country. That same ‘leadership’ was further allowed to facilitate the incarceration and harsh conditions Tina faces daily in order to cover up […]

by Joseph P. Farrell, Giza Death Star: You may have noticed something lately. Or rather, you may have noticed the distinct lack of something lately, namely, the lack of screaming (and now completely irrelevant) Swedish girls bellering and hollering about climate change. You may also have noticed the distinct lack of media attention to sky-rocketing electric bills and energy […]

Taylor Swift isn’t just releasing music; she’s rewriting her own search history. Her new album Life of a Showgirl includes a track called “Cancelled!” — and that exclamation point isn’t just for drama. For years, typing “Taylor Swift canceled” into Google had the potential to bring up think pieces about feuds, backlash, or headlines about canceled live performances. Now, that search will point str Continue reading…

Every lyric from every song on Taylor Swift's "The Life of a Showgirl" album. Continue reading…

Ukraine is “central to Russia’s identity, Putin may not stop until the Russian flag flies over Kyiv