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25 thoughts on “Trent Telenko’s Twitter Threads”
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Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
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Since Trent Telenko’s link is now permanently pinned to the top of Chicago Boys, let me simply note that I was not impressed with his coverage of the Covid Scam. Trent obviously worked very hard compiling all the “information” released by official channels and put out summaries which blew the risks from the CovidScam far out of perspective. Looking back on that episode, Trent did too much assembling of “information” and too little common sense scrutiny of that “information”.
Trent’s initial coverage of the US/NATO proxy war on Russia seemed to suffer from the same problem — but was even worse, given the very one-sided “information” available from the Usual Suspects. So I gave up following Trent’s summaries.
As Brian, late of this parish, said — All many of us want is reasonable coverage of the facts. Since the US/NATO proxy war may very well lead to global thermonuclear war, with negative consequences for every single one of us, that does not seem too much to ask. But in the fog of war, apparently it is.
Telenko does provide facts. His logistics analyses have been well-supported and completely in line with the observed target prioritization of the Ukrainians. It also precisely fits the observed decrease in the intensity of Russian shelling. His discussions of how drone usage has been integrated into Ukrainian military practice on an institutional level while the Russians are lagging in the adaptation also fits with multiple independently observable facts. Your statement that his coverage suffers from inaccuracy is therefore measurably false. I also note you provide no specific examples of inaccuracy in this regard, using the blanket word “seemed” instead.
I would very much like to see a correspondingly fact-based analysis from a pro-Russian side; unfortunately, every pro-Russian English-language commentator I can find is so consistently off-base as to be purely imaginary, especially when judging any given analysis or prediction three months after it is made. (Any prediction by Scott Ritter, Douglas MacGregor, or John Mearsheimer is hallucinatory when compared with actual results three months later.)
There is a zero percent chance of the Ukraine war going nuclear. None of Russia’s problems, or Putin’s problems, are solvable in that manner. There was some risk of it early on, when the Russians thought they could win, because obtaining the win might have been judged worth the risk. After a year and a half of getting nowhere at tremendous cost, coupled with a visible steady increase in the willingness of NATO countries to act in opposition, it’s very unlikely such a judgement would now be made.
Bold “Anonymous”: “There is a zero percent chance of the Ukraine war going nuclear. None of Russia’s problems, or Putin’s problems, are solvable in that manner.”
Personally, I am not worried about Russia initiating the use of nuclear weapons. The obvious concern is that the Biden MalAdministration will bumble its way into a corner in which the US triggers a global thermonuclear war. That “bumble” will likely be driven by US mis-perception of great progress in its US/NATO proxy war currently being fought in the Ukraine — mis-perception which was being fully reflected in Trent Telenko’s coverage last time I looked.
Precisely what Gavin Longmuir said. As for “There is a zero percent chance of the Ukraine war going nuclear. “…Interesting comment from a nit-picker. Zero percent, eh?
Is there an agency of the government that puts out trustworthy data? I don’t know of any. Or a college or university? Or a newspaper or news media outlet? Or a polling firm?
If you want a realistic portrayal of Ukraine war, try simplicius76.substack
As a fan of both Trent Telenko and Gavin Longmuir, I’m happy to see more of what both have to say.
I’ve occasionally seen Trent T. comment at the youtube channel below- WW2TV- and the posts he made here about that war have been top shelf.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUC1nmJGHmiKtlkpA6SJMeA
I can agree to disagree about the Ukraine War, as I believe Gavin L. has the more accurate accounting on that matter.
”…the US/NATO proxy war on Russia…”
There is no US / NATO proxy war on Russia.
Russia invaded Ukraine. It is a war between those two countries. It has nothing to do with the US or NATO or Biden or Trump.
”As for ‘There is a zero percent chance of the Ukraine war going nuclear.’ Interesting comment from a nit-picker. Zero percent, eh?”
Pretty much. There is no amount of escalation that Russia can do that would lead to a clear Russian victory, only a more devastating loss. There’s a minute chance they will do it anyway, but it will make their situation worse, not better, and they know it.
“There’s a minute chance they will do it anyway, but it will make their situation worse, not better, and they know it.”
Not zero. The hyperbole is BS. Pretending one can read the mind of a man who may, rightly or wrongly, believe he is trapped, not necessarily in Ukraine but in whatever domestic political situation he is in, is folly. No one truly knows all the factors. Believing people will behave in a manner you see as rational is completely independent of the reality that they perceive for themselves.
mkent: “It is a war between those two countries. It has nothing to do with the US or NATO or Biden or Trump.”
If this war has nothing to do with the US, why are US citizens on the hook for the $Billions the Biden MalAdministration is spending on killing civilians & soldiers in the Ukraine?
Seriously, we all should want to know the facts. Some of the facts are obvious — the unnecessary expansion of NATO after the collapse of the Soviet Union; US interference in the Ukraine leading to the coup in that polity; the 8-years long Western-supported civil war in the Ukraine in which the Zelensky regime killed thousands of their own citizens. Sadly, the US/NATO have had a lot to do with the situation.
World War 1 was triggered when a single aristocrat was assassinated. What kind of global war could be triggered by US/NATO supporting the killing of hundreds of thousands of people in the Ukraine?
”the unnecessary expansion of NATO after the collapse of the Soviet Union”
This war has shown that the expansion of NATO after the collapse of the Soviet Union was very much necessary. In fact, it shows we didn’t expand it enough.
”US interference in the Ukraine leading to the coup in that polity”
The Russian coup in Ukraine in 2014 had nothing to do with the US.
”the 8-years long Western-supported civil war in the Ukraine“
There was no recent civil war in Ukraine. There was one Russian invasion in 2014 and another in 2022.
”the Zelensky regime killed thousands of their own citizens.”
The Zelensky government has been defending the country from a Russian invasion. It is Russia that is responsible for those deaths.
”What kind of global war could be triggered by US/NATO supporting the killing of hundreds of thousands of people in the Ukraine?”
Neither the US nor NATO supports the Russians’ killing of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians.
Wow! Your knowledge of this war is really bad. You need to read up on it more. A lot more.
I saw that this post was sticking to the top, but I think WTP and Gavin hit the key points.
As far as WTP, I was going to approach it from a more conceptual, rational actor model. If you are going to predict another’s actions then you need both a very accurate picture of their decision-making model and the information that is on hand. We have neither in regard to Russia, let alone Putin, yet we act that as if we do. You would think after 20-year experiment to bring liberal democracy and Pride flags to the Hindu Kush that we would be wary about imposing our conceptual models on other civilizations, but you know I’m not as smart as the guys down in DC/Crystal City.
I think we need to take a giant step back and take a look where we are and how we got here, specifically we have defined the vital strategic interests of the US as being 5,000 miles east of North America and confronting a continental, nuclear power. To any student of history the fact we are deploying high-end military equipment and providing tactical intelligence to oppose Russians in places named Sevastopol or Kharkiv is mind-boggling.
Yes people can, and many have, point out that our decision to involve ourselves in the Ukraine War is justified by the Russian aggression there and all the implications if we don’t oppose it. My larger point is that we (the public) are being manipulated to focus our decision-making on a narrow context, that of what needs to be done next. Anybody who has done staff work can tell you the way to get your boss to adopt your recommendations is to play with the context to provide a simplified reality of binary choices.
How did we get here? It wasn’t supposed to be this way. After the Cold War whole partnership-for-peace and we promised we wouldn’t expand NATO. We can point fingers and the obvious place to point them is at Putin given that he is the head of a corrupt oligarchy that likes to throw political opponents out of windows and invade neighboring countries; however, since I’m not a direct player in the game I don’t need scapegoats or blame, I just want the after-action report on what we missed. You know what we missed from the 1990s on? We missed what Bismarck knew from the mid-19th Century that Russia is the big 800-pound gorilla in the East and we need to find a way to accommodate it. Instead we treated it as a 3rd World country with a gas station at the End of History. That’s okay to do as long as History never comes back… and sure enough, it did. Our bad.
I know, thanks for the history lesson Mike, how about we figure out the here and now? Because before you move forward you have to know where you are and before you know that you have to know where you have been and we have been misled by people who have just about gotten into the biggest no-no of the Cold War, coming into direct contact with a nuclear power. In fact if you follow the RC-135 flights in the Black Sea, that line has already been breached. There are a lot of people who are pretty blasé about all of this because they think Putin will never do that but what if it isn’t Putin there? We think that this will be some Tom Clancy novel where the bad dictator gets ousted and everyone comes to their senses but odds are the ones who would replace him will be worse.
Crises get out of hand and escalate to a place that no one wants or forsees. We didn’t think we would ever see another major land war in Europe. Nobody thought we would have the situation we have now, Putin thought he was going to win fast and we thought we had the winning strategy of sanctions and weapons. Last April we thought this was going to be a glorious victory and instead Putin called and backdoored the sanctions and decided to go Grozny.
How does this end? Maybe there will be a happy ending, maybe Russia cracks first and not only Putin falls but whole rotten, nationalist cabal goes with him. I doubt it, that was last year’s promise. Go back over the past 16 months and tell me how many predictions about this war have panned out? Go back over the past 30 years and tell me that we got our Russia policy right. We have staked NATO and our prestige, spent $100 billion+, run-down our military readiness and unless something dramatic happens we are in a stalemate on what is really not the critical theater for us. Maybe not a stalemate but a quagmire because we have lashed ourselves to the mast (allowing Zelensky to address Congress was one of the greatest symbolic mistakes of the past 50 years) where we have embarked on a great crusade. Why? Because we wish to take the world as we want it to be, not as it is.
We now speak openly of bleeding Russia dry, toppling its government, and of breaking the country up. How we got to this point is rooted in the past and it has to stop. We are on a 25-year run of bad policy in this area and we have been on an escalatory ladder ever since and we are about to roll Moltke’s iron dice. If anyone has confidence in how our Administration has been running this you are better than me.
This war has shown that the expansion of NATO after the collapse of the Soviet Union was very much necessary. In fact, it shows we didn’t expand it enough.
Well, no. The Russians repeatedly told the so-called leaders of the West that NATO membership for Ukraine was a redline. The West ignored them. Hence, war.
The Russian coup in Ukraine in 2014 had nothing to do with the US.
This is a delusional claim. A pro-Russian president was overthrown in a CIA-backed coup. Russia had no reason to depose a pro-Russian regime.
There was no recent civil war in Ukraine. There was one Russian invasion in 2014 and another in 2022.
The families of the 14,000 civilians killed by Ukrainian shelling of the Donbass since 2014 might disagree. In any case, when one set of Ukrainians is killing members of another set, I think that meets the definition of a civil war, even if the people being killed aren’t really Ukrainian.
The Zelensky government has been defending the country from a Russian invasion. It is Russia that is responsible for those deaths.
How dare the Russian inhabitants of the Donbass resist Keev’s efforts to make their language and culture illegal! All they had to do was submit, and be ethnically cleansed.
What were they thinking, to resist? And how dare the Russians resist efforts by the West to overthrow their government and partition Russia! And by violence, no less!
Neither the US nor NATO supports the Russians’ killing of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians.
The US and NATO are quite literally supporting the Russians’ efforts to kill beaucoup Ukrainians, by keeping the bankrupt Ukrainian regime afloat and sending them a wide assortment of mismatched and usually obsolete weapons. Failing that, the war would end swiftly, and Ukrainians would stop dying.
Wow! Your knowledge of this war is really bad. You need to read up on it more. A lot more.
“This war has shown that the expansion of NATO after the collapse of the Soviet Union was very much necessary. In fact, it shows we didn’t expand it enough.”
What are your pronouns? What is your gender?
”The Russians repeatedly told the so-called leaders of the West that NATO membership for Ukraine was a redline. The West ignored them. Hence, war.”
Ukraine was and is ineligible to join NATO. To prevent Ukraine from joining NATO all Russia had to do was….nothing. No war was necessary. Hence, the war has nothing to do with NATO.
”A pro-Russian president was overthrown in a CIA-backed coup.”
What pro-Russian president? Yanukovich? He wasn’t overthrown by the CIA or anyone else. He fled the country in 2014 after his security goons killed 128 peaceful protesters. He was subsequently impeached by the Ukrainian parliament by a vote of 380 to 0 and removed from office and then tried and convicted by the Ukrainian Supreme Court.
The only Ukrainian coup in 2014 was when Russian naval infantry — what we would call Marines — invaded Crimea, occupied the provincial parliament, and forced them to vote at gunpoint to secede from Ukraine and join Russia. The CIA had nothing to do with the coup. America and the rest of the civilized world opposed the coup.
”…14,000 civilians killed by Ukrainian shelling of the Donbass since 2014”
That didn’t happen. Russian troops invaded the Donbas in 2014 with tanks, artillery, and air defense. The Ukrainian army shelled the Russian troops in an attempt to liberate their country. They had every right to do so.
”And how dare the Russians resist efforts by the West to overthrow their government and partition Russia!”
No one attacked Russia. Russia invaded Ukraine. Twice. And Moldova and Georgia and Azerbaijan and Syria.
”Failing that, the war would end swiftly, and Ukrainians would stop dying.
Russia is genociding Ukraine. Their stated objective is to destroy Ukraine as a nation, a people, and a culture. Ukraine will not submit to genocide and will not stop fighting until Russia is driven from their country no matter what we do. Withholding weapons from Ukraine will only prolong the fighting and the genocide.
I don’t comment often because, with my schedule, when I finally get time to respond, the thread has already receded and moved on.
(1) Up front, I’m more in line with mkent (and Telenko) than I am with the current criticisms of the Ukraine affaire. Full disclosure.
(2) There is an old aphorism that is particularly appropriate in the net assessment game. To with: “A -little- knowledge is a -dangerous thing.” I see a whole lot of that going on, on both sides, although the Russian propaganda machine is more honed in this art and has a very long baseline (decades/generations) to work with. Note that I’m not using this in a pejorative sense to anyone here on either side but in a constructive one.
(2a) What I see, on both sides, is a lot of reliance on media memes by relative latecomers who lack a -deep- (in the historical and historical time sense) and rich context, coupled with a tendency to both recentcy [sic] and confirmation bias. Again, on -both- sides of the argument. And, since postmodern space tries to operate faster than the speed of thought……..things go straight to the hindbrain and there is neither time nor desire to, as it is put, “do the homework”. It is easier in the passion of the moment within an increasingly low-trust environment just to have at it without context and without consideration of second, third-order inputs or consequences.
(3) An example: The facility with which some disputants harp on the West’s refusal to restrain the growth of NATO and Putin’s wild claims of breach of promise. (Most of the Russian claims fall into the class of the defense used by abusers in an abusive relationship, i.e. “Look what -you- made me do!” But I digress.) What was actually promised: At the time of negotiating German reunification (1988-1990), it was agreed that NATO would not advance force structure from the West into the former DDR. And this is confirmed by Gorbachev. But this is -all- that was promised because, at the time, no one considered the possibility that the Soviet Union would be one with Ninevah and Tyre within two years time. When the Union dissolved, between the internal components themselves and outside, to mutually respect sovereignty and allow the individual states to pursue their destiny a s they saw fit.
The Warsaw Pact collapsed with the Union, BTW …
So what happened?….this was when pan-Europeanism was in full tide and the central Europeans rushed to embrace Europe because it restored centuries long relationships that had been suppressed by the Soviets. And Brussels -wanted- them in the EU. Ultimate NATO accession was part of that package…but at the time NATO was seen to have a diminishing role over time as Europe reconstituted itself (Side lesson: The Europeans have a -lot- of agency of their own and they are not afraid to use it. They had a long-term vision of panEurope from the Atlantic to the Urals. We aren’t the only dog in the West.)
Once Yeltsin fell completely into the bottle and Putin arrived on the scene, all of the classic Russian pathologies reemerged. The FSB immediately started to suborn the Baltic states – which drove them into the arms of Brussels … and NATO, which may not have been so obsolete after all. . And, in -both- of these cases, it was the locals who approached the Europeans. We didn’t -disapprove- but our position at the time was that this was a Euromatter and we had priorities elsewhere to attend.
But you had to follow this at the time and -remember-.
But those are my assessments. What I really want to suggest is doing some homework and developing a deeper (and more nuanced) take. A source well worth consulting:
“Ukraine and Russia: From Civilized Divorce to Uncivil War”, Paul D’Anieri, Univ California, Riverside, 2019 (an updated version is in prep). Anieri writes from a neutral outsider perspective and is not dismssive of either sides concerns (unusual in this day)(It is, after all, seen as existential by both states). Available in trade paper.
This is only one source among many and one POV among many (my arguments are not sole-source dependent) but it is far better than relying on conventional media (MSM or disputative), social media, agitproip etc.
Just a suggestion and I await the rapid delivery of overripe fruit.
Midwest Observer — with respect, you have missed the point entirely.
The criticism here is directed specifically at Trent Telenko’s style of coverage. He works hard going through all the propaganda developed by the Usual Suspects and summarizing it into a very distorted view of reality. That was what Trent did with the CovidScam — he absorbed all the “We are all going to die” propaganda and did a highly competent (but completely misleading) job of reproducing it.
The evidence today shows clearly that the CovidScam was never a great pandemic; it was a risk mostly to the very old & sick, just like the regular annual flu; the injections themselves carry great health risks; and the economic consequences of the shut-downs have been far more significant than the health risks of the CovidScam. Yet Trent Telenko’s coverage missed all of that!
When I looked at Trent’s early coverage of the US/NATO proxy war in the Ukraine, I saw exactly the same total reliance on “information” from the Usual Suspects. That is why I stopped following his coverage. Once bitten, twice shy. I suspect that, in the long run, Trent’s coverage of Our Betters’ proxy war will turn out to have been as misleading as his coverage of the CovidScam.
Gavin
Hey, you’re entitled to your POV and opinions. I respect that. Without challenge, truth and accuracy are unlikely to emerge.
(1) Cutting a little slack for Trent, COVID and Ukraine are separate turfs. Miltech and logistics are the heart and soul of his “domain knowledge” – which is -very- deep and well documented.
COVID, not so much. That high level of domain knowledge doesn’t fully crossover into either short-term epidemology [sic] or sociopolitical economy. Not everyone can consistently hit the knuckleball. Any failure here does not discredit the work he does in his primary sphere.
(1a) And Trent, as I have stated, isn’t a sole source.
(2) I haven’t -missed- the point. Your positions on the Ukraine affair have been longstanding here before Trent’s threads appeared, much less the pinned posting at the top of the blog. If not this, then some similar statement would have prompted me to make the same set of comments.
(3) Disclosure: This isn’t aimed at you.
I have a long-standing issue with how discourse is conducted in postmodern, instantaneous media land. One which is now low trust and reactive. (Bear with me: this can get long and winding at times but there -is- a point at the end.)
Post-modern dialogue now operates faster than the speed of rational discourse (much less thought). We are conditioned to want everything instantaneously, we live in the moment and we have (or systematically deny) any memory (historical or otherwise). Couple that with the intense polarization of the day, along issue lines as well as dogmatic/ideological/political ones. The consequence is that the usual order of things gets inverted. The meta now overrules the real. At any moment, we are divided into Team A and Team B – with the object of winning the point in a high school debate conducted under Friday Night Lights. The consequence of this is that we too quickly attach ourselves to plausible outside statements that can confirm our team’s (our internal narrative) in a way that enables us to quickly and cheaply put up that game-winning score. Anything else is inconvenient. As long as it can be used as a tool to beat up That Other Team, it matters not whether it stands up to (inconvenient) rigorous evaluation. The goal is to beat That Other Tribe and anything else is secondary. So long as we get the warm glow of confirmation.
I run into this sort of thing a lot with Tucker. Which is sad, because I agree with him on many issues (although -not- Ukraine). With Tucker there is always a lot of tension. On one hand, he has his beliefs and is a strong ability to inquire. OTOH, his whole career, his personal brand (how I have come to loathe that concept), is dependent on (a) being the best debater (professional sophist) in the room and (b) modern branding requires the ability to develop, maintain and grow a specific deliverable niche audience – and modern media is a ruthless game where that is concerned. Where does one draw the line between what is true and what is necessary or expedient to managing the brand because, without a strong band, one is now nothing.
The whole key to being a successful analyst, whether its politics, business, academic research, whatever is the ability to, at least temporarily, suspend or disarm one’s internal narratives and be completely objective – wherever that leads you. Easy to say, but I find that it is insanely hard for most to consistently acknowledge because of the disincentives of doing so in postmodern culture.
And again, do the homework.
MO: “The whole key to being a successful analyst, whether its politics, business, academic research, whatever is the ability to, at least temporarily, suspend or disarm one’s internal narratives and be completely objective”
That is definitely true — and can be very difficult for any of us to implement. In Trent Telenko’s case, he appears to define “objectivity” as anything supported by statements from official sources. But are official sources reliably accurate? Trent does not seem to invest much effort in thinking about those official statements and testing their reasonableness.
Other people start from the basic assumption that any “information” from official sources is automatically a lie, or at least highly biased & distorted. That is about as useless as Trent Telenko’s approach of total trust in officialdom.
Personal view — we should try to get “information” from as wide a set of sources as possible, and then think about it and reach our independent conclusions. That applies to topics as different as the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming Scam, the Covid Scam, and the US/NATO proxy war in the Ukraine. If Trent Telenko adopted that approach, I would take him much more seriously.
Midwest Observer,
I remember the period quite well. If I could recast my argument into two terms that explain the radical change in thinking during the 1990s; “sphere of influence” and the “End of History”.
Let’s take a step back and analyze the situation we’re in. We’re in a disastrous situation in Ukraine, not just because we have decided to fight Russia in ts backyard but because we have cemented the end of Kissinger’s great work, splitting the two great Asian powers and preventing an anti-American alliance in Mackinder’s “World Island.” To top it off with our heavy-handed use of sanctions we have not only damaged our relations with the BRICS but placed important strategic tools such as SWIFT and the dollar as reserve currency at risk. We thought we would give the Russians a good thumping and instead exposed our own weaknesses. How did we get to this point?
The End of History was not only ideological in nature (the preeminence of liberal democracy) but of course of foreign policy in the sense that international relations would, perhaps not completely devoid of rivalry, at least down-shifted to that of partners engaged in supporting a global order. The Budapest Memorandum is a good example of that because we would not have dreamed of providing security guarantees to Ukraine if we thought there was the slightest chance of having the back them up but we wanted those nukes off the market. Then again it was Bill Clinton who has been known to say just about anything to get someone to give it up.
We were all in this together right?
The term “spheres of influence” got a bad rap under Woodrow Wilson, but it encapsulates an important truth which is that nations in part have certain interests that, for reasons say of history or geography, are nNixon’s trip to China, which split Macear and dear for them and should have preeminence. In Russia’s sphere of influence is Serbia, a nation for which it has deep cultural and historical ties and basically started WW I for. When we and our NATO allies decided to go to war with Serbia over Kosovo the Russians were a bit irked. We didn’t care because 1) we thought the humanitarian issues were more important 2) we really didn’t care that much what Russia thought. Russia had realized that not only didn’t it matter, but that we were going to remind them of it.
Extend that humiliation to 2008 when we dangled NATO membership to Ukraine and Georgia. Yes they didn’t become members but we had just publicly announced our intention to extend a military alliance to Russia’s border without its permission. In terms of international relations that’s a slap to the face. As far as the Obama years? We still haven’t gotten to the bottom of what we were doing in Ukraine.
I’m not justifying what Putin did in invading Ukraine or his action afterwards. I am not saying backing Ukraine is necessarily a bad idea. What I am trying to is make sense of how we ended up in a proxy war that could go hot on the doorstep of continental nuclear power. One of the key rules of dealing with nuclear powers? Keep out of their spheres of influence, that’s just a brutal fact of life WW III didn’t start because 1) the Soviets didn’t cross the inter-German frontier and 2) we didn’t try to roll back Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.
Whenever public debate has been downgraded to a binary choice, support Ukraine to the hilt or you are putting the liberal democratic order at risk I get my hackles up because that’s prime information warfare strategy. Sort of the same lines of having Zelensky address Congress. When I hear loose talk in DC about our war ends being regime change or destroying the Russian military or that we should seek a long-term “settlement: by using a Russian defeat to have that nation implode I get worried because that is not only dangerous but in line with our attitude toward Russia for the past 25 years. We don’t live anymore in a world where we can afford those attitudes, not with the challenges we face.
To put it cold bloodily, we have the same attitudes (and many of the same people) that got us into this mess. Given what we now face in the world, we cannot afford that any longer. Is it too much to demand of our leaders in Washington some of the same sort of creative thinking of a Kissinger or a post-WW II Truman and Marshall? Our post-Russian invasion policy in the Ukraine is not a sign of virtue or strength but rather of sclerosis and cliché.
Midwest Observer,
Midwest Observer,
You comments about Tucker, discourse, and the role of analysts are well-written. Allow me to add my 2 cents (and then some)
In regard to Tucker and post-modernist discourse perhaps some definitions and and boundaries. I see post-modernism not as a particular state of affairs, but rather as a mindset exclusive to the Left that sees Truth not as an entity with its own status but rather as a product of particular social or power structure. Post-modernists see Gender” (as opposed to sex), social relations, identity as not as objective truths but rather as a Marxist social super structure to cement the power of white supremacy. The thing is about this outlook is that it is not just critique of current society, but an endpoint in of itself. Afterall if that is how you see the world all you are trying to do with your revolution is change who is in control or if you like in a Leninist vernacular “who is kicking whom”
The “narrative” is an outgrowth of this post-modern thinking because it is a deliberate attempt by both its adherents and its more centrist allies to define what is and not acceptable debate. Only that which fits the narrative is fit for society, all outside of the narrative is extremist (MAGA), “far-right,” and illegitimacy. By creating a united front among government, media, business, and upper-middle class to upper class it not only denies dissidents purchase into debate but crushes the morale of those who might oppose it. Tucker is not about discovering the Truth (and indeed nothing on cable networks should be seen that way) but about cracking the narrative by exposing its flaws, in a blasphemous sense he prepares the way for others are to follow.
As far as analytical work goes, I will extend your expression of the need for objectivity. I tell both the people who work for me and those who I mentor that they must approach situations with the mindset, carrying in their head multiple hypotheses and ruthlessly test them. I take that a step further by going back to something I learned back in my high school days, the difference between reliability and validity. A reliable explanation is something whose logic that hangs together internally, like a good story. A valid explanation is one that matches up with the facts. We, as imperfect human beings, tend to gravitate to stories that tie together data gained through induction, that’s fine because you have to start some place or else you would never get out of bed in the morning
As an aside when the kids got big enough to ride on the front seat of the car we played a game to work on perceptual biases. We would see something approaching on the horizon, perhaps a building or an oncoming car, and we would have to guess what it was and why we thought it was that way. The kids liked it because we played for ice cream, but it also left them in their arrogant youth a lesson about cognitive blindspots.
The ability to control through narrative and to self-deceive is never absent. Indeed it is the ability to understand that dilemma which is one of the many joys of getting older. Another joy is developing a finer nose for BS. The COVID issue smelled from Day 1 in terms of how it was being reported because the information presented did not fit basic facts or processes; also the information was presented as definitive, as a part of an overarching narrative, when anyone with the slightest bit of experience and humility would understand that there was no way anybody could honestly come to the conclusions they did. The Ukraine War is much the same way with people presenting analyses and narratives that they could not justify because it is difficult for people with first-hand knowledge of the situation to come to those conlusions
What do Ukraine and COVID have in common? They both were narratives heavily pushed by the Left to coerce a certain course of action by defining what was and not acceptable for debate, in other words using explicit post-modernist tools (as defined above) The Left likes to talk about hegemonic and supremacist discourses and structures, really the calls are coming from inside the house.
So back to exploding narratives. I loved Trent’s post on logistical determinants for the invasion of the southern Philippines because he brought up issues I never considered. However, keeping in mind it was just a post and not a fully edited chapter, I had some issues with the conclusions he made because they didn’t seem supported by the historical facts and what may be inconsistencies in his writing. That doesn’t mean he is wrong and I saw myself as a sympathetic reviewer, but that in my view he would need to dive into primary sources of information regarding specific command decisions. I came from the social science side of the fence, but I learned from my counterparts in the History department the absolute, ruthless need for primary sources in order to test theories. Validity not reliability. To put it another way, I may have problems with Tent’s thesis but I have not proven it wrong.
So the long and short of it is, the need for ruthless analysis never really ends because even after going through that process we (as imperfect beings) may have arrived at inadequate conclusions. So to take argument with you, I largely agree with Gavin’s basic conclusions that our policy toward Ukraine is a fiasco though I approach it from a different perspective. You may have refuted Gavin’s facts but is it fair that you haven’t refuted his basic point which is what we’re doing is wrong?
Btw… when I decide to open up my private investigation firm I’;; call you to see if you want in on the ground floor.
Mike to MO: “You may have refuted Gavin’s facts …”
Or, to put it more accurately, “You may think you have refuted Gavin’s facts …”
It seems we are all in violent agreement that it is essential:
(a) to get information from a wide variety of sources;
(b) to subject that information to careful scrutiny, recognizing that it may be biased or simply erroneous;
(c) to try to understand situations from the perspectives of all the different participants;
(d) to keep an open mind, and be prepared to adjust our understandings.
My personal assessment is that Trent Telenko did not follow those guidelines in his coverage of both the CovidScam and the US/NATO proxy war, for whatever reason. I wholeheartedly agree with Mike that Trent’s assessments of events which are safely in the past, like the invasion of the Philippines, are generally excellent.
Ukraine was and is ineligible to join NATO.
If you’ve missed the endless talk about Ukraine joining NATO- well, I’m not surprised.
He wasn’t overthrown by the CIA or anyone else.
Reality begs to differ. Victoria Nuland rather famously boasted about the coup and how much it cost.
That didn’t happen.
Yes it did. Again, I note my lack of surprise that you either know nothing about it or pretend to.
No one attacked Russia. Russia invaded Ukraine. Twice. And Moldova and Georgia and Azerbaijan and Syria.
Russia invaded Syria? Is that like how there are American troops there now, occupying part of that country and extracting oil from it?
No, because any Russian troops in Syria are there at the request of the Syrian government, which the West worked hard to overthrow, with the usual amount of success.
And, also, like the West tried to overthrow the governments of Belarus and Kazakhstan, just before the beginning of the present Ukraine war.
Hmmm. I’m sensing a pattern here. The West likes to overthrow governments- Iraq, Libya, and even Egypt come to mind, although that one didn’t stick- because… reasons.
Forgive me if I understand exactly why the Russian government didn’t wait until it was overthrown and sharing the fate of the former Libyan dictator to react to events. Or don’t.
Ukraine will not submit to genocide and will not stop fighting until Russia is driven from their country no matter what we do.
This is a childish vision of reality. Ukraine will stop fighting because they will soon have no weapons, no ammunition, and too few soldiers to matter.
You and your warmongering pals did this. You all made it happen. Blood is on your hands. You destroyed Ukraine. You should be ashamed.
But of course you aren’t.
I recommend “Torch of New Russia” by Pavel Gubarev for anyone interested in reading a different version of events in Ukraine than the one we see every day in the regime media. Heaven forefend that I should claim it’s the “correct” version. It is, however, a different version.