F—k It: I’m Going Full Ruski
Feel free to join me, Comrades.
With a rump like that, who can blame Vlad for staring
Let me start with this caveat: adopting a neutral position in regards to our current geo-political drama of choice between Ukraine and Russia is a sound and laudable decision.
It is, needless to say, far better than replacing your jab emoji with a blue and yellow flag emoji simply coz it’s the Right Thing to do. However, it is also better than putting your unconditional support behind a shifty-eyed ex-KGB agent who enjoys a spot of bare-chested horseback riding in front of opportunistic State TV teams, simply because the same people who provably lied to us for two years about a pandemic are now telling us he is the new Orange Man Bad. That whole “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” thing, while a useful starting point, doesn’t hold up for long when you start to realise just how much of this political posturing is simply elite theatre, scripted to lead us into false choices.
Few people also have the autistic compulsion and free time (thank you Jibby Jab mandates) to deep dive into the complex and convoluted backstory behind Ukraine’s recent invasion, to the extent that it is possible to confidently place one’s toe onto either side of the divide.
So: I absolutely respect and support anyone who maintains this steadfast Swiss neutrality, and instead chooses to put their skin into other games that are currently escalating to beyond normal levels of informational, moral and emotional warfare.
But I’ve finally gotten around to watching the documentary Ukraine on Fire (so you don’t have to, although you probably still should) and I’ve decided it’s time to make a break for it. Wish me luck!
Look: I don’t need to do this.
There are few people who enjoy sitting on the fence more than someone who was born into the role through their last name. I take pride in adopting deliberately provocative centrist positions on the majority of hot-button social issues, and consistently aim to hit that sweet spot of attracting negative energy from both sides.
But someone needs to get things moving here. Enough of this hiding behind “well yes I understand why Russia would feel threatened by NATO expansion but there is still no justification for military invasion and oh my God won’t someone think of the Ukrainian children!” stuff.
Let’s be clear here: very few people outside of the psychopaths have any desire for this purposeful violence dressed up as war. I certainly don’t know anyone who does. So to have to qualify every opinion with this blanket anti-war caveat is becoming increasingly tiresome and pointless — not to mention problematic (in my humble opinion) if it is extended to the denial of more abstract forms of warfare in the moral and spiritual domains.
While i’m at it: also tiresome is the equivalence that is automatically made between supporting Russia’s initial invasion and supporting any events that result from this invasion. The decision to commence military action must be judged separately from the gratuitous and bloodthirsty acts of military violence that we all know will follow. Such violence is, after all, the inevitable outcome and consequence of giving jacked-up toxic-masculine institutions full access to the shiny hardware of the global military industrial complex.
What I mean by jumping off the fence is clearly and unambiguously stating, without equivocation or moral hedging, that both sides are not equal here: the aggressor — the party who makes the initial transgression of natural law — is always in the wrong, is always the culpable party, and will always bear primary responsibility for any retaliation that was to follow.
And this party, it is now clear to me, is the US/NATO/Ukraine alliance.
My first red flag from the mainstream anti-Russia narrative came via Oliver Stone’s infamous interview by Stephen Colbert — who took the Oscar winning Director to task (from his unparalleled moral high horse) for having the audacity to treat Putin with the respect deserved of a human being. While I was still full libtard at that point, deep in my smug Colbert fandom, the vibe was unmistakably hostile (from both interviewer and audience) and it is still one of the most uncomfortable interviews I have seen.
With this context in mind, Ukraine on Fire (based around interviews between Stone, Putin and other Russian and Ukraine leaders involved in the 2014 uprisings) is well worth 90 minutes of your time — if you have not already invested it. You will have to rely on wrongthink outposts like Rumble and Bitchute, given it was recently memory-holed from the big boys. It is hard to be surprised by the level of fuckery Western Governments are capable of once you have gone full 9/11 Truth, however the audacity of their shameless intervention in a sovereign foreign nation’s affairs during the Maidan colour revolution is something to behold.
Of course: numerous, more notable Substack writers have also provided excellent insight and commentary on the Western micro-aggressions that have lead us to this point. They haven’t quite gone full Ruski yet, from what I have red, sorry read — perhaps because they still feel somewhat humbled by not predicting the extent of the Russian invasion.
Or, perhaps it isn’t their time yet. Greenwald, Taibbi, Johnstone et al. serve their role in unravelling these thick layers of propaganda, and we all know where they stand — however taking a deliberately provocative Pro-Putin position is probably unnecessary to that role.
Well, I don’t have that problem. All my YouTube Tarot Readers, Astrologers and Doomsday Preppers were telling me that the end times were approaching, so I was well and truly expecting things to quickly veer towards nuclear. I’ve already committed myself to the impending apocalypse timeline, so to feign moderation and caution at this point would be disingenuous.
So, in short: if I don’t take the plunge and go full Ruski, who will?
I’m already all-in on several key aspects of the pro-Russia narrative: the Vlad-Orange Man bromance, the Biden Burisma business, the bio-labs (turns out, fellow lab-leak truthers, we may not have gone deep enough!); all this Qanon-adjacent goodness is my bread and butter.
Plus, I truly have a soft spot for Russia. Perhaps the most life-changing and mind-opening piece of literature I have read is the Anastasia series: a remarkable record of the encounters between a Russian businessman and a Forest princess/witch from the Siberian Taiga. If you persist through the clunky writing style and New Age-isms, you will catch a rare glimpse of a country and a culture — or, perhaps more accurately, a land — that holds a level of wisdom and knowledge we can only dream of in our basic-bish Western world.
If I was going to be particularly provocative: I would suggest that Russia is one of the few remaining white populations to still possess a robust culture and spirituality — not to mention one that remains grounded in harmony with the natural world.
*Ducks*
Our society has been on a steady drift towards moral relativism and both-sides-ing for a while, and this fence-sitting is only going to increase. It is, after all, the logical and understandable result of being bombarded by questionable information from all sides, which leaves one overwhelmed and unable to settle on a clear position on any significant social issue. Solipsism is about to become the new black.
And I get it. I will readily admit that I am almost at the ‘throw the TV out the window’ stage: making a radical break from the world we can understand only through distorted digital means. Every screen check increasingly feels like a misuse of our depleted sources of energy, when they should be being directed towards issues that we can understand and change through our direct personal experience. Like no other time in our lives, the most important thing we can be doing right now is focusing on our own communities, our own backyards, or even (to go dangerously close to Jordan Peterson territory) our own rooms.
But I’m not at the stage to switch off completely yet (granted, maybe that may just be my smart screen addiction justifying itself). While the majority of our population remains caught up in this global (and, to be fair, increasingly entertaining) political theatre, we have a duty to steer this script towards objective truth and reality in whatever way we can.
And that is the ultimate reason for this article, and this position: I believe there is a distinct right and wrong in this current plot line, and — in a painfully predictive development — The West falls on the wrong side, again.
Urgh… why do so many of articles finish at this same conclusion? I’m at peace now with us being the bad guys, although I still like to think we will be left with some chance for redemption.
We could really be on to something with this Wetiko thing, guys.