Fourth-Wall Notes
in re
On Self-Invalidation: Throughout my time, self-invalidating arguments persist as one of the great mysteries of people's behavior. It's not that I can't follow this or that argument, but, rather, that doing so shows an argument invalid according to its own pretenses. As a living experience, stuff happens; but as a discursive prospect, people have long expressed frustration when taken at face value in this manner, though it remains unclear what anyone else is supposed to do.
And in this, consider discussion at hand:
Saint: [(in re Ukranian "self-destruction" and killing Russians)]
Write4U: So Ukraine should just do what? Give their country to Russia?
Sculptor: What would you suggest?
And in that moment, how is, "National defense",
not the obvious answer? What would I suggest? National defense. I would suggest Ukranians defend their nation. Yet, apparently, this runs in some sort of circle, because defending the nation is "self-destruction", and while this is its own argument for Saint to support or not, we can easily wonder, in considering Sculptor's point, at a soldier's self-invalidation.
It seems a fair question: If national defense is off the table, then what the hell was anyone's military service for? The U.S., after all, is a nation that sallies forth abroad in order to fulfill its national defense pretenses; comparatively, foreign invaders marching down the street and blowing up the place is about as straightforward an occasion for national defense as anyone might find. That a soldier struggles with this concept is about as invalidating of soldiers as can be.
We hire, train, and organize mass murderers, and this is ostensibly acceptable because it fulfills a certain allegedly necessary purpose. When the political argument abandons that necessity, what we're left with is just a bunch murderous gangsters.
†
Here is a ridiculous pretense: 「Decades of "anti-imperialism" were just explicit
anti-Americanism, because Russian imperialism should apparently be somehow defended, protected, rhetorically mitigated, or even coddled.」
I know, I know. But compared to the ridiculousness of the pretense, there is also the absurdity of what it comments on. Contrachauvinism often feels like it makes a certain amount of sense, but in its moment gives the lie to generations of antisociality woven into a society. It would be one thing if the great leftist anti-American menace of traditionalist fearmongering rose up to support Russian romanticizing of the old Communist empire, but it's not; it's our anticommunists, antisoviets, and antiliberals. American capitalists have their own decisions to make, but American libertarians and conservative patriots backing Russian expansionism is its own context, and the stuff of legend; in the future, some people won't believe straightforward descriptions of what went on in these days, 「Because, come on, nobody's
that ridiculous, right?」
†
One last note: There is a circumstance that becomes quite difficult to explain, even though we perceive it frequently.
If one will not stop unless someone kicks his shit, and another will lament that nobody is kicking his shit, then neither should complain when the neighborhood shitkicker steps up and kicks the shit out of the one.
We might encounter it plenty around here, but what is striking about the moment is actually how it plays out in larger living expressions well beyond the odd corners beneath and behind the chatter and buzz of social media. Think about the idea of an American political movement that will eventually blame its behavior on the opposition for failing to kick the shit out of them at the height of their noncompetency. Perhaps even more jarringly, consider an imperialist-expansionist war run by a Russian strongman who isn't going to stop until someone stops him. And even more unsettling might be a prospect that the one admires the other.
And as discouraging as it might feel to watch Republican politicians and surrogates pander to Putin's fancy, the hopeful part is the inherent reminder that it's not all the same. If it was, American conservatives wouldn't be praying for their own Russian strongman.