Dana Blankenhorn

Counterculture

Here is the most important point about Trump, his acolytes, and the Christianist forces allied with him.

They’re a counterculture.

They’re not the culture.

The dominant culture of the West is tolerant. It’s tolerant because that’s in the best interest of technology, where creativity is the gating factor to economic growth.

The economic facts aren’t changing. China isn’t going to beat us because you can’t get mass creativity from slaved minds. Russia remains tied to the old economy of resources, money coming out of the ground. Even the Middle East is liberalizing, because the Sauds and their fellow sheikhs can see the handwriting on the wall, can see Israel becoming more powerful than they can ever hope to be. They know they must get on the right side of the new economy. It’s where they’re investing their oil wealth.

We are at War

The simplest explanation for this year’s events is one we don’t want to admit.

We are at war.

We are at war with Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

We were in a state of Cold War with Russia for years. Trump was part of it. Brexit was part of it. Putin subverted democratic processes, subverted the Internet, and subverted markets long before his invasion of Ukraine.

The invasion made this a hot war.

There is no alternative to Ukraine’s complete victory. Anything that leaves Putin in power only means we’re going to be here again. He isn’t like Hitler. Putin IS Hitler. It no longer matters that he has nuclear weapons. He may use them if we retreat, he may use them if we advance. We can’t limit our response to his threats. Putin’s victory would destroy humanity in any case, wrecking the climate in a global conflict of all-against-all.

It's time to go all-in.