Xeet your Heroes
As all sheol breaks loose in the Levant, we can pray for peace as people prepare for war. But I want to refrain from further commentary on the madness, before the dust settles. The Martyr Made telling of the origins of the conflict between Israel and Palestine is still the best I have ever heard. If you have never given it your ear, and you have any glancing interest in the region, I encourage you to do so expeditiously—whilst refraining from bombastic side-eye, criminal offensive side-eye. Who does the Levant belong to? Palestinians? Israelis? Brits? Turks? Or, as BAP proposes, The Kingdom of The Two Sicilies?
They say never meet your heroes… because they will be a peg or two lower on the pedestal you placed them on in the figments of your imagination. You will see that they are humans, and not gods. That they bleed. And breathe.
Edward Luttwak is a sort of hero of mine, and I don’t fully know why, but perhaps it is because he is so hard to pin-down positionally. It may be because he is functional in his approach. He made it big in his mid-twenties by writing The Book on coup d'état. Unlike the many well-travelled but ignorant spooks he acerbically criticizes in every nook-and-cranny, he’s an enthusiastic polyglot (Romanian, Hebrew, Sicilian, Milanese, English, Chinese etc.). He’s as genuinely and authentically interested in other cultures as Cotton Hill. Hank knows nothing of Kahn’s ethnic background, and Boomhauer thinks Kahn is Japanese. And yet, Edward Luttwak’s progressive daughter Yael made a film about him entited My Favorite Neoconservative. And I have railed against Neoconservatives in name since I stumbled upon Dr. Ron Paul (2007), and in action since I stumbled upon Immortal Technique (2004).
What gives? He has consistent insight into effective governance. But on the Russia question, like another intellectual I look up to (Nassim Taleb), he has taken the State department’s official position. I can respectfully disagree on any current conflict in the world, even the one closest to my heart in the amhara region of Ethiopia. But I will whip out my American card (born and raised) on X to tell Luttwak his analogy is piss poor. All analogies breakdown if extended too far. My philosophy professor taught me this long ago. But some breakdown immediately.
I laid two claims against his claim that there is a connection between King George III’s scrap with the 13 colonies and Pres. Putin’s scrap with the Ukraine. Notice that my first claim went completely unanswered. He knows I am right. In university parliamentary debate, which I received a scholarship and first dibs, along with NCAA athletes, at signing up for courses because of, any competent judge would award this point fully in my favor. A strong contingent of left-wing political activists (Whigs) sabotaged the English from within England in the American Revolution. No such force, nor anything near it, exists today in Russia. The recently departed rich man and suicide squad leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was the closest voice of dissent, and if anything, he wanted to be more aggressive against the Ukraine.
That brings us to point two, which Luttwak tries to dispute. He counts England’s Canadian colony as a land border with the U.S. The border of a satellite or colony is not the same as the border of the homeland. After telling him this, he stopped responding. yahweh alone is judge. But I judge this a concession. Reader, what do you judge?
Again, maybe I too should put the Ukraine flag in my X bio, or wear it on my suit like ex-Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy. Slava Ukraini! And Slava Substack, for allowing me to say these spicy tingz that would get me banhammered from Youtube. Nevertheless, let us only use analogies that work to some significant extent, or shut up.
Now, if you want to read and hear why I admire Luttwak: read his account about how Pres. Xi Jinping of China may have danced with the devil to get to where he is today, read him in conversation with one of my favorite writers David Samuels re: Xi, Putin, and Biden, and hear him in conversation with BAP about how beautiful the temperate climate and temperate kingship of Palermo and Norman Sicily writ large was.