A realistic guess about the future. The tsar’s inflexibility. Yesterday was overly exciting

20221230

A few months ago I gave up the notion of writing a review of Edward Dutton's "The Past Is A Future Country". I concluded it was a hastily pulled together book. Its mathematical models of what would happen in the future seemed to be poorly constructed and the graphs were terrible. Nonetheless, it contained a many good ideas.

Returning to it, I find that Dutton is the only writer whom I follow who is not afraid to put all of the significant factors into the equation modeling our future. These include race, sex and gender, declining intelligence, the woke philosophy and so on. He also has a good understanding of how civilizations have collapsed throughout history.  See my Amazon video review of the book that first called him to my attention, At Our Wits End.

Most importantly, he is of my view that civilization will survive in small groups of more or less homogeneous people who return to simpler styles of life. Unlike Robert Malone or Charles Murray, he does not express any optimism that America can reconstitute itself. History shows that civilizations collapse, usually in a messy, bloody fashion, but nonetheless a few people survive to restart the process.

The most significant such collapse is one we never read about – the end of the Bronze Age about 1200 BC. It saw the collapse of the Mycenaean Greeks, the Hittites, the new Kingdom Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians and the Elamites. Whereas the Roman Empire split, with many of the more intelligent and productive citizens relocating to Constantinople to keep things going for another millennium after Rome collapsed, the Bronze Age catastrophe was absolute. He suggests that it is the best predictive model with regard to what will happen to our current world civilization.  He predicts it will take about another three decades.

The factor Dutton leaves out, which I consider major, is the depopulation that appears to be underway.  He credits the long-term decline in births to social factors. While that is certainly true as well, as I note in my video on depopulation, birthrates are down about 10% since the jabs. My projection is that this is only the tip of the iceberg. He doesn't acknowledge that the vaccines have any thing to do with it.

The book has only three not very substantive reviews on Amazon after six months. I will take my time and do a thorough one. Meanwhile I am continuing to work on my own article “An Evolutionary Analysis of What Women Want,” the effort which inspired me to go back and reread Dutton. Many of our of observations dovetail. He says that societies did not reproduce themselves because they became too dissolute, too individualistic. I state the same thing another way. A society needs children to propagate itself. When what women want does not include children, it collapses.

Dutton is an evolutionary psychologist.  The timeframes he addresses are certainly evolutionary, not merely historical.  We have evolved into the cul de sac in which we now find ourselves.  It has happened before.

Every author stands to benefit from outside opinions. If any of you readers are interested in my draft, which now stands at about 10 pages, I will be delighted to send it to you and look forward to your feedback.

We are seeing the mistakes of the czars repeated in Putin. It is quite probable he is the one who inspired the campaigns against Bakhmut, against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, and certainly against Ukraine itself. The Russian hierarchy is such that nobody can tell him he has made a mistake. Once he is committed to a course of action, his subordinates must assume that his judgment is infallible. Said infallibility will be his downfall.

They have been trying for four months to take Bakhmut, at a cost so far of 10,000 lives and artillery rounds beyond reckoning.  Same as Severodonetsk and Lysychansk last summer.  Knowing of their unwavering commitment to whatever goal Putin names, Ukraine can play rope-a-dope with the Russians until they are exhausted.

The attacks on civilian infrastructure in an attempt to freeze us into surrender are immoral and reprehensible.  Also ineffective.  I write this on December 30, a day after the third huge attack this month.  While the lights were out yesterday until dinnertime, they have been on most of today.  The Russians have been looking for a knockout punch since October.  Prognosticators say they are running out of rockets.  Kyiv keeps saying “ouch, it hurts, it hurts,” then bouncing right back, perhaps in an effort to encourage them to continue a wasteful, politically isolating and not that damaging waste of resources.

Ukraine is flexible. We can take advantage of Putin's “infallible” judgment as we did last spring shooting stranded tanks on the roads leading to Kyiv, and with last summer’s Kharkiv counteroffensive.

It was so obviously important that he not lose Kherson that we feigned an attack that direction and we got him to commit his troops to its defense. This weakened him along the Kharkiv sector where we were able to mount a major offensive. I would not be surprised that same sort of thing was being planned even now. Russia's objectives seem to be quite clear. They want to capture the rest of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts. Knowing their aims, we can hit them where they are weak.

The Russians are planning to defend against an attack on Melitopol from the north.  It is said that Ukraine cannot cross the Dnipro in force to attack from the west.  I would not be so sure.

Returning to the subject of the bombs, the statistics are that our air defense shot down 54 of the 69 rockets that Russia sent. By official accounting so far three people were hurt in Kyiv, nobody killed. We were without light until about 6 o'clock night.

Russian Dissenters on Substack repeatedly point out the stupidity and futility of Russia’s policies. This link is to a good article from a couple of days ago. They ask what would happen if Russia were to prevail? They would have won over a country of 35 million people that resolutely does not want them. They would have to contend with insurrections and partisan activity forever and ever. Ukraine could never be integrated into Russia. We were not fully integrated into the Russian or Soviet Empires.  We never became Russian. It was laughable to Russians in the 1970s. It would be even harder now, given that the world knows us, and we know so much more of the world than we did back then.

Even back in March, in the initial onslaught, when the whole world was convinced that Ukraine would collapse and Russia would take over, it was clear to me that they could never dominate.  That’s why we stayed. 

As Eddie, Zoriana and I were waiting for the bus at 9 o'clock yesterday morning we heard a loud explosion. The warhead of a Kalibr missile – the size of the big bombs of World War II. It sounded no more than a mile away. Eddie quickly concluded that the Metro would be closed on account of an air raid.  He could not go to his dentist appointment. He went home. Zoriana and I proceeded to her kindergarten.

At 5 o'clock she had a Christmas pageant at nursery school. It was reminiscent of Christmas pageants at St. Patrick's Elementary School in Washington three decades ago.  Parents packed into the living room of the school’s rented house, every one with a camera to capture their little darlings’ performances. The kids did well. Zoriana sang a Christmas carol a capella, making me proud. She danced with (IMHO) better coordination and style than the other little kids.

As we were standing waiting for the bus on the way home Oksana shouted and started to comfort Zoriana. I didn't understand what was going on.  Oksana pointed into the black. I still didn't see anything.  Then flames emerged from the smoke I had not noticed coming from the house across the street. Everything went up in flames in the three or four minutes we stood there waiting for the bus.

The householder ran in a panic to Oksana and asked her to call 911, which she did.  Oksana asked what we could do for the guy.  Beyond her call to 911, there was nothing.  There were flames shooting out the door. Things were popping inside the apartment. The smoke was noxious.  We had a little kid we had to get home. There was nothing we could do. Oksana read on the neighborhood Telegram channel that the firemen had arrived in the four minutes it took the bus to get to our stop.

On the way to kindergarten this morning we saw that the building is still standing. We hadn't been able to see in the dark, but it's made out of stucco. The door and windows are burned out but the structure appears intact. It’s a small place – maybe 12 by 12 feet -  an apartment above what used to be a store.  At any rate, we can feel sorry for the poor guy who probably lost everything he had in life.

Oksana gave a thought to our house.  Quite different, thankfully.  Fiberglass siding over a SIP panel structure, with an interior of sheetrock hung on metal studs.  Not much to burn except the kitchen cabinetry.  I don’t have vast faith in the electrical wiring installed by a since-deceased alcoholic, but the circuit breakers have kicked in often enough that we know they work.

That’s the news from Lake WeBeGone, where I am cooking a mince pie to take to New Years dinner at Sasha and Vika’s house, where Eddie will play with his best friend Artem and Marianna with her agemate Taras. 

Graham