All outcomes should be judged in reference to the resources waged and… lost.
Since life is a zero sum game whereby one’s gain is someone else’s loss, the same goes for almost all human endeavors.
I would even claim that the more one stands to lose in a contest, the more it becomes a zero-sum game.
In other words, if the game is waged over kicks & giggles, then almost nothing is lost or gained.
However, if one ends up losing one’s wife over a game of craps, then the whole game becomes about its outcome.
Case in point
Was listening to Tucker Carlson being debriefed on his Putin interview by none other than Lex Fridman. Frankly, I do not like Fridman. I do not care for him at all. I do not know why but there is something he exudes I find disingenuous. More about Lex later.
Big parenthetical break starts here – better get some air before we dive in, eh…
As for Tucker, besides his name which reminds me of Robin Hood’s original Friar Tuck, I find the man as congenial and outspoken as the good friar, and quite the straight shooter. Not entirely honest, mind you, because the man did not disclose his CIA job application until Putin came out with it, but enough of a man to own it after the fact.
Can’t really put my finger on it, but even Tucker seems to hide something under his jovial carapace.
Why do I say this?
Well, I happen to know someone who laughs in a very clenched manner, and whose eyes do not laugh along with his mouth. Pretty much like Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter character.
The thing though and this is very important for your survival, is to watch out for the signs. When the person’s mouth tells you something, but their eyes belie that, you ought to run.
You’re in mortal danger.
And that’s exactly what that dude I told you about earlier looks like. Even when he talks to me, and he is affable, almost to the point of making himself endearing, but not just, there is something off putting about him. Call it instinct, but that guy cannot be trusted. I don’t trust him.
That’s why I do not cultivate that person. Because if I cannot trust someone, I won’t frequent them.
Back to Tucker. I used to be and still am, somewhat, of a Tucker fan. Although now, I find the man, the journalist less appealing. You see, once a liar, even by omission, always a liar.
And I cannot bring myself to like a liar. Although…
Parenthetical break ends here.
Anyhow, Tucker said that a case for negotiated peace in Ukraine could still be made as long as both UKR and RUS felt they both lost at the green table.
I beg to differ. I really do.
At this point, the conflict is acute. Hence, peace will come after the final victory.
I think this might have been the case back in 2022. Although even then, tens of thousands of lives had already been lost to violence. As you can see from this little 2015 war map below.
There is no chance of a negotiated settlement of this conflict today. Both parties have taken horrendous losses. We’re talking 100,000 dead and many more wounded for RUS, and 600,000 dead and more wounded for UKR. The material and financial losses range into the hundreds of billion dollars.
No. This is a fight to the end. This is a zero-sum war.
Anybody who believes a war on this scale, with these costs, can be stopped at the turn of a key, is misguided and deluded.
Anybody who tells you that the longer the war lasts, the easier it is for peace to become reality, is hiding the truth.
Truth is this war was conceived, planned, and instigated at the behest of the Collective West.
Its purpose: to remove Ukraine from Russia’s near abroad and put her on a Western orbit.
This is part and parcel of Brzezinski’s grand chessboard strategy, which guided the policy of the last seven US presidential administrations.
Let me be clearer. America wants to dismantle Russia until it looks like this. Capisce?!
But Russia detected Western motives. Forestalled its tactics. And sprung the trap before it could knock it out of commission. The West imposed its 19,000 sanctions on Russia. These all failed. It made Russia more resilient than ever before. Not only that.
Russia is now fighting this Global War against the West for Its Life. It is an Existential War.
And all Existential Wars are to the Death.
It also pierced the veil of deception that the West was not the enemy of Russia and Russians. It made the Russian people realize that not only the Collective West was out to get them as a People. But also, that its intended target, Putin, was the providential man to save it from obliteration.
Nowadays, sanctions have cemented his myth to the point that Putin is Russia and Russia is Putin. So, yeah. Western tactics backfired horribly. And China and India, who have been watching this unfold, just like the entire world, are judging the West with disapproving eyes.
The World
The BRICS, Africa, South America, Asia, basically more than 6 billion people are watching the entire thing play out, apprehensively. They know by now that the designs of the Collective West concern them directly. For if Russia ever falls, they are next.
And let me again be crystal clear.
Most of the world is (combined) Islamic, traditional, and sane. It believes we here in the West have completely lost our wits. They know that the gods have condemned us to die. And that before that comes to pass, they made us mad. And they willingly want to avoid our fate. They want to live. And they want their children to live.
You see, folks, most of the world considers this Life preferable to Death.
We alone here in the West have succumbed to the Devil’s Trap. We no longer cherish Life. We abort that is we kill our babies before they are even born. We hedonistically seek all material pleasures. Without ever being satisfied by our futile quest for something to fill the hole of our meaningless lives. We are doomed to a sterile existence. We are lost without a rudder on an ocean of solitude at the mercy of its winds and currents.
We are trapped in the pot de merde, the very doldrums of our own civilization’s self-ending resolution. We are doomed to die where we stand. Because we have stopped believing in our manifest destiny.
But the world out there hasn’t. In fact, it is full of hope in a brighter, more prosperous future.
One in which their children and their children’s children will remember their ancestors with pride for countless generations into the time continuum.
In the end, the Red, Yellow, Dark Green and the bottom half of the Light Green, along with the eastern half of our Pale Blue Dot will emerge victorious.
Because Life will always find a way. Whereas Death will annihilate the very memory of Our Failure.
Outcome
In the end, the cost of the war will dictate its outcome. The battle will be to the end. And since Russia has 5,580 nuclear warheads, installed on 1,710 deployed missiles, and Ukraine has none, this war can only end with the total capitulation of Ukraine.
Götterdämmerung 