The Enemy of My Enemies

Contemplating a moral dilemma in our multipolar world.

We are forbidden to speak of Vladimir Putin at all these days without wrapping both sides of his name with sufficient admonishments of venomous slander. Anyone who does not pledge their immediate allegiance to the fashionable and misguided present hysteria against the man or 150 million Russians will be considered prima facie an apologist at best and a traitor at worst.

They say he’s a demon, a scoundrel, a war criminal, a cosmic accident sent to destroy democracy and all that is good and noble, which of course only derives from good and noble nations of the west claiming to still be democratic. Sixty years ago they also said that by now cars would fly, there would be no more wars, liberal democracy would shepherd us from evil, and not morph into the evil it proclaimed to dispel. Thirty years ago was supposed to be the end of history.

They say Putin is our enemy and the reason they keep repeating it ad nauseam is that they know millions will believe it. Those who incessantly level these charges without irony, apparently lack any self-awareness or a mirror. Perhaps all they have are mirrors and can only make dark accusations based on their own reflections.

We used to expect so much of our enemies, with a minimal prerequisite being they behaved as such. And here we are, millions still believing the unbelievable, a new prepackaged promo kit of “The Present Thing” delivered with the usual historical inconsistencies and logical fallacies, while millions more watch this charade repeat in disbelief.

If we have learned anything from western governments in their quest to enflame a new cold war with Russia, and now a new world war with both Russia and China it’s that they can’t be trusted about anything. If they point in a direction and say, “Look! Be outraged! It’s your enemy!” The only thing more outrageous than the cartoonish nature of their sloppy programming attempts, is that they seem to work because not enough people stop and ask, “Why?”

In Sun Tzu’s The Art of War one of his five constants of warfare is the Moral Law:

The Moral Law causes the people to be in complete accord with their ruler, so that they will follow him regardless of their lives, undismayed by any danger. …The consummate leader cultivates the Moral Law, and strictly adheres to method and discipline.

A nation or people bound to their leaders by strong foundations and principles, rooted in justification for a righteous conflict, whether in attack, defensive attack, diversion, or defense, will be more likely to find success. It requires the people to be in complete accord with their ruler.

Does this sound like NATO?

Does the Moral Law exist in any nations of the west that just concluded two years of psychologically abusing if not outright murdering their own citizens?

Does it exist in the drunken empire of the west that has been at war with the world and its own people for decades?

Wars used to require some foundation for public acceptance. Sun Tzu could hardly have imagined the ability of governments to manipulate and gaslight their own warriors to sacrifice for inoble aims. Now all conflict requires is first and foremost a good public relations campaign. People want to feel like their side has a clear conscience about things. It never really matters whether the information that relieves the conscience is based on truth. They want a sense of moral high ground even if that ground is built of straw. They seek to be on the “right side of history”, even if that side is objectively clouded in ambiguities and contradictions.

Governments of the west have given up on the Moral Law a long time ago. They do as they please toward aims they are never honest about with those who entrusted their governance. Moral governance seems like a contradiction in itself.

And so with no moral ground of any discernable kind to stand on, we’re still supposed to believe what we’re told by our unscrupulous leaders about Russia and Putin.

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