The Fri-gest: Wednesday Edition!
Russian war bloggers go on the offensive; the queen takes a break; tragic beauty is real, y'all; and Wynton makes me reconsider
>Live by the meme, die by the meme. Expecting a romp, the Russian government allowed pro-war bloggers and journalists to embed with invading forces at the outset of the “special military operation” in Ukraine. The idea was to bolster state propaganda with on-the-ground reports of swift and easy victories as the military swept through the largely Russian-speaking territories in the East and South, and perhaps to record for posterity the reunification of the empire under the aegis of Moscow. On Telegram, a social media platform that is freely available to Russians (Facebook and Twitter are restricted), some of these commentators have picked up hundreds of thousands — even millions — of followers.
The original plan hasn’t aged well. Beyond the steady accumulation of new atrocities and very tenuous control in some key areas, the Russian military has mostly been stymied by Ukrainian defense forces. And in the last week, a Ukrainian counter-offensive has reportedly reclaimed vast territories, variously reported as covering anywhere from hundreds to thousands of square miles, in the Northeast, including key cities such as Balakliya, Kupyansk and Izyum, a critical supply hub for the invading forces. Volodymyr Zelensky touched down in Izyum today to survey the situation after the city was liberated.
This has saddled the Kremlin with a restive corps of internet jingos — many of them military veterans and far-right nationalists — who are reporting on the steadily mounting failures and looking to assign blame. “It’s time to punish the commanders who allowed these kinds of things,” the Times quoted from a video report by one prominent commentator. Another of these, a retired Russian intelligence colonel who led Russian forces in Crimea, is quoted in the Guardian: “We have already lost. The rest is just a matter of time.”
There’s no sense getting over one’s skis here. Ukraine’s successes in Kharkiv Oblast notwithstanding, the Russian military still maintains a pretty strong grip of the Donbas region next door, with control over major cities from Luhansk down through Donetsk and Mariupol and across the South of Ukraine to Kherson, which is even to the west of Crimea, the Black Sea region Russia claims to have annexed in 2014. No one expects Ukraine to be declaring any victories until all of that territory is recovered, Crimea included. Russia is still the much stronger force, and hasn’t yet used all the levers available to it, which could include a military draft (which they’ve resisted) and, in the worst possible scenario, a nuclear strike.
But as a domestic matter, it’s unclear how long Putin can sustain his regime once the country’s powerful ultra-nationalists — who have generally complained that Russian forces have not been bold enough in fighting the war — lose faith in Putin’s ability to win in Ukraine. The challenging part for the Kremlin — at least the part of it that remains committed to the president — is that these dispatches not only undermine the image of competence promoted (pretty successfully) by domestic propaganda, but that it comes from the far-right, which leaves the Kremlin with little choice but to suffer it.
From the Guardian:
The Kremlin’s tolerance of the bloggers’ comments is remarkable, experts say, given the newly introduced laws under which criticism of the war can be punished with up to 15 years in jail.
Pavel Luzhin, an independent Russian military expert, believes the bloggers are left “untouched” because they provide an outlet for a section of the Russian population to vent their anger about the failures in Ukraine. “The Kremlin is too scared to simply ignore the nationalist section of the population,” Luzhin said, adding that some of the bloggers were probably operating with the tacit approval of the security services.
One thing I’m watching: Defeat in Ukraine would undoubtedly mean the end of Putin, but it’s not clear this is the most favorable outcome. With the totality of the regime embodied in the lone figure of the president, there is no comprehensible mechanism to replace him, no apparent order of succession, nor even a clear sense of who the candidates might be. And since it’s Russia, you always have to worry about something worse coming along. Strange to say it, but we ought to be careful what we wish for.
>God Save this Particular Queen. Andrew Sullivan puts the case for monarchy better than most:
The Crown represents something from the ancient past, a logically indefensible but emotionally salient symbol of something called a nation, something that gives its members meaning and happiness. However shitty the economy, or awful the prime minister, or ugly the discourse, the monarch is able to represent the nation all the time. In a living, breathing, mortal person.
It’s not enough. It’s not enough to justify a facially repugnant system of inherited title that might occasionally elevate someone tolerable, such as the recently deceased Queen Elizabeth II, at the cost of both democratic principle and self-respect. Let’s face it: If the accident of birth had positioned Randy Andy and not the dimwit Charles to inherit the throne, even the blinkered English would lose their taste for these inbreds and possibly join in shrieking, consumptive laughter with the rest of us. Kingship (or Queenship, if you’d prefer) is a relic of the ages of superstition, before science and medicine, when subjects of the realm were encouraged to believe that Providence itself could be transmitted through the royal bloodline and conferred mystical potency. Once that mythology is gone, all that’s left is a line of idle rich folk with a boatload of entitlement and an uncertain residual claim on the public treasury.
No, let’s have “something called a nation” without the unworthy knockabouts. The Kennedys have been enough, thank you.
Still, I can’t possibly go this far:
In fairness to this charmer, she may believe this is the 17th Century and England’s monarch still has some kind of crucial role in the affairs of the state much beyond deciding when to open parliament and when to close it. Elizabeth II ascended to the throne in 1952, five years after the collapse of the Indian Raj. The larger decolonization project, a priority of postwar Labour governments, was already well underway. It should perhaps be reckoned that Britain’s disengagement from its former colonies required no specific assent from The Crown; nor was it The Crown’s business to oppose it. Britain has been a constitutional monarchy since 1688, and it is the prime minister and parliament’s business to make policy. To the extent Elizabeth had any role in the colonial project at all, it was as the ceremonial figurehead of a nation that was busily at work unwinding it.
Indeed, perhaps the key to her global popularity was that she came to symbolize, through public reserve and personal grace, the acknowledgment of a more modest role and expectations for a former global power that once ruled over nearly a quarter of the earth.
To wish for an “excruciating” death for this figure would seem not just inhumane but ahistorical. (It is to condemn the present that this medieval sentiment — a barely concealed wish for torture — is what now serves the demands of “enlightenment” in many places.) She was probably a cold mother, Elizabeth, and deserves no credit for that. Even among Americans (who one wishes could do better), she excited that retrograde impulse to bow before idols and revere celebrity, all the better for being “royal,” and we will be forced to tolerate the cultic sway of her insufferable brood for time uncertain. That is its own kind of horror. But the late queen should not be remembered un-fondly: she was the best we could ever hope to get from a truly lamentable institution.
>Nope, you are never too attractive, so stop it. I must have said it before: If you are going to skip out on the tab at a restaurant, go big. Do not make it a Chili’s. Make it a Nobu, or maybe a French Laundry, or Eleven Madison Park. Pecca fortiter, Martin Luther advised, and he had a point: There’s no sense going to Hell for the small stuff.
Yes okay sure you can only beat the team that’s in front of you, as the Brits like to say when one of the big soccer clubs mashes some provincial pushover. And if you’re suddenly hit with the inspiration to stiff a waiter, and that waiter works at an airport Chili’s … that’s just who you are going to have to outrace through the departure terminal. But ditching the bill at Chili’s really does seem like the kind of offense that should inspire pity and, if need be, the barest minimum of sentence for the person who does it. Better she be returned to the streets with encouragement to set her sights higher.
Here’s another piece of advice: If you are caught stiffing a waiter at an airport Chili’s, do not claim you were targeted for being “too good-looking.” For one thing, it’s definitely not true. You are, I dare say, pretty average when you take into consideration the sheer volume of lookers who will likely pass through a busy regional airport on any given day. The idea that you were picked out from this king’s pageant for special attention — and on some odd pretext like an unpaid Chili’s order — is ludicrous. Too many others were simply waved through without trouble. This was Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas. At best, you were identifiable because you had clothes on and weren’t missing any limbs. Plus, as a defense it’s non-responsive. They’re not looking at you for (say) elder abuse because of your wonderful classic-car collection, and choosing that plea only suggests you cannot argue the merits of your case.
Why am I even discussing this? Because I’m sensing a trend. It’s bad for the beauties out there, if you hear them tell it. In fact, the NY Post (naturally) has an entire genre of coverage devoted to people claiming various hardships because they are knockouts. Here’s one (and here’s another) who says she was banned from Tinder(!) for being “too hot.” (Presumably Tinder would like to limit the appeal of the app.) This woman claims to have been disinvited from a friend’s wedding because she looked too good in the bridesmaid’s dress, which I guess is more understandable. And here’s another who claims to have been fired from a corporate banking job because she was just too beautiful for her workplace. “She was finally transferred in July, but matters didn’t improve at the next branch, where she said she was chided for failing to recruit new customers. She was axed in August.” Undoubtedly too hot to attract clients.
There are more. An entire sub-genre of the Post’s coverage in this area deals with “models” — basically, anyone with Instagram and a dash of pluck — kvetching that they are “too hot” to get dates. The Post says a “growing number of models and social media influencers” are claiming this handicap. Yes, it’s becoming a movement.
(In case you think maybe it’s just the Post doing this — a reasonable suspicion —here’s an example from another publication, and here’s one from a third.)
Speaking as someone who is breathtakingly handsome, rather like an Adonis (but no doubt taller), I get it: It’s not always a bed of roses for the beautiful. The cruelties of life come for us all. I’m even willing to believe that attractive people — women in particular — have difficulties that unattractive people don’t. For instance, when you are conventionally attractive, you are surely more likely to be sought as a trophy and not valued for other qualities and virtues you may possess. And in the extreme cases, you are more likely to be assigned qualities and virtues you don’t have, like brains or a winning personality; and while that’s better than being called stupid, it may end up warping your sense of reality so much, causing you to become so saturated with misbegotten confidence and sanctimony, that you wind up the governor of California.
What I’m not willing to believe is that physical attractiveness can or should be claimed as just one more source of hardship in the intersectionality sweepstakes. It’s not a good look, as they say, even if silence means having to fold your hands and watch jealously while just about every other thirsty grumbler with a mobile phone competes for the spoils. Honestly, must you really try to draw down the reservoir of middle-aged suburban white-woman guilt? Must they play savior for you, too? You’re already looked upon as healthier, smarter, more desirable, and more trustworthy. You'll likely do better in your career, and even babies prefer you.
Here’s something a lot of pulchritudinous people probably haven’t heard before: suck it up. And give Chili’s a break.
>On second thought, Wynton Marsalis is true American royalty AND he’s too beautiful for us. From Friday’s edition of Real Time with Bill Maher:
Until next time, friends.