The cheese metaphor is easy enough to grasp: Multiple layers of protection, imagined as cheese slices, block the spread of an unmitigated disaster. No one layer is perfect. Each has holes, and when the they align, fubar. But several layers combined — equity, expression, justice — plus lots of violin music, education, art, culture, ibogaine, etc., in addition to basic governing competence — significantly reduces overall risk.
This explains why we should all agree to keep Eric as far away from Ukraine policy as possible. In addition, there is no compelling reason to believe anything The Washington Post says about managing the disaster response1.
Maybe the long-term strategy plan should be titled “Recover, Build, Fight and Reform?” Or “Build, Reform, Fight and Recover?”
Recall that WAPO ran a frontpage story accusing Roman Chervinsky of helping blow up Russia’s Nord Stream pipelines last summer. It’s pretty clear that the newspaper’s exclusive report was pure bullshit2.
What’s interesting about the latest piece, though, is the re-appearance of the retired CIA agent rumored to have ratted out Trump for his “I would like you to do us a favor” chit chat with Z in 2019.
American Ukraine experts discussing the best way forward almost never talk about the fact that a bunch of greasy clowns is in charge of governing the country. This is a GIGANTIC point of potential failure. As Avril pointed out early on, it is a feature, not a bug, a pre-impeachment problem that’s only gotten worse3.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine ten years ago, Team USA has failed miserably to rise to the challenge. It’s unrealistic to think decision-makers there will address it today, so we must presume on ourselves.
US House Speaker Mike sounds less than enthusiastic about the Senate deal semi-announced yesterday on securing the southern border, whatever that means. The bill is tied with continued assistance to Ukraine. Drama over flooring, debating and voting on the measure in the House will intensify next week. Predicting the outcome is depressing.
When it comes to intelligence about Ukraine, we should be relying more on inductive reasoning, the system of inference describing the relation between propositions on intelligence, and propositions that extend beyond the intelligence, such as predictions over future intelligence, and general conclusions on all possible intelligence.
Ignore analysts. Stay away from experts (June 18, 2022)
Day 3, Phase 3. Explosion-prone macroeconomics (May 17, 2022)