What is positive cognitive dissonance? This is when Russia, being frankly weak economically, demographically and technologically, feels like an “empire on the rise” and actually (and not at all in words, not as a bluff) implements a large-scale plan for global expansion.
What is negative cognitive dissonance? This is when the collective West, faced with global Russian expansion, does not consider Russia as a priority threat, because it cannot believe that this dying state, technologically backward and completely dependent on the export of raw materials, can have such serious ambitions.
In the subconscious of Western elites, who have been observing the process of complex degradation of Russia for a quarter of a century, the opinion has been firmly imprinted that Russia is “playing tricks,” because most of what Russia is doing now no sane society will do otherwise than for fun.
In principle, the message is correct. The catch is that Russia’s sanity is not an axiom, but a theorem that would be nice to prove. Perhaps Russia is even experiencing formational (civilizational) agony. This says a lot. The problem is that agony is precisely an extremely dangerous condition for others. It is capable of generating euphoria, which is quite enough for the last fatal bite.
An observation by practicing philosopher and former Merck Sharp & Dohme legal adviser Volodymyr Pastukhov.
In other news, it has apparently dawned on NATO member states that China is Putin’s partner in fascistic Russia’s genocidal war against Ukraine.
Oleksandr Kubrakov and USAID. Why isn’t anyone writing about this?
On energy and the lack thereof. In summary: we are screwed. Looking on the positive side, it appears that I am developing a bicep muscle from lugging Bad Boy up and down flights of stairs.
Olena talks about magical 1GW generation thinking we whined about on Day 8401.
And, finally, a 25-year old man jumped from the glass bridge in Kreshchatyk Park. If I had taken my long bicycle route yesterday morning, it’s entirely possible he would have landed at almost the exact same spot where a Russian cruise missile almost killed me in 20222.