It is clear, clear enough for anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear, that something is amiss, just a bit off in the telling of the tale that so many are enamored with. All of the analogies some of the simple-minded among us use so carelessly between the current situation in the world and Hitler or The Lord of the Rings seem off, tragically wrong – to those that see and think. But we also know that these analogies do work if one accepts many narratives and simply ignores inconvenient facts that point to some other reality.

Recently, last week perhaps, some official at the UN released a statement that essentially said that whenever a nation invades the territory of another nation, without invitation of the invaded country the invader cannot be keeping the peace or doing anything good. The astute among us immediately recognize that as an example of Sam Francis’ anarcho-tyranny at an international level. Rules for some and not for others. Invading other nations, uninvited has been the main industry of the West in the years since the Cold War ended. It matters little if all of the West gets together and votes that it is ok to do it, the principle articulated in the UN official’s statement is the same. The US would tomorrow invade Mexico if it felt that it was a strategic threat – we have done it before there and elsewhere. The US might ask permission from those in our club, but we have a gang, does having a gang that approves makes the action any different than doing it alone?

By all of that, I am not suggesting that nations cannot nor should not act in unison or unilaterally in their own self-interest or in areas that are central to their perceived security. I am merely pointing out the hypocrisy of it all. A realist rejects the sanctimonious nature of the cries of foul aggression. I may or may not be opposed to aggression by one nation, in a specific case against another, but to claim it is perfectly fine for one group, in all cases where they simply agree, and a crime against humanity for another, in any case, that sort of hypocrisy shows me something of the nature of the complainer, and by extension any and all that repeat that hypocritical narrative.

Caveat – I know because I see, the “odd” IP addresses from “odd” locations that always peek at my site when I write this sort of topic. From my old life I can parse oddities from paranoia. The mere fact that simple words, borne of reason, deriving from first principles, seeking to apply realism sparks the interests of such odd entities, that too tells me something of the nature of the West. It is just words and ideas, a threat only to lies and deceptions, nothing more. Samizdat is becoming as much of a perceived threat in the West as it once was in the USSR.

Many believe we know something of Putin and Russia. We know it has cultural laws that look a lot like laws that were common in the US in the early and mid-20^th century. Modern western sensibilities and mores may call those authoritarian, but most are not so very different than what we very recently looked like. We know Putin is not very “democratic” but in that ‘knowing,’ we template our own conception of the idea. Russia has a government that looks very much like the governments Russia has had since the Kievan Rus. Value judgments about cultural differences, when those differences do not conflict with universals are problematic. The understanding of universals itself is a problem in the West, we abandoned first principle-based universals long ago and replaced domestic and international policy with ideas we created from ideology and called them universals. That is hubris.

What then do we really know about Putin and Russia?  Most consists of what we have been told, what think tanks, politicians, and the media have told us over the decades. The narrative has shifted, but one theme has remained – Russia is a threat. The US reflected this in every single National Security Strategy document since the end of the Cold War. Is this to be believed, was it always true or made to be true?

It was the West (governments, institutions, thought leaders, the media) that told us many things beginning in 2020. Many of us now have come to believe very little of all that, and wonder how things got so turned upside down based upon nothing more than what those in authority told us was reality. We have witnessed the largest transfer of wealth in human history since 2020, and it continues. The Mongol Golden Horde would have to mount up and ride from the east in ten separate iterations, looting, and plundering, to even begin to make a dent in the amount taken from ordinary people.

But the transfer and looting have only just begun it seems. The sanctions and financial institution exclusions so gleefully imposed upon Russia will not just affect Russian oligarchs and not just Russian citizens. Every regular person across the world will suffer through inflated prices. Inflation is a recipe to benefit not the consumer, but financial houses, and all that in ancillary and tertiary ways benefits from their largesse.

We see odd occultic super celebrities coming out to condemn Russia as a “fascist Christian state” and we watch much of social media post happy pictures of Ukrainians coating ammunition in pig fat. The wise among us see what this means. One of the ‘universals’ buried in the ideology of the West is a hatred of religion. They cannot tell the difference between a Christian and a Muslim. Not many would have suspected in the era of tolerance that progressives would celebrate Muslims being shot with pig fat-coated rounds. Some of us did, that is the nature of it all, and always has been. Tolerance was always a charade and cover for intolerance.

Some of those cheering and laughing so loud about the pig fat usage are OSINTers. I have watched this group since 2014, as a group there is a distinct official narrative compliance feel. Individuals may vehemently deny it, but it is there. They see the things that support the official narrative and deny those that conflict with it, almost to a man and woman, thing and it.