Futility of the Mind

Russia, Ukraine, and Moral Inversion

Dear Friends,

This is an unscheduled edition of The Quarter Inch, mostly because I just have something to express and what is the point of having a Substack newsletter if one cannot use it for unscheduled musings?

There is a serious and substantive debate to be had about how to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. From time to time the sycophants defending President Trump’s posture make a point or two that might be worth exploring. But they do not make these points to honestly explore them. They generally make these points because they are self-rationalizing their own moral decrepitude. Allow me to explain.

Last week David Bahnsen made an appearance on Yahoo Finance to talk about tech stocks and it didn’t go very well for his interviewer. Speaking about Nvidia, the high-flying company that makes cutting edge microchips for artificial intelligence, David explained that the stock is extremely expensive, its successes are already priced in, and the only reason to buy the stock now is if you think this already extremely pricey stock is going to get significantly pricier. The interviewer then said, quite irritably and aggressively:

“You don’t think AI chips are good for the world, then?”

And that, my friends, is a pristine example of the colossal mess that is public discourse here Anno Domini Two-Thousand Twenty-Five. It should be printed out and framed. I am not particularly prone to personal insult, but my patience has worn thin. A lot—a lot—of people are stupid. Unintelligent. Incapable of following a reasoned argument.

I do have confidence that you, readers of The Square Inch Newsletter, are bright enough to see the complete disconnect between David’s argument and his interlocutor’s conclusion. It is called a non sequitur. It doesn’t follow. David said absolutely nothing about the value of the company and its products, whether they are good or bad, or anything of the sort. He questioned the wisdom of investing a client’s money in the company at these stock price levels. And the guy thought “not wise to invest at these price levels” meant “doesn’t think Nvidia’s product is good or useful to the world.”

This phenomenon—the non sequitur—is running rampant. For example, if you think that Ukraine should ask the United States for security guarantees of some sort, some pinhead will say: “Oh, so you want World War III, then?” Or “So you want forever wars, huh?” Or “You don’t believe in diplomacy?” “You don’t want peace.” “You must be a warmonger.” It is so idiotic and tiresome it is a waste of time trying to even engage such a person. It would be one thing if this sort of “argumentation” were the sole province of basement-dwelling thirty-something video gamers with a social media addiction. It is quite another when this is the discourse carried on by the President of the United States, the Vice President of the United States, and the Secretary of State.

Another related fallacy running rampant is the red herring. This one has a much more fun name, and it refers to the practice of distracting a dog. If you want to throw the hounds off the scent, you drag a “red herring” across their path to confuse them. It is a way of changing the subject. In the discourse about Russia and Ukraine, any time the discussion starts to get to the heart of the matter—who invaded whom, who owes whom, who bears liability, should there security guarantees, reparations, etc.—a flurry of red herrings will suddenly rain down. What happens is something like this: Volodomyr Zelensky will say something like, “You know, this talk is interesting and all, but can I point out that Vladimir Putin has a history of not keeping his word?” And JD Vance will leap in to retort, in a moment of breathtaking Ivy League insight: “Have you ever thanked President Trump for his support?”

Millions of people, after recovering from their brief orgasm, will think to themselves, “Yeah! What a great point! What really matters here is Zelensky’s ingratitude and his disrespect!” The stinking fish has been waved in front of their noses and they will follow it wherever JD Vance chooses to take it.

I have to make a slight correction. In last Friday’s newsletter I compared Donald Trump to the white dress / blue dress, “Yanni” or “Laurel” phenomenon from a few years ago. In those cases 50% of people saw or heard one thing, and the other 50% saw or heard the opposite. That’s superficially what Trump represents. However, in those cases they were real optical and audio illusions. There was genuine ambiguity involved. A person who saw a blue dress when it was actually a white dress does not bear any fault or blame; it says nothing about his or her character.

This is not the case with Donald Trump. 50% of people are wrong—no, they are culpably wrong—in their assessment of the man and his policy objectives vis-a-vis Ukraine. He is literally and brazenly calling white black and black white—Zelensky is a “dictator,” Ukraine “shouldn’t have started it,” “Putin wants peace,” and so forth. As Jim Geraghty explains today, “We Have Effectively Switched Sides in the Russian-Ukraine War.” Trump is engaged in 100% pure moral inversion. And the only way to defend it is by way of ridiculous non sequiturs and red herrings of the sort I’ve outlined above. Suddenly the real issue is Zelensky’s attitude or—Dear Lord—his wardrobe, and everything is framed as either “diplomacy” or “World War III” with no other options provided.

On that “diplomacy” thing: JD Vance introduced this new talking point in his tirade at Zelensky. The framing is that Donald Trump is on the side of “diplomacy” and disagreeing with Trump means you don’t believe in “diplomacy.” Secretary Rubio then took this talking point to the cable news Sunday shows. It is idiotic beyond belief and I honestly cannot believe I am living in this timeline (If you can stomach it, click here to take a trip down memory lane to a time when Marco Rubio knew a thing or two and appeared to possess a spine). “Diplomacy” is a method one uses to achieve some policy aspiration. It is not the policy aspiration. Diplomacy in service of what? That is the question. Zelensky and Trump both want to use diplomacy (why, pray tell, do you think Zelensky was in the Oval Office in the first place?), but they have very different aims. Trump wants Ukraine to give up their defense of their homeland along with their mineral rights, let Putin keep all of his gains with no further liability whatsoever, and to do all this with no promises or guarantees of aid in the future if Putin decides he isn’t content with that deal (which, given the history that began with the invasion of Crimea in 2014, is a near certainty). Does that sound like a good deal to you? If it does, I’m sure you’re one second away from blathering on about fake numbers like “$350 Billion” or how “disrespectful” Zelensky was or whining about his clothing choices or something else because you have nothing substantive, relevant, or even intelligent to say.

The fact that millions of people applaud this obscene moral inversion as something good, true, and noble has been a shock to the system. To my nervous system, certainly, but also our civic and cultural system. But what is more shocking and depressing to me (and, likely, you) is the number of people—friends, family, co-workers, acquaintances, even Cabinet members and Senators and Congressmen—cheering this turn of events about whom we had thought had clear moral compasses. That is the appalling thing. That is the new reality with which we have to deal. Apparently it no longer goes without saying that unprovoked invasion, rape, murder, and bombing schools and hospitals is unequivocally bad, and resisting and opposing it is unequivocally good. If you put the question that way to these people, the reply will invariably—and I mean every single time—take the form of non sequitur and red herring. I have said for ten years that making an idol of Donald Trump would be morally corrupting. I am not happy to have obviously won that bet.

The Bible talks quite a bit about nations who call good evil and evil good. I never really imagined I would see it happen here, on the scale with which it is happening, and with the suddenness of its arrival. A country that takes a 180-degree moral turn because a narcissistic egomaniac tells them to seems to be a country God has “handed over.” You can read all about that in Romans chapter 1, and one of the effects of that kind of “handing over” is that the people become “futile in their thinking.”

No wonder so many people can’t even follow a basic argument.

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