At Rigid Thinking, Damian Penny has to be given top marks for recycling this week, although it’s not newspapers or plastic cartons he’s getting to do twice the work:
Please keep psychotic Twitter accounts with animated-squirrel avatars in your thoughts and prayers this weekend. They’re going through a tough time right now.
And, once again, the point I made last week is proven:
Did this operation really do as much damage as the
UkrainiansIsraelis say? I dunno. I don’t begrudge theUkrainiansIsraelis their own propaganda weapons.(Plus, these are
Russian planesShah-era jets for which getting parts is a massive pain in the ass, so there’s a good chance they might have just exploded on their own, like a Soviet television set left plugged in overnight.)But the mere fact that
UkraineIsrael was able to pull this off at all, right under theRussians’Iranians’ noses, is a game changer. The message toCzar Vladimirthe Mullahs, that we can strike literally anywhere, couldn’t be more clear.We’ll get the whole story from the
UkrainianIsraeli side soon enough. What I’m chomping at the bit to see is what’s in theRussianIranian archives someday, whenPutinthe “Islamic Republic” is gone and McDonald’s has been restored to its rightful place inRed SquareAzadi Square.A few weeks after the Russian invasion, when it became clear that they were in for a much harder time than anticipated, I wrote about how what would appear to be an authoritarian government’s great advantage over liberal democracy — the ability for its leaders to just “get stuff done” instead of having to put up with the horse-trading and lobbying and arguing and mean tweets which make can make things so exhausting and frustrating for a more open society — eventually becomes a disadvantage.
[…]
If the leader can do whatever he wants without any serious resistance, everyone else learns to keep their heads down and not do nor say anything which will make him angry.
Because you really, really wouldn’t like him when he’s angry.
As a result, the guy in charge is surrounded by sycophants and yes-men who will nod along and feign enthusiasm for whatever he wants to do, even if they know it’s really risky and/or really, really stupid.
That filters down to the drones (the human kind) and proles, too. I’m not a betting man, but I’d bet my entire hoard of Hawk Tuah meme coins that
RussianIranian intelligence services actually knew, or at least strongly suspected, that something likeOperation SpiderwebOperation Rising Lion was in the works.Good for them. Now, you go and tell the
CzarAyatollah that there areUkrainianMossad operatives (and, at the risk of wishcasting, someRussiansIranians brave enough to assist them) thousands of miles away fromUkraineIsrael, ready to take out much of thestrategic bomber fleetair defences.
UkraineIsrael, by contrast, is an open enough society to learn from its mistakes, see what actually works, and adapt accordingly.RussiaIran is a closed society which keeps doubling down on what it was already doing, and woe is you if you suggest a change of course.It doesn’t matter how much stronger you are in terms of weaponry, if your society and political system punishes anyone who might tell the leader he’s wrong.
Well, that was surprisingly easy to write about. Here’s hoping I don’t get lazy and get into the habit of throwing on old reruns, assuming you kids won’t know the difference.
