In general you want your opponent to be dumber and less capable than you. In matters of war and serious geopolitics, you want them to believe things that just ain’t so, to be generally gullible. But at a certain point, those who oppose you can start to believe in false stories that are *so* dumb – the “wage gap,” “white supremacy,” ‘trans women are women,” and so on – that they begin to pose an all new kind of threat.
And so… to Russia:
Russia Is Afraid of Western Psychic Attacks
Psychic powers and the supernatural are, on their own, wholly unthreatening. Things that don’t exist can’t hurt you… the Kremlin can have their psychic warrior beam Bozo Rays at me all day long, won’t harm me a bit. But such things *aren’t* on their own. A belief in nonsense could end up with Putin, say, believing a “psychic” who tells him that the United States just launched a thousand cloaked warheads at Moscow, each filled with a Sith lord dolphin powered by Mary Kay brand dark matter. Since the Russians don’t have an anti-Sith dolphin defense shield, their only recourse would be to strike back at the US with a full nuclear barrage.
In general I fully support my enemies spending as much of their time and treasure trying to gain the upper hand in psychic warfare. Every ruble spent on Miss Cleoski is a ruble not spent on an AK-47 or a MiG or an ICBM. But at some point they go a little too far. Hell, imagine if the Russian leadership began to believe that their psychics were capable of stopping a full US nuclear strike on Russia. That might incentivize a Russian first strike.
3 responses to “So… is this a good thing?”
I am more worried about China. While we coddle jocks and fret over their health-phys.org reports the PRC are looking to lift up 1000 of their best students…sigh.
Oh-and Putin?
I’m pinching your head.
Expect that stroke…
Agreed. The Russians are relevant only because of their nuclear weapons. I would happily sit and eat popcorn while they an Europe settled things old school otherwise. The few survivors of my grandmothers family left Ukraine because they didn’t like being in God’s Ant farm. Every generation or two he just give it a shake and watches the ants struggle.
As Jeff said China is the potential threat and they do have the habit of being goal oriented and taking the long view and also as Jeff said, they aren’t consumed with the inane issues of the idle rich.
Oh I almost forgot.
Vlad,
Do you know how hard it is to find a bald voodoo doll? I hope you appreciate the trouble.
You should probably see someone about that pain in your groin, people are wondering why the pipes in the men’s room have fingerprints.