# Respect The Man At The Deep End of The Long Table #writing

## Part 1

Putin has made a terrible strategic miscalculation and he'd be wise to realize that. But so did the West.

Today I read an article stating the top priority across US intelligence agencies is to assess Putin's mental health and this should be extremely worrisome to every informed reader. Emphasis on "informed". I could only consider myself informed after getting a better picture from the other side of the table and that meant watching Putin's speech in it's entirety.

For an atheist to question a religious person's sanity is extremely disrespectful and so it is for the West to question Putin's. Putin isn't crazy and you only need to watch his speech, where he clearly lays out the mental framework he's operating in, to understand him.

Russia can't become Lybia, Syria or Afghanistan, examples of failed Western intervention and some of the largest humanitarian crises in recent history. In Putin's mind, the encroachment of NATO in former soviet territories gives him a glimpse of that. An invasion of the West isn't required but merely the prospect of democracy in the minds' of russians is enough for him to envision the possibility of being hanged and having his country thrown into a civil war, famine and other indescribable calamities.

Well, let's skip to the West's response to his invasion of Ukraine (a miscalculation, not madness, that logically follows from the reasoning he exposes on his speech).

I couldn't believe the unified response and vigor from the West when it came to the sanctions on Russia. Every russian is experiencing their worst nightmare right now and they still have quite a way down before they reach the bottom. If the West really believed Putin was crazy, caution was thrown out of the window when dealing with a nuclear-powered madman. If not, how can that be sound strategy?

At first I also supported the strongest possible measures — I never once believed they'd be taken up though. After all, that's what the democratic process, especially in modern times, is often about. Smother the nuance, advocate for the extreme angle of the pendulum and hope it lands in some agreeable middle ground.

The fact the sanctions came, and came in hard, was a sour-sweet surprise. But only at first as it's clear they've left Putin in a very bad corner. The oft quoted Sun Tzu line now is being put to the test. What does an aggressor do when no golden bridge is left for him to take? Retreat or any other form of honorable retraction is not an option.

The ball is in the middle of the court, if the West waits too long and Russia grabs it, their attack options are grim (they have no defense strategy left). The West is the one who needs to run, correct course and give the Russian Government and the Russian people a way out of this mess.

The best outcomes the West could hope for would be either a removal of the other player from the game (which further raises the probabilities Putin imagined at first, making him not a madman, but quite an astute strategist) or a de-escalation within the current government by means of public pressure (which it has left very little room for, and even worse, the pressure can push for further escalation as there's no way to predict the will of the masses — which makes the West the crazy player in the game).

## Part 2

This whole second "Bay of Pigs" kind of episode should put one thing in question. It should but it won't as we still live in a society where some ideas take roots so deeply that it's hard for anyone to question them without being discredited.

That thing is Democracy.

Democracy has shown its appeal and its fang at the same time.

Its appeal shows that it's not a single entity — "the West" — that is responsible for all failed Western interventions and the current Ukrainian war. It's something deeper. It's the human drive for freedom of expression. Dale Carnegie, the famous self-help writer, of all people, nailed it 86 years ago. Well, several others did before him and the track record of human history confirms it. Evolution begets chaos, entropy disorder, in anarchy there is the prospect of the fundamental force of nature: expression. Not just replication or "progress". Expression is what every living organism (and gene) seeks. It's what drives us towards democracy. The political system that claims your voice will be heard.

Its fang is the very process it takes to do that. Too many voices leads to noise and to win through the noise means competition (it's no wonder capitalism comes attached as a freebie on the democratic process). For democracy, as an idea, to survive it needed to fight. And make no mistake, ideas do fight. They need to take on territory in other people's minds, expanding like a maniac dictator. The fact that some do win isn't bad though — although the process can be just as cruel. If an idea survives and expands is because it's likely true and useful. And rightful, and virtuous, and... Enactable. I'll not make this case here but I am in favor of democracy — and going even beyond that (hence the questioning I advocate for) — but in here I want to focus on the cruel processes it creates.

I mentioned it before when West's sanctions came against Russia and came in hard. They didn't have to be so. Ponderation could have won and measured discussion was not out of the table (then). However they also had to be so. No other form of communication would have won in the democratic process. The signal to be distinguished from the noise had to be loud and clear. That's how the votes passed in the UN, that's how...

That's how Donald Trump won, that's what explains the rise of extreme right... and extreme left... and extremist positions in general. Terrorism also. As an attempt to make ourselves heard and separate the signal from the noise, as an attempt to achieve self-expression and enact the ideas of our own accord.

The only way out of this mess is to let our egos aside and show acceptance for what's out there and what's different. Russia might not be a democracy yet but maybe it doesn't have to be. Let's leave that to the russians and their current government to decide. As long as we let the public access information, the best ideas will win, whichever they are at the time they are ripe enough to do so. They may not even be the ideas we cherish now.

## Part 3

Reports have come out that after Macron and Putin's chat, the french president feels the worst is yet to come. I feel the same. I also feel a somewhat inevitability that Russia will takeover Kyiv — and then what? I think not even Putin knows what to do with Zelensky if he grabs him. I bet on "disappearance". It's in the Standard Playbook For Bloody Dictators. But if you quote me you better say I said Ukraine will win (I want to be an optimist).

This bullshit of acceptance and letting egos aside only takes you so far — even though nobody gives a shit about the Uighurs (Chamath may have badly missed the tone but the core idea he was trying to convey was true). I'm gonna leave this China parallel at that, purposely incomplete. After all we gotta go for appeasement sometimes, right? But other times we gotta f* them up with our financial nukes. Geopolitics is way over my league.

Truth is: the world is chaotic and most of the times it doesn't make sense. Dude, there's a 3-body problem, did anyone think 7-billion-free-willed-bodies wouldn't be a problem?