The Fast-Gathering Storm

From Andrew Sullivan, at the Weekly Dish, "How close are we getting to a full-on war between Russia and the West?":

“The beginning of every war is like opening the door into a dark room. One never knows what is hidden in the darkness,” opined a certain Austrian maniac. And what we are discovering about Putin’s Russia as this brutal war continues, is something extremely dark.

The rhetoric in Moscow is now outright eliminationist toward not just Ukraine, but Ukrainians as a people. The more bogged down the Russian military, the more intense the “de-Nazification” memes. With each defeat, from the failure to take Kyiv to the sinking of the Mockva, the sense of humiliation and anger grows. In the words of one Kremlin propagandist: “It’s no accident we call them Nazis. What makes you a Nazi is your bestial nature, your bestial hatred and your bestial willingness to tear out the eyes of children on the basis of nationality.” Ukrainians are being dehumanized — deemed not just victims of a “Nazi” regime but somehow Nazis themselves. It’s hard not to recall Aleksandr Dugin’s 2014 remark when asked his view of Ukraine: “Kill! Kill! Kill! There can be no other discussion. This is my opinion as a professor.”

The rhetoric on Russian TV is about ending Ukrainian identity, as well as Ukraine, altogether. “Ukrainianism, fueled by anti-Russian poison and all-consuming lies about its identity, is one big fake,” pronounced Dmitry Medvedev, Putin’s mini-me. And the tactics — mass rapes, wholesale flattening of cities such as Mariupol, profligate torture, mass-murder of civilians — are those of a country seeking some kind of psychic purge of its ungrateful and traitorous Ukrainian subjects. The removal of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to Russia proper is yet another sign of Putin’s genocidal mania.

As this sinks in, Europe is instinctually, understandably rallying to support Ukraine. Because Europe proper is next in line for Russia’s aggression if Ukraine loses. Boris Johnson has grasped the crisis as a way to play FDR (BoJo) to Churchill (Zelensky), sending arms to Ukraine, arriving in Kyiv for a photo-op with Zelensky, with whom he seems to have bonded. The UK alone has sent 4,000 anti-tank weapons, including Next-generation Light Anti-tank Weapons, or NLAWs, and Javelin missiles. More are on the way. They have had a real effect.

And the EU is now doing something no one expected only a couple of weeks ago: considering a ban on Russian oil imports. Finland and Sweden may join NATO in a matter of weeks. The US is now funneling arms and training to Ukraine, as Russia menaces from the east: “The training will focus on using 155mm howitzer cannons, counter-artillery radar and Sentinel air defense radars, and will take a few days each.” This comes after years of NATO training of Ukrainian armed forces, which helps explain their remarkable early success in nimbly thwarting Russia’s onslaught.

The emergency spending from Congress a month ago for military and other foreign aid to Ukraine amounted to $13.6 billion. The aid is a culmination of deep support from the US since 2014. It’s getting more and more aggressive. Just this week, the Biden administration offered another “$800 million in additional security assistance for Ukraine, including artillery, armored personnel carriers, and Humvees ... The new package includes heavier weaponry than the U.S. previously had provided and — for the first time — American-made artillery pieces.”

But the demand for this sum to grow even further is becoming the conventional wisdom in DC. Fareed Zakaria explains why: “the world is expected to pay $320 billion to Russia this year for its energy.” $16 billion doesn’t seem so impressive. Fareed also notes what is evident: the Russians are doing far better in the south than in the north, and could throttle Ukraine if they manage to capture Odessa. So what should the West do?

[NATO] should enforce an embargo around those waters, preventing Russian troops from entering to attack Ukraine’s cities or resupply Russian forces. NATO ships would operate from international waters, issuing any approaching ships a “notice to mariners” that NATO forces are active in the area and warning them not to enter.

No risk elevation there!

Let’s be real: This is a Europe-wide war, fast becoming a global one. And as Putin gets more isolated, and his war drags on without a breakthrough, Russia is upping the ante too. The CIA director, Nicholas Burns, just worried out loud about Putin’s possible reach for chemical or nuclear weapons: “His risk appetite has grown as his grip on Russia has tightened … Given the potential desperation of President Putin and the Russian leadership, given the setbacks that they’ve faced so far, militarily, none of us can take lightly the threat posed by a potential resort to tactical nuclear weapons or low-yield nuclear weapons.”

If and when Russia begins a new onslaught on eastern and southern Ukraine, with the potential for Grozny-like devastation and war crimes, the pressure on all these countries to keep Ukraine free will get even more intense. Russia will be sorely tempted to prevent these huge military transfers by attacking supply lines from the west. Medvedev has warned of an end to a nuclear-free Baltic zone if Finland and Sweden join NATO. Putin cannot lose this war in the eyes of the Russian public — and has far, far more invested in Ukraine than the West does, as Barack Obama once reminded us.

And while support for the war remains solid in the US, it is not uppermost in voters’ minds, as they cope with raging inflation and rising crime. In France, a candidate who would oppose a EU oil embargo and who’s been chummy with Putin in the past, Marine Le Pen, is polling far better than expected. The Germans remain the most reluctant anti-Putin country in Europe, and if their economy goes into the shitter this fall with spiraling energy costs, who knows how long their will to fight back will last? Much of the developing world is ambivalent but leery of the US. And all this Western mobilization gives credence to Putin’s propaganda, does it not? It’s simply true that Ukraine, while not in NATO, is essentially a NATO outpost, using NATO weapons, to defend their country.

If and when Russia begins a new onslaught on eastern and southern Ukraine, with the potential for Grozny-like devastation and war crimes, the pressure on all these countries to keep Ukraine free will get even more intense. Russia will be sorely tempted to prevent these huge military transfers by attacking supply lines from the west. Medvedev has warned of an end to a nuclear-free Baltic zone if Finland and Sweden join NATO. Putin cannot lose this war in the eyes of the Russian public — and has far, far more invested in Ukraine than the West does, as Barack Obama once reminded us.

And while support for the war remains solid in the US, it is not uppermost in voters’ minds, as they cope with raging inflation and rising crime. In France, a candidate who would oppose a EU oil embargo and who’s been chummy with Putin in the past, Marine Le Pen, is polling far better than expected. The Germans remain the most reluctant anti-Putin country in Europe, and if their economy goes into the shitter this fall with spiraling energy costs, who knows how long their will to fight back will last? Much of the developing world is ambivalent but leery of the US. And all this Western mobilization gives credence to Putin’s propaganda, does it not? It’s simply true that Ukraine, while not in NATO, is essentially a NATO outpost, using NATO weapons, to defend their country...

 

Who Is Looking Out For Gay Kids?

From Andrew Sullivan,on Substack, "The risks of imposing critical gender theory on young children":

It seems to me that any books that teach kids to be compassionate and accepting [children’s books and curricula that used in many schools and recommended by groups like the Human Rights Campaign, etc.], and aware of different ways of being human, are a positive thing. I don’t doubt the good intentions behind them. Having some materials for a genuinely trans child is a good thing. But teaching all public school kids under the age of eight that their body has no reference to their sex is a huge development — and news to most American parents. And encouraging toddlers to pick pronouns like “ze” and “tree” is not exactly what parents send their kids to public school for.

These teaching materials aim to be inclusive of the tiny minority of trans children — but they do this by essentially universalizing the very rare experience of being transgender, and suggesting that everyone’s gender is completely independent of biological sex, and trumps it in any conflict. The only way to help trans kids feel better about themselves, this argument goes, is to tell the lie that their experience is everybody’s experience. We are all varieties of trans people now, choosing our sex and performing our gender.

But, of course, we’re not all varieties of trans; the overwhelming majority of humans, including gay humans, experience sex and gender as completely compatible — when they think about them at all. And our species is sexually dimorphic. When pushed to defend the idea that humans are not a binary sexual species, critical theorists lean on the “univariate fallacy.” That argues that any single exception to a rule completely demolishes the rule. If there are any exceptions to every human being male or female, even if they are a tiny percentage of the whole, then there is no sex binary.

But that’s bizarre. That a small percentage of people are attracted to the same sex, for example, does not invalidate the rule that humans are overwhelmingly heterosexual — and if this were not the case, humans wouldn’t exist at all. Gay people are the exception that proves the heterosexual rule. The much smaller number of trans people, likewise, does not disprove that the overwhelming majority of people are completely at ease with their biological sex. It actually proves it, by showing the terrible psychic cost of being otherwise. (Trans kids and adults deal with huge mental health challenges, and commit suicide at staggering rates.) Intersex and DSD people are not a separate species, or some kind of third sex, no more than people with Down Syndrome are anything but fully human. They are a variation in the sex binary.

For most kids, of course, this stuff will probably be taken in stride. They’ll play with pronouns, feel at home in their bodies, and go on to express their sex as humans always have. Life itself will disprove these weird theories. And if some of this new gender gobbledegook encourages them to be more accepting of others unlike them, of boys who wear dresses or girls who love football, it may well do a lot of good.

But for troubled kids with gender dysphoria — or at least some discomfort with being a boy or girl because they don’t seem to fit in very well with their straight peers — there’s a much greater risk. I’m worried about kids with autism, kids from very dysfunctional families, kids with every sort of mental health issue that needs to be unpacked before judgment is made. I’m worried that gay kids could absorb the idea that what is different about them is not that they are attracted to their same sex, but that they may, in fact, be the other sex “inside.” Most kids with gender dysphoria turn out to be gay in adulthood, as the discomfort disappears with puberty. (That’s certainly my own experience.) But these young gay kids are being subtly taught, at a deeply impressionable age, that they may be in the wrong body.

Among the most important things a gay boy needs to know is that he is no less a boy because he is attracted to his own sex. The proof of this is his own body. Removing the body from any conception of sex takes this away from him. And if he were ever to act out the idea of being a girl, the current treatment is immediate affirmation, puberty blockers, then female hormones and sterilization. Letting him be, or supporting him in his male body, or allowing him to fully experience puberty and grow up gay, is less and less where the emphasis lies.

We have accumulating evidence that lesbian girls in particular are susceptible to this suggestion — as we see transition rates soar beyond anything previously known in teen years, and as the number of detransitioning women grows in number. This unavoidable tension between messages that are good for trans kids and those that are good for gay kids is absent from the debate — in part because the woke conflate both experiences into the entirely ideological construct of being LGBTQIA++. But no one is LGBTQIA++. It’s literally impossible. And the difference between the gay and trans experience is vast, especially when it comes to biological sex.

Here’s where that difference counts. Gay people have had to struggle to own their own sex and their own bodies; while trans people have had to struggle to disown theirs. On this core question, our interests are, in fact, diametrically opposed.

Activist trans groups like HRC or the ACLU may thereby be unwittingly putting gay children at risk, misleading them about their sex and their bodies, putting ideas in their head that in the current heated atmosphere could easily lead to irreversible life-long decisions before puberty. And none of this is necessary. It is perfectly possible to look out for the very few genuinely trans children, without revolutionizing everything we know about the human body and biology. It’s possible to be welcoming to gay kids without insinuating that their real problem could be being “in the wrong body.”

And one of the core elements of gay male culture — the celebration of the male body, its unique qualities, and its sexual power — is effectively diminished. It’s diminished because we are told that being a man is now a feeling inside your head rather than a fact about your body, from the first wave of testosterone in the womb onwards. All that gay male physical sensuality — the interaction of male bodies with one another, the passion for biological maleness — is reduced to an arid, gnostic, inside “feeling” unrelated to the body at all.

At some point, gay men need to face down those who deny the biological differences in the human body that make homosexuality possible. If there is no sex binary, there is no homosexuality. We are not some third sex; we are one of two sexes: men. Our sex is not just in our head; it was not merely assigned at birth. It is in our bodies and minds shaped by testosterone since the womb, bodies that seek sex and intimacy with other male bodies shaped by testosterone in the womb. That the former gay rights movement would now seek to deny this is just one sign of its collapse into woke degeneracy. That some gay rights leaders are now telling gay men they should force themselves to be attracted to vaginas, or that we have to have a pronoun sticker on our jacket to remind people we’re men, is an outrage.

I have a feeling that some in the forefront of this revolution know there is a large body of silent opinion among gay men and many lesbians that deeply believes in sex differences, cherishes and celebrates the male and female bodies, and does not see gayness as connected to transgender experience (which is not to say that transgender experience is any less valid). Gay happiness depends on our owning our own sex, not denying it. And biology is our friend. There’s no reason gay kids should not also understand this. And be spared the mandatory indoctrination into a postmodern homophobic lie.

The Problem With Jon Stewart

I cant't block quote this one. You gotta read the whole thing.

From Andrew Sullivan, at the Weekly Dish, "How painfully, cringingly super-woke must a comedian get to stay relevant?"

Natural-Gas Industry Gets Boost as Biden Shifts Stance

Baby steps. Baby steps.

At WSJ, "Shares of large U.S. natural-gas companies rose as Biden softened position against fossil fuels":

President Biden’s pledge to boost U.S. liquefied natural-gas exports to Europe marks a further retreat from his hard-line stance against fossil fuels, sending share prices surging for natural-gas companies.

The president, who campaigned on a platform to transition the U.S. to cleaner energy, said Friday the U.S. is working to ship 50 billion cubic meters of LNG to Europe annually through at least 2030 to help the continent wean itself from dependence on Russian supplies.

The announcement came a day after Democrats on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission backtracked on new environmental policies, suspending implementation of heightened requirements on reviews that industry officials and Republicans said would impede gas-pipeline development.

Shares of large U.S. natural-gas companies rose 9% on average Friday as major stock indexes were mixed. Shares of EQT Corp and Southwestern Energy Co., two large producers, shot up to close about 12% and 16% higher.

Cheniere Energy Inc., LNG 5.46% the top U.S. exporter, was up about 5.5%. Tellurian Inc., which is seeking financing for an LNG project, soared 21%.

The gas industry’s prospects have been a concern among the sector’s executives because of Mr. Biden’s stance against fossil fuels. But the president has softened some of his positions in the wake of rising energy costs, which have been driven in part by the economic rebound from Covid-19, and more recently by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The White House pivot has also put the U.S. and its vast oil and gas reserves in shale rock back at the center of a global scramble for energy resources as a bulwark against petrostates and authoritarian regimes. The U.S. is the world’s largest oil and gas producer.

Daniel Yergin, the vice chairman of S&P Global and a noted oil-industry historian, called recent developments “a huge turn.”

“There’s a recognition now that shale—and particularly LNG—is a real geopolitical asset,” Mr. Yergin said.

Mr. Biden and his advisers have said they are still committed to ending the world’s reliance on fossil fuels, including gas, and will continue to fund renewable energy as part of their work with European allies. But they also acknowledged the need to deal with the reliance that exists today.

“While gas is still a substantial part of the energy mix, we want to make sure that the Europeans do not have to source that gas from Russia,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Friday.

Toby Rice, chief executive of top U.S. natural-gas producer EQT, said the Biden administration’s shift is an extremely encouraging political signal that natural gas will play a key role in the world’s future energy mix.

Mr. Rice said the U.S. could sharply increase LNG exports over time if companies build thousands of miles of new pipelines and billions worth of new LNG facilities. But unleashing that will require broader support for that infrastructure and speeding up the sluggish permitting process, he said.

“The problem we face is it takes longer to permit something than it takes us to build it,” Mr. Rice said. “The faster we move, the faster we move toward achieving our climate goals and providing energy security for people around the world.” Shippers of LNG have already sent most U.S. cargoes to European destinations this year, as prices have skyrocketed following Russia’s invasion. American exporters are moving cargoes as fast as physically possible and are on pace to send a record 11.4 billion cubic feet a day of LNG overseas this month, with more than 60% bound for Europe, according to market intelligence firm Kpler.

FERC has approved 13 LNG facilities across the U.S. that have remained unbuilt with the combined capacity to export about 25 billion cubic feet each day, according to FERC’s February update. Companies haven’t begun construction on those largely because they haven’t yet gathered enough supply agreements with customers overseas to finance the construction of those facilities.

Part of the arrangement between the U.S. and Europe is to ensure that European countries also come through to show they can take more U.S. gas. They are to build out their infrastructure to accept up to 50 billion cubic meters of additional U.S. supply a year between now and 2030, Mr. Sullivan said.

Before the Russian invasion, Biden administration officials had been hesitant about putting U.S. development money into fossil-fuel projects abroad...

 

U.S. Makes Contingency Plans in Case Russia Uses Its Most Powerful Weapons

At the New York Times, "BRUSSELS — The White House has quietly assembled a team of national security officials to sketch out scenarios of how the United States and its allies should respond if President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia — frustrated by his lack of progress in Ukraine or determined to warn Western nations against intervening in the war — unleashes his stockpiles of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons":

The Tiger Team, as the group is known, is also examining responses if Mr. Putin reaches into NATO territory to attack convoys bringing weapons and aid to Ukraine, according to several officials involved in the process. Meeting three times a week, in classified sessions, the team is also looking at responses if Russia seeks to extend the war to neighboring nations, including Moldova and Georgia, and how to prepare European countries for the refugees flowing in on a scale not seen in decades.

Those contingencies are expected to be central to an extraordinary session here in Brussels on Thursday, when President Biden meets leaders of the 29 other NATO nations, who will be meeting for the first time — behind closed doors, their cellphones and aides banished — since Mr. Putin invaded Ukraine.

Just a month ago, such scenarios seemed more theoretical. But today, from the White House to NATO’s headquarters in Brussels, a recognition has set in that Russia may turn to the most powerful weapons in its arsenal to bail itself out of a military stalemate.

NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, underscored the urgency of the preparation effort on Wednesday, telling reporters for the first time that even if the Russians employ weapons of mass destruction only inside Ukraine, they may have “dire consequences” for people in NATO nations. He appeared to be discussing the fear that chemical or radioactive clouds could drift over the border. One issue under examination is whether such collateral damage would be considered an “attack” on NATO under its charter, which might require a joint military response.

The current team was established in a memo signed by Jake Sullivan, Mr. Biden’s national security adviser, on Feb. 28, four days after the invasion began, according to the officials involved in the process, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive planning. A previous iteration had worked for months, behind the scenes, to prepare the U.S. government for the likelihood of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.

That team played a central role in devising the playbooks of deep sanctions, troop buildups in NATO nations and arming the Ukrainian military, which have exploited Russian weaknesses and put its government and economy under tremendous pressure.

Mr. Stoltenberg, sounding far more hawkish than in the past, said he expected “allies will agree to provide additional support, including cybersecurity assistance and equipment to help Ukraine protect against chemical, biological, radiologic and nuclear threats.”

As Mr. Biden flew to Europe on Wednesday, both he and Mr. Stoltenberg warned of growing evidence that Russia was in fact preparing to use chemical weapons in Ukraine.

These are questions that Europe has not confronted since the depths of the Cold War, when NATO had far fewer members, and Western Europe worried about a Soviet attack headed into Germany. But few of the leaders set to meet in Brussels on Thursday ever had to deal with those scenarios — and many have never had to think about nuclear deterrence or the effects of the detonation of battlefield nuclear weapons, designed to be less powerful than those that destroyed Hiroshima. The fear is that Russia is more likely to use those weapons, precisely because they erode the distinction between conventional and nuclear arms.

Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat who heads the Armed Services Committee, said on Wednesday that if Mr. Putin used a weapon of mass destruction — chemical, biological or nuclear — “there would be consequences” even if the weapon’s use was confined to Ukraine. Mr. Reed said radiation from a nuclear weapon, for instance, could waft into a neighboring NATO country and be considered an attack on a NATO member.

“It’s going to be a very difficult call, but it’s a call that not just the president but the entire NATO Council will have to make,” Mr. Reed told reporters, referring to the governing body of the Western alliance...

Still more.

 

Putin's Challenge to the American Right (VIDEO)

From Andrew Sullivan, at the Weekly Dish, "An invasion in Europe has exposed the flimsiness of post-liberalism":

It would perhaps be too glorious an irony if it were Vladimir Putin who finally buzz-killed the American and European right’s infatuation with post-liberalism. But, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine staggers shambolically and criminally forward, it’s no longer unthinkable. The icon of the West’s new right is in serious trouble now — and it might tarnish all of those who only yesterday were idolizing his reactionary zeal.

It’s not so much Putin’s trashing of international law, his unhinged rehashing of post-Soviet grievances, his next-level Covid paranoia, the foul murders of his opponents, or his brazen embrace of shelling hospitals that has so deepened the damage to the Putin brand among the West’s new Russophiles. These atrocities and madnesses they have long found ways to live with. No, it’s Putin’s failure — thus far — to actually win the war he started that’s so damning. It’s one thing for a dictator to be deemed cruel; and quite another — and far more dangerous — thing for him to be seen as incompetent.

And it’s happened so fast. The love letters had been flowing for years now before this unfortunate interruption. “Russia is like, I mean they’re really hot stuff,” Donald Trump chortled in April 2014, adding that “now you have people in the Ukraine — who knows, set up or not — but it can’t all be set up, I mean they’re marching in favor of joining Russia.” Two weeks ago, in the face of Putin’s pre-invasion posturing over the Donbas region, Trump marveled:

How smart is that? I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, ‘This is genius.’ Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine, of Ukraine, Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful … And he’s going to go in and be a peacekeeper. … There were more army tanks than I’ve ever seen. They’re gonna keep peace all right. … Here’s a guy who’s very savvy… I know him very well. Very, very well.

“They’re gonna keep peace all right.” Think of the depth of the cynical callousness that has to lie behind such a smirk. Notice that for Trump, Putin is not just a thug but a smart one, and the possibility of his brutal incursion into a sovereign neighbor state was, in Trump’s mind, “wonderful.” And cheap: “He’s taking over a country for $2 worth of sanctions. I’d say that’s pretty smart.” With Trump, evil is always better when it’s also a bargain.

Even those on the far right who had long had to acknowledge that, yes, well, Putin was a bit of a sociopath, nonetheless professed to admire his skill, if not his motives. Nigel Farage, the well-nicotined Brexit pioneer, called Putin one of the world leaders he most admired, hurriedly hedging with “as an operator, particularly the way he managed to stop the West from getting militarily involved in Syria.” He later reiterated: “He’s a very canny, very sharp, very clever political operator.” Eric Zemmour, the dynamic far-right leader in France, also spoke highly of Putin, calling him “the last bastion against the hurricane of the politically correct which, starting in America, has destroyed all the traditional structures of family, religion and nation.” He later added, “I dream of a French Putin emerging, but there is none.”

Putin’s Russia, like Orban’s Hungary, appealed to many post-liberal conservatives in the West for obvious reasons. Part of it was the shamelessness of the strongmen’s ethnically-homogeneous nationalism, compared with what was seen as the simpering, multicultural globalism of EU types; part was hatred of Obama, who was always deemed weak in contrast with, er, anyone; and part was a more amorphous but nonetheless profound view of Putin and Orban as cultural traditionalists, standing up to Western decadence, as it staggers into its Drag Queen Story Hour hellscape. For besieged social conservatives and Christianists in America, Putin loomed like some phantasm of strange hope.

Steve Bannon summed it up: “Putin ain’t woke. He’s anti-woke.” Congressman Madison Cawthorn took it further: “Remember that the Ukrainian government is incredibly corrupt, and it is incredibly evil, and it has been pushing woke ideologies.” That plucky little Zelensky, speaking live to the British House of Commons as bombs rained down on his country’s cities? An “incredibly evil” “thug.” Our old friend Dinesh D’Souza, in his usual temperate style, sees the Democrats as posing “a far greater threat to our freedom and safety than Putin.” And Bannon is still urging his minions to give “zero dollars to Ukraine,” even as the corpses of children lie on the streets. There’s an alt-right edginess to this moral perversity.

And over the years, this drumbeat of love for the Russian dictator shifted the views of many grassroots Republicans. In the wake of Trump’s personal infatuation with Putin, the murderer’s favorability among Republicans jumped from 10 percent in 2014 to 37 percent by December 2016. Until as recently as January this year, “62 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents considered Vladimir Putin a stronger leader than Joe Biden.” That’s the primrose path down which the GOP led its supporters — seeing Putin as a more legitimate president than Biden.

The last two weeks, to put it mildly, have pummeled this narrative...

Still more.

 

Thirty-Five Killed as Russia Strikes Ukraine Military Base Near Polish Border (VIDEO)

War is hell. Bloody fucking hell.

At WSJ, "Russian Missiles Strike Ukrainian Military Training Base Near Polish Border":

Attack kills at least 35 and increases risk of war encroaching on NATO territory, after Moscow says arms shipments to Kyiv won’t be tolerated.

A Russian airstrike on a Ukrainian military training center close to the Polish border threw into sharp relief the hazards of the Western push to deliver arms support to Kyiv while avoiding direct conflict with a nuclear adversary.

The airstrike killed 35 people at the facility in Yavoriv about 10 miles from the Polish border early Sunday, far to the west of where the conflict has been concentrated, one day after Moscow warned the West that it would consider arms deliveries to Ukraine as legitimate targets.

A large portion of the military aid from the West—one of the largest transfers of arms in history—passes through Poland into western Ukraine, part of the fine line the U.S. and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, allies are walking between aiding Ukraine militarily while steering clear of providing troops or enforcing a no-fly zone that Ukraine has called for.

The expansion of Russia’s aggression to a target close to Poland also increases the risk of the war encroaching on NATO territory, which the U.S. has warned would be treated as an attack on the alliance. Any strike on Poland would bring “the full force of the NATO alliance to bear in responding to it,” Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, said in an interview Sunday on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.”

Russia’s Defense Ministry said more attacks aimed at supply lines and foreign mercenaries supporting Ukraine were in the offing. Armaments supplied to Ukraine by the U.S. and its European allies—especially antitank and antiaircraft weapons—have played an important role in checking the advance of Russian ground troops, who have suffered heavy casualties in the north as they have tried to encircle the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.

But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that military aid alone might not be enough to enable Ukraine to fight off Russia’s invasion, and has made increasingly urgent calls for a no-fly zone that would protect the supplies entering the country and the refugees fleeing to neighboring countries.

The U.S. and its European allies have said a no-fly zone that involved other countries’ air forces risks escalating the conflict because it would only be effective if it were empowered to deter Russian planes. The U.S. also last week declined to support a Polish plan to give the U.S. Soviet-built MiG-29 combat jets after the U.S. had broached the prospect of Poland supplying the planes directly to Ukraine.

While the West aids Ukraine, Russia has asked China for military equipment and other assistance for its war effort, according to U.S. officials, who didn’t specify what Russia had requested.

News of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s request for help from Beijing, first reported by the Washington Post, comes as Mr. Sullivan heads to Rome on Monday to meet with a top Chinese official to discuss Ukraine.

Mr. Sullivan spoke on CNN on Sunday of the growing concern inside the Biden administration that Russia might be looking for help in the conflict, though he didn’t acknowledge a specific request from Russia to China.

“We are also watching closely to see the extent to which China actually does provide any form of support, material support or economic support, to Russia,” Mr. Sullivan said. “It is a concern of ours, and we have communicated to Beijing that we will not stand by and allow any country to compensate Russia for its losses from the economic sanctions.”

In addition to supplying arms, the Biden administration and its allies have shared intelligence with Kyiv and inflicted sweeping economic sanctions against Russia. But they are facing calls from some quarters to do more...

 

Russia Asked China for Military Assistance in Ukraine

Thus making Putin's regime look all the weaker. 

And China's supposedly guarded in its newfound partnership. 

At the Financial Times, "US officials say Russia has asked China for military help in Ukraine":

Russia has asked China for military equipment to support its invasion of Ukraine, ​according to US officials, sparking concern in the White House that Beijing may undermine western efforts to help Ukrainian forces defend their country.

US officials told the Financial Times that Russia had requested military equipment and other assistance since the start of the invasion. They declined to give details about what Russia had requested.

Another person familiar with the situation said the US was preparing to warn its allies, amid some indications that China may be preparing to help Russia. Other US officials have said there were signs that Russia was running out of some kinds of weaponry as the war in Ukraine extends into its third week.

The White House did not comment. The Chinese embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for a comment.

The revelation comes as Jake Sullivan, US national security adviser, heads to Rome for talks on Monday with Yang Jiechi, China’s top foreign policy official.

Before leaving Washington on Sunday, Sullivan warned China not to try to “bail out” Russia by helping Moscow to circumvent the sanctions that the US and its allies have imposed on President Vladimir Putin and his regime...

The apparent request for equipment and other kinds of unspecified military assistance comes as the Russian military struggles to make as much progress in Ukraine as western intelligence believe they expected.

It also raises fresh questions about the China-Russia relationship, which has grown increasingly strong as both countries express their opposition to the US over everything from Nato to sanctions.

China has portrayed itself as a neutral actor in the Ukraine crisis and has refused to condemn Russia for invading the country. The US has also seen no sign that Chinese president Xi Jinping is willing to put any pressure on Putin...

 

Joe Rogan Speaks the Way Men Do With Each Other in Private

And that's the fundamental basis of his appeal, which is gargantuan with 11 million viewers. 

Andrew Sullivan has thoughts:

No, the left is not calling all masculinity toxic. But they get pretty quiet when you ask for a definition of non-toxic masculinity that doesn’t end up sounding like being a woman. And, no, they’re not explicitly denying that there are biological differences between men and women — they just speak and act on the premise that there aren’t, that boys do not need a different kind of education than girls, that all-male groups are problematic, and that finding a way to direct masculinity to noble ends is somehow enabling the oppression of women, or gay people. The result is that men are subject to left derision, right machismo, and complete cultural derailment.

And that’s where Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson come in. They too, of course, are mocked constantly, demeaned as chauvinists or white supremacists, etc. But what Rogan does is speak and talk the way men do with each other in private, which, in this media era, is a revelation. He doesn’t entertain the woke bromides of gender theory because he’s lived a life, clearly loves being a man as much as Adele says she loves being a woman, and believes, as he once put it, that “bad men are just bad human beings who happen to be men.”

He lifts weights, watches fights, eats elk meat, smokes pot, dabbles in DMT, and asks the kind of questions normie men might ask of experts. Which is why they listen. They feel at home with him. Unlike so much of the MSM, he feels real: not a throwback to patriarchy but an opening to a kind of brotherhood that feels sane to many disoriented men in America — especially the majority who haven’t yet bent the knee to the doctrines of the successor ideology.

He’s in no way a bully or blowhard. Just listen to him: his tone is mellifluous, curious, amused. His masculinity is unforced, funny and real. He’s genuinely ingenuous — the way most humans are, possessing the kind of credulousness journalists are trained out of. But that’s why he has 11 million listeners and CNN has a little over 500,000. One of his most frequent guests is the brilliant comic Tim Dillon — openly gay and stereotypically male.

Rogan’s politics are eclectic, but they reflect a male concern with practical things, straightforward people, and solutions. The idea that he is a right-wing ideologue is silly and untrue. He readily admits when he’s wrong and often self-deprecates. He’s not afraid to show emotion and choke up — whether it’s over the triumph of female fighters or putting down a puppy or the death of Chadwick Boseman. Rogan is simply not the brutish caricature that left-Twitter and CNN would have you think.

The same goes for Peterson. The Canadian prof and clinical psychologist is cantankerous, yes, but also compassionate...

RTWT: "Between the World and Men Truckers, Rogan, Peterson and the revolt of masculinity."

U.S. Says Russian Invasion of Ukraine Could Be Imminent: Biden Administration Warns U.S. Citizens to Leave Country as 'Soon as Possible' (VIDEO)

I almost can't contemplate a major European land-war in Europe in 2022. It seems unreal, though I don't doubt the intelligence. It's weird because Russia's a weak mid-level power whose leader is not unlike Kim Jong Un --- one who bluffs, blusters, and bullies until any and all opposition to Moscow's aims melt aside amid craven national self-interests in the West. 

No, we don't have to send U.S. troops to Ukraine. 

We do need to do something, and not the continuation of Biden's weaselly warnings that Moscow will pay a "terrible price!" should Russian troops waltz right on in. Pfft. 

At the Wall Street Journal, "U.S. Says Russia Could Invade Ukraine at Any Time":

WASHINGTON—The White House said Friday it believes Russia could invade Ukraine at any time with a major military action and urged Americans to leave the country as soon as possible.

In the White House briefing room Friday, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the U.S. wouldn’t conduct a military evacuation of citizens from a war zone. He said Americans should leave Ukraine on their own in the next 24 to 48 hours while land, rail and air routes out of the country remain open, in the most pointed directive yet from the White House.

“We are in the window when an invasion could begin at any time should [Russian President] Vladimir Putin decide to order it.”

He added: “If a Russian attack on Ukraine proceeds it is likely to begin with aerial bombing and missile attacks that could obviously kill civilians without regard to their nationality. A subsequent ground invasion would involve the onslaught of a massive force. With virtually no notice, communications to arrange a departure could be severed and commercial transit halted.”

Mr. Sullivan said an invasion could occur during the Winter Olympics. Until Friday, many U.S. officials and outside analysts believed that if Mr. Putin were to order an invasion, he might await the conclusion of the Games on Feb. 20 out of deference to Chinese President Xi Jinping, whom he would be disinclined to upstage with a military incursion.

The U.S. wasn’t closing the door on diplomacy, however, and President Biden, who is at the presidential retreat Camp David in rural Maryland this weekend, was expected to speak with Mr. Putin in coming days, Mr. Sullivan said.

While U.S. officials declined to detail the new intelligence, some of it appears to consist of fresh signs that Moscow is preparing a pretext to invade its neighbor. The intelligence, officials said, has pushed forward the Biden administration’s understanding of Mr. Putin’s timeline.

“The level of concern is increasing on the imminence” of an invasion, one official said.

Oil prices jumped to fresh eight-year highs Friday on fears of an invasion, while U.S. stocks and bond yields sank, with investors fleeing to safer assets. The S&P 500 had tumbled 1.9% as of the 4 p.m. ET close of trading. The Nasdaq Composite erased 2.8%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 504 points, or 1%.

Mr. Sullivan said the disposition of Russian forces around Ukraine’s borders showed Russia was positioned to mount a major military action in Ukraine any day now, but said the U.S. didn’t know whether Mr. Putin had made a “final decision.”

“Russia could choose in very short order to commence a major military action against Ukraine,” he said. “We are ready either way.”

Mr. Sullivan said the U.S. envisioned a large-scale incursion by Mr. Putin. U.S. officials have said that an invasion could result in 25,000 to 50,000 civilians killed or wounded if Russia mounted an all-out attack and sought to occupy the entire country.

“I can’t obviously predict what the exact shape or scope of the military action will be…but there are very real possibilities that it will involve the seizure of a significant amount of territory in Ukraine and the seizure of major cities including the capital,” Mr. Sullivan said.

Ukrainian and U.S. officials say Russian action could also take the form of cyberattacks on critical Ukrainian infrastructure, sabotage, or efforts to undermine the Ukrainian state.

U.S. officials estimate as many as 35,000 Americans were in Ukraine at the start of the year, although as few as 7,000 are registered with the State Department.

Mr. Sullivan’s comments echo a statement from Secretary of State Antony Blinken earlier Friday.

“As we’ve said before, we’re in a window when an invasion could begin at any time—and to be clear that includes during the Olympics,” Mr. Blinken said in Melbourne, Australia.

Also Friday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley spoke with his Russian counterpart, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the Pentagon said. The two generals “discussed several security-related issues of concern.” And President Biden discussed the Ukraine crisis with the leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and European Union allies.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon said Friday that it would deploy an additional 3,000 troops to bolster the defenses of NATO allies that could house and support Americans evacuating from Ukraine. U.S. officials said earlier this week that hundreds of U.S. troops would be deployed inside Poland along its border with Ukraine to help facilitate the safe evacuation of Americans and others from inside Ukraine.

The U.S. troops aren’t authorized to enter Ukraine, nor will any evacuations involve U.S. aircraft, officials have said.

In warning of the Russian military buildup, Mr. Sullivan was referring to the deployment by Moscow of more than 100,000 troops to the border with Ukraine, the movement toward Ukraine of heavy weaponry from bases in the Russian Far East, and the movement of Russian troops and missile batteries into Belarus.

To bolster the military position of the Kyiv government against Russia’s overwhelming advantage in air, sea, artillery, missiles and manpower, the U.S. and NATO countries have been transporting defensive weaponry to Ukraine. Those include small-arms ammunition, mortar and artillery shells, antitank guided missiles, Stinger antiaircraft missiles, grenade launchers, explosive- ordnance disposal suits and Mossberg 500 pump-action shotguns, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials. The shipments haven’t included advanced antiship missiles or sophisticated air-defense systems.

Russia has denied it intends to invade its neighbor. But Moscow says NATO’s expansion into Eastern Europe since the end of the Cold War poses a threat to its security and has demanded the alliance swear off ever adding Ukraine and pull back troops from its eastern flank.

While rejecting Moscow’s demands regarding the future of NATO’s security posture, the U.S. and NATO have offered Moscow a menu of reciprocal proposals that would provide for inspections of U.S. missile defense sites in Poland and Romania and curbs on military exercises. At the same time, the U.S. and Europe have threatened crippling sanctions aimed at Russian banks and industry and the nation’s economy in the event of an incursion.

 

How Biden Lost the Plot

 It's Andrew Sullivan, at the Weekly Dish, "Listening to interest groups and activists is no way to get re-elected":

If I were president (I know, I know) I’d take an hour or two each week and observe a focus group. Presidents never get the full truth talking directly with the public, let alone the nuances of the feelings behind various positions — but if the prez is behind a one-way mirror, people are much less intimidated or showboaty. And because a president is constantly surrounded by like-minded people in politics, he can easily drift into internalizing the priorities of his peers and pleasing his activists and forget what ordinary people actually wanted when they elected him.

That’s my best take on why Biden had such a terrible first year — his marination in Democratic politics and his distance from moderate voters are the problem — and why his long presser this week was so starkly out of touch with political reality.

The NYT just published the transcript of a fascinating focus group — with Americans who voted both for Obama and Trump at least once. And they’re not happy with Biden. They’re sick of Covid restrictions, frightened by inflation, and unsettled by rising crime and social disorder. Here’s one quote from a member of the group:

I think they’ve taken us back to cave man time, where you would walk around with a club. “I want what you have.” You’re not even safe to walk around and go to the train station, because somebody might throw you off the train, OK? It’s a regression.

Another old white man? Nope. That’s a statement from a 60-year-old Latina woman. The group takes a rather complacent view of January 6, 2021, and when asked about their concern for democracy, one respondent said: “You see how the Democrats in power, they seem to be wanting — changing the rules, you know. Voting rights, we can’t win free and fair elections, so let’s change some rules there.”

Of those who said they’d vote Republican in November, there were two reasons given: “I just want to send a message. I think the Democratic Party is nuts at the moment, and the only way I can send that message is with my vote,” and “Yeah, the progressives have taken over the Democratic Party.”

Now imagine these people watching Biden’s press conference on Wednesday.

It would have said absolutely nothing to them. It would show that the president doesn’t share their priorities, that he sees no reason to change course, that he has no real solution to inflation, and that his priority now is a massive voting rights bill that represents a Christmas tree of Dem wishes, opposition to which he categorized as racist as Bull Connor. Biden was, as usual, appealing as a human being: fallible, calm, reasonable, and more “with it” than I expected. I can’t help but like him and want the best for his administration.

But the sheer gulf between the coalition that voted for him and the way he has governed became even wider as the time went by. Joe Biden can say a million times that he’s not Bernie Sanders. But when his priority has been to force through two massive bills full of utopian leftist dreams, and conspicuously failed to pass either, while also embracing every minor woke incursion in American life, he’s just a Bernie Sanders without the conviction or mandate. Which is … well, not great.

Voting rights matter, obviously. The filibuster is a very mixed blessing — capable of creating complete gridlock when the country is so deeply divided. I favor the anti-majoritarian ethos of the Senate, but there’s a decent case that the filibuster renders the minority far too powerful. I think most people are open to reforms on both, and I sure am.

But is this really what Americans want their president to be focused on right now? And the way in which Biden framed the question — as about the core legitimacy of future elections, and about racism — seems wildly off-base. In 2020, we had record turnout in an election that made voting far easier than at any time in history (and the GOP picked up seats in the House). If we are in a crisis of voter suppression, it’s a very strange one. The evidence that Republican vote-suppression tactics actually work in practice is absent; the assumption that higher turnout always benefits Democrats is highly dubious; and many Democratic states have appallingly cumbersome electoral systems, like New York’s. Does that make Chuck Schumer a “white supremacist”?

More to the point, laws — like that recently passed in Georgia — are far from the nightmares that Dems have described, and contain some expansion of access to voting. Georgians, and Americans in general, overwhelmingly support voter ID laws, for example. Such laws poll strongly even among allegedly disenfranchised African-Americans — whose turnout in 2012, following a wave of ID laws, actually exceeded whites’ in the re-election of a black president. In fact, the normalization of ID in everyday life has only increased during the past year of vax-card requirements — a policy pushed by Democrats.

And Biden did something truly dumb this week: he cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election in November now that his proposal for a federal overhaul has failed: “I’m not going to say it’s going to be legit.” No sitting president should do this, ever. But when one party is still insisting that the entire election system was rigged last time in a massive conspiracy to overturn a landslide victory for Trump, the other party absolutely needs to draw a sharp line. Biden fatefully blurred that distinction, and took the public focus off the real danger: not voter suppression but election subversion, of the kind we are now discovering Trump, Giuliani and many others plotted during the transition period. Reforming the Electoral Count Act could, in fact, help lower the likelihood of a repeat of last time. And if the Dems had made that their centerpiece, they would have kept the legitimacy argument and kept the focus on Trump’s astonishing contempt for the rules of the republic.

So why didn’t they? For that matter, why did the Democrats design massive cumbersome bills in 2021 — like BBB and the voting rights legislation — which are so larded up with proposals they are impossible to describe in simple terms? Why did they not break out smaller, simpler bills — such as the child tax credit — and campaign on one thing at a time?

And why have they wildly inflated the threat to election security and engaged in the disgusting demagoguery of calling this “Jim Crow 2.0”? The WSJ this week tracked down various unsavory GOP bills to suppress or subvert voting in three states — three states Obama singled out for criticism — and found that they had already died in committee. To argue as Biden did last week in Georgia that the goal of Republicans is “to turn the will of the voters into a mere suggestion — something states can respect or ignore,” is to add hyperbole to distortion.

One explanation, perhaps, for Biden’s dense and hard-to-sell legislative juggernauts is that if he’d broken them up and prioritized any single policy, he’d have split his own party. Look what happened when infrastructure passed the Senate first: the left went nuts. In that sense Biden is not so much governing the country as trying to keep the Democrat coalition together, and in the end, achieving neither.

Another aspect of the problem is that so many Dem activists and groups have deeply imbibed the notion that America in 2022 is a “white supremacist” country, designed to suppress non-whites, and that we are now living in a system of de facto “legal fascism,” with a minority “white” party holding the country in its undemocratic grip, perhaps forever. The Democrats and elite liberals really seem to believe that we are back in the 1960s or 1890s or even 1860s, that we live in a black-vs-white world of good vs evil, and that the choice today is literally, in Biden’s words, between backing Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis. This is as self-righteous as it is ludicrous. It’s MLK envy. It’s an attempt to recreate the moral clarity of the civil rights movement, in a country no one from 1964 would begin to recognize...

 

White 'Antiracist' Teacher Fired in Tennessee

This is a the Washington Post, via Memeorandum, "A White teacher taught White students about White privilege. It cost him his job."

The guy's employed was terminated in 2020. He lost his appeal in October -- and the dude was tenured. 

Here's the story at Education Week, "Teacher Fired for Lesson on White Privilege Loses Appeal":

A Tennessee teacher was fired justifiably last school year for teaching his students that white privilege is a fact of life

rather than a theory, an outside hearing officer overseeing his appeal process ruled late last week.

Matthew Hawn, a Sullivan County, Tenn., contemporary issues high school teacher, was insubordinate and unprofessional and violated the teacher code of ethics when he failed to provide students “varying viewpoints” on the existence of white privilege during a lesson on police brutality against Black men, hearing officer Dale Conder said in his decision.

“Despite knowing he was to provide varying viewpoints, Mr. Hawn did not provide a viewpoint contrary to the concept of white privilege,” Conder wrote in his decision.

Hawn, reached by Education Week over the weekend after the ruling, has not yet decided whether to appeal Conder’s ruling.

“I really thought that I was going to be teaching in Sullivan County. I thought we made a great case,” said Hawn, 43, who grew up in the county and had been teaching in the district for 16 years. “I’m just extremely disappointed and defeated.”

The ruling comes amid a raucous national debate over whether districts and states should censure the ways teachers talk to students about America’s racist past.

As his case gained national attention, Hawn, who was tenured, decided to appeal the firing, asking for a hearing to determine whether the district acted legally.

Hawn taught a contemporary issues class at Sullivan Central High School for more than a decade, where he brought up current events in his classroom for students to debate and discuss. In September 2020, Hawn told his contemporary issues students, “white privilege is a fact,” while juxtaposing the police shooting of Jacob Blake, an unarmed Black man, and the actions of Kyle Rittenhouse, a white teenager who walked away unharmed after fatally shooting two people at a Black Lives Matter protest in Kenosha, Wis.

On Sept. 10, Hawn was told by his principal in an email to allow room for classroom discussion and not make declarative statements about the topics he brought up in class. Undeterred, he later that year assigned a Ta-Nehisi Coates essay called “The First White President” about Donald Trump, which calls the former president a white supremacist.

After a parent complained, Assistant Director of Schools Ingrid Deloach issued Hawn a reprimand for failing to provide varying perspectives, which is a requirement under Tennessee’s Teacher Code of Ethics.

When Hawn wanted to discuss former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s verdict for killing George Floyd with his class in June, he chose to show a video of Black poet Kyla Jenee Lacey reciting her poem, “White Privilege.” This time, he also assigned students to read Peggy McIntosh’s “White Privilege: Unpacking an invisible knapsack” and CNN writer John Blake’s opinion piece, “It’s time to talk about Black privilege.”

Conder did not consider any of these to be a “varying perspective” to the poem, because they did not question the existence of white privilege.

“These articles do not challenge the concept of ‘white privilege,’” he said in his decision...

 

Inside Biden's Controversial Decision to Abandon Bagram

At Politco, "‘Speed equals safety’: Inside the Pentagon’s controversial decision to leave Bagram early: The administration didn't second-guess its decision to rapidly withdraw from Afghanistan. Lawmakers are fuming":

On a rainy day in early May, weeks after President Joe Biden announced the U.S. exit from Afghanistan, senior leaders from across the government gathered in the basement of the Pentagon for a broad interagency drill to rehearse the withdrawal plan.

During the exercise, top Pentagon leaders including Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley stressed the need for American troops to get out of the country as quickly as possible to protect against renewed Taliban attacks.

“All of them made the same argument,” said one defense official, who was in attendance at the drill on May 8, and whose account includes previously unreported details. “Speed equals safety,” the person said, referring to the message conveyed by the military leaders.

The military brass had done a remarkable 180. For the first four months of 2021, as the White House reviewed the withdrawal timeline inherited from the Trump administration, Austin and Milley, as well as senior military commanders, urged Biden to leave a few thousand troops in Afghanistan indefinitely. Both were overruled. Once that happened, the Pentagon embraced as quick a withdrawal as possible, including from Bagram. And the Pentagon stuck to that approach through the beginning of July, regardless of the conditions on the ground.

The remnants of the U.S. military at Bagram left in the dead of night on July 1 handing off the base to Afghan commanders who complained they weren’t even notified of the departure.

“They just decided they lost the argument, and OK fine let’s get the heck out of dodge,” said one former senior defense official.

At every stage of the withdrawal, the White House went along with the Pentagon’s recommendations, accepting a timetable that ended up going faster than Biden laid out in the spring. When the Taliban started to sweep through northern Afghanistan in the summer, different plans were discussed but never altered. The priority for the Pentagon was to protect U.S. troops and pull them out, even as diplomats and Afghan allies stayed behind.

By early August, when it was clear Kabul would fall sooner than expected, the American military presence was down to fewer than 1,000 troops. It was too late to reverse course.

None of the civilian officials who were at the May 8 meeting at the Pentagon questioned the military’s rapid drawdown plan, according to multiple officials. Those attendees included national security adviser Jake Sullivan and his deputy, Jon Finer; CIA Director William Burns; Samantha Power, the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development; Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the ambassador to the United Nations. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was not present, but was represented by his deputy, Brian McKeon. Besides Austin and Milley, other Pentagon officials included Gens. Frank McKenzie and Austin Scott Miller, the commanding generals of U.S. Central Command and U.S. Forces-Afghanistan, respectively, who joined via secure video.

The internal withdrawal debates and plans are at the heart of the congressional inquiry into the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban...

Still more.

Previously: "Senators Question Milley and Austin on End of War in Afghanistan (VIDEO)."

Americans Stretch Across Political Divides to Welcome Afghan Refugees

This is fine with me, though, of course, not for most Trump supporters. 

As always, my concern is that jihadi terrorists will be admitted to the country along with Afghans who helped the U.S., and along with the tens of thousands of regular Afghans fleeing totalitarian terrorism. 

At NYT, "'Even the most right-leaning isolationists' are coming forward to help those fleeing Afghanistan, a pastor said. A mass mobilization is underway":

Wow.

Just one poll, but “Welcoming Afghan translators to the US” looks like the most popular and bipartisan policy idea I’ve seen in a long, long time pic.twitter.com/o09sWjrnXE

— Derek Thompson (@DKThomp) August 22, 2021

PHOENIX — The hundreds of parishioners at Desert Springs Bible Church, a sprawling megachurch in the northern suburbs of Phoenix, are divided over mask mandates, the presidential election and what to do about migrants on the border. But they are unified on one issue: the need for the United States to take in thousands of Afghan evacuees, and they are passing the plate to make it happen.

“Even the most right-leaning isolationists within our sphere recognize the level of responsibility that America has to people who sacrificed for the nation’s interest,” said Caleb Campbell, the evangelical church’s lead pastor.

Last weekend, the church inaugurated a campaign to raise money for the dozens of Afghan families who are expected to start streaming into greater Phoenix in the next several weeks. Already, thousands of dollars have flowed into the church’s “benevolence fund.”

“This is a galvanizing moment,” said Mr. Campbell, 39.

Throughout the United States, Americans across the political spectrum are stepping forward to welcome Afghans who aided the U.S. war effort in one of the largest mass mobilizations of volunteers since the end of the Vietnam War.

In rural Minnesota, an agricultural specialist has been working on visa applications and providing temporary housing for the newcomers, and she has set up an area for halal meat processing on her farm. In California, a group of veterans has sent a welcoming committee to the Sacramento airport to greet every arriving family. In Arkansas, volunteers are signing up to buy groceries, do airport pickups and host families in their homes.

“Thousands of people just fled their homeland with maybe one set of spare clothes,” said Jessica Ginger, 39, of Bentonville, Ark. “They need housing and support, and I can offer both.”

Donations are pouring into nonprofits that assist refugees, even though in most places few Afghans have arrived yet. At Mission Community Church in the conservative bedroom community of Gilbert outside Phoenix, parishioners have been collecting socks, underwear, shoes and laundry supplies.

Mars Adema, 40, said she had tried over the past year to convince the church’s ministries to care for immigrants, only to hear that “this is just not our focus.”

“With Afghanistan, something completely shifted,” Ms. Adema said.

In a nation that is polarized on issues from abortion to the coronavirus pandemic, Afghan refugees have cleaved a special place for many Americans, especially those who worked for U.S. forces and NGOs, or who otherwise aided the U.S. effort to free Afghanistan from the Taliban.

The moment stands in contrast to the last four years when the country, led by a president who restricted immigration and enacted a ban on travel from several majority-Muslim countries, was split over whether to welcome or shun people seeking safe haven. And with much of the electorate still deeply divided over immigration, the durability of the present welcome mat remains unknown.

Polls show Republicans are still more hesitant than Democrats to receive Afghans, and some conservative politicians have warned that the rush to resettle so many risks allowing extremists to slip through the screening process. Influential commentators, like Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host, have said the refugees would dilute American culture and harm the Republican Party. Last week, he warned that the Biden administration was “flooding swing districts with refugees that they know will become loyal Democratic voters.”

But a broad array of veterans and lawmakers have long regarded Afghans who helped the United States as military partners, and have long pushed to remove the red tape that has kept them in the country under constant threat from the Taliban. Images of babies being lifted over barbed-wire fences to American soldiers, people clinging to departing planes and a deadly terrorist attack against thousands massed at the airport, desperate to leave, have moved thousands of Americans to join their effort.

“For a nation that has been so divided, it feels good for people to align on a good cause,” said Mike Sullivan, director of the Welcome to America Project in Phoenix. “This country probably hasn’t seen anything like this since Vietnam.”

Federal officials said this week that at least 50,000 Afghans who assisted the United States government or who might be targeted by the Taliban are expected to be admitted into the United States in the coming month, though the full number and the time frame of their arrival remains a work in progress. More than 31,000 Afghans have arrived already, though about half were still being processed on military bases, according to internal government documents...

 

It's Wasn't a Choice. Biden Just Abandoned U.S. Citizens to the Barbarity of Islamic Jihad

As yesterday's report noted, potentially millions could be left behind, to meet the possibly of murder and even mass slaughter of millions. 

At NYT, "All in or All Out? Biden Saw No Middle Ground in Afghanistan":

As the American military withdrawal from Afghanistan capping an ill-fated 20-year war turned uglier and deadlier in recent days, President Biden has stood by his decision but at the same time repeatedly singled out one person in particular to blame: his predecessor.

Because President Donald J. Trump struck an agreement with the Taliban last year to pull out, Mr. Biden has insisted that he had no choice but to abide by the deal he inherited or send tens of thousands of American troops back to Afghanistan to risk their lives in a “forever war.” It was, in other words, all in or all out.

But that reductionist formula has prompted a profound debate over whether the mayhem in Kabul, the capital, was in fact inevitable or the result of a failure to consider other options that might have ended in a different outcome. The unusual confluence of two presidents of rival parties sharing the same goal and same approach has led to second-guessing and finger-pointing that may play out for years to come in history books yet unwritten.

In framing the decision before him as either complete withdrawal or endless escalation, Mr. Biden has been telling the public that there was in fact no choice at all because he knew that Americans had long since grown disenchanted with the Afghanistan war and favored getting out. The fact that Mr. Trump was the one to leave behind a withdrawal agreement has enabled Mr. Biden to try to share responsibility.

“There was only the cold reality of either following through on the agreement to withdraw our forces or escalating the conflict and sending thousands more American troops back into combat in Afghanistan, lurching into the third decade of conflict,” Mr. Biden said as the Taliban seized Kabul this month.

Critics consider that either disingenuous or at the very least unimaginative, arguing that there were viable alternatives, even if not especially satisfying ones, that may not have ever led to outright victory but could have avoided the disaster now unfolding in Kabul and the provinces.

“The administration is presenting the choices in a way that is, at best, incomplete,” said Meghan O’Sullivan, a deputy national security adviser under President George W. Bush who oversaw earlier stages of the Afghan war. “No one I knew was advocating the return of tens of thousands of Americans into ‘open combat’ with the Taliban.”

Instead, some, including the current military leadership of Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, asserted that keeping a relatively modest force of as few as 3,000 to 4,500 troops along with the extensive use of drones and close air support could have enabled Afghan security forces to continue holding off the Taliban without putting Americans at much risk.

“There was an alternative that could have prevented further erosion and likely enabled us to roll back some of the Taliban gains in recent years,” said Gen. David H. Petraeus, the retired commander of American forces in Afghanistan and former C.I.A. director who argued the mission was making progress while serving alongside Mr. Biden under President Barack Obama.

“With the Afghans doing the fighting on the front lines and the U.S. providing assistance from the air,” he added, “such a force posture would have been quite sustainable in terms of the expenditure of blood and treasure.”

But the White House rejected such a middle ground, contending that it amounted to more war. At her briefing on Friday, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said the only real choice was sending tens of thousands more Americans to “potentially lose their lives” or getting out.

“There are of course other options, but there are consequences to every option,” she said. “That is my point.” As for the critics, she said, “I think it’s easy to play back seat” driver...

The most cowardly and craven administration in U.S. history. I'm furious at what's happening --- and of course at a loss for all of those who've suffered with loved ones killed. 

Still more. 

Afghanistan: What Went Wrong?

Almost everything, it seems. 

At LAT, "News Analysis: What went wrong in Afghanistan?":

WASHINGTON — Twenty years ago, the mission seemed direct, clear and just: Invade Afghanistan and pursue, capture or kill Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and his armed band of followers.

Achieving that goal also included overthrowing the Taliban, and steadily the mission morphed into a vast, complicated experiment to reshape a society that few Americans understood.

After a war stretching over four U.S. presidencies and costing more than a trillion dollars and tens of thousands of lives, the once-routed Taliban has retaken power in a swift march across Afghanistan, barely meeting resistance, occupying the presidential palace and driving the remaining U.S. troops to a single redoubt: an airport now swamped with Afghans desperate to flee.

Despite its military might, expertise and investment, the United States badly miscalculated the speed and absolutism with which the Taliban would overtake Afghanistan and is handing a battered country back to the very people the U.S. sought to defeat, with any gains in nation-building, education and civil rights in jeopardy.

Why? And who is to blame?

The Afghan army “chose not to fight for its country,” U.S. national security advisor Jake Sullivan said Monday, hours after Taliban militants entered the capital, Kabul, and occupied the president’s residence.

On Wednesday, as criticism of the withdrawal mounted, and finger-pointing and postmortems began, Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, concurred while also recognizing broader blame.

Afghan security forces “had the training, the size, the capability to defend their country,” he said at a tense briefing at the Pentagon. “This comes down to the issue of will and leadership. I did not, nor did anyone else, see a collapse of an army that size in 11 days.”

In fact, the reality is much more complicated. Putting all of the blame on the Afghan army, government and people ignores U.S. directives, policy and lack of knowledge. It’s also a hollow analysis of what the United States was trying to do in Afghanistan in the two decades since President George W. Bush launched the initial invasion.

The invasion For years, Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terrorist network thrived in Afghanistan under the Taliban, which then ruled most of the country. Shortly after Al Qaeda attacked the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, killing nearly 3,000 people, Bush dispatched American troops to Afghanistan to hit the terrorist group where it lived.

It took a decade to finally assassinate Bin Laden, in 2011, in Pakistan. One distraction during that decade was Bush’s ill-fated decision to launch a second war in Iraq, despite the country having no relation to the Sept. 11 attacks. Today, military officials and analysts say the threat from Al Qaeda is diminished but not gone. Al Qaeda franchises have sprung up in parts of Africa, for example, where they did not operate previously. Moreover, according to the United Nations, the Taliban never completely severed its ties to Al Qaeda, despite its pledge to do so.

The Taliban surrendered in December 2001, although many of its forces hid in impenetrable mountain ranges or in neighboring Pakistan and other countries. But the U.S. mission was just beginning. It shifted to “nation-building,” an attempt to construct democratic institutions, to open civil rights for all, including women, and to fashion a system of freedom familiar to the West but unknown in Kabul.

It included missteps, many experts say, that the U.S. military and its civilian partners have often made — misjudging local cultures from Vietnam to Bosnia-Herzegovina, botching realistic goals and making serious errors.

Creating a dependent army

Many observers now are questioning how an army built with nearly a trillion dollars in U.S. and NATO funding over two decades and tons of materiel — from rockets to Humvees — could so quickly collapse. It appears that as the Taliban marched across the country in the last couple of weeks, its fighters met little resistance from the U.S.-trained military.

Reports from several provincial capitals said local elders and tribal chieftains negotiated with advancing Taliban troops, agreeing not to raise arms against them in exchange for a peaceful resolution. Some Afghans say that arrangement extended nationwide.

“The leadership at one point gave up and told the security forces not to resist,” Roya Rahmani, until last month the Afghan ambassador to the U.S., said this week. “Over the last few weeks, they continuously received calls from Kabul asking them to surrender, asking them not to resist.”

Afghan security forces and ground troops were operating without the air power that had been vital in staving off Taliban advances. At some point — it is not clear when — supportive airstrikes stopped. In recent weeks, the U.S. declined to provide most air support, leaving Afghan troops on their own.

Under U.S. tutelage, the Afghan army became increasingly dependent on its American patrons, so withdrawal of that support was devastating.

“They baked dependency into the Afghan forces,” said Laurel Miller, former acting special envoy for Afghanistan now at the International Crisis Group, describing the U.S. strategy.

She said U.S. efforts too frequently ignored facts on the ground, underestimated the sway of powerful regional warlords and failed to sufficiently take into account vast corruption and the collapse in morale among the rank and file as well as deficiencies in Afghan leadership and command.

Miller and others also gave some credit to the Taliban as fighters — fiercely dedicated and zealously motivated. Strategically, the Taliban, as it sought to regroup, concentrated many of its operations in northern Afghanistan, preventing a resurgence of the so-called Northern Alliance — militias that helped initially to defeat the Taliban. It continued to grow stronger even during a massive, temporary troop surge ordered by President Obama.

The U.S. military made a major mistake in trying to create an army replicating U.S. standards, which made little sense in Afghanistan, said James Stavridis, former NATO supreme allied commander with responsibility for Afghanistan.

“I believe we probably trained them in a way that did not prepare them for this kind of moment in the sense that we tried to make them a mini version of ourselves,” he told MSNBC. “Dependent on intelligence, dependent on air cover, that was not as it turns out the force that was needed to defeat the Taliban.”

The levels of corruption in the Afghan military and government were something U.S. officials never came to terms with.

The Biden administration has repeatedly asserted that the Afghan army was a fighting force of 300,000, dwarfing the Taliban. But the payrolls of the Afghan military and police contained thousands of “ghost” soldiers, fighters who did not exist but were listed so officials could abscond with their payments.

A government watchdog, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, or SIGAR, in recent years found a gap between recorded and actual strength levels in the tens of thousands of personnel; in southern pro-Taliban provinces, 50% to 70% of police positions were filled by people who did not exist, the agency found.

The widespread corruption also served to demoralize the Afghan fighting forces, which by many accounts were formidable and relatively professional...

Keep reading.

 

Years of Miscalculation in Withdrawal from Afghanistan

All sides bear blame.

A close buddy of mine, who served years in the U.S. Army and Army reserve, told me that once we booted the Talbiban in 2001, we at most should've stay a few more years, leaving the Afghans to build their own country. 

At NYT, "Taliban Sweep in Afghanistan Follows Years of U.S. Miscalculations":

WASHINGTON — President Biden’s top advisers concede they were stunned by the rapid collapse of the Afghan army in the face of an aggressive, well-planned offensive by the Taliban that now threatens Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital.

The past 20 years show they should not have been.

If there is a consistent theme over two decades of war in Afghanistan, it is the overestimation of the results of the $83 billion the United States has spent since 2001 training and equipping the Afghan security forces and an underestimation of the brutal, wily strategy of the Taliban. The Pentagon had issued dire warnings to Mr. Biden even before he took office about the potential for the Taliban to overrun the Afghan army, but intelligence estimates, now shown to have badly missed the mark, assessed it might happen in 18 months, not weeks.

Commanders did know that the afflictions of the Afghan forces had never been cured: the deep corruption, the failure by the government to pay many Afghan soldiers and police officers for months, the defections, the soldiers sent to the front without adequate food and water, let alone arms. In the past several days, the Afghan forces have steadily collapsed as they battled to defend ever shrinking territory, losing Mazar-i-Sharif, the country’s economic engine, to the Taliban on Saturday.

Mr. Biden’s aides say that the persistence of those problems reinforced his belief that the United States could not prop up the Afghan government and military in perpetuity. In Oval Office meetings this spring, he told aides that staying another year, or even five, would not make a substantial difference and was not worth the risks.

For Mr. Biden, the last of four American presidents to face painful choices in Afghanistan but the first to get out, the debate about a final withdrawal and the miscalculations over how to execute it began the moment he took office.

“Under Trump, we were one tweet away from complete, precipitous withdrawal,” said Douglas E. Lute, a retired general who directed Afghan strategy at the National Security Council for Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. “Under Biden, it was clear to everyone who knew him, who saw him pressing for a vastly reduced force more than a decade ago, that he was determined to end U.S. military involvement,” he added, “but the Pentagon believed its own narrative that we would stay forever.”

“The puzzle for me is the absence of contingency planning: If everyone knew we were headed for the exits, why did we not have a plan over the past two years for making this work?”

A Skeptical President From the moment that news outlets called Pennsylvania for Mr. Biden on Nov. 7, making him the next commander in chief for 1.4 million active-duty troops, Pentagon officials knew they would face an uphill battle to stop a withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan. Defense Department leaders had already been fending off Mr. Biden’s predecessor, Donald J. Trump, who wanted a rapid drawdown. In one Twitter post last year, he declared all American troops would be out by that Christmas.

And while they had publicly voiced support for the agreement Mr. Trump reached with the Taliban in February 2020 for a complete withdrawal this May, Pentagon officials said they wanted to talk Mr. Biden out of it.

After Mr. Biden took office, top Defense Department officials began a lobbying campaign to keep a small counterterrorism force in Afghanistan for a few more years. They told the president that the Taliban had grown stronger under Mr. Trump than at any point in the past two decades and pointed to intelligence estimates predicting that in two or three years, Al Qaeda could find a new foothold in Afghanistan.

Shortly after Lloyd J. Austin III was sworn in as defense secretary on Jan. 22, he and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recommended to Mr. Biden that 3,000 to 4,500 troops stay in Afghanistan, nearly double the 2,500 troops there. On Feb. 3, a congressionally appointed panel led by a retired four-star Marine general, Joseph F. Dunford Jr., publicly recommended that Mr. Biden abandon the exit deadline of May 1 and further reduce American forces only as security conditions improved.

A report by the panel assessed that withdrawing troops on a strict timeline rather than how well the Taliban adhered to the agreement heightened the risk of a potential civil war once international forces left.

But Mr. Biden, who had become deeply skeptical of American efforts to remake foreign countries in his years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and as vice president, asked what a few thousand American troops could do if Kabul was attacked. Aides said he told them that the presence of the American troops would further the Afghan government’s reliance on the United States and delay the day it would take responsibility for its own defense.

The president told his national security team, including Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, that he was convinced that no matter what the United States did, Afghanistan was almost certainly headed into another civil war — one Washington could not prevent, but also, in his view, one it could not be drawn into...

Still more.

 

Critical Race Theory Driving Teachers Out

 At CNBC, "Critical race theory battles are driving frustrated, exhausted educators out of their jobs":

Battles over diversity and equity initiatives in public schools have resulted in administrators and teachers being fired or resigning over discussions about race. 

[Connecticut high school principal Rydell Harrison] is one of a small but growing number of educators who have left their jobs after school districts became inundated in recent months by furious parents who’ve accused them of teaching critical race theory, an academic framework usually taught in graduate schools that posits racial discrimination is embedded within U.S. laws and policies. Administrators at virtually every district facing these conflicts — including Harrison’s — have insisted they don’t teach critical race theory, but conservative activists are using that label for a range of diversity and equity initiatives that they consider too progressive, prompting lawmakers in 22 states to propose limits on how schools can talk about racial issues. 

In education, we have responded to opposition with truth and facts and being able to say, ‘Yeah, I can see why that’d be a concern, but this is what is really happening.’ In most cases that works for us,” Harrison said. “But when facts are no longer part of the discussion, our tools to reframe the conversation and get people back on board are limited.” 

Against the backdrop of hostility to discussions of race in schools — and as five states have passed laws limiting how teachers can address “divisive concepts” with students — administrators and teachers across the country say they have been pushed out of their districts. Some have opted to leave public schools entirely, while others are fighting to save their career. The result in these districts is what educators and experts describe as a brain drain of those who are most committed to fighting racism in schools. 

In Southlake, Texas, at least four administrators who were instrumental in crafting or implementing a plan combat racial and cultural discrimination in the Carroll Independent School District left the district this spring following a community backlash to diversity and inclusion efforts. 

In Eureka, Missouri, the only Black woman in the Rockwood School District’s administration resigned from her position as diversity coordinator after threats of violence grew so severe that the district hired private security to patrol her house. 

“This is going to cause an exodus among an already scarce recruiting field in education,” said Kumar Rashad, a Louisville, Kentucky, math teacher and local teachers union leader. “People aren't entering the field as much as they were, and now we have this to chase them away.” 

In Sullivan County, Tennessee, Matthew Hawn, a white high school social studies teacher, is facing termination after assigning an essay on President Donald Trump by writer Ta-Nehisi Coates and showing a video of a poetry reading about white privilege that included curse words. The district accused Hawn, who is appealing to save his job, of not showing opposing viewpoints. Both Hawn and the district declined to comment.

In Florida, Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran said “we made sure” that Amy Donofrio, a white English teacher in Jacksonville, was fired for displaying a Black Lives Matter banner in her classroom at Robert E. Lee High School. Donofrio, who was removed from teaching duties by school officials in March but has not yet been fired, has sued the district, claiming administrators violated her free speech rights and retaliated against her for advocating for Black students...

Substack! Holy Crap!

This blows my mind. 

My tweets are set to private, but in response to Steven Perlberg's tweet, linking his Business Insider piece (which is behind a paywall, of course), I quote-tweeted: 

.@MelissaTweets Elizabeth Bruenig's a freakin' self-declared communist? Did she take the 100 percent boost in pay? Or did she decline on principle? Can't say, because the article's behind a paywall, hence, capitalism. I can't even. *Man facepalming.*

Now, while you probably can't read the article to which Perlberg is linking, it turns out Mediaite did read it, and they've written up a piece that reveals the mind-blowing information. See, "Substack Offered NYT Reporter Taylor Lorenz $300,000: Report." 

Now that's why I yelled holy crap! when I saw that headline. You may not recall, but Ms. Lorenz is a very bad terrible person, and Tucker Carlson called her out a few weeks back, and it was glorious. But I knew how bad and terrible a person she was long ago, because, for one reason, she's been an awful no-good person for a long time, and Robert Stacy McCain wrote about her years ago, after Ms. Lorenz doxxed Pamela "Atlas Shrugged" Geller's daughters. You can't make this stuff up. (And Ms. Lorenz has of late been accused of stalking teenagers for inside interviews without the kids' parents permission, she's that bad.)

But no! She's getting offered a $300,000 advance to quite the Old Gray Lady and start her own newsletter? Well, I guess you gotta love free-market competition, which is why the New York Times is so freaked and has basically declared all-out war on the newsletter hosting platform, and this Sulzberger fellow, the publisher (or at least he used to be), is putting up some big bucks to go after top talent (some at Substack!) and have his own "by-line" bigwig writers up their game to meet the challenges of the day. Hoo boy, this is interesting.

At NYT, "Why We’re Freaking Out About Substack":

Danny Lavery had just agreed to a two-year, $430,000 contract with the newsletter platform Substack when I met him for coffee last week in Brooklyn, and he was deciding what to do with the money.

“I think the thing that I’m the most looking forward to about this is to start a retirement account,” said Mr. Lavery, who founded the feminist humor blog The Toast and will be giving up an advice column in Slate.

Mr. Lavery already has about 1,800 paying subscribers to his Substack newsletter, The Shatner Chatner, whose most popular piece is written from the perspective of a goose. Annual subscriptions cost $50.

The contract is structured a bit like a book advance: Substack’s bet is that it will make back its money by taking most of Mr. Lavery’s subscription income for those two years. The deal now means Mr. Lavery’s household has two Substack incomes. His wife, Grace Lavery, an associate English professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who edits the Transgender Studies Quarterly, had already signed on for a $125,000 advance.

Along with the revenue the Laverys will bring in, the move is good media politics for the company. Substack has been facing a mutiny from a group of writers who objected to sharing the platform with people who they said were anti-transgender, including a writer who made fun of people’s appearances on a dating app. Signing up two high-profile transgender writers was a signal that Substack was trying to remain a platform for people who sometimes hate one another, and who sometimes, like Dr. Lavery, heatedly criticize the company.

Feuds among and about Substack writers were a major category of media drama during the pandemic winter — a lot of drama for a company that mostly just makes it easy to email large groups for free. For those who want to charge subscribers on their email list, Substack takes a 10 percent fee. “The mindshare Substack has in media right now is insane,” said Casey Newton, who left The Verge to start a newsletter on Substack called Platformer. Substack, he said, has become a target for “a lot of people to project their anxieties.”

Substack has captivated an anxious industry because it embodies larger forces and contradictions. For one, the new media economy promises both to make some writers rich and to turn others into the content-creation equivalent of Uber drivers, even as journalists turn increasingly to labor unions to level out pay scales.

This new direct-to-consumer media also means that battles over the boundaries of acceptable views and the ensuing arguments about “cancel culture” — for instance, in New York Magazine’s firing of Andrew Sullivan — are no longer the kind of devastating career blows they once were. (Only Twitter retains that power.) Big media cancellation is often an offramp to a bigger income. Though Substack paid advances to a few dozen writers, most are simply making money from readers. That includes most of the top figures on the platform, who make seven-figure sums from more than 10,000 paying subscribers — among them Mr. Sullivan, the liberal historian Heather Cox Richardson, and the confrontational libertarian Glenn Greenwald.

This new ability of individuals to make a living directly from their audiences isn’t just transforming journalism. It’s also been the case for adult performers on OnlyFans, musicians on Patreon, B-list celebrities on Cameo. In Hollywood, too, power has migrated toward talent, whether it’s marquee showrunners or actors. This power shift is a major headache for big institutions, from The New York Times to record labels. And Silicon Valley investors, eager to disrupt and angry at their portrayal in big media, have been gleefully backing it. Substack embodies this cultural shift, but it’s riding the wave, not creating it.

And despite a handful of departures over politics, that wave is growing for Substack. The writers moving there full time in recent days include not just Mr. Lavery, but also the former Yahoo News White House correspondent Hunter Walker, the legal writer David Lat and the columnist Heather Havrilesky, who told me she will be taking Ask Polly from New York Magazine to “regain some of the indie spirit and sense of freedom that drew me to want to write online in the first place.”

(Speaking of that spirit: Bustle Digital Group confirmed to me that it’s reviving the legendary blog Gawker under a former Gawker writer, Leah Finnegan.)

And a New York Times opinion writer, Charlie Warzel, is departing to start a publication on Substack called Galaxy Brain. (Substack has courted a number of Times writers. I turned down an offer of an advance well above my Times salary, in part because of the editing and the platform The Times gives me, and in part because I didn’t think I’d make it back — media types often overvalue media writers.)

The Times wouldn’t comment on his move, but is among the media companies trying to develop its own answer to Substack and recently brought the columnist Paul Krugman’s free Substack newsletter to the Times platform. And newsrooms can offer all sorts of support that solo writers don’t get. Jessica Lessin, the founder and editor in chief of The Information, a newsletter-centric Silicon Valley subscription publication, said part of its edge was “sophisticated marketing around acquiring and retaining subscribers.”

Substack’s thesis is, in part, that media companies underpay their most prominent writers. So far, that seems to be bearing out. Mr. Warzel isn’t taking an advance, and many of the writers who took advances now regret doing so: They would have made more money by simply collecting subscription revenue, and paying Substack 10 percent, than making the more complex deals with money up front.

The former Vox writer Matthew Yglesias calculated that taking the advance wound up costing him nearly $400,000 in subscription revenue paid to Substack. The writer Roxane Gay told me she earned back her advance within two months of starting The Audacity ($60 a year) with an audience of 36,000, about 20 percent of them paying. She also wrestles with what she sees as Substack “trying to have it both ways” as a neutral platform and a publisher that supports writers she finds “odious,” she said, but has concluded that her dislike of someone’s work is “not enough for them to not be allowed on the platform.”

Isaac Saul, who told me his nonpartisan political newsletter Tangle brought in $190,000 in its first year, wrote recently that he came to Substack “specifically to avoid being associated with anyone else” after being frustrated by readers’ assumptions about his biases when he worked for HuffPost...