Lemoine’s Claim #1

Why, why do I have to engage with this absolute child, Philippe Lemoine? But OK, I will if people want me to.

Lemoine’s claim #1.

Russia would never attack a NATO country because Russians don’t feel as strongly about, say, the Baltics as they do about Ukraine.

First of all, yes, they feel very strongly about the Baltics. There’s been a single-minded obsession in Russia with how the Baltics are persecuting “ethnic Russians” and oppressing the Russian language. Lemoine doesn’t know this because he’s not part of the cultural space.

But that’s not even the important part. All of the high-minded disquisitions about how it would be irrational for Russia to do this or that are disregarding how much this is not about what’s rational. It’s about love. An irrational, single-minded, painful love.

Russians are in love with America. They were going nuts during Tucker Carlson’s visit. “He went to a store and bought something! He’s walking around in the streets! A real American person! Walking amongst us!” My priest has this level of enthusiasm when he talks about Jesus.

It was the same thing when that Scott Adams fellow visited. Nobody in Russia (or anywhere else) knows who he is but that’s not the point. He’s an American! That’s all that matters. The object of painful, unrequited love finally noticed them.

And what did Putin do during the interview with Tucker? He negged the poor guy. That’s a favorite love trick of the manosphere.

Lemoine goes on and on about how important Ukraine is for Russians and how unimportant the Baltics are. But it’s all a nothing burger because the real love object here is America. All of the Russian invasions are a love letter to America. What is the first thing you do when you fall in love? You start saying, look at me, we have so much in common, I’m the only one who understands you. This is precisely the Russian message. “You invade, and so do I. You are a big, strong country that walks over everybody else, and so am I. We are meant for each other. Why aren’t you seeing this? Why don’t you understand?”

This love is doomed to be frustrated because what does a person in love want from his love object? To have and to hold, at his healthiest. To possess, subsume and own, at his most messed up.

Why is Lemoine not getting any of this and is trying to analyze the situation in terms of “if everybody were exactly like me, then they’d act exactly like I would”? He wasn’t with us when we lived behind the Iron Curtain and invented our own vision of America. He wasn’t with us when the Iron Curtain fell and we discovered a very different America, having to make our peace with that discovery. I often see my 8-year-old trying to reason her way out of concepts she is too young to understand. “The book says rich people live in mansions. We don’t live in a mansion. We must be poor.” It’s cute in an actual child but distressing in adult men like Lemoine.

In order to make pronouncements on what people in another culture would or wouldn’t do, you need to study that culture, immerse yourself in it, and let yourself become aware of the enormous distance between yourself and that culture. We briefly mentioned philosopher John Gray on this blog today. He explained how the Enlightenment-era belief in the hyper-rational core of every human being that supposedly makes us all want the same thing and try to achieve it in identical ways led to many of today’s problems. The French were the leaders of Enlightenment, and no amount of Bataclan fiascos is teaching them anything new.

If Ukraine never existed at all, Russia would be invading somebody. Tantruming, making itself noticed. Ukraine doesn’t solve its problem of wanting to be desired as passionately by America as Russia desires it. That’s a huge problem, and no amount of rationalizing will make it go away.

Hey, you asked for a long posts. Don’t complain now.