Thread by @17cShyteposter

Young man, on a cross-Atlantic trip, 1924.

H.P. Lovecraft-type racist? Or Yale-educated man who invented the containment strategy toward the Soviet Union that way well have saved the Earth from nuclear annihilation?

Our culture has been radically changed in less than 100 years.

This is George F. Kennan, expert on the post-WW2 Soviets, who shaped our foreign policy toward them. There's a possibility that every human on this planet is alive today due to his understanding of the USSR, which stemmed from his wider understanding of the world.

Kennan was anti-war with the Soviets, btw. He understood their beliefs in perfect equality relied on a highly paranoid mindset that brooked no dissent. He believed that geopolitical pressure could be applied to them to minimize their expansionist beliefs without military conflict

He understood that order stems from hierarchy, and the Soviets had overthrown proper hierarchy. So you didn't need to fight them. Just make it harder for them to expand. And wait for them to collapse.

In hindsight, very hard to argue with him.

There's probably a direct line, which Trump understands, with his high-level instincts if not his not-so-much-higher-level intellect, between this and the anti-war right.

You don't have to waste your capital destroying these people. They'll destroy themselves.

For instance, from a Kennanist stance, if we weren't at war in the Middle East, and didn't allow immigrants from them, they would pose no threat to us.

And they obviously don't. They're comically weak. We have no national interest there. So why are we there?

"Israel." Yes obviously.

Yet on a deeper level, it's that leftist ideology doesn't let us determine between friend-enemy, as Schmitt understood. We are universalists: so we can't understand that some people need to stay enemies. Perversely, this means we must invade them!

This seems like a massive paradox until you understand that, if you can recognize enemies, and can let them *remain* enemies, who are nonetheless incapable of harming you, you can leave them alone.

They are different. Military conquest can't change them. Afghanistan. Iraq. Eh?

It is the *understanding of difference*, as Kennan did, that allows us to recognize that we can't reshape the world in our image. Progressivism, which believes in universalism, is thus ultimately a warmongering ideology.

Believe what we do, whether or not it suits you, or die.

To make this 100% clear:

When you believe humans are all the same, you therefore believe your ideals (i.e. liberal democracy) are the ideals of all human society.

Therefore, if any society rejects this, it is inhuman: and must be invaded

Therefore, why America must invade you.