Why does a rattlesnake rattle?

It’s actually an interesting evolutionary mechanism, because being venomous doesn’t help you if a cow steps on you. Yes, you bite and kill the cow that stepped on you, but you’re still dead. However, if you warn the cow before it steps on you, then the cows can learn to avoid you altogether, thus saving both. A combination of warning and fear is, therefore, an evolutionary mechanism developed to avoid mutually assured destruction.

I keep thinking that one of the main contributing factor to our present geopolitical situation is the role of the “New Age” literature of the 1990s, which emphasised “positive thinking” and recommended things such as ignoring the things that frighten you until they leave. I guess this is useful strategy for making children unafraid of imaginary monsters under their bed, but it’s a terrible thing to tell a cow faced with a rattlesnake.

Also, such idiotic literature seems to have contributed to the anti-pragmatic mindset of, well, everybody, because instead of playing the normal and expected game where you weigh costs against benefits and then avoid actions with a poor cost/benefit ratio, people today adhere to “principles”, which are mostly pulled out of someone’s arse because they obviously have no deeper religious or spiritual background, ignore warning signs and react in petulant and spiteful manner where this is almost guaranteed to result in terrible consequences, they are taught “not to compromise”, to “follow their heart”, to just look at the ideals and ignore reality, because if you impose your wishes upon reality hard enough, “the entire Universe will change to accommodate you”. This all sounds like terrible nonsense, and indeed it is, but I assure you, I read it all in multiple places in the New Age literature, and saw it in all sorts of lectures by all kinds of self-help “gurus”.

When I read the news about all those European politicians who “won’t be blackmailed by Putin” after trying to blackmail Putin with sanctions, Ukrainians who are “not afraid of Russians” and refuse to accept a simple statement that they will be neutral and not a part of a war pact against Russia, and all kinds of lies on social media that attempt to portray a reality opposite to the one on the ground, as if that matters for winning wars, I keep wondering what kind of books have those people been reading? It’s like those Instagram “models” who pretend to have a perfect life, whose homes are minimalistically beautiful, whose meals all look like art pieces, who are always happy and up-beat and all of that, while of course the reality is that they are all on anti-depressants and suicidal. It’s as if they all think the most important thing is to show you’re not afraid, you’re not hurt, the enemy is weak and ridiculous and can’t hurt you in any way, and you’re so confident you laugh at him until he goes home confused with his tail between his legs.

He didn’t succumb to fear

I’ve seen Putin displaying obvious, absolutely clear rattlesnake warnings – back off, you crossed my red line, I am going to attack if you don’t – and they kept laughing, psychoanalysing him to figure out all the weaknesses and insecurities behind the threat posture, and then they act with shocked surprise when he actually did attack, as if it were out of the blue with no warning. When he didn’t attack with enough force to wipe out his opponents, he’s mocked for being weak. Guess what this tells him? Yeah, it tells him that you are unable to understand subtle signs and he needs a bigger stick.

Those “New Age” authors are all charlatans who have been lying to you. A rattlesnake is not trying to make you afraid in order to “control you”, or in order to make you “forget your own greatness” or to “make you forget your dreams”. It’s trying to keep both of you alive. To conquer fear means to win a Darwin award.

If all that allegory went over your head, let me put it this way: Putin first tried to reason with you. Then he tried to warn you. Then he increased the loudness of the warning and simplified it, so that even a not-so-bright person can understand. Then he did a limited strike to clear the immediately hostile area, but without actually doing much harm, the way some snakes do a “dry bite” as a warning. He’s trying to keep everybody alive. But hey, you know better than to be controlled by fear. You’ll just laugh at him to show you can’t be manipulated and you’ll keep following your dreams of total, uncontested power, and like a deaf cow that got bitten by the rattlesnake, you’ll ask “how did that happen all of the sudden?”

According to the analysts, the actual number of Russian troops in Ukraine is around 50000-60000 men:

 One such U.S. military expert has created a brand new interactive map that shows unit dispositions all over the country. Of course it demands the usual caveats, being from an anti-Russian source, BUT it can give us a few useful pieces of information.

https://www.uawardata.com/

The most significant of these is that, I have counted every single brigade and BTG listed on the map and have come out with a startling find that correlates exactly with what I’ve been saying for a while, and have written in detail about in the last report. Namely: there appears to be only about 50-60 total Russian BTGs in Ukraine. Considering that a Russian BTG is listed as having an estimated 600-800 men, this would amount to 50,000 – 60,000 troops in total deployment. The author himself has stated these are all the confirmed groups in the country.

Also, I’ve seen reports that satellite pictures within Russia and Belarus show much more troops there than before the invasion.

My conclusion is that this adds weight to my initial assessment that this is all in fact a ruse, or, as we would say in former Yugoslavia, “navlakuša”. The majority of the military is in fact standing by in preparations for something bigger; the ones in Ukraine seem to be more preoccupied with locking the situation up than actually conquering, but something will have to be done with all the hornets’ nests they have stirred. The 50-60k numbers don’t actually surprise me because that’s perfectly in line with my expectations, if my initial assessment was correct, but since much larger numbers were mentioned online I thought, well, I must’ve been wrong and they are doing a much more serious job than I assumed. Apparently not.

It’s difficult to think through all this war noise, but let me try; for starters, what reactions did this invasion provoke, what’s the new status, and what’s likely to happen next?

Sanctions. America basically sentenced Europe to resource shortages, which will destroy their industry and forment social unrests. I expect more totalitarian clampdowns on freedoms, following the precedents set after the covid response. Normally, people would protest the self-inflicted shortages and the lowering of the standard of living, but now the military will control the streets and just shoot them. No protests will be allowed, and protesters will be publicly derided as selfish and ignorant, following the established covid patterns. So far, the effect of sanctions on Russia has been negligible; basically, they lost the Western fast food and fashion chains, and are left with better and cheaper local alternatives. They have cheap energy, cheap and good food, they are not dependent on credit, and what technology they don’t produce, they can get from China, which is a good and reliable ally. If the Russians didn’t know what happened, they could be excused if they came to the conclusion that some plague wiped out the collective West, and that is actually not far from reality. Russia lost some of its gold and foreign reserves, but honestly they could afford it; it’s mostly used for foreign trade anyway. Their economy is stable, and their currency has recovered to pre-invasion levels. American and EU economies, on the other hand, are flashing with warning signs. Things are not yet in free fall, but the forecasts are dire.

Petroruble. Putin is forcing the EU to either buy gas (and, likely, all other imports are to follow) in Rubles. This gives the Ruble the same kind of commodity-backing that the Dollar had since the 1970s. Nobody in the West expected this, and it’s a serious blow. America will try to stop this by all means at their disposal, but it’s questionable what they can do short of nuclear war. This situation is still in development and it’s unclear what direction things will take.

Ukraine. The Ukrops are rabid and murderous, and there is increasing support in Russia for wiping them all out with heavy weaponry – basically, if Putin stopped pussyfooting around them in attempts to protect the civilians, and simply levelled everything, there would be a loud cheer in Russia, especially after the videos of Ukrops torturing Russian POWs came out, along with increasing evidence of general Ukrainian population’s widespread hatred of the Russians. The helicopter incursion and bombardment of an oil depot in Russia didn’t help things one bit. The atmosphere in Russia changed regarding the Ukrainians, and the Ukrops will regret that very dearly in the following weeks. Other than being rabid and murderous, they are mostly incapacitated, fragmented, surrounded and unable to do anything of military significance. Basically, they wait for the Russians to decide what to do with them.

Technology. Russia was seriously slacking with regard to attaining technological independence from the West, and this is a real source of concern. This includes payment technology, which consists of licensed Western stuff implemented by their people who were educated in the West; basically, it’s all completely vulnerable to all kinds of pressures. Agriculture, industry, finance, even military industry – they are all vulnerable. Apparently, the reason for that is that they were following the path of least resistance and greatest short-term effectiveness; why waste limited resources on producing your own tractor when you need those resources to produce something you can’t readily buy for reasonable prices? Well, now they can’t buy either the tractors or the spare parts, and when things start failing, things will start degrading and eating up resources in order to get fixed. Also, they have problems with the production of seeds for agriculture – they import those from America, which is a mind-boggling oversight; also explainable by following the line of least resistance. I can understand that, because I’m also practicing this approach in daily matters, where I organize things to be economical in a business-as-usual environment, instead of a doomsday-SHTF environment, which might bite me later, but I would expect Russia to have figured out that America is neither a friend nor a partner, but a geostrategic enemy. You don’t buy seeds, tractors, software and payment protocol licenses from a geostrategic enemy. Things are very, very bad in this segment, and this is the only segment where I’m scratching my head in “what the hell were they thinking” ways. They have ten times more vulnerabilities than strengths here.

Phase 2. It’s generally assumed that by this the Russians mean cleaning up of the remaining Ukrainian military east of Dnepr river, and possibly Odessa. I’m not so sure about that, regardless of the fact that those Ukrops will absolutely end up pushing up daisies in the short term, because it would be strategically imprudent to either leave them there, or to allow them to evacuate. What I mean is that it might be more strategically prudent to just keep them surrounded until phase 3, and deal with America and NATO in phase 2, because something might be imminent from that direction. America just won’t allow things to go Russian way as much as things seem to be going now. They will intervene, Russia will respond, and all kinds of shit will hit the fan in very short order. This might mean that the Ukrops in Donbass will have to wait for their initiation into perfect unity with the earth.

In a recent chat, Božo and I were talking about how even the “right wing” politicians here in Croatia simply assume that Putin is some kind of a dictatorial madman and my answer is something I wanted to share here:

“They are all sucking American cock like a gay baby”

🙂