The Gamblers

War, what is it good for, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING

Have you heard this thought as often as I? Maybe like me even had it yourself. No no not WAR, no one I know offline, all 6, brings it up. Online outside of Substack two or three I guess.

They cannot win an outright war against Russia and China and they know it.

How do we think about this word winning?  Russia says she is winning in the Ukraine for example in a Special Military Operation.  War on log scale is not instantly the nuclear winter of 100 megatons of atomic ordinance used against urban high value targets and other less interesting targets "like the Man in the Moon or the Face on Mars,” said the General in Charge to the new Head of State formerly number 18 in the line of succession. Understanding this idea of something with authority survives until escaped or KIA you see total annihilation of the adversary is ruled out, initially.  Then from the Ukrainian state's view it is winning by losing.  Winning hearts and minds and military aid and loans never to be called in.   Winning by forcing Russia to start a log war in the hopes of prevailing over the West.   The West thinks its winning by fighting a proxy war which is called poker not chess.  Tombstone rules are used so the force calculus can be calculated with even an old G4 mac.  Moves are negotiated in a kind of Crab Apple Tree Crisis fashion in the MUD.  Escalation of force is promised by the warning and the obligatory you were told ya was gonna shoot at High Noon one bright sunshiny day after all obstacles that held them down went away.   Due to the hyper-sensitivity of the West you just can't lose and in the House of The Rising Sun everyone  wins under Tombstone rules -not just LGBQT people of color and people of indeterminate pigmentation due to piercings and tattoos self mutilation mutation or bad luck with caustic bleach.  Reputations are made, money flows, life is beautiful during wartime even with trillions of debt owed by the world to the world.  Interest on the debt is paid by the body parts of casualties.  Bodies can be scavenged by the living without respect for the dead who really aren't dead since dead people are not people but a junk car lot being parted out biologically down to the 800,000 BCE last common universal genetic ancestor, the mother of Shamans, the Great Ogress Lilith.