NATO members are engaged in massive military escalation against Russia, and are deliberately creating conditions that will inevitably lead to a conflict with Russia
Recently we had a discussion about the usefulness of the concept of psychopathy to characterize trends in Western elite thinking. Let's consider another psychological concept, the borderline personality. One of its hallmarks is a very poor sense of social causality. While that's not the only salient feature of the syndrome, it refers to the borderline's inability to understand the interaction logics of the culture. In simpler terms, they cannot understand why people hold them responsible for situations that are always someone else's fault. In initial interviews, when a clinician is roughing out a general idea of the patient, for them to depict themselves as always a victim would be a tipoff, suggesting a line of inquiry. The key question would involve figuring out why they so busily project their aggression out onto others and set up another dynamic that has made the rounds, "splitting" into all-good and all-bad object categories.
This fits quite well with the US/NATO understanding of the world. There are, of course, propagandistic reasons for denying that Russia should have any reason to fear the US/NATO. But it does seem that, lacking that simple anchor in reality, there no limits to an image of Russia as a hostile, aggrandizing power. Please recall that George Kennan, who was supposedly such a clearheaded fellow, in his infamous Mr. X essay of 1947 that stoked the Cold War, regarded the Soviets as like a wind-up toy that would keep crashing ahead until it was contained. The US/NATO have never been able to formulate an alternative understanding that steadily acknowledges Russian security interests. Failing to do so, they are free to self-pityingly fantasize, and in the process pull the rest of society along with them. Borderlines are US.
Recently we had a discussion about the usefulness of the concept of psychopathy to characterize trends in Western elite thinking. Let's consider another psychological concept, the borderline personality. One of its hallmarks is a very poor sense of social causality. While that's not the only salient feature of the syndrome, it refers to the borderline's inability to understand the interaction logics of the culture. In simpler terms, they cannot understand why people hold them responsible for situations that are always someone else's fault. In initial interviews, when a clinician is roughing out a general idea of the patient, for them to depict themselves as always a victim would be a tipoff, suggesting a line of inquiry. The key question would involve figuring out why they so busily project their aggression out onto others and set up another dynamic that has made the rounds, "splitting" into all-good and all-bad object categories.
This fits quite well with the US/NATO understanding of the world. There are, of course, propagandistic reasons for denying that Russia should have any reason to fear the US/NATO. But it does seem that, lacking that simple anchor in reality, there no limits to an image of Russia as a hostile, aggrandizing power. Please recall that George Kennan, who was supposedly such a clearheaded fellow, in his infamous Mr. X essay of 1947 that stoked the Cold War, regarded the Soviets as like a wind-up toy that would keep crashing ahead until it was contained. The US/NATO have never been able to formulate an alternative understanding that steadily acknowledges Russian security interests. Failing to do so, they are free to self-pityingly fantasize, and in the process pull the rest of society along with them. Borderlines are US.