A Radical Reset
Our Republic has been converted into a democracy which is just another name for mob rule. The mob is getting what it wants, to paraphrase H.L. Mencken, good and hard. One day soon, the entire edifice is going to collapse under its own weight and what takes its place historically will be tyranny. A Radical Reset is the alternative and the system is called Antipolitism. It calls for a new republic based upon merit and not ambition. No parties, no money in politics, no careers in politics, and only serving the public good.
A Radical Reset
Holy Mother Russia and the Unholy War in Ukraine
A former NSA Russian linguist shares deep cultural insights to help listeners understand Vladimir Putin and Russia's actions in Ukraine from a historical and psychological perspective.
• Russians fundamentally differ from Americans in their worldview and expectations
• Russians experience genuine surprise when things work out well, while Americans are surprised when they don't
• Russian history is defined by suffering, invasions, and endurance rather than triumph
• Putin represents Russian cultural values as a "Slavophile" who views Russia as a holy place
• Russia's vulnerable geography has shaped its historical need for buffer states
• The invasion of Ukraine stems from centuries of Russian security paranoia
• Current Ukrainian conflict requires both pressure and incentives to reach resolution
• American weakness under Biden administration has complicated the situation significantly
• Understanding Russian psychology is essential to developing effective diplomatic strategies
Pick up a copy of my book "A Radical Reset: The Manifesto of Anti-Politism Which Will Save the Republic" available on Amazon in Kindle, paperback, or hardcover formats, and please share this podcast.
Hello there guys. It's me Herbie, your host here at the Spiritual Agnostic, where I take a more cultural, spiritual point of view, where I understand that as religion reduces and America in particular our culture is reduced by that, and I'm hoping that hopefully we can talk philosophy to replace the void being left by the absence of God. Now I also relate that to current events. This is a really weird podcast. I know the title isn't really right either. I should change it to the spiritual agnostic who opines on whatever pops into his head. But listen, that'll have to just spread by word of mouth. You know, either I'm good at this or I'm bad, and you decide that and that's that All right, and I'm not going to lose a lot of sleep over it. I'm going to talk to you today about Russia and Vladimir Putin. I'm especially good at this because I was a Russian linguist at the National Security Agency. I speak Today I would say fluent might be the wrong word. I'm fairly fluent in Russian, but I understand it perfectly because I just don't speak it very often. I wish I spoke it more, but as we say in Russian, which means I need practice and I just don't get a chance to do that very often. I have Ukrainian neighbors and they speak Russian and I talk to them every time I see them really, but just not enough to keep myself up. But anyway, I do have an understanding of Russia and Russians and I even have a top secret clearance kind of understanding. So you know, I know a lot about what went on, particularly in the Soviet Union before it fell, but that's part of the history. We're going to talk about what. As we're looking at what's going on in Ukraine and with Russia, I'm going to try to help you understand what's really going on beyond the news, from a human, cultural level, and who. Vladimir Putin and it's Vladimir Putin, if you want to say it the Russian way and his, you know, if you were a friend of his, you would call him Vladimir Vladimirovich.
Speaker 1:Russians don't use middle names, they have something called patronymics. So my first name obviously is Herbie and my father's name was Kalman. So I would be Herbie Kalmanovich and if I was a woman I'd be Kalmanovna. That's just a little different name. So when you hear Russian women's names, there's always an Ovna at the end, and when you hear Russian men's names, there's always an Ovich at the end, and whatever name comes before the Ovič or the Ivna is the name of their father. So you know my daughter would be. It sounds so ridiculous I'm going to use my middle name. I actually have a Russian middle name because my grandfather was Russian Jewish, so my middle name is Ivan Ivan in Russian. So my daughter, chloe, would be Chloe Ivanovich, and my daughter and Chloe would be Chloe Ivanovna. Sorry, chloe Ivanovna, but my son, julian would be Julian Ivanovich. Okay, so there you go. That's the whole Russian thing. I don't know why I went down that with you, but I just thought it'd help you understand it for the future. Anyway, so Vlad was a former KGB agent. But that's not really. That's what lazy media does, because they don't bother to understand.
Speaker 1:Russians and Americans have a fundamentally, fundamentally from its very core different view of the world. You know our history. Even the bad parts were only pauses on the way to victory, if you think about it. From our revolution to the War of 1812, to the Civil War, to freeing the slaves, to World War I, world War II, korea, vietnam, we've had wins, we've had losses, but always along the way we've ended up triumphing in the end, right up to the end of the Cold War, when we defeated the Soviet Union, by the way, I knew we would way before it came. Ronald Reagan just said what we all knew in the intelligence world, which was Russia, was a big paper tiger imploding on itself. The Soviet Union was. But anyway, big is not necessarily strong, so understand that. Russian history is not like ours. I'm not going to go through a rehash of American history, but we conquered a continent, settled it and dominated it, and have become the dominant power in the world by being victorious in the Second World War, emerging as the world's industrial and technological superpower, which by far, we still are today. It's not even a horse race. By far we still are today. It's not even a horse race. I'll speak to China some other day.
Speaker 1:And so here we are and we are generally a triumphant people. You know we're fighting amongst ourselves now between the apologists who want to look at everything we've ever done wrong and, you know, apologize for it, like reparations and nonsense like that. And we also have people who are MAGA, who are just the opposite. But overall Americans, in the end, when push comes to shove, we always think it's going to work out. We're kind of surprised if it doesn't. Regardless of what side of an issue we're on. We always think that in the end our side will be triumphant because we're on the side of right and we are Americans and things always turn out right for Americans sooner or later. That's the American way. That is not the Russian way. Russians are genuinely surprised if anything ever works. That's not a joke. So I actually had a Russian explain this to me Back at the time the Soviet Union fell.
Speaker 1:I volunteered for Jewish Family Services in Tucson, arizona, and I was the only really Russian speaker they had. So I would go to the airport in the middle of the night generally Again, I don't know why it always came in at the middle of the night, but it always did and I would meet the plane with the mostly Russian Jewish refugees coming in from the former Soviet Union and they spoke absolutely no English and I would meet them and I would take them. We had rented an entire apartment complex and I would take them to their apartment and get them settled in and the next day I would come and I would take them to the local fries which is Kroger in Arizona. So, wherever you live, and I would stock up their refrigerator, I would get them their social security cards. I would get them, you know, set them up with their green cards and all that kind of good stuff that were all arranged, and I did all yada, yada, yada, yada, yada. I don't want to bore you with all of it, but I was their liaison and I made a lot of good friends as a result of that and it was one of those Russians that really enlightened me and said to me you know, the thing about Americans that you don't understand is that you guys are genuinely surprised when things don't turn out the way you think or hope they will, and we Russians are genuinely surprised if they do. And if you look at their history, it's one of suffering. If you read Russian literature, it's the literature of suffering Russian literature.
Speaker 1:Right now I'm rereading Anna Karenina, which I think is the greatest book ever written. You can decide for yourself. I'm not going to go into a literary discussion, but I haven't read it in many, many years. So I'm rereading it and just so you don't think I'm a braggart, I'm reading it in English. I have tried to read it in Russian. It's way past me. That's what I can say.
Speaker 1:But the thing about Anna Karenina is that it's very dark. Things don't go well ever in Russian literature there's no happy endings. It's just not the way it works. No one rides off into the sunset Russia. You know why don't? For example, I don't know if you've ever noticed this, but a lot of Russians seem to have. They seem to be European in color, but they have Asiatic features. That's because for centuries the people they called the Tatars, that we call the Mongols, took over Russia and raped and when I say raped, raped on a scale of millions their women, before they were finally driven out. And they were driven out to be replaced by the first Tsar, who was Ivan the Terrible, who, in a fit of rage, killed his only heir. I mean, this is how Russian and, by the way, in Russia he's not Ivan the Terrible, he's Ivan the Great, which tells you exactly. There are plenty of Russians that know everything that Stalin did and forgive it, because sometimes you have to break some eggs to make an omelet, as trite as that sounds to an American ear.
Speaker 1:What I'm trying to explain to you is the Russians, really, when they do win, it's only through endurance. They outlasted Napoleon, they outlasted Hitler, but boy did they take a horrible beating In World War II. We lost roughly a half a million men give or take. In World War II. They lost 20 million people and their population was half of ours to begin with. As big as Russia is, a lot of it is virtually uninhabitable. It's mostly concentrated in the European area. And that brings us to Putin. So Putin is a product of his culture. He's very, very Russian, and to understand that is to also know that he's what's called a Slavophile. Now, a Slavophile is a person who views Russia not just as a place, but as a holy place.
Speaker 1:Don't make fun of the spiritual people. This is where this man's coming from. He believes in Holy Mother Russia. He is Orthodox. He's not a practicing Orthodox, but he's Orthodox. Now, orthodoxy for those of you who don't understand it is the break off. The Catholic Church split, and the Eastern Orthodox version of it was in Byzantium, which is today Istanbul, and the Catholic Church, as we know it was headquartered and is headquartered in Rome, although briefly, not briefly. For a long time it was in France, but then it went back to anyway. It's a long history. I'm not going down that hole either, but anyway, the way I like to explain the Eastern Orthodox, particularly the Russian Orthodox Church, versus Catholicism is to basically say it's Catholicism without the sense of humor which you know. You guys get the joke right. I don't have to explain it. So it is not a happy religion. It's not a happy people. They are dark Russians. Don't walk down the street smiling like Americans. So let's start with that. When Vladimir Putin, when a Russian they're not the only culture you know we Americans were open.
Speaker 1:Donald Trump thinks that he likes, you know he likes Vladimir Putin. He thinks he understands him. He's not the first American president to fall for that joke. You know George Bush said he looked into Putin's eyes and saw his soul and blah, blah, blah. And Bill Clinton, thought, said that Vladimir Putin was a man you could count on to keep his promises. I mean, americans fall for this because we are preternaturally cheerful. Okay, again, we expect a good outcome. We want everyone to be our friends. It's the same reason why Donald Trump talks about. You know, kim is his friend in North Korea and she and I are friends. That's just American, you know. It's just. Maybe every American doesn't voice it quite as loud as Donald Trump, but that's very American to think you're making a human connection on a human level with people that are not really looking at you from the same cultural perspective.
Speaker 1:Now I want you to look at a map of the United States this is the final thing to understand the difference between Russia and America and how Putin looks at the world, and this will explain what he's trying to do in Ukraine, and then I'll explain the risks and then I'll explain what has to be done to end this war Really, truly Okay. So, number one look at a map of the United States. We've got the two major oceans of the world the Atlantic and Pacific on both sides, which makes invasion impossible. We'd see it coming from thousands of miles away. And we have friendly neighbors to our north and south and we're never going to fight a war with either Canada or Mexico.
Speaker 1:We invaded Mexico a few times. They didn't try to pick a fight with us, god knows, and that's the history of that. But today that's just not going to. Mexico is in no position to pick a fight with the United States and they're not planning to. I've spent a lot of time in Mexico. They're not trying to. They're a little resentful that we have, but that's another story for another day.
Speaker 1:But basically we're surrounded by nothing but safety. Pearl Harbor was hit in World War II, but we responded by beating the living shit out of the Japanese and nuking them twice. So, basically, america is an incredibly safe country and we have the luckiest geography we possibly could. But add to that, we have the Mississippi River and all of its tributaries running down the dead center of the country, which, oh, by the way, is the largest flat-growing area in the world. So we have this phenomenal water source running down the middle that's almost entirely navigable north to south, unlike there are other long rivers in the world, like the Don River in Russia, okay, and the Volga, and they're long, but they're not entirely navigable and they don't have tributaries that are navigable. But Mississippi has the Ohio, the Missouri, the Tennessee I don't know the whole list, but they're all navigable. So that opens up trade down the center of the country, which set us up to win to begin with.
Speaker 1:And then we had a fairly visionary early government when it used to know what it was in business to do, and they built things like the Erie Canal which connected the Great Lakes to the East Coast, and the Great Lakes that's another thing we have for enormous amounts of commerce and shipping out into the Atlantic ultimately. But we can take it now because of the Erie Canal down through New York, or at least in those days. I'm not sure what the current status is. Shipping has evolved a lot, so I don't pretend to be an expert, but the point is our geography is unbelievably lucky. We have great weather, very moderate, even our coldest states unbelievably lucky. We have great weather, very moderate, even our coldest states. You know, little side note the reason that, for example, the south of France is warm when it's on the same latitude as Newfoundland, basically, or Maine, is because of the Gulf Stream. The Gulf Stream crosses the Atlantic and brings warm water up and touches Europe and that's why Europe is warmer than it would be colder than the northern parts of Canada otherwise. So that's just a little side note and a little climate fact for you today. It has nothing to do with what I'm talking about Now.
Speaker 1:Let's go and take a look at a map of Russia. Russia is surrounded by countries that have invaded it over and over and over again. It's been invaded by the Tatars, or the Mongols as we would call them. As I told you, it's been invaded by the Europeans, various ones, the Swedes. I know that sounds funny in today's parlance, but there was a time when Sweden was a great empire and just kicked the shit out of Russia. It's been invaded by the Germans. It's been invaded by the French. It's been invaded by the French. It's been invaded by the Poles. The Poles, historically, were also a great power that for quite a time ran roughshod on the Russians and the Russians outlasted them all.
Speaker 1:But that's how they do it. They don't do it through brilliance or technology or the better equipment or industrial output. They just basically throw people at it. That's how they did it in World War II. They just threw people at it. That's the story of Stalingrad, you know. It was basically charged and when you fall in or killed, you pick up the rifle. Since they didn't have enough rifles this is absolutely true they'd pick up the rifles and were ordered to, of the dead people, pick it up and run until they were shot dead, who would then be followed by other guys who would pick it up and run until they were shot dead. And that gives you some idea of not only how tough Russians are, but of the psychology of Russians. And this is what feeds Vladimir Putin, who was born into the world subsequent to World War II. He grew up under Stalin. He did his career as a KGB agent. This is a real Russian. A real Russian, not a communist. A Russian Understand that.
Speaker 1:Now let's look at the map of Russia again. Not only is it concentrated, as population, in just one area, and not only does it have nothing like the Mississippi River, and not only does it have only one navigable warm water port well, two, if you include Vladivostok. But given the size of the country, it's unbelievably difficult to transport anything from east to west in Russia. It takes days and days and it's horrible. It's just not practical. All those geographic disabilities, and on top of all of that, they are the largest country in the world. They're very, very. They have a mystical feeling about Mother Russia because of the Russian Orthodox Church and the tradition that seeps within their culture. And the only way to defend a country that size, who's been invaded only over and over and over again, is to push out its borders, which is why Ukraine was historically, for the last five centuries or so, a part of Russia.
Speaker 1:Russia took Ukraine and made it its own because it was a buffer against invasion from the Turks and from the West. Okay, look at a map. They are as afraid of us as we are of them. Now that's why Putin's goal is not just to keep the parts of Ukraine that he has. Like Trump wants to believe, his goal is to take all of Ukraine. He thought it would fall easy. It was a horrible miscalculation, but regardless, that's the goal. Take the country. Okay, he will call. Trump's mistake here is that you have to go with Putin, and here's the solution. It has to be carrot and stick and boy. This is going to. You know, we've got ourselves.
Speaker 1:Let me back up just for a moment and say under no circumstances, if I had been President Biden at the time and not senile, would I have ever, ever gotten us involved in this. I would have let Russia take Ukraine Because I would have understood and not because it's a good thing and not because I support that, but I understand why he did it and there's no threat to the other NATO countries, even though we instigated the attack in many ways by causing Russian paranoia. After centuries and centuries and centuries of being invaded from the West, we pushed the enemy NATO to their border when we promised we wouldn't in 1992. We did it anyway, and the Russians are. Look at it from their point of view, look at the map, look at their country and this is why Putin invaded Ukraine. Now why did he pick the moment he did? Because he knew we had a senile president. He had met Biden. He knew Biden was out of it and he made a calculated risk that the Ukrainians would lay down and it was a stupid risk. And he made a calculated risk that the Ukrainians would lay down and it was a stupid risk. He really stepped into a pile of poop. He's not infallible. Now he has to get out of it. But as a Russian he can't get out of it by making a deal because he'll be overthrown.
Speaker 1:Russians all think like Putin. If you think that if we got rid of Putin we'd have a different guy, we would just have another Putin. Putin is essentially Russian. He we would just have another Putin. Putin is essentially Russian. He's not American. He doesn't naturally smile at everybody. He doesn't walk into every conversation thinking he's going to make a friend out of you. He is deeply suspicious because he's Russian. Russians are wonderful people once they get to know you. It's the get-to-know-you part that's different. They're not Americans. They're not chubby. They don't smile at each other on the street. If you smile at a Russian walking down the streets of Moscow, they could probably tell right away you're an American, but otherwise they think you're out of your goddamn mind. Okay, it's as simple as that, and you can reduce it to humanity and understand Putin.
Speaker 1:So what needs to be done? We have two choices. We can either abandon Ukraine, which I can completely understand, all of the consequences of that, which would be very, very bad in many, many ways Another discussion for another day or we're going to have to, now that we've gotten sucked into this. This is how World War I started. You start with nothing and it turns out we are in real danger here of crossing a threshold. So we have to dance a very delicate dance of carrot and stick. So, as I record this, ukraine had carried out a massive drone attack inside of Russia that they had been planning for a very long time. Read about it. It's very clever how they did it. It reminds me of the Israeli attack with the pagers. It's been in the planning for, I think, about a year and a half, but anyway it was effective.
Speaker 1:We're going to have to take the gloves off Ukraine, short of nuclear weapons, and let them go after Russia in Russia, because without the stick, and then hold out the carrot of before you just retaliate and go to strategic nuclear weapons in the battlefield, which is the risk, and Russia could do, calculating that the West would never use intercontinental missiles to retaliate and defend Ukraine from battlefield nuclear weapons, which are what we used to call neutron weapons smaller, less fallout, so on and so forth. Not that there's ever, but this is the world that Joe Biden has gotten us into through his senility. This is why covering up his mental and being complicit in the gaslighting of America is the worst scandal in American history and maybe world history by far. And Biden is a villain because while he was senile, he knew what was going on. He had good days and on those good days he was fully complicit in his own lies. So I blame this all on Biden and everyone around him that we're in this mess, but we're in it and we only have two choices. One is surrender and lay down, which will destroy.
Speaker 1:The world operates on the dollar, and the dollar is the dollar, because America maintains the peace of the world in terms of at least trade. While we shouldn't be interventionist anymore and President Trump is absolutely right about that we should also. We can't be isolationist. You know we have if we don't keep the seas open for shipping. Someone else will get involved, if history has taught us, and we won't like what it is so and that's why the dollar gets, and that's why we get away with our debt.
Speaker 1:Because if the dollar weren't the world's currency, you know why we get away with our debt. Because if the dollar weren't the world's currency, you know trading currency we would be right down the tubes. It's all interconnected. That's why we can't just say to make simple solutions, let's just get out of there. Yeah, if we just get out of there, the party's over. So we'll have a depression. And even if we don't have a world war, we'll have a depression because the dollar will lose its special status as countries stop believing us because we don't stand behind our friends. And the next thing, you know it'll be a shit show. So that's entirely predictable. Let's not do that.
Speaker 1:On the other hand, the course is dangerous. We're going to have to give, together with our European partners, the Ukrainians what they need to inflict a lot of damage inside of Russia and try to exert control enough over the Ukrainians that they don't literally try to assassinate Putin in the Kremlin, and you know which would kick off. God only knows what? But they might do it because, again, they're not Russians, but they're Slavs and they've endured enormous suffering. I mean, read what Stalin did to the Ukrainians. It'll make your blood run cold.
Speaker 1:As a Jew, I identify with it only because it was very Holocaust-y. Okay, if you, you know, when they talk about genocide today, that is a word that gets thrown around a lot, that people don't. You know, the killing of white farmers in South Africa is horrible, and I'd let them into the country for sure, but that's not a genocide. Okay, what's going on in Gaza is what happens in a war, but it's not genocide. Okay, genocide is what Stalin carried out in the Ukraine. Check it out. Genocide is what Hitler carried out against the Jews and the gypsies, to a lesser extent, although plenty, I'm not trying to say just less of them. I mean, believe me, they suffered too. So, listen, we have to be careful throwing around these words.
Speaker 1:So the bottom line here is we're going to have to basically inflict enough damage that Putin makes a tactical decision which is the only way you're going to get Russia to make a deal in which he decides that his best chance to hold power is to make the deal, because right now he's going to call our bluff because all we're dangling is the carrot. Oh, and that's what I was going to say. The carrot has to be a big carrot. All sanctions off. Americans allowed free trade, no tariffs, no, nothing. Russia is right back in business. We have to basically entice them with money that's our money, or destruction has got to be the only choices. They don't respect reason, you know. The idea is that.
Speaker 1:You know Trump keeps saying there's a lot of killing going on. I believe he's 100% sincere. I don't think he likes killing. He's been, if you look at Trump's record, for decades. He's been anti-war from the very start. He was anti-Gulf War way before it was fashionable and I'm fashionable and I'm talking Gulf War I, not just II. So you know Trump just doesn't like the whole concept. That's why he's trying to make a deal with Iran, for example, as opposed to just letting Israel bomb him into the Stone Age, because he would prefer not killing all the people working inside of those plants. That's all the evidence. You need to understand that, because Israel and the United States certainly have the capability to flatten Iran.
Speaker 1:So the bottom line here is folks, we are in a terrible position as a result of, I believe, being weak, and that weakness coming as the result of a president who was non-compassmentist much of the time and therefore a committee was acting as president, and committees never do the right thing, they always do the go along, get along thing. So you get mediocre decisions. And here we are and we're stuck. But the way to deal with Putin is not to appeal to his humanity, it's to appeal to his fear. That's the only thing Russians will understand and that's where I'm going to leave this discussion and I'm publishing it two podcasts in one day, because this just occurred to me and I just felt like doing it.
Speaker 1:And it's Monday afternoon and I could hold off publishing this till Wednesday, but I think, ah, what the hell, I'll throw it out there, because between now and Wednesday, god only knows what will happen. So I'll leave it there. You have a beautiful rest of your day and until the next time. This is Herbie saying. God bless you. Oh, by the way, don't forget to pick up I never promote myself pick up a copy of a radical reset, the manifesto of anti-politism which will save the republic, and you can pick up your copy at Amazon, either in Kindle paperback or hardcover. A radical reset by me, herbie K, and don't forget to share the podcast. You know that, but I suppose I should say it have a beautiful day and I'll talk to you next time.