Tom Nichols: Clowns with Flame Throwers

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Thanks. Welcome to the Bulwark podcast on trolley Sykes. It is Wednesday. And once again, stop me if you’ve heard me say this before. I feel like I’ve taken crazy pills.

So as an antidote to all of that, we are joined once again by our good friend Tom Nichols, staff writer at The Atlantic and Professor Emeritus at the Naval War College. Tom, welcome back on to the podcast. Thanks, Charlie. Well, where do we start I I really wanna talk about what’s going on in Russia, the clock ticking in Russia, Vladimir Putin’s various meltdowns. You and I were talking about this right before we started.

I I I find myself going back and forth between saying to people, hey, guys, Could you just dial it down a little bit? Just calm down? Have a sense of humor on the one hand? And then also looking at it around and going, hey, you people. Why do you not have your hair on on on fire?

And this would be my reaction, you know, in the same day different hours. But it does feel like we just toggle between these two extremes. Right? It’s either okay. This is just too ridiculous.

I have to back off versus hey, guys, there’s a big fucking meteor headed right towards your head. Why are you not more upset? And you’re not gonna solve it with a meteor meme. Now are or a tweet. I

think the thread that underlines that because I I’ve had the same feeling you do, Charlie. I think, you know, and this is gonna sound like another edition of grumpy old men here on the bulwark,

but it’s what we do, Brian.

You know, these kids today. But but I think the thread for me that underlines it is something I’ve written about before, which is seriousness. You know, it’s it’s a you should have your hair on fire about the decline and potential, you know, overthrow of the constitution of the United States That’s a big goddamn deal. On the other hand, you know, calling yourself the resistance you know, like, you’re all wearing berets and sculpting through the forests of France in nineteen forty four. It’s just silly.

And so there’s a there’s this kind of tacking back and forth between, you know, law nothing matters and look this funny meme I made with a dog and, you know, people saying, oh my god, you know, This is everything is fascism and Nazis all the way down. There’s no adult response to this, which is, yes, this is I might be one of the few people that like the like president Biden saying semi fascism. Right? I think of it as incipient fascism or you know, kind of minor league fascism compared to the nineteen thirties. But it’s it’s fascism nonetheless and at least in terms of its it’s content.

By the way and I I I’m just re associating for a moment. I was going back through something the other day and, you know, you guys have never used the word fascist you know, you should have used word batches. I was looking up Charles Crowdhammers old piece about pet buchanan. Thirty years ago. And there it is.

Crowded ever called Buchanan a fascist. So, you know, there there were conservatives who were ahead of that curve. Well, I miss Carol Scott Hammer. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, don’t we all? But I do think that that’s the that’s the thread that underlines all this of saying, look, there’s a, you know, these are adult reactions you need to have, which is to be concerned, to be resolute, to want to do something about it, But, you know, you’re not solving it by wearing, you know, stickers that say, you know, Viva resistance and law nothing matters. I mean, it’s there’s to be something in between there?

Well, and I did my newsletter today about the the rights lust for violence sort of just playing off of this new Roger Stone video. And again, Roger Stone is is one of these perfect examples where he’s a complete clown, but he’s a clown with a flamethrower, nevertheless. Right. And, you know, he’s talking about, you know, We need to go out there and kill people and shoot people, shoot to kill, antifa, you know, fuck the election. Let’s go right to the violence, etcetera.

And of course, Roger Stone is is a clown. Except that, okay, people, you know, this is not just theoretical out there. You have the January six writers. I didn’t include this, but CBS has a big story about a survey. More than eighteen months after the rioting at the US capital by a pro Trump mob and estimated, listen to this.

Thirteen million US adults or five percent of the adult population agree that force would be justified to restore former president Donald Trump to the White House. And an estimated fifteen million Americans believe force would be justified to prevent Trump from being prosecuted if he is indicted for mishandling classified documents or anything else. This is a study from the University of Chicago Dr. Robert Papos, the director of UC Chicago project on security and threats said, we don’t just have a political threat to our democracy. We have a violent threat to our democracy.

And so, like, people, you know, this is this is no joke here. You you have American greatness which is sort of the the intellectual home of these super magna types like Victor Davis Hanson. And and they’re running this new piece by Michael Anton. Remember Michael Anton? You know, they flight ninety three election guy from two

thousand six.

And I don’t know how you read it as anything other than a justification slash call for violent revolution, and you’re looking around going, okay, people, we are in a combustible period here. This is, you know, not dealing with a world in in which the worst crisis we face is high gas prices, I guess, what I’m saying. Not to minimize it.

It’s astounding because, you know, this is not the great depression. This is not War War II. This is not some, you know, systemic crisis. And yet, these clowns writing articles about violent revolution. For them, it’s a game.

For them, it’s you know, I was this close to being one of the elite to being, you know, part of the the governing crowd. I mean, these are people who hate elites because they’re not in them and they they don’t it’s not they don’t wanna have elites. They just wanna be the elite and displace others that they don’t like. And so they kind of write these idiotic pieces because for them it’s just a game. Let’s see who wins.

Let’s see what happens in the next election. Let’s keep throwing dice. You know, you’ll notice that Roger Stone, you know, makes sure that he’s not actually in the middle of the fight. And the rest of these people won’t be either. They are riling up other people to send them in, to hurt other Americans and then end up in jail for, you know, six or seven.

One of the one of the January sixth guys just got almost something like seven years yesterday. You know, hope an afternoon of violent political tourism was worth seven years in jail. And this guy was was one of the guys who is part of that

model. His son he brought his son there, and they they were playing with tasers and things like that. And look, why was he there? He was there because he was ginged up by all this rhetoric and people saying, you know, real patriots need to fight back against the regime. This is seventeen seventy six.

So here’s the thing is you keep throwing those memes around and people will believe them and they will act on them. So not to trivialize this, but I find myself in order to maintain my sanity. Thinking that one of the most important political documentaries of our time is not. Well, there’s there’s two. There’s idiocracy.

Right? But there’s also Zoolander because somebody the politicians sound like they’re Zoolander. I mean, Elise Stefanic sounds like she’s a character from Zoolander lately. I mean, that gives you but also Remember, the classic scene and people need to go and find this, the Zugelander gas fight where they all go and has all fun in games at the gas station and their hying with the gasoline. And there’s, you know, spraying each other with gasoline.

Like, what could go wrong? This is so cool. And, of course, it ends precisely the way you’d expect it to. And I feel like America is like, we are in the Zoolander

gas fight scene. When we’re talking about the the writer who just got that long sentencing who brought his son. You know, there is this weird thing of why am I going to this wall because it’s seventeen seventy six and you know, revolution, but also this is gonna be cool. Yeah. I’m bringing my son and we’re gonna wear, you know, cool costumes and capes and it’s gonna be a hell of an afternoon.

We have their Instagram and their texts and and their videos of, hey, I just did this really fun thing. And now I’m gonna go back to text us install real estate. Well, it doesn’t work that way, but it tells you about the kind of fundamental fundamentally shallow approach that these people take to politics that’s been encouraged by again this kind of course of you know, the wannabe clowns who are like, you know, but for the constitution, I would have been secretary of state. You know? And they rile at people and and suddenly the fun turns into Michael Fannon begging for his life.

And pleading that he has children. And then, you know, seven months later, standing in front of a a magistrate and realizing that your life’s over, that your life’s been completely destroyed, and why? Because you watch too much fucking

TV. And months after this, rather than this sobering us all up, things have gotten worse. So you you were mentioning the adults who were the adults, where are the adults. Yesterday, the the judge, in that case, I judge Amy Berman Jackson, was very much an adult and very

much so. Yes. I I

wanna read what she said because this is this was this was clear. This was Clarion. She said the judiciary, if nobody else. Has to make it clear. It is not it was not patriotism.

It it is not standing up for America to stand up for one man who knows full well that he lost instead of the constitution he was trying to subvert. Some prominent figures in the Republican party are cageily predicting or even outright calling for violence in the streets. If one of the multiple investigations doesn’t go his way, the judge Jackson said. And then she says to the to the rider, you were not prosecuted for being a Trump supporter. You were not arrested or charged, and you will not be sentenced for exercising your first amendment rights.

You are not a political prisoner. You are trying to stop the singular thing that makes America America the peaceful transfer of power that’s what stopped the steel means. Wow.

Yeah. It was incredible. And with no clever circum locations here. I mean, she just went right at it. And I think, you know, especially having to put a guy away for for seven years, he needed to know why he’s going.

And to his, I guess, small credit, I mean, he said, I guess, I deserve whatever I’m about to get. But that’s what happens when the spell is broken, but you look at the tape of January sixth and, you know, even as it turns into violence, These people all think they’re at a party. They all think, you know, that they’re at, like, you know, Woodstock with Bear Spray. And this is, again, I don’t know. I’ll just keep hammering on this point I’ve been making for a long time.

These are people who are looking for some kind of meaning in their lives and right wing pundits who know better. Who and they know better. I mean, Michael Anton knows better. Tucker Carlson I don’t know. Tucker Carlson is just such an empty husk at this point.

Who knows? But most of these people know exactly what they’re doing. They know exactly the risks they’re telling other people to take. And they don’t care. We have to own the limbs and win the game.

Yep. And there was actually since we’re talking about good pieces about this and before we came on. I I said, your morning shot speed this morning was a I thought great. Thank you. Interesting as well that the artist formerly known as alopundo Nick Coutu, he had a very good piece where he said over at the dispatch.

Yeah. Over at the dispatch. Yeah. The only animating notion among the conservatives now is spike. Right.

There’s no programmatic issue. There’s a policy, but it’s nothing. It’s just whatever your forum against, whatever enrages you is what I want because I there’s nothing else. There’s no there’s no there there with any of these folks. They don’t care about anything.

They just care about kind of their own sense of of incoate and diffuse grievance about everything. And

the only reason we’re really even talking about some of this stuff is is, of course, because the former and perhaps future president of the United States keeps stoking it. And and I think that one of the things was in judge Jackson’s mind when she was telling this this writer as she was sentencing him to to prison was that there is this movement out there that regards the rioters as political prisoners. And And in an under covered story and there are very few under covered stories involving Donald Trump, but I think this one was that he actually called into a January six you know, jail rally or something like that to express his solidarity with the people who are still in jail for what they did. And as Amanda Carpenter, as a documentary, my colleague at the Bulwark, Amanda Carpenter has documented at, you know, in in great detail, Trump has made it very clear that he intends to issue pardons for January six rioters who have been out

in the

late truck. Now would that include the guy, the the guys who tased officer Fanaan, has he made any distinction whatsoever, or are they all sitting there going not only were we really patriots, not only was this seventeen seventy six, but we are going to get away with it because when there is the restoration of Trump two point o, When the military drags, you know, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris off the Gitmo and and executes them, and Donald Trump becomes president again, he’s going to pardon us. I mean, this is the sickness that unfortunately is shaping some of our, you know, our political environment.

As if I could be more unshareable, I’m gonna be even more unshareable and say, you know, this is not even a political stance. This is a group of people first of all, who don’t even clue what it means to be a political prisoner. Right. No concept of that. And basically, it’s saying, you know, again, if our guy gets in, we win the game.

It’s like a video game. We get a Respawn. We get another life. You know, we get, you know, player one is gets to go back to start and it’s a clean slate and we win. There is no sense there at all.

You know, when people call themselves, I’m a political prisoner. I’m Martin Luther King. Well, none none of you are producing a letter from a Birmingham jail. I’m pretty sure about that. You’re not political prisoners.

Yeah. These guys are not Alexander Scholes and Ethan. Pretty

pretty good for a non Russian speaker. For non

Russian speaker, as by the way, I just document it. So to your point about how on the right, it’s all about spy not policy. I I guess this this is part of that that cognitive disconnect when you read something in like the Wall Street Journal editorial page where they’re Writing about the election in Arizona and in effect endorsing conspiracy theorists, election denier, Kerry Lake, and saying, What this election is really all about is about school choice. And

then

moments sharing. In in the bowl, moments are great piece, like, what planet are you on? I have been a long time enthusiastic supporter of school choice. I remain a supporter of school choice. But I think it is absolutely delusional to think that our politics is about policy issues like this right now when you have the big fucking meteor heading

our way. Right? It’s it and when you have someone saying, I will turn one eighty, you know, turn on a dime, a hundred eighty degrees. You know, as so many folks have pointed out, right, what was Donald Trump’s big populist agenda? A classic rich guy Republican tax cut.

And a trade war that hurt little guys, and they say, oh, okay. I guess I’m for that. And again, why? Because I have to be for the guy that pisses everybody off. And I’ve been I I was thinking about this issue of Spike because there’s the whole layer under it of how did we get from twenty fifteen where a lot of I would say, decent people said, hey, the Democrats and the institutional problem, they’re not dealing with things like immigration, they’re not dealing with know, they’re not they don’t care enough about abortion, whatever it is.

Okay.

But I

think where the spike comes from is that all of these folks that I’m gonna take a chance on Donald Trump. And then turns out that, oh my god, this was a really bad idea. But I’ll double down. And because we’re gonna get some things, I mean, oh, man. Now I know this is a really, really bad idea.

So I’m gonna triple them. And of course, by the end of four years with all of, you know, the annoying people like you and me and, you know, Tim Miller and others standing by saying, we warned you, you’ve been conned. This was the worst thing that could have happened. You’re This is unAmerican, anti constitutional. Fascistic pro Russian bullshit.

The fight now is, I don’t care about politics anymore. I have to do something to alleviate the incredible sense of cognitive dissonance and shame and embarrassment that comes from knowing how much ice screwed the pooch over the past five years because there’s no and I said it at the time, there is no climbing down from the tree these people put themselves in. So now they’re just gonna stand at the top of it and yell, burn it all down. You know, nothing matters. Donald Trump is God.

Because they can’t just there’s no way. And and no one did this to them, by the way. It’s not like you or I or anybody else didn’t give them the space to say it. There’s just no way for them to say, wow, I screwed up. This guy’s horribly.

He’s a monster. This is insane. This is why I often think that

we ought to spend our time reading more human psychology books rather than political philosophy books — Absolutely. — because what you’re describing is the that that cognitive lock that that we’re seeing that would when you’ve done something truly horrible, then you instead of going wow, I need to change my my life. I need to change my direction. No. It’s like, I need to double down and find all sorts of ways to transform this into a good life decision that will impact, as you point out, give my

life meaning. And to aim my rage and hatred at anyone who calls me out about it. Yeah.

Especially the ones who call you you out at it. I mean, that’s why I think they they reserve their greatest rage not for Democrats, but for fellow former conservatives or or current conservatives who say, by the way, you you you looked at yourself in the mirror lately because that’s the real world. Or

to say we we warned you and this is not conservatism and this is not the Republican party that any of us wants knew and that, you know, all of that and they’re like, you know, they can’t that that getting even with everyone who was right has become like this project for a a a a fair number of these — Okay. — of MAGA

world. I I wanna switch to Russian a moment. But just on this point, you know, what’s going on right now? And and Trump is certainly very much part of all of this. And and Michael Anton’s piece, what he’s calling for the violent revolution, is is a more intellectualized version of it.

But they’re in the process of convincing themselves, sort of machining themselves up that that to be more courageous that somehow be more transgressive, more violent, more vulgar, more cruel is a sign of their courage. And defining anyone who goes, hey, you know, Maybe we ought to be more civil. Maybe we ought to be more prudent. Maybe we ought to have more respect for the law and for constitution and the truth. That these are people who are weak.

And so that whole strength and weak thing and then we’re doubling back to, you know, this this is the the fascist id. At a certain point. That will to power that if you don’t have that will and that courage, then somehow, you are the weak sister. You are the weak link. You are the limantic.

And this is the way they’re they’re and you can sense that they’re they’re working themselves up into you know, bravery means we go in and we finish the job. Right? Right. I hope that anyone listening doesn’t think that

because I think these people are juvenile and silly that they’re also not dangerous. You know, like, as you said, you know, clowns with flamethrowers, You know, there there’s a there’s a fundamental silliness about somebody like Stewart Rhodes, but that didn’t make him less dangerous. And the organization he was leading, less dangerous. But but there is a juvenile performativeness about this that is characteristic of fascism. It’s it’s it’s Tucker going to the funeral of the Hell’s Angel leader and posing and, you know, chest chest out and hanging with the tough guys and yelling into the camera about masculinity and wholeness and, you know, all of that stuff.

And I’ll only say this as one lesson I learned, you know, maybe sometime in my probably about the time out to Washington. And I met people who were genuinely powerful. And in other

areas around

life where I met on occasion, met people who were genuinely dangerous. The most powerful and dangerous people I’ve ever known never raise their voices. They don’t have to. They speak quietly. They speak with purpose.

They are they’re a lot more dangerous in some ways than the people who get out in the street and start throwing things around. Now though there’s an immediate danger from people like that because they break stuff and they hurt people. But the people with a real sense of purpose who are really I think, you know, they’re kind of really dangerous people who are true believers. They tend to be pretty quiet. One of our shared favorite authors CS Lewis talking about people in, you know, well lit offices with manicured fingernails, you know, doing terrible things.

And so I think there there is this kind of idiotic adolescence to all of this that nonetheless, and this is where I was going with this, serves the purposes of people who are much more dangerous. That Tucker and the all these guys in the street that they’re just they’re they’re worth their fodder. They’re raw material for people who really do think that the constitution in the United States should be overthrown. And they are both in this country and overseas. And there is

that intersection of of of clownishness and and danger that that we ought not to to miss. And I was thinking one of the great movies of the twentieth century, Charlie Chaplin’s great dictator. Where he was mocking Adolf Hitler and Mussolini, not because he thought they were jokes or because he thought they were, you know, simply, you know, fodder for laughter. But he knew he was pointing out, you know, despite all of their pretensions and their danger that they were clowns, but that they were immensely dangerous nevertheless. You know, people people who go, you know, you you and Tom are are minimizing this.

I mean, you’re you’re making light of these dangers. Well, Charlie Chaplin did that with a great dictator because I think there there is a crucial role to be played for the mockery of these pretensions pointing out that these guys are juvenile performers like Tucker Cross, and I wanna get to Tucker in a moment as well. If we

were minimizing it, Charlie, we wouldn’t be talking about it. That’s how you really minimize it. The fact that we’re sitting here having a conversation about it and and that we’re trying to peel apart you know, what kind of danger, which groups are present, which kinds of danger, I think, is actually what, you know, what we’re trying to be you know, to to illuminate rather than to minimize. Minimizing would be, let’s just talk about, you know, funny stuff we saw on the Internet today. That’s that’s not what we’re doing.

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Okay. Here’s a

segue from the clownishness to the really, really, really grim. You may have seen this, Donald Trump is out with a statement on social media, offering two mediate peace talks between Russia and Ukraine. Have you have you seen this? Let me just read you. It’s just zero eight.

Yes. And again, I’m I’m laughing — Okay. — yes. In that kind of sad grim, you

know, like, if World War three breaks out and future archaeologists ever piece together what’s left of this world, they’re gonna pick that up

and say, Really? Did

this really happen? US

leadership, okay, in quotation marks, should remain quote cool calm and dry on the all in caps sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines. This is a big event that should not entail a big solution, at least not yet. The Russia Ukraine catastrophe should never only caps have happened and would definitely not have happened. That’s the passive voice. There no one did it.

It just happened. It would never have happened if I were president. Do not make matters worth with the pipeline blow up. Be strategic, come up, be smart in parentheses brilliant exclamation point. Get a negotiated deal done now on caps.

Both sides need both sides. Need and want it the entire world capitalized is at stake. I will head up group triple question mark.

He

can’t

stand anything that isn’t about

him. And I

think, you know, although

I there’s a

part of me and and this, you know, gets back to the unseriousness problem. I’m sure there are already people on social media or Facebook or Twitter or wherever saying, see, he’s Putin’s puppet. Putin wrote that tweet. First of all, Putin would do a much better job. Putin’s goons would write a better tweet than that.

This is him saying, I I never understood anything about this stuff. I don’t know what I’m talking about.

I am emotionally disturbed and I want this to somehow be about me. And let’s talk about the Nord Stream pipeline. There’s a lot of speculation about whether or not it was sabotaged. I think that more rational folks and you push back if you disagree with me. If in fact there was sabotage, it was most likely Russia trying to punish Europe or in support of Ukraine.

But there are other theories out there. And since we’ve been talking about clowns with flamethrowers, Here’s your daily dose of Tucker Carlson giving this weird orwelly and potent spin suggesting it might have been well, I’m just gonna play and get your reaction, Tom. This is this is Tucker Carlson’s deep thoughts about the

potential sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline. Action has a reaction equal and opposite blow up the Nord Stream pipelines? Okay. We’ve entered a new phase. One in which the United States is directly at war with the largest nuclear power in the world.

It doesn’t mean it’ll go nuclear immediately, but it does suggest there could be consequences. If we actually blew up the Nord Stream pipelines, why wouldn’t Russia sever undersea Internet

cables? What

would happen if they did that? What would happen if banks in London couldn’t communicate with banks in New York? Just that one piece of it, leaving aside its potential effects on our power grid, but let’s just say the banks couldn’t communicate with each other for one day.

What would the

economic effect of that be? We would cascade downward into your

house. We could have an

actual collapse. We could wind up very quickly in third world conditions. Those are the stakes.

God’s sake. Yeah. Have

the people behind us that geniuses like Torrey Newman considered the effects? Maybe they have. Maybe that was the point. What

the

I’m

getting about. Good. It’s it’s mad well, first of all, it’s it’s Madness. It’s Mad Libs. Yeah.

You know, has insert name of some Clinton official here or some Obama appointing here. But you know, first of all, it it when we get back to this problem of lack of seriousness, this is Tucker

saying, hey, this is

like a big game of risk. If if they take yacoosk, you know, we could take, you know, lower US and blue pieces of red be he has for he has no idea what he’s talking about. The the intern, you know, from some right wing publication, probably wrote that Monologue has no idea what you’re talking about. And I will I hate to ever in engage on the substance of an argument like that. But if all of the undersea Internet Internet cables were cut and banks couldn’t talk to each other, the first countries that would go under would be Russia, and also China.

So, you know, aside aside from the fact that, you know, that that it’s a bad, that it’s a dumb idea in what what Tucker suggesting would actually, you know, hurt the the people that would do it. But but again, he’s playing the game, Charlie. Hey, here’s an idea. This thing happened in the news. How do I spend this to make this about yet another, you know cortisol releasing you know, fear, tirade for an hour on television to my audience that doesn’t understand Nord Stream.

Oh, first

of all, can we just mention that there’s absolutely no evidence whatsoever that we had anything to do with this whatsoever that it would be crazy. I guess I am old enough to remember when Gene Kirkpatrick launched herself into prominence among conservatives by taking on the blame America first crowd. Remember that used to be the mantra. You lefties blame America first. That is literally now the Tucker Carlson playbook.

Blame America first. There’s a pipeline that blew up or had some sort of an accident. So what should we go immediately? I’m going to go on Fox News and tell my millions of followers, listeners, viewers, that, you know, we should blame America first. You wanna about how the world is turned upside down.

You know, as recently as a couple of years ago, the, you know, Wall Street Journal was editorializing the left STILL BLAMES AMERICA FIRST ALL THE TIME. THIS IS WHAT THEY DO. NO, IT IS NOW THE RIGHT THAT BLAMES AMERICA FIRST. AND DIDN’T EVEN

A CRAZIER WAY. AND I, YOU KNOW, Patrick is one of the many people I miss. I knew I will just say. I had a personal there’s a personal dimension of this. I was her assistant at Georgetown.

She is the person who got me my job in the senate. I am I am one of my friends. John John Hines. She blurbed one of my books back when I was a young professor just starting out, and I remember that. In fact, I had a volume.

I probably stalled it around the house somewhere of the nineteen eighty four Republican convention with her speech in it about blaming America first. But this is even crazier than that. This is not just let me, you know, extend a tiny olive branch to our friends over on the left and say, they had this notion wrong as it was that America was this baneful influence on international affairs that we were too big, we were trying to, you know, run the world because we were threatened by anybody that wasn’t a capitalist. There was a certain coherence. I mean, it was it was a I think I was wrong, but there was a coherence to their anti Americanism about America’s role in the world.

This is Uh-oh, something happened and Russia’s involved. Therefore, I must get on the side against the Americans and on the same side as the Russians. Because Tucker has made that clear. You know, why shouldn’t I be for the Russians? In fact, I am.

Well, then, you know, if once you’ve already made it clear where you stand on this stuff, your opinion about who, you know, who could have been responsible for this this Nord Stream issue. You know, you’ve already kind of made an obuary decision about whose fault you think everything is. I guess what I’m saying is that it’s beyond just an ideal it’s not even an ideological conviction. It’s a reflexive he reminds me of Vladimir Possner. Do you remember you’re you’re old enough you and I are both older from this guy, Vladimir Possner.

He was this really well spoken He’d been raised in America. He spoke fluent unaccented English. He was kind of the Kremlin’s man over here, you know. And he could make these very elaborate very elegant arguments for why everything was America’s fault, nothing was the Kremlin’s fault. And again, it wasn’t really an ideological position.

It was just in instantly opposing anything America did and instantly supporting anything Russia did or the Soviet Union did. And that’s kinda where these guys are now. You know, there’s there’s just this kind of reflexive, you know, Russia is white Christian — Hate people. — hate hate hate hate people, you know, and wear the decadent power, so I’m gonna have to support the the chesty cross wearing macho dictator which boy, when you talk about juvenile performativeness, that issue with Putin is there’s a whole other world of stuff going on there. But that’s I think that’s what it’s about.

I don’t think

it’s even that well thought out. So we’re at an ironic moment here where we were talking about a fascist semi fashions, and we have a new prime minister in Italy who, you know, heads up a party that is really the successor to Musilini’s fascist party. And yet, The American right, the people like Tucker Carlson, are actually further to the right than she is. They are further to the right. And she actually supports Western born confinity.

She actually supports Ukraine and is Putin skeptical, shall we say, unlike some of her coalition partners, So, yeah, it’s it’s like Tucker Carlson is going, you know, fascism in Italy. I can do one better than that. I can I can go further than all of that. And

yet there are conservatives who have immediately their knee is trying to say, well, why does anybody think she’s she has anything to do with fascism? I don’t know, because she picked up the symbol of the fascist party and put on her flag. She’s, you know, raised Musilini for Oh, she’s raised Musilini.

She talks

about, you know, international fanciers and how they’re ruining the world. But but as you said, you know, even with all that, wait, we can still get further to her

right

than she is. Alright.

Let’s talk about Vladimir Putin. You had an interesting take on somebody who was asking about these these camera friendums, and they’re coming back, what, ninety eight, ninety nine percent of the votes saying, absolutely, we wanna be part of Russia. And somebody said, well, why would you go for that? Why wouldn’t you just you know, why do you have to why don’t you have something realistic? Like, you know, sixty nine percent or seventy percent?

Why is Vladimir Putin faced with all the criticism that just a sham election? Why is he pushing it right to the edge and saying, yeah, it’s ninety nine fucking percent. What’s that about? Right. Well, because

in a situation like this, The goal is not to I mean, the the veneer of legitimacy is far less important than trying to convince your opponents that you are in vulnerable, that you are already in charge, that opposing them is pointless. And so this is a this is a result that says, we’ve taken this territory. It’s done. It’s over. And oh, a referendum.

You won’t

you think we should have a referendum? Fine. Fuck you. Here’s your referendum. Yeah.

Yeah. Obviously,

they’re not sitting around going, how can we make it look more legitimate. How can we convince the world this is legitimate? No. There’s none of that going on here. There’s none of that.

This is a signal to the rest of the

world. That this is a fader conflict and that they are completely in charge. Alright. So most important question of the day, which I have saved for last and now We are getting these threats of the use of nuclear weapons out of Russia as things have gone from bad to worse as the mobilization by the way, what a symbolic mess that is. I did I find these pictures out of Russia to be truly amazing.

Just people just like leaving the country And as you point out, I mean, they are just they’re throwing cannon fodder, you know, right onto the front lines right now. It’s going to be a real meat grinder. So what are they left with that are left with these threats? Of using nukes. And we have the former president, Medvedev, you know, suggesting this is not a bluff.

We we are prepared to do this. This is the point of the referendum. Right? To make it Russian territory so that these military operations are an attack on the motherland on Russian soil, which therefore, they would say, justifies our use of nukes. How seriously should we take that threat?

We should always take those threats seriously, but but things you

take seriously, you do not treat as as likely or imminent either. And this is goes back to where we started this conversation with about somewhere between shrugging your shoulders and having your hair on fire. I have wondered and I have no other than just kind of my gut instinct as a Russia watcher for a long time. I even wonder if part of the the goal here is to send those guys to Eastern Ukraine so that they die, so that literally their blood soaks into the ground, and then Putin says, You see? This is now Russia.

The bodies of thousands of Russian boys are soaked into this into this dirt, and therefore, we can never leave it. Literally sunken

cost. This literally

sunken amount.

By the way, there are cases in history where leaders have done this. I mean, Bismarck’s attack on a fortress, you know, in the Danish war, you know, when his commander said, this is completely hopeless. A lot of guys are gonna die and he went, right. That’s exactly. That gives us a that gives us a place at the table.

All those bodies give us a place at the table. And, yeah, it was the it’s the fortress of dupe. And so, you know, it could be that Putin is doing something like that. The the question is whether or not he gets things gets so unstable in Russia, that he decides that the only way to to scramble the deck The only way to get a do over and to, you know, kind of bring everything to a halt is to use a small nuclear weapon. Maybe you know, I used to say, well, maybe blows one up out at sea to show how he’s so serious he is, or that he blows one up somewhere in eastern Ukraine to say this was to forestall an unacceptable invasion of the motherland.

Now the I still think that’s highly unlikely because I think even the craziest people in the Kremlin know that they’re gonna get calls from people like China and others who are gonna say, you know, to use mob terminology that Putin would understand. Now I gotta turn my back on you. Now I gotta walk away from you. And as I said yesterday in the Atlantic, I think that ends his regime faster than losing this war does. So I still think it’s unlikely, and I still wonder if there are people, you know, in the Russian military are gonna say, some of our people are there.

Some of this is gonna blow into our country. You really, you know, this is is this really an order I’m gonna follow. But there are also people in the Russian military who saying we are so humiliated that we’ll do anything now ourselves too. This is bad this is bad voodoo all around and it’s really dangerous. So it is really dangerous

and and we know what cornered animals will sometimes do. What is happening with public opinion in Russia. I mean, up until now, if you believe any of the polls, which I think we should be skeptical about, but it would indicate that the most Russians have border what’s going on. But, you know, that’s, of course, before you have this mass mobilization and then sending untrained soldiers to the the the front line. So And does public opinion matter, I guess?

So does it change public debate? And then does it matter?

It does because, you know, part of what dictators want is peace and quiet. And when you’re getting, you know, military recruitment offices, getting molotov cocktails thrown into them, that’s a big deal. The other there’s a couple of things that aren’t quite obvious

to

westerners. One is that he’s at first, he tried to do this by margooning kids from the boondocks. The problem is the boondocks is where he’s most popular. You know, and all those kids have cell phones or smartphones rather. And there are, you know, things are starting to come out and people are seeing what’s happening.

For for people who don’t understand how this is done, you know, here in the United States. Right? If we draft you or if we pull you into the Navy or the Army, we sent you to great lakes. We send you to, you know, Fort Benning or, you know, wherever and you kind of train with everybody. Here, this would be like saying, you’ve been drafted report to the tenth mountain guys up at Fort Drum in New York, and they’ll tell you what to do next, and they’ll get you clothes.

I mean, there’s no central way of doing this. So you have all these this as you said, this kind of shampolic mess, but of course, There are now smartphones. Putin seems to forget this isn’t nineteen seventy five. People are taking videos of this, and it’s traveling all across the the the Russian Federation. So I think it does matter because his social compact with the Russian people wants to say, This is gonna be a splendid little war.

We’re gonna have big parades. Everything’s gonna be awesome, and it won’t touch you. Peter Pomerantz has had a great line. He said, this was supposed to be a TV show. Now it’s touching Russians.

And the deal Putin always had was the old Soviet deal. You leave us alone, we leave you alone. You leave the people in power alone, we leave you alone to live your lives. Well, when you start rebooting people, I mean, this isn’t even a draft. This is literally like dragooning people and pulling them in and saying, you know, go go show up over there and get a uniform.

You know, that that breaks that deal. And then when things become unstable, I always say, dictators seem completely invulnerable right up until the day they’re not. Yeah. We’re

right in, but until Chochescu goes out onto the balcony. You know, general Mark Hartling has been writing and talking about this, a lot he talks about, you know, how much training an American soldier gets, how detailed, how long it takes and then contrast it with the really shitty training that we’ve seen in in the Russian Army. This seems like it’s it’s becoming even shittier. And I guess I’ll let me ask you this question because you’re a lot more knowledgeable about it. It strikes me that there was at one time, I suppose, an era where you could take an untrained soldier and hand him a a a rifle and just, you know, put him in a trench and then say go over the trench and just, you know, you know, go and shoot at the enemy.

That’s no longer the case in warfare any longer and that the modern soldier needs to be much more sophisticated educated and well trained, and so Russia is going in exactly the wrong direction at

the wrong moment. I would say that that notion of, you know, dragging a guy you know, in and handing a rifle and pointing with the enemy. That that probably hasn’t been the way that successful militaries work since maybe at least the eighteen seventies — Mhmm. — at least since the the mid twentieth century. But the right here’s the the reason the Russians think it works that way or at least some Russians like Putin because their experience of doing that is when they’ve been

invaded. Mhmm.

And so, you know, when you’ve gotten the Wehrmacht coming at you, and I I highly recommend the movie enemy at the gate. Because that’s where a lot of people are pulling these memes from and other scenes — Okay. — about the about the defense of Stalin grad. Yeah. If you’re defending Stalin grad, Sure.

Hand a guy a rifle and say, listen, just kill anybody that’s not us. And and, you know, good luck. And and the guy behind you, you know, you don’t really have a rifle, but he’s gonna get shot and die. So pick his up and then once again, kill anybody that’s not us, kill, you know, kill Germans. There’s a a patriotic poster from world war to a Soviet patriotic poster that says, one bullet, one German.

You know? And it’s

got it’s got a kid,

a fresh faced kid holding a rifle, one bullet, one German. And that doesn’t work anymore because Russia is not being invaded. The Wehrmacht is not rolling over the planes toward Moscow. And you can’t just hand guys a rifle and say, you know, save your motherland and I suspect that even the defense minister who has no military experience, by the way, doesn’t understand that. I suspect that guys that served in Afghanistan and other places get it.

Because to fight effectively, not only do you have to have some knowledge of, you know, basics about military. And I I have never served in the military. I spent twenty five years teaching military officers about strategy and policy.

You do

have to form some kind of shared identity. And general Hirtling talks about this a lot. The training together over time is what forges a bunch of, you know, ragtag bunch of guys into a fighting unit, and the Russians aren’t doing that. They think this is they’re trying to recreate the sense of nineteen forty three, you know, nineteen the winter of forty two. Here’s your rifle.

The enemy’s over there. Go do your duty for the motherland. Well, you know, that’s just a recipe for getting your ass kicked and for having massive desertions for people that don’t understand why they’re doing this. There was and I’ll just there was one more more thing I want to add to this is there was some film of this on one of the networks and this this Russian woman yelling, you know, she’s yelling, for what? Yeah.

Like, you’re pulling my son. For what? And that no one in nineteen forty two. No one after June of nineteen forty one in the sub union ever said for what? They knew for what.

But Putin

doesn’t understand is that there are millions of Russians looking around and going. You I’m doing you’re gonna do that. And for what? You’re what what are we doing here? What

is the point of this? Tom Nichols, staff writer at the Atlantic and Professor Emeritus at the Naval War College, and his books include, as you know, the death of expertise in our own worst enemy. We always love having you on the podcast. Thanks for coming back today. Appreciate it very much.

Thanks, Charlie. The Bow War podcast is produced by k D Cooper with audio production by Jonathan Seres. I’m Charlie Sykes. Thank you for listening to today’s Gold Work podcast. We’ll be back tomorrow.

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