The Bonfire of the Sanities
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
-
Internet Research Agency
13 min read
The article discusses Russian troll farms and state actors sowing discord on social media. The Internet Research Agency was the primary Russian organization behind these influence operations, and understanding its structure, methods, and documented campaigns provides crucial context for the article's claims about Putin's information warfare strategy.
-
Euromaidan
10 min read
The article references the 2013-2014 protests in Kyiv's Maidan Square that led to Yanukovych's ouster and Putin's subsequent invasion of Crimea. Understanding the full scope of Euromaidan—its causes, participants, and international reactions—provides essential background for comprehending the Ukraine conflict's origins discussed in the article.
-
Foundations of Geopolitics
16 min read
This influential 1997 Russian text by Aleksandr Dugin explicitly advocated for Russia to destabilize the United States by promoting racial and political divisions—precisely the strategy the article attributes to Putin. Understanding this book's influence on Russian military and political thinking illuminates why the Kremlin pursued the discord-sowing campaign described.
Claire: We have another entry today in our What Went Wrong with America series. For those of you only now tuning in:
The remit of the Cosmopolitan Globalist is international affairs. But the molten insanity of the United States right now preoccupies my mind greatly—as it does, I’m sure, the mind of every American. It preoccupies everyone who isn’t American, too, because when a superpower melts down, it affects everyone and everything.
To judge from our comments, many of our readers have strong views about what’s happening in the US, how serious it is, how it came to this, and what should be done. I thought it would be interesting to invite our readers to contribute to an ongoing symposium on the topic—call it the “What went Wrong” Symposium—and to supplement this with podcasts in which I interview our subscribers about their views.
If you’d like to write such an essay, or come on the podcast, let me know. If you’re not sure whether what you have to say merits an essay or a podcast discussion, send me your ideas and I’ll tell you.
Today’s entry comes from , who writes the excellent newsletter, See Around Corners. I think it’s as complete an explanation as you’ll find in an essay of this length.
THE BONFIRE OF THE SANITIES
WHAT’S GONE WRONG WITH AMERICA?
By Tom Millard
2016-2026: THE AGE OF TRUMP AND PUTIN
“We will not be terrorized. We will not be divided. And we will not allow fear to change who we are.”
— President Obama, December 5, 2015
“Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.”
—Donald Trump, December 7, 2015
It’s been a long decade. The two reactions above to the San Bernardino terrorist attack, from the sitting president and from the man who would replace him in January, 2017, set the tone for the complete bifurcation of America. The majority of the country initially rejected Trump’s projection of hate. But a third of the Republican primary electorate would vote for him on Super Tuesday, four months later, cementing his front-runner status in the battle for his party’s nomination. And a big enough proportion of the larger electorate was so repulsed by the prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency that it handed him power
...This excerpt is provided for preview purposes. Full article content is available on the original publication.