Haunted By a Soviet Zombie

Responding to your comments!

Before we dive into the past week’s comments, an exciting update: Our Substack Live this coming Monday (06/02) at 5pm ET/2pm PT will feature Four-Star General Stanley McChrystal.

One of America’s most decorated veterans, he led Joint Special Operations Command and oversaw US forces in Afghanistan. Stan’s a friend and a member of RDI’s advisory board. And he has a new book, On Character: Choices That Define a Life, which came out earlier this month and focuses on the values that underpin our actions, both as individuals and groups.

Authoritarians on far right and far left are keyed into identity and community, the things that truly drive people to act. Meanwhile, the pro-democracy community remains mired in talk of process, policy, and politics. But as important as these things are, they don’t actually move people on an emotional level. People are hungry for a discussion of core values, of how to build character when there is such a dearth of it in our society.

So Uriel and I are excited to discuss how we develop character not only as individuals, but as a society with one of the most decorated warriors of our time. The livestream is open to all, but if you’d like to participate in the conversation, I hope you’ll consider upgrading to a paid subscription to get access to the Live Chat.

Be sure to log on at 5pm ET/2pm PT on Monday, 06/02.

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Now, to your comments: Starting off with my weekly column, I was inspired by how many of you took an interest in Romania. I must admit I was a little self conscious writing about a country that is not on every American, or, frankly, every European’s radar, even though it should be. Will anyone care? You do, and that gives me reason to hope!

We need to learn from Romania: Nicușor Dan was an unlikely outsider, not a representative of the ossified status quo. That’s what made him an effective alternative to the authoritarian right.

Reader Mircea Ivan points out some of those qualities:

Mr. Kasparov, former world champion and one of the all time greats, speaking about another world champion, Nicusor Dan (a rare individual who won multiple golds at International Math Olympiads with perfect scores). A most unlikely president who never utters empty words, ND is all about facts, numbers and common sense.

OK—I’m not immune to a little bit of flattery! But beyond that, Mircea’s highlighting President Dan’s mathematics background is actually quite relevant. There’s no rule that a mathematician can’t go into politics. We live in a time when so many career politicians are becoming clowns, that even someone trained as a comedian can become a hero in the fight for freedom.

Ideally, they get some experience before going for national office, as Dan did as mayor. But that broader, outsider worldview can be beneficial. And when people are tired of politicians who do politics for politics’ sake, we should take note. Otherwise, someone we don’t like will fill the gap.

Of course, there’s always a troll to try to disrupt our dialogue. I already responded to “Yuri Bezmenov” (name in airquotes because the real Yuri Bezmenov died thirty years ago—posting pro-Russian nonsense behind the name of a deceased Soviet defector is certainly a choice). But I’ll revisit his comments here, because they’re quite illuminating.

“Yuri” writes:

Democracy is when you nullify the results of an election and run a new one so that the unelected EU's preferred candidate wins!

“Yuri” is referring to the nullification of the second-round presidential results after Kremlin puppet Călin Georgescu won under highly suspicious circumstances. As a reader from Romania helpfully explains, Georgescu rode off of a sudden TikTok surge amid a string of Russian cyberattacks.

Russia is allowed to attack democracies, but democracies are not allowed to fight back. Russia would burn your home down, and then useful idiots like “Yuri” would ask: “if you didn’t want to have a house fire, why did you have a house?” It is plainly ridiculous but it throws you off balance for a moment.

This is their M.O.: Not intellectual consistency, not fair competition, just doubt and chaos.

Coming back to these shores, the debate under my two pieces on former President Joe Biden rages on. I’ve called for accountability over the coverup of Biden’s decline. Many feel—and feel strongly—that we ought to shut up and stick to covering Trump. Getting the pro-democracy camp to open up about our own faults is sometimes an uphill battle when the other side is so risible. I get it. But we have to look in the mirror if we are going to win.

Fortunately, we’re not alone in thinking this. Lourine writes:

This post gives me hope. Talk about speaking the truth with grace ...and all the while being so respectful of other people's views by responding to those who commented by name. I have never seen a post like this, and I thank you for it.

Thank you for your readership—what you’ve described is what we’ll keep doing!

Now, regarding the substance of the back-and-forth over Biden—this is not something we will be able to run from. Already, the Democratic Party is starting to see the harm the Biden coverup caused to public trust. This is going to be an issue in the Democratic gubernatorial primary in California, and I would be shocked if it does not come up in other places where veterans of the last administration seek new jobs.

Rounding things out—while I believe as a matter of principle that no public official, whether Joe Biden or Donald Trump, is above criticism—I do keep things in perspective. Biden was not Trump, despite the ramblings of people like one Peter Daniel Miller, who left me a comment blathering on about the forty-sixth president being the “capo of the Biden Crime Syndicate, who…

had his son placed in a no-show job as a Burisma Board member at $50,000/month, and bragged about that too, in order to cover up even larger-scale corruption in accepting bribes from Ukrainian oligarchs… the list is endless. This is a decent person?

Yes, decent. I’ll turn your question around. If $50,000 a month to a vice president’s son is criminal, then I struggle to think of an adjective to describe what we call a president whose companies earn billions while he controls the levers of power.

That’s all for this week! Please join us at 5pm ET/2pm ET on Monday, June 2 for our Substack Live with General McChrystal, and as always, keep reading and keep on commenting!