Cheerleaders

[degringolade]

I am getting exhausted by the nonsense of all flavors surrounding the Ukrainian escapades.  I am reading less and less and by doing so it seems that I am losing nothing in my understanding of the fog of war that surrounds the utter nonsense that is occurring there.  Granted the utter nonsense seems to be killing quite a number of people, but there seems to be considerable discussion on which flavor of the Rus is doing the dying.  More to the point, I can't say as the antics of people ten time zones away from where I am pecking away on my ancient laptop has any real importance to me.  But I am morbidly fascinated by the interplay of opinions and warring datasets being presented by the experts.

But I do like wandering by the Colonel's place to check up on the doing's there.  I like the simple, bloodthirsty "materials and methods" discussion there and the us-vs-them mindset.  Sneer all you want about this way of thinking, but it is the way that the folks who do the work look at things.  The folks that post there tend toward the "spookish" end of the military spectrum, but I can live with that.  This has always been a critical aspect of the military art and to tell you the truth, it does temper the bloodthirsty aspect of the military art in a helpful manner.

But TTG got me a thinking.  He noted a historical strain of Russian/Soviet military thought referred to as "reflexive control" in the long ago and referred back to it in a recent string of comments.  Now this way of thinking has been around for quite a while.  I would read this primer on reflexive control for those of you who are unaware of this school of thought.  I think that the concept is sound, and there are many experts in this aspect of control available to the US in the advertising field. 

But I think the core of the issue is both the goals of the operation as defined by the Kremlin leadership itself (And definitely not the "Kremlin's" goals being bandied about here by armchair generals).  I have more than a sneaking hunch that the actual goals as defined by the Kremlin for the "special military operation" are rarely being addressed by the cognoscenti in the media.  This is because they really don't know what the goals are.

I think that one of the critical base concepts of reflexive control is the simple concept of taking into account the subjects' self-image(s).  Both sides of the information wars being waged here in the internet playground are pitching to different audiences at different levels.  But I think that the access to incomplete and slanted information as presented by both chess players is telling.  In a sense, I am thinking that we here in the blogosphere are the bit players in a multilevel con-game where there are two, three, or more political entities with differing goals attempting, in the immortal words of Chomsky, to manufacture consent.

My big trouble is, I can't say for a moment that I trust any of the data I am being fed.  I really can't see a guy in a white hat anywhere. 

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Excellent point. In the end, being skeptical is probably the healthiest approach. Most, even the "experts" have bought, for whatever reason, one of the narratives. It's really hard not to be sucked by this black hole, but we must try to thread the middle road.

Thanks

[emily07]

Thank for the link on reflexive control, I think that's also exactly whats going on right now in my country, nothing I can do about it, but still.