Mailbucket #2: Are You with Me, Dr. Vu?

Also: Welcome to Syria, bitch

A reminder of the premise here: Y’all send more good emails than we can possibly read on the weekly Members Only episodes; some of them are unreadable because they’re long, and so exists this here catchment basin. I edit them lightly (mostly for our idiosyncratic style necessities), and usually respond in italics at the end. Less go!

From: Pat

Subject: The Military and Journalism

Date: Jan. 16, 2024

Hello all,

I have been listening to you for a long time and only became a paid subscriber last year. I almost unsubscribed after listening to you bash the “freeloaders” and I wanted to show my solidarity with the poor unwashed masses you demean on a weekly basis; regrettably, I did not join them. That said, I am sending this email mostly as a comment but also with an ending question about the relationship between journalists and the military.

You previously mentioned the ignorance of journalists about people in the military and stated that most do not even know someone that serves. I find myself extremely distrustful of journalists given the current climate of “responsible” reporting, which lets me know that they do not care about the ground truth. The ground truth is never pretty, nor does it fit into an ideological basket. The American people have a right to know the actions of their military, but journalists seem to focus only on the facts that help their ideological side.

I encountered this early in my career with The New York Times, which I detest to this day. I was deployed to Iraq in the mid-2000s, and we were targeting a Sunni leader of a neighborhood that was terrorizing the people living in his neighborhood (kidnapping, rape, murder, sometimes all three). We got an Iraqi warrant for his arrest and were ready to execute the warrant with Iraqi police until my command got word of a New York Times article interviewing this Sunni leader. The article made the argument that the Iraqi government was targeting him only because he was Sunni, which was true, but they ignored the rapes and murders. My command reprimanded me for targeting this “innocent” civilian even though I had the testimony of dozens of people he hurt. We did not arrest him and in the ensuing years, I had to listen to people recount horror stories of his conduct. A single interview that fit the narrative of the evils of the U.S. and Iraqi governments prevented the arrest of someone who went on to commit more atrocities.

Over my career I avoided journalists and my time in Syria is a recent example. VICE News was all over Syria and they loved to ambush us with “gotcha” questions that would get us in trouble with our leadership, so it was our rule to hide from them. I remember having to help some people from VICE News through a Kurdish checkpoint. I went there, spoke with the guards to let them through, and pretended I did not speak English. I was going to ask if they knew Moynihan, but quickly shot that idea down. They requested to observe and film our training of the SDF, but we unanimously declined. I knew not to trust them.

I remember an NPR journalist we had to drive around Raqqah. One of our guys was pulling security and a little boy came up to him asking for something to drink. Our guy handed him an energy drink (the only thing he had) and an NPR journalist chastised him for giving the child such a poisonous beverage. My friend said to him, “That boy is most likely to die in the next year, let him enjoy himself for a second.” As if on cue, the boy chugged the drink, lit a cigarette, and began to smoke in front of this guy from NPR. I didn’t say anything, but I wanted to say, “Welcome to Syria, bitch.”  

These are only a couple of examples of journalists’ ignorance. The last episode reminded me of this as you were speaking to Tina Nguyen and her work on understanding MAGA. I saw an intellectual blind spot with Shadi Hamid as he spoke about his disagreement with Israeli tactics even though he knows nothing about military operations (though I found him extremely interesting). My problem is with journalists serving their own needs and not taking the time to understand the military or military operations. This intellectual blind spot is pervasive, and most journalists do not know they have it.

This went a long way to ask: If the military does not trust journalists, and most journalists do not want to learn, how can we mend this gap? Is there a market for war reporting that does not fit into an ideological bin?

Sorry for the long email,

Pat

(Hey man, that’s what the Mailbucket’s for! So the civilian-military divide, and the related journalistic-military divide, are concepts that crystallized for me in the post-9/11 writing of Robert D. Kaplan, though I cannot right now locate the exact essay he first wrote about it. [It’s probably reflected somewhere in 2005’s Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground and/or 2007’s Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts: The American Military in the Air, at Sea, and on the Ground.] It’s also a subtheme explored in Evan Wright’s 2004 Generation Kill, which was an excellent mini-series.

Like many pre-existing journalistic maladies, this has been greatly exacerbated by the ongoing institutional-media collapse, which has gutted expertise and funding while incentivizing partisan tilting and social-media juvenilia. There is, in my view, no easy fix, especially with the acceleration of those trends. I do recommend—heavily—a demand-side habit formation, which is: Seek out individual people and publications who are doing trustworthy work, share/publicize that work among your relevant social and professional circles [letting the journalists know!], and where appropriate support them with subscriptions. Like, Tim Mak in Ukraine, or Nancy Rommelmann wherever she goes next.

One of the best things about the early blogosphere, and early-days Twitter, was the way people used them to surface expertise and valuable new sources of news/information. I love how people do that in our comments and Chat here; and only wish there was more.)  

***

From: Tim

Subject: Tom Vu and the American Dream

Date: Jan. 19, 2024

Moynihan and the fellas,

Your mention of Tom Vu made my day. Demographic details: I'm 44, live in Seattle, and am currently drinking a kalimotxo—50/50 red wine and Coke (or Coke Zero if you're so inclined). EVERYONE says "Gross." when they hear about it, but almost all of them begrudgingly approve once they've tried it. 

I also have some friends who would do a Tom Vu impression here and there. Always something like "THIS IS MY BOAT. THESE ARE MY BITCHES. IF YOU WANT THIS, YOU NEED TO LISTEN TO ME." 

I remember seeing those Tom Vu infomercials as a white trash kid and being convinced that I'd found the key to escaping the dead-end I was headed toward. Poverty and orientalism probably fooled me into buying into his mystique, but the better explanation was that Tom Vu was so rich he could no longer find satisfaction in the further accumulation of wealth. Luckily for me, some far-Eastern compulsion to give back meant that I was gonna be rich. 

I was probably around 11 or 12. Tom Vu was going to be at the Sheraton Hotel for one day only offering a free seminar to those visionary enough to recognize the opportunity in front of them. I begged my mom to drive me to Tacoma 45 minutes away. I would go to bed spending the money in my head. I wasn't going to be garish like the rich on TV. I was going to bring dignity to the wealthy. (You might remember Robin Leach's Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, which was still on at this time as well.) 

We got to the hotel conference room, and it was packed. A giant hotel conference room filled with oxygen tanks, overalls, hairlips, eyepatches, and chewing tobacco. We waited well past the hour. People were bored and restless, but I didn't lose faith. I hoped Tom noticed when the time came. I looked toward a commotion at the back of the room. Tom Vu was marching down the walkway with speed and purpose. People were gasping. The wait was forgotten; I was caught up in the moment. It was absolutely electric. I really can't compare it to any other moment I've experienced. The hope in the room was infectious, and sort of heartbreaking in retrospect. I think someone suggested his helicopter had just landed. I couldn't believe I was in the same room with the great man.

He got on stage and, similarly to his infomercials, told us that he started with nothing, was filthy rich now, and we could be, too. I don't remember how it played out in the end—I think it was something like paying him $1,100 to get the Glengarry leads or some shit. Or maybe we would go halves on houses and then split the sales profit, or something like that. I didn't have a dollar to my name; I was 11. There was no coming up with the full-course fee, or buying a house, or whatever. It was a long car ride home. 

My mom passed away last week as it turns out. (We weren't super close, but it's complicated, of course.) I ended up better than the oddsmakers would have given to those beginnings, even if Never Flying Coach isn't in the cards. My big money-making scheme these days is getting a friend to pitch in on the WeTheFifth Substack dues until they graduate to their own subscription. My days are always improved listening to you fellas make sense of the world in public, and doubly so when Tom Vu comes up. Keep it up.

Tim

(NEVER give up your dreams to join Never Fly Coach! You like my waterfall?...

Fantastic, heartbreaking story, thank you. Also, I learned the pleasures of red wine & Coke during my first week in Prague – did I mention I lived there? – though in fairness 22-year-old college dropouts from the LBC don’t always have the most refined tastes.)

***

From: Julia

Subject: Portland Comedy, Chaos, and a Cuban’s Worst Nightmare

Date: Jan. 19, 2024

Dear Neocon Royalty,

I'm a big fan of the show and thought I'd share a slice of Portland life that's so bizarre, it sounds like a rejected Portlandia script.

My boyfriend and I, escapees from Miami's sunny shores (I'm Argentinian, he's Cuban), moved to Portland a few years back. We thought we'd seen it all, but Portland's brand of radical activism is like a crash course in "Useful Idiots for Dummies." It's like living in a cautionary tale told by every paranoid old Cuban man.

The drama unfolded at Helium Comedy Club, where my boyfriend works. Michael Rapaport was on the lineup, and the local activists went ballistic. Why? Because a Pro-Israeli Jew in Portland is apparently a sign of the apocalypse. Their response? A smorgasbord of harassment: petitions, 1-star online reviews, spray paint, window smashing, and, for the grand finale, bomb threats. Talk about overkill.

But wait, there's more! Local antifa called in reinforcements from "Justice for Palestine," known for protesting menorah lightings (because, you know, that's not super antisemitic). The FBI and Portland Police set up barriers for the impending protest, but let's just say their barrier game was weak.

The protest was a sight to behold: a sea of blonde women in hijabs pretending to be Muslim, hurling insults at patrons. My boyfriend, who might pass for Jewish, was dubbed "baby killer." His co-worker, as blond and blue-eyed as they come, got "wife-beater." Go figure? Despite the verbal barrage, the show went on, but outside, the protest turned into an egg-throwing, window-smashing, firework-launching circus. They actually tried burning down a building full of Jews! It was like a bizarre, twisted version of Selma.

You can probably find some videos on Rapaport’s Instagram. 

This spectacle seemed to flip a switch in Rapaport. He's now more MAGA than anti-Trump, drawing in a crowd decked out in MAGA hats.

So why am I sharing this insanity? Because there's a twisted joy in watching these "morally superior" activists commit actual hate crimes. Plus, in Portland, there's an endless buffet of things to get mad at, and a growing crowd of disillusioned liberals to rant with. That being said, if you're ever in Portland, hit me up for some comedy club tickets. Who knows, you might even catch the bonus street performance!

Julia

(Obligatory Rapaport-on-Fifth link here! Portland, God love it, is always on our shortlist of places to invade.)

***

From: Simon

Subject: Islamist Death Cults: 7th Century Barbarians or Modern Revolutionaries?

Date: Jan. 25, 2024

Hi all,

Moynihan, I wanted to thank you for your response to the piffle coming from Myriam François during her appearance on Sky. It struck a common chord. I’ve seen people I know—more than I expected— posting and commenting online in ways where they seem to view the conflict through the prism of a kind of unsophisticated humanitarianism which incorporates very little about history, geopolitics, international law, or ethics, and yet still tries to morally intimidate the rest of us into assenting to their position. […]

In any case, I really liked what you said in response to Francois. I think I agreed with pretty much all of it. One thing, however, stood out. You described the Houthis (and I’ve heard you describe other violent Islamist groups like this) as a “7^th century death cult.” I understand the description, and I think it’s correct in the sense that these groups do ground incorporate ideas about Islam and Muslims that are very old. But, I’ve been persuaded by Hussein Aboubakr Mansour's writing (in Mosaic, Tablet, and at his own new Substack) that there is something very modern about these groups. His bio is super interesting, and I highly recommend reading his work (savage nihilism, etc.). One of the most interesting arguments is that it wasn’t only Nazism that was imported into the Middle East during Arab modernization when nation-states started forming, but it was the underlying ideas in German philosophy out of which the totalitarian states developed. 

Principally, these are Hegel’s ideas about the progress of history towards a reality in which all contradictions (like good and evil; subject and object; the desire for freedom in a world that can coerce you) are resolved and the individual and the state come into unison. It is these ideas—which took hold in the minds of Arab elites who studied in Germany, and which were then implanted in the Middle East through the modernization projects—that has brought about the revolutionary interpretation of Islam that we have seen the effects of now and in recent decades. One of the things which hooked me about this argument, and has led me to dig into the topic, is that these ideas also permeate our own Western culture and politics. This, I think, is a big part of the reason you have this strange, seemingly contradictory alliance between groups like Hamas and Western progressives. 

So, that was the short-story-long version of why I think that describing these barbaric organizations as “7^thcentury death cults” misses a central, modern feature of their ideologies. To my ear, it suggests they are ideas that we are going to struggle to make sense of because they have mysteriously emerged from the distant past. (Granted, I didn’t know a whole lot about these groups until recently, so the struggle and the mystery might be a function of my own ignorance.) Still, I think “7^th century” highlights that these are things that should never have re-emerged and that we should never want to see re-emerge. Yet, these ideologies may well have come about because of certain ideas that we might more closely associate with Western philosophy. 

Hussein’s essays are fantastic. If you guys read them and like them and want to have him on the pod, that would be a treat. He is a wealth of knowledge, and I can vicariously pick his brain if you have him on.

All the best,

Simon

P.S.: Leon Wieseltier’s essay “Savagery and Solidarity” in the latest Liberties Journal is very good, as is the essay “Albert Memmi and the Problem with Postcolonialism” by another author. 

P.P.S.: Hussein’s conversation with Haviv Rettig Gur and Shany Mor about Mor’s essay in Mosaic was very much worth listening to, too.

(See above re: sharing good journalistic/analytical work!)

***

From: Charles J. Johnson

Subject: Your hostility to media unions

Date: Jan. 27, 2024

Can you believe these feckless, childish media union people at the L.A. Times?? This kind of advocacy accomplishes nothing.

[Shares tweet that I can’t embed on Substack, from Ryan Fonseca, saying:]

So, a wild update:

I've now been told I won't be laid off after all. Our @latguild bargaining committee negotiated to have my notice withdrawn, along with those of other colleagues who got them after the initial round of layoffs.

I would simply just all start a podcast after a ripening career with roots in the salad-days of newspapering and blogging. Easy.

Was considering subscribing but now I’m just here to tell you to fuck yourselves.

(To correct potential misimpressions: 1) The “salad days” of newspapering were from 1960-1990; that last year of which is when my cohort tried vainly to enter the workforce, then when that failed, took to starting up their own publications from scratch. Also, between the three of us I’m the only one who worked full-time at a daily newspaper, from 2006-2007, a period of well-chronicled decline. 2) Whatever the “salad days” of blogging were, none of us ever made more than the occasional beer money from it. 3) “Bemused indifference” and “doubt that they will slow the extinction events” are quite different than “hostility.” Hope that helps!)

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