When The Object Is Beyond Victory

     In his novel Isle Of The Dead, the late Roger Zelazny sketched a piercing depiction of a quest for vengeance that seeks, beyond simple justice, the humiliation and destruction of the enemy. It arises from the hatred evoked by a sense of mortal insult. Zelazny’s term for it was pai’badra. The novel’s plot concerns such a perception of offense and the confrontation it precipitates.

     In the scene below, the supposed offender, who has gained an inescapable upper hand over the offended one, attempts to persuade him to relinquish his pai’badra in exchange for his life:

     “I will forget the vengeance which you sought upon me,” I said. “I will show you that there was no pai’badra, no instrument of affront, so that you may take leave of this vengeance with honor. I will not seek recompense, and we may go our ways thereafter, each freed of the hooks of the other.”
     “No,” he said. “There was pai’badra in your elevation to a Name. I do not accept what you propose.”
     I shrugged. “Very well,” I said, “then how does this sound? Since your feelings and intentions are known to me, it would be useless for either of us to plot vengeance along classical lines. That fine, final moment, where the enemy realizes the instrument, the mover and the pai’badra and knows then that his entire life has been but a preface to this irony—that moment would be diminished, if not destroyed.”

     The novel, while not one of Zelazny’s most celebrated ones, is a striking tale of what unslaked hatred can cost those who are consumed by it.

     In pondering the debacle in the Oval Office yesterday, it struck me how hatred has colored the whole of the Ukraine / Russia conflict, and the state of American political intercourse as well. Deb Heine reports:

     The heated exchange began when Zelenskyy told Trump that he and his friends in Poland were concerned that the United States was aligning itself “too much with Putin,” and asked the president what his message was to those people.
     Trump responded that if he didn’t align himself with both sides, they would “never have a deal” to end the war.
     Jokingly, the president added, “you want me to say really terrible things about Putin and then say ‘hi Vladimir, how are we doing on the deal?’ It doesn’t work that way!”
     Trump continued, saying: “I’m not aligned with Putin, I’m not aligned with anybody, I’m aligned with the United States of America and for the good of the world. I’m aligned with the world!”
     The president told reporters he just wanted “to get this thing over with” but it was difficult because of the intense hatred Zelenskyy has for Putin.
     “It’s very tough for me to make a deal with that kind of hate,” he lamented.

     Donald Trump is the most accomplished negotiator of our time. No one now living has a record near to his at finding ways to strike deals, even between persons who detest one another. He knows his stuff. Thus, it would be good policy to respect his approach to that highest form of deal-making, international diplomacy.

     Volodymyr Zelensky can’t bring himself to do that. His guiding star is hatred of Vladimir Putin. He wants to grind Putin’s face into the dust. But he knows that counter-invading and conquering Russia is beyond his powers. Therefore, he wants to expel Russian forces completely from those parts of Ukraine where they currently hold sway: the best he could imaginably do.

     But the critical word in that paragraph is imaginably. Ukraine is so depleted from hostilities to this point that merely holding the line against further incursions by Russian forces is the best achievable outcome – and even that is likely to be beyond Ukraine’s powers. It would take American intervention – preferably diplomatic; possibly military – to make it happen.

     While Zelensky may imagine an American military deployment to Ukraine, the Trump Administration would never agree to it. His subconscious realization of this stokes his hatred higher. That provides a partial explanation of his insulting and demanding behavior toward President Trump and Vice-President Vance.

     But there’s another force to reckon with.

     Zelensky met with a bipartisan group of Senators before meeting with Trump and Vance. I have yet to see such a report that went into the details of the meeting. How did those Senators advise the Ukrainian? Unclear. Worse, the ABC report concludes with a statement from two Democrat Senators castigating Trump and Vance!

     [Minnesota Senator Amy] Klobuchar and [Delaware Senator Chris] Coons came out with posts on X in defense of the Ukrainian president after his exchange in the Oval Office, particularly the moment in which Vance accused Zelenskyy of being “disrespectful” toward his American hosts.
     “Answer to Vance: Zelenskyy has thanked our country over and over again both privately and publicly. And our country thanks HIM and the Ukrainian patriots who have stood up to a dictator, buried their own & stopped Putin from marching right into the rest of Europe. Shame on you,” Klobuchar wrote.
     “Every time I’ve met with President Zelenskyy, he’s thanked the American people for our strong support. We owe him our thanks for leading a nation fighting on the front lines of democracy — not the public berating he received at the White House,” Coons wrote.

     The transcript of the Trump / Vance / Zelensky meeting makes it plain that the backhanding the Ukrainian received was only what his conduct had earned. Why, then, would two United States Senators characterize it in the exact opposite fashion?

     Because they, too, are animated by hatred.

     If there’s anything the Democrat Party despises without limit, it’s a Republican president who refuses to play by their rules. Atop that, Trump is an outsider: one who, by their lights, doesn’t belong in the corridors of power. Yet he’s beaten them twice officially and three times in reality. Today he’s the most popular public figure in America, if not the world. The defeats he’s dealt the Democrats have rendered them incapable of dealing with him as a “loyal opposition” should. They want his hide tacked up on their barn wall as a warning to others who contemplate intruding on their domain.

     Hatred of us in the Right and our chosen representatives is an endemic condition among those on the Left. Consider this from a Liberty’s Torch commenter:

     My friend Allison has gotten over her grief of Trump being re-elected and that grief has turned into foaming at the mouth rage. All I’ve been hearing is “Just wait until we get back into power, oh you people are going to be sorry!”, so yes, at some point there is going to be violence. There are those like her who will never be able to let it go.

     This is what has made dialogue between Left and Right impossible in our time. How much less likely is collaboration or compromise?

     As I wrote yesterday, Zelensky’s hold on power in Ukraine will end whenever the war with Russia ends. A “president” cannot do the things he’s done and remain in power without an emergency to keep him there. So he has several reasons to want the war to continue, even though it’s bled his country so deeply that press gangs have been rounding up young men and forcing them into Ukraine’s army.

     “If something cannot continue indefinitely, it will stop,” said Herbert Stein. It’s as applicable to the retention of political power as it is to economics, but he who is moved by hatred is no more likely to concede that truth than any other that’s averse to his aims.