Ray Dalio’s book on the changing World Order has been universally praised since its publication. I fear that may be because nobody has read it.
So far it seems like my “drama” videos have been more successful when they go after folks who are native to the app rather than establishment figures. Ray Dalio happens to be both. He’s one of the most successful Hedge fund investors of all time, and he racks up tens of millions of YouTube views. Here’s hoping this video is successful. Reading his book was a bit of a chore.
I feel like I’m weirdly a lot more optimistic about American power today than most of the US media is. Today I lay out why I think that may be. The US is reacting to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as some inexplicable horror, another step back towards history’s chaos, and another sign that the American world order is falling to pieces. As more of a cynic, and a student of foreign relations, my sense is that the US world order has been falling apart since at least 2003. What Russia has done in Ukraine, is give us a second chance. By conclusively setting himself up as a more destructive and dangerous actor than the US government, Putin has given the US world order a new lease on life.
What’s vital in this moment is that we seize that opportunity. Europe is now back on our side in ways it hasn’t been for two decades. What we should do now, is try to win over the rest of the world by improving our relations with old enemies that no longer matter. To it’s credit, the Biden administration is already trying to do this with Iran and Venezuela. Unfortunately, they are being blocked by their efforts to do so, and not just by Republicans. I think it’s a failure of understanding. US government and media don’t understand just how bad the situation was, and how valuable a window Russia has given us. Today’s video is my attempt to explain the situation.
This isn’t really a Russia Ukraine video. But it’s certainly been prompted by that horrific event. Washington, DC got this one right, and I got it wrong, not expecting Putin to be this stupid. But I think the exultation we’re getting from a lot of pundits today is misplaced. Some see this as a Pearl Harbor moment, hoping that it will wake the US public from its slumber, make us forget the past 20 years of imperial mismanagement, and fall in line behind the same clowns who brought us the current dismal global situation. Needless to say, that’s not my take. I do see hope here though. Russia has proven itself to be thuggish, and surprisingly weak. The situation we have now, a real fight, might finally convince Washington, DC to engage in a little prioritization. The United States is actually a very capable and impressive country. This moment could cause us to do better. In today’s video I use a similar video from British Imperial history to talk about how.
It’s more than a little absurd that I have to comment on another YouTuber’s work to get videos watched on the platform. But after the success of the Kraut and Whatifalthist critique videos, my best and 2nd best performing videos of the year, I think it’s a pretty unavoidable conclusion. Luckily this month one of the biggest news and politics YouTubers, Johhnny Harris has weighed in on Russia and Ukraine, and I have a few quibbles with his approach. So with today’s video I manage to smack two birds with one stone, hopefully satisfying the algorithm, while commenting on most US coverage of Russia by proxy, through Johnny Harris. Going forward I think it probably makes sense to try to do one of these “YouTube Drama” videos a month. I hope you find them worthwhile. The Whatifalthist video uploaded two weeks ago has brought me back to traffic numbers I haven’t seen in two years. I hope to use the numbers to hit the audience with some Yemen coverage soon…
A number of months back I ran a poll asking which of a selection of geopolitics YouTubers I should do a review of. I was surprised to see Whatifalthist win the poll dramatically. The few videos of his I had watched had struck me as inoffensive and vaguely amusing. Having now done a deeper dive, it’s clear I was missing a lot. This kid, and I do mean kid, I think he’s like 22, does delightfully nerdy deep dives on European history, but his takes on countries and events outside of “Western Civilization” are sometimes… problematic. As I looked into it further, I was surprised to find that he has a lot of the same educational gaps and right wing ideological hang-ups that I did when I was 22. It’s an odd artifact of our age that he is working out his ideas with an audience in the hundreds of thousands. I don’t think he should be pilloried for it. This was an interesting video to write. If I were criticizing someone with serious institutional backing, or over the age of 25, I think I would have been a lot harsher. But this kid literally seems to have grown up on-line, starting a YouTube channel half his lifetime ago to answer fun nerd questions. I’m not sure I got the balance right. Let me know what you think.
I guess I should be grateful to Samantha Power! Late last year I set out to read her book “The Problem From Hell” covering genocide in the 20th century. The book, and Power herself, are famous for helping to justify the Obama administration’s continuation of Bush’s war on terror, on a “kinder, gentler” basis. I was prepared to mock, but I found the book to be quite powerful. It helped me deal with a quandary I’ve had for quite some time. For over a year now, I’ve struggled to say something new about the horror in Yemen. I’ve covered it extensively on the channel, but how many different ways can I say it’s a horror show? Ms. Power provided that new avenue. Her description of the horrific genocide in Bosnia in the 1990s, something Power covered personally, is compelling. It’s truly grim stuff, and I now understand why it was so dominant in the mindsets of 1990s policymakers. The Serbian war on Bosnia was a horrific crime. But it pales in comparison to what the United States and Saudi Arabia have been doing to Yemen. As I lay out in today’s video.
This video is another attempt to shake up the style a little bit. It’s been a while since I’ve done an all visual video, and this one almost qualifies. I’ve noticed that a lot of the successful geopolitics videos on YouTube tend to be lighter on the speaking in person, and heavier on the storyblocks and animated maps. Storyblocks is a stock video website I’ve been subscribed to for about six months now. It’s a cheap service, and you get what you pay for, but it’s a fun way to build a video. The selection is limited enough that after going through the library, I am beginning to see the same clips over and over in the work of my competitors. I think I have a few more rudimentary animation skills than a lot of the other geopolitics YouTubers, and I think I mixed animated graphs well with the storyblocks clips. Let me know what you think!
This is the longest produced video I’ve ever done, and I think I’m fairly proud of it? It’s the product of reading a few books and multiple lengthy reports on Ethiopia’s conflict, and following the coverage closely for over a year now. I think my coverage has also been aided by having multiple viral videos on the country on TikTok, and the responses I have gotten over there. I hope you like it!
I’ve been meaning to talk about this for a while. Heck, and one point, I thought I might make a multi-video series covering all the ways the Gulf Monarchies worked to destroy the Arab Spring. It’s a vital point that gets over-looked. Yes, as my “Everybody’s Lying About Islam” series documented at length, Saudi Arabia’s century of power and wealth has been terrible for world Islam. The Saudi Wahhabi project has been a sort of cultural genocide against what was a much more diverse body of Islamic practices half a century ago. That matters. But beyond the religious aspects there is the fact that Saudi Arabia and the UAE are proselytizing monarchists as well. They have extraordinary wealth and influence in Washington, DC, and for the past 10 years they have used it to crush democracy across their region. This is the real tragedy of declining democracy this century. The Arab Spring could have made 2011 a new 1776, or 1989. Instead Arab Democracy was strangled in the cradle by a set of absolute monarchies that simply would not exist without the United States.
I am enjoying this new style of calling out folks for bad opinions. Sure, drama is a little crude, but hey it’s the internet, and it seems to succeed at winning views. Over the past couple weeks I have gone after well known YouTuber Kraut, and late night TV host John Oliver. It seems only fair, and very appropriate to the MFF channel, that I also go after “more distinguished” members of the foreign policy community today. Calling people out provides a hook for videos I have always wanted to make. In today’s video, a particularly egregious column by retired admiral and war popularizer Admiral James Stavridis has given me the opportunity to finally talk about the Rwandan Genocide, and Samantha Power’s “A Problem From Hell”, a topic I’ve been meaning to tackle for years. I hope you enjoy the video. What do you think of the whole new “YouTube Drama” approach?
