Fanbaiting a War

The Max Boot Way

Fanbaiting is a neologism that came into being as a way of conceptualizing why Hollywood creators keep producing content they know is not only subpar, but practically designed to drive away audiences. If you are the sort that likes (or used to like) Star Wars, the Marvel Movies, Lord of the Rings, etc., then you know what I mean. Rather than choose to create new stories that build on existing material in a way that is respectful of previous work and their fan subcultures (I have my criticisms of that but go with it for now) writers and directors seem to go out of their way to pervert -in every sense- core elements of narrative lore for reasons that seem baffling to observers. Why not just make stuff people will like?

The answer is not merely that they are “woke” or that they are trying to insert leftist messages. Hollywood writers have done that successfully for decades without causing problems; Spartacus (1960) was basically an advertisement for gay communism, but people still liked it. If they were still subtle about it no one would know or care. Lately, however, it seems they are becoming wholly incapable of this. They aren’t so much interested in changing your values as they are in displaying their contempt for them. They want to throw in your face the fact that they can hoover up a half-billion dollars and basically toss it into a woodchipper making a movie no one will watch starring a person no sane parent would let near their children. Veblen isn’t dead- conspicuous consumption lives on, just in ideological rather than strictly material terms. Fanbaiting is the modern equivalent of lighting up an el presidente with a $100 bill.

A behind-the-scenes picture from the making of Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

But what does this have to do with war? I had a sudden epiphany today while going back into the Washington Post while review-fact checking my essay from the day before. I saw a link to a Max Boot article about Ukraine, and despite myself, I clicked on it. And somewhere in the middle of reading it it finally dawned on me what he and his fellow neoliberal managerial elites are doing. It’s all the same whether they’re butchering a screenplay or actual human beings. Max Boot is fanbaiting.

I don’t mean to make light of the horrible situation in Ukraine by comparing it to online culture war stuff, but I think the paradigm generally fits as an explanatory model. What Boot is doing is not so much providing information or even propagandizing at this point. Much like Kathleen Kennedy, he is proudly showcasing the fact that he can shove utter crap in your face and never be held to account for it. Like her, he belongs to a class that will never be allowed to suffer any serious consequences for failure, and his column in the Washington Post is the medium through which he advertises that. The war in Ukraine is the managerial elite’s equivalent of She Hulk, though considerably more expensive in blood and treasure.

Carrying Zelenskyy to victory, one tweet at a time

The article opens up with the admission that despite everything he and his fellow neocons have been telling you since February of 2022 it seems that Ukraine is not winning the war. This is apparently due to the fact that attacking is difficult: “in warfare, attacking has always been harder than defending.” Good to know. Also, despite assurances at the time, the weapons and training given to the Ukrainians by NATO were not enough and were known to be not enough to turn back the Russians; the Ukrainians were hurled into battle unprepared and were slaughtered with no significant gains having been achieved. Boot labels the fallout from this as “finger pointing.” Given these facts, and the fact that the wunderwaffen sent by the west have proven underwhelming to say the least, perhaps it might be time to negotiate an end to the war and stop the bloodshed that can have no meaningful effect on the outcome at this point. Boot sees where you are going with that Putin-fanboy nonsense:

So what should Ukraine — and its supporters in the West — do now? Many will argue that, with the failure of this counteroffensive, it’s time to cut a deal with the Kremlin. But there is scant indication that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is ready to make any concessions or to give up his goal of swallowing Ukraine. The Ukrainian military setbacks — and waning support for Kyiv’s cause among Republicans in Congress — only encourage him to keep going in the expectation that he will outlast his enemies. “The only reason he will stop the war is if he is stopped physically and has no other choice,” Zagorodnyuk told me. “He won’t stop the war if you can’t continue it. He will only stop war when he can’t continue it.”

Thus, the war-weary Ukrainians have no choice but to continue fighting if they are to save their nation from being occupied by war criminals who commit heinous atrocities against innocent civilians. And we have no choice but to continue backing the Ukrainians.

At this point you may be asking, “do we really have no choice? Because I’m pretty sure we do.” Well that’s where the fanbaiting comes in. What Boot means by '“we have no choice” is that he has a choice and you don’t. People listen to him and not you. You might have voted for one of those “Republicans in Congress” who hesitate to spend (borrow) any more money to keep this war going, but Boot is here to tell you that elections in Washington mean about as much as they do in Ukraine. Witness him rub it in here:

The United States has a strategic imperative at stake: The Ukrainians are inflicting massive losses on the Russian armed forces that will make Russia less of a threat to its NATO neighbors for years to come. There is also a humanitarian imperative: By arming Ukraine, we are saving innocent lives. The West must, in particular, continue to provide air-defense ammunition to stop the air attacks that Putin is sure to launch soon against Ukrainian cities to render them uninhabitable. “The Russians will try to break Ukraine over the winter,” an administration official told me. “We need to stop that from happening.”

The first sentence is a bald-faced and idiotic lie. The west is giving Russia an American-funded tutorial on how to destroy western equipment and deal with western tactics from which they are emerging stronger than they were before. The lieutenants currently blowing up Leopards with Lancets will be the instructors in any major conflict to come. The notion that Ukrainian lives are being saved only makes sense if you believe Putin plans to kill or maim in peace more than the 500,000 already having suffered so in war. We need to give Ukraine more ammunition? Give it to whom? The average age of a Ukrainian soldier is now 43, so one wonders what demographic will be next up to make use of those air defense rounds (which don’t exist) or stop Russia from “breaking” Ukraine over the winter. And again, who is this “we?”

Boot knows that Russia cannot be stopped apart from direct military involvement on the part of NATO. He wants this to happen, is certainly working behind the scenes with all of his influence to make it happen, but even in the event of some crisis that can be pitched as a causus belli it is difficult to see how he would get what he wants. Due in large part to economic and social policies he and his fellow neocons/neoliberals have supported for decades, America no longer has the manufacturing base nor the critical mass of credulous patriots that would make a successful global war possible. They got ahold of a thriving IP, turned it into generic but still off-putting sludge through a combination of a poor and reductive understanding of market forces and a genuine contempt for the core audience, and now are squirming with rage that no one is showing up for their big project. At this point, Kevin Feige should be made the next Secretary of State.

He certainly has the track record of success and manifest good instincts one expects from a modern statesman.

And that’s a bit of a redpill. If you are wondering how I’ve gotten this far talking about fanbaiting without acknowledging that I myself have taken the bait and paid my dues in attention, you should know that deep down the joke is on them. For all of their arrogance and pretensions of control, the Boots of the world know they are the one thing people like them cannot abide, objects of mockery. Yes, for now, they can parade their control of important spots in culture and politics. But all they are really doing is diminishing the value of their own sinecures. Martin Gurri in The Revolt of the Public sums it up well as a crisis of authority brought about by the advent of alternative sources of information via the internet. Boot imagines he is authoritative because he is perched at the Washington Post. But the fact that I, with a few minutes of digging, can demonstrate that he is colossally wrong, as he has been about every public crisis in his adult life, means that anyone can. Which means that he is a mere king of air, surviving on the fumes of money and goodwill still remaining in our institutions.

So perhaps fanbaiting isn’t really the fire, but the smoke, emanating from the flames of cultural self immolation. Like Lee’s face in the furnace, those who have destroyed popular culture’s most beloved franchises have severed a link with the immediate past for those who revered them. However, being evil mediocrities, they are unable to replace them with anything as enduring, and their attempts to do so are scorned by the people they need the most. There is no new Star Wars; there’s not even a new Matrix. And most importantly, there is no new Lee.

Admit it, you forgot this even happened. Keanu Reeves didn’t even bother to change his look from John Wick.

A thing that cannot endure will not endure. And ceasing to endure, new things will arise in the empty spaces. Something new will arise in the East, and something new will arise in America. A new generation will create new stories, animated by a cultural revival occasioned by the clearing away of the dross of consumerism; the young will thirst after the real, and they will find it where their ancestors found it, in the Classics and the Faith. And unlike the predictions of Boot, I have confidence that mine will stand the test of time.