Since I stopped giving YouTube interviews, life got better. I no longer have to hold forth attempting to answer the same set of stupid questions over and over again by pointing out that they are stupid. That was, of course, futile; the quality of the questions did not improve over time — predictably so, since they all came from the headlines in Western press. I had a queasy feeling the entire time, since the audience is being force-fed bullshit and I was serving as an unwilling accessory to this process. (Well, not quite unwilling; I had an ulterior motive, which was to attract visitors to my blog.) I could not flatter myself that I was evening the score or enlightening people because, I am quite sure, any discussion of bullshit is still just bullshit.

But sometimes I do find it within myself to comment on what passes for the news in the West. The news of the hour is never particularly interesting, but it becomes interesting when zooming out and looking for patterns. And here we find an obvious pattern.

Objective: Get Russia to agree to a cease fire in the Ukraine without conditions, never mind an actual peace agreement or concessions from the Ukrainian side. Then rearm the Ukrainian army, fill the Ukraine with NATO troops and try to defeat Russia again.

Progress so far: None. Russia is winning. Kill ratio is around 35:1 in Russia's favor and Russia is slowly but surely achieving its officially declared objectives.

• Threaten Russia with even more sanctions. Result: none.

• Threaten tariffs against China and India for buying energy from Russia. Result: none.

• Meet with Russia's leader on US soil and say nice things. Result: none.

• Threaten to provide the Ukrainians with Tomahawk cruise missiles. These can be nuclear-tipped and can only be launched by a US crew, and so deploying any of these in the former Ukraine would mean the start of a nuclear war with Russia. Not a very successful nuclear war, mind you: any one of these has maybe a 3% chance of penetrating Russian airspace, being very old, rather slow and quite easy to shoot down even using Soviet-era air defense systems (such as the ones Syria once had). Result: none.

• Propose to meet Russia's leader on EU soil (in Budapest) and say nice things. Result: none.

• Cancel the meeting in Budapest and impose some more sanctions on a couple of Russian energy companies. Result: none.

The reason that there are no results is that none of these gambits offered to Russia what Russia has demanded late in 2021: demilitarization, denazification and neutral status for the former Ukraine, no foreign troops on Ukrainian soil, NATO rolled back to where it was in 1991 and all sanctions lifted. Russia presented an official document defining these demands. The US officials ignored the document. That is fine; what can't be achieved through diplomacy will be achieved through armed conflict.

This self-defeating pattern of behavior reminded me of a story my friend Orren Whiddon told me while we were sitting on his porch (a.k.a. "stoop") in Pennsylvania a decade or so ago.

Orren once had a dog — "a very smart dog," he said. Once the dog ran over to the neighbors' property — who were ornery rednecks armed to the teeth — and killed a chicken. Orren went over to them, made amends and whipped the dog.

The dog, being smart, thought: "OK, no more chickens." And so a little while later the dog ran over to the neighbors' property and instead killed a duck.

Orren went over again, made amends and whipped the dog. The dog, being smart, thought: "OK, no more ducks."

And so a little while later the dog ran over to the neighbors' property and killed a goose. At which point the neighbors shot the dog. End of story.