Becoming inured to war

One of the calculations Putin seems to be making is that we in the West will tire of the war in Ukraine as a story, that day upon day, week upon week of pictures of bombed out buildings in Kharkiv and Mariupol will cede the front page to The Slap and the Duke-Carolina game, etc. In this calculation he is not entirely wrong.

Once more this point up the importance of a professional government, the so-called swamp, the people who provide depth and continuity to our embrace of and interface with the world and all of its complexity, across administrations. We cannot have a wholesale shift of focus every four or two years based on which way the winds are blowing and which soundbites and memes are resonating most clearly. People in different parts of the government will have different foci and views of the world. They will fight amongst each other for budget. There will be tussles along ideological grounds. But we can't burn it all down or cut off all their heads every few years just because it polls well and draws eyeballs.