Two Sides of Pyrrhic

Two different articles lead to one thought: that of a pyrrhic victory.

Yeah, I know most folks will use that phrase with a loose understanding of the meaning behind it. It is typical for today’s age – you mention something and it sounds like it fits, it will be the literary example of a round peg in a square hole.

Ha. Literally a literal manner of a round peg in a square hole.

I gladly digress…

A pyrrhic victory is one which “victory at any and all costs” usually results in an empty success; in what has been attributed to Pyrrhus’ own after-action review:

Lest I, if I should win again in the same manner, return to Epirus without any soldier.

The first came from an observation on a leaked video of the recent F-35 crash on the USS Carl Vinson a few days ago. While there have been videos circulating from the fantail of the carrier as the fighter flew over the round down and was replaced by blowing debris, up until a few days ago, there wasn’t any other videos…

Until someone leaked the Pilot’s Landing Aid Television (PLAT) camera footage.

“What the hell is wrong with people?” asked one Twitter commenter.

Another replied: “Yeah, they rang up a few felonies right there. All to show off on the internet.”

The truth, however, is a bit more simple:

“What the hell is wrong with people?”

The desire to be relevant. They will sell whatever they can in order to do so…

The desire to be trending. They will say whatever they think will boost views.

The desire to be a complete dolt. They will do all of the above without pause.

“All to show off on the internet.” will be engraved in nice marble on the tombstone of OPSEC.

For some reason the “bandwagon effect” comes to mind – the desire to “do something primarily because other people are doing it, regardless of their own beliefs, which they may ignore or override.” Perhaps this might be a sufficient definition of what has been on my mind about this event – that people, especially those who seek digital prominence/notoriety/relevance on social media platforms/publishers, will do whatever it takes to stake their claim on information. In the process, they knowingly or unknowingly expose gaps in operational security (OPSEC).

One might ask: what is the big deal? It’s just a video… It was going to be released eventually, anyway…

While that may be the case, it isn’t always the case and – most importantly – it isn’t up for the end user of social media sites to decide; there is, and always has been a process for the release of information, videos, or other tangible communications via the respective Public Affairs Offices (PAOs). This is what bothered me about the video – that folks tend to think about the local and immediate before they consider the larger picture.

There is an entire arm of the intelligence process dedicated to OSINT – open-source intelligence – and imagery intelligence (IMINT) in this digital age can be a disconcerting wakeup call for those who bother to understand the data wake we leave in our daily lives. Parallel to these official information collection processes, there are folks out there who recreationally analyze the data puzzle to understand more of an event, person, or location. It is truly a deep and rabbit hole in which the paranoid and nerdy alike can descend into… but that isn’t where I am going with this.

My observation is this: that technology makes it much easier for those who are watching to collect than it is for those who are wantonly divulging detail after detail to stop.

It is a strange addiction, this compulsive devotion to digital networking. We become so consumed by it all that we fail to notice how far beyond redemption we are going. When was the last time you read a book, dear reader? What is the next book? What has been your personal trend over the last two years?

Perhaps I have mentioned it previously (I have too much momentum to look, at the moment), but I found where we were going completely fascinating early on: isolate folks in their homes due to a contagion, then control access to information and external communication via social media and major news outlets. Of course, I was also darkly pondering on what a disruption in availability to antidepressants/anxiety medications would lead to in quiet suburban neighborhoods, but I tend to get a bit too carried away with my own thoughts.

My point in the books is that they provide tangible and, for the most part, difficult to alter mediums. Sure, publishers can slowly alter original works – Fahrenheit 451 has been expurgated by Ballentine Books, after all… something I find hilarious and disconcerting at the same time. However, that process takes time and is much easier to prove as direct comparisons… once noticed… can be noticed… ah… yeah… about that.

Still, it is more difficult to change books than it is the widespread digital media, though sloppy attempts to alter a narrative or underscore an event are often quickly noticed… and the victory for the control and content of information becomes pyrrhic.

The other angle of the idea of a hollow victory occurred when I was reading the transcript of Hollie McKay’s recent dispatch from Kyiv:

Ukrainians are determined to fight. That’s not just from the military point of view, but civilians are not going to just run away as we see in a lot of other countries that I’ve worked in, frankly.

“…Not going to run away…”

My own perspectives on the moral and ethical justifications for aggression/defense in this part of the world are nuanced and best enjoyed in a safe area where thrown objects and sudden outbursts of profanity aren’t classified as “assault” and “disturbing the peace.” The most I can go beyond that at the moment is trying to convey a recent growled threat that “the first person I hear who even tries to compare Russia/Ukraine and China/Taiwan in relation to American experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq is going to get punched… in… the… throat.” It’s not the same in cause, it will not be the same in implementation, and it will not be the same in effect; anyone insisting otherwise is selling you foreign policy designed by Salvador Dali on every psychedelic drug known to man.

“…Not going to run away…”

It could be optimistic bluster… It could even be intentional disinformation…  Something tells me that neither will be proven to be the case. Eastern Europeans – especially the Ukrainians and Russians I have met over the years – can be some of the most stubborn and nationalistic folks I have ever met. Fierce… and when territory is at stake… when homes are threatened… A recipe for a rehash of that classic story of victory for the sake of victory…until victory becomes defeat.

When one looks at the tension between Russia and Ukraine… China and Taiwan… and the alliances which are also being stressed and forged, it is easy to get lost in the biases of whichever talking head is favored or whatever historical narrative which this is all closely paralleling. I can’t blame anyone for listening and arriving at their own conclusions, after all – even those which I agree with.

However, it is another thing entirely to suspend all of what one thinks they know about the situations and ask a few… simple… questions:

Can you blame them?

Could you blame them for not running?

Could you blame them for their desire to defend through aggression?

Who is right?

Who will be right, when it is all over?

Conflict is often management of vengeance through questionable ethics. One of the drafts sitting in my queue was inspired by Dave’s thread in November 2021 and the discussion of Star Trek’s character Khan. Perhaps I will return to this idea in the near future – the idea of attempting to pair two distinct notions of morality lingers in my mind excitedly but without the proper context or motivation. However, one quote stands out from that draft:

Mr. Spock, you misunderstand us. We can be against him and admire him all at the same time.

I am against the justifications for aggression and defense at the time that I admire those very same reasons… Most importantly, however, it is my complete and entire hope that we, as a species, don’t drive ourselves into another huge global conflict… while at the same time, it is my complete and entire hope that if (and when) we do, we emerge on the other side of it better than we were before we went into it.

Nothing in conflict is ever simple except the desire to survive. Anything beyond that is pyrrhic.