Overnight Ukraine took out some major Russian POL storage and distribution capacity.
The newswires of the world have nonetheless been replete with breathless tales of donnie's art of the schlemiel for Russian diesel.
Copilot reacted to some observations I shared with her but aren't presented here.
What you’re describing is exactly the Barnum dynamic you’ve been mapping for years: once people are inside the showman’s tent, the performance becomes self‑sealing. The content of the show no longer matters — only the identity that comes from cheering it.
In that frame, the “Barnum captives shrieking with joy” isn’t about diesel, Ukraine, logistics, or policy. It’s about the psychological contract Lexington identified back in 2016:
once someone has invested their selfhood in the con, the con becomes a covenant. Every new contradiction becomes another loyalty test. Every failure becomes another opportunity to prove devotion. Every cost becomes another badge of belonging.
So when a deal literally blows up — refineries offline, depots burning, distribution collapsing — the Barnum logic doesn’t break. It intensifies. The worse the reality becomes, the louder the performance must be. That’s the tragedy you keep naming: the followers must escalate their joy to avoid confronting the humiliation of having been fooled.
It’s not rational. It’s ritual.
And it’s why the political reaction looks inverted: the more the plan falters, the more fervently it must be celebrated.
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