I should preface this post by saying that the Taliban are, obviously, extremely bad, and domestic opposition to (or apathy regarding) American imperialist intervention is far more likely to be expressed through the language of right-wing nativism than left-wing internationalism, even coming from many social democrats.

That said, there is something delightful - something bordering on effervescent - about (1) the staggering rapidity and thoroughness with which the American occupation apparatus in Afghanistan is collapsing, and especially (2) the bipartisan neoconservative reaction to this turn of events. If John McCain wasn't already in Hell, this would have sent him directly there. The stench of panic is emanating from these ghouls to such an incredible degree that I think if I picked up today's copy of the Wall Street Journal or Washington Post it would actually be soaked in Mitch McConnell's flop sweat.

If neoconservatism was nominally a response to America's humiliation in Vietnam and a promise to permanently and perpetually avenge that defeat, the one thing that can literally under no circumstances happen in these people's worldview is a repeat of the Saigon embassy evacuation. If there's a front-page shot of a helicopter lifting off from the embassy in Kabul, it is going to break neocons' brains the same way that Donald Trump winning the 2016 election broke Democrats'. They have no way of intellectualising or coping with this.

And what's really wonderful is that you don't just get to watch them realise in real time that this is an increasingly likely scenario - they're also all realising simultaneously that no one but them gives a shit. Ninety-plus percent of Americans outside of DC are not going to think that the US embassy being evacuated is a disaster, barring some kind of full-scale, multi-week media offensive to convince them it is. It just doesn't register.

In a way this is actually more devastating to the neoconservative worldview than the possibility of military defeat: the possibility that they've devoted years of their lives and untold energy to avoiding this exact thing, only for it to barely show up on anyone's radar. Catastrophe, surely, would be preferable to irrelevance! And I'm just sitting here drinking this energy up like a kitten with a bowl of heavy cream.