#judt fail

[gingerbreadpopsolo]

jskdnwilxbwiwnw

I was trying to make cookies for my fam because they've been stressed and they TURNED OUT LIKE THIS

IM CRYING IT LOOKS LIKE MICROWAVED CHEESE 😭

I was looking to see what I did wrong because I followed the recipe exactly and

I GRABBED THE WRONG BOX

IT WAS CAKE MIX

I USED CAKE MIX AND TOO MUCH BUTTER IM S C R E A M I N G

#im sobbing #i cant #cooking #cooking fails #baking #baking fails #cookies #cookie fail #judt fail #fail everything #i was so pumped to make cookies for my family #thst i leapt before looking #and now ive tumbled into the sand #never to recover #ginger rambles #god help me #THEY ARE COOKIE CRACKERS

[basofy]

playing the entirety of mother3's chapters 2 and 3 as fast as i could cuz my cousin was playing claus journey and i was trying to help her get to chapter 4 to play as claus only to be welcomed by that ionia scene gave me the same feeling like when lisa DE released and i played thru area 1 at the speed of light only to be welcomed with grooming campfire conversation

#this makes no sense its judt DISAPPOINTMENT #i also like to call it the failed artist convention conversation #im just yapping #i dont think i still hate that thing but the feeling i had yesterday was very similar to wgat i felt that day

[ghostcrows]

The fucking annoying irony of my art project about not being able to finish anything due to adhd collecting dust on top of my dresser because I haven't finished it and possibly never will. If I could I'd just make this an art exhibit as is it's already a statement or whatever

#its a board of all the lists ive tried and failed to make over the course of about 2 years #so that when people tell me judt make a list i can pull out my fucking board of lists #to be fair i did get things done on the lists sometimes but very few are crossed all the way out #theres a lot of me transferring things i did not finish on one list over to another list. to still not finish

[nomaishuttle]

im so tired 2dayy

#i dont wannaaa i dont wanna #i fifnt get up early btw i judt went back 2 bed. im so fail

[necrocat]

took this selfie after having an anxiety attack in the movie theater bathroom because somehow i keep accidentally seeing movies about suicide yippieeee!!!!!

#me #my face #personal #real #fit check #at least every time he tried to kill himself and failed i got to go hes judt like me fr #finally some good fucking representation #really though #that movie was too real and i wasnt ready for it #it made me feel ill hearing my sister romanticise this movie when this is my reality #and of fucking course to make me feel better she tells me how skinny i look #bitch i have an eating disorder #like sincerely fuckkkkn youuuuuu

[distance-does-not-matter]

If you’re wondering where the Mr. Sunshine posting went, know that it’s because I’ve been biting at the walls because of that show

#mr sunshine #penni yeets her thoughts into the void #IT JUST. I JUDT. OUAAAAAAGHHHHHH #WORDS FAIL ITS SO GOOD

[orphudice]

gm

#judt hafta endure this week then thanksgiving break... #i have a test though so ummm.might fail thay #its on wednesday

[phin-and-frob]

me: [messes up administering medicine in a way that I've never had to do before]

me to myself: Oh god. This is awful. I'm going to get bad grade in being disabled, something that is both real and possible to fail at. The doctors and pharmacists are going to point and laugh at me and I'll be banned from Healthcare™ forever

#its not jsut me with this problem right? #disability #medication #my brian is judt envisioning the doctors like: #CRINGE FAIL PATIENT DOESNT KNOW HOW TO USE AUTOINJECTABLES ON THEIR FIRST TRY 🤣👉 #nevermind that i did the second dose properly #cleARLY what matters is the first time when i made a completely understandable human mistake #THATS WHAT DEFINES ME #i hate anxiety #does anyone else have these problems?

[voidcat]

Will have to make a wisdom save roll bc of that message ngl

#openinf it gave me psychic dmg i wish i was joking i rlly dhouldve kept my mouth shut or judt daid smr like 'say please' #men srop being cringe and throwing my entire mood off wirh a snap of fingers challenge failed once again #danyl talks

[vihrago-a]

me suddenly feeling like a failure and overwhelmed with everything on here bc my inbox is at least 70+ and i wanna respond to stuff in there but not everything but i just *head in hands* why do i do this to myself. i wanna clean this blog up and make it look nice but i cant even afford to pay anyone for graphics comms bc my hours got cut at work again just like everyone else and i have school + extra curricular activities so i just . have to suffer with an ugly as hell blog and not look aesthetically pleasing like everyone else 💀

#OOC. #negativity tw #sorry guys im #trying to be more positive #but im exhausted rn #and everything hurts #and overall i judt #feel like im failing #at being a writer and a friend

[ivanzplaid]

Ok so because of my autism I crave to be like crushed in a good way ya know? I had someone do this before but their account got deactivated so I wanted to revive it.

Can I get Rz, Michael, Otis Driftwood, Brahms Heelshire, and the Sinclair brothers with a s/o who asks for them (the slasher) to lay on top of them (the reader)

YESYES I GET IT, for me itd literally judt the feeling if the weight of somebodg i love is so securing and nice, but i love this ask omfg, also if i may i added doomhead because i know you were asking for more content if him :)

requests are open, masterlist is up!!

Slashers x Gn Reader | Laying Ontop of You

Warning: Language, Slight Teasing

------------------------------------------------------------

RZ Michael Myers

hes already impulsive, he acts on what he thinks, so more than not hes probably already laid ontop of you because it was what he wanted, or most convenient

he thinks of it almost as extra protected to fall asleep ontop of you, because not only is he with his s/o but he knows youd go out of your way for him, so he will get extra comfortsble

actuslly either way hes settling in, you didnt protest him when he positioned himself so now he is going to make himself at home, so what if a leg traps your arm or his body eeight is probably enough to crush you? hes calmed

BUT if you want him to donit more, and you decide to tell him, hes thoughtful about it

he now knows that you like it, so hell wrap his arms around you, or put his face to your shoulder while he rests

he is all for it, and while he may seem indifferent, or not verbally affirming you, he has a small glint in him thats grateful to know it, and he will be caring with it

with this knowledge he may try to apply it to other things now

firm hugs? letting himself lean into you while standing? a nice yet secure holding hands time? he wants to put it to the fullest extent

you may catch a smallll smile on his face while you two are half asleep

he really loves to put a hand on your chest and feel you heartbeat, or feel you breathe, something sbout it is just very easing to him and he likes to do it when you two rest

Otis Driftwood

he loves to lay his weight on you because he thinks its funny trapping you under him, because whats better than him snickering as you try to push yourself against his weight and failing?

he stares you in the eyes as he does this judt to see your reaction, but when he sees you settling in and accepting it, his fun is ruined

"Whaddya like me doin' this? I'm tryin to crush you for gods sake!"

you in fact do, and tell him this exactly

when he hears this he laughs like an idiot, he not only finds this hilarious that when he spreads himself out and prevents you from moving that you like it, but you ask if he would do it more often

"Darlin', are you feeling alright?"

thats the only argument he gives, because he sees that this is something you like and he thinks its a little nice to be able to hold you so thoroughly while you two relax

strolling his fingers along your collar bone and looking at your face, maybe keeping ideas for his art to perform later is his favorite pros about this

if you want to lay in silence hes all for it, your beauty makes him adore you, and hell take his time to look over your body and see every thing specific to you

this is a winddown time for him as well, he may put his ear to your heart and just simmer down there, or grt away from his family like that

something about the unspoken intimacy is his favorite part if this, but he wouldnt let you know that

Brahms Heelshire

i STAND my ground that he is all too nervous to touch you or hurt you, his childhood was never easy and hes not used to it, so please ease him into this at his own pace, because one day it will be holding hands, and a few weeks later his lightly cuddling you

his touches at first are cautious, he doesnt want to scare you or be too firm, and even when you tell him its alright, you can see the slight tremble in his hands when he puts them over yoh

he consistently nods at you as an 'ok' to confirm youre ok, hes worried his weight may literally crush you

once he gets more comfortable, he likes to hold you from your under arms while he rests his head on your neck, hes trying not to be as hesitant because of your smile snd your happy aura

he truly loves cuddling snd physical touch, it makes him very clingy and he feels so much closer, emotionally & physically

he falls asleep so quickly, once hes nestled in snd happy hes tired, hes been yearning for someone to hold him and the fact that your protected and secured by him, being able to feel you wont leave, makes him trust you sm more

this is definitely a milestone if youre in a relationship, he truly loves you enough to push himself to do more

he may be distant after, as hes vulnerable, but warms up nicely after, and he will ask to do this more often

is still a bit shy, so the fact that you like it will loosen him up a bit

he feels closer to you, and less awkward or nervous about asking you for intimate things🫶

DoomHead

it was one night where he was entirely exhausted after a day of outing, where the minute he hit the bed he was out

he slightly missed the bed, and ended up falling asleep on you, arms outstretched to your sides like a pillow as he slept hard

your cheeks were burning, and embracing this nice moment, you held him comfortably as you drifted off to sleep, his breath hitting your neck as he slept heavier

eventually when the morning sun came through, he got up and went about his day, trying some to not wake you up from the way you two slept

he found it a little odd you didnt tell him to move, but what should he care, you two both slept in the end

when you got up, he was sitting at a chair in the kitchen with the paper, skimming the news for anything be wanted to see, giving you a tired hum as his goodmorning

"Could've moved me y'know. Fell asleep right ontop of ya."

his eyes moved from the paper slightly, seeing if you were disturbed, but when he saw a slight smile on your face with your chest faintly quickening, he was amused

both eyebrows raised with curious look, he wanted to know whats so funny

"What? Looks like that was your best nights sleep in a while honeybun."

he loved to use his sarcastic little petnames to lighten you up, but thr last thing he expected you to say was that you actually liked it

he laughs thinking youre joking, because that night he was just limp on you, but you said you eere serious as you made your breakfast

"You like me being laying on you, is my weight a pillow for you?"

hes still trying to grasp thr concept, but in the end he realizes that you truly did appreciate it, but he will keep being a dick about it

"Whatever you say darling,"

he does slightly enjoy it because he feels like he can let some of his stress go, and it leads to him being less tense as he gets usually throughout the day

he will talk to you the whole time, he has too much fun passing the time by getting into imaginary arguments where he gets annoyed, and eventually rests his chin on your chest while he sits in silence, cooling down

Lester Sinclair

he is too damn excited when he gets to hold you, bear hugs, resting his chin on your head or shoulder, kissing your forehead and pulling you along when your holding hands

so when you even mention the fact that you like it, hes curious, he wants to see why youre all flustered just asking

so after a ling day of work, he asks if you can 'do that cuddle thing'

he is also very careful when adjusting himself to s comfortable position, but he likes to pull you close to him as he smiles into your chest

his hat falls onto you and he likes to put it on you since youre like his ' gorgeous image', he thinks you look wonderful

very hearty laugh, so if he laughs with his head tilted on its side on your chest, you can feel the vibrations from it

he is such an open and chill boyfriend, he thinks this new way of cuddling is perfect and lived to bring it up in a fun light

he likes to try to stay awake since this is the time where you two talk about anything n everything, its calming and peaceful

but he is very prone to sleeping sweetly on you

he trusts you truly, and this is like a dream he never knew he was having that was fulfilled

Vincent Sinclair

if snything, he is the most thoughtful brother when it comes to this

are you sure? what if he hurts you? maybe hes too heavy for you? how could he live with himself if something happened?

he takes caution when you ask, and slowly transitions from sleeping by your side to resting on your chest lightly

while hes there he loves to admire your features, your face is so delicate and he wishes he could explain to you judt how encapsulating you look, but his muse could never be captured perfectly that would reflect their natural beauty

when you tell him youd want this, hes not weirded out, he understands to just want something that may seem ofd but is truly comforting to you

he takes strands of your hair in his hand to examine, putting his head sideways while he sleepily adores everything sbout you

rubbing his back is something that makes him melt into you, its so reassuring he loves it

if you fall asleep or begin to shoe signs your tired, he wants to fall asleep with you, so hell trace your body in a calming way

sometimes his hair may fall as a curtain when he looks over you, his hair is soft and strong, giving you two a little privacy curtain while he presses light kisses over you

just happy to be with you likr this, its almost a privilege to him to have soft and caring touches

Bo Sinclair

oh my god hes laughing when you tell him, he has small tears springing from the corners of his eyes from laughing because you outta be joking

youre not?? oh sweetheart, you want a hefty man like him to relax on you? if its what youd like

hes not exactly against it, hes surprised and amused you said anything like that, but to see what its like, why not

he thinks hell be able to outlast you, its almost like a game of chicken for him, lets see how ling till youre begging him to move, and he will, smugly

but as you two rest and grt settled in, you have thr most serene look on your face like this is enjoyable, and he gets his doubts

he soon realizes this is a battle he wont win, and thats how the first time went

second time was slightly better, he can be a heavy sleeper when hes truly at peace, and a slight snorer, so if you feel his head just rest hesvily and a noise come from him, hes out cold

probably the best nights sleep he got in a bit

likes to mess with you subtly, flicking your nose softly or playing and abruptly coming to a stop when he runs his hands through your hair

he likes to see how relaxed tou get, its impressive to him

------------------------------------------------------------

i finslly got to this im so sorry🤞🤞 but i hope u like it!!

requests are open, masterlist is up!

#house of wax #slasher #slashers #lester sinclair x you #lester sinclair x reader #lester sinclair #bo sinclair x you #bo sinclair x reader #bo sinclair #vincent sinclair x you #vincent sinclair x reader #vincent sinclair #slasher x reader #doomhead #doomhead 31 #31 #doomhead x reader #doomhead x you #otis driftwood x you #otis driftwood x reader #house of 1000 corpses #otis driftwood #brahms heelshire #the boy 2016 #brahms heelsire x reader #brahms heelshire x you #michael myers #rz michael myers #michael myers x reader

[sanjisboyfie]

keep safe mc headcanons im sleepy

-> covers the corners of tables when you duck your head under them ALL THE TIME without fail, his hand is there. and he doesnt even seem to notice he does that?? hes talking to someone, noticed your picking something you dropped under the table, quickly moves his hand, and stull maintains perfect conversation

-> an advid grey sweatpants wearer probably paired sleeveless tanks as well, only cuz hed be most comfortavle in them snd thats rlly it. he doesnt get the whole appeal behind it, or rather he just isnt aware abt the entire thing. he judt wears it cuz theyre comfy for him and his inhumanely gargantuam, thick, girthy, massive dick

-> does calisthenics to work out along w a lot of cardio. his figure is ... hehe

-> complains a lot abt luffy being a clingy sleeper but hes the exact same way. if u slept in the same bed as him, but not like cuddling/near each other, when u wake up he will be big spooning you and snoring on top of you. its actually a disease he had where he has to hug or cuddle whatever is closest to him and genuienly goodnluck in trying to escape this fuckign massine unit of a man.

-> oh my god thought abt this one jus now. but i mentioned before hes a chronic manspreaded. yeah its terrible. genuinely terrible to sit next to him anywhere. the dining table/restaurant, in public anywhere idk, anywhere u would need to dit next to him -- its a pain. he doesnt know he doed it and its so fucking annoying. bc if u correct him or ask he just fixes himself he will and then he'll apologize but then he'll go back to manspreadung line ten mins later. (if you tell him it rlly bothers u he offers you his thigh to sit on, with a light tap to his MEATY AND MUSCULAR legs and a soft "cmere"- someone cage ne im going insane for a man that isnt even canonically or literally real)

#keep safe mc #lazy headcanons #this is like 50% serious #50% unserious #only bc of how tired i am rn #keep safe mc x reader #its that serious #keep safe mc x me because this is indeed completely self indulgent

[starstruck-owie]

Thinking about cowboy au Red vs blue, COWBOY GRIF oh my god fucking drools DUDE COWBOY TUCKER agggg shouts idk what their bases would be but holy shit i need more people writing this shit down i beg anyways yapping below

Like okay imagine like grif laying in haybales or wtv the fuck and his cowboy hate is like over his face DROOLS SCREAMS SHOUTS OH MY GOD. Need grif so bad sigh and then i feel like cowboy sarge is just like normal sargehonestly. SKINNY COWBOY SIMMONS OH MY GOD wai would he stil be a cyborg dude??? I mean sure why not fuck it honestly maybe sarge is just a little into robotics for fuck knows what reason, AND THEN BLUE TEAM oh my god blue team butch flowers cowboy shouts oh my god need him AND THEN HE DIES of like idk some shit cowboys get and then church the cowboy oh my god i need him he has like noidea how to do cowboy shit and i also dont know what cowboy shit im just like dicking around but i imagine hes on a horse or wtv and he tries to lasso a runaway cow or sheep or sum and fails like several times b4 tucker comes in and clutches up and oh my god cowboy tucker i fucking need him so bad. And then like cowboy caboose i imagine hanging out with the cows ONE OF THE COWS NAMED SHEILA and he like just lays on her and talks abt shit caboose talks abt an oh my god i love this already screams and cries

BACK TO RED TEAM doc and donut oh em gee cowboy doc drools ANYWAYS doc is silly and is like rahh the animals deserve space yadada and donut is his silly self but a cowboy which is honestly semi normal cause didnt beo grow up on a farm id bet hes the best cowboy dude out there hes not scared to get on his hands and knees, get a little dirty while doing some hard work,, kms ANYWAYS lopez,, how would thag work man what if uhhh TRACTOR HELP nonono i guess he’d still be robot judt with like a cowboy hat on LMAO lovw them

#tucker rvb #red vs blue #rvb #rvb simmons #rvb grif #rvb sarge #rvb church #rvb caboose #rvb donut #rvb doc #rvb lopez #sheila #cowboy au #inedthemsofuckingbadman #evil-weevils

[bwoahtastic]

Pls the alphas just fooling around annoying the betas while Logie is just there reading or hanging out, at first he just slicks up a little because he's never heard an alpha say things like that before. But they don't stop and he can't either. Once the alphas are done with their lil experiment they notice Logan practically presenting himself smelling delicious.

Lewis would be the one to bring the pretty omega to his room and just absolutely worship him and shower him with praise. The pack members would definitely be able to bear that and tease them about it later.

Ppss Logan judt sitting in the pack room reading a book and drinking some tea, minding his own business so he is left alone (he defo needs alone time a lot) and the Alphas are busy torturing kev who just looks increasingly more ready to punch someone in the face but is also amused at the same time by how hard they are trying and failing.

Logan squirming a bit because the words and tones are starting to get to him, making him slick up a little, but when pack alpha Lewis joins in, poor thing just gets all fuzzy in th3 head! He doesn't realise he got up on his knees on the sofa, resting his front against the back rest in a quite obvious presentation attempt until the voices quiet down and he gets more coherent again, seeing them all look at him.

Logan panicking so much and hiding in his room and Lewis follows him, apologising profusely and hugging Logan when he agrees to it. Logan still so turned on but Lewis will happily help ofcourse, and the whole pack can hear it lol!

Also kev might not he affected by alpha voice, but when they later try with Logan going "please come here?" In his sweetest voice ever, kev stumbles a few steps in his direction before catching himself lol

#asks #a/b/o #smut

[jerktournament]

ROUND ONE - Five Pebbles (Rain World) VS Dingo (Pikmin)

!!! PROPAGANDA BELOW !!!

FIVE PEBBLES: "(tw suicide mention) He's a robot built by ancient civilization with suicidal tendencies that no longer exists (I wonder why). Because of his civilization he's being peer pressured into being suicidal, then fails to kill himself and in the process accidentally almost kills his sister and also gives himself turbo cancer. He then shuts himself of the outside world and hates and blames everyone of his own failures and refuses to get help from his friends or sister. He is an asshole to the protagonist, killing you on sight if you enter on his room too many times (3) and if you're playing as Gourmand (big sized creature) he fatshames you calling you "rotund" :( But he ends up sacrificing the last thing he has left in order to improve the situation of her sister. And his story doesn't go any better after that so he ends up being a poor little meow meow that I can't but feel bad for him even after all he's done."

DINGO: "hes such a jerk you have no idea. so he tries to act tough and play it cool but hes kinda bad at doi g it. he has a cartoonishly hilarious crush on his captain and faints when she mentions taking him out to dinner (as her thanks, not on a date). hes aleays has a problem with the newbie (you) and when u ask him for help on certain missions (because hes a ranger) he wont use pikmin at all. he judt. blows the place up. also look at him. hes cant NOT be a jerk with that face."

#five pebbles #dingo pikmin #rain world #pikmin #dingo #5 pebbles #dingo looks so cute and mean akjasjka. and five pebbles's design looks sick!! #poll

[mariacallous]

Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of state and national security advisor who died on 29 November, lived out the latter part of his life among celebrities and hangers on, basking in a curious prestige that overshadowed his war crimes and the amoral support he proffered to fascist dictators. Indeed, until his final days Kissinger was able to command a large and sycophantic audience wherever he went - an audience that included influential journalists and scholars, former presidents and presidential candidates as well as various other powerful figures.

Proximity to power invariably exhibits its own gravitational pull. But much of the reverence afforded to ‘Dr’ Kissinger is a product of the Kissinger Myth, a carefully constructed tale of strategic genius said to have taken place while he was at the helm of one of the most powerful offices in America. The myth has been propagated by Kissinger himself and by countless others. The late historian Tony Judt summed the Myth up succinctly some fifteen years ago:

‘We found the world in a mess, [the Kissinger Myth] says: the cold war still frozen, the US trapped in a hopeless war in Southeast Asia, incoherent and contradictory American alliances and dealings with allies and enemies alike. In six short years we executed two truly radical departures: the opening to China and détente and arms agreements with the Soviet Union. We extricated the country from its Asian imbroglio, we propounded the “Nixon doctrine” whereby the US would support foreign allies without getting militarily embroiled in local conflicts, we set in place the basis for Middle Eastern dialogue, we established enduring personal and institutional relations with foreign statesmen, and we laid the groundwork for the great changes of the decades to come.’

Not all of this is without merit (as Judt notes). The opening of American diplomacy to China as well as arms control agreements with the Soviet Union may be seen as significant foreign policy achievements. But when setting those achievements against the carnival of violence that Kissinger unleashed on the world - indiscriminately raining bombs on civilian populations and pursuing policies whose bills would fall due in subsequent years - his record looks far less impressive. The illegal bombing of Cambodia was accurately described by William Bundy, foreign affairs advisor to presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson (and himself an architect of the Vietnam war), as‘a black page in the history of American foreign policy’. During the 3,600 B-52 bombing raids carried out in Cambodia over a four year period (and kept hidden from Congress) hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed. This ‘grand strategic thinking’ on the part of Kissinger - together with Nixon and Alexander Haig - created the conditions in which the genocidal Khmer Rouge would come to power. It’s hard to look at this sequence of events without concluding that Kissingerian realpolitik failed on its own terms.

Of course the biggest myth of all holds that Kissinger, by his strategic genius, brought about an end to the Vietnam war through the Paris settlement of 1973. This is an inversion of actual events. We now know that Nixon and Kissinger deliberately prolonged the war in order to trumpet their own peace deal - a deal they oversold to the American public and which subsequently unravelled soon after as South Vietnam fell to the Communists. Again, not exactly a resounding victory for grand strategic thinking.

The stated aim of such policies was (often enough) to prevent smaller nations from ‘going communist’. Nowhere did this policy bear as much rotten fruit as in Latin America. In the late 1970s human rights groups estimate that nearly 30,000 people were ‘disappeared’ by the American-backed junta of Jorge Videla in Argentina (in collaboration, predictably, with the hierarchy of the Catholic Church). Victims of the regime reported seeing swastikas and pictures of Hitler on the walls of their torture chambers. US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger granted $50,000,000 in security assistance to the junta. “If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly,” Kissinger told Argentina’s foreign minister. He would later inform the junta that it had done ‘an outstanding job in wiping out terrorist forces’.

Nearly a decade earlier Nixon and Kissinger had helped an equally revolting cabal of military officers to overthrow Chile’s democratically elected Socialist president Salvador Allende. Kissinger played a direct role in a plan that involved the kidnap and subsequent killing of Gen René Schneider, the conservative head of the Chilean armed forces who had pledged to stay loyal to the Chilean constitution. Following General Pinochet’s subsequence coup, 17 years of fascist rule would follow in which thousands of innocent people were murdered, tortured and imprisoned by the military dictatorship. Unsurprisingly the Chilean ambassador to the United States greeted Kissinger’s death with a show of contempt: Kissinger, he wrote on Twitter (X), was ‘a man whose historical brilliance never managed to hide his profound moral wretchedness’.

Support under Nixon and Kissinger for the Shah of Iran had a similarly baleful affect on America’s reputation in the Middle East, while America’s influence over India is coloured to this day by that administration’s support for the Pakistan dictator Yahya Khan in 1971 as the latter violently suppressed riots in East Pakistan (which would culminate in the region breaking away and becoming Bangladesh). Such support was proffered to Pakistan on the basis that the latter was on good terms with China whereas India (one of Asia’s few democracies) was neutral and not sufficiently hostile toward the Soviet Union (‘Why is it our business how they govern themselves?’ asked Kissinger of Pakistan). Not only were 3 million Bengalis killed by the Pakistani junta, but as with so many of Kissinger’s ventures, the enterprise failed on its own terms: the US backed the wrong side and subsequent American leaders were dealt a hand of reduced influence in the region.

One also does well to remember that peripheral nations do not always remain peripheral. Venture south of the Rio Grande today and a suspicion of North American motivations still emanates from the democratic parliaments whose existence Kissingerian diplomacy was often a bloody impediment to. One reason the United States is finding it hard to get countries such as Brazil and Chile to support Ukraine against Russia is due to a deep well of suspicion that has some of its origins in the Kissinger years. Anti-Americanism in the region did not start with Kissinger and Nixon, but like a pair of arsonists they doused the fire with enormous quantities of combustible fluid.

Big power politics - and the contempt for small states and ordinary people that flows from it - is not the preserve of the right. In recent times sections of the left have taken to viewing the world through the prism of ‘spheres of influence’ and big power blocs. When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 both the reactionary right and the isolationist left rushed to giddily cite the ‘realist’ scholar John Mearsheimer. Russian aggression was the West’s fault for attempting to ‘move Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit’, as Mearsheimer had written. Whose ‘orbit’ the Ukrainians themselves wished to be in was considered immaterial. The beauty of realist theory is that such concerns - considered beneath the purview of the sweeping strategic calculus - may be loftily brushed aside.

While Kissinger gave American backing to dictatorships and death squads - in places including but not limited to Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Bolivia, Uruguay and Brazil - he did so under the guise of eradicating ‘Communists’ and ‘terrorists’. Yet Kissinger was more than happy to cosy up to Mao Tse-tung and side with his hardline successors as they butchered thousands of students in Tiananmen Square (hosing their remains down nearby drains). ‘Since no government in the world would have tolerated having the main square of its capital occupied, a crackdown was therefore inevitable,’ wrote Kissinger, the mythical foe of dictatorial Communism. While Mikhail Gorbachev was opening up the Soviet Union to his ‘new thinking’, Kissinger steadfastly sides with Beijing’s unreconstructed Stalinists.

Kissinger effectively became a paid asset to China in later life. The increasingly toad-like Kissinger would show up regularly in Beijing, squatting next to some Stalinist gargoyle who’d taken the afternoon off from sending people to forced labour camps. This dynamic had been set in motion much earlier. The former assistant secretary of state Richard H. Solomon described Kissinger’s memoirs as ‘replete with almost awestruck recollections of the personal escorts, elaborate tours, and lavish banquets meticulously arranged by his Chinese hosts during his nine visits between 1971 and 1976’.

The fawning eulogies to Kissinger are I suspect a reflex action; some people can’t help but transform into a pool of sycophantic mush when they fall into the slipstream of a powerful individual. It is not a conscious or calculated thing so much as a product of a certain sensibility. The merest whiff of power and status and the cliches start to roll off the tongue in a great torrent. Here we have ascended the soaring peaks of what is sometimes called ‘civility’ politics.

I suppose this was inevitable. After all if you accept that Kissinger was a monster a lot of your other assumptions about the world will necessarily unravel. And so you cling faithfully to the shore, mechanically disgorging a few carefully road-tested pieties at the appropriate time. Kissinger meanwhile goes back to the dust from whence he came, the dust to which his victims long ago returned. In a just universe they would be there waiting for him, the little people contemptuously written out of history by the Historical Giant™. In our imperfect version it falls to the living to try to drown out the ingratiating wail of Henry Kissinger’s sycophantic hangers on. We owe that much to his victims at least.