BUCK: Has World War III already started, Zelensky puts out there. That was last night on Lester Holt’s NBC News show. And that was obviously through a translator. But Zelensky calling for us to consider the possibility that we’re already in World War III?

World War III “may have already started” and “we have the whole civilization at stake,” @ZelenskyyUa told @LesterHoltNBC. https://t.co/gIVKg2CA2D pic.twitter.com/CbvByLZNzg

— Mediaite (@Mediaite) March 17, 2022

That’s pretty bold talk, I have to say, given what we’re seeing so far. World War III would be multiple combatant countries going at each other in the battlefield, and we’re not there yet.

This is important. It’s important we understand what the stakes are that that we get all this right from the outside because with each passing day it feels like there is a louder chorus of people in America and in the West and Europe, but specifically in America who are saying, come on. Is Putin really going to react as badly as we think if we do this no-fly zone? Are we sure about that? We’re not doing enough. We’re not doing enough! This is what you’re hearing frequently.

Now, notice Zelensky made the comparison to the Second World War. I think it would be also instructive to think about the First World War when the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in what is now the former Yugoslavia led to a series of cascading events that brought the whole world — yes, a world war — into conflict with each other.

I think that would be historically instructive in this moment. And I also think we need to be very cautious that there’s a sense — and, Clay, this is reflected I believe in a poll here on the Ukraine war. What we have been fighting for 20 years in this country are largely counterinsurgency operations in countries that have very limited military capability to begin with and we’re essentially doing policing and nation building with our military. A war with Russia would be something quite different from that.

There’s a Pew poll out that shows 35% of Americans support the U.S. taking military action even if it risks a nuclear conflict with Russia. I sit here and I say, I think these people have never read about Hiroshima and Nagasaki? I think they don’t understand — the same way that they just did I understand what a no-fly zone meant, otherwise I worry a lot of people who through the mass mobilization we’ve seen over covid, they’ve kind of lost their minds and they can be mobilized to whatever the apparatus tells them they have to move toward.

CLAY: That’s a chilling number, Buck. Think about that. One in every three people, basically, in America is okay with us going into Ukraine even if it starts nuclear war.

Now, to your point, Buck, I always like to say, and I think it’s instructive, think about the person of the most average intelligence that you know in your life, 50% of people are dumber than that person. So, you know, average doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s a huge scholar.

But when I hear that 35% of people are okay with nuclear war, the only way that I can even conceive of how that could happen, Buck, is, they don’t know what nuclear war actually is. And that’s because, I think, over the last 35 years or so, really hasn’t been much talk about nuclear war.

When I was a young kid in the late eighties and everybody was still dealing with the Russia situation and the Cold War, that was a conversation. But I think a lot of people, Buck, who grew up entirely in the nineties and the 2000s and the 2010s, I think they lack all conception of what nuclear war actually might be like. And we know, Buck, that the historical knowledge in this country is insanely low. It’s like if it didn’t happen in the last 10 years, people don’t know anything about it.

In the same way that we’ve allowed inflation to get back up to potential double digits because most people don’t really have a lot of experience in the Jimmy Carter double-digit inflation era. Whatever has not happened in recent history, we presume will not happen again, and then when history repeats itself we all look like idiots, and I think that’s where a lot of those people are right now.

BUCK: First of all, Clay, that’s why we have TikTok influencers to make sure we remember all of our historicalized facts and stuff. So —

CLAY: Did you see the TikTok — first of all, she was — the one that I saw, the brunette, like, gorgeous. I can see why she would be popular on TikTok. Did you see the video of her talking about the Ukraine war?

The White House told the TikTok influencers who were invited on the zoom call to blame the high gas prices on Putin. pic.twitter.com/qBCEA6r2C7

— Libs of Tik Tok (@libsoftiktok) March 14, 2022

BUCK: I did. I did indeed.

CLAY: I bet you thought the same thing as me. She’s gorgeous. I’m not surprised that people watch her, but the idea that the White House is briefing this girl to talk to people is terrifying to me.

BUCK: Think about this. The only reason to give a White House briefing to TikTok influencers is to try to give greater credibility to their influence on these issues. Otherwise they could do this really complicated thing called, read the newspaper, like, open —

CLAY: I’m not sure that girl can read.

BUCK: I mean —

CLAY: She’s good-looking. I’m not sure she can read. But I think —

BUCK: Very influential.

CLAY: Very influential. Yeah. No kidding. I will say this. To me the reason why you talk to the TikTok influencers is because you’re setting the table for them to influence the election in 2022 and 2024 because they trust that — first of all, it’s flattering even if you’re an imbecile to have the White House reach out to you and say we want to give you a briefing.

We know that there’s no existing knowledge from this group, right? So you’re talking basically to a blank slate. So they will take whatever they are told and regurgitate it for their audience. And to me it’s a test case for the midterms and 2024 when I would bet the Biden White House is gonna try to convince all these young idiots that are sitting around watching TikTok influencers if they vote against Democrats, then the world’s gonna end.

BUCK: I just gotta say that I’m happy that at least on the no-fly zone, increasingly — I don’t know. Maybe some — even these Democrat senators listening to this show because everything that we’ve been saying in recent days about a no-fly zone would actually entail air strikes on the ground against ground targets, and now you’re actually blowing up Russian forces that aren’t even in the sky, never mind shooting planes out of the sky. Here’s Senator Chris Coons saying just that.

COONS: After we tried to force a no-fly zone, not only would we have American pilots confronting Russian pilots and shooting at each other, but we would have to take out Russian air defense systems that are in Russia and in Belarus. That’s how we’d effectively gain control of the airspace over Ukraine. That’s a step I’m not willing to support, but I do think we should give Ukraine every possible stall that will allow them to prevent Russia from succeeding by using air against them.

BUCK: He’s correct. I think it’s so important that what we’re talking about something of this gravity, that the wrong set of ideas, the wrong narrative here embraced by enough people in this country could lead to our military having to fight against the Russian military, we would be losing our men and women in a fight for the sovereignty of Ukraine — which a lot of Americans listening to this right now, look. We all feel badly for what’s happening to the people of Ukraine. We all want them to, you know, kick out the Russian invader. This never should have happened. But we also don’t want to go to war about the sovereignty of Ukraine, like meaning, we, the American people, this is not our fight.

I’m glad that more accurate information about something like a no-fly zone is getting out there. I think at some level people might have to start thinking about, what does a nuclear strike from Russia actually entail? What does that look like. If Russia fires off an ICBM you can set a clock before a U.S. city is likely, although there’s people talk about countermeasures, hits, and there would be a nuclear explosion that would kill hundreds of thousands of people, if not more, right away. That’s what a nuclear war with Russia would entail, everybody.

CLAY: Bipartisanship, Buck, is a good thing when it comes to avoiding nuclear war.

BUCK: Yes. I guess this is where I’m gonna have to say, I break from I think some conservatives a little bit on this issue in the media. It is more important to me that Biden get this right than it is that we get to make fun of Biden for being an idiot and say how weak he is and everything else. That is true on so many issues, but on this issue I just want him to get it right. I don’t care about scoring the political points.

CLAY: If he gets it wrong, a city could cease to exist. I gotta give credit, again, ’cause it does seem like the Senate in particular — there have been some wing nuts in the House who have gone off and said crazy things, but leaving aside Lindsey Graham going on and saying, hey, we gotta get Putin assassinated, which I still think is kind of crazy to say on television or anywhere, for that matter, with a big audience.

But I do think there have been reasonably intelligent Republican and Democratic senators who have looked at the severity of the situation and recognized that getting involved in a military conflict which could lead to nuclear war is something that should be avoided and we should have bipartisan agreement on that.