Recently, several pundits on the political Right have jumped in with the Democrats on the anti-Russia bandwagon. I've often said that the Left has no monopoly on NPCs and it's really beginning to show. There seems to be a major strain of thought---brought on the Neocons of the Bush Era---that American strength is measured by its ability to push around other sovereign countries up to and including obliterating them with military force. It shouldn't be surprising that Senate Republicans---the same people criticizing Hunter Biden---are heavily represented on the Ukrainian Government's foreign lobbying payroll.
"Firms working for Ukrainian interests have inundated Congressional offices, think-tanks, and journalists with more than 10,000 messages and meetings in 2021, according to an analysis of Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, filings for a forthcoming report from the Quincy Institute,” the think tank’s Ben Freeman writes today. “To put this extraordinary campaign into perspective, the Saudi lobby — known for being one of the largest foreign lobbies in D.C. — reported 2,834 contacts, barely a quarter of what Ukraine’s agents have done...
“Congress has been the primary target of Ukraine’s agents, with over 300 House and Senate staff and members of Congress on the receiving end of more than 8,000 emails, phone calls, and meetings with Ukraine’s lobbyists. Agents representing the Ukrainian Federation of Employers of the Oil and Gas Industry, or UFEOGI, the largest association of energy companies in Ukraine, have flooded Capitol Hill with headlines like ‘Ukrainians call on U.S. Senate to sanction Putin’s pipeline weapon,’ and others claiming ‘Moscow regards concessions as a sign of weakness.’ "The lobbyists seem to have found a friendly ear in Senate Republicans, in particular Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX),” the former boss of Yorktown Solutions’ Daniel Vajdich, who represents the UFEOGI. Outreach was also “focused intently on senators who co-sponsored 2020 legislation to block completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, including Cruz; John Barrasso (R-Wyo.); Tom Cotton, (R-Ark.); and Ron Johnson, (R-Wis.)."
Since September 11th, 1990 when George Bush Sr delivered his infamous New World Order speech, American Foreign Policy has shifted completely from non-intervention, containment, and free-trade to negotiation at gunpoint. Here is a very simple question for the American Right to ponder: How have 30+ years of all of these invasions, bombings, occupations, regime changes, color revolutions, embargoes, and carving up territories helped the average American in the slightest? We'll give a moment to think about it.
What exactly in American society has improved since 1990? Are we less divided? Do we have smaller, less intrusive government? Have small businesses been thriving? Have we seen price deflation? Are our schools better? Is our Standard of Living higher? Are traditional families stronger?
How has conducting US Foreign Policy with a sledgehammer done us any good at all?
The short answer is that it hasn't. In fact, it seems to have turned into the Neocon version of Virtue-Signalling. We're still a great, exceptional power because we can make Iraq bend to our will. We can push one button and wipe out the Libyan Army. We can force Europe to impose sanctions on Yemen and starve them into submission. We can create countries like Kosovo and South Sudan out of whole cloth just because we feel like it. We can sail warships in Chinese waters just to show them who's boss. We're the toughest kids on the block. Sure, it doesn't create jobs or strengthen families, but our will is law, and don't forget it.
This isn't Conservatism---in fact, it's not even traditional Liberalism. It's simply being a bully (in street terms) and being a tyrant (in political terms). Take for example the West's reaction to Russia's intervention in Ukraine. It's simply an extension of the same thuggery that these Elite scumbags have imposed on their own populations during the Scamdemic: isolating Russia, freezing their assets, Cancel Culture, sending thugs and weapons into Ukraine, barring them from international events, psy-ops, censoring opposing views, issuing mandates and ultimatums, etc. They're even trying to make a martyr of the cutthroat Zelensky like they elevated the thug George Floyd to the status of a national hero.
What's happening to Russia right now isn't new: it's been standard operating procedure for the Elites since the 1990s. Putin is now the same demon they made of Noriega, Milosevic, Hussein, Mubarak, Qaddafi: the new Hitler, the new threat to world peace and our way of life (as if that was worth saving), and all of it really served one purpose. That purpose is distraction.
It's distraction from the fact that we have a failed democracy, a controlled economy, a failed legal system, a failed school system,---in short, America is a failed society with nothing other than our military power holding us together. I think that on a subconscious level, many Conservatives fetishize our Military and Foreign Policy because they see it as the last remaining symbol of American strength. This is an illusion. A nation that can only survive by its ability to beat its opposition into submission is not a strong society. If anyone is inclined to think otherwise, take a good look at Canada, because that's what our future looks like.
This is not to say that we don't need a strong military capable of defending our country or even participating in legitimate peacekeeping missions or territorial expansion if necessary. But beneath that we need a government that functions, a legal system that keeps peace, an economy based on free and fair trade with a dignified standard of living, strong families, strong churches, and schools that actually train and educate people.
As I've said many times before, our problems as a country are largely of our own making. That includes the so-called Conservative element who like pointing the finger at the failed policies of the Liberal-controlled areas with their passive-aggressive "I live in Red State, sux to be you" attitudes without looking out their own windows and seeing how it affects them too. They're also the first to grab on to any moral crusade to clean up some other country on the other side of the planet while their own country is in a downward spiral.
We need to throw all of these ideologies and scapegoating overboard and start focusing on how to make things actually work. It used to work. Maybe this would be a good place to start for the Right: repudiating Neoconservatism.
Amen! 3 cheers for this post. I've been pleading with people, those who want to be an armchair quarterback or social media warrior during this conflict, to try to become a conscientious observer and objector. This is a really complicated situation, not a simple case of "Putin-bad."
ReplyDeleteRecently I listened to Jordan Peterson interview Dr. Frederick W. Kagan, a former professor of history with a Ph.D. in Russian and Soviet military history from Yale. I didn't agree with everything that was said, but it was an interesting discussion going back through history and talking about the Russian Orthodox church, history, their relationship with Rome, protestants, and Western domination. It was refreshing to hear some in depth discussion rather than the usual knee jerk reaction that's all uniformed and full of mindless bluster.
Even here at the local level, I'm fond of many conservatives, but they are so out of touch with average Americans and average problems, that I can't envision them as being very helpful. How can you solve problems you can't even recognize? It's often all about "I got mine" and "sux to be you," just as you've said.
This is excellent and I wish I'd read it sooner. Might have to repost, more pertinent now than ever.
ReplyDelete