One of the things I spend time doing is reading right-wing propaganda so you don’t have to. This is something I began in 2016, right after the lost election. I began to look at sites like Right Wing Watch and I realized that had I been paying attention, I could have predicted Trump and MAGA. The signs of a reactionary backlash to Obama, buttressed by religious fanatics, and a weakened GOP, devoid of leadership, were all there. Hillary was a good candidate, but she was not the right candidate for the moment, anymore than Mitt Romney was in his moment. The morning after the election, in my depression, I vowed to stay on top of these things so that I would never be blindsided again. While I dreaded the reelection of Trump, it was no surprise. A shock yes, but not a surprise.
One newsletter I get is from a former Breitbart News London bureau chief and staffer to Nigel Farange, Raheem Kassam. He’s a propagandist par excellence. While the rest of the world is castigating Trump and Vance for their “cruelty” in mistreating Volodymr Zelensky, Kassam opines that Zelensky, was treated like royalty in the Oval Office. We have a black/white set of perceptions here, folks. They can’t both be true. Let’s see what the French Prime Minister said today about Trump-Vance’s joint embarrassment.
“On Friday night, in the Oval Office of the White House, a staggering scene unfurled before the lenses of the entire world, marked by brutality, a desire to humiliate, with the goal of making Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy fold through threats, so that he gives in to the demands of his aggressors,” said Bayrou during a parliamentary debate. “All this was summed up in one phrase before the planet’s cameras: ‘Either you find a deal with Putin or we will abandon you.’”
“For the honor of democratic responsibility, for the honor of Ukraine and, I dare say, for the honor of Europe, President Zelenskyy did not fold and I think we can show him our appreciation,” Bayrou continued, prompting the applause of members of Parliament.
And the Prime Minster of the UK vows “unwavering support” for Ukraine.
'You have full backing across the United Kingdom'
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer tells Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, 'We stand with you and Ukraine for as long as it may take'
— Peter Stefanovic (@PeterStefanovi2) March 1, 2025
That is the stance of Europe, of NATO, of civilized nations on all the continents of the globe. And what do the right-wing loonies say instead? This gaslighting:
Now toss in the temper tantrums of those who wish to see Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a man himself who would be king, treated like royalty in America’s Oval Office and think to yourself if you want the nation to endure another Afghan-style debacle…[…]
We’re always told we should “stand with Ukraine,” but we’re rarely (not never) told why. The adage that we should necessarily side with a liberal “democracy” (elections, when?) is farcical, given how the Western world has propped up dictators and terror factions and has scarcely showered itself in glory in recent decades in the context of classical liberalism (free speech) and democratic values (stolen, canceled, or defrauded elections).
From lawfare to outright cheating, the finger-wagging that once convinced an entire hemisphere to cheer on the dropping of billions of dollars of bombs in the desert for the short-term aid of the defense industry and the long-term aid of the Taliban no longer works. So no, we don’t always need to side with the so-called victim, and that presupposes we view Ukraine as a victimized Western liberal democracy in the first instance. We do not.
When I visited the Maidan protests in 2014, it was abundantly obvious the fight was the salient of an expansionist bureaucracy (the European Union) more than anything else. Ideology played almost no part, political philosophy was out the window. This was a good old-fashioned power game, a Eurasian civil war for resources and, dare I say, lebensraum. That’s not to defend Putin’s response but rather to contextualize it.
“Contextualize” means to rationalize his invasion. There is no rationalization for Putin either invading Crimea in 2014 or the attack on Ukraine in 2022. None. It is the aggression of a dictator with delusions of the old Russian empire, pure and simple, but spinmeisters can alway find a way to make it sound rational. Gaslighting at the Ph.D. level. These are the people who profess Trump is playing 12-dimensional chess and is always “ten moves ahead.” Trump has trouble walking ten steps from his golf cart.
Zelenskyy had a point in the Oval Office when he said, “you have nice ocean,” but lost the room with the follow-up, “you will feel it in the future.”
THE TRUMP-VANCE DOCTRINE.
This line made Trump and Vance so irate because their resolution doesn’t involve a decades-long conflict—a ‘white Iraq’, as I wrote for Newsweek in 2022. It involves a fundamental shift in global power dynamics that ends with China on the back foot and Russia squarely more interested in the West than the East. Ukraine is actually too small for the Trump-Vance doctrine. America’s appetite (see Greenland, Canada, etc) is greater today, but requires no blood sacrifice nor billion-dollar bombs to sate.
So it’s MAGA manifest destiny, folks. OMFG. To be actually reading this. I guess Mars is part of the Trump-Vance doctrine, since Elon’s involved. Again, you’re reading the words of a Breitbart editor and Farange crony, what do you expect?
This is all against the backdrop of a prope mortem Putin and an impending opportunity for Russians to see Americans as their friends and allies rather than their natural enemies.
The neoconservatives, neoliberals, and globalists should be pleased, if they held true to their public pronouncements about democracy promotion, Westernization, and even regime change in Russia. Those are an almost certainty in the coming decade if America plays its cards right.
“Playing our cards right” is caving into Putin and letting him conquer Europe. Are we that stupid? Apparently the Brits, French and Germans think so, they are making contingency plans for life without the United States. And they are right to do so.
But they’re not cheering Trump and Vance’s efforts because, quite simply, they were always more interested in war than peace, conflict over resolution, and cash piles from their lobbyists in Arlington, McClean, and Chantilly, Virginia.
It feels almost trite, at this point, to write it. But it is true. The elites want war. As surely as the pro-life lobby found reasons to nitpick against President Trump during the GOP primary, fearing an end to a decades-long gravy train, the defense industry is now jerking its knees, triggered by the only horror that could ever force them to wince: peace.
Nobody sane wants war. Certainly not the “elites.” This is the new hustle here, that Zelenskyy insists on continuing the war. No, he wants it to come to an end more than anybody. But selling out Ukraine’s minerals and agreeing to perpetual occupation by Russia is a bridge too far. But that is the right-wing stance and that is the Trump-Vance doctrine, at first blush.
Forget the Marshall Plan which worked so well for 80 years, folks, we have the Trump-Vance doctrine. Trump and Vance between them have six years experience in government, (think about that now — six years collectively between a president and vice president) yet they are going to singlehandedly undo the work not only of the past 80 years but basically undermine all that this nation has stood for, for the past 250 years.
Sheer madness, but then consider the source. This is what we’re up against, anti-American propaganda, proselytized by none other than the president and vice president of this nation. We are in some deep shit.
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Friends, if you can help with a donation or subscription during these difficult times, it would be appreciated. We are part of an industry-wide media recession due to the loss on November 5. But I have no doubt that we shall overcome. Thank you. Ursula
Isn’t it odd that a side that loves showing images of martial splendor and ‘strength’ so readily equates ‘success’ and ‘peace’ as abject surrender?
It’s quite revealing how they equate their own craven, cowardly capitulation to the dark side of Russian dictatorship with their ideal model of how everyone else should behave.
Just because they are spineless losers they think everyone else should join them in their little gulag.
We’re about to have some new words to replace ‘quisling’ and ‘Benedict Arnold’ in our lexicon.
While they find out everyone else would rather be a patriot than a traitor.
A small correction: the loathsome Brexiteer Nigel’s surname is actually Farage, although many folks refer to him as Fromage. He wants to be the next Prime Minister of Britain, which would be almost as bad as Trumpler is for America.
Hey Ukraine…listen to the song Ohio by Crosby Stills Nash…substitute your own lyric…” tin soliders and Nixon coming…we’re finally on our own…”