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Cathy Young on Putin's American Fans
As she explains, admiration for Putin on the US right is rooted in a combination of illiberalism, nationalism, and cultural grievance.
At the UnPopulist site, Cathy Young has a valuable analysis of Vladimir Putin's admirers on the political right in the US:
[W]hile opposition to aid to Ukraine doesn't necessarily entail support for Vladimir Putin…. Putin-friendly themes have been increasingly prominent on the right. At this point, pro-Putinism is no longer an undercurrent in right-wing rhetoric: it's on the surface.
But not all Putin-friendly conservatives are the same. For some, their hatred of the American left overrides any feelings they have about Putin. Others are more ideological: they oppose the Western liberal project itself. Untangling these different strains is key to explaining why so many on today's right embrace views that, until recently, would have gotten them branded Kremlin stooges by other conservatives….
[Tucker] Carlson reflects the dominant mode on the Trumpist right: if not actively pro-Putin, then at best anti-anti-Putin. The anti-anti-Putinists may concede that Putin is kinda bad, but only to insist that other things are far worse: Mexican drug cartels, progressive philanthropist George Soros, "the left," or America's "ruling class." Like the left-wing Soviet apologists of old, they make up faux political prisoners in America to suggest moral equivalency with the dictatorship in the Kremlin….
It's hardly news by now that many American right-wingers see Putin's Russia as the antithesis of Western "wokeness." This is especially true with regard to sexual and gender norms: I noted the beginnings of this trend in 2013, when several right-wing groups and conservative pundits praised a Russian law censoring "propaganda" of homosexuality. Discussing the phenomenon recently in the context of the GOP's anti-Ukraine turn, David French pointed to such examples as far-right strategist Steve Bannon's praise for Putin's "anti-woke" persona and Russia's conservative gender politics, or psychologist Jordan Peterson's suggestion that Russia's war in Ukraine was partly self-defense against the decadence of "the pathological West."
The idea of Russia as a bulwark of traditionalism and "anti-woke" resistance is an image the Putin regime deliberately cultivates—not only to appeal to its own population's biases but to win friends among conservatives in the West. And many are seduced into an affinity that goes well beyond anti-anti-Putinism…..
Yet distaste for post-1960s social and sexual liberalism doesn't entirely explain the right's Putin love. Some right-wing pro-Putin rhetoric indicates a far more radical rejection of liberalism, even in its more classical varieties (the liberalism of John Locke and John Stuart Mill….)….
[Christopher] Caldwell, who unabashedly hails Putin as "a hero to populist conservatives," just as unabashedly acknowledges that the "hero" has suppressed "peaceful demonstrations" and jailed and probably murdered political opponents. Yet he asserts that "if we were to use traditional measures for understanding leaders, which involve the defense of borders and national flourishing, Putin would count as the pre-eminent statesman of our time." Leaving aside dubious claims about Russia's "flourishing" under Putin, perhaps the most revealing thing about this defense is that it openly invokes standards which predate and reject modern, Enlightenment-based beliefs about liberty, self-government, and human rights.
Young rightly analogizes Putin's American right-wing fans to earlier left-wing Western admirers of the Soviet Union and other communist regimes. Both groups feel a strong enough affinity to a foreign dictatorship that they overlook or deny horrific atrocities, which in Putin's case include both large-scale domestic repression and horrific atrocities in Ukraine, comparable to those committed by Hamas against Israel, but on a much larger scale.
Interestingly, as Young notes, one of Putin's American right-wing fans even embraces the analogy with support for communism:
Caldwell praises Putin's refusal to accept "a subservient role in an American-run world system drawn up by foreign politicians and business leaders"—and offers a startling analogy:
"Populist conservatives see [Putin] the way progressives once saw Fidel Castro, as the one person who says he won't submit to the world that surrounds him. You didn't have to be a Communist to appreciate the way Castro, whatever his excesses, was carving out a space of autonomy for his country."
If Putin-friendly "populist conservatives" are the equivalent of Castro-friendly, Cold War-era progressives, that's quite a self-own—and a self-reveal.
I made related points about Putin's Western fans (including Europeans as well as Americans) in this video, part of Marshall University's series of podcasts about the Russia-Ukraine war:
If I have a disagreement with Young, it's that I give more emphasis to the nationalist element in Western right-wingers' affinity for Putin. I think that, for many, this is more significant than social conservatism and cultural grievances. US social conservatives who are not also highly nationalistic tend to be far less sympathetic to Putin, and some strongly support aiding Ukraine against him. Examples include former Vice President Mike Pence and GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell.
But these two sources of pro-Putin attitudes are often interconnected, and their relative importance varies from case to case.
Young also devotes part of her article to Tucker Carlson, one of the American right's most prominent cheerleaders for Putin. I discussed some of his fallacies regarding Russia here.
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Anyone who likes Putin or admires him is an idiot.
But to ascribe opposition to Ukraine aid as support for Putin is forgetting that Ukraine is barely more democratic than Russia; it’s arguably more transparent to cancel elections than stuff the ballot boxes. Russian and Ukraine media are more in the government’s pocket than US media, but that’s a low bar.
Stop stealing my taxes for your purposes. If you can’t convince me of the righteousness of your moral argument, don’t steal as if might makes right.
How about we help Ukraine because it’s the right thing to do, and we’d be upholding our commitments we made 30 years ago?
How about because doing otherwise shows our allies and enemies that our word is shit, and doesn’t mean anything more than yours would?
How about doing it because doing otherwise permits our enemy to become stronger and have a better strategic position to attack other countries and NATO itself?
How about doing it because to allow Russia to own Ukraine will result in a greater cost to ourselves and Europe to beef up the defenses against further Russian aggression, as opposed to the relatively cheap cost of allowing Ukraine to simply win?
Now sit back down and shut the fuck up.
Let’s just incinerate the planet for no good reason.
“Diplomacy is the art of saying ‘Nice doggie’ until you can find a rock.
-Will Rogers”
The thing is you need the rock. If your strategy begins and ends with “He’s serious. If we don’t give him what he wants he’ll kill us all.” then the Western world is already lost.
You’re the one who has repeatedly called for other countries to use nuclear weapons against civilian populations!
How about you remember that freedom matters too?
How about you stop thinking you know what I’d do based on incomplete and incompetent reading of what I wrote?
How about you sit head down in your outhouse so no one can hear you?
I made no such commitments. If you did, then pay up, but leave the rest of us out of it.
Stay in school kids, or you end up acting like a fuckwit who thinks that treaties don’t matter if his own personal name isn’t a signatory.
Be quiet.
Before you sit back down and shut the fuck up, you can go die for You-Crane if its so fucking important. Or your kids can, like you ever served or have kids who do.
Frank
We have a daughter in the Navy. We fully support her if it came to it, to help prevent Sudetenland 2.0 because if it is allowed what comes next is far worse.
Good for you. Stop using my money to support your daughter. That’s all I ask. I don’t even take the threat or chance of nuclear WW III seriously. Just stop using my money for your ends.
You ask some stupid shit.
We live in a republic. Your preferred policy lost. That’s how it goes, sometimes.
Your self-oriented tantrum is not some principled stance, it’s you being a child.
More profanity and name-calling? Who’s being childish, again?
You are, because Sarcastro’s substantive response was accurate. And the alphabet’s focus on “stealing” his money is childish.
Close. But under that corrupt reptile you forgot a word. Banana.
Sir,
Did you notice that Congress hasn’t passed another Ukraine aid bill since the Congressional session started?
I’m afraid this means that so far, his preferred policy has been the winning one in this Congress, which for better or worse controls the purse strings.
The point was not about this specific expenditure. Alphabet seems to be under the misconception that using tax money to support allies is somehow “stealing” his money if he doesn’t support the particular foreign policy initiative. His is a stupid argument. And he lost that argument because we are a representative democracy, so his personal feelings don’t govern what we spend money on.
There’s another political branch than Congress, who does some foreign policy and military-related stuff!
They will next week. Speaker is going to suspend the rules and block all amendments, and get with Democrats to push it thru.
In this republic, should the will of the people matter?
It matters, but it’s not determinative because we don’t live in a direct democracy. (And because we have a Bill of Rights and judicial review)
If it did, Trump would never have been president.
1968 called, wants it’s “Domino” Theory back. So when Putin sinks her ship (because that’s what you do in Wars, you sink the Enemies and those supporting the Enemies ships) you’ll think her death was worthwhile. Have 1 daughter in the Marine Corpse Reserves, 1 in the Air Farce, both fly fighters, both want to transfer to the IDF and not just because of Oct 7th. The fighters they fly were built in the 90’s and even if you have a really nice 94 F-16C it’s still 30 years old. The FA-18’s are even older. But at least the OBOGS(I’d tell you…..) works, unlike the F-35’s where they’ve lost at least a few jets due to Hypoxia.
Frank
I think Biden already proved his US is shit with Afghanistan. And now that the secretary of state compares Israel to Hamas, after betraying Israel in the UN and undertakes to supply aid to Hamas by building a port. Not to mention aiding Iran and all but green lighting the CCP invasion of Taiwan. Yeah that’s showing the world. I think they got the message. And aid Ukraine to what ultimate end? WWIII?
What a litany of fantasies you have there! It sure makes winning arguments easier when you make up your own facts.
What did I make up? Biden’s incompetent exit from Afghanistan? Blinken comparing Israel to Hamas? The US abstaining in the UN peace council save Hamas resolution? The money flowing to Iran from that creep Biden? John Kirby saying the US doesn’t support Taiwan independence?
Blinken comparing Israel to Hamas? Made up. Or provide a citation.
undertakes to supply aid to Hamas by building a port Really? It’s to supply aid to starving Palestinians, not Hamas. But, you know that. You’re just gaslighting on this one.
The money flowing to Iran… Are you on about a legitimate debt under international law that the U.S. paid? The rule of law means something.
Your first iteration: all but green lighting the CCP invasion of Taiwan An outright lie, which you knew, so you changed it.
Your second iteration: John Kirby saying the US doesn’t support Taiwan independence? True. But your implication that this was “all but green lighting the CCP invasion of Taiwan” is absolutely dishonest.
What Kirby said: But I can tell you that — that President Biden was very, very clear that — that nothing has changed about our One China policy. We don’t support independence for Taiwan. But we also don’t want to see the status quo changed in a unilateral way and certainly not by force.
The One China policy (whereby Taiwan is autonomous but not an independent country and the U.S. doesn’t take a position as to how that is to be resolved, other than not by force and not unilaterally by the CCP) has been consistent for decades. He said nothing changed. He explicitly rejected a change from the status quo unilaterally by China or by force. What, exactly, do you find objectionable or different than any prior administration? (Nothing, you’re presumably smart enough to know he didn’t say anything new.)
So, yes, all fantasies and innuendos that I presume you are smart enough to know are bullshit. But you throw enough of it, you assume some of the stink will stick.
I appreciate that the new totalitarian left will not tolerate any opposing points of view but for future reference, that you have a different view does not erase the facts. And projecting your gaslighting on me is getting old. Biden’s disastrous exit will not disappear because you pretend it didn’t happen. Biden’s payments to Iran still happened even if you lie about it. Biden’s actions in building a port aid Hamas even if you pretend otherwise. Blinken’s remarks are on the record for anyone to view if they want, as is the US conduct at the UN. Kirby can backtrack all he wants but the CCP got the message. You leftists are rather pathetic, just the same old garbage lies.
‘I appreciate that the new totalitarian left will not tolerate any opposing points of view’
Someone disagreed with you!
By denying reality. Like Stalin’s propaganda machine. Nothing ever changes for the diehard leftists. Nothing new or intelligent, same old crap their communist heroes were doing years ago.
I laid out the facts. Greene, Gosar, and Scott are suspect independent of their stance on aid to Ukraine.
And I don’t believe you know what gaslighting means.
Also, calling me a leftist is hilarious. You’re an idiot or, more likely, just a troll.
‘By denying reality’
By intruding actual reality on your right-wing-swamp consensus reality.
No, I laid out the facts “NOVA,” you try to pretend that facts you don’t like aren’t really facts. You’re gaslighting and projecting like a lying leftist hack but feel free to label yourself however you want if you don’t like the term “leftist”, I don’t really care (but I recommend keeping “hack” because you are, and “lying,” well the reasons are obvious)
No, I laid out the facts
You and I both know you didn’t. You made things up and implied motives that didn’t exist.
I provided facts with actual quotations demonstrating you were wrong. You just come back with ad hominem, every one of which is an admission of what and who you are.
Difficult to reason with a hack blind to his biases. leftist or otherwise (although who are we kidding, its leftist), and who doesn’t believe anything exists beyond the first page of a Google search. Could be another woketard AI tool but I suspect its all Google. You clowns wouldn’t breathe if you didn’t double check with Google first.
who doesn’t believe anything exists beyond the first page of a Google search
The burden of proving your assertions is on you. Now you complain that I did provide evidence but you didn’t? LOL
Just a troll who likes to engage in a battle of insults. I understand why you’d prefer that to a battle of wits.
Look at me, I’m the world policeman. What an idiot.
Actually you’re a moron who failed to make an intelligent remark.
Beyond that, you failed to address any of the numerous reasons we should be supporting Ukraine.
Typical of you.
.
If the southern parts of Ukraine were ethnic Russians and wanted to join Russia after a decade of oppression by the State Dept controlled Ukrainian government, would that change the calculus any?
If the southern parts of Ukraine were ethnic Russians and wanted to join Russia after a decade of oppression by the State Dept controlled Ukrainian government, would that change the calculus any?
In the fantasy world where any of that is true? Maybe. I would still say that Russia’s many war crimes kind of add up to something to consider.
It’s ok to stop dictatorships from expanding, just to limit their admittedly sorry economic might from inching up a smidge. This was the rule during the Cold War, and ethically suspect (if that country’s gonna be a dictatorship anyway, might as well be US-oriented as Soviet-oriented.)
We didn’t embarace Cuba, so he ran off to the USSR. Lesson learned?
In any case, “it’s expensive!” is a shitty, everything and the kitchen sink argument. Those espousing it should be ashamed. It was advanced by dictator support to pile on why a dictator should get away with it while a nation which can trivially support it stands by.
“I praise you!, politician who saves a little money as a European country is overrun.” Wth.
I’m not trying to harden peoples’ hearts here. There’s something funny going on with Trump and Russia. I’m hardly the first to suggest it. It’s a bizarre position to have.
Look, I think we should be supporting Ukraine. We promised, and we need to work on making our promises credible again. And it’s in our interest to impoverish Russia as long as they have ambitions against their neighbors. (Much more in their neighbors’ interest, though!)
But, “In any case, “it’s expensive!” is a shitty, everything and the kitchen sink argument. ”
Sheesh. That’s the sort of thing you say when you’re NOT discussing a country that’s deep in debt and piling on over a trillion dollars more debt every year. You can’t afford EVERY good thing when you’re in debt, often you can’t afford some very important good things.
We have to not only do what’s needed, after all, we have to do it sustainably, not by running the nation into the ground.
Nope, sorry, we’ll never agree on this point. “It’s expensive!” is ALWAYS a non-shitty argument when you’re deep in debt, and getting deeper every microsecond.
“We” did not make any such promises. A bunch of damned politicians made promises. Let them go fight. This is 30 years later. George Washington said something about foreign entanglements. Too bad for us no one remembered.
Far as I’m concerned, “promises” like this show the moral bankruptcy of monolithic governments. They do not speak for society, they do not speak for future generations and people not yet born.
The financial bankruptcy is another matter entirely. When I bought a house, I made a 30 year commitment, which I could discharge early by paying off early. I could not, and did not, obligate my kids to pay it off. My obligation to the bank meant I could not spend that money on other things. That is another thing governments illustrate the moral and financial bankruptcy of.
I’m rolling my eyes here. Yes, I personally didn’t make that promise, either. But it’s pretty conventional to refer to your own country as “we”.
That was a fine word — 30 years ago. Anyone who relies on politicians’ promises is a fool. Anyone who thinks politicians’ promises bind anyone 30 years later is an entirely different kind of fool.
Again, it’s a damned shame no one listened to George Washington about foreign entanglements. He knew how little 30 year political promises could be relied upon.
Luckily this ridiculous take on foreign policy is not widely shared.
And we learned the lesson about isolating into fortress America right about when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
We may decide not to care about the world; the world will still very much care about us.
Yup. This is one reason withdrawing from Afghanistan was a mistake and may have been one of the causes of Russia’s invasion.
Not remotely what I said.
Isolationism is bad does not mean all wars we get into are good.
You didn’t used to be this kind of shitty troll.
“Not remotely what I said.”
No, that’s what I said. You can tell by reading the name at the top of the comment box.
Please try to keep up with the discussion instead of engaging in juvenile name-calling.
Abandoning the secure air base in Afghanistan was a mistake.
Forget the rest of the country, we should have kept (and further secured) that.
Not one of Trump’s finer moments.
Nor Biden’s.
He took responsibility for a mess and grimly stuck with it. I’d say it was a hint about his decisiveness when it came to Ukraine, as well as his, from my point of view, indefensible support for the Israeli campaign in Gaza. So, it exposed a core of steel Trump isn’t remotely capable of showing.
And we learned the lesson about isolating into fortress America right about when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
There’s no sense that comports with any of the actual history that US activity in the Pacific before World War II was “isolating into fortress America”. Indeed, at the time of the bombing, Hawaii was itself… a colony.
I’m more talking about our post-WWI isolationism.
Not in the Pacific though.
Have you ever been to Pearl Harbor? NPS shows an excellent film that pulls no punches about the Japanese and their ambitions… but also sets forth how the US was absolutely trying to dominate the Pacific in the years between World War I and World War II. Neither side was “isolationist” in any sense– even if the US had a burgeoning isolationism movement with respect to Europe at the time.
Regardless of whether the U.S. was acting according to isolationist policy in the Pacific, there was a significant isolationist crowd in the years prior to WWII, but WWII pretty clearly demonstrated that isolationism was not a viable position for a global leader.
So we deal with a REAL threat from China with a 40 year old boat.
Right….
China is well featured in our National Defense Strategy.
Our promises 30 years ago were that we would not expand NATO up to the Russian frontier. The Soviet policy doctrine was always based on the concept of spheres of influence. The promise from Sec.State Baker was that the US would respect that concept with with the former Warsaw Pact countries becoming a neutral buffer.
Within a couple of years the process of NATO enlargement began, accelerated by the desire of former Soviet block countries to be part of the Eurozone.
At present the US has paid our military industrial complex $100B to arm Zelenskiy. Now Mr Biden asks for $80B for the weapons industry, all the while incentivizing nuclear first use by Russia. As the US has a declaratory policy of first use of nuclear weapons, this seem dangerous and certainly is not a policy of honesty with the American public.
Putin’s propagandists keep beating that drum.
But…
-the promise was oral; the written agreement after only discussed Germany.
-The promise was made while the USSR and Warsaw Pact still existed – an utterly different configuration of world security
-By this argument, the real issue came in like 1995 when we started the work to get Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic into NATO. It’s a shit excuse to invade Ukraine.
That wasn’t their excuse.
What do you think the reason was?
I’m responding to Don Nico, who is using it as an excuse.
I offer no excuses. You are the master of obfustration and excuses
What is your above comment other than an excuse on behalf of Russia?
based in a false narrative might I add.
This has zero to do with Putin’s propagandists. Your comment is the same old kind of Red baiting shit and you know it.
Your “shit excuse” is a just good reason or Mr Biden to feed his friends in the military industrial complex.
The promises made to end the Cold War is diplomatic history history, and people who are not bureaucratic sheep actually admit that. Mr Biden proposes to spend nearly $200B on his proxy war. Yet you offer only a shit excuse for thinking.
Mr Bden is playing a dangerous game with a ruthless enemy courting some kind of escalation. Yet now because of a “no interest” vote in Michigan, he is ready to insist that Israel must tolerate Hamas. No wonder you’re a Fed.
As Sarcastr0 said, the promises on paper are the ones that matter the most, and Russia had been reneging on how many promises once Putin got into power? How many times had it treated its neighbors like they were still part of the USSR? The second issue is that all former Soviet Bloc countries and former Soviet republics were sovereign nations that could join whatever alliances they wanted to.
It’s hilarious that someone who doesn’t feel bound by actual treaties decries broken “promises”. But falling for it isn’t.
Z is probably a billionaire by now.
So one of your many deficiencies is that you get your news from facebook?
Many things about you are revealing their embarrassing explanations.
Does he own any US defense contractors?
“Now Mr Biden asks for $80B for the weapons industry, all the while incentivizing nuclear first use by Russia.”
Keep sucking that dick, Nico.
Putin is not going to use nuclear weapons.
If Ukraine joins NATO — which Biden is pushing for — I would not feel terribly confident in that.
Considering the state of all of their other equipment, I’m not all that confident they would even work.
Regardless Putin needs to understand if here were to use them that Moscow, St. Petersburg, etc would cease to exist. The West would get pretty messed up as well but if he really believes he could act with impunity he is even more delusional than we thought.
“Moscow, St. Petersburg, etc would cease to exist”
If you think that a 1 kT nuke in Kyiv would lead to a strategic attack on Russia, then you better be prepared to lose New York and Washington and more. Your “pretty messed up” show no understanding whatsoever about the destructiveness of medium sized nuclear weapons. Neither Mr Putin nor Mr Biden are that stupid
If you display cowardice over the mere idea, that gives us an even more emboldened Putin. What fun that would be.
“Keep sucking that dick”
What a crude and uninformed asshole you are, Jason.
You obviously know nothing about the declaratory nuclear policies of either the US or Russia.
Or, and here’s a radical idea: You’re utterly misinformed and someone who has spent months repeating Russian propaganda.
Russia is not going to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, regardless of the bullshit you try to state as fact.
I stand by my assertion that you’re just sucking Putin off and spreading his misinformation like you enjoy it. I don’t give a shit how crude you think that is. You should care about not doing it anymore and getting your information from better sources.
That’s just not true. The U.S. informally notified the Soviets that if they permitted German reunification, that NATO would not station forces in the former East German part of Germany. At no point did the U.S. promise never to expand NATO membership, and the Soviets not only knew that, but knew that if they actually wanted some sort of arrangement, the way to do that was to enter into a treaty, not have an informal oral statement.
David, you are rewriting history.
But it does not matter, because for 20 years the US has encouraged gradual NATO expansion to the Russian frontier regardless of the consequences. And every year US -Russia relations got worse to the point that there are essentially no discussions between the governments, not even back channel discussions.
Can you seriously offer any instance of a US offer of a possible treaty on that topic? There were none, even though such would have been a natural follow-on to the INF treaty. Instead, the very active treaty discussion concerned limitation of strategic nuclear weapons, ABM defenses, Open Skies, and other nuclear related topics
You know what Putin could have done to stop NATO and EU expansion into former Soviet Bloc countries and Soviet republics? Offered them a better deal than the EU or NATO could. Either Putin had no interest in treating them like sovereign nations, or he couldn’t offer them a better deal. Either way, too bad, so sad for him.
Nope. The imaginary promise that NATO would never expand is what’s a complete rewriting of history.
Of course, that’s not even a little bit true. And US-Russia relations only “got worse” as Putin became more and more of a dictator.
Of course not; since NATO isn’t a threat to Russia, Russia was never going to give anything up in exchange for blocking NATO expansion. And once Russia re-became a threat to its neighbors, there was nothing it could offer that would make it worth it for NATO to make a deal with them.
Moreover, it is repeating word-for-word the Russian propaganda on this point. How credulous can one be?
Don Nice is a Russian propagandist and a weasel.
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4579289-intel-chair-turner-absolutely-true-russia-propaganda-infected-us-congress/
But that’s the core point, isn’t it? It’s what this whole thing is all about.
He and the many people like him DON’T think of their country as “we.” They have far more in common with and far more sympathy for their ideological compatriots, even among historical enemies of this country, then do for their political opponents in this country. They regard their political opponents, people like us, as the true enemies of this “nation.”
Odd that these people call themselves “nationalist.” They may care about their “nation,” whatever that means. Biut they sure don’t give a shit about their country.
““it’s expensive!” is a shitty, everything and the kitchen sink argument.”
Do you think money grows on trees or something?
Sorry, hardworking American man with a family to support. Zelenskyyyy needs some more of your blood and sweat again this month. So do Raytheon shareholders.
Now there’s a Putin fanboy.
The same people that say opposing an open ended commitment and unlimited funding for Ukraine is support for Putin would have screamed like howler monkeys if their opposition to the Iraq War was declared support for Saddam Hussein.
Nobody supports Putin but we are demanding that if we support Ukraine we have a plan for victory and that the money we send is appropriately spent and that Ukraine be worth spending our money on.
And another reason we are skeptical of what is happening is that most of us on the right believe that the lead-up to the invasion was badly bungled by the Biden Maladministration and want oversight on the aid we are providing.
EXACTLY!
Although I would add two things — first, we know that the Ukrainians have been bribing the Bidens for years and we need to remember that with respect to their policy toward Ukraine — and second we can not forget that the same people fabricated all of Russiagate.
Dr. Ed 2 as usual adds things that are not true.
An open ended commitment and unlimited funding for Ukraine looks a lot different than this.
I do agree that there is no path to ending this conflict right now and we need to get to work on that.
“we need to get to work on that.”
We did work on it two months after the conflict started. We scuttled the Ukraine-Russia negotiations.
“open ended commitment and unlimited funding for Ukraine looks a lot different than this.”
Then tell us what that would look like, because Mr Biden has not done that. Or are you suggesting that “open-ended” = sending US combat forces?
I actually have no problem with initial pushback before you have time to come up with an offramp.
I don’t really know what that looks like.
“I don’t really know what that looks like.”
There I agree with you. Yesterday I was speaking with an highly experienced US negotiator, and he did not offer any suggestions about an off-ramp and only commented that the US and Russia are just not talking.
In the meanwhile European politicians are talking about being in a pre-war setting. That all the more reason that an off-ramp needs to be found.
” Yesterday I was speaking with an highly experienced US negotiator”
No, you were not.
“We scuttled the Ukraine-Russia negotiations.”
Why would anyone want negotiations to succeed when war is so profitable and the health of the state?
No such thing occurred. For one thing, there weren’t any “negotiations.” Russia was just trying to dictate terms to Ukraine. The only thing we did was offer support to Ukraine, which of course meant that Ukraine didn’t have to surrender.
David, you are just wrong. Boris Johnson did the dirty work for the US and NATO. It is amazing how uninformed American are.
Spouting Russia propaganda doesn’t make you “informed.” It makes you a useful idiot.
Hey Don,
Have your handlers noticed yet how more and more people here are recognizing you as Putin’s cockholster?
Your usefulness to Mother Russia is coming to an end.
What did Putin bring to the peace negotiations, Don?
You may need to retune your skepticism of some of your sources, Don.
A lot of your posts seem to recapitulate flat-our falsehoods that I’ve only seen elsewhere in folks who parrot RT. (I have some family members…)
Flat out falsehoods what you have been spouting about this war since the beginning.
BTW, what the hell is RT?
You have multiple independent serious people here explaining you are pushing lies.
Your response is Americans don’t get the real truth.
Like holy shit stop being Putins stenographer.
“We scuttled the Ukraine-Russia negotiations.”
More word-for-word repetition of the Kremlin line. Coincidence?
And as if any “we” would have entrusted Boris Johnson with a diplomatic mission…
The path to that is to supply Ukraine with such an overwhelming amount of weapons that Russia has no hope of winning. Tanks, fighter, ground support, and radar countermeasures (Wild Weasels) aircraft, long range missiles, etc. in sufficient quantities that they own the skies and the land. An army that isn’t advancing is losing.
It works with ships, anyway. Should work with bridges, too.
People ARE in fact openly supporting Putin. That’s the whole point. This isn’t about Ukraine aid supporters labeling aid opponents Putin supporters. This is about people who openly support Putin.
But to ascribe opposition to Ukraine aid as support for Putin is forgetting that Ukraine is barely more democratic than Russia;
Aside from the fact that Ukrainians stopped a stolen election with the Orange Revolution, then a few years later forced out the same corrupt leader with popular protest during the Maidan. Then when a subsequent President was too corrupt elected a complete outsider to the Presidency.
Yeah…. “barely more democratic”.
it’s arguably more transparent to cancel elections than stuff the ballot boxes.
Brilliant, hold an election with campaign rallies and long ballot lineups while Russia is actively occupying several regions and bombing cities.
As it turn out, some of the anti-anti-Russia folk are just plain idiots.
.
Taxation is theft? That’s what disaffected, antisocial, right-wing, anti-government cranks say. A core element of the target audience of a white, male, movement conservative blog operated by and for obsolete culture war casualties.
It’s a specious argument. I suspect if in some sort of bizarro world where we suddenly started supporting and arming Russia they’d do an about face and be cheering it on.
…that Ukraine is barely more democratic than Russia.
For very large values of “barely”, sure.
it’s arguably more transparent to cancel elections than stuff the ballot boxes.
Ukraine’s constitution required an election last Sunday (3/31/24), but it also says that elections cannot be held during wartime. At least several millions of Ukrainians are displaced from their homes, both internally and millions that left for safer lands in Europe or the U.S. Infrastructure is constantly under attack from Russian missiles and drones, and they don’t have enough money for basic government services and national defense as it is. Who would run an election under those circumstances? (The U.S. did during the Civil War, but the fighting was taking place in Confederate states by then.) How could Ukraine run a legitimate election? It isn’t as if the Ukrainian public is behind holding an election now. Quite the opposite.
Just listen to Lindsey Graham, “Everyone I spoke with said you need to get this war in a better place before you have elections. That makes sense to me, having been on the ground.” This was after visiting the country last month. He also seems to have changed his mind, as he said that he thought they should hold elections. “The American people need to know that Ukraine is different. This has been a very corrupt country in the past,” he said at a Kyiv press conference last year.
Stop stealing my taxes for your purposes. If you can’t convince me of the righteousness of your moral argument, don’t steal as if might makes right.
This is just the usual “taxes are theft” bullshit from online libertarians that drives me up the wall. No doubt you only think of taxes as theft when it is your money being taken and when the government is spending it on things that don’t benefit you. If your taxes are being being stolen for “[other American’s] purposes” when Congress appropriates money for something you don’t like, then that will apply to all taxes paid by all Americans. There is always going to be something that each taxpayer does not want government spending money on that will get passed by Congress. It is really just an argument for anarchy.
Putin is a Soviet thug, whether that means he’s a communist or a fascist. Communists can throw gays in jail or murder dissidents just as well as fascist can so I don’t see it matters much which flavor of Soviet thug he is.
I make no distinction between throwing gays in jail and throwing anti-gays in jail. A society that values liberty does NEITHER.
Well put.
Compare:
https://reason.com/volokh/2024/04/04/thursday-open-thread-185/?comments=true#comment-10510009
The implication seems to be that, while those who perpetrate / support “the mass killing of non-whites” are awful Nazis, those who perpetrate / support the mass killing of “whites” (i.e., Israelis) are not so bad.
LOL that’s not what Nige was saying at all.
Now that’s a classic logical fallacy, right there.
Ed Grinberg is really bad at determining the implications of sentences written in plain English.
A society that values protecting children amd public health does do one of those things, however.
Mandate vaccinations?
Jordan Peterson is a good example and what Canada has tried to do to him isn’t a far cry from what Putin is doing to gays in Russia.
Look at what was done during Covid, look at what is being done to Trump and then try to tell me that we aren’t just as bad as Putin.
We’re not good, not remotely as good as we should be, but we fall very far short of being as bad as Putin.
Seriously, we’re not even in the same neighborhood.
Thank you for replying to Dr Ed 2.
If one of us lefties replied, we’d just be labeled as commie / pinko / fag / treefuckers or something like that.
Dr E has no sense of boundaries and falls into your ‘every movement has idiots’ group.
Maybe you lefties should stop your knee jerk support of lefties and your knee jerk opposition to righties, if you want to be taken seriously.
Yes, it’s the liberals who are the knee-jerk reactionaries around here.
That’s why RAK has nothing but support from the lefties on here.
“If one of us lefties replied, we’d just be labeled as commie / pinko / fag / treefuckers or something like that.”
Only if you identified yourself as such.
“Dr E has no sense of boundaries and falls into your ‘every movement has idiots’ group.”
The sophomoric tactic of dismissing that which you can not understand.
Sez the guy who thinks the revolution is nigh.
Brett, we aren’t in the same neighborhood YET…
Look at where we (US, CA, UK, AU) are coming from and where Russia is coming from — we have several hundred years of liberty and freedom while they had Stalin and the Czars before that. We have John Locke while their very race (Slav) comes from the word “slave.”
Society has always been heteronormative and hence Putin is just enforcing the existing social norm which is held by the overwhelming majority of the Russian people. What the Progressives here are doing is forcing NEW social norms that a majority of the people do NOT hold.
It’s not that Trudeau wouldn’t throw Jordan Peterson into prison if he could — I have no doubt that he would — but the extent to which they could destroy his life because they don’t like his use of pronouns. Do you remember what Trudeau did to the striking truckers?!?
And JK Rowling could only defy the new Scottish law because she is rich and famous — the point is that Scotland would actually pass such a law.
My point is that we don’t look at either the West or the East as where it is right now, but how much it has changed from where it was 30 years ago. Our dictators have bullied us into more change than Putin has bullied the Russian people into.
The question I ask is not what neighborhood we are in NOW, but what neighborhood will we be in thirty years from now….
Yeah, sure, we COULD be that bad in 30 years, or worse. You wrote in the present tense.
Also, Christopher Columbus was named after the capital of Ohio.
You are seriously telling me that the people who’re pulling out all stops to “get Trump” (and his lawyers!) would shrink from the more drastic measures, like poisoning people, if the “nice” methods proved insufficient? Please…
Better start protecting your precious bodily fluids.
Yes, I am in fact telling you that the California Bar disciplinary committee and the District Attorney in Manhattan would shrink from murdering Donald Trump.
Just rounding up dissidents, political prosecution, theft and murder there (or do you really believe Seth Rich was randomly mugged of nothing and killed) no biggie. We are simply not as far along but our political class are definitely just as corrupt and evil
Clinton Death List, man. Come on, play the hits!
Yes, Putin does make a play to appeal to the reality-challenged such as yourself.
Seriously, we’re not even in the same neighborhood.
Ain’t no fuckin’ ballpark, either. Ain’t the same league, ain’t even the same fuckin’ sport.
Yeah, all those gays in Russia with lucrative careers as public speakers promoting their agenda.
I remember when Cathy Young was a conservative. Wow, that was a long time ago.
I’ve never personally encountered so much as one solitary fan of Putin among conservatives. But I suppose every movement has idiots, and every opposition movement sees nothing but idiots in their foe.
I think an element of what is on display here is the same sort of left-wing Manicheism that you see on display in left-wing responses to Trump: If somebody is seen as a bad person, they have to be uniformly bad, in all ways. They’re not allowed to be complex, have good points, and if they secretly do, it’s impermissible to notice them.
The bad person can’t just be bad in one or two specific ways. He has to be stupid, ugly, lazy, smelly… You get the idea. Denying any of this must mean they’re NOT bad, since the unstated premise is that bad people are bad in all things.
So, if you say, “Well, at least Russia under Putin isn’t doing “X”!” where X is some stupid thing common in the West, like lopping off healthy testicles or hanging the toilet paper backwards, you must love Putin. There’s no other possible explanation!
Some of the more right-wing zealot commenters here have been into Putin.
BCD, IRRC.
Cite?
I don’t have BCD’s nonsense from like a year ago saved.
Ed likes Putin of course:
https://reason.com/volokh/2024/02/16/tucker-carlson-vs-the-evidence-of-russians-voting-with-their-feet/?comments=true#comment-10449483
And Tucker Carlson, who is on the right.
Ed’s nonsense:
“There are a lot of people in American cities who would be DEAD if they were doing the same thing in Moscow. Petty criminals, aggressive begging, shooting up on the street corner — I doubt Putin tolerates that, which does make a nicer city.
A nicer city — but at what price.”
“but at what a price.”; THAT sounds to you like he’s into Putin?
It’s like I said: Your unstated premise is that bad people are bad in absolutely every respect, so if you note anything positive about a person, AT ALL, you must think they’re not bad.
It’s simply not permitted to notice any upside at all to a bad person; If you do, you must love them! How stupid.
It’s like you’ve never met Ed before.
I don’t recall ever having met either of you.
“I don’t have BCD’s nonsense from like a year ago saved.”
I can’t believe that you have mine saved.
What kind of a sick mind would invest the time and effort into that?
And I’m serious about the Stalin part — older people in Moscow in the late ’70s *were* saying that certain objectional behaviors wouldn’t have been tolerated in Stalin’s day, thirty years earlier. That doesn’t mean that they particularly liked Stalin, nor approved of his methods, only a grudging respect for this accomplishment of his.
For you, I just had to Google.
The bit about people who are supposedly “anti-anti-Putin” in the article is a blatant example of that. No, it’s not that they have some opinion about how much aid we should be giving Ukraine — it’s that the only way to be anti-Putin is to agree with Young on how much to support Ukraine. If you object to endless dollars for an indefinite war in Ukraine, that practically makes you a Putin-sniffer!
the only way to be anti-Putin is to agree with Young on how much to support Ukraine
I don’t see where you get that from.
The same place he gets most everything he says: out his ass.
Norman Lear wrote the Archie Bunker character to be the butt of all jokes and instead the audience wound up identifying with him, in part because he actually *said* what they wanted to say but didn’t dare.
I wonder how much of this purported support for Putin is actually people thinking “damn, I wish *I* could say that and get away with it.”
But the larger issue is that not wanting to subsidize a corrupt Uke regime is different from supporting Russia when the *real* threat to our security is China. So we send a 40-year-old USCG Cutter to help honest nations deal with China while giving our best to Ukraine?
Why aren’t we helping the Philippines in their current war with China? That one we have a national interest in, this one, not so much.
Norman Lear wrote the Archie Bunker character to be the butt of all jokes
No he didn’t – the empathy for the character was key to the show’s popularity.
I guess you don’t get out much.
https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2024/03/jacob-heilbrunn-america-last-trump-putin/677609/
So where are the receipts?
Surely he can point to specific places where right-wingers have said that Putin is a good guy, instead of projecting admiration where the right declines to make the specific criticism of the Kremlin that Franklin Foer will acknowledge.
I mean, anybody can write a lot about how terrible their ideological adversaries are. Most of us want to see that backed up with evidence. Otherwise you end up looking like Gaslight0 above, claiming one thing and then undercutting himself with his actual evidence.
This thread has receipts
Ed, ML, rloquitur.
And now White Pride.
Are the goalposts shifting? Will I have to produce someone specifically saying that Putin is a good guy in those exact words?
You can find plenty of praise for Putin from Trump; “genius”, “savvy”, “doing great things”, “so nice”, “could not have been nicer”, “I do respect him”, “you have to give him credit”, etc. It’s not a difficult internet search; here’s one result:
https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2019/01/17/trump-putin-praise-vstan-orig-me.cnn
At least Putin didn’t cancel his election due to Martial Law like Volodymyr Z did.
Which is more honest? Canceling an election, or stuffing its ballot boxes to get a fake result?
Same end result.
There could be legitimate reasons for cancelling an election, but how do you “honestly” steal an election?
“If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.
-Winston Churchill”
This is kind of where I am at with Zelensky.
Which one are you praising, Churchill or Hitler?
Praising anyone who opposes Putin and Russia, no matter what their domestic situation is.
Feel free to stand in line to cast your ballot during a Russian missile attack.
There’s a reason that no one other than the anti-Ukraine crowd criticized the decision to cancel elections. Holding the elections while under invasion was a dumb idea.
Are you also mad the French didn’t hold elections during WWII?
War? It’s not a war; it’s a “special military operation”…
Republicans are authoritarians. It was Nixon, then Reagan, now Trump. Dissent is not tolerated. Anti-Nixon Republicans were not tolerated (at least not until the end). Anti-Reagan Republicans were not tolerated. Anti-Trump Republicans are drummed out of the Party.
This is not a symmetrical situation. Plenty of out-loud anti-Clintonites, anti-Obama-ites, and now anti-Bidenites, in the Democratic Party.
Dissent is not tolerated only by Republicans? Like John Adams and the Sedition acts? Like Woodrow Wilson and the anti-war crowd? Like FDR? Like woke cancel culture? Like Trudeau and the truckers? Like Biden and social media censorship?
Next you’ll be telling us NASA is better than Space-X.
Heck, I forgot about the Dems who used the post office to censor abolitionist mailings, and refused to accept petitions in Congress from abolitionists.
Buddy, you really need to take off your blinders. Your partisan slip is showing.
I’d need to do more consideration of captcrisis’ thesis, but you picked mostly stuff from before WW2, and he was talking Nixon and after – i.e. the modern political alignment.
You did mention Biden and social media, but the problem with that is it’s bullshit.
Weren’t the truckers shutting down vital roads for like weeks in the name of protest? That’s not just speech.
Oh stuff it. Juvenile comments deserve juvenile pffffft responses. To plagiarize captcrisis, yours is not a serious response. You don’t get to set the conditions of what is proper and what is not in a conversation you didn’t start.
Quit with the debate school nonsense.
I don’t care about the initial conditions – you posted a response full of examples that are not material to current political conditions, which was what captcrisis was talking about.
“I don’t care about the initial conditions”
You forgotten about you training as a physicist.
I very much hope this is a joke.
When it comes to Democratic party authoritarianism, you’ve got stuff old enough that you don’t care to deny it, and stuff new enough that you’ll call it bullshit. It’s amazing how things just go from one period to the other with about a one second interval of “Yeah, our bad.”
It’s like the transition from “Didn’t happen!” to “Old news!”. Happens without warning in a time too short to measure.
Y’all offer stuff that’s either not material to modern politics or based on nonsense. You don’t get to blame me for that.
You in particular have a very partisan definition of authoritarian you alternate between a broad definition to let the GOP off the hook, and a narrow one that seems to include only Democratic policies.
I could argue plenty of criminal justice reform the Dems don’t support make the Dems authoritarian. Or the border policies they condone. Doubt you’d join me.
“You in particular have a very partisan definition of authoritarian…”
Huh? You’re the one who’s claims it’s authoritarian for elected officials to tell government actors what books they should or shouldn’t make available in government libraries, what they should or shouldn’t say in government classrooms, etc.
Democratic control of the government is the opposite of authoritarian, except where the government’s authority is limited.
The two parties realigned on race in the civil rights era, so not really a time too short to measure, and pretty much negates arguments based on 19th century treatment of abolitionists. Balance the Sedition Act and Woodrow Wilson/anti-war crowd against Joseph McCarthy and the Bush/Cheney administration leveraging the war on terror against dissent; those are decades apart, and the parties developed very different coalitions in that time. (The later examples sound like conservative fever swamp echoes and deserve to be called what they are, bullshit.)
“The two parties realigned on race in the civil rights era,”
Not so much as the Democrats would like to pretend. They went from pursuing racially discriminatory policies in favor of whites, and against minorities, to pursuing racially discriminatory polices in favor of minorities, and against whites.
For a short while there they actually toyed with abandoning racial discrimination, I’ll concede. It didn’t last long.
This remains just a buck wild thesis. The Southern Strategy is a documented thing.
And bigotry doesn’t turn on a dime like party affiliation.
You with your adherence to the Bell Curve seem more like you are of the cohort that switched parties but kept your racial…sensitivities.
Well, there were a slew of authoritarian policies pushed during COVID, and as I remember, most of the push towards shutting down religious congregations while allowing secular gatherings to proceed came from those leaning to the left.
The left was very upset about Dobbs, even though it had the effect of putting the issue back into the hands of the voters.
It tends to be the left that is less supportive of free speech in the name of safety or policing disinformation.
So at the very least, no one side has the monopoly on authoritarian sentiment.
Pandemic restrictions may have been good policy at the time, but I suppose they count as authoritarian.
But Dobbs? That’s stupid – allowing states to be authoritarian is not some libertarian move.
You don’t think that democratic decision-making is anti-authoritarian?
No, I don’t. Tyranny of the majority.
People’s participation in governing themselves is an orthogonal inherent value from liberty.
“People’s participation in governing themselves is an orthogonal inherent value from liberty.”
People participate in governing themselves by making their own private decisions. You’re talking about participating in governing each other.
People participate in governing themselves by making their own private decisions.
Semantic games. Not even Nozick takes that tact.
-Government is a thing that exists.
-It definitionally governs those in it’s ambit.
-Those within that ambit participating in governing themselves is of inherent value
Well, there were a slew of authoritarian policies pushed during COVID,
Policies that ended with the pandemic.
and as I remember, most of the push towards shutting down religious congregations while allowing secular gatherings to proceed came from those leaning to the left.
Religious congregations generally involve people sitting in close proximity for an hour or more, often including signing.
If the comparable “secular gatherings” were plays or concerts you’d have a good point, but I doubt anyone was trying to ban indoor religious congregations while allowing indoor plays.
The left was very upset about Dobbs, even though it had the effect of putting the issue back into the hands of the voters.
Human rights shouldn’t be a matter for voters.
The tough question with abortion is there’s conflicting rights at stake. But it shouldn’t be up to the voters any more than slavery was.
Just the streets around Parliament and a few border crossings. It didn’t really have much of an effect on commerce. It was more high visibility than anything else.
Speaking of NASA, the evidence is pretty clear that Wernher von Braun was a war criminal who should have been tried and executed in Nuremburg.
Things aren’t as simple as the Left would have us believe.
Ed drops another truth bomb everyone knows.
Don’t even mention his name around my wife. Most of her mom’s family was lost in the Blitz.
EVERYBODY in government are authoritarians! If they weren’t, they’d be in the damned private sector.
Look at Biden. Does he suggest that the automotive industry transition to EVs, even if their customers don’t want to buy them?
No, he mandates it. Of course he mandates it; Who seeks to be President in order to issue requests?
“This is not a symmetrical situation. ”
Yeah, tell Tulsi Gabbard that.
The President issues requests all the freaking time – that’s the bully pulpit.
And just about every government communication exercise, from EnergyStar ratings to scientific papers out of our National Labs.
Broad, facile brushes are not really a feature to seek out in your worldview.
Not a serious comment.
Show your work.
I’m sure that Putin occasionally makes requests that aren’t backed up by implicit death threats occasionally, too. Does that negate the mandates that will get you shot if you don’t follow them?
Yes, two countries have laws you gotta follow.
That doesn’t mean they are both authoritarian.
What kind of insane lack of perspective are you off on?!
Yeah, I get it: You want to draw a line for how much ordering about a government can do without being authoritarian, without the people doing the ordering about BEING authoritarians.
And you want that line to be precisely positioned so that all the guys you like are one one side, and all the guys you don’t like are on the other.
Sorry, no. Being an authoritarian is a personality trait, and basically nobody seeks public office if they lack it. And politics selects very strongly for it, the higher you go up the food chain, the more strongly it manifests.
So, yeah, Biden IS an authoritarian. He really loves issuing dictates people must obey. He’s really, really bad at taking “no” for an answer. Sure, he isn’t going to have Trump assassinated with a polonium pellet injected by trick umbrella, or anything like that; He’s not, institutionally, in a position to do that.
If he were? I wouldn’t bet against it.
Being an authoritarian is a personality trait, and basically nobody seeks public office if they lack it.
This is a common fault in your takes – people are more various in their motives than you think.
Hence your telepathy has zero relationship to reality, it’s just you reinforcing your priors.
Of course people are various in their motives.
People who seek out certain lines of employment are somewhat LESS various in their motives.
You’re not just saying less various, you’re saying ‘basically nobody.’
With no sources other than your own priors.
Don’t feed your priors with speculation.
He has a point. People of certain personality traits are drawn to certain professions. Why do you think CEO’s are very heavy with psychopaths? It’s because it’s a trait necessary to do the job.
Politicians and bureaucrats are no different. The will to exercise power is literally the job description.
I’m sure it’s true for more people than it should be but it’s also those people willing to shoulder the utterly thankless job administring incredibly boring but utterly vital shit, the willingness to sit on committee after committee after committee, reading and writing reports, managing things that should be simple but which are complicated in a million unbelieveably tedious ways by competing and incompatible interests, and nobody will notice any of it until it all goes wrong.
“basically nobody seeks public office if they lack it.”
You are not defending the same goalposts.
And the CEO psychopath thing is shitty pop psychology, don’t buy it.
You’re going to vote for the one authoritarian who tried to overturn an election, so this is about how Democrats in power are intrinsically illegitimate.
No, I’m going to vote for the guy who has the greatest likelihood of maximizing chaos and the breakdown of the entrenched institutions that run DC.
Anarchy doesn’t always end well for the anarchists.
He had four years of chaos, proving that merely being a dumb idiot doesn’t reform anything, but, hey, he had a go at entrenching himself as an institution, didn’t he?
EVERYBODY in government are authoritarians! If they weren’t, they’d be in the damned private sector.
That’s dumb. That’s like saying the only people who want to be cops are corrupt bullies. While the profession does attract a disproportionate number of those, some people actually join to serve. One of the finest men I’ve known was an LEO and a very good one.
Yeah, tell Tulsi Gabbard that.
I have a hard time taking seriously anyone who doesn’t recognize what a kook she is. And Tulsi Gabbard was not drummed out of the Democratic Party, she chose to leave, not because of criticism, but because she went running to the right, endorsing the likes of Kari Lake and J.D. Vance. In her own words: In 2022 she left the Democrats, saying they were dominated by “an elitist cabal of warmongers who are driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue and stoking anti-white racism”.
By all appearances, she decided there was more money to be made shilling to the right than continuing in the Democratic Party. And she’s probably right about that.
Tulsi Gabbard isn’t, wasn’t, and won’t be a Democrat.
She isn’t, wasn’t, and won’t be a Republican.
She’s a disaffected contrarian, a flailing malcontent, a fringe misfit, and a useless (if not counterproductive) and unreliable loser, much like Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Commenter ‘mad_kalak’ who I’m sure many remember, seems to have been scrubbed from Reason.
Here’ a thread where people are absolutely talking to him, and his comments are gone:
https://reason.com/volokh/2023/03/13/vladimir-putin-better-than-any-psychotherapist/?comments=true#comments
Yes, it does appear as though they scrubbed all his comments.
Here you can see where Volokh actually responded to him, and nothing visible in the comments.
I find this disturbing, and it substantially lowers my opinion of Reason. Worse, they have no-indexed the comments, so they can’t even be retrieved from the Wayback Machine.
I wonder why they did it?
Of course, Brett leaps immediately to a conspiracy theory that “they” must have done something. Did Brett consider the possibility of a technical glitch, or that the commenters in question requested this, or that it happens automatically if one deletes one’s account, or anything other than conspiracy? Of course not.
They didn’t no-index the comments as a result of a technical glitch, that was a deliberate effort to make the comments untrackable.
And if the comments had disappeared as a result of a technical glitch, they’d likely have said so when they replied to me. And who the heck sets things up so comments going back years disappear if an account is canceled, making conversations look strange?
There’s really no good justification for this, so I’m not going to try to make excuses for them. I’ve seen several sites start doing this, and it never ends well. I never expected to see it at Reason.
re: certain comments being “scrubbed”
I’ve noticed this too. Here’s me, replying to someone (I think it was Queen Amalthea) — but the original comment is gone!
https://reason.com/volokh/2023/10/11/may-private-employers-fire-or-refuse-to-hire-employees-because-of-their-praise-of-hamas-or-praise-of-israel/?comments=true#comment-10271453
Come to think of it, it’s been a while since I’ve seen any comments by Queenie.
I asked about it.
“Hello,
We don’t disclose information about the status of our users’ accounts, which unfortunately leaves open opportunities for erroneous speculation. Reason remains a pretty free and open commenting site. Nothing changing about that.
Chris”
I don’t see any denial there that they scrubbed all his comments. Just a refusal to explain why, and an empty promise that a site that has started scrubbing comment history is going to remain free and open.
It’s sad. I really don’t trust them anymore after this; They didn’t just get rid of some comments, they went back a long ways wiping past comments. Sites that start down that road never turn back, in my experience.
And yet, magically, you again came to some sort of weird conspiratorial conclusion.
Vanishing comments, banned commenters, and ongoing word-specific censorship have always been part of the Volokh Conspiracy.
The law professors who operate this blog are entitled to continue to impose viewpoint-driven, partisan censorship at their blog. Cowardly hypocrites have rights, too.
Interesting. On the main board this kind of scrubbing of comments would be considered irrefutable evidence of pedophilia.
Alternatively, would Reason/VC respond that way in response to an EU-ish “right to be forgotten” demand?
The Reverend implies that everyone here but him is Right-wing.
So, how many of you like Putin?
I’ll admit to being “right-wing.” And no, I don’t “like Putin.” Never did.
I have to wonder how many of those Putin leaning people would actually want to live under Putin rule in Russia? They may think that jailing gay people is good, but look at the Russian economy. It is hardly much better than when the communist ran the government. There is nowhere near the gains that should have been made in the transition to capitalism. This is what you accept when you also accept authoritarian leaders.
You somehow seem to think this country is free…
By relentlessly persecuting the opposition, our current administration is going down the same road as Putin. No, we are not there (i.e., Putin-level) yet, but they really ought to stop!!!
If you don’t see yourself as free in America, I doubt there is anywhere where you would see yourself free. Please name a country you see as free.
Well, there’s this prime specimen: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/05/fugitive-former-us-city-councillor-enlists-with-russia-for-war-in-ukraine#:~:text=Appearing%20to%20confirm%20his%20participation,%2C%E2%80%9D%20he%20is%20heard%20saying.
Currently being welcomed with open arms, but I suspect that the warm embrace will soon change…
Putin has got to go. But this post attempts to prove way too much. A few crackpots like a few of the things that Putin is doing. Most of the “pro-Putin” stuff is isolationism rather than being pro-Putin. I don’t particularly care for the government of Xi Jinping, and personally, I think he should be hanged from the nearest tree. However, I think that the Chinese government approach to urban construction net/net is probably better than ours. (Like why does it take forever to build the Second Avenue Subway?). Does that make me pro-Xi–of course not.
Construction has bankrupted China.
“Most of the “pro-Putin” stuff is isolationism rather than being pro-Putin.”
Online, I assume even more of it is internet trolling, bots, and various astroturf or intelligence operations. But I haven’t watched cable news or followed any of these personalities in years.
Mostly, this is a way for globalists to smear people that disagree with them. Nothing new, as Washington said, “Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.”
You could say the same thing about the white supremacists, anti-semites and Nazis travelling on the same road.
I think the big thing left out of both analysis is 2016.
Whether or not Trump colluded, it’s pretty well agreed that Putin was trying to help Trump win and Clinton lose.
I think there’s a significant group on the right who figure “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” and consider Russia a sort of ally.
I don’t believe Putin particularly cared who won, he just wanted whoever won to win by as narrow a margin as possible, with as much ill will as possible. Like most people, they were assuming that Trump was going to lose, so they promoted the expected loser to narrow the margin.
Once Trump actually won, they turned on a dime and began running anti-Trump content, instead. Some of the biggest anti-Trump rallies after the election were actually organized by Russia!
Russians Staged Rallies For and Against Trump to Promote Discord, Indictment Says
‘I don’t believe Putin particularly cared who won’
He threw all that support in favour of Trump, you’re just playing dumb.
Because he thought Trump would lose….
Presumably that’s why he decided Trump needed so much help.
I don’t believe Putin particularly cared who won, he just wanted whoever won to win by as narrow a margin as possible, with as much ill will as possible. Like most people, they were assuming that Trump was going to lose, so they promoted the expected loser to narrow the margin.
The discord was a plus, but he was definitely trying to help Trump win.
The only question is whether he specifically wanted Trump or didn’t want Clinton. I personally suspect he wanted Trump since he saw Trump could move the GOP in a pro-Russia direction.
As for Russia running anti-Trump stuff post election are you sure you have the right citation?
Because the only reference I see in that article is: “The Russians were also accused of promoting discord after the election by simultaneously holding New York rallies, one in support of Trump’s victory and another under the name “Trump is NOT my President!” according to an indictment released Friday by U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller. There was a separate post-election, anti-Trump rally in Charlotte, North Carolina.”
Otherwise, it’s just a big list of Russia doing pro-Trump stuff.
Putin wanted Trump to win. He had an axe to grind with Hillary Clinton for starters. Whether he viewed Trump as loyal to him is questionable, but I am sure he saw Trump as an agent of chaos. Trump was both incompetent and provocative and Putin could see him as an agent of chaos in American and the West.
I love these statements with literally no evidence behind them.
He has come out and said he wants Biden to win. I’ll bet you’ll STILL claim he’s for Trump.
What brilliant analysis.
Sure Putin’s Russia has assisted Trump in numerous documented ways since 2015, and Putin has obvious things to gain from another Trump Presidency, most significantly a cutoff of American aid to Ukraine and possible dissolution of NATO.
But then again, Putin, a former KGB agent, said he’d prefer Biden. How can you not take his words at face value?!?
In the words of the immortal George W. Bush “I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy”.
“Sure Putin’s Russia has assisted Trump in numerous documented ways since 2015, and Putin has obvious things to gain from another Trump Presidency, most significantly a cutoff of American aid to Ukraine and possible dissolution of NATO.”
Hmm, Putin opposes American expansion of their oil industry. Biden agrees.
Putin wants America to become obsessed with green energy (he has funded green energy movies and the like). Biden agrees.
Putin invaded nobody under Trump. Biden cannot say the same.
There is not a policy Trump underwent that helps Putin. If Biden’s goal was to help Putin, he would not have to change a single policy he advocates.
If Putin cares so much about Russia’s economy then why is he invading Ukraine? Putin’s priorities are clear. Territorial expansion, and there Trump is the obvious choice.
It’s widely reported that Trump wanted to leave NATO, there’s even a bipartisan bill designed to stop him from doing so in a potential 2nd term. Without NATO not only is Ukraine in that much more trouble, but so is the rest of the former USSR.
And no one thinks Trump is going to support Ukraine, half the narrative when things looked bad for Russia was about them holding out for a 2nd Trump term.
The only reason that Putin waited until Trump’s first term was over to invade Ukraine is he didn’t want to jeopardize Trump’s re-election and the chance Trump would dismantle NATO entirely in a second term.
Not to mention Trump constantly trying to avoid or roll back sanctions against Russia. The preference is so obvious I’m honestly not sure you’re even arguing in good faith.
Everyone, including Putin, underestimated the effectiveness and decisiveness of Biden’s response. Bearing that in mind the invasion of Ukraine was presumably also supposed to help Trump’s re-election as well as roll over Ukraine in two weeks.
And also the foolishness of Biden’s response. Ukraine is still losing the war, and the Biden policy is just killing a lot of Ukrainians.
So is your solution to finally give Ukraine the support it needs to win the war and liberate its territory? Or to force Ukraine to surrender “for it’s own good” and give up any aspirations of being a free country?
The Ukrainian defence against Putin is killing lots of Ukrainians. But also, Russians.
Why in the world would Putin have wanted Trump to win. Hillary had already showed herself to be weak when she “hit the reset button.” Trump was very pro-extraction (which is completely antithetical to Russia’s interests), and he wanted NATO to get stronger. He strongly opposed Nord-2.
Since he tried to interfere in Trump’s favour, perhaps that’s a question you should actually think about.
Ever stop to think that he was shooting at Hillary to wound because he didn’t think Trump had a chance? Also, Putin funded a lot of enviros, ya know, because he wanted to tamp down competition in oil/gas.
‘Ever stop to think that he was shooting at Hillary to wound because he didn’t think Trump had a chance?’
No. Because that would be stupid.
Clinton was a well-known anti-Putin hawk. Putin hated her and knew, in fact, she was not weak with respect to Russia. Trump, on the other hand, was, even at the time, quite obviously enamored of dictators and easily manipulated with praise and attention.
One of Trump’s first acts was to try to undo the sanctions imposed on Russia for the 2014 annexation of Crimea. Putin understood who would be weaker vis a vis Russia.
You really should reconsider your priors if you don’t realize Putin knew which 2016 candidate would be better for Russia. (And that doesn’t necessarily say anything about which candidate was better for America, but, if it wasn’t clear to you on your own who was better for Russia, Putin’s substantial support for Trump in 2016 should remove any doubt.)
>Clinton was a well-known anti-Putin hawk. Putin hated her and knew, in fact, she was not weak with respect to Russia.
Hillary of the Russian Reset? That Hillary was a well-known anti-Putin hawk? The one that sold off rights to our own uranium mines? How anti-Putin of her!!
The one that sold off rights to our own uranium mines?
When you have to resort to making up facts, it’s clear you know you have no legitimate point.
“Clinton was a well-known anti-Putin hawk. Putin hated her and knew, in fact, she was not weak with respect to Russia. ”
That seems accurate. Putin clearly did not want to deal with Clinton, because he considered her “reset” as just a ploy to instigate regime change in Russia. To the extent that Trump was only a chaos factor, he was better for Putin than Clinton. All the rest follwed as you described.
Trump did not, of course, want NATO to get stronger. Even if that wasn’t obvious (spoiler alert: it is!), his own National Security Advisor expressly said that Trump was looking for a pretext to leave NATO.
“large-scale domestic repression and horrific atrocities in Ukraine, comparable to those committed by Hamas against Israel, but on a much larger scale”
Of course Russia acts on a larger scale with its atrocities than the terror-government of a single city-state.
Looking at the opponents of Israel’s war effort in Gaza, should we be on our guard against any pro-Hamas tendencies from that quarter, as we’re supposed to be on guard against pro-Putin tendencies among the opponents of Ukrainian intervention?
What are you talking about? The slightest criticism of Israel is immediately labeled as pro-Hamas anti-semitism. Every pro-Palestine demonstration is called a pro-Hamas demonstration.
Well, when the protesters chant “from the river to the sea,” it’s an apt criticism.
See?
So I would presume that *the same folks* who talk about pro-Putin sentiment among the opponents of intervention in Ukraine give the same attention to pro-Hamas sentiment among the opponents of Israel’s war effort in Gaza?
Same critique in each case by the same people? Is the overlap complete?
You tell me. Are you unable to perform the necessary critical and contextual assessment for yourself?
The context is the desire to believe that anyone who differs from you does so from evil or corrupt reasons.
It’s not a matter of consistency or logic, or holding oneself to the standards you apply to others. It’s about concocting the best smear you can come up with.
Nige said you could provide the context yourself.
Your reply is a pure attack on Nige; nothing else.
Lame.
I was including him and his ilk in my criticism. So it’s not a “pure” attack on him alone.
Pedantic and lame.
As such, it’s an ad hominim argument with no interest in the substance of the question. Ignoring the substance is supposed to acheive this magic trick of creating equivalence and exposing hypocrisy. It’s a thought-ending approach that runs through the centre and the right as the right grows more freakish and extreme.
‘The context is the desire to believe that anyone who differs from you does so from evil or corrupt reasons.’
That is the context of your comment, deployed as a gotcha, not a good-faith question, not the context of the differences between the forces involved in the two conflicts.
should we be on our guard against any pro-Hamas tendencies from that quarter, as we’re supposed to be on guard against pro-Putin tendencies among the opponents of Ukrainian intervention?
I don’t think anyone really said opposition to support for Ukraine means a person is suspect as possibly supporting Putin. It’s just a fact that people like Tucker Carlson are disturbingly supportive of Putin and consistently parrot his propaganda. But the causal arrow is not opposition to support for Ukraine, it’s the pro-Putin part that leads him and his ilk to oppose support for Ukraine.
But, re Hamas, sure. Please do be suspect if you care to. The difference, though, is that I have not heard anyone in these comment threads praise Hamas or support their aims (nor any mainstream politicians or left wing commentators). In fact, I and many others who can be critical of the IDF and don’t like Netanyahu have repeatedly said, and I will say it again, Hamas is an evil organization with evil goals and evil methods. I wish them all dead, frankly.
And to the extent there are people openly supporting Hamas on university campuses or elsewhere, they absolutely should be condemned equally with those who openly support Putin. And vice versa.
But it’s that vice versa part that most of you who are supposedly concerned with Israel’s right to exist and the moral depravity of evil doers (Hamas/Putin) will balk at.
“I don’t think anyone really said opposition to support for Ukraine means a person is suspect as possibly supporting Putin.”
I’m not saying you’re wrong but…you’re wrong.
One of the Volokh commenters responded to my critical remarks about U. S. intervention in Ukraine with a homophobic comment about how much I supposedly loved Putin.
You have a cite and name? Forgive me for not blindly trusting your version of events when it would be easy for you to supply a hyperlink to the alleged incident.
Interesting, you provided no link or citation of any kind and expect people to believe you, but now you expect me to have an obsessively-maintained record of every argument I ever had on this site.
If it weren’t for double standards you’d have no standards at all.
You choose to disbelieve my assertion, and I choose to disbelieve yours.
And here’s a Guardian article which plants suspicion of pro-Putin sympathies based on opposition to Ukraine aid:
“On a more political track, House Republican Freedom Caucus members such as Paul Gosar, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Scott Perry – who in May voted with 54 other Republican members against a $40bn aid package for Ukraine, and have raised other concerns about the war – have proved useful, though *perhaps* [emphasis added] unwitting, Kremlin allies at times.”
That “perhaps” is telling. The entire article is worth a read by anyone who’s interested in evidence counteracting your gaslighting narrative.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/06/us-conservatives-pushing-russian-spin-ukraine-war
People are suspect of whether Marjorie Taylor Greene is a Putin sympathizer? That’s truly shocking given:
Republican leaders in Congress are torn over what to do with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene after the congresswoman spoke at a weekend event organized by a white nationalist who marveled over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as the crowd erupted in chants of “Putin!”
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-marjorie-taylor-greene-race-and-ethnicity-europe-mitch-mcconnell-6dd6985db085537fcb103c0d022ac775
Paul Gosar: “Ukraine is not our ally. Russia is not our enemy. We need to address our crippling debt, inflation and immigration problems. None of this is Putin’s fault.”
Scott Perry: Congressman Scott Perry chose to be only one of six House of Representatives members to vote against HR 7276 which directs the President to investigate possible war crimes by Vladimir Putin and Russia.
These aren’t just people who vote against aid to Ukraine, they’ve taken other actions which reasonably call into question whether they are sympathetic to Putin or “witting Kremlin allies”.
You are gaslighting by pretending that “perhaps” applies to all who vote against or are critical of aid to Ukraine and/or by pretending that it was only the vote against aid to Ukraine that had the Guardian suspicious of whether those three were merely unwittingly helping Putin or whether they were actually sympathetic to him.
Dillweed, I wasn’t speaking of the AP article, but of the Guardian article and its “perhaps.”
Your claim was “I don’t think anyone really said opposition to support for Ukraine means a person is suspect as possibly supporting Putin.” But the Guardian article raised such a possibility based *only* on certain House Republican Freedom Caucus members voting against Ukraine aid.
Your evidence about Perry only shows that he doesn’t want to support Ukraine by having a war-crimes investigation as part of America’s Ukraine intervention. Did you even pass the LSAT? Because your example undermines your own case as a a matter of logic.
You’re fixating on a single word which is actually giving them the benefit of the doubt over actual evidence of support for Putin? And even then you notably leave out the ‘unwitting’ that follows the ‘probably.’ Hey, could opposing aid to Ukraine provide unwitting support to Putin? Ummmm…
Dillweed, I wasn’t speaking of the AP article, but of the Guardian article and its “perhaps.”
How special are you? No one suggested you were talking about the AP article I cited and which presumably you hadn’t considered until I cited it, Sherlock.
But the Guardian article raised such a possibility based *only* on certain House Republican Freedom Caucus members voting against Ukraine aid.
Oh jeezus. You are very special indeed. That sentence makes sense if you think the Guardian author wasn’t aware of other facts. Oh, wait, the remainder of the article goes on to list many examples other than opposition to aid which supports their “perhaps” formulation.
You either didn’t read your own article or your reading comprehension is well below what’s necessary to have an intelligent conversation.
Your evidence about Perry only shows that he doesn’t want to support Ukraine by having a war-crimes investigation as part of America’s Ukraine intervention.
No, it also shows he was carrying Putin’s water in ways other than opposing aid. It’s not clear why the U.S. would be uninterested in investigating and documenting war crimes of our enemy as they attack one of our friends. And given almost every Democrat and Republican also couldn’t see why we wouldn’t do that, Scott’s vote against is suspect (perhaps especially when combined with his other witting or unwitting carrying of Putin’s water). Damn you are not bright.
Since you asked, my LSAT score was better than over 99% of other people who took the test.
“investigating and documenting war crimes of our enemy as they attack one of our friends”
That’s some serious, question-begging stupidity right there. Do you even know what NATO is and how Ukraine isn’t a member?
Maybe you could post a link to your test results, so I can see what you were like back in the old days when you knew what logic and evidence were.
And as for your suggestion that if “almost every Democrat and Republican” in Congress support something, that must make it right…
By that standard, of course, the national debt is a wonderful thing, and all the haters complaining about it must be foreign agents.
Assuming purely for the purposes of argument that you’re telling the truth about your test scores, how did your logical abilities decline so much since then? Perhaps you are blinded by what George Washington would call a passionate attachment to a foreign nation, so that (ignoring your risible gaslighting) you blame sinister influences for the fact that there are people who fail to share your dangerous attachment.
That’s some serious, question-begging stupidity right there. Do you even know what NATO is and how Ukraine isn’t a member?
You are just not bright. You know the U.S. is friendly with many, many countries that are not part of NATO?
Also, not question begging. Go read an article about what that phrase means, please.
As for your next one, making nonsensical claims about what I asserted and what, with your limited logical skills, that implies, I have to believe nobody is that stupid and you really are just a troll.
you provided no link or citation of any kind and expect people to believe you
How am I supposed to provide a link that no one said something?
You’re not a serious person.
You wanted me to take me at your word then showed your lack of seriousness by assuming I’d compiled a list of things of every exchange I had of other commenters.
You are a dillweed.
then showed your lack of seriousness by assuming I’d compiled a list of things of every exchange I had of other commenters.
This is a rather unintelligent interpretation of our exchange. You needed only provide one example. Which, notably, you haven’t.
Meanwhile, apparently you wanted me to cite the entire internet to prove no one worth noting has done what you claim. You know you can’t really prove that sort of negative with a citation, right?
You are quite unserious.
“You needed only provide one example. Which, notably, you haven’t.”
Are you some kind of genetic experiment to see how a person’s life can be sustained with the minimum number of brain cells? I cited an entire article from your friends at the Guardian.
“I cited an entire article from your friends at the Guardian.”
Which I pointed out didn’t support your claim.
We can agree that at least one of us is a moron.
If by “pointed out” you mean “risibly claimed,” then sure, you pointed it out.
You haven’t addressed the substance of my arguments, but have retreated to ad hominem. It’s telling.
Your one attempt was getting confused about why I cited the AP article demonstrating, again, that Greene, Gosar, and Scott have made other questionable decisions/statements relating to Putin and/or Russia.
You’re just flailing at this point and it’s amusing.
You gaslit about the accusations of Russian sympathy against critics of the Ukraine war.
You beg the question of whether the antagonists in some war abroad are friends or enemies of the United States.
And you think strong bipartisan support of a policy in Congress is a sign it’s a good measure. Which would make the national debt the awesomest thing ever.
Three strikes.
You gaslit about the accusations of Russian sympathy against critics of the Ukraine war.
You clearly don’t know what gaslit means. You just say that when you disagree with someone’s assessment but can’t muster the facts to actually dispute their point.
You beg the question of…
You also don’t know what “beg the question” means. Stating facts is not begging the question.
you think strong bipartisan support of a policy in Congress is a sign it’s a good measure
No one said that. The point is that there is widespread consensus on investigating war crimes committed by our enemy and no one who opposed it offered any sensible reason that makes their opposition to this particular investigation of war crimes less suspect.
Which would make the national debt the awesomest thing ever.
First, that’s not what it would mean. Second, there isn’t even broad bipartisan support for running up debt. Third, you are confusing being responsible for something as being supportive of it.
Your lack of understanding of basic English words or phrases is telling. At best, you’re just trolling.
“our enemy”
That’s what’s called begging the question. It’s also called moronic.
You cited “almost every Democrat and Republican” in Congress as if their support of something proved it right.
Maybe that makes sense in Northern Virginia, but outside Washington, D. C., Northern Virginia and environs, you’ll have to do better than simply mention that a bunch of Congresscritters support something, if you want to argue it’s something good.
“there isn’t even broad bipartisan support for running up debt. Third, you are confusing being responsible for something as being supportive of it.”
What kind of bullshit is this? Were the vast majority of Congresscritters, as they ran up the debt, somehow not supportive of their own actions? Do you even notice the crap you’re typing?
That’s what’s called begging the question.
No, it isn’t. It’s a fact. Besides that, begging the question involves asserting the thing to be proven. That’s not what’s involved here. Whether the Greene, Gosar, and/or Perry are Putin stooges does not depend on Russia being the enemy. Hence, as I said, you clearly don’t understand what begging the question means.
I also see you essentially acknowledge you misused the term gaslighting.
You cited “almost every Democrat and Republican” in Congress as if their support of something proved it right.
Nope. Complete reading comprehension fail. I said I see no reason why the U.S. wouldn’t investigate war crimes by Russia, then mentioned that apparently almost every Congress person agrees with me. Rather than provide any reason for disagreeing with me (i.e., providing a reason why the U.S., who at least purports to be a nation that cares about human rights and acts to enforce international norms, wouldn’t investigate war crimes by a rogue nation), you just pretended that I was asserting it was right because of support in Congress. Go re-read what I said and formulate an intelligent response.
Were the vast majority of Congresscritters, as they ran up the debt, somehow not supportive of their own actions?
There was majority support for various spending bills and various tax cuts, but plenty of people in Congress didn’t support one or the other, including because they didn’t support running up the debt. However, the cumulative effect of various spending and tax cutting bills is an exploded national debt, though very few Congress people actually want that (and few voted for all the bills which contributed). But just re-read this sentence and ponder it until it makes sense:
you are confusing being responsible for something as being supportive of it.
People take actions which lead to secondary results they don’t “support” all the time. They are responsible for the thing, but they don’t necessarily support the thing. It’s really not that hard of a concept.
“I also see you essentially acknowledge you misused the term gaslighting.”
Absolute and utter bullshit.
“I said I see no reason why the U.S. wouldn’t investigate war crimes by Russia, then mentioned that apparently almost every Congress person agrees with me.”
So I interpreted you correctly.
So I interpreted you correctly.
Wherever you learned English, you need to get your money back.
I really think this supposed admiration of Putin is wildly exaggerated. I know a lot of conservatives. I don’t know a single one that likes or admires Putin.
They may agree with him on some gender issues and some other things, but they don’t want to live under him.
You know who else believed in two genders?
Back when Obama was president, Putin-love was at its highest pitch – manly Putin vs effete Obama – nowadays it’s the love that dare not speak its name. But a vote for Trump is a pro-Putin vote.
Well, Putin was more of a man than effete Obama, but recall that Obama was tongue-bathing Putin (“the 80s called”) and the reset. Plus, Obama meekly allowed the taking of Crimea etc.
Yes this kind of divorced dad energy captures the creepy energy of Putin support on the right quite well.
There you go.
Plus, Obama meekly allowed the taking of Crimea etc.
What did you propose he do beyond economic sanctions including kicking Russia out of the G8?
Would you describe Trump’s request that Russia be allowed back in the G7 meek? Or perhaps submissive? Or maybe slavish?
“economic sanctions”
The go-to approach of the past 20 years that show far more failures than successes.
So we’ll go with: Trump’s effort to help Putin get into the G7 was slavish.
Shame on you. Don’t make up things that others have not said.
Especially don’t follow the Red-baiting example of our resident Fed.
My comment is a very common sentiment among US political scientists. It could be incorrect. If you think so, give compelling counterexamples, counselor.
Pretty sure that was directed at rloquitur more than you.
Don’t make up things that others have not said.
What do you think I made up that anyone said?
My response was my own based on the lack of any response to my prior question, as Sarcastro could tell. It’s not clear why you couldn’t.
My comment is a very common sentiment among US political scientists. It could be incorrect. If you think so, give compelling counterexamples, counselor.
In what way do you think my comment was in any way a response to your assertion regarding the general effectiveness of economic sanctions?
What would you have had the U.S. do after Crimea? Nothing?
In my view, better economic sanctions and kicking Russia out of the G8 than nothing. It imposes a cost. It reduces Russia’s resources and prestige to some degree even if it doesn’t change their behavior in any discernible way. Doing something is definitely, in the long term, more effective than doing nothing. Even if it doesn’t dissuade Russia (or Russia now), it goes into the calculations of any rational actor in the future and, so, in at least some circumstances the increased cost of taking an act the U.S. will condemn will result in a leader not taking that act. That’s why it’s important to impose economic sanctions in many cases where it “won’t work” with respect to the particular problem that provoked the sanctions. Anyone with a basic understanding of economics should understand this point.
But, to your question, yes, they have worked:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/04/28/13-times-that-economic-sanctions-really-worked/
You, rloquitor, seem to mistake your on-the-spectrum incel’s dislike of women for masculinity.
It’s an everyday mistake among worthless, right-wing culture war casualties.
Steven Seagal seems conservative..
No one that admires Putin? Really? Let’s see if you can guess the source of this quote:
“When I went to Russia with the Miss Universe pageant, (Putin) contacted me and was so nice. I mean, the Russian people were so fantastic to us,” he said on “Fox and Friends.” “I’ll just say this, they are doing – they’re outsmarting us at many turns, as we all understand. I mean, their leaders are, whether you call them smarter or more cunning or whatever, but they’re outsmarting us. If you look at Syria or other places, they’re outsmarting us.”
Geniuses have to stick together.
This warmongering by Russian Jews, like Somin and Young, is really despicable. Russian Jews have caused a massive amount of harm to the world. Somin and Young claim to be naturalized Americans, but they have no allegiance to America and carry their Old World grievances to the USA.
They do not even have any legitimate arguments for promoting the Ukraine War. Just straw man arguments and personal attacks.
You’re giving anti-Semitism a bad name.
As with certain other commenters, if I don’t reply to you hereafter, it’s because I have you blocked.
Just name-calling. It is tiring having these wars being mostly promoted by Jews, and then opposition to the wars being called anti-semitic.
No one says opposition to the wars is anti-Semitic.
these wars being mostly promoted by Jews
That’s the anti-Semitic shit.
The ADL does. Where have you been?
Oh, yeah, you work for an entity whose leadership is disproportionately Jews and some dual citizens even.
“His claims about expelling warmongers, driving out globalists, casting out communists, and throwing off those who hate our country echo classic #antisemitic rhetoric.” – ADL March 2023
You gotta wonder, why do things that happen to antisemites keep happening to WhitePride?
leadership is disproportionately Jews and some dual citizens even.
This only matters if you’re antisemetic.
‘The ADL does’
Does what? Start wars? Or just support Ukraine? Lots of people support Ukraine. Why single them out?
Oh wait, yeah, anti-semitism.
It’s amazing how you manage to be an even worse human being than your mother. That’s a pretty low bar to fail to surpass.
No, I think it’s they both know America from the Ivory Tower.
They didn’t grow up here and hence didn’t grow up with the children of firemen, truck drivers, and tradesmen. They don’t understand MAGA.
An Ivory Tower academic should be able to understand that there are legitimate reasons for opposing the Ukraine War, and for opposing NATO expansion into Ukraine.
And those reasons would be fundamentally pro-Putin. There’s NO reasons for opposing the support of Ukraine that aren’t pro-Putin, it’s completely unavoidable.
Jewish propaganda. Supporting Ukraine has been a disaster for everyone. Lots of people do not like Putin, but do not want to go to war against him either.
A disaster for Putin. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was a disaster for Ukraine, not people supporting it in its time of dire need. Nobody wants to go to war against Putin, not even Ukraine, but Putin decided to go to war with them. There are people like you who want to do things that would *let Putin win* or at least give him an excellent chance of winning. That’s why those things cannot avoid being pro-Putin.
Prof. Somin’s family emigrated here when he was 5.
And anybody who has read about the KKK understands MAGA.
How is wanting America to be prosperous again analogous to the KKK?
You never talk about American prosperity.
You only talk about all the bad people you want to lose and suffer.
“Prof. Somin’s family emigrated here when he was 5.” — What are you trying to say? That his Russian Jewish family was not an influence on him?
The Ukraine War is all about admitting Ukraine to NATO. Sec. of State Blinken just confirmed that again. If I disagree with fighting a war to get Ukraine into NATO, then I am called a Purin lover or anti-semitic.
I’m trying to say that Dr. Ed is wrong when he said that Prof Somin “didn’t grow up here.”
The Ukraine War is an invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Why would Russia want to admit Ukraine to NATO?
You’re called antisemitic because, like your mother, you’re an antisemite.
Russia invaded to stop Ukraine being admitted to NATO. Many of the prominent American supporters of the war are Jewish. Somin and Young give examples of Jewish arguments for the war.
The evidence would rather suggest that Russia invaded Ukraine in order to expand NATO into Sweden and Finland.
4d chess, apparently.
And why the fuck shouldn’t Ukraine, a sovereign independent democratic state, join NATO if it wants to? The very invasion to supposedly stop it proves that they should probably have been let in years ago.
It is not Ukraine’s choice. 30 other countries would have to agree to defend Ukraine, and start World War III.
It’s still Ukraine’s choice whether to go to those thirty countries and ask for admission. It would be *Putin’s* choice to invade a NATO state, if it came to that. We know he wouldn’t dare. Else why use the *prospect* of Ukraine joining NATO as one of his pretexts? Because he wouldn’t dare afterwards.
Vlad has a God-given right to invade neighboring countries.
Ukraine’s choice? Okay, Ukraine is being destroyed out of its own choice. The USA is just helping it commit suicide.
Huh. Used to think you guys at least stuck by self-defense as a principle. Guess there’s none you won’t jettison at convenience.
As always, you lie. Nobody was even considering admitting Ukraine to NATO in 2022.
Maybe American Jews have issues with a party that condones people like Roger S and White Pride, Ed?
You think Roger S and “White Pride” are bigger threats to Jews than the Squad?
Have you heard some of the stuff they say?
I leave that question up to the individual Jew.
I’ve winced at some of what they say – but you’ve in this thread said shit a lot worse than ‘it’s all about the Benjamins.’
Pres. Trump was good for the Jews. The enemies of Jews today are on the Left.
You hate the Jews a lot so this post is ridiculous.
Just the commies and warmongers. And those who want to replace the American population with foreigners.
You think they’re puppetmastering our government. You’re basically quoting the Protocols.
You’re antiemetic as fuck. Giving advice to Jews is a pretty bold move for a piece of shit like you to make.
This whole original post was one Russian Jew agreeing with another Russian Jew about a hatred for a Russian non-Jew. But I guess I am anti-semitic for noticing that.
>I leave that question up to the individual Jew.
You defer to the individual Jew for complaints about your side, while confidently generalizing all American Jews for complaints about my side? Pathetic.
>but you’ve in this thread said shit a lot worse than ‘it’s all about the Benjamins.’
lol wow, of all the horrible shit they’ve said on the record, that’s the worse you can recall? Of course you know what they really say but you have to pretend they didn’t. Your entire world is made up of pretending things aren’t what they are.
I was replying to an argument Dr. Ed has made about American Jews many times.
If you have an issue with the scope, take it up with him.
What’s everyone’s opinions on Orban?
Why taunt the zoo animals?
Viktor Orban is an illiberal (which he proudly proclaims though it should be a pejorative to anyone who values liberty and individual rights) kleptocrat who has every appearance of wanting to be more like Putin and less like the leader of a modern Western democracy. The reasons MAGA are drawn to him are obvious.
If this makes you skeptical, then you’re a PUTIN LOVER AND FALLING FOR RUSSIAN DISINFORMATION! Which harms our National Cognitive Infrastructure Security, thereby violating the law.
https://twitter.com/Lauren3veMemes/status/1776266878719013352
The video is riddled with errors which suggests it is unreliable even for what it purports to show (some prominent people in Ukraine have big houses).
The list has no credibility and the notion that prominent people in Ukraine (or any country) have big houses is hardly surprising. However, anyone who just believes that the houses shown are, in fact, the houses of the people listed who hold the offices listed are far more credulous than I am.
But, more to the point, no one disputes that there has been a lot of corruption in Ukraine. The High Council of Justice (a member of which purported has a large house) is a good example, however, of steps taken with U.S. and European assistance to reduce corruption and improve the Ukrainian justice system. The Ethics Council was created in 2021 and includes a former British judge and a former American (Massachusetts) judge. Simply showing pictures of houses purportedly belonging to prominent people fails to establish that these people in particular afforded their homes through diverting U.S./E.U. aid or, more generally, through any type of corruption.
It’s an emotional smear job that would only appeal to the naive or those who’ve already made up their mind. Critical thinking is not your forte, white supremacist.
I’m not aware of anyone arguing that Ukraine doesn’t (historically and currently) have a problem with corruption. Must be the Russian influence! But the war and the country’s goal of joining the EU seems to have focused Ukraine’s leadership on anti-corruption efforts. To have any hope of joining the EU those efforts will have to be largely successful.
In any case, the current practice of sending them weapons instead of money tends to minimize the chances of US/Western military aid being corruptly diverted from its intended purpose: fighting Russia.
Exactly right.
As for which candidate Putin wants Americans to vote for:
Supposing Putin supports Jones for President of the U. S. But if he says “vote for Jones,” it will provoke a patriotic reaction so American voters will *reject* Jones.
So Putin will have to use reverse psychology and say “whatever you do, don’t vote for Jones!” And the voters will be like, “well, I’m not going to do what some foreign dictator says, so I *will* vote for Jones.”
But supposing American voters are wise to the reverse psychology tactic? “Putin says he doesn’t want me to vote for Jones, but he knows that I’ll vote for whoever he opposes, so he actually *does* want me to vote for Jones. So I will vote against Jones because I don’t want to vote for Putin’s candidate.”
Of course, Putin will anticipate this. So he’ll say “vote for Jones,” using reverse reverse psychology, and the voters will vote for Jones, thinking they’ve outwitted Putin when in fact they’ve been duped by him.
Or maybe it’s a case of reverse reverse reverse psychology…never mind, I can’t follow the insidious workings of Putin’s KGB-trained mind.
Or maybe this is like (SPOILER ALERT) the game-of-wits scene in the Princess Bride where it turns out *both* glasses are poisoned, which metaphorically means all the candidates are Putin stooges.
You aren’t that smart, but this post is way dumber than you usually are. Maybe it’s a joke.
The talking points were apparently late this morning. Admire the work ethic, though.
“Maybe it’s a joke.”
You think?
It’s just unserious. Easy mistake.
Look, I accept that there’s nothing any mere citizen can do about U. S. policy in Ukraine. Just wait until it blows over, I guess, and hope there won’t be any nukes.
Like the entire Cold War, then.
‘Supposing Putin supports Jones for President of the U. S. But if he says “vote for Jones,” it will provoke a patriotic reaction so American voters will *reject* Jones.’
I mean, sure, if you reduce voters to pavlovian children incapable of determining independently of Putin whether Jones is or is not, in fact, pro-Putin and will instantly become trapped in such a cunning maze of logic and double-bluff.
If a candidate favors nuclear war with Russia, then Putin will favor the other candidate. So will I.
Nobody favours nuclear war with anyone.
No candidate favors nuclear war with Russia, of course. Putin is the only person who would initiate a nuclear war.