U.S. liberals insist on message discipline on Russia

Remember that Russia is irredeemable

The following citation illustrates what I consider to be one of the dumbest (simplest? Most ignorant?) but extremely popular interpretation of the changing alignment of the U.S., NATO, Europe, and Russia in early 2025,

“Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last week ordered U.S. Cyber Command to stand down from all planning against Russia, including offensive digital actions.” Because the US is a Russian ally (or satellite?) now I guess.”

It comes from a post that I will snarkily title as Don’t End the War with Russia! by Jason Kottke (who doesn’t usually provide his own titles) because that can be the only interpretation: he’s lamenting that the U.S. might be following through on ending hostilities with Russia. He would rather continue a proxy war than speak to the dastardly Russians. Kottke mocks the Trump administration as having “allied” with Russia, which is, apparently, the worst thing that he can imagine. Kottke probably has no idea that he is—has become?—an 80s Republican and he certainly has no idea how brainwashed he is.

If you think I’m being unfair, his very next post is again untitled, but amounts to what I will call The NY Times told me to believe that Zelenskyy is an untouchable hero by Jason Kottke, which I think matches his sentiment. It includes the following,

“My god, Trump and Vance are just total fucking assholes. The US is openly aligning themselves with Russia against Ukraine and Europe, a major shift in international relations that dates back to the 1940s. I am so embarrassed to be an American right now.”

I wonder if Kottke will ever look back and feel any shame for his simplistic take on foreign affairs. Will he ever regret having sided with continued war when the chance for peace was available? Does he ever wonder why the U.S. needs to be at war with Russia?

Will he ever regret that he was “embarrassed to be an American” when the U.S. starting bringing a senseless and murderous war to an end, but he never evinced the same sentiment for the sixteen months of Israel’s genocide that occurred during and were wholly supported by Biden’s regime. He never even mentioned that it was going on, but peace with Russia is enough to make him want to renounce his citizenship. What sterling and totally banal principles.

Kottke even cites a piece of what Trump said to Zelenskyy, after the Ukrainian leader had interrupted and talked over him. Kottke essentially berates Trump for not just rolling over and giving him another $100B when Zelenskyy literally just told him that the U.S. is in grave danger from Russia, and the Ukraine is doing not just Europe, but also the U.S. a favor by fighting Russia. Colloquially, Zelenskyy has drunk his own Kool-Aid. Here’s how Trump responded,

“You’re gambling with World War III, and what you’re doing is very disrespectful to the country, this country that’s backed you far more than a lot of people say they should have,”

Um, yeah! I kind of feel like Kenan Thompson on Black Jeopardy when Tom Hanks gets another question right. Like, you can’t believe you’re hearing something you think is correct coming from the person who said it.

Support that which is worth supporting

Look, Trump is doing a lot of things. A lot of them are truly terrible, petty, wasteful, and occasionally evil. We should all try to focus our outrage on the things that are actually bad, like ethnically cleansing Gaza, rather than things that sound promising, like decreasing the chances of nuclear armageddon.

Kottke is not alone, of course, in joining the obligatory chorus of “anyone who thinks that Trump wasn’t disrespectful to ally Ukraine is a Russian plant”. The article Grovel Before The Great And Powerful Trump by Scott H. Greenfield (Simple Justice) writes,

“But while the cadre of the Trump-dependent spew the talking points to gaslight a nation that watched the debacle in real time that it was Zelensky being disrespectful of Trump, the rest of the world isn’t buying. Russia loved it, watching Trump suck up to Putin, but European countries, one after another, watched in dread as they came to the realization that the post-World War II structure of the world had come to an end.”

You see what I mean? Greenfield barely has to put any thought or effort into it. It just writes itself. Trump is a Putin-loving agent of Russia, just like Greenfield’s favorite news sources have been saying all along. Accepting any outcome short of nuclear armageddon is a sign that you’re not being American hard enough, that you’re a Putin-loving traitor. If you’re not willing to blow up the entire world to defend the empire, then you’re not worth nothin’.

And honestly: wouldn’t any moral person—by which I mean someone who wasn’t more concerned with the growth of their own personal situation, despite that situation already being much better than most other people’s situations—absolutely welcome the end of the post-World War II structure of the world? You know, the structure in which the Global South has continued to be economically colonized and subjugated by a globe-spanning empire that enforces its will through violence.

It’s not that there’s nothing to save! But there is a lot to tear down. I, too, had hoped that we could get someone who was tearing things down for the right reasons—and Trump has cited a few good reasons like “too many people have died for nothing”—but this is what we have.

The iron grip of propaganda

The degree to which the west is in thrall to Ukraine makes for a fascinating study in psychology. It goes beyond self-interest. I think it’s that Zelenskyy has a charisma that works on a lot of powerful people, much like Netanyahu’s somehow does. And much like Trump’s does, as well. Trump even pointed it out when he said that he respected Zelenskyy’s game, how he seemed capable of waltzing into the U.S. again and again, leaving a couple of days later with yet another promise of dozens of billions of dollars for his country. Now the unstoppable force of one con man has come against the immovable object of another.

The message in a good part of the western press is that Trump is only an idiot, whose every single move is idiotic and harmful, whereas Zelenskyy is a war hero. It’s always instructive to observe brainwashing at work. Most of the people espousing this viewpoint would say that they’re against war and for peace. Or would they?

Are we really in a place where even people who would place themselves socially on the left support an empire, with its war-making and conquest? Do they really continue to believe, after decades of indoctrination, that it’s always, always, always the chosen enemy who is alone evil and that “our side” represents an unalloyed moral good? Even after having been show that the opposite is the case so many times in the past? Or do they just miss all of those memos? Or have they been led away from them by a media with ulterior motives to line their own pockets with revenue from so-called defense companies?

I’ve read other takes that describe the situation in Eastern Europe in early 2025 as a disgraceful sellout of Ukraine. Did they not read that the Biden administration admitted that they never had any intent of admitting Ukraine to NATO? That they never had any intent of supporting it with boots on the ground?

What is happening in these people’s heads? Are they such ethically shallow people that they think it better to continue to pour money into Ukraine, all the while lying to them about the depth of the alliance? They can’t all be shilling for the weapons companies, so some of them must have simply bought the propaganda, hook, line, and sinker.

Yeah, the meeting with Zelenskyy wasn’t pretty at the end[1]—you have likely only seen the last four minutes, but the meeting was almost 50 minutes long—but it was 100% USA. It was also refreshingly honest about the actual situation. The US is no longer interested in supporting an unwinnable war that is killing hundreds of thousands per year. How did people think this war was going to end? With Ukraine’s victory? How realitätsfremd.

So-called liberals won’t give up “their” wars

Europe is free to jump in and “defend itself” from the Russian invasion they can’t seem to shut up about. Either they legitimately fear this nonexistent threat or they’re cynically trying to support the only industry in Europe that even makes anything anymore: armaments. Europe is in deep shit economically, so what do they do? They kick up war. This is a lazy way of goosing the economy. There is no reason that anyone with a brain should believe these false narratives.

Just to be clear, though: Greenfield is openly for the continued genocide of Palestinians, so it’s not like he’s a moral compass. Kottke has never written a single word about the genocide because he’s afraid of losing subscribers. So, it’s not like they’re leading lights of moral and ethical clarity who are supporting Ukraine.

A little history because why not?

And it’s not about “supporting” Ukraine or not. Ukraine is an internationally recognized nation. No-one should be invading it. They were ethnically cleansing Russians in the eastern part of their country, in a grinding, long-running civil war that Zelenskyy was elected to end. Their giant neighbor had a problem with that but it left those Russians mostly to defend themselves.

Ukraine map by language

The problems began when Ukraine began working with the U.S. and NATO nations to set up “defenses” against Russia, right on Russia’s border with Ukraine. Ukraine went from being a huge trading partner to an actively hostile neighbor that was being funded by a giant empire that had been intent on ending Russia for decades.

None of what Russia did is surprising. It’s unclear what its alternatives were: capitulation? What could it have done other than to lay down and die? Should it have just allowed high-powered weapons on its borders—weapons that we all very well know would have eventually been used?

Once again, for the cheap seats: the invasion is illegal but it was not unprovoked. Russia is a large nation with an oversized military and a population that is small relative to its size. It was cornered and forced to react or be caught up in a net and trapped. Pretty predictably, it chose to fight back.

No-one supporting Ukraine considers anything that the U.S. did to Russia over the last 30 years to have been “attacking” it: not the sanctions, not the putsch in Ukraine, not the many “color” revolutions instigated by USAid and the CIA. Almost no-one either ever knew about those things or they’ve cheerfully forgotten, as it complicates their narrative. And they sure do love their narratives simple. Like Star Wars simple. LOTR simple.

Most of these fools have internalized that diplomacy is for pussies, that only force is worth an investment. The reasoning is that, were EU countries to talk to Russia or China, then they’d be consorting with the enemy and would have appeased. It’s laughable and childish and dangerous. Sit down and shut up while the adults talk. Trump is not an adult, and even he understands that you can’t just not talk to other nations. I welcome that we’re opening embassies again. FFS, how can that be a bad thing?

Trump is more of the same

And the sad thing is that so much of what Trump is doing is a continuation of standard American policy, just without wasting time bothering to put lipstick on the pig for people whose opinions he doesn’t care about. What did Biden retract or change of what Trump had done in his first term? Not as much as you think. The sanctions not only stayed in place, they were extended. The immigration policy was continued and extended in its cruelty and restrictiveness. Biden increased tariffs on dozens of countries, in particular China. Most people have no idea that these things even happened.

I saw a tweet that read,

“The liberal outrage and hatred for trump is largely because his lack of all pretence & decorum destroys the fairy tale of a benevolent US & reveals the thuggish empire it is. They always care more about appearance, rhetoric, and performance than actual policies and their impact.”

Amen. The policies are the same. Trump’s just got the mask off. Go ahead and be appalled, but be appalled for the right reasons rather than demanding that useless and evil wars continue. FFS.