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Power in the U.S. – that doesn’t make the U.S. powerful

“If you want to know what power looks like, watch a man safely, even smugly, do interviews for decades, without ever worrying whether he will be asked the questions he doesn’t want to answer.” (Monica Lewinsky, talking about Bill Clinton, in 2018)

If you want to know what power looks like, watch Democrat after Democrat safely, even smugly, say that Republicans intend to “put y’all back in chains”, to “go back to the days of enslavement and to the days of Jim Crow”, without ever worrying whether they will be asked which party backed slavery and Jim Crow back in the day. (Biden in 2012, Pelosi and others in 2022, lots in the decade between.)

37 comments to Power in the U.S. – that doesn’t make the U.S. powerful

  • Martin

    I stand by my claim that over a long-term timescale the US democrats are still the biggest threat to the world. What Putin is doing in Ukraine right now is very bad. Over the next few decades though, the US democrats will destroy America and much of the world along with it unless stopped.

  • bobby b

    Applying Occam’s Razor, clearly they all simply switched sides in the 1960’s.

    And I was born a poor black child . . .

  • Shlomo Maistre

    I stand by my claim that over a long-term timescale the US democrats are still the biggest threat to the world. What Putin is doing in Ukraine right now is very bad. Over the next few decades though, the US democrats will destroy America and much of the world along with it unless stopped.

    I 100% agree.

  • Paul Marks

    Martin – the fall of the American economy is already baked-into-the-cake, I watched Tucker Carlson the other day wondering how the fiat money and debt based American economy could be saved – it can not be saved. That does NOT mean that everyone is going to starve to death – but it does mean that people are going to have a lot of hard work to do building a real economy based on farming, mining and manufacturing (not Credit Bubbles in Washington D.C., New York City and other hopeless places).

    No more “world reserve currency” or any of that nonsense – in spite of the Dollar going up (against other fiat currencies) now.

    I repeat the fall of the Credit Bubble economy can NOT be stopped – it is too late for Paul Volker (and he was a Democrat) style limiting of the Credit Bubble (which he successfully did in the early 1980s, at the cost of a recession, thus providing the system with a few decades more life).

    bobby b – I know you are being ironic, but other people may not realise that.

    The two political parties did NOT switch sides in the 1960s.

    Even back in the early 1900s – whether it was (“English” hating – anyone who was not a member of his own ethnic group was “English” regardless of where their ancestors came from, he was a classic Identity Politics person) Mayor Curley in the north (Boston) or Governor Bilbo (if only it has been Bilbo Baggins) in the South (Mississippi) the Democrats were already a party of ever bigger government – Woodrow Wilson did not appear from nowhere.

    As for racialism – Governor Bilbo, Woodrow Wilson and so on were all vicious racialists – that did not contradict their Big Government views, it was part of it.

    Such men as President Warren Harding (perhaps the most SMEARED American President in history – the left have lied about him endlessly) opposed racialism just as they opposed “Progressive” Big Government.

    Eastern Tennessee is not known for support for Big Government – and it has been Republican since the 1860s (not the 1960s – the 1860s).

    As for modern times – Senator Robert Byrd (the close friend and ally of Senator Joseph Biden) was just as much as Big Government person as he was a racist – Great Cyclops of the West Virginia KKK

    The KKK hated northern “capitalists” (whether they were Jews or WASPs or any ethnic group) – it did not “just” hate blacks. The KKK was a PROGRESSIVE political movement – believing in an active controlling government. That is why such people as President Wilson backed it.

    It is true that now the Democratic party appeals to black and Hispanic people against whites (the opposite of what it once did) – but think about, it is still ethnic group RACIALIST politics – still a refusal to judge people as INDIVIDUALS (not as members of ethnic groups).

    When Joseph Biden says he will appoint a “black woman” to the Supreme Court (NOT the best INDIVIDUAL to the Supreme Court) he shows that Democrat thinking is really the same as it was in the days of Jefferson Davis – still a matter of GROUPS not INDIVIDUALS.

    The Confederacy – higher (not lower) taxation, and more “Progressive” (higher tax rates), MORE (not less) Credit Money inflation, and MORE (not less) government regulation and control of industry and commerce.

    President Lincoln is rightly condemned for his violations of the Rule of Law – but the violations by Jefferson Davis and the Democrats in the Confederacy were far WORSE, much more extreme.

    Essentially in every Confederate State (with the possible exception of North Carolina) the Rule of Law and basic Civil Liberties was scrapped – not “just” for black people, but for WHITE people as well.

    And that was in the 1860s – not the 1960s.

    The “Justice” Department and the FBI acting as a partisan tool for the Democratic Party would have warmed Jefferson Davis’s pro slavery heart – that is how he used the Confederate government (and the people who condemn Lincoln are oddly silent about the far worse abuses on the other side).

    And using the Federal Government as a tool AGAINST individual liberties was not an invention of Joseph Biden (that Glove Puppet has never invented anything) – WOODROW WILSON had that idea way back in the 19th century (see his book “The State”).

    Not to a win a war (as with Lincoln in the 1860s) – but for ever, as a SYSTEM of government control.

    Becoming President did not ruin Woodrow Wilson – his own writings (as an academic) show he always was hostile to liberty – his “New Freedom” being servitude with a new name.

  • Paul Marks

    As for the sickening bias of the “mainstream” media and the education system in the United States.

    Again it should be expected – the “Schools of Journalism” (and so on) were created with the intention of pushing ever bigger government “Social Reform” – this is what the education system stands for, to a more and more extreme degree as the years and decades have passed.

    The Democratic Party stands for this, for ever more “Social Reform”, ever bigger government to “help the poor” or to “help” various ethnic or other GROUPS.

    So, of course, the “mainstream” media (which shares this objective of state control of society) supports them.

    Beware a Republican who the media likes – for that person is a “RINO” a “Republican In Name Only”.

  • J Winters

    “Applying Occam’s Razor, clearly they all simply switched sides in the 1960’s.”

    This comment got me thinking: Why does the Left always say this? Clearly the two parties never “switched” sides on race. There is no proof whatsoever that such a thing happened.

  • Paul Marks

    J Winters – the left say this because they are liars, but it is a USEFUL lie. It is useful – because they want to paint the party that contains at least a faction that is against ever-bigger-government as “racist”.

    “Ah the Progressive faction of the Republican Party was anti racist, but the Conservatives were pro racist” – again NOT true, Progressive Republicans such as Theodore Roosevelt were more (not less) open to “scientific” racism than conservatives were (although Theodore Roosevelt was not personally racist in his own conduct – as Woodrow Wilson, with his weird obsession with segregated toilets and washing and so on, was).

    Someone like Senator Conkling, the arch “reactionary” “Stalwart”, who led the opposition to the creation of the Civil Service, was not racist – quite the reverse, he was by-the-standards-of-his-time very much in support of the rights of black people.

    How is it really “Progressive” to have the government controlled by a group of people, a “Civil Service”, who the people did NOT elect – and who their elected representatives can NOT remove?

    Already the “scientific” statists were stealing words – there is nothing “Progressive” about a government controlled by a bureaucracy based on examinations (rather than appointment by elected people) – after all this system is that of Imperial China over thousands of years.

  • Paul Marks

    Consider the area of eastern Tennessee – where the people are famous for their support for individual liberty.

    What political party do they tend to support and what political party do they tend to oppose today?

    What political party did they tend to support and what political party did they tend to oppose a century ago?

    What political party did they tend to support and what political party did they tend to oppose 160 years ago?

    Well there you have your answer as to what political party (in spite of all its terrible faults) is more in line with supporting individual liberty.

    And, by the way, if the United States economy is to be rebuilt (when, and it is WHEN, the Credit Bubble Fiat Money economy collapses) then it is people like the craftsmen and farmers of such areas who will be key.

  • J Winters

    Consider the area of eastern Tennessee – where the people are famous for their support for individual liberty.

    What political party do they tend to support and what political party do they tend to oppose today?

    Answer: “I support the Republican Party and oppose the Democrat Party”

    What political party did they tend to support and what political party did they tend to oppose a century ago?

    Answer: ” A century ago? I was not alive back then. Grandad was a Democrat”

    What political party did they tend to support and what political party did they tend to oppose 160 years ago?

    Answer: “The South for the most part voted Democrat 160 years ago. They did so because at the time of the Civil War 100% of the 4 million slaves in the US were owned by Democrats. 100%. The South hated the Republicans because that party was created specifically to oppose slavery”

    So why did the South go from voting for the Democrat Party foe 150 years and then start voting GOP after the 1960’s?

    Answer: “The change in voting was not a sudden reaction to the Voting Rights Act of 1964. The change was a gradual one. It was motivated not by racism but on economics, patriotism, religion, and cultural changes as the Democrat Party moved further and further to the Left. This slow 40 year drift to the GOP occurred in the border states first and then to the deep south states later. If race had been the motivation then the opposite would have been true.”

  • staghounds

    Paul Marks, you don’t know what you are talking about. Very specifically, in this situation.

    I’m a 12th generation East Tennessean. The Eastern Grand Division has ALWAYS been Republican, and Whig before that. The EGD voted overwhelmingly against in the Secession Referendum.

    In the century after the war, East Tennessee was the red headed bastard stepchild of the State, consistently sending Republicans to Congress in its Democrat- Gerrymandered district. Our roads are still suffering! West and Middle Tennessee were and remain the money and power in the State, although it’s not like it was.

    East Tennessee, like Western North Carolina and South West / Western Virginia, is mountain country. These areas were settled by and populated with bare subsistence small farmers, often Scotch-Irish. The flat lands prospered and became part of the larger economy, including the slave economy. Slaves were a useless luxury in the mountains. Nobody immigrated, there wasn’t anything to attract them. Our current demography reflects this.

    Other regions of the South might fit your idea, but not the one you picked.

    I’m calling Gell-Mann on you.

  • The Jannie

    “How is it really “Progressive” to have the government controlled by a group of people, a “Civil Service”, who the people did NOT elect – and who their elected representatives can NOT remove?”

    This could be asked in the UK, too. “Yes Minister” was a satire, not an instruction nmanual.

  • Paul Marks, you don’t know what you are talking about. (staghounds, February 28, 2022 at 1:11 pm)

    Actually, Paul wrote questions. If I read his and J Winter’s comments aright, it was J Winters who, answering Paul’s questions, thought an East-Tennessee guy would be a Democrat in the old days.

    I’m a 12th generation East Tennessean. The Eastern Grand Division has ALWAYS been Republican, and Whig before that.

    Staghounds has saved me the trouble of explaining that West Virginia seceded from Virginia during the civil war but the Confederacy took vigorous steps to ensure that East Tennessee, with its strategically-vital railroads and mines, couldn’t – but I’d written it by the time I saw that so am telling you anyway. 🙂

  • staghounds

    I’m sorry, that was meant for Mr. Winters. Mr. Marks was right with his questions, which showed he was familiar with my strange little homein, but some ways not of, the South..

  • J Winters

    Staghounds:

    My last post was not specific to some obscure section of East Tennessee but was a general explanation that the two parties Never switched sides on race at any time. Period. I apologize if my comments were taken to be specific to a particular tree in a very large forrest.

    As for your comment “I’m calling Gell-Mann on you.” please see above comment. Please refute anything I said as it pertains to the fact that the two sides never “switched” as it pertains to race or racism.

  • staghounds

    I think the Democrats at least in the South switched, very clearly. About 1965 they took Black Americans out of the “enemy” column and put them into the “dependent” one.

    About the time the Courts gave them effective votes.

    They also switched to a total encouragement of Federal power, but that was in 1932.

    Great Migration Blacks in the North had always been Democrat machine dependents, like any other low skill immigrants. So adding the Southern Blacks to the dependents might be more of a fold-in than a switch.

  • J Winters

    staghounds:

    True the Democrats “switched” in the sense that after 1964, they did not embrace racism and segregation as an official policy but the GOP NEVER embraced racism in any way whatsoever then or now.

    Interesting fact: after the CRA in 1964 only Strom Thurman and another minor Congressman became Republicans. Every other Democrat who voted against the CRA remained Democrats until the ends of their political careers.

  • Paul Marks

    Staghounds – I was arguing that East Tennessee tended to be Republican, it was J Winters who (seemed) to be arguing that it was Democrat.

    Did you read my first comment?

    As for the Democrats – they have only “switched” in the sense that they used to support government helping whites at the expense of blacks – and now they support blacks at the expense of whites. It is still GROUP politics – a rejection of INDIVIDUAL liberty.

    Again I said this in my first comment.

  • Paul Marks

    Perhaps I should type “see my first comment” or repeat everything I have already said in every new comment (which would make my comments much longer than they are) – still let us put all that aside. I would advice people to look up the Congressmen that the 1st and 2nd Districts have sent to the House of Representatives – very good people indeed (all Republicans over the last 160 years or so). And one must not forget places outside the 1st and 2nd Districts as well – such as Scott County.

    By the way Niall – I was asking rhetorical questions, I had already given the answer (but I made the unwise assumption that people had actually read what I had written).

    ON A LIGHTER NOTE… due to the antics of the media the United States is one of the few countries in the world where the colour red is used to indicate the ANTI socialist party.

    Can anyone name another country where this is true? Where the colour red is used to indicate the main anti socialist party?

    There is a country in South America where this is done – a Merit Mark for the first boy or girl who gives the correct answer.

    Due to the absurd antics of the media

  • Paul Marks

    No Staghounds – the Democrats did not switch their view of the Federal Government in 1932, many Democrats held an expansive view of the uses of the Federal Government long before that (I did explain this – at some length).

    Indeed, in 1932 the Democrat Platform (agreed in Chicago) was quite conservative – did you mean 1933 (as Franklin Roosevelt did the opposite of what he had promised to do).

    Even if we leave aside Woodrow Wilson (again – I dealt with him at some length) such Democrat Presidential Candidates as William Jennings Byran made expansive promises about what the Federal Government would do for the people.

    The Presidency of Grover Cleveland is held up as an example of when the Democrats held a more conservative view of the Federal Government (he was rejected by the Democrats at the Convention of 1896) – however, even under Grover Cleveland the Federal Government established regulation control of the railroads (the Interstate Commerce Commission of 1887) – President Cleveland’s argument being that State regulation would be even worse.

    It will not shock anyone here to be told that ICC did not “help the people” – quite the contrary.

  • Paul Marks

    Remember boys and girls – a Merit Mark for the first one of you who gives the correct answer to my question.

    By the way – I should not have typed “due to the absurd antics of the media” twice, I was distracted by the television (bad Paul – losing his concentration).

  • Paul Marks

    By the way – yet again I refer people to my comment of 1022 AM, specifically starting with the words “bobby b, I know you are being ironic – but other people may not realise that”.

    It includes the words eastern Tennessee has been Republican – “since the 1860s (not the 1960s – the 1860s)”.

  • Fraser Orr

    @Martin
    I stand by my claim that over a long-term timescale the US democrats are still the biggest threat to the world. What Putin is doing in Ukraine right now is very bad. Over the next few decades though, the US democrats will destroy America and much of the world along with it unless stopped.

    FWIW, I don’t think I agree. I think the Republicans are even worse because they claim to stand for liberty and then are effectively democrat lite.

    The only thing worse than having enemies is having friends who stab you in the back.

    And in other news: today Switzerland broke hundreds of years of tradition of neutrality and threw their lot in with the anti-Putin brigade. The mountain fortress of Switzerland has long been a bastion of freedom, but in the past twenty years it has been slowly becoming “like everyone else”.

  • Martin

    FWIW, I don’t think I agree. I think the Republicans are even worse because they claim to stand for liberty and then are effectively democrat lite.

    I would have thought this in the past, such as when the Republicans had presidents/candidates like George Bush, John McCain, Mitt Romney etc.

    But the democrats have got increasingly insane, what with the woke/antifa/blm/alphabet and pronoun people hysterias, Trump derangement syndrome and conspiracy theories about how the 2016 election was rigged by Russia, etc. Plus they have got even more obviously corrupt even as they get more self-righteous. This is shown by Nancy Pelosi’s obvious insider trading antics and just the general fact that the plutocratic class have switched more and more to the democrats.

    While the GOP has its fair share of neoconservative and just general corporate shills left, I don’t think it’s anywhere near as bad as the democrats are now. The GOP base almost overwhelmingly prefer the populists. Trump can fill a stadium of working class supporters. Mitt Romney can only fill a room of people where their average net worth is seven or eight figures or more.

    Obviously I appreciate Trump himself is a billionaire, but he’s obviously clearly atypical of the contemporary billionaire class.

  • Paul Marks

    As I said in my first comment – the economic collapse of the United States can NOT now be avoided. It is “baked into the cake” – the Credit Bubble economy has already been created, and will fall. The question now is how to build a decent economy AFTER the collapse.

    There is indeed a Corporate Establishment wing of the Republican Party – but they will fall with the Credit Bubble economy. This is why PRIMARY elections are so important – to make sure the correct Republicans are the candidates to build a real economy AFTER the collapse occurs, the collapse that can not (now) be avoided.

    Such areas as eastern Tennessee (farmers, manufacturers and so on) are a good guide to the future – if there is to be a decent future. Washington D.C. and Credit Bubble New York City are a guide to what to AVOID.

    The economy must be based on farming, ranching, mining, manufacturing – NOT government spending and the Credit Bubble “Woke” Corporations of the Big Cities (which are joined at the hip with government and depend on the Federal Reserve).

    This is all why Tucker Carlson was mistaken the other night – the point is NOT to “save the Dollar as the world reserve currency” and all that stuff, all that is is GOING TO GO. One can not have a debt based “economy” with endless stuff imported from China in return for IOUs – that economy is OVER (regardless of what happens in relation to Mr Putin and Ukraine).

    “But Paul you are coming out against free trade” – this is NOT free trade, this is a Credit Bubble (FAKE) economy created by the Federal Reserve and the “Woke” Corporations that are dependent upon it. It has nothing to do with Free Trade as Sir Dudley North (and all the others) understood the term.

  • Paul Marks

    By the way boys and girls – none of you get a Merit Mark because you did not give the correct answer to the question I asked.

    I will ask it again – due to the mad antics of the media the colour red is used in the United States to indicate the main ANTI socialist party, but the United States is not the only country where the colour red is used to indicate the main ANTI socialist party – name another such country.

    There is such a country – clue, it is in South America.

  • Paul Marks

    “But Paul – how does one build a real economy after the collapse?”

    The same as one does at any other time or place (as Carl Menger pointed out, “The Errors of Historicism” 1883, the basic laws of economics do not change with “historical period”).

    Real money (a actual commodity that people value – before-and-apart-from it use as money).

    Banking and finance that are from REAL SAVINGS – not Credit Bubbles.

    Limited government spending so that the family and other voluntary cultural institutions, NOT the government, are the primary thing when it comes to education, health care, old age, poverty and-so-on.

    Getting rid of the idea of law as endless “regulations” rather than the non aggression principle of the Common Law (J.S. Mill was a bit mistaken – there are not two separate principles concerning freedom of manufacture-and-trade and personal civil liberties freedom – it is the SAME principle for both).

    And getting down taxation – which can only be done if government spending is radically reduced. See above – the family and voluntary cultural institutions (both religious and secular) must take the main role when it comes to Civil Society – education, healthcare, old age, poverty, and so on.

    In short America AS IT WAS – not the fake America that has been created by the Progressive Movement – both the government and the Woke (and Credit Bubble) Corporations that are joined at the hip with government. The managers of both the government machine and the Woke corporations being produced by the same “education” (really indoctrination) system.

  • bobby b

    Actually, I’m just going to go ahead and quote this sucker:

    These days Neville Chamberlain is too invoked and the comparison is unfair. In 1938, when Germany invaded Czechoslovakia, the Prime Minister went on the radio and described it as “a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing”. For America, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the precise opposite: a quarrel in a far-away country of which their leaders know everything. Because they’ve been up to their neck in it for years.

    Ukraine is a beautiful place, its people are intelligent and agreeable, and its women are stunners. But it is a very poor country and, notwithstanding its many fine qualities, the most corrupt nation in Europe, and, per Ernst & Young, the ninth most corrupt in the world. As I pointed out regularly three years ago on Tucker and Rush, at a time when Hunter Biden was getting fifty grand a month plus seven-figure bonuses from Burisma, the average wage in Ukraine was $200 a month: The Biden family’s heist was “not a victimless crime”.

    A far-away country of which we know nothing? Has there been any Washington scandal that has not involved Ukraine in recent years?

    The Trump impeachments? Ooh, he telephoned …Ukraine!

    The “Russia investigation”? Putin wanted Trump to win why exactly? Oh, no problem: because he’ll roll back sanctions imposed for Moscow’s actions against …Ukraine!

    Do we have any witnesses to any of this? Yeah, sure, the really good guy’s some Colonel Vindman. He’s an immigrant from …Ukraine!

    On the other hand, Obama made Biden his point-man in …Ukraine!

    Biden told the Ukrainians they had to clean up all the corruption. They took the hint and put Hunter on the board, and Joe, Jim and the rest of the mob family suddenly acquired extensive “business interests” in Ukraine.

    Oh, and the biggest source of foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation is …Ukraine.

    Don’t you find it curious that, for an unimportant country with a piffling economy, Ukraine looms so large in Washington? And we’re just skimming the filthy overflowing septic tanks of obvious crooks like the Bidens and the Clintons, without getting into, say, CIA chief John Brennan’s visit to Kiev after the installation of a “pro-American” government.

    We’re told, inter alia, that Putin’s casus belli – Ukrainian membership of Nato – is ludicrous because that would take years and would require the approval of every single existing member from Canada to Montenegro. Consider the words of George Kent III (or possibly IV), the bow-tied striped-pants panjandrum from Foggy Bottom presented at the first Trump impeachment trial as the very acme of selfless American public service explaining to the masses how Washington’s Ukrainian policy is too fundamental to be susceptible to such footling considerations as the wishes of the head of the executive branch:

    By analogy, the American colonies may not have prevailed against British imperial might without help from transatlantic friends after 1776. In an echo of Lafayette’s organized assistance to General George Washington’s army and Admiral John Paul Jones’ navy, Congress has generously appropriated over $1.5 billion over the past five years in desperately needed train-and-equip security assistance to Ukraine. These funds increase Ukraine’s strength and ability to fight Russian aggression. Ultimately, Ukraine is on a path to become a full security partner of the United States within NATO. [emphasis added]

    Okay, so if I follow this “narrative”, America is Lafayette and Ukraine is George Washington. That would make Russia George III?

    But Putin’s the paranoid one.

  • As usual with Steyn, important information wittily and concisely expressed.

    the biggest source of foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation is …Ukraine

    I could believe it was so (I’d have thought the Clintons’ take would have fallen off more recently), but note that, given how much money they got from Russia for just the Uranium One deal, this must be an example of “a $100 million bribe here, $50 million bribe there, soon you are talking real money”.

    I take Steyn’s point that

    when Hunter Biden was getting fifty grand a month plus seven-figure bonuses from Burisma, the average wage in Ukraine was $200 a month. The Biden family’s heist was “not a victimless crime”

    but suggest this hurt ordinary Ukrainians through corruption reducing normal commercial development and so on, not immediately through their wages/taxes directly funding the bribes. Biden/Obama voted U.S. tax money for Ukraine – and made it plain to the Ukrainians that every grant had to have a large kickback (or not even that; they were just not to notice when the sum arriving was less than stated). The sheer public insolence of Biden’s “and guess what – he got fired” has always been my go-to illustration of the fact that the deep state feels entitled to farm everything that’s voted, whether spent in the U.S. or abroad – and that, like Hollywood and grooming, “everybody knows”. The overt justifications are for the voters and the ‘transfer costs’ are high.

  • Paul Marks

    bobby b – the President of Ukraine was elected (overwhelmingly elected) in 2019. This stuff from Mark Steyn (a man I like – yes I do) is utterly irrelevant.

    Mr Putin has invaded, and he has committed many other crimes – including in the United Kingdom.

    Mr Putin must be opposed – everything else is just noise.

  • Paul Marks

    As none of the boys and girls have answered my question correctly none of you will be getting a Merit Mark.

    The country in South America where, like the United States, the colour red is used to indicate the main ANTI socialist party, is Paraguay.

    Now you will all write an essay of at least five thousand words on Paraguay by tomorrow morning – and I will be checking to see if you have taken it from the internet.

  • the President of Ukraine was elected (overwhelmingly elected) in 2019. (Paul Marks, March 1, 2022 at 9:08 pm)

    True, and whether he had been or no, the desire of the Ukranians not to be conquered by Russia is deep and sincere and sensible.

    This stuff from Mark Steyn (a man I like – yes I do) is utterly irrelevant.

    I must dissent. It has relevance to why the west is becoming weaker and less free, and to why Putin did not invade when Trump was in the White House and invades now Biden is. Putin runs his own country corruptly, with help from political murders. He would run the Ukraine with more of the first and far more of the second. If I were Ukrainian, I would fight – and feel much contempt for Biden.

    As well as being relevant, it is also merely factual. Biden and others farmed U.S. payments to Ukraine, and tried to impeach Trump because he sought to investigate.

  • bobby b

    “Mr Putin must be opposed – everything else is just noise.”

    Paul, this might possibly be the case for people who have a personal connection to the area and who have studied enough of the region’s history to make competent judgments about what things mean. People who do not, have to depend on exclusively third-or-fourth-hand accounts and all of the guaranteed accuracy that entails. If I were to begin examining Israel starting last year while remaining ignorant of the past, I’d likely come down on the wrong – i.e., less morally supportable – side.

    So the stuff of which Steyn speaks is important to people like me, who need to catch up on history and context. I can’t start on Jan 1, 2019. Some stuff happened before that, I’m sure.

    (And, frankly, I get points on my ears when someone says “no, don’t look at that stuff, it’s not important!”)

    – – –

    I was going to guess Argentina. Doesn’t one of their rightist parties use dark red, while light red still goes to the leftists?

  • Martin

    I think it’s important as well. Assuming the war does not escalate completely out of control, it will still have an impact on the US elections in November. There’s already a wall of disinformation from democrats trying to pin this as Trump’s fault because he was the Moscow candidate or fucked over Ukraine or whatever. The fact that Trump was the first president since Bill Clinton where Russia didn’t begin another military intervention abroad gets unmentioned (Georgia happened under Bush II; Crimea/East Ukraine/Syria under Obama; this full blown war under Biden). That Putin probably got on better at a personal level with Trump than any other president doesn’t contradict this. I’ve seen it said that Trump got on at a personal level with Xi better than other presidents have and he clearly did with Kim Jong-un (as no other president had ever met a North Korean leader (think that’s right)), however it’s hard for anyone to claim Trump was Xi or Kim’s stooge. That Obama refused to send weapons to Ukraine goes unmentioned, however it’s alleged Trump (who did send weapons) stiffed over Ukraine. Simple fact is that the military build up that predated this current war happened under Biden, so to any extent a US administration shares the blame for it, it’s Biden, not Trump. We’ll never know otherwise but I strongly doubt the current events would be happening under a 2nd Trump presidential term. Trump was more credible, and frankly was better at the diplomacy with Russia than Biden is. Trump’s apparently contemptuous attitude to other NATO countries over defence spending has been vindicated. They should have been doing this in 2017, not starting it now. Of course Trump got little good press regarding this.

    If highlighting the Biden family’s corruption (and degeneracy of his son) helps puncture the ridiculous democrat narrative then I’m all for it.

  • The Wobbly Guy

    @Martin,

    An incredible number of people believe all the stuff you debunked though. Sure, we could blame the media… but a lot of it comes down to the successful Gramsci march through the institutions that has rendered the minds of much of the developed world into mush. How else to explain the fact that millions voted for Biden (cheating aside)?

    The libertarians and conservatives keep ignoring this aspect, and that is why they lose.

  • Paul Marks

    bobby b – the President of Ukraine was elected in 2019 not 2014.

    But if you wish to know about 2014 – ask Perry, not Mark Steyn.

    If the right tries to defend Mr Putin – then the right will be digging its own grave.

    When you are in a hole – STOP DIGGING.

  • Paul Marks

    The Woobly Guy and Martin.

    The leftist establishment will use this crises – they already are.

    Not only will non leftists (such as the Prime Minister of Hungary) be smeared as “friends of Putin”, but also every disaster in the West will be blamed on Putin – NOT on the economic policies of the leftist establishment (this is already happening).

    What can we do to limit the use the “Woke” establishment will make of Mr Putin’s invasion of Ukraine?

    The first thing we can (and MUST) do is stop making excuses for Mr Putin – stop with the “background” and other garbage.

    What I just said to bobby b was NOT directed at him personally – it was GENERAL. Unless we want to hand over TOTAL power to the left (the Davos Corporate and Government crowd) in every Western country – give up any hope of wining elections and getting them out of office.

    We have to have a clear message – condemn Mr Putin and oppose him all ways we can.

    “But Paul….”

    “but” NOTHING.

    A clear message – condemn Mr Putin, and oppose him in all possible ways.