As I type this newsletter, continued American aid for Ukraine is in grave doubt. Tucker Carlson is in Moscow to conduct a friendly interview with Vladimir Putin. And we’re receiving reports from the front lines that Russia is advancing, in part because of Ukrainian ammunition shortages. In short, the war is reaching a critical stage, and Ukraine may lose because Republicans are willing to hand authoritarian Russia a historic military victory rather than supply further aid to a democratic ally.
Ronald Reagan isn’t just rolling over in his grave; he may also lurch from it in a fit of incredulous rage. This is a remarkable and potentially catastrophic reversal by a political party that is in a state of near-total, frequently random ideological transformation.
To explain the intensity of Republican resistance to Ukraine aid, I need to return to a concept I wrote about in November: that of bespoke realities. My friend Renée DiResta, the technical research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, coined the term, and she wrote that it refers to the “bubble realities” constructed by communities “that operate with their own norms, media, trusted authorities and frameworks of facts.”
Among those who oppose aid to Ukraine, there are certainly several paleoconservatives who object on classic isolationist grounds: It’s not our fight, our support is costly, we might find ourselves inadvertently embroiled in war, and so on. But the mass Republican movement against Ukraine is rooted far less in policy than it is in a particular bespoke reality of the MAGA universe, in which Ukraine is a pernicious villain, Putin is a flawed hero and Russia should have crushed Ukraine long ago.
MAGA Republicans’ hatred and contempt for Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainian cause is shockingly vehement. Candace Owens says she wants to “punch” Zelensky. Donald Trump Jr. calls him an “international welfare queen.” Carlson says he dresses “like the manager of a strip club.” It’s all bizarre and unreasonable. And it all fits the broader MAGA narrative.
Sorry, I'm running Windows XP with a really old version of PowerPoint and that's not opening correctly for me. Can someone convert it for backwards compatability for me?
And has since Russia hacked the DNC and RNC servers. They released the DNC emails, no doubt peppered with false entries, but never released the RNC stuff. You just know these idiots in the GOP were dumb enough to put their crimes in email and that gave Putin all the kompromat he needed to take over the whole party.
Yes indeed. Thank you for reminding everyone of this. I believe they also financially back a lot of people on the right, Trump and his family are on the record saying that they were financially saved by Russia some years back, which would explain their attempts to create a secret back channel to Putin.
They released the DNC emails, no doubt peppered with false entries
You guys STILL pretending that the DNC didn't rig it? Nobody in the DNC ever denied the veracity of the emails, they only raged about their secret plotting on behalf of Queen Hillary being published.
but never released the RNC stuff
This part is a fair point though, don't get me wrong.
You just know these idiots in the GOP were dumb enough to put their crimes in email and that gave Putin all the kompromat he needed to take over the whole party.
MAGA is a movement, whose origins are greatly influenced by Russian misinformation campaigns, that revolves around Donald Trump, a notorious Russian asset. It's not fucking rocket science.
Modern Republicans are like George on Seinfeld when he decides to do the opposite.
Everything they do, everything they believe, is purely in opposition to the Democrats (and the establishment consensus more broadly).
It's pure, kneejerk obstructionism.
Everyone else says Putin is bad? Well shit, he must be good.
Everyone else says Ukraine is good? Then they're evil.
Folks say Biden won? Nope, he lost.
Honestly, the left should just start using reverse psychology to get things done. If Biden came out against the trans community, you can bet the next day Trump would do a rally in drag.
You're seeing a little taste of this now at the southern border - the left happily jumped on board with the right's plan to fortify, then suddenly it was "wait, no, not this way..." and they killed their own bill.
People always say this about parties that are out of power. All of your examples come down to Trump aligning with the Russians (for...whatever reason...) and Trump fans get on board with that, which leads to being anti-Ukraine funding. And Trump just has the inability to say he lost and people get on board for that.
There are things like Israel funding which both parties want to pass. Senate Republicans want Ukraine funding still. There was a bipartisan law passed on infrastructure, and a bipartisan law on gun control / mental health services.
Obviously in a two party system, the parties have opposing views on a lot of things, but that doesn't mean it's knee-jerk opposition to everything.
I'd buy that argument if the house Republicans could actually come together and do, you know, anything with their (thin) majority. But they can't because they're now simply the party of "no".
And the root causes are obvious: the house GOP is the least experienced caucus in history with more freshman than ever. Those folks were voted in on a platform of obstruction and reactionary objection, not constructive policy positions.
And so now, with their hands on the tiller, they have no coherent platform or strategy.
You can see this in the recent border debacle where it was more important to deny Biden even the hint of a win than to pass any kind of legislation, even when it's policies they ostensibly support. That's the politics of obstruction at work.
Back when the Tea Party was the minority voice, that was fine. They could throw bombs from the back row and things would still get done.
Now that those folks are in charge, they're directionless.
America made profound and catastrophic foreign policy mistakes in the past. But never in my lifetime have we been on the verge of a mistake so profound and catastrophic that was the direct result of theories and ideas that were so shallow, stupid and, frankly, bizarre.
Because they were told to, as they cannot truly think or reason critically, and because they've subscribed (with their dollars) to the monthly traitor-box to receive and share the enclosed hatred and revenge. Just like Christians are supposed to preach the Gospel, these chucklefucks spread hatred and bad faith misinformation, with arguments that are paper thin and defeated easily by a simple Google search.
It's the banner of bullies and abject failures in life. The flunkers and cheaters in school. A lightning-rod for the psycho and sociopaths alike. Of those whose parents failed to teach them character and empathy.
Basically, all the assholes you met in your life since you were a kid and who never had a wake-up call to change are highly likely to sympathize or reside under the maga banner.
They idolize Putin's power and see themselves in Trump (take that how you will; you know they would). They love that fake-it-til-you make it actually works and they can slide by because after all, that's all they have.
Now in fairness there is a subset of these individuals who may be decent people deep-down. But they're so ignorant or apathetic to reality they just know no better. In that respect, external, systemic influences certainly play a part. The right-wing propaganda machine is strong and a hard current to overcome.
In short, the war is reaching a critical stage, and Ukraine may lose because Republicans are willing to hand authoritarian Russia a historic military victory rather than supply further aid to a democratic ally.
My friend Renée DiResta, the technical research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, coined the term, and she wrote that it refers to the “bubble realities” constructed by communities “that operate with their own norms, media, trusted authorities and frameworks of facts.”
Among those who oppose aid to Ukraine, there are certainly several paleoconservatives who object on classic isolationist grounds: It’s not our fight, our support is costly, we might find ourselves inadvertently embroiled in war, and so on.
“On 4chan and pro-Trump spaces on Reddit, on websites like ZeroHedge.com and Washington’s Blog,” he wrote in 2019, “you can find plenty of speculation about evil manipulation by CrowdStrike and secret maneuvers by Ukrainians — often inflamed by Mr. Trump’s own statements.”
Combine that claim with the fact that Hunter Biden had a lucrative business relationship with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, and MAGA found itself with the perfect villain to counter the Trump-Russia narrative.
The culture war, he mused, may be “serious enough to increase the probability that Russia, say, will be motivated to invade and potentially incapacitate Ukraine merely to keep the pathological West out of that country, which is a key part of the historically Russian sphere of influence.”
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Was listening to an interesting take by Jon Stewart talking to Ian Hislop who’s a UK satirist. Jon was talking about the role of racism in their perceived ideological alignment.