Are We Nuts? Steve Witkoff as Our Metternich?

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Steve Witkoff

Yesterday (6/19/2025), Donald Trump announced a two-week reprieve for the mullahs. That’s dangerous. Many legitimate estimates put Iran at two weeks from a nuclear bomb. Two weeks is a rough assessment that can’t preclude one week or less, if rushed. If he succeeds, Khamenei will have the premiere blackmail weapon, or turn Tel Aviv into Hiroshima, before time runs out. Is Trump about to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory? How did we get to this point? Well, partially, it’s the language, stupid! (Like in James Carville’s famous words from 1992, “It’s the economy, stupid!”). Read further.

Today, our overheated politics disfigure our language. In the Left, “top 1%” (billionaires), “men” (the “patriarchy”), “privileged” (anybody white or male or anyone able to escape the public schools for their kids), “heteronormative”, “…phobia”, et al, denote an evil presence. In the Right, specifically the MAGA universe, “establishment”, “elites” (which practically means anyone of high status in a demographic), “neocons” (the old Reagan coalition), “Wall Street” (shared with the Left), “globalists”, et al, are used to identify their meanies in the world. Each side has their jargon. Since MAGA and the MAGA-adjacent are in power, it’s their linguistic twaddle that presently holds sway in personnel choices and policy.

In MAGA world, the buzzwords lead to some really odd policies (a tariff war against the planet, the crude verbal abuse of allies) and personnel choices. Right now, an “elite” real estate developer, Donald Trump – one who hobnobs with “Wall Street” and “globalists” – makes some stylistically crude overtures to blue collars, essentially big labor unions, but also turns to buddies in his high-end real-estate social circles for statecraft positions and advice, people whose only real experience is in the cocooned transactional world of U.S. law and real estate, people like Steve Witkoff. Any criticism of these picks is dismissed by tarring these wayward voices with MAGA’s list of jargonized horribles.

The ancient Greeks wrote of hubris (excessive pride) leading to nemesis (retribution, bad happenings). Could the reliance on buddies, absent any real background in the field, with overconfidence in their abilities, lead to nemesis and catastrophic failure for the nation? One need only examine Witkoff’s résumé to understand the lurking dangers.

Who is Steve Witkoff? He’s a lawyer and real estate developer from New York, like Trump (see #1). He was Trump’s lawyer in the 1980s. According to Witkoff’s testimony in Letitia James’s New York civil suit against Trump, his friendship with Trump began in 1985. During this decade, he became heavily involved in real estate development. His sole interaction with foreigners was his 2016 effort to sell his group’s stake in the Park Lane Hotel project in the Central Park neighborhood. All his activities occurred under the aegis of American legal norms. The friendship with Trump endured through it all.

The result is a man totally out of his lane in international diplomacy. He succeeded in the release of a couple of American hostages in singular transactions that required no real sacrifice from malevolent actors (Hamas, Putin). These were important for their families, but are not evidence of any acumen in the momentous arena of international statecraft. As Trump’s travelling envoy, he’s been an embarrassment. Maybe that’s because he doesn’t realize that he’s been given impossible tasks in trying to broker deals in conflicts without middle ground. In one, Putin invaded another sovereign country, brutalizes its people, and can’t back down because of the heavy sunk costs in the effort. It’s either conquest or being overthrown and execution, always a strong possibility for dictators.

An isolated American real estate lawyer is a duck out of water in places not corseted by American legal norms. Additionally, he was given the job of bringing an end to the Gaza War. What made him think that a deal was possible between the victim of mass murder and the butchers of men, women, the old, and children, many burned alive? A level of fanaticism is at work that a real estate lawyer schooled in real estate deals cannot comprehend. He cannot envision that the side across the table from him isn’t united with him in common purpose, like making money. They’re goal is your demise, not anything like achieving mutual benefit under American contract law. These malcontents are cut from the same cloth as the 911 hijackers. Negotiating with them will get your throat slit, as many discovered on the planes during 911.

People who have cut their teeth in a lifetime of American real estate transactions run the risk of being ill-suited to handle the world’s cutthroats. Witkoff was stunned coming face-to-face with them; he admits it. At the Arab summit in March, he said about his discussions with Hamas (see #2),

“I thought we had a deal, an acceptable deal. I even — I even thought we had an approval from Hamas, maybe that’s just me getting — getting, you know, duped . . . .” (see #2)

Getting “duped”? After being “duped” by Hamas, Witkoff engages with Putin and comes away with, “I don’t regard Putin as a bad guy.” He then proceeded to sound like Putin’s Russia Today network endorsing Putin’s seizure of the Crimea and Ukraine’s eastern provinces (see #3). He then points to plebiscites in them, under Russia’s guns, to justify Putin’s declared right to rewrite borders at his whim. And, like a parrot out of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Witkoff blames NATO. Is this guy Putin’s ambassador to the U.S. or our envoy to Russia?

To be honest, he sounds like his partner in real estate, Donald Trump. Remember Trump’s Putin-like hammering of Zelensky in the Oval Office earlier this year? Repulsive, absolutely repulsive.

A transactional approach to foreign policy assumes a commonality of purpose that doesn’t exist. It’s easier if only money is at stake. Any other motive – ideology, religious fanaticism, an overriding sense of grievance – throws the transactional approach into the category of self-annihilation for the side not so disposed. Trump is transactional, and so is his special envoy. It’s stupid, it’s dangerous. Are we nuts?

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RogerG

Sources:

1. Thanks for Jim Geraghty’s insights and sources in “The Fate of Israel and Iran Is in Steve Witkoff’s Hands”, National Review, 6/20/2025, at https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/the-fate-of-israel-and-iran-is-in-steve-witkoffs-hands/. I strongly recommend his Morning Jolt newsletter. Sign up at https://link.nationalreview.com/join/4rc/newdesign-nls-signup?
2. Thanks to Jim Geraghty for this source: “Trump’s longtime buddy testifies as defense expert in Manhattan fraud case”, Erik Eubelacker, Courthouse News Service, 11/14/2023, at https://www.courthousenews.com/trumps-longtime-buddy-testifies-as-defense-expert-in-manhattan-fraud-case/
3. “Steve Witkoff Says Putin Not a ‘Bad Guy’, Stumbles on Ukraine Geography”, Ellie Cook, Newsweek, 3/23/2025, at https://www.newsweek.com/steve-witkoff-ukraine-ceasefire-russia-mistake-regions-annexed-vladimir-putin-2049224

Boy, What a Week!

(Post from June 18, 2025)

Flags of Ukraine and Israel Lying Together Symbolizing Political Relationship. 3D Rendering ...

X (Twitter) An image showing a Tu-22M on fire at Soltsy-2 airbase
Photo from the BBC show a Tu-22M bomber on fire at Soltsy-2 airbase, Russia
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A photo of an Ukrainian drone as it strikes a military plane, a Tu-95, at Russia’s Olenya airbase during the attack, June 1, 2025.
Burning Tu-95s at Olenya air base
Burning Tu-95s at Olenya air base, Russia, on June 1, 2025
Eight Israeli Air Force F-15I Ra’am strike fighter jets of 69 Squadron “Hammers” at Hatzerim Airbase high above Israel on their way to attack Iran in mid June 2025. (photo: IDF)
Israel’s bombing of IRGC facilities in Tehran. (photo: Iranian news agency)
Thank God for Ukraine and Israel while some places in the good ‘ol USA go insane. Ukraine and now Israel have taken momentous steps to reestablish a civilized order in an often-chaotic world, but some on the Right – the MAGA-adjacent Right – refuse to accept the heady opportunity staring us and them in the face. Just devote a moment’s thought to a world without a nuclear-armed “Death to America”. On the other hand, the Left – now synonymous with the Democratic Party – has gone bonkers in violently defending the indefensible. Lawbreaking, compounded by more lawbreaking, appears to be a core tenet of the Party’s manifesto. It’s now a key aspect of what it means to be “blue” on today’s electoral map. The progressive’s “arc of history” is a fantasy; it’s a roller coaster. Civility and incivility reside side by side at the same time on the same planet, sometimes in the same country.

Much of our public discussion encourages the schizophrenia. Victor Davis Hanson on the Right has honed a reputation as a Ukraine skeptic in line with the “restrainers” in Trump world. He planted his flag on the inevitability of Ukraine’s defeat if they persist in fighting the war, maybe to justify Trump’s immoral attempt to strong arm the victim into accepting Putin’s aggression against them, or just a plain kowtowing to MAGA isolationists. In Hanson’s reckoning, Putin has more of everything: 5x’s the population, military dominance, resources, you name it. Then, in the fashion of Israel’s decapitation of Hezbollah, Ukraine eliminated a third of Putin’s strategic bomber fleet in one day. They have proven to be quite inventive in fighting the big bear to a standstill. Now, it’s an open question whether Putin will be able to outlast Ukraine or vice versa.

The West, with its consensual republics, is proving to be quite resilient no matter the numerical weight against them. A short time after Ukraine’s daring move, Israel struck. Under Hanson logic, Israel shouldn’t be on the same playing field with Iran: 9x’s the population and oodles of more resources (oil!). On paper, it’s the midget versus Andre the Giant. Of course, its relative standing shrinks further if you factor in much of the Middle East. Yet, Israel has systematically decimated Hamas, then Hezbollah, and now has taken on the big meanie, the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Tackling the ayatollahs sent shivers down the spine of Tucker Carlson, MAGA-adjacent pacifists, the Biden/Obama administrations, the donkey party’s militias in the streets, and, honestly, me too. However, I favored war, war to jaw, jaw (in a reversal of Churchill’s famous formulation) after decades of fruitlessly piddling around with the ayatollahs. October 7 woke Israel up. They took on the head of the anaconda after chopping up smaller portions of its entrails.

What we are witnessing is absolutely amazing. It puts to shame Hanson’s defeatist logic. Consensual republics possess indefinable reserves of gumption and wiliness. They are proof that the prospect of looming destruction concentrates the mind.

In America, we’d rather enfeeble ourselves between isolationist hand-wringing on the Right and the neo-Marxism of the Democratic Party. The donkey party is so compromised that flying the American flag at one of its confabs is . . . incongruous, to say the least. The flags of Palestine and Mexico seem more at home, along with bricks, Molotov cocktails, and homemade flame throwers directed at law enforcement.

Why the furor from the Left? It’s the sudden realization that Title 8 of the U.S. code (federal immigration law) actually exists. Trump took his Article II job of executing the law seriously. Some obviously don’t like the law to be enforced. Many Americans have grown accustomed to cheap landscaping, domestic servants, and ag labor as if that is the natural order of things. The cognitively compromised Biden took this logic to its ultimate conclusion, just eliminate the border and be done with it.

The donkey party is onboard with lawbreaking. Let’s be honest, at its core, “sanctuary” cities and states have little to do with federalism and everything to do with an indulgence for law breaking. The Constitution only matters to them as something to be twisted to protect their preferred type of law breaking, immigration law breaking.

So, Trump and his people found a way to write them and their “sanctuaries” out of the picture. Use federal warrants to renew respect for immigration law over the interference of by people like Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass. They dare not obstruct this federal justice, for federal charges await them if they do. How sweet would it be to see Newsom and Bass in perp walks?

California is home of this insanity. Conversely, Ukraine and Israel are beacons of clear-eyed moral purpose in a world with the U.S. bullying Ukraine and countries like Denmark over Greenland, and conducting trade wars against friend and foe alike.

True to form, Trump tries to unseemly hog the spotlight of Israel’s success on Truth Social: “WE [my caps] now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran.” He crudely panders to a kind of American chauvinism when he touts American-made: “[Iran’s stuff] doesn’t compare to American made, conceived, and manufactured ‘stuff.’” Further, “Nobody does it better than the good ol’ USA.” Our stuff is indeed great but it’s Israelis, their people in command, on the ground, and in the air, who pulled this off. That’s the real lesson for MAGA and the donkey party’s neo-Marxists. Resilience, perseverance, and possessing the moral high ground are force multipliers and crude jingoism is just plain embarrassing.

Americans riot in the streets for law breaking. Ukraine and Israel show guts and gumption. Trump displays his crudity. Will he, fearful of missing his share of the glory, finally do the right thing and obliterate the last remnants of the mullahs’ nuclear program?

In sum, wow, what a week!

RogerG

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RogerG

The World Turned Upside Down

 

Trump and Vance attack Zelenskyy in remarkable Oval Office exchange - POLITICO
Pres. Trump and VP Vance criticize Zelenskyy in Oval Office on Feb.28, 2025

People have talked about disruption as if it was some kind of virtue. Disruption is like a kitchen knife. It is neither good nor bad. It depends on our purpose. It could be part of our plan to make a family meal or part of a plan to harm another person. Similarly, disruption could be used to break up malign nests in our administrative state, or it could turn friends and allies into enemies and enemies into friends. Such is the foreign policy of the second Trump circus.

Imagine it, the Republican Party is the party of George McGovern, and the Democrats sound like Ronald Reagan (see Democrat Sen. Michael Bennet’s speech below). Can “disruption” get any crazier? Democrats invoke Reagan, and the Trump foreign policy is run as if Jane Fonda and her 1972 consort, Tom Hayden, are in charge.

Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda speak to press upon return from North Vietnam in 1972
Actress Jane Fonda sitting on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun during her 1972 visit to the ...
Jane Fonda at North Vietnamese antiaircraft gun during 1972 visit to North Vietnam

The whole of MAGA world follows in lockstep. It is as if the 1960s peace movement, fresh from their maligning of returning Vietnam War vets at San Francisco airport, had a political transgender moment five decades later and discovered their inner MAGA. Trump cannot find anything negative to say about Ho (Chi Minh) . . . er, Putin. After Ho . . . er, Putin . . . rejected making any serious counteroffer to the one Trump coerced out of the Ukrainians, Trump responded in his now usual Putin smiley-face way (see #1): “Based on the statements he made today, they were pretty positive, I think.”

Fox News plays an outsized role in the camp of the MAGA chattering classes. Andrew Napolitano, MAGA’s Jane Fonda/Tom Hayden, came back from Hanoi . . . er, Moscow . . . with a glowing report of the latest brutalitarian Shangri La. He visited Hanoi . . . er, Moscow . . . on invitation from his friend, Le Duc Tho, North Vietnamese Foreign Minister . . . er, Sergei Lavrov, Putin’s Foreign Minister.

WATCH Lavrov speaks to US bloggers - Pravda Trump
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s interview to the US bloggers Mario Nawfal, Larry C. Johnson and Andrew Napolitano, Moscow, March 12, 2025

It did not take long for Fonda/Hayden . . . er, Napolitano . . . to appear on Fox News to parrot Ho . . . er, Putin . . . propaganda. In an updated version of the old “Who are you going to believe, me or your lyn’ eyes?”, the Ukraine War according to Napoliano (or Fonda/Hayden, you choose) did not begin when Putin seized Crimea in 2014 or the 2022 invasion to capture Kyiv and the east and south of the country. Instead, Fonda/Hayden . . . er, Napolitano . . . blamed us. According to Napolitano, it “started in 2014 with a coup against a popularly elected president [Putin stooge Viktor Yanukovych] who sought neutrality for Ukraine. . . orchestrated by the U.S. State Department in conjunction with the CIA and British MI6.” In actuality, Yanukovych was corruptly elected and popularly deposed by millions of Ukrainians who hit the streets to protest his delivery of them into the arms of Putin. Yanukovych skedaddled to Moscow.

But do not let facts get in the way of a good smear on Ukraine. The sixties radical Left took over the Democratic Party, and with them they brought their peace-at-any-price plank which was part-and-parcel of their condemnation of western civilization. Do you remember “Hey, hey, ho, ho, western civ has to go”? Move over Democrats, now it is the Republicans with their own theatrical variant, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Ukraine has to go.” The sixties Left smeared the U.S. and then moved into the teaching profession and soon into the commanding heights of the culture. The Trump Right got bit by the same rabid animal and took over today’s GOP. The oval office scene of February 28 is what would have happened if President Tom Hayden and VP Jane Fonda had a meeting with South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu.

The sixties Left aped Ho’s propaganda and the Trump Right apes Putin’s. It is “de ja vu all over again”. Maybe we should not be surprised. Read Ecclesiastes 1:9:

“What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.”

Please watch Sen. Bennet’s speech in the Senate.

RogerG

Sources:

1. Thanks to Jim Geraghty for his insights in “Putin Flips Trump’s Cease-Fire the Bird”, National Review, 3/14/2025, at https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/putin-flips-trumps-cease-fire-the-bird/

A Source for Sensible Discussion: The GoodFellows Podcast of the Hoover Institute

GoodFellows | Hoover Institution

A good source for a sensible treatment of current issues is hard to come by these days. Major news organizations are either divided into Trump-love or Trump-hate camps. Trump-hate overwhelms the programming on MSNBC, NPR, and legacy media. Fox News and the new counter-media – Breitbart, Townhall, Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, talk radio, a portion of the podcast world, etc. – carries the flag for Trump-love. So, what is really happening when everything is seen through the lens of Trump-love or Trump-hate? If one of those is your only window to the outside world, reality will be distorted because it is so tightly filtered and shaped to either worship or harm Trump.

I recommend the GoodFellows podcast of the Hoover Institute, hosted by Bill Whalen, as an antidote to this blinkered stridency of, for example, the celebrity hosts of Fox News. Whalen hosts three regular contributors, John Cochrane (economist), H.R. McMaster (national security), and Sir Niall Ferguson (historian), and a guest. In the most recent episode, “The Great X Debate, with Matt Continetti: Vance v. Ferguson, Trump Diplomacy, DOGE, and Hackman” of 2/28/2025 (below), the guest was Matthew Continetti of the American Enterprise Institute and the Commentary podcast. Please sit back and watch the 57-minute podcast. It takes commentary and analysis out of the cage-fighting arenas.

This latest installment mostly focused on the Zelenskyy-Trump/Vance dustup on Friday, 2/28. These are just a few of my takeaways with all not in agreement and from a variety of perspectives:

• The Ukraine War is unwinnable for Ukraine. False. The weaknesses of the Russian military were borne out in the fighting. The combined forces of the U.S. and our NATO allies could stop Rusia in weeks if we had the will.
• The economies of Russia, China, and Iran are in a troubled state.
• The U.S. is weak, no longer capable of worldwide predominance. False. McMaster and Cochrane rebut this banality on the Trump Right (Laura Ingraham, et al). The fallacy is used by sectors of the Right to support neo-isolationistic retrenchment.
• The Trump of term #1 is different from the Trump of term #2. This time around, the people who surround him are more likely to feed and accept his ill-founded propensities. Most advisors are neo-isolationists from the MAGA eco-system. The foreign policy and trade issues will likely be viewed through this prism. Ferguson says Trump wants to be a trade-war president, not a war president.

More can be gleaned.

The podcast is a soothing alternative to the partisan bombast of the more popular but compromised outlets. You may not agree with them, but you will come out with the mental gears turning. You may discover a whole world outside the celebrity pundits of talk radio, MSNBC, and Fox News.

RogerG

The GOP Aligns with Evil

Trump and Vance 'have humiliated the United States' after shouting at Zelenskyy
Trump and Putin (r)

“I can only imagine what the political prisoners and dissidents in Russian jails are feeling today [2/21/2025]. Only a year ago Alexei Navalny was killed by Putin in one of his prisons. Before he died, Navalny wrote me a few letters in which he said that what he saw in Russia’s prisons was the same world that I once experienced as a prisoner in the Soviet Union.

. . . I think that in some ways it is worse for the political prisoners in Russia today. We had the advantage of knowing that President Reagan was on our side. But what should the hundreds sent to Russian prisons for many years for daring to call out Putin’s aggression feel today?”

—- Natan Sharanksy, eminent Soviet dissident now living in Israel, after Trump’s comment calling Zelenskyy a “dictator” and accusing Ukraine for “starting the war”, in the Free Press on 2/21/2025 (see #1)

Natan Sharansky - Alchetron, The Free Social Encyclopedia
Natan Sharansky

America is morally unmoored. There is nothing “grand” in Trump’s Grand Old Party. The party of Lincoln, the party that staked its existence on slavery’s abolition, is appeasing, if not siding with, a savage tyrant. So much for being “on the side of the angels”. Trump has signed us up for the Satanic host. On this, there can be no question.

To be clear, both political parties are unhinged. The Democrats lunged into neo-Marxism and hate Donald Trump down to his DNA. Conversely, a sizeable chunk of Republicans is enraptured by him. They treat him as their messianic north star. Trump dislikes Zelenskyy and has little use for Ukraine, and now so do they. In lockstep, they come to Trump’s defense no matter what he says and does. They clap like trained seals, or like Putin’s political ancestors during a speech by Stalin to the Communist Party Congress of the USSR.

Loyalty is one thing, obsequiousness another. It is disgraceful. But both parties are disgraceful. We are in an age of bipartisan disgrace.

Has Trump signed the country up for the Satanic host, or are we merely adjacent? Either way, it seems disgustingly so. The shameful abandonment of a beleaguered and desperate people is beginning. A headline from Washington reads “Hegseth Orders Pentagon to Stop Cyberoperations Against Russia” (see #2). Another headline: “State Department terminates U.S. support of Ukraine energy grid restoration” (see #3). These are probably the first of many steps to cut Ukraine adrift, adrift into the maw of Putin’s regenerated Soviet Union, a nation that has inflicted multiple holocausts on millions of Ukrainians. Are we now an abettor, if not an ally, of the new Axis of Evil? Did you sign up for this when you voted for Donald Trump?

J.D. Vance is making himself particularly loathsome. He has been for quite some time. The “dictator” smear, his castigation of the closing of Putin’s Russian Orthodox Church in the country suffering from a Putin invasion, the undocumented charges of waste and corruption, the demands for surrender under the guise of “peace”, heaping blame on NATO, and opposition to aid to the besieged country has been part of his stump spiel for the last couple of years. It is as if Copperheads won the 1864 presidential election. Trump, Vance, and the rest of the trained seals in the cabinet are Putin Copperheads. The converts to the Copperhead caucus in the right-leaning media have joined the abasement.

“It is impossible to live in Russia, but dying is possible.” — Dmitry Merezhkovsky, died in exile in 1941.

So, who is Putin, this person who enjoys the indulgence of Trump and Vance? Sharansky lays it out. He should know. Putin’s regime operates as if the Soviet Union was reanimated, something very familiar to Sharansky. Opposition is killed and jailed. Mariana Katzarova, the UN’s special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Russia, estimates the number of currently jailed political dissidents at over 2,000 (see #4). It is hard to say with any precision given Putin’s death grip on news and information in the country. One of the most reliable outlets, Memorial, was shut down by Putin in 2022.

Death grip is fully applicable to Putin’s Russia. Still, some of the more indecent inhumanities have been widely reported. To make you cringe, here are some examples (see #5). Trumpkins, do not avert your eyes for this is what you are signing us up for.

Flowers laid at ceremony in Moscow for Boris Nemtsov (3 March)
Makeshift memorial to Boris Nemtsov after his murder, March 2015

Aleksei Navalny, founder of Anti-Corruption Foundation, returned from exile only to be rearrested and imprisoned where he died in an Arctic prison camp on Feb. 16, 2024.

Mikhail Lesin, former Russian press minister and Putin critic, was found dead in a Washington, D.C., hotel room on Nov. 5, 2015. His death is considered by many to be “suspicious”.

Boris Nemtsov, former deputy prime minister under Boris Yeltsin and Putin critic, was shot dead on a bridge outside the Kremlin on Feb. 27, 2015. Critics with possible popular traction have shortened life spans.

Boris Berezovsky, former Putin ally turned critic, was found dead in his home in Berkshire, England, on March 23, 2013. Officially listed as a suicide, strong suspicions remain.

Sergei Magnitsky, Russian lawyer and auditor who exposed corruption that was traced to Putin, was imprisoned, suffered beatings, denied medical treatment, and died in prison on Nov. 16, 2009. Our Magnitsky Act, which sanctions Russian abusers of human rights, was named after him.

Stanislav Markelov, human rights lawyer and journalist, was assassinated in Moscow on Jan. 19, 2009, by the same killer of Anastasia Baburova (see below).

Anastasia Baburova, a journalist and human rights activist, was killed alongside Markelov on Jan. 19, 2009.

Had enough? The sources are brim full of poisonings, murders, and disappearances in Putin’s Gulag Archipelago. Inside or outside of Russia, it does not matter. On the hit list was an elected Ukrainian president, Viktor Yushchenko, who was poisoned in September 2004 during the campaign. His face was scarred from it.

Putin barbarity is most resplendent on the ground and in graves throughout Ukraine. Putin starts this war, targets civilians, commits atrocities, and Trump and his sidekick level their abuse at the president of the country resisting the crime. Now, Trump is cutting them off. America, are you going to stand still and let this mauling of our sense of decency continue?

“When you see Trump with Putin, as I have on a few occasions, he’s like the 12-year old boy that goes to high school and meets the captain of the football team. ‘My hero!’ It’s really creepy.” — Malcom Turnbull, 2015-2018 Australian Prime minister, Dec. 29, 2024 (see #6)

Why the toadying to Putin and not Hamas? Try to make sense of it. It boggles the mind unless Trump has some adolescent affection for strongmen. As for Vance, he is just young and foolish. The young establish conclusions first, then root around for a rationale. The result is a logical mishmash. Vance sounds as mature as my 10th-grade students in my high school World History class.

Trump is constructing his Kyiv, as Biden did his Kabul, and the 1975 Democratic Congress did their Saigon. All of them besmirched the reputation of our country, but more than that, they soiled us. Joining the Axis of Evil makes us no better than our co-thugs. Admiration for thugs is a dangerous thing.

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RogerG

Sources:

1. “Natan Sharansky: A President’s Words Saved Me in the Gulag”, Natan Sharansk, Free Press, 2/21/2025, at https://www.thefp.com/p/natan-sharansky-a-presidents-words
2. “Hegseth Orders Pentagon to Stop Cyberoperations Against Russia”, New York Times, at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/02/us/politics/hegseth-cyber-russia-trump-putin.html
3. “State Department terminates U.S. support of Ukraine energy grid restoration”, Vaughn Hillyard, NBC News, 2/28/2025, at https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/state-department-terminates-us-support-ukraine-energy-grid-restoration-rcna194259
4. “UN Expert Sounds Alarm on 2,000 Political Prisoners in Russia”, The Moscow Times: Independent News from Russia, 2/17/2025, at https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2025/02/17/un-expert-sounds-alarm-on-2000-political-prisoners-in-russia-a88054
5. Reportage on Putin thuggery include:
“Putin’s Opposition: Dead, Jailed Or Exiled”, AFP in Barron’s, 3/16/2024, at https://www.barrons.com/news/putin-s-opposition-dead-jailed-or-exiled-964f341b
“Most of Russia’s opposition is either dead, in exile abroad or in prison at home. What happens now?”, Emma Burrows, AP, 2/19/2024, at https://apnews.com/article/navalny-russia-opposition-putin-8554f74e229c451f96956939b05d2a99
“The List Is Long: Russians Who Have Died After Running Afoul Of The Kremlin”, Steve Gutterman, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 2/16/2024, at https://www.rferl.org/a/enemies-kremlin-deaths-prigozhin-list/32562583.html
“Full List of Putin Critics Who Have Died in Mysterious Circumstances”, Isabel van Brugen, Newsweek, 2/26/2024, at https://www.newsweek.com/putin-critics-dead-full-list-navalny-1870692
6. Malcom Turnbull’s comment can be found on X at https://x.com/highbrow_nobrow/status/1873556154556838212?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1873556154556838212%7Ctwgr%5E87a08c42098cfd7dc62d00f18c68b6d36fbf2878%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nationalreview.com%2F2025%2F03%2Fhinge-point%2F
7. Thanks to Jay Nordlinger for his contributions to this article at “Hinge Point”, National Review, 3/3/2025, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/03/hinge-point/

The American Grievance Party on the Right

Trump’s Politics of Grievance - WSJ

Our president is not a grand thinker. He is, however, the head of a movement dominating the Republican Party. Its platform is grievance. Ironically, now, grievance has become the core of both the Right and the Left. For Trump and his MAGA, the rest of the world is screwing us. The outlook is mixed with some truths, a slew of exaggerations and falsehoods, and absent self-examination. The unintended aftershocks of this political rush could be an America increasingly without partners on our continent, in our hemisphere, and in Europe and Asia. Adjustments will be made by our former partners in the face of an increasingly erratic, unreliable, and at times hostile America, an America that cares a whole lot less about common interests with other nations. Do not expect this to end well.

Trump’s chief complaint is that America is not “Great” because we are patsies. Just Monday (2/24/2025), he stood before the press and announced his tariffs in a verbal cascade of victimhood (see #1),

“We’ve been mistreated badly by many countries . . . . We were taken advantage of. We were led by, in some cases, fools, because anybody that would sign documents like they signed, where they were able to take advantage of the American people, which happened over the last long period of time, except for a little four-year period that took place four years ago. But anybody that would agree to allow this to happen to our country should be ashamed of themselves.”

Per Trump, shame on you, Americans, for preferring Toyotas to Chevies.

Toyota global market share

His incoherence is glaring when he talks about the glories of tariffs. But what is foreign trade, the thing to be tariffed, taxed? It is an exchange of a foreign producer’s goods and services for a country’s currency (paper). So, a U.S. trade deficit is our possession of their valuable things, and their accumulation of our paper. Conversely, as Trump seems to prefer, a surplus is our reverse accumulation of their paper in return for our valuable things. At root, Trump’s talk is nonsense, but it is soothing syrup to a crowd addled by a sense of victimhood.

Though, his tariffs – for Trump, “the most beautiful word in the dictionary” – will torpedo his campaign promise to reduce inflation. Any tax hikes, like tariffs on business, any business, foreign and domestic, passes through to the consumer. It works like this: raise taxes (like tariffs), increase business costs, raise prices, reduce consumption and production. A bad deal all around. The price floor rises for all goods and services, both foreign and domestic. So much for “the most beautiful word in the dictionary”. So much for ending inflation.

A better understanding of trade would be helpful. The flow of goods and currencies passes through a foreign trade infrastructure. GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), currency foreign exchange agreements (FEA), and the adjudication of FEA disputes in the Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards (New York Convention) work to ease the flow of trade so the foreign paper (currency) can be made valuable to its possessor. In other words, a trade deficit (more goods, less paper) or surplus (more paper, less goods) or “balance” (the value of the paper and goods in equal measure) is not as important as Trump thinks. But the superficial language of trade, absent clarifications, lends itself to demagoguery.

Admittedly, the trade numbers are relevant for national security, social, and political reasons. By themselves, they are more than sufficient to support more domestic production of physical goods. But why aren’t we more of a manufacturing powerhouse? Certainly, we came to face renewed competition from our formerly WWII-ravaged economic rivals.

The resulting challenge exposed our self-inflicted inefficiencies, thus the need for some self-examination; something buried in the rhetoric. Our appetite for New Deal tax and regulatory schemes, and bloated business bureaucracies, proved to be a hindrance under competitive pressures. Furthermore, we exposed our manufacturing to the vast expansion of the regulatory straitjacket in the 1970s due to manufacturing’s many impacts on the natural environment. Land use controls, the expansion of the eco-superstate, their spread and expansion at all levels of government, and a labyrinth of empowered NIMBYs, mandates, permits, and hearings wreaked carnage on the sector.

Abandoned factory.
(Image credit: Rick Gershon/Getty Images)

The air in the LA basin is cleaner due to the subsequent flight of physical production. They continue to flee. California declared war on affordable energy and the Philips/Conoco refinery in Wilmington is closing, the latest manufacturer to skedaddle the hyper eco-state. Much of the Chevron complex now resides in Houston. Adjacently, the regulatory war on housing will make the rebuild of Pacific Palisades, Malibu, and Altadena a nightmare. Cleaner air (except for the fires), combustible landscapes, Hiroshima devastation, and bankrupting energy are the new realities of the eco-Leviathan.

Manufacturing – the physical production of any kind – began a slide into the snake pit of our predatory unions, litigious culture, voracious “civil rights” lobbies, and taxes, more taxes, regulation, and more regulation. The split between the permission economy (physical production, manufacturing, construction, timber harvesting, et al) vs. permissionless economy (initially small-scale innovation that becomes capitalized into Apple, Google, Microsoft, Intel, Nividia, et al) is the main feature of this new hyper-regulated economy (see #2). Traditional manufacturing is relegated to being the red-headed stepchild.

The Industrialist | Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh pa, Steel
Jones and Laughlin Steel Pittsburgh, 1950s
Googleplex - Google Headquarters in California
The Googleplex, Mountain View, Ca.
A decade after the Richmond refinery explosion, protesters march to end fossil fuel dependence
Climate activists protest the Richmond refinery in California, 2017

Without addressing this problem, Trump’s tariffs are foolhardy. They will jack up prices, raise the cost of business inputs, threaten employment, and pull the only available ladder out of the snake pit that America has made of itself. American economic activity, and particularly manufacturing, cries out to be something other than survival in a snake pit.

DJT should address the pit before he tries to sell the narcotic of tariffs to the public. If not, trade relations will be disrupted as our friends scramble to protect themselves and their nascent industries. New trade arrangements will arise with America seen as just another economic belligerent.

To make the tariff scheme palatable to the public, the jargon of “reciprocity” is employed to hide the real purpose of tariffs. The prime directive of tariffs is to punish domestic consumers for preferring a foreign-made product. I am skeptical of their use as a bargaining chip since the tariff prime directive remains, even if reciprocity agreements are temporarily achieved. The political pressure by the snakes in our pit will make a hash of the “reciprocity”.

What Trump is doing to international trade, he promises for our foreign policy. Already, an undertow of cynicism infects our relationship with our allies (see #4). Trump sees our national security as another arena to apply the same approach as he would with a supplier of pipe. For instance, Trump has introduced a cushy deal for rare earths as a part of a survival package for Ukraine. To him, it is like demanding from the supplier the free gratis addition of brass fittings to the order. Trump has made extortion an element for a relationship with the United States.

For Trump, it is not enough to stand athwart a thug’s subjugation of another country on a continent already made jittery by two previous 20th-century world wars totaling over 100 million deaths and the USSR enslavement over half of it. Not surprisingly, eyebrows are raised in European capitals by Trump’s Belgian Congo-style treatment of Ukraine. Trump’s America comes close to being the reincarnation of the British East India Company.

It is not as if Ukraine has a realistic alternative to Trump’s USA. The situation has a key role to play in Trump’s Art of the Deal for international affairs. If you are dependent on him, you are at his mercy. It results in the odd abuse of friends with whom he can control, and odd praise of enemies with whom he does not. Trump recently declared that Putin is smart and strong and Zelensky is a dictator (I kid you not) and stands accused of starting the war (I kid you not). He gets away with it because he has leverage on Zelensky that he does not have on Putin, thus the pandering to a thug and the defamation of Zelensky. It is negotiations by shakedown in threats, insults, and extortion. For Trump, it must be like extracting concessions out of his favorite pipe supplier. The unrestrained nature of international affairs presents a playground for Trump’s baser instincts.

Trump’s Ukraine/Putin stage act reminds our friends and allies of the danger of getting too close to America. Post-WWII, South Vietnam’s existence was placed at the mercy of American domestic politics and resulted in the collapse of South Vietnam and the rest of Southeast Asia. Leaping forward to 2020, American domestic politics reared its ugly head over Afghanistan with the rise of Trump and his subsequent Doha Accords with the Taliban. Trump and his people repeated the Nixon/Kissinger tactic of negotiating the future of our friend and ally without them being in the room. Timetables for an American withdrawal were set only to be inflamed by more American domestic politics with calamitous effects for Afghans. Afghanistan descended into a dark age at our bidding.

40 years ago: The fall of Saigon
The fall of Saigon, 1975, and evacuations from the roof of the American embassy.
Trump officials back away from 2020 Taliban peace deal after withdrawal chaos
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo meeting with Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, now the Taliban’s de facto political leader, in Doha, Qatar, in September 2020. (Photo: U.S. Department of State/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Why experts say the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan didn't have to lead to chaos | CBC News
Thousands of people are trying to flee Afghanistan as the Taliban strengthens its grip on the country. Some people chased a U.S. air force plane down the tarmac, while others tried to force their way onto planes at the Kabul airport. (photo: screen shot, Axios)

Can you blame any potential international partner for wariness in getting too close to the USA? They have alternatives. They could cut their own deals with our common enemies turning America First into America Alone. Appeasement might sound more appealing than laying yourself open to America First and an insane Democratic Party.

They could expand their defense capabilities and magnify their efforts in coalitions without a troublesome USA. Trump’s America First becomes America Problematic. Such arrangements will not have our interests at heart. America First, now known as America Alone, will be an unreliable, isolated nation with an expanded dependence on an even greater military buildup than is possible given our current domestic politics. Are you prepared to slash entitlements? Our crazy Democrats went bonkers over George W. Bush’s 2005 nibbling at Social Security’s edges (see #3). What makes you think that Democrats would not seek to ride the hysteria to more political fame and fortune this time around? Bottom line, America Alone becomes America Weaker.

This is our “master of 4-D chess” at work. We are not prepared for the consequences. The “most beautiful word in the dictionary” only disguises our deep-seated economic problems. America First will cause our friends to run for the exits. Any “peace” deal over Ukraine will come at the expense of more screw-tightening on the victim. America needs to address what we have done to ourselves before we scapegoat our friends and allies. Welcome to the world of America First.

The rabble-rousing has the advantage of feeding popular prejudices. Grievance has proven to be a political winner. The Right has discovered its inner victim in the same manner as the Left for over a century. The world should be leery of an America united in grievance.

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RogerG

Sources:

1. “Trump: ‘Tariffs Are Going Forward On Time, ‘We’ve Been ‘Led By Fools”, Tim Hains, Real Clear Politics, 2/24/2025, at https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2025/02/24/trump_tariffs_are_going_forward_on_time_weve_been_led_by_fools.html
2. “The Future of Innovation in the United States: Permissionless or Regulated?”, Mohamed Mutii, Econlib, 10/14/2023, at https://www.econlib.org/the-future-of-innovation-in-the-united-states-permissionless-or-regulated/
3. “How George W. Bush Lost Personal Accounts For Social Security”, Peter Ferrera, Forbes, 4/7/2011, at https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2011/04/07/how-george-w-bush-lost-personal-accounts-for-social-security/
4. For an American public uninterested in the foreign discussion about America, tune into this podcast, “Can German centrists keep ignoring the hard right AfD?”, The Daily Telegraph, 2/24/2025, at https://youtu.be/LiLEeFlbfHk?si=eOveyaQX98wuaumb . It covers more than the results of the German election. Toward the end of the interview, a major German parliamentary leader expresses major skepticism of a Trump-led America.

Resuscitating Munich in The Art of the Deal

British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (left) and German Fuehrer Adolf Hitler shake hands in this composite photograph at the 1938 Munich Conference in which Chamberlain agreed to allow Nazi Germany to annex the Sudetenland
British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (left) and German Fuehrer Adolf Hitler shake hands in this composite photograph at the 1938 Munich Conference in which Chamberlain agreed to allow Nazi Germany to annex the Sudetenland. (photo: The Daily Mail)
Trump and Putin shook hands Friday at the APEC gala dinner too, while both were wearing the now-traditional strange shirts that mark the annual meeting
Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin shake hands at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders’ summit in Da Nang, Vietnam, 2017.

The prophet Jeremiah warned the people of Jerusalem of their impending doom, and included an admonishment that rings through the ages.

“From the least to the greatest,
All [people of Jerusalem] are greedy for gain;
prophets and priests alike,
all practice deceit.
They dress the wound of my people
as though it were not serious.
‘Peace, peace,’ they say,
when there is no peace.”
(Jeremiah 6:13-14)

Then, here’s President Trump at Mar-A-Lago on Tuesday (2/18): “Today I heard [from Ukraine], ‘Oh, well, we weren’t invited.’  Well, you’ve been there for three years.  You should have never started it.  You could have made a deal.” (See #1)  “You should have never started it.”  What?!!  A slip of the tongue?  I didn’t realize that it was Ukraine that invaded Russia.  The inverted logic is absolutely dumfounding, stunning.

It’s the logic of a businessman, not a statesman, who is practiced at cutting deals in the good ol’ USA, in the protective cradle of our rule of law.  Deals in business frequently aren’t moral matters.  Both sides make proposals and meet in the middle.  In the arena of international relations, there is no rule of law, despite what Geneva and the ICC have to say about it.  So, President Trump treats the bloody aggressor as the moral equivalent of the bloodied victim. It’s beyond foolish; it’s stupid; it’s dangerous.

“‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.”  Is a real and enduring peace a possibility under this mental deformity?  “Peace” becomes the pause between the hungry wolf and the sheep with nowhere to run.

Peace, at this juncture, occurs without moral judgment.  “Peace” merely becomes the bridge of moral equivalence between evil and innocence.  The wolf is still hungry.  Into the fray of the Ukraine War has entered President Trump and his people.  Shuttle diplomacy is commencing between the wolf and his dinner.  Separate meetings with Putin’s people are taking place in Saudi Arabia, then the scene will shift to Ukraine’s Zelensky.  Trump’s negotiators are the “honest broker” between the wolf and his victim.  This isn’t the first time for these purveyors of a morally monstrous “peace”.  History lends many examples, and the results are disturbing, as usual.

It’s the kind of “peace” strictly defined as an absence of war, till the next time. Appeasement is the means to achieve a “peace” that does not deter, that does not matter.  It was tried numerous times in the ancient world, such as during the campaign of Philip II of Macedon to unite the Greece under his rule (in the 350s to 330s BC), much like Putin’s ambition to reconstitute the Soviet empire.  After the Battle of Crocus Field (352 BC), Athenians negotiated the Peace of Philocrates with Philip which made Athens a Macedonian ally and relinquished territory to him.  The “peace” ended in 338 BC in the last-ditch Battle of Chaeronea and Philip’s final subjugation of Greece.

Moving forward in time to the late 20th century, a form of appeasement with no real “peace” came out of the Vietnam War’s Paris Peace Accords of January 1973, negotiated by Nixon and Kissinger.  The result was a withdrawal of U.S. forces without a commensurate one for North Vietnamese forces in the South.  Within two years, the communist North conquered the South and the red flag of the hammer and sickle flew over Southeast Asia.

The approach of Nixon and Kissinger in 1973 is eerily similar to Trump’s.  In Trump’s Doha Accords of 2020 with the Taliban, the Afghan government had no direct involvement.  Nixon and Kissinger were agreeable to freezing South Vietnam out of the talks as were Trump’s people the Afghan government.  In both cases, the victims were “consulted”, and they even protested, but the U.S. decided their fate in isolated talks with their enemies.  The U.S. agreed to a withdrawal from Afghanistan of our and NATO forces as well as restrictions on air strikes in support of our Afghan allies.  In an Afghan army trained in the tactics of American combined arms, the hampering of air support would prove dispiriting and catastrophic.

Trump gave us the opportunity to relive ’75 Saigon.  Biden carried it out, only this time it was Kabul.  Biden crammed down Afghan throats Trump’s Peace of Doha like he jammed eco-fanaticism, transgenderism, and floods of illegal immigrants down our throats.

It happened to South Vietnam and Afghanistan, so what lies in store for Ukraine?  The common ingredient is an antsy eagerness to leave which sets the stage for abandonment.  I saved the most egregious example of disgrace for last.

The 1938 Munich agreement with Herr Hitler, der Fuhrer, screams at us.  “Munich”, like “Hitler”, is worn from overuse.  That doesn’t mean that it isn’t relevant when the parallels are too numerous to ignore.  Let’s see, in 1938 Czechoslovakia was the next dish in Hitler’s buffet after the shredding of the Versailles Treaty, rearmament, the Rhineland, and the Anschluss.  Next is defeat of the West and Lebensraum (living space in the East) and the immortal Third Reich.

Conquest is Putin’s forte as well.  He gained power in 1999 and soon launched the Second Chechen War over Dagestan.  He leveled Grozny like Hitler did Warsaw.  An independent Chechnya is no more.  And soon to follow was Georgia in 2008.  Reaching deeper into the North Caucasus, he ripped off a couple of provinces.  All this sets the stage for Ukraine in much the same manner as Hitler eyed Czechoslovakia.  1935-9 parallels 2014-present.

For both Hitler and Putin, expansion is the goal, but standing in the way are the victim and her allies.  These allies, however, had their valor stripped by previous wars.  They were anxious to cut a deal in Trump’s Art of the Deal. Britian’s Chamberlain and France’s Daladier joined Hitler and Mussolini at Munich to construct “peace with honor”.  Czechoslovakia’s friends were much more eager for a deal (remember Trump’s Art of the Deal) than either the Czechs and Slovaks, and the wolf.  Without support and now isolated, the victim was forced to accept the dismemberment of their country with the loss of the country’s defenses abutting the lair of the wolf, the mountainous Sudetenland.  Soon after marching into the Sudetenland, by March of 1939, the wolf had the whole enchilada. No more Czechoslovakia.

Standing athwart Putin is the U.S. and NATO, and the moxie of the Ukrainians.  America’s Chamberlain, Donald Trump, has sent his reps to Saudi Arabia to cut a deal (remember the Art of the Deal), absent the Ukrainians.  Picture this: the bloody seizure of Crimea, followed by the Donbas, with the aid of proxies (like Hitler used Konrad Henlein and his Sudeten German Party), and then a full-scale invasion.

Putin reads history books.  Trump rereads his Art of the Deal.

“You should have never started it.”  Can you believe that it came out of the mouth of a U.S. president?  Trump has a problem distinguishing the rapist from the victim.  The U.S. met three rapes of the same victim with relative passivity and only decided to provide real assistance after the serial rapist tried to seize every inch of the woman’s body for his own.  In steps Trump with a counteroffer: we’ll allow you to take an arm and six toes.  After all, it’s the Art of the Deal, and the two sides meeting in the middle.  It’s beyond disreputable.  It’s disgusting.

In one final note, Putin cheerleaders on the Right bellow that they’re tired of the war.  Tired?  Not one drop of American blood has fallen in Ukraine.  These mental midgets can’t be referring to American body bags.  There aren’t any.  The victim is only asking for the guns to stop the attack.  In Trump’s twisted universe, the girl is at fault for exposing too much skin in her prom dress.  How else can you get to, “You should have never started it”?

This is shameful, shameful, but it’s not as if we haven’t been here before.

May be an illustration of ‎1 person and ‎text that says '‎RNIRZ SVEGSRENEEN-OURNAL VEGAS 20220CREATORS.COM 2022 OCREATORS.COM אממ RUSSIA WOULD WOULDNEVER NEVER TARGET CIVILIANS in POLAND. WE TARGET CIVILIANSiM in UKRAINE. ባባ @Ramireztoons michaelpramirez.com‎'‎‎

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RogerG

Sources:
1. “’You should have never started it’: Trump seems to blame Kyiv for war”, Reuters, 2/19/2025, at https://www.yahoo.com/news/never-started-trump-seems-blame-075955974.html
2. A summary of Putin’s history of aggression can be read at “Vladimir Putin’s history of conflict with former Soviet nations: the timeline and human cost”, Stacker, 2/19/2025, at https://stacker.com/stories/world/vladimir-putins-history-conflict-former-soviet-nations-timeline-and-human-cost

The Incoherence of Victor Davis Hanson and His New Right

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Victor Davis Hanson at his home near Selma, Ca.

In Rob Reiner’s “This Is Spinal Tap”, the character of Nigel Tufnel (guitar and vocals in the faux group) divulges their secret in being “one of England’s loudest bands”.  They stenciled their amp dial scales to end at 11 and not the usual 10 – not increase the actual power output, mind you.  Thus, “We go to 11.”  The difference between the regular Right and the most recent edition is that the newest vintage will “go to 11”, always on the lookout for new opportunities to be loco.

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Trump supporters swarm Washington, D.C., Nov. 2020

The New Right is content with the batty isolationism-lite, the battle against those mysterious and formless “neocons” and the “establishment”, and a zeal for protectionist tariffs.  Their political darling is Donald Trump and prominent mouthpiece in the academy is Victor Davis Hanson.  Hanson has twisted his intellect into knots to turn Trumpian incoherence into coherence.  The old wisecrack “Give him enough rope and he will hang himself” could be rejiggered to apply to Hanson in “Let him talk long enough and reasonableness is overtaken by bunk”.

It was on full display in the October 26 podcast of the “The Victor Davis Hanson Show”. Hanson loves the term “reestablish deterrence”.  I do too. In a dangerous world, bad actors need to understand that they’ll pay a heavy price for harming you: “If you want peace, prepare for war.”  But it’s strange to the point of incredulity to apply it to only two of the three theaters of Cold War II: Israel and the Middle East, yes, of course; Taiwan/CCP/South China Sea, yes, of course; but Ukraine/Putin/Russia, no.  What’s with that?

For Hanson, “reestablish deterrence” somehow stops when considering Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.  Hanson’s logic is a ball of confusion.  He blathers about the “scared soil of Mother Russia” as quicksand for Ukraine and their supporters in order to justify a replay of 1967’s Vietnam War micromanagement when then-president LBJ chose bombing targets in North Vietnam and restricted efforts to destroy the Ho Chi Minh Trail and clean out NVA and Viet Cong sanctuaries in Cambodia.  According to Hanson, we should not be supplying offensive weapons nor should Ukraine in any way, no matter how modified, adopt the tactics of the invader.  Is there at least a hint of inconsistency here?  Hypocrisy?

Weapons are weapons, whether labeled “offensive” or “defensive”.  Is it “offensive” to strike Russian airbases, supply depots, missile sites, command-and-control centers, or occupy areas near Ukraine’s borders that are essential to keep Russia’s murderous juggernaut rampaging in Ukraine well-supplied?  That’s defensive, Victor!

For Hanson, “reestablish deterrence” only applies against Iran or the CCP.  How does Putin deserve a free pass?  It’s the strangest thing.  Putin’s desire to resurrect the Soviet empire is somehow different in Hanson’s mind from the mullah’s ambition to bring back the caliphate over the bodies of millions of Israelis or Xi’s craving to rebuild the Middle Kingdom of earth.  Putin is decimating Ukraine as Iran would like to see done to Israel.  Instead, Hanson strays off into a gripping fear of stepping onto the “sacred soil of Russia”.  No word about the “scared soil of Ukraine”.

Try to make sense of it.  You can’t.  Emotions must account for it.  Angers, resentments could be swamping the brain.  Col. Vidman is Ukrainian and testified against Trump.  Hanson must have been grinding his teeth.  (Honestly, me too!)  Zelensky visits an American factory that’s viewed favorably for Biden and Harris.  The Left hates Russia for magically electing Trump; therefore, the Right automatically loves the place.  Putin, manly man, versus XY “girls” and XX “boys” regaled at the White House.  The faculty lounge flies Ukrainian flags at their homes while blue-collars languish in joblessness and meth.  Hanson is seething.

Hanson tries to use the national debt and an open border as an excuse not to have a foreign policy, at least one that makes some sense.  He’s actually saying, until all our problems are solved, to hell with Ukraine and foreign affairs.  We’ve done it before regarding the continent of Europe, circa the 1930s prior to the fall of France, Pearl Harbor, and the Holocaust.  It’s a theater of the absurd, and Hanson is begging to play a key role in the sordid drama.

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RogerG

Blowhard-fest I Postmortem

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The Biden-Trump rematch is in the books.  Who won and who lost?  Nobody won, and Biden lost.  Will they move on to a second match?  Hardly.

In a nutshell, by the end of the talkathon, my fears about Biden’s infirmity were confirmed, but my concerns about Trump were elevated.  Biden came off as a doddering old Marxist head honcho like one of those Eastern European party strongmen in the waning days of the Iron Curtain, or the party elders standing next to Brezhnev overlooking the May Day grand parade in Moscow in the 1970s.  Yes, Biden is infirm but what came out of his mouth in his infirmity was the socialism that is firmly established Democratic Party doctrine.  If the party movers and shakers succeeded in pushing him aside, his replacement won’t be an improvement, just more presentable.

The left-wing party establishment got what it wanted under Biden (and Obama), and the country is a wreck for it.  Biden resorted to the party’s doctrinal tics throughout the debate: tax the “rich” to save Social Security (it won’t), all the “pay their fair share” talk, the greenie nonsense, the “glories” of ending unborn life as if it was God’s eleventh commandment, and more bribery of friendly political constituencies with other people’s money.  It’s disgusting, and ruinous.

For his part, Trump was . . . Trump.  He brought his “A” game, as in donkey.  He donned his adolescent schoolyard bully uniform for all to see.  Vague generalities, superlatives in regard to himself, avoidance of questions in favor of rudimentary insults, and the repetitive use of a monotonous standard line were the essence of his performance.

Trump boasts were routine.  For instance, “I’ll end the Ukraine War before inauguration day.”  How’s he going to do that?  He has no practical leverage on Putin.  He’ll hang Zelensky out to dry and give Putin a third of the country, that’s how.  All will be done in an isolated meeting after which there will be a smiling Trump photo op.  Zelensky won’t be smiling, Ukraine will be in tears, and naked aggression will have been rewarded.  Speculation?  It’s more realistic than any of Trump’s self-assessments.

Trump made the correct observation that other world leaders see Biden as an embarrassment.  After last night’s performance, they see our country as crazy.  Are these two people the best that we can come up with?

Now more than ever, we need a real leader to prosecute the case against the creeping socialism that is smothering us, and for the unborn.  We don’t have one, certainly not in Trump.  Trump has always been merely a walking gesture, the middle finger to our decrepit politico-cultural elites.  He’s incapable of presenting an argument, a line of reasoning.  It shows every time that he steps onto a stage.  In the meantime, the country is careening to insolvency.  At this juncture, neither party will even recognize the tidal wave of debt that threatens to swamp us and our ability to defend ourselves.  Eco-central planning is no more coherent than the kind in the old Soviet Union.  Who do we have to make the case?  Who has the wherewithal to convince the American people to turn away from their belief in the impossible, from decadence?

Don’t look for it in Trump.  Don’t look for it in either political party.  We need leadership, not a middle finger.

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RogerG

It Makes No Sense

Ukrainian strike
Emergency personnel work at the site where an apartment block was heavily damaged by a Russian missile strike in Dnipro, Ukraine on January 15, 2023. (REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne)

What makes no sense?  The denial of aid to Ukraine, of course.  Recently I listened to an interview of Ryan Zinke (R, Montana) regarding the four bills that were introduced by Speaker Mike Johnson to provide aid to Israel, Taiwan, Ukraine, and our defense industrial base.  Zinke’s skepticism about supporting Ukraine is, to put it mildly, incoherent.  Why single out Ukraine?  It’s bonkers.

MT-Sen: Trump To Nominate Rep. Ryan Zinke (R) For Interior Secretary Position
Ryan Zinke (R, Montana)

A person can be forgiven for concluding that a good chunk of the Republican caucus is scared, maybe petrified, of the screeching minority in the part of the party most infected with Trump Personality Disorder (TPD), people like Marjorie Taylor Greene (R, Georgia) and Thomas Massie (R, Kentucky).  They threaten to oust Johnson for simply putting Ukraine aid on the floor for a debate and a vote.  Shrill, fire-breathing fanatics have outsized influence in a paper-thin Republican majority in the House, ironically a consequence of Trump’s ludicrous 2022 endorsements (he would like to shift blame to abortion).

What is TPD?   These are people who, like Trump, confuse theatrics for common sense.  It’s a form of political personality that treats stridency, bluntness, and coarseness as the virtues of a statesman.

Thomas Massie Joins MTG's Motion to Vacate as Opposition to Mike Johnson Grows over Ukraine
Rep. Thomas Massie (R, Kentucky) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R, Georgia)

But why the hostility to Ukraine?  Zinke provided the usual humdrum about needing to secure our borders, our depleted munition stockpiles, and Ukraine corruption.  Yet, the first two excuses are ridiculous. Money and supplies going to Israel and Taiwan, which he supports, also steer resources away from our border and weapons inventories.  As for corruption, is Ukraine any more corrupt than, say, Chicago, our teacher unions, any of our unions, defense contractors, our litany of eco-industries with both hands in the public purse, et al?

The corruption angle is a ruse to hide an affection for Putin by loud-mouthed zealots who’d never win the spelling bee.  It’s all tied up in the Russia hoax melodrama of 2015 to 2019.  The left scapegoated Hillary’s 2016 loss on Russia, so the dimwitted Trump enthusiasts quickly discovered their inner Putin.  “They’re against him, so we must be for him” is the dictum.  The door was thus opened to a love for authoritarian public cleanliness, physicality in political persona, Potemkin visits by Tucker Carlson, and the balderdash of Candace Owens’s rantings — and a willingness to leave Ukraine dangling.

A Ukraine flag on a Trumpkin’s house became as incongruous as the tortoise besting Usain Bolt in the 100 meters.

Ditto for the thought process in the donkey party’s embrace of Ukraine-love.  Their own “for ‘em/against ‘em” dialectic led them to replace their LGBTQ+ rainbow flag with Ukraine’s.  Russia gave us Trump, in their disturbed thinking, so let’s inflict Ukraine on the Russians.  That’ll teach ‘em.  It’s, frankly, astounding to watch them after they spent the later years of the Cold War siding with the Russians.

Where’s all that stuff about partisanship ending at the water’s edge in foreign affairs?  Hogwash.

Is the MTG caucus aware of the new Axis?  It’s not hyperbole to notice the similarities between Germany/Italy/Japan circa 1939 and Russia/Iran/China circa 2024.  There are more 1939 similarities in this new triumvirate of evil than during the Cold War (the bipolar U.S. v. Soviet Russia), including a rehash of “American First” isolationism – another Trump legacy.  They might concede Iran to a lesser extent, but their cyclopic monovision really only sees China.  Thus, as in der Fuhrer gobbling up the Rhineland, then Austria, then Czechoslovakia, they are willing to return Europe to a battlefield, just eighty years later.  Their myopia, alongside the rank pusillanimity in other parts of the Republican caucus, is a cloning of a combination of Britian’s Neville Chamberlain and U.S.’s own Charles Lindbergh throughout the party.  Is anyone noticing that we’ve been down this road before?

German soldiers being welcomed into the Sudetenland by its German population. | Deutsches heer ...
German soldiers marching into the Czech “Sudetenland” in 1938

Pass the Ukraine bill, and damn The Squad, the TPD Republicans, and the cowardly in GOP ranks.

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RogerG