Dave Pell is a blogger whose writing I enjoy. Here is a great example. He pulls together the events of the past five years and sees the connections. His blog is called “Dave Pell’s Next Draft.”
He writes:
It’s all connected. The years of Trump being manipulated into lauding Putin’s savvy and genius. The scene in Helsinki when Trump sided with Putin over America’s intelligence agencies. The weapons Trump withheld from Ukraine and the perfect phone call to blackmail the Ukrainian president into digging up dirt on Joe Biden. The failure to adequately punish Trump for that international crime. The attacks on NATO. The abandonment of allies. The dictator love. The labeling of the press as enemies of the people. The America First hogwash. The relentless lying. It’s all connected to what we see playing out in the streets of Kiev. And still, the likes of Trump, Pompeo, and Tucker Carlson can’t bring themselves to side with democracy over the Moscow Murderer. Ordinary Ukranians have the guts to face Putin’s army. The Senate GOP was scared to stand up to Trump. And the broader party is afraid to stand up to him and call him out, even now, as he sides with pure evil. Fortunately, Europe, Biden, and much of the free world are not so misguided. Putin has unified the alliances he sought to divide. NATO is more determined. The EU is more unified. “The European Union agreed Sunday to close its airspace to Russian airlines, and spend hundreds of millions of euros on buying weapons for Ukraine and ban some pro-Kremlin media outlets in its latest response to Russia’s invasion.” These nations and organizations understand that this isn’t just about a sick, war criminal killing innocent civilians to achieve a hopeless fantasy of piecing back together the Soviet empire, it’s a clash between authoritarianism and democracy. As David Remnik writes in The New Yorker, “What threatens Putin is not Ukrainian arms but Ukrainian liberty. “His invasion amounts to a furious refusal to live with the contrast between the repressive system he keeps in place at home and the aspirations for liberal democracy across the border.” The fighting is in Ukraine, but the front in this war stretches from Kiev to Mar-a-Lago. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and MAGA’s Big Lie are both part of a broad war against democracy. Hopefully Americans will be inspired by Ukrainian bravery and stand up for democracy, because it’s all connected. As a teen during the Holocaust, my dad was hunted by Ukrainian henchmen working for the Nazis. When history pushed, he pushed back. Today, he would be proud of the courage shown by Ukraine’s Jewish president Volodymyr Zelensky. When the U.S. offered him an escape route, he responded, “The fight is here. I need ammunition, not a ride.” Man, I wish my dad—who survived the Holocaust because he got a gun and ammunition—was around to hear that line from a Jewish leader in Europe. Zelensky, the former comedian who used to play the part of a fictional president, found himself in a situation that is all to real. The guy Trump thought was so weak that he could be blackmailed during that phone call has proven himself strong enough to become an international hero fighting against a corrupt madman and for democracy. He is the very opposite of Donald Trump. As Franklin Foer writes his Atlantic piece, A Prayer for Volodymyr Zelensky, “The whole world can see that his execution is very likely imminent. What reason does he have to doubt that Vladimir Putin will order his murder, as the Russian leader has done with so many of his bravest critics and enemies?” And yet, as history pushes, the standup stands firm. During the last years of his life, my dad repeatedly lamented that Americans weren’t taking the threat to our democracy seriously enough. “Vhy aren’t the people out in the streets?” Well, today, inspired by the Ukrainian grandson of a Holocaust survivor, hundreds of thousands of people are taking to the streets across Europe, and even in Russia itself. The fight is there. The fight is here, too. It’s the same fight my dad fought. It’s all connected. The world should have stood up to Putin a long time ago and treated him and his oligarch crew as the criminals they are. But from America to Europe and beyond, they are beginning to stand up to him now. And dictators like China’s Xi, who obviously gave Putin the greenlight during their Olympics elbow rubbing, are seeing this resolve. The ruble had been turned to rubble. The sanctions are stiff. The West has weaponized Russia’s Central Bank against Putin. Even Switzerland says it will freeze Russian assets, setting aside a tradition of neutrality. The Swiss realize the fight is there, too. There’s no room for neutrality anywhere. It’s all connected. |
“During the last years of his life, my dad repeatedly lamented that Americans weren’t taking the threat to our democracy seriously enough”
Exactly. I understood why the Republicans were embracing authoritarianism and fascism – their blatant disregard for the truth and view that might makes right and power is everything has been evident for a long time.
But seeing some folks on the left – as well as our so-called liberal media – legitimizing that view has been incredibly disheartening.
The NYT has not practiced journalism in a long time. They practice defensive stenography – framing all their articles using right wing narratives in the hopes that it might make Fox News not criticize them as much.
And Russia/right wing propaganda has made inroads even at blogs like this one – where right wing trolls posing as progressives have spent years linking to right wing propaganda and lies. Russian propaganda is excellent, and these trolls establish identities in which they seem to support some progressive things (for example they will attack a Democrat for being racist or a Democrat for being anti-public school) but you can identify them by their UNwillingness to criticize Republicans (except the one or two who stand up for democracy) and their non-stop excuses for anything Putin does.
Democracy means that there will be politicians who have different views and sometimes they will win. But democracy needs truth to survive. And this country has been embracing a culture where right wing lies are legitimized and part of the legitimization are a few on the left and in journalism who have been propagandize to normalize the biggest lies by their “both siderism”. Trump can shoot someone dead on Fifth Avenue because Truman dropped the atomic bomb. Republicans can lie about non-existent voter fraud to get people to accept their passing laws to disenfranchise those who won’t support them, because Bill Clinton lied about having an affair. Putin can bomb Ukraine because of something the US did 75 years ago.
The fact that ANYONE who isn’t a right wing ideologue spews the lie that the threat to our democracy is no big deal because we have never been a real democracy and politicians have always lied is part of why this country is in so much danger.
Hitler rose to power on such lies, with many Germans believing the threat to their democracy was not a big deal.
defensive stenography!
What a great phrase.
Diane:
Thank you for this info and in perspective. Very necessary info and historical context. It should be communicated broadly.
Shirley Rausher
The timid response of our own Justice Department makes me wonder if they would do anything should Trump shoot a bazooka at the Capitol. Trump’s behavior makes Benedict Arnold look like child’s play.
It’s sickening to see this. Entirely agreed.
I think Arnold gets a bad rap. Maybe he was about to give plans away for money, but that pales by comparison to what we had when the southern fire eaters split the country in advance of the civil war or what the American fascists did in their support of Hitler. Time to modernize our villain list.
Agreed!
Since 1990, NATO expansion eastward has been very, very profitable for U.S.-based defense contractors. NATO expansion, as well as the on-going squabble over who should control LNG sales to Germany, shouldn’t be discounted when considering factors leading up to the current crisis in Europe.
Yes, but the “connection” began long, long before Trump or you or me or Putin. When we (Woodrow Wilson) chose to send troops to Russia in 1918 to force them back into the war with Germany and to abort their socialist revolution, we created a dark story that we don’t teach in our schools (almost no one knows this story, but Google “Polar Bear Expedition” or visit the graves of our killed, buried north of Detroit)–but Russian kids do learn it. Also, we may well have promised Gorbachev, no NATO to the east. We certainly had put missiles in Italy and Turkey, bringing about the Bay of Pigs near-disaster. Also, our attacks and subversions of Venezuela, Iraq, Iran, & Libya–allies of Putin–have set the stage for his maybe justified paranoia. I hope Biden’s approach works, or its Strangelove II for all of us.
Actually, U.S. participation in the civil war place that took place in Russia beginning in 1918 is taught in many U.S. schools. There is mention of it in the AP US History textbook I’ve used for many years.
Sometimes a book title says it all, like John Stockwell’s ‘In Search of Enemies’. Or for education, ‘Reign of Error’ is a good summar in three words.
While we are on the topic of connections-
Jack Hanick was described in a Serbian Orthodox Church announcement (2016) as being baptized with his family at the Church of the Holy Martyr at Moscow State University.
The announcement describes Hanick as one of the founding producers of Fox News (where he worked from 1996-2011). He “accepted a work invitation to Russia” which occasioned his baptism.
Hanick has been indicted for working with a sanctioned Russian oligarch, Malofeyer. Media report that Malofeyer “started an orthodox Christian network called Tsargrad TV. In 2020, he launched a similarly named right wing political group in Russia aimed at pressuring politicians to toe the conservative line.”
Open Democracy wrote a compelling story (6-6-2017) that reports about a speech Hanick gave to an anti-abortion, anti-LGBT congress held in Hungary. Representatives of the ADF and the National Organization for Marriage were present. Robert P. George and Brian S. Brown have been described as NOM’s founders. (John Eastman, who stood on the podium with Rudy Giuliani on Jan. 6, was NOM’s president and Cleta Mitchell, linked to Koch, was NOM’s attorney.)
Wikipedia describes in the entry about Brian S. Brown, founder of World Congress of Families, a 2019 photo taken in the US Supreme Court that includes Kavanaugh, Alito, Brown, Gloria – Princess of Thurm and Taxis and, Cardinal Ludwig Mueller.
Open Democracy wrote, “push back against rights related to gender and sexuality are increasingly organized and interconnected.” Representatives from the Philippines at the Hungary congress bragged, “The Philippines is Asia’s bastion of Roman Catholicism.” Given the income inequity in the nation, it proves Jefferson’s statement, “In every country, in every age, the priest aligns with the despot.
What did the Bush administration infamously say? The smoking gun has become a mushroom cloud. Trump is part of the bigger problem in the US. The Republican Party has successfully taken over strategic parts of our political apparatus to enrich their US oligarchs. It’s obvious through the comments of support for Putin that many Republicans prior to the invasion were happy to use the Russian subterfuge to forward their grasp for power. The media spends far too much time focused on the Federal Government and the culture wars while Republican operatives maneuver in opaque state legislatures to privatize everything in sight, including Public Schools. Trump’s incompetence is the perfect tool for serving the agenda of Putin and the Republican Party. As Bannon so openly states, they are in the process of bringing down the administrative state for power and money. Our citizens seem clueless to stop it as this happens right out in the open..
Bannon’s impact is explained in the Mother Jones article (March-April, 2022), “Right wing activists hellbent on transforming Catholic Church…’liberal Catholics have no plan’ ”
The associate director of the Kentucky Catholic Conference is also the VP of EdChoice Kentucky. Catholics take credit for originating and passing school choice legislation in Indiana (Southwestern Indiana Catholic Community Newspaper, April, 2021, “An Insider’s Look…”)
Pat Buchanan uses the “culture war” narrative to spin attention away from right wing religion’s dominance in policy. Liberals shouldn’t use Buchanan’s framing.
Who’d a thunk…The Holy Roman Empire rises again!
Thanks for reading the article.