Does anyone remember when this was the GOP? Those were the days.
"We are allied with Eurasia against East Asia. We have ALWAYS been allied with Eurasia against East Asia. Nothing has ever changed. (p. 96)"
"We are allied with East Asia against Eurasia. We have ALWAYS been allied with East Asia against Eurasia. Nothing has ever changed. (p. 147)"
-George Orwell, 1984
In American politics, no matter who the president is, when he says "jump," Congressmen and Senators from his party say "how high" while the other party says "jumping is a threat to democracy."
Think about it. When the president says "black," every legislator of the opposing party is duty-bound to say "white." If the president says "the sky is blue," every legislator of the opposing party is duty-bound to say "no, it's green!" So what happens when the president changes what has for decades been the party's tune? The answer is every legislator from the opposing party suddenly finds themselves on what would have been the president's side of the issue the day before, and all concerned will vociferously deny that either they or their opponents have ever changed their view.
And, as we have all seen recently (and yet few of us seemed to notice), there are times when it happens just exactly that quickly.
Do You Remember When...?
"This became the media complex's narrative for the duration of the Trump administration: 'Trump gave weapons to Ukraine, and Ukraine has Azov, and Azov are Nazis. Hence, Trump supports Nazis.'"
Let's take a walk back to 2019, shall we? Russia was beginning to rear its head on the world stage for the first time in decades. Mitt Romney, the 2012 Presidential candidate, had been one of many Republicans sounding the alarm about this, while Democrats and their faithful lackeys in the media mocked them for considering Russia a threat (Rayfield). Meanwhile, Donald Trump, eager to shake off long-standing (and ironic, in light of the previous sentence) Democrat allegations of colluding with Russia, was signing a massive (or perhaps that should be "yooge") $400 million packet of financial and military aid to Ukraine for the purpose of stabilizing them against further incursions by Russia (Zengerle). This aid was not only the first time the US provided Ukraine with lethal aid (Gould), but in raw dollar value it absolutely dwarfed the paltry $190 million table scraps thrown to Ukraine earlier by the Obama regime (Office of the Press Secretary).
And of course the Democrats, whose Prime Directive was "OrAnGe MaN bAd!!! (Drool)" could not abide Obama being upstaged by Trump, and had to find a way to make this aid package seem nefarious somehow. In order to do it, the Democrats, who had a long and rather sad history of love affairs with Moscow (Kranish), fell back on the same source that has provided their dogma since the 1930's: the Kremlin.
Max Rose (D - NY) insisted that the Azov Battalion, in whose hands much of this aid seemed likely to end up (though that claim is open to much debate given the absence at the time of any affiliation between Azov and the Ukrainian Government) was a "Neo-Nazi terrorist organization (Owen)." There are a few problems with this characterization of Ukraine's staunchest and most vehement defenders (read: "the biggest pain in Russia's ass") as "Nazis." The first is that it is total bullshit and has been since Maximim Rus Max Rose first penned it (McCullum). The second is that by spouting it, Rose was continuing a Kremlin tradition that dated back to Josef Stalin: the trend of insisting any Ukrainian opposition to Russian rule was rooted in Nazism (Patriamreminisci).
Nonetheless, this became the media complex's narrative for the duration of the Trump administration: "Trump gave weapons to Ukraine, and Ukraine has Azov, and Azov are Nazis. Hence, Trump supports Nazis (Shuster & Perrigo)." As to the discrepancies in this narrative (namely, the Left's inability to answer the question of "why is Trump, a supposed Russian asset, supporting Ukrainian nationalists who violently oppose Russia" and the Right's inability to deny a sneaking admiration for Vladimir Putin's macho-image), these were easily papered over. From the Left, this papering came in the form of the "Trump withheld aid from Ukraine as part of a Quid pro Quo refrain that was drilled into the heads of the American public ad nauseum before it was finally debunked, and from the Right it came in the form of the dream (now a pipe dream, considering Russia's present state of vassalage to China) of Putin as a potential ally against the nation that was and still is the biggest threat both to the US and to Russia: China.
Now it should be noted that the motivations of all the participants in this ballet of bollocks had less to do with truth or falsehood and more to do with self-serving politics.
- The Democrats insisted Trump was a Russian asset because it was the easiest way to discredit him (since Russia left enough fingerprints all over both candidates in the 2016 election that either of them was doomed to be heckled as a Russian asset by their opposition (Friedman)).
- Trump increased aid to Ukraine far beyond its Obama-era levels because arming those who opposed Russia was the easiest way to deny these allegations.
- Rose borrowed the Kremlin's "Ukraine = Nazis" line because painting Republicans (and anyone receiving support from them) as Nazis has been a proven effective way to rile up the Democrat voter base for decades.
And so, as 2019 drew to a close, we had the Right playing the hawks and standing against the Kremlin while the Left echoed the Kremlin's propaganda almost verbatim, just as it had been through the entire Cold War. And long-time registered Republicans (such as myself), finding this state of affairs familiar, found it quite easy and convenient to poke Leftists with sticks by saying "yeah, painting your opponents as Nazis is what you and your fellow Commies have been doing since before Obama replaced Stalin as your Messiah. You really need some new lines, Komrade."
So what changed?
Biden Happened, and Ukraine Happened
"When Trump and his followers saw Biden had finally miraculously pulled his head from his ass, they, in order to continue being his opposite, shoved their heads up their own."
The election of Joe Biden shifted up the internal political landscape of America more than most people realize. As I cited above, the Democrat Party had a long history of sighing dreamily and batting their eyes at Moscow, while mocking Republicans for raising alarms over Russian aggression. But now a newly elected president who came to power in a hotly contested election, needed a way to bolster his image of strength. Considering that his entire party had built their entire platform since 2016 around "GRUUUH... TwUmP iZ wUsHeN pUpPiT!", the best way to legitimize himself was to present an image of standing firm against Russia.
...We needn't ponder the irony of a Democrat building his public image around taking a hard line on Russia, one election cycle after openly-avowed Soviet sympathizer Bernie Sanders was much of the party's preferred choice for president.
And of course it was nonsense. For all Joe Biden's talk, he started off his administration not actually doing anything to stop Russia from further incursions into Ukraine. If anything, his cowardly admission that he would not send US troops to rescue Americans in Ukraine in the event of hostilities (abandoning the centuries-old openly-stated mandate of the entire Department of Defense) because he feared a confrontation with Russia (Finn) likely encouraged, rather than discouraged, further Russian hostilities, as did his limp-wristed response to the invasion (which he cried wolf about multiple times) when it finally happened.
And Donald Trump, no longer holding office but still far from sidelined, was not shy about ripping into Biden for this anemic response.
Instead, he suggested Biden should be doing something more to confront the Russian strongman.
“When he goes in and kills thousands, are we just going to just sit by and watch?” Trump asked. “In a hundred years, they’ll be talking about what a travesty this is.”
-Dave Goldiner, NY Daily News
So how did we get from there, to Democrats (the traditionally pro-Kremlin party) beating the war drums and calling to bolster Ukraine while Republicans (the party of Reagan) make comments like this one on Social media?
https://twitter.com/GuntherEagleman/status/1632394377157914628?s=20
- GuntherEagleman
Coming soon: "The D.U.R.A. Files - Entry 2, starring Grunting Smeagolman"
Essentially, after months of sitting around drooling while Russia ran amok in Ukraine, Joe Biden finally had a rare moment of almost lucidity and made the decision (or more likely heeded the Joint Chiefs' recommendation) to send heavy weaponry, including HIMARS, to Ukraine.
And all of NATO (which had previously been just as inactive and useless against this re-enactment of the Holodomor) followed suit.
Better late than never, NATO.
The paradigm shift in both parties' rhetoric that began with the onset of the war, was finally complete. One of those two times a day when the stopped clock is right struck the hour, and the Leftist media complex renounced their previous claim that Azov were Nazis (Jama;), which they had stubbornly clung to throughout the time when Azov's weapons were coming from Trump (Owen). Immediately, Donald Trump Jr. took to Twitter to echo Kremlin-penned rumors about Zelensky being a drug addict. Insistence that Ukraine was laundering money from defense aid for the benefit of a handful of elites, another common Kremlin talking point (which has never been backed by a single shred of actual evidence), gained traction from Right-leaning pundits. "Why is Ukraine more important to Biden than America?" became the crux of the Republican message on Ukraine and it pealed forth again every time a dime was sent to Ukraine.
The most ironic victim of it was Donald Trump. After spending his entire term deflecting allegations of being under Russian control, he found himself maneuvered into a position where he and Vladimir Putin now had the same arch-rivals: Joe Biden, and Volodomyr Zelensky. With the Kremlin's rhetoric now forming the backbone of Donald Trump's resistance against Biden's regime, he didn't realize (and still doesn't realize) it but he had been outflanked into becoming the very thing the Democrats tried to paint him as: a Russian asset.
I really can't put it any more succinctly than I did in a previous reply to @valued-customer. "When Trump and his followers saw Biden had finally miraculously pulled his head from his ass, they, in order to continue being his opposite, shoved their heads up their own."
How humiliating has it got to be, Donnie, to get outmaneuvered by an Alzheimer's patient like Joe, Fucking, Biden?!
Anyway...
The Republican party's "If Biden say this am good me say this am bad" response to anything Ukrainian continued. When Volodomyr Zelensky spoke before the US Congress, Republicans, whose entire platform is based on "sTuMbLiNg MaN bAd!! (Drool)" went as violently crazy as Democrats did when Benjamin Netenyahu addressed Congress less than a decade before. It's like it's an unwritten law. Washington can't have a real leader speaking before Congress without one party or the other throwing a childish temper tantrum about it. And just like under the previous administration, the message has little to do with what either party's pundits actually believe. It's simply a matter of "him say this, me say not this."
I'm not sure how many of them actually believe it and how many of them simply find foaming-at-the-mouth denials of whatever the other guy says to be a useful way to mobilize votes, but I miss the days when the ones who accidentally made sense were in my party, and the ones duty-bound to deny that sense were the opposition.
Works Cited
Finn, Teaganne. "Biden warns Americans in Ukraine to leave, says sending troops to evacuate would be 'world war'." MSNBC. 10 Feb, 2022. Web. 5 Apr, 2023. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-warns-americans-leave-ukraine-russia-troops-world-war-rcna15781
Goldiner, Dave. "Trump trashes Biden’s ‘weak hand’ on Ukraine in new interview on Fox." NY Daily News. 21 Mar, 2022. Web. 5 Apr, 2023. https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/us-elections-government/ny-trump-trashes-biden-ukraine-fox-20220321-6rapqxn43ncjxph5ggmzf2hutm-story.html
Gould, Joe. "Here’s what you need to know about the US aid package to Ukraine that Trump delayed." Defense News. 25 Sep, 2019. Web. 4 Apr, 2023. https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2019/09/25/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-us-aid-package-to-ukraine-that-trump-delayed/
Jamal, Urooba. "Facebook is reversing its ban on posts praising Ukraine's far-right Azov Battalion, report says." Business Insider. 25 Feb, 2022. Web. 5 Apr, 2023. https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-reverses-ban-praise-ukraine-far-right-forces-2022-2
Kranish, Michael. "Inside Bernie Sanders’s 1988 10-day ‘honeymoon’ in the Soviet Union." Washington Post. 3 May, 2019. Web. 4 Apr, 2023. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/inside-bernie-sanderss-1988-10-day-honeymoon-in-the-soviet-union/2019/05/02/db543e18-6a9c-11e9-a66d-a82d3f3d96d5_story.html
McCullum, Alasdair. "Much Azov about nothing: How the ‘Ukrainian neo-Nazis’ canard fooled the world." Lens. Monash University. 19 Aug, 2022. Web. 4 Apr, 2023. https://lens.monash.edu/@politics-society/2022/08/19/1384992/much-azov-about-nothing-how-the-ukrainian-neo-nazis-canard-fooled-the-world
Office of the Press Secretary. White House. FACT SHEET: U.S. Assistance to Ukraine. 7 Dec, 2015. Web. 4 Apr, 2023. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2015/12/07/fact-sheet-us-assistance-ukraine
Owen, Tess. "House Democrats Just Demanded These Neo-Nazi Groups Be Prosecuted as International Terrorists." Vice. 16 Oct, 2019. Web. 4 Apr, 2023. https://www.vice.com/en/article/59nqmq/house-democrats-just-demanded-these-neo-nazi-groups-be-prosecuted-as-international-terrorists
Patriamreminisci. "The Stalinist Origins of the 'Ukrainians Are Nazis' Myth." Peakd. 4 May, 2022. Web. 4 Apr, 2023. @patriamreminisci/the-stalinist-origins-of-the-ukrainians-are-nazis-myth
Rayfield, Jillian. "Obama: The '80s called, they want their foreign policy back." Salon. 23 Oct, 2012. Web. 4 Apr, 2023. https://www.salon.com/2012/10/23/obama_the_80s_called_they_want_their_foreign_policy_back/
Shuster, Simon & Perrigo, Billy. "Like, Share, Recruit: How a White-Supremacist Militia Uses Facebook to Radicalize and Train New Members." Time. 7 Jan, 2021. Web. 4 Apr, 2023. https://time.com/5926750/azov-far-right-movement-facebook/
Zengerle, Patricia. "Trump administration reinstates military aid for Ukraine." Reuters. 12 Sep, 2019. Web. 4 Apr, 2023. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-ukraine/trump-administration-reinstates-military-aid-for-ukraine-idUSKCN1VX213