The Far Left Is Surreally Stupid When It Comes To American Foreign Policy
According to Michael Tracey, he can't answer questions on Russia's war of terror on Ukraine because it doesn't fit with his world view.
by Ben Cohen
This tweet from Alt Left commentator Michael Tracey perfectly encapsulates the fringe left’s surreally idiotic understanding of international relations and US foreign policy:
Tracey’s statement is enlightening because he admits openly what most in his camp will not: that he is completely incapable of thinking outside of a narrowly defined ideology. To only focus on US foreign policy at the expense of everything else during a conflict as complex as the Russia-Ukraine crisis is, well, crazy. It is akin to blaming the US for World War II because it sided with Britain and France after the Nazis began invading large swathes of Europe.
Q: What was Germany’s role in starting World War II?
A: Sorry, I can’t answer that because I only focus on US foreign policy.
Tracey has been a vocal opponent of America’s support of Ukraine after it was illegally invaded by Russia earlier this year. According to Tracey, the conflict is none of America’s business and by taking action to repel Vladimir Putin’s armies, it is directly risking World War III and a nuclear holocaust.
Tracey recently condemned Ukraine’s attack on the Kerch Strait Bridge, denouncing it as a terrorist assault comparable to “ISIS or Al Qaeda”:
Given Russia built the bridge following the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 and now use it to resupply Russian forces fighting in the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, few outside of Russia would argue that it is not a legitimate military target. But according to Tracey’s logic, it is a despicable act of terrorism because America is funding Ukraine and America is bad, so therefore Ukraine is bad and Russia’s actions are, well, none of anyone’s business.
Matt Taibbi, another purveyor of the Alt Left’s bizarro reality, has made similar arguments in recent years. Earlier this year, Taibbi attempted to convince his readers that Russia was not going to invade Ukraine despite the aerial footage of thousands of Russian troops on the Ukrainian border made publicly available by US intelligence agencies. Why? Because US intelligence agencies are bad, therefore Russia is telling the truth.
Taibbi provided no evidence for his assertion that the intelligence was a hoax, and was so spectacularly wrong that he was forced to issue an public apology. He claimed that his mistake was “being so fixated on Western misbehavior that I didn’t bother to take this possibility seriously enough”. Taibbi ate humble pie for a few weeks, but then went right back to blaming Joe Biden for putting the world in danger.
“Biden is just a less likable, more deranged version of Dubya,” wrote Taibbi in May. “A political potted plant behind which authoritarians rule by witch hunt and moral mania, with Joe floating on a somehow even fatter cloud of media protection than Bush enjoyed after 9/11.”
Taibbi wrote this after Biden brought NATO back to life and created a strong global alliance that acted incredibly swiftly to push back against Russian aggression. Biden’s actions were widely praised in the Western world (Europe in particular), and without his leadership the crisis would have almost certainly taken a far darker turn.
The childishness of Taibbi and Tracey’s ideology has been highlighted so spectacularly during the Russia-Ukraine war that the far left’s arguments have become increasingly difficult to understand, let alone take seriously. Take Tracey’s comment that he believes the bombing of the Kerch Strait Bridge was an act of terrorism. Using this logic, no country is entitled to defend itself from an invader if supported in any way by the United States. This means every European country invaded by the Nazis would have been guilty of terrorism if it took money or military supplies from the US. This means Britain was a terrorist state when it bombed military and industrial targets aiding the German war efforts, and the US ultimately to blame because it was lending money to the UK. This also means Taiwan cannot defend itself against China because it takes money from the US, and every NATO country is a potential terrorist state because the US is the major funder of the organization.
Joe Biden has shown the world that there are still those who believe in democratic values and are willing to fight for them.
The US has a long history of terrible military ventures — some criminal and completely immoral. The Vietnam war was unconscionable, as was George W. Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq. But the US is also a functioning democracy with competing political parties. It participates constructively in international affairs (though this is often dependent on the elected party), and has played a role in peacekeeping in around the world. The creation of the international system post World War II was led and mostly funded by the United States, and it has — until recently — held up quite well. Democracy has spread to more nations than ever before, catastrophic wars are increasingly rare, and the acquisition of territory through violence is largely frowned upon. The US is far from perfect, but it isn’t engaging in land acquisition abroad, is broadly supportive of liberal democracies, and participates in matters of global urgency — like climate change, food security, child poverty and so on. In fact, the US is widely respected abroad, especially after it voted out Donald Trump.
The US government is largely made up of serious, thoughtful, and educated people who don’t go into work every day dreaming up ways to take over the world and make a small fortune for themselves. The Russian government on the other hand, is packed with some of the scariest individuals imaginable. The Kremlin isn’t a place where politicians go to make their nation better — it’s where they go to pillage the nation’s resources and enrich themselves. Politicians who refuse to toe the line are mysteriously shot or poisoned to death, and journalists who report on government corruption also end up dead, severely beaten, or in jail.
The most important distinction of course, is that America is a democracy, while Russia a fascist autocracy with huge territorial ambitions it is now acting on.
America’s support of Ukraine while it fights an aggressive, fascist, authoritarian regime with the largest nuclear arsenal in history is not only the morally right thing to do, it is in the best interests of the entire planet. Autocracies are on the rise once again, and malevolent actors like Vladimir Putin have grown bolder because they sense weakness in Western democracies. The election of Donald Trump was a cause for celebration in Putin’s Russia for good reason: the Kremlin saw a man they could do business with.
Joe Biden has shown the world that there are still those who believe in democratic values and are willing to fight for them. His forceful repudiation of Putin’s gangsterism with not only words, but billions of dollars worth of high tech weaponry has shown other despots that there are consequences to their actions. Putin expected to run over Ukraine in a matter of weeks and swallow it into Russia. US intelligence and weapons combined with Ukrainian bravery has put an end to Putin’s grim ambitions.
As Fiona Hill, a former official at the U.S. National Security Council specializing in Russian and European affairs argued in an interview with Politico, this is the only way to stop him. Rather than cower in the face of Putin’s increasingly apocalyptic threats, we should stand up to him. Said Hill of Putin’s threat to use more “modern” weapons in the conflict with Ukraine:
This is pure nuclear blackmail. There can’t be a compromise based on him not setting off a nuclear weapon if we hand over Ukraine. Putin is behaving like a rogue state because, well, he is a rogue state at this point. And he’s being explicit about what he wants. We have to pull all the diplomatic stops out. We have to ensure that he’s not going to have the effect that he wants with this nuclear brinkmanship.
Putin is also making it very clear that to get what you want in the world, you have to have a nuclear weapon and to protect yourself, you also have to have a nuclear weapon. So this is an absolute mess. Global nuclear stability is on a knife edge.
But again, this is not about strategic issues. This is not an issue of strategic stability. This is Vladimir Putin pissed off because he hasn’t got what he wanted in a war that he started.
By continually countering Russian aggression with directly proportional responses, Putin is learning that there are consequences to his actions. Hill’s contention that we do not acquiesce to his demands is based on decades of studying his behavior. When Putin is not confronted, he takes more. The world did not stop him annexing Crimea in 2014, so he believed he could take all of Ukraine in 2022 without facing any opposition. He miscalculated and is now trapped in a war he cannot win.
The Alt Left though, does not see this as a desirable outcome. They regard Vladimir Putin much in the same way they regard Donald Trump — an agent of chaos undermining the global order and paving the way for a potential transformation of society. Michael Tracey and Matt Taibbi view Ukraine and the US as “neoliberal” shams run by globalist elites and thus deserving of everything they get. They may not like Putin and Trump, but rather them than Zelensky and Biden.
Like all ideologues however, they must deny facts to keep up the charade. As Russia brutalizes Ukraine, their distortions become more egregious and more ridiculous. Now they will only answer questions they can contort through the strictures of their ideology — and simply refuse those they cannot.
Read the latest for Banter Members:
A Sinister Theory On Herschel Walker's Fake Police Badge Scandal
It was almost certainly a cleverly planned scam and Democrats need to wise up to it before it is too late.
by Bob Cesca
WASHINGTON, DC – Not too long ago, a computer security expert noticed that typos in social media posts might actually be a good thing. Specifically, this person found that posts with misspellings tend to get many more comments from readers who invariably jump in to point out the spelling mistake. The flood of corrections signals to the platform’s algorithm, whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, or whatever, that the post is getting a lot of engagement, thus improving the reach – the visibility – of the post as well as the account itself.
I don’t have specific proof, but I wonder if people like Marjorie Taylor-Greene and Donald Trump, before he was banned from Twitter and other social media for being a danger to society, deliberately allowed misspellings to sneak into their tweets solely to augment their engagement and reach.
“Now, Walker can hand out plastic badges and play make-believe with various good-ol’-boy police officers” - Bob Cesca
Deliberate typos are a win-win for people like that. Misspellings signal to “the folks” that Republican leadership is composed of regular doofuses just like them, and, more importantly, it boosts their reach on social media. Trump, in particular, only cares that people are paying attention to him – any publicity is good publicity – so he’s willing to do just about anything to get there…. continue reading here.
It’s the usual ass backwards petulance you get from spoiled, selfish, smug faux-intellectuals like Tracey.
“I have my conclusion. Now I’m looking for the facts to support it.”
So nice to see Mikey recovered from that awful beating he got from Maxine Waters!