Bulletins and News Discussion from April 15th to April 21st, 2024 - Between The Darkness And The Dawn, There Rises A Red Star

I can’t find an article that explicits says so, but it looks like by my math every House democrat voted in favor of sending tens of billions of $ to Ukraine and Taiwan.

While all Democrats voted in favor of aid to Ukraine and all but Ms. Tlaib supported funding to Taiwan, 37 left-leaning Democrats defected to vote against the Israel aid bill.

NYT

So yes the "progressives" voted against Israel but for Ukraine and Taiwan. Tlaib voted for Ukraine but didn't vote on Taiwan.

The episode finished with a schmaltzy scene of Americans reciting the pledge of allegiance. And made me think… libs really just see Russia and China as “bad”, and are utterly incapable of seeing the USA as anything other the good guys who occasionally get it wrong but it’s nobody’s fault, really.

This has been pretty obvious to communists since WW1... Anyone to the right of communists is like this.

I can tell you with a high level of confidence that these people as group don’t have a level of geopolitical understanding that’s any higher than your typical college-educated American.

This is my experience with British MPs too. In fact, much less so that your typical college educated Brit now, because all they got taught then was end of history, totalitarianism defeated, freedom wins, prosperity forever. This isn't to let them off the hook though, because they choose to be fundamentally uncurious and are incentivised and rewarded for ignorantly spouting whatever their supposed betters in the political heirarchy tell them to.

I can tell you with a high level of confidence that these people as group don’t have a level of geopolitical understanding that’s any higher than your typical college-educated American. They cannot (and refuse to) see American imperialism

Michael Hudson was hired by a neocon institute to explain American imperialism and dollar hegemony to the US president, and the CIA was the largest customer base for his books explaining those things lol.

When people meet Senators and House Reps, they come away with wildly different impressions. Some people come away thinking, "oh thank God that competent person is running that committee" (libs think this), others "Fuck that evil competent imperialist running that committee", others, "wow that person is just a fool".

They're usually a little of all the above. Some are particularly competent or incompetent, malicious or just foolish, but most are a mix. They're "good" at some things, bad at most other things, and choose to do evil both knowingly and explicitly and knowingly due to deliberate incuriosity. They get into the habit of lying to their constituents because honestly answering hard questions might tank their next campaign. They learn who butters their bread very quickly and tell themselves that despite being sellouts if they weren't in office it would be someone worse. And of course some are purely self-interested and don't care about the politics or ethics at all.

Anyways, there are House Reps and Senators that do have a much better understanding. They tend to chair or play second fiddle to the chair on the committees most relevant to funding for the imperial apparatus and manufacturing consent for war, sanctions, etc. They get their understanding from years of intel briefings and dodging hard questions from their constituents. They're not experts, and don't need to be - their benefit to the system is to do as they're told - but they do actually know that when they press the sanctions button it means dead children and when they bring home the MIC bacon to their district it's for offensive military actions. They know that escalation is not defense and that they're carrying out an effort to meet strategic goals that hurt other people in order to benefit US business interests. And they'll fight you to the death if you threaten their career.

American Civic Religion. It's a hell of a thing.