The central question for Americans from the start of the war in Ukraine was what role, if any, should the U.S. government play in that war? A necessarily related question: if the U.S. is going to involve itself in this war, what objectives should drive that involvement?
The only acceptable modes of expression in U.S. discourse were to pronounce that the Russian invasion was unjustified, and, using parlance which the 2011 version of Chris Hayes correctly dismissed as adolescent, that Putin is a "Bad guy." Those denunciation rituals, no matter how cathartic and applause-inducing, supplied no useful information about what actions the U.S. should or should not take when it came to this increasingly dangerous conflict.
Others who urged the U.S. to try to avert war through diplomacy - by formally vowing that NATO membership would not be offered to Ukraine and that Kyiv would remain neutral in the new Cold War pursued by the West with Moscow - faced the same set of accusations about their loyalty and patriotism.
The U.S. is, by definition, waging a proxy war against Russia, using Ukrainians as their instrument, with the goal of not ending the war but prolonging it.
If any pathology defines the last five years of U.S. mainstream discourse, it is that any claim that undercuts the interests of U.S. liberal elites - no matter how true - is dismissed as "Russian disinformation."
As we witnessed most vividly in the run-up to the 2020 election - when that label was unquestioningly yet falsely applied by the union of the CIA, corporate media and Big Tech to the laptop archive revealing Joe Biden's political and financial activities in Ukraine and China - any facts which establishment power centers want to demonize or suppress are reflexively labelled "Russian disinformation." Hence, the DNC propaganda arm Media Matters now lists as "Pro-Russian propaganda" the indisputable fact that the U.S. is not defending Ukraine but rather exploiting and sacrificing it to fight a proxy war with Moscow.
As former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis put it on Saturday: "A U.S. President who, during an atrocious war, does not mean what he says on matters of War and Peace, and must be corrected by his hyperventilating staff, is a clear and present danger to all."
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/bidens-reckless-words-underscore?s=r
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