I would also like to complain about how sickeningly brainwashed Americans are. 90% of Americans support sanctions on Russia for the annexation of what has always been Russian land, the Crimea. That’s a pretty incredible figure. But I suppose it makes sense in that in the US media, generally from the Right to the Left, you will hear one and only one story about Russia and Ukraine – the pro-government “bipartisan foreign policy consensus.” You will never see, in any major media, anything from the Russian side. I had hopes that the Internet would change all of that, but apparently most of them are just as brainwashed as ever.
The truth is that most Democrats are diehard Democrats and they simply every single that the Democratic Party is for. Right wing, left wing, centrist, atrocity, no matter. Democrats who claim to be liberals and progressives willingly support the most insanely reactionary foreign policy of all. They have for decades and there is no end to this in sight. These same liberals will typically support any rightwing crap a Democratic President does these. And looking back at the Clinton and Obama Presidencies, that’s a lot of rightwing crap. When a Democrat is in office, most Democrats simply support every single thing he does, period.
I figure most Republicans are just as dumb. Whatever the Republican Party line is, that’s their line. When a Republican President is in, he can literally do no wrong. Of the Republicans I know, you will never hear a peep out of them in protest to anything they do. Republicans are always right. If a Republican wants to know what to think about something, he just turns on Fox News or goes to his favorite rightwing website. The websites and the station are all saying the same thing anyway and never disagree, so no matter. The Republican simply believes whatever Fox and the websites tell him to believe. No further thought is required.
If a Democrat wants to know how to think on some particular issue, he turns on “liberal” news stations like MSNBC or CNN. CNN is not a progressive or liberal station by any means, and best I can tell, CNN is pretty much the same thing as Fox. MSNBC indeed is different, but how different are they on Russia and Ukraine.
If the TV’s not on, the Democrat opens up a rightwing “liberal” newsmagazine like Time or Newsweek (many liberals will proudly tell you that they subscribe to “liberal” Time or “liberal” Newsweek), and Timesweek tells them what to believe. Usually about the same as CNN, or actually more to the Right than that. If the magazine hasn’t come yet, you can always look at the daily paper. Your daily paper editorializes all through its “news” pages, and on foreign policy, Fox, MSNBC, CNN, Timesweek, your local paper and both political parties (due to the “bipartisan foreign policy consensus”) are saying the same thing.
I suppose that it is understandable that in a USA with media about as controlled as that of the Soviet Union it might be hard to find folks who don’t tow the government line or fall in line behind the “foreign policy consensus.”
Some more Left publications have lined up behind the US and against Russia: The Nation and Rolling Stone. In addition, almost all Trotskyites are against Russia and are urging neutrality on this issue – the Trots’ attitude is – you guessed it – both sides are “fascists.” The always execrable Trot Louis Proyect has been supporting Ukraine from the start.
