Everybody else — even many who were happy that he became president — has soured on Old Joe Biden’s disastrous presidency, but not the man who warned us not to “underestimate Joe’s ability to f**k things up.” Barack Obama on Thursday called on all Americans to get behind the sanctions on Russia that Biden has already admitted don’t stop Vladimir Putin from doing anything. Even worse, Obama said that Joe’s sanctions would cost us, like everything else connected to the Biden administration, but that it would all be worth it for the cause of freedom. As Obama was speaking as one of the foremost figures of the increasingly authoritarian Left, his words were hardly inspirational to anyone who has been paying attention.
Obama declared that “people of conscience around the world need to loudly and clearly condemn Russia’s actions and offer support for the Ukrainian people.” This involves getting behind Biden’s toothless sanctions: “And every American, regardless of party, should support President Biden’s efforts, in coordination with our closest allies, to impose hard-hitting sanctions on Russia — sanctions that impose a real price on Russia’s autocratic elites.”
Yet Biden himself emphasized, also on Thursday, that the sanctions would not actually “impose a real price” on Putin or anyone, in that they would not stop Russia from invading Ukraine. “No one expected the sanctions to prevent anything from happening,” Biden said, contradicting numerous statements from top officials in his own administration, including Vice President Kamala Harris. Biden continued, “This could take time and we have to show resolve so he knows what’s coming and so the people of Russia know what he’s brought on them, this is what this is all about. This is going to take time, it’s not going to occur … he’s gonna say ‘Oh my God, these sanctions are coming, I’m gonna stand down.’”
What Joe in his dementia haze was trying to say was that the sanctions wouldn’t make Putin stand down, which really means that they’re just a way of saving face and are otherwise worthless. But that doesn’t mean that the American taxpayer isn’t going to have to pay for them. Obama warned, “There may be some economic consequences to such sanctions, given Russia’s significant role in global energy markets. But that’s a price we should be willing to pay to take a stand on the side of freedom.”
We should be willing to endure the still-higher prices that will result from Biden’s sanctions in order to preserve “democracy,” by which Leftists generally mean “Leftist hegemony.” “For some time now,” Obama said, “we have seen the forces of division and authoritarianism make headway around the world, mounting an assault on the ideals of democracy, rule of law, equality, individual liberty, freedom of expression and worship, and self-determination. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shows where these dangerous trends can lead — and why they cannot be left unchallenged.”
Related: How Not to Sanction Russia
“An assault on the ideals of democracy.” Where have we heard that kind of rhetoric before? That’s right: it’s what the Left has been telling us for over a year now about the January 6 non-insurrection. Democrat leaders have been doing everything they could to portray the supporters of President Trump who gathered at the Capitol that day — not just those who entered the building — as violent insurrectionists bent on destroying “our democracy” and installing Trump as a dictator. With the repeated false claims of the intelligence establishment, echoed by Biden himself, that “white supremacists” constitute the greatest terror threat the nation faces today, this operation is being extended to all dissenters from the Left’s agenda anywhere in the country. If all Trump supporters are “white supremacists,” as Leftists have frequently claimed, and white supremacists are the nation’s foremost terror threat, then over seventy million Americans are a terror threat.
The Biden administration’s first year has been marred by, among so very many other things, this ugly and underhanded campaign to criminalize political dissent. The fishing expeditions for something to convict Trump of doing are part of the same initiative: taint the movement by declaring its leader a criminal, and making all his followers afraid to continue to support him for fear that they will be similarly tarred.
When Barack Obama speaks in ringing tones about how we have to support Ukraine in order to stand for democracy, he is acting as the mouthpiece for a movement that would happily behave toward conservative Americans the way Vladimir Putin is behaving toward Ukraine. Consequently, his high-minded language rings hollow. We have already seen enough from Attorney General Merrick Garland and his henchmen to know what’s behind it.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member