When you stop and think about it, Hollywood breast implants and D.C. speechwriters are eerily similar: They’re both designed to help the “actor” perpetuate a particular image.
It’s just show biz, baby!
And even though we can kind of tell who uses them on our own, it’s not polite to point ‘em out in front of the paying public: It ruins the performers’ desired aesthetics.
Society runs on similar cultural fictions. We all know them: Every bride is beautiful, every kid is cute, your boss’ ideas are always brilliant, and when someone asks, “How are ya?” you DO NOT tell them about your crippling depression and/or your ongoing bouts with bedwetting. The proper response is, “Great!”
But sometimes, our self-deceptions can be deeply damaging.
Generally speaking, the purpose of euphemistic language is to spare someone’s feelings. Although the PC nutjobs have given it a bad name, it’s mostly innocuous. Hey, if an old crippled hetero guy wants me to call him a “differently-abled cisgendered senior citizen,” that’s not gonna be my hill to die on. I’ll call him whatever he wants.
It’s good manners to treat people with respect.
That usually extends to names — including names I personally dislike. Look, I’ve always thought it’s weird when dudes named Richard voluntarily choose to be called Dick, but if that’s what you want, that’s what I’ll call you.
I’m a people-pleaser.
There’s an inherent danger, however, when you’re dishonest about your true intent in foreign policy because there are life-and-death geopolitical considerations that outweigh social niceties. And besides, when you’re dealing with an atom-splitting Russian empire with 5,580 nuclear warheads, your margin of error is limited.
Blundering our way into thermonuclear war isn’t in anyone’s best interest.
This past week, we learned that the lame-duck Biden-Harris administration has FINALLY given the Ukrainians the go-ahead to fire U.S.-supplied and U.S.-built missiles into undisputed Russian territory.
Russia promptly responded by lowering its threshold for the deployment of nuclear weapons. As we noted yesterday:
A Kremlin spokesman announced, “The Russian Federation reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in case of aggression with the use of conventional weapons against it.”
The spokesman also confirmed that the Biden-Harris-approved missile strikes “would be consistent with the updated doctrine and could trigger Russia’s nuclear response.”
Missiles and weapons are only tactics. In and of themselves, they mean nothing. What’s of paramount importance is our overarching strategy. Although foreign policy decisions are often bipartisan, America’s Ukraine-Russian policy is an entirely Democratic invention: Putin invaded Ukraine during the Biden-Harris administration, and throughout the totality of the conflict, only Democrats have been Commander-in-Chief and Secretary of Defense.
This is 100% a Democratic strategy. (Aided and abetted by the occasional neocon, of course.)
And the Democrats’ strategy is now readily apparent: It’s not for Ukraine to win. If we wanted Ukraine to win, we would’ve given it the green light years earlier or upped our contributions. We’ve been stroking checks, but clearly could’ve done more.
However, it’s not for Russia to win either.
Instead, what the Biden-Harris administration has been hoping for is a long, drawn-out, intractable bloodbath.
It’s a deliberate policy decision by the American government: Trap Russia in a lengthy, multiyear conflict that chews up its hardware and depletes its artillery. And later on, even if it manages to conquer Ukraine, hopefully, it’ll be too weakened to cause problems elsewhere.
As a ruthlessly Machiavellian policy, I’m not even saying that the Democrats are wrong! (I’d prefer a weakened Russia to a strong Russia, too.) Twenty years from now, we could look back at this policy and consider it a masterstroke.
But I am saying we need to be honest with ourselves.
We’ve engineered a conflict where the most probable outcome will be tens of thousands of additional Russian and Ukrainian corpses. Probably more. (Exponentially more, should the nuclear genie escape from its bottle.) It’s a war we’re not really trying to win, but actively perpetuating — the higher the body count, the better. It’s a policy written in Russian and Ukrainian blood.
And nobody’s telling the truth about it.
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