Look guys, being opposition for the sake of being oppositions is STUPID. So quit it.
Any questions? What? Oh for Pete’s sake…
We’ve spent the last forty years in American politics with the Democrats desperately clinging to the coattails of Civil Rights in the vain hope of maintaining relevance. They settled for maintaining power. That’s now ending. Yes, the whole process was stupid. Could we please not repeat it on the conservative side?
No, I didn’t say Republican because I’m a lot less confident of the Republican Party’s likelihood of surviving the next decade. If they don’t clean house soon, they won’t. But whether Republican or its replacement there’s gonna be a new sheriff in town in the very foreseeable future and that sheriff will be far more conservative than the current elite will be comfortable with. Conservativism is on the rise worldwide and very much so in the US of A.
It’s a normal political cycle so don’t get too cocky. Politics has a gravity of its own and what goes up usually comes back down. If your lucky, in a swinging pendulum. If not, it falls on your head. Political parties always forget this and what we’re seeing now is the effect.
I’d rather vote for drying paint than Joe Biden. But that should not prevent me from giving credit if it is due. Two reasons: it’s the right thing to do and we should never get in the way of political parties self destructing. Being hypocritical jerks just gives them a distraction. Political parties are very much like drowning men as they lose power – they get desperate and will grab onto anything, no matter what. Don’t be the what.
What does this have to do with foreign policy? A lot, actually. Conservative commentators and others are getting very reactionary. Anything the Biden admin does MUST be bad for the US. That’s the same kind of stupidity we normally see from the liberals. Oh, don’t get me wrong. Liberals don’t have a monopoly on being stupid. We all do it sometimes. But we don’t actually have to do it this time.
Russia is no friend of the US. Letting, or worse, helping Russia win in Ukraine undermines US interests. That’s real politick speak for it’s slitting our throat to spite our face. I get that there are some valid concerns – we shouldn’t ignore them at all – but the money is trivial by US budgetary standards (we might wanna revise those standards but that’s a different debate) and what we get is far more valuable.
The hilarious part is that the war is widely supported in the US (another reason not to do the sour grapes thing) yet Biden has not benefited politically.
The White House is managing to mismanage even wins all by itself. Just stay out of their way. Biden seems intent on taking down his own administration.
A good example is the beyond the pale stupid Chinese Spy Balloon. If China was trying to damage itself politically, it succeeded beyond its wildest dreams. The US got a MAJOR intelligence coup courtesy of the Chinese Communist Party. Look, Brazil might not be able to follow the thing, gather all kinds of intelligence data from it, make sure it doesn’t see anything we don’t want it to or transmit anything worthwhile and then shoot it down in spectacular fashion when we’re done with it, but the United States most certainly can – and did. F22 for the win, baby!
This should have been a win for the Biden admin. The Chinese threw a softball and US Intell hit it out of the park. But instead of explaining that from the beginning – or realizing that people would be able to observe the stupid thing from the ground – the Biden admin stumbled around and looked like idiots. Kinda hard to tell which was stupider: the Chinese sending the thing in the first place or the ludacris way the Biden admin handled the incident.
We won and the Biden admin made it look like a loss. You can stop freaking out now.
This brings us to the latest in Biden admin idiocy: the allegations that the US (aka Biden) was responsible for the Nord Stream destruction. A journalist has an anonymous source and writes a novel that he submits as a report – tell me if you’ve heard this one before.
Anonymous sources are inherently unreliable. Conservatives have been shouting this from the rafters for decades but the instant an anonymous source says what some want to hear, well, that’s different.
No, it’s not. This is the crap thinking that helped bring the Democrats to the brink of self destruction. Kindly do not follow suit.
Did the US do it? I doubt it because its so beyond the pale moronic, but sure, it’s possible. Why they would send divers when we have perfectly good submarines beats me, but yeah, somewhat plausible. I find the account dubious due to the depth but I’m not a diver so maybe? Yeah, probably not. The lack of a public report from Sweden is probably the most damning of the actual evidence but even that can be explained from a different possibility.
All that means is that the best evidence doesn’t make it a slam dunk but it also can’t be dismissed.
The idea that Russia had no motive is insane. I’ve actually watch a couple lawyers argue this once months ago. I’m gonna assume they’ve thought about it since because it was funny as heck that lawyers missed the obvious. When Germany canceled Nord Stream 2 they ate the damages from withdrawing from the contracts. Germany is a rich nation; Russia is not.
When Russia throttled Nord Stream 1, they made every excuse in the book. They denied deliberately slowing the flow of gas to pressure Germany into backing out of its support of Ukraine. Why? Surely, already at war and under sanctions the Russians had nothing to lose by owning up to the act. This is the part that the lawyers should have immediately caught on to – and I admit, I didn’t right at first – Russia had multiple billions of dollars in contracts for delivery of gas through Nord Stream 1. Violating those contracts would mean incurring penalties – very, very big ones.
Even if Russia refused to pay right now, eventually the war will end and a long line of countries and companies will want their money. If Russia wants to rejoin the international order, it will have to pony up or spend years in court then pony up. Right after an expensive war? Not a great prospect.
But all contracts that are written by sane lawyers contain Act of God clauses. This means if something happens that the party could not have controlled, they are not liable for the loss or not all of it, depending. See now why Russia kept blaming Canada for the slowdown on Nord Stream 1?
The observant will note that wasn’t working. Russia wanted to put that pressure on Germany but they needed an out. Russia didn’t need a surface ship or a sub to destroy Nord Stream – they had maintenance robots and full access. Suddenly kinda interesting that only three of the four pipelines were destroyed, isn’t it?
Is this proof that Russia did it? No, it’s just motive. But it is compelling motive.
So we’re back to who did do it. I don’t know and for today’s purpose it doesn’t matter. I’m already seeing some conservatives latching onto this stupid anonymously sourced report as if it were proof and trying to slay the Biden Admin dragon with it. This is really, really stupid.
It’s really stupid because conservatives largely know better than do this. We’ve been complaining for decades every time liberals did this to us. Don’t act like them.
The problem with becoming the monster is that you lose by default. The object of the game is to get rid of the monster, not replace it with another in a different color. The other problem is that new knights will arise to slay the dragon and that dragon is now YOU!
The Democrats, the Russians and the Chinese are all busily destroying themselves in various ways. It’s going to be an interesting few years and there’s gonna be a huge mess to clean up. Good thing the world has us as its favorite Boy Scout. Right now, they don’t need a knight, just a Boy Scout to help with clean up later on.
In the meantime, get out of the way of the self destructing dragons.
