The Hash-Tag War

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I’ve been cynically amused over the past couple of weeks at how efficiently the Laptoperati and Twitter-fixated media Powers That Be have swung to “Russia Bad-Ukraine Brave & Noble!!! Eleventy!!” since the Russian invasion-attempted-occupation-re-occupation of the place began in a big way nearly two weeks ago. How can it now be World War III already, when we still have our Covid-19 decorations still up? Watching practically every media outlet swing into action in being all sympathies for Ukraine and all-hate on Russia is … astonishing. All the parties who would have been lighting candles, holding vigils for peace, and lecturing us about how war is not good for children and other living things, and no blood for oil have changed tune without missing a beat, hardly. Suddenly Vladimir Putin is the enemy of all that is good and decent, and everyone is rushing to declare sympathy with and support of the Ukraine, declare anything Russian to be double-plus-ungood, and throwing Russian cats out of cat shows, Anna Netrebko out of the Met, and vodka with a Russian-origin brand-name down the drain. Celebrity fools with pretensions to adequacy issue hysterical demands that Russia be thrown out of NATO, or that NATO enforce a no-fly zone over the Ukraine – never mind that Russia wasn’t a member of that organization and instituting a no-fly zone would almost instantly involve the United States. The turn-around is purely astonishing to behold; a hashtag/social media war on steroids.

It reminds me of the last time there was a grand virtue-signaling rush on social media – Kony 2012, anyone? Bring back the Chibok girls. It also reminds me of a minor running jest in Angela Thirkell’s early wartime Barsetshire novels. A pair of elderly spinsters keep renaming their pet dog after the leader or national hero of whatever nation that Hitler had just lately overrun as a pathetically useless gesture of support for plucky little (insert name of country here) which likely left the poor little dog terribly confused, as there were quite a few countries or regions invaded by the Nazis in the late 1930s and early 1940s. But that was just light fiction.
About the last time the American public went in this heavily for round of ostentatious wartime virtue-signaling, it involved re-christening sauerkraut as Liberty cabbage, throwing stones at dachshunds, and a lot of German-Americans legally changing their surnames to something less identifiably Teutonic. It also contributed to wishing Prohibition on us, which might suggest that ostentatious virtue-signaling is not a wise choice when it comes to suggesting national policy.

Was the signal sent out officially, by some version of Journolist, or is it just a matter of all the birds in a media flock pivoting and turning independently in response to hints that the Biden administration may be in deep doo-doo? My daughter just yesterday saw gas at almost $4.00 – and last week, it jumped ten cents in a single day. In San Antonio. These costs cannot continue without resentment and protest. Neither can the cost of basic groceries, or their erratic delivery to the store shelves. I can’t think that whoever is pulling the strings in the Biden administration deliberately fomented a war with Russia as a means of distracting Americans from the various disasters building; inflation in the costs of practically every commodity on the market, catastrophic crime rates in red-run cities and farming and transportation woes. We may safely assume, though. that the Biden administration powers-that-be are taking full advantage of, and even encouraging the Ukraine-Russian war to that end. Discuss as you wish.

50 thoughts on “The Hash-Tag War”

  1. My daughter does equestrian competitions, and the other day the national organization that sponsors the events put out a press release that they have banned Russians from their events. Keep in mind that these are events for kids. And that there are large numbers of Russian citizens living in America while working through the immigration process. But no horseback riding competitions for you, kid, we gotta show Vlad that we Stand With Ukraine!
    Never seen anything like it. Craziest thing ever. Makes the covid hysterics look completely trivial. Very illuminating, though.

  2. well we saw it under woodrow wilson, but we’re not even officially at war, yet (hopefully we will never be) I used to think dos passos was off when he was in his anarchist left phase, but he painted the picture vividly at least in the first of his usa trilogy,

    the boko offensive was delayed for a bit, when axelrod’s strongman client bukari took power and paid the jizda, then they have resumed since, because such a war chest just encourages more,

  3. Its amazing the “we stand with Ukraine” lot are the same ones who wanted their unvaccinated friends, family members, neighbors and co-workers, stripped of their rights, their money taken away, their children removed and forcefully vaccinated against their wishes, and consigned to live out the rest of their days in a labor/detention camp.

  5. Ukraine bet heavily on Hillary in 2016 and, luckily for them, Trump did not find out.

    The Ukraine ambassador was involved as well as the president of Ukraine. It was run out of the Obama White House.

    Chalupa continued to pow-wow with the Ukrainian Embassy and got so cozy with officials there that they offered her a position, which she declined, as an “embedded consultant” in the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

    That same month, high-ranking Ukrainian officials openly insulted Trump on social media in an unusual departure from normal diplomacy.

    “It was clear that they were supporting Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. They did everything from organizing meetings with the Clinton team to publicly supporting her to criticizing Trump.”
    Andriy Artemenko,
    Ukrainian lawmaker

    For instance, Ukraine Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov tweeted that Trump was a “clown” who was “an even bigger danger to the U.S. than terrorism.” In another July post, he called Trump “dangerous for Ukraine.” And on Facebook, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk warned that Trump had “challenged the very values of the free world.”

    It’s amusing to watch the hysteria.

  6. they chose poorly and now they reap the butchers bill, kony was a nasty piece of work, but a regional ogre, you know what they were ignoring for years, in the interim the rise of what would become islamic state and the salafi statelet as general flynn’s monograph noted, just like focusing on the serbs, at virtually every step, took our eyes off the ball, until the tower’s were in the cockpit of the 737s

  8. I liked one comment reply to the suggestion to kick Russia out of NATO: Aren’t you worried that Russia will retaliate by kicking the US out of the Warsaw Pact?

  9. the more inflation that is caused by dubious foreign policy, the lesser the fraction caused by dubious domestic policy?

  10. Certainly some of the focus on Ukraine is driven by a hope of distraction from Biden’s multiple disasters and a hope of a ‘rally round the flag’ political reaction that would favor the Dems. And some of it is driven by people who would much prefer having Russia as our major opponent than having China in the same position…lots more money to be potentially made from China, due to its much larger economy.

    But, we should be careful not to view world events excessively through the lens of domestic politics. When US troops started arriving in Britain in large numbers preparatory to the Normandy invasion, apparently many on the British Left were convinced that they were there to help the upper-class Britons suppress the working class. We shouldn’t view Putin’s aggression purely in terms of how it may or may not play into the hands of the Dems and Progs.

    Putin really does seem to have a vision of ‘making Russia great again’ NOT by developing it economically, scientifically, artistically, but by empire-building in the old style. If he had done what at first it looked like he was going to do, recognizing the eastern territories of Ukraine as independent (but under Russian ‘protection’) and sending support to his agents there, then he probably would have gotten away with it without serious sanctions. To do what he actually did surely requires something approximating megalomania.

    Putin

  11. Nothing to worry about here. Our Overlords’ plan is going well. This week, Congress is passing a $1,200,000,000,000 bill which no-one has read, spending money they (and we) do not have. That is approximately an $8,000 charge to each taxpayer in the US. But nobody is talking about this, because everyone who is anyone is instead virtue signaling their support for the Ukrainian government which has spent the last 8 (Eight!) years shelling their own innocent citizens who happen to speak Russian.

    Meanwhile, my bank is offering 0.3% interest on a 2 year CD at a time when inflation is somewhere between 10% and 20%, and diesel has risen to $5/gallon — which will affect the cost of everything that we buy, like food.

    How do we tell the non-kleptocrats among the Ukrainian people that democracy & freedom are not all they are claimed to be? At least, not in the US or the EU.

  12. That was the notion that prompted orwells line about intellectuals, of course many of these figured had gone along with the molotov pact

  13. David F: To do what he [President Putin] actually did surely requires something approximating megalomania.”

    David, you seem to have fallen for the NYT/CNN line. The old Far Left “Rules for Radicals” — personalize the issue! Putin is Trump … oops, I mean Hitler … no, maybe I mean Trump. Anyway, he is bad and he is the ONLY bad person in the world.

    “Our Guys” — obviously not the brain-challenged Biden* — pushed Russia against the wall. They refused to deal with Russia reasonably, and this is the result. If “Our Guys” don’t get sensible soon, the war will escalate to nuclear exchanges.

    Bottom line is — Stop falling for the Far Leftie demonization of President Putin. Take the Russian concerns seriously, and start to push for a negotiated settlement. It is eminently doable!

  14. Its a waste of resources at this time, like ian malcolm said ‘just because you can do a thing, doesnt mean you should’ kiev is not grozny or aleppo, no matter how hard you squint.

  15. Gavin..”David, you seem to have fallen for the NYT/CNN line.”

    You really shouldn’t assume that people you are debating / dialoguing with are necessarily acting under the influence of sinister forces. In my not-at-all-humble opinion, my knowledge and reasoning ability exceeds that of 98% of NYT writers and 99.9999% of CNN commentators, so I can evaluate information and make decisions by myself.

    See Neo’s post here:

    https://www.thenewneo.com/2022/03/09/coming-to-a-decision/

  16. I think it likely that Putin thought he’d have Ukraine under control by now AND be in the midst of an economic war with the West that he thinks he can win. While the laptop class is laughing about Russians being cut off from iPhones and McDonald’s, who’s going to be laughing in 6 months when gas is still $6/gallon and a loaf of bread costs $10?
    I don’t think this is just about Ukraine, and it’s a looooong way from over.

  17. If he had done what at first it looked like he was going to do, recognizing the eastern territories of Ukraine as independent (but under Russian ‘protection’) and sending support to his agents there, then he probably would have gotten away with it without serious sanctions.

    Indeed, and it’s no surprise that that’s the situation Trump called genius. If Putin had limited it to that, he would have fully secured Ukraine from ever joining NATO and likely suffered little for it. This current course of action seems reckless and suicidal, but it hasn’t played out yet so maybe it’s genius too.

    As to the majority reaction in the West, it strikes me as mainly driven by the public rather than politicians or even the media. Some governments (including USA) seem quite surprised by it and are trying to catch up. It’s very powerful, and the moral boost it gives to the Ukrainians is enormous; something that could turn the tide of the conflict (along with eff loads of munitions).

    I’m quite disappointed and a little confused by the sneering derision coming from the online right on this issue. I hope it doesn’t become mainstream right in the USA, because it’s a level of stupid that will be the one thing to throw away the midterms (and the disaster that entails). Honestly, if idiots make this partisan and hand it to the Dems, it’s take it up the botty forever time.

  18. The whole thing went off the rails a long, long time ago. It’s just now that everyone is starting to pay attention to the same crap I was worried about when Clinton got elected the first time.

    The government of these increasingly disunited states is not and has not been run in the interests of the average citizen since… Oh, at least the 1960s. What happened to Nixon was a trial run for what they did to Trump; Nixon, for all his manifest flaws, was another outsider in the vein of Palin and Trump. That’s why they had to end him–If he’d successfully carried off his second term, and won in Vietnam, well… No telling what would have happened. I don’t think Nixon would have allowed what went on in ’75, and would likely have had the moral weight to blackmail Congress into doing until the ’75 invasion what they’d done to the earlier one. That might have broken the back of the Soviets as effectively as Star Wars did, a decade or so later. Iron Curtain might have come down in 1980, instead of 1990. Who knows? These counterfactuals are always easy to make, hard to prove.

    It is a fact that the Democrats in Congress were working in the interests of our enemies even then. Hypocritically, after having gotten us entangled in Vietnam, it became a “Republican” war, and trying to win it was outright “evil”. Never mind the sunk costs in lives lost and lives taken, which I would put before you was the worse sin.

    What we all need to do is stop supporting these kabuki actors calling themselves politicians. Note what has been done by the NYT in support of hiding Fauci’s financial interests, and further note that no Republican is challenging any of this crap in Congress. It’s all go-along-to-get-along, and here we are.

    I used to be a staunch Republican, believing that they were on my side. They’re not, not even at the state level. There was zero resistance to the latest attack on my rights here in Washington, even after the assholes refused to prosecute any of the egregious firearms transfers that took place in plain view on FakeBuch.

    So, if you want reform? Figure something else out, and plan on putting most of the Republican side of the Uniparty in prison after it’s all over.

    Humorously, I note that they just made lynching illegal, a Federal hate crime. You know why? They want more tools to go after the constituents after some of them go home to meet with their just deserts… Frankly, I think it ain’t entirely out of the question that you’ll see the Dutch or Liberian solution to some of these supposed “legislators” that claim to represent us. Times get hard enough, even a stringy-ass politician may start to look like good eatin’…

    Anyone have a good barbecue recipe for corrupt political hack? Asking for a friend…

  20. Was the signal sent out officially, by some version of Journolist, or is it just a matter of all the birds in a media flock pivoting and turning independently in response to hints that the Biden administration may be in deep doo-doo?

    At this point, I think it can only be a new more secure version of Journalist. They don’t need it for any ideological reason but simply for message discipline.

    I also think the media campaign was all set to roll, only awaiting the actual Russian invasion. I’m reminded of how the gun-control groups were planning and organizing their media campaigns prior to the Sandy Hook massacre- and for that matter how quick the George Floyd protests took off.

    Pattern recognition. It’s one important reason why I think the regime has been goading Russia into invading Ukraine, long knowing the Russians considered it a redline.

    They wanted this war, to give them political cover for the economic damage they knew their policies would cause.

    Unfortunately for them, Russia waited until it was too late to be a credible scapegoat for disaster. Sad Panda.

  21. Sayeth PJF –
    “I’m quite disappointed and a little confused by the sneering derision coming from the online right on this issue.”

    Sneering derision? Really? Not derision, not from this particular quarter – Can’t speak for the other Boyz with regard to specifics, but for myself, I am deeply skeptical about the whole thing, and absolutely convinced that we’re being played by all parties concerned; the Ukrainians, the Russians, our own Dear Media, and our own political parties.
    Of one thing, I am absolutely convinced – no American blood ought to be shed in this looming fiasco – for Hunter Biden’s oils, or anything else. Getting involved militarily will be a horrific blunder, and that we are in any danger of doing so is a matter which can be laid at the door of our incompetent political ruling class … who may indeed have seized on this emergency for their own malign purpose.

  22. Indeed, and we know there is an institutional network, joyce diamond foundation behind thr push for gun registration and confiscation

  23. I’m quite disappointed and a little confused by the sneering derision coming from the online right on this issue. I hope it doesn’t become mainstream right in the USA, because it’s a level of stupid that will be the one thing to throw away the midterms (and the disaster that entails).

    I guess I am not the only one who does not understand what you mean here. As for a Media driven war, remember when Bush sent supplies to Somalia to avert famine ? Then Clinton sent troops? There were reporters there before the troops, taking photos as they waded ashore. Remember how that worked out? I do. They even made a movie of it. “Blackhawk Down.”

  24. if we’re in a shooting war, with Russia, the midterms will be the least of our problems, specially one led by general milley vannili and darth austen, and yet this is where the turtle is leading us to,

  25. Oh, thanks, Mike K – for reminding me of Somalia. Another media-driven crisis – driven by pathetic pictures of starving children, and good intentions (also driven by the media) got American troops involved in a bloody but local civil war, in which we also got played.
    Yes – that escalated quickly, in the words of Ron Burgundy.

    And that involvement also cursed us with Ilhan Omar/Elmi, or whatever her name and clan is at this moment, and a whole bunch of creatively- grifting refugees, incompetent cops and crooked local politicians. Yeah, thanks, Somalia.

  26. the daughter of one Sidde Barre’s commissars, who was not widely known in the Kenyan refuge camps, or else she would have faced the mythical fate of Rebenga, the Castro minister
    (in reality our community was very welcoming, to those who had honestly repented, a slander oliver stone had spread in his screenplay)
    now back in the early days of the cold war both British and American intelligence operatives supported the UPA, of course Philby gave the Soviets the landing coordinates almost right after the airdrops, so that was a waste,

  27. For more than two years now we’ve seen a massive clampdown on bad thoughts, first about the election, then about covid, and we’re supposed to be all rah rah about Ukraine? Are you kidding. Let the regime apologize and beg forgiveness and then we’ll start to consider it.

  28. Speaking of which, in the Ukraine thread a link to a YouTube interview with Trump was posted earlier today.
    The video has now been removed from YouTube.
    Anyone who thinks we’re free and the poor Russians are living in an authoritarian state is delusional.
    I don’t recognize this country, and feel zero affinity for the regime or its supporters.

  31. I’m sorry, what? Nixon was an outsider? Dude started in DC in 1947, spent time as a representative and senator both, then did eight years as the RNC’s choice for Eisenhower’s VP, lost to Kennedy, then finally won the presidency in 1968.

    That’s not an outsider’s resume.

  33. Outsider standing is not just determined by a resume. Nixon was part of HUAC and integral to the Alger Hiss prosecution, hated by some in the Eisenhower circle (though not the General himself), and close to McCarthy. None of those things would have endeared him to the ‘deep state’ even back then. He was largely a cipher in Republican politics for the almost decade after his 1960 loss to JFK and 1962 loss to Pat Brown in the California gubernatorial. He got the nomination in 1968 in no small part because that kept the stink of 1964 off him, and he had the good luck to run against a fractured Democrat Party in 1968 and one that went completely off the rails in 1972. My folks were active in Republican Party politics back in the day, and I remember the fights between the ‘grassroots’ nee deplorables and the ‘Rockefeller Republicans’ nee GOPe. Reagan had much of the same ‘outsider’ status even though he had been a two-term Governor of California.

  34. As a sunbelter nixon was closer to the outsider party, but he picked up some bad notions in new york at mudge rose

  35. Nixon was paranoid, but “they” really were out to get him, and all because he was right about Alger Hiss. It’s an American tragedy.
    And the past five years make “McCarthyism” look like peanuts. At least Joe was right in the basics, even if sloppy in the details. The Russiagate hysteria was just a total fraud from the very beginning.

  36. “Cynically amused,” “astonished” (x3, at least), “changed tune,”… human nature not what you thought it was?

    The Left in America behaves as the Left in Russia under Stalin: eagerly awaiting the cue as to who is this week’s villain.

    If I had Conquest’s book with me, I could quote (oh, darn, forgot his name) about how a true socialist could forget everything he was told last week to follow the party’s declaration this week.

    If you think rationality is having principles or beliefs, then examining those beliefs, deciding which to abandon in light of new experience and which to hold fast, then the Left lacks reason.

  37. A sane society would recognize much of leftism as what it is, mental illness, and place the majority of its adherents under some form of restraint. Such a society would certainly not put them in charge of anything more complex than running the local vegan cafe, where they could do limited harm.

    To be a leftist, you have to be ideologically pure; the problem with that is that ideology is basically you trying to impose your ideas on the universe, rather than rationally responding to the universe as it actually is. The ideological cannot recognize when their ideas are not working, and will persist in trying to put out fires with gasoline so long as their cherished theories and authorities tell them that gasoline is an excellent fire extinguishing agent.

    You can identify these people quite easily; find some part of their mental construct that isn’t working out, in clear view: Point that out. Then, watch the contortions begin, followed by denial that the problem even exists once you’ve gotten them cornered in their mental maze of fantasy and error.

    End of the day, the ideological of any stripe are dangerous. I do find, however, that the less-fanatic religious types who insist on things like “…the world is only six thousand years old…” are a lot less hazardous to deal with. Their insistence on these things is essentially harmless, because you can, if you chose to leave the nuttiness alone, discuss other issues more-or-less rationally with them. They’re amenable to reason in most other areas, in other words… Unlike your usual leftist, who will simultaneously decry the corruption of corporations and government, and then demand more government to solve the problems brought on by government…

    The root cause for a lot of this is the simple fact that humans are a scarcity- and suffering-based species. We do not do well in prosperity or plenty; nearly immediately, we start showing signs of insanity. Absent struggle and the need to work hard for day-to-day survival, we seem to go nuts. I honestly can’t think of a single society that’s survived success, not over even the medium term, let along the long one.

  45. BREAKING NEWS

    Police Units across the nation join hunt for Covid-19,
    Following its sudden and complete disappearance
    from its former resting place on every media outlet.

    Foul play is suspected.

  46. }}} These are the same geniuses who stopped drinking Corona beer during the pandemic.

    There’s a great wiseass cat meme to this —

    (Crying/pointing girl):
    You said you were sick!
    Wiseass cat:
    I said I had a case of Corona
    (picture of case of beer below him)

  48. Here’s why it was a bad idea (or maybe good, depending on your point of view) to censor RT. I haven’t seen this story reported anywhere else in our “objective” media, and I couldn’t find it on Google.

    https://www.rt.com/russia/552060-ukrainian-pure-blood-museum/

    The claims of the Ukrainian “historians” mentioned in the article might just as well have been written by some Nazi professor of “racial science” of the type that “proved” Jesus was a German, etc.

  49. It acts like a bum link, anyway, I’m not going to spend time considering anything on RT.com or cnn or NYT for that matter. The Russian standard response to discredit anything is always Nazi, just the way racist is used here.

    I have no doubt there are a few benighted souls in Ukraine that revere Hitler just as here with about the same amount of influence and we never had the experience of living under Stalin.

    Any mention of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and how Stalin seemed perfectly happy to split up Eastern Europe with Hitler? I thought not.

  50. The link works fine for me. The material in question was not issued by a few benighted souls, but by a Ukrainian state body, the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance. You don’t have to take RT’s word for anything. The material in question has been archived and is there for anyone to see. Are you aware that Stalin was not a Russian?

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