Tag Archives: #MaxBoot

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The economy being an electoral loser for the Democrats, now they’re pushing Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine!

We have noted ‘neo-conservative’ Washington Post columnist Max Boot several times previously, not particularly charitably. The neo-conservatives were rather useful to Republicans from the Reagan Administration through that of the younger George Bush, in that they supported a stronger American military. The trouble is that while conservatives wanted the US to have the world’s strongest military to defend the United States, and were proceeding from something of a Cold War mindset, the neo-cons wanted to use that military to project American power forward. President Reagan used that power judiciously, in quick, easy actions in Panama and Grenada, and the elder President Bush used it in response to the actual threat of Iraq under Saddam Hussein invading Kuwait, and the threat posed to world oil supplies. The younger President Bush used it in response to an actual threat in Afghanistan, and a perceived threat from Iraq. The actions of President Reagan and the elder President Bush went well: they had defined missions which could be, and were, accomplished quickly, and we got right back out. Under the younger President Bush? Not so much: the wholly necessary mission of destroying al Qaeda was accomplished fairly quickly, while the very much unnecessary mission of trying to build Iraq and Afghanistan into functioning, Western-style democracies took years and years and years, and, in the end were never accomplished.

But the neo-cons have learned nothing.

Max Boot, trying to look all journalist-like in his fedora. From his Twitter biography.

The midterms are a referendum on democracy in America and Ukraine

by Max Boot | Monday, October 24, 2022 | 1:11 PM EDT

Polls suggest that the economy and crime are among the most important issues for voters in the midterms — and that, as a result, Republicans are surging in the home stretch. I think a lot of voters are missing the point. These elections are actually a referendum on whether you favor the continuation of democracy in America — and Ukraine.

Can we please stop pretending that Ukraine was a democracy? In 2010, Viktor Yanukovych was elected President in what observers stated was a free and fair election. As President, Mt Yanukovych was more pro-Russian than oriented toward western Europe, and declined to sign a closer arrangement between the European Union and Ukraine, or accept NATO membership. He was not defeated for re-election, but overthrown by the “Euromaidan Revolution“. Some democratic forms were reinstated, but deposing President Yanukovych was most certainly not democratic at all.

Those issues are more closely linked than most people realize, because most of the same MAGA candidates who support Donald Trump’s strongman rule at home are either indifferent or hostile to the fate of democracy abroad. J.D. Vance, the GOP nominee for U.S. Senate in Ohio, exemplifies the trend: He has said the 2020 election was “stolen” and “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.”

That makes it all the more disturbing that Vance and other MAGA candidates are in the lead two weeks before Election Day. Vladimir Putin must have a smug smile on his face as he reads reports of recent political developments in the “Main Enemy,” as KGB agents of his generation referred to the United States.

A Post analysis found that “a majority of Republican nominees on the ballot this November for the House, Senate and key statewide offices — 291 in all — have denied or questioned the outcome of the last presidential election.” Put another way, this means a majority of the most important GOP candidates reject the fundamental premise of democracy, which is to accept the outcome of an election even if your side loses. Yet in a recent New York Times-Siena College poll, 39 percent of voters (and 71 percent of Republicans) said they are open to supporting candidates who reject the results of the 2020 election. If these candidates prevail, it will mean that aspiring authoritarians could have a stranglehold on our democracy.

I must say that I find this amusing: the distinguished Mr Boot, who tells us how very much he supports democracy, also tells us that it is a horrible, horrible thing that the voters might have issues other than Donald Trump and the war in Ukraine on their minds, and that if Republican candidates win a majority in the House of Representatives, and possibly the Senate, in a free and fair election, our democracy is doomed.

The fallout could reach all the way to Ukraine, where an embattled democracy needs U.S. aid to beat back the Russian invasion. Last week, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the likely next House speaker, said: “I think people are going to be sitting in a recession and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine. They just won’t do it.”

Mr Boot, it seems, is very concerned that if Republican candidates win majorities in Congress as the result of free elections, they might just follow what they see as the will of the voters, and stop sending unlimited and unaccountable aid to Ukraine. Don’t the public have the right to believe that we shouldn’t do that?

Mr Boot, who never served in the military himself, is very much a fan of war, and he wants to see American and European aid to Ukraine to continue, to fight Russia, a nation with a strategic and tactical nuclear arsenal.

As we have previously noted, Mr Boot, who was brought to the United States as a child when his parents fled the Soviet Union, and other neoconservatives have not been real fans of individual liberty. Patterico’s tweet, “We may get to a point where the big debate becomes: why on earth didn’t we institute more coercive measures on the unvaccinated in July 2021, when we could have stopped COVID before it mutated beyond the vaccines’ capacity to immunize people against it?” wound up not aging well, as there were already breakthrough COVID infections among people who were immunized, and while the SARS-CoV-2 virus does seem to have mutated to be able to get beyond vaccinations to prevent contraction and transmission of the virus even more easily — it’s clear that, even originally, the vaccines didn’t completely prevent infection — it has also mutated to be a much less serious disease.

Mr Boot called President Trump a fascist, knowing that the definition of fascism includes ” individual interests (being) subordinated to the good of the nation,” as he called for individual interests being subordinated to the good of the nation![1]Via Wikipedia: “In an opinion piece for Foreign Policy in September 2017, Max Boot outlines his political views as follows: “I am socially liberal: I am pro-LGBTQ rights, pro-abortion … Continue reading

Then again, why would we expect any sense, or trust the judgement, of a man who stated, “I would sooner vote for Josef Stalin than I would vote for Donald Trump.” One would think that a man who holds a baccalaureate degree in history from the University of California at Berkeley, and a Master of Arts degree in diplomatic history from Yale would know and understand that the Soviet concentration camp system flourished under Comrade Stalin; did Mr Boot believe that Donald Trump would somehow establish his own ГУЛаг, Гла́вное управле́ние лагере́й, in the United States? If he did, it certainly never happened, and the repression of speech in the United States has happened only by liberal institutions in banning conservatives, not the government under President Trump.

Sadly, it isn’t just Mr Boot; the Editorial Board of The Washington Post also weighed in, telling readers, “This is no time to go wobbly on resisting Russian aggression.” Worried sick that the voters might, gasp! vote in a Republican majority in the House of Representatives, the Editorial Board tell us:

It’s no surprise that the Kremlin would try to divert attention from its failures in Ukraine toward a new story about Kyiv’s purported plans to detonate a radioactive “dirty bomb.” Transparent disinformation, Moscow’s tale might be intended to serve as a pretext for its own first strike with unconventional weaponry. More likely, it is another attempt to play on the West’s fears of nuclear war, the goal of which, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a think tank that tracks the conflict, is “to slow or suspend Western military aid to Ukraine and possibly weaken the NATO alliance.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin guessed right that Western solidarity with Ukraine would be crucial; he has consistently guessed wrong about the willingness of Kyiv’s friends to stay the course, despite the costs of doing so. As Mr. Putin has no doubt noticed, however, there are incipient fissures in that united front, including — ominously — signs of a split within the Republican Party over U.S. aid to Ukraine, which has totaled $54 billion since the war began in February. Rank-and-file GOP voters, possibly influenced by messaging from former president Donald Trump and Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, are warming to the idea that U.S. aid is a waste of money better spent on domestic problems. A September Pew Research poll found that a significant minority of Republicans — 32 percent — say the United States is providing “too much” aid, up from 9 percent in March. Small wonder 57 GOP members of the House and 11 GOP senators voted no on a $40 billion package in May. Trump-endorsed Republican candidates for Senate in Arizona, Nevada, New Hampshire and Ohio have disparaged aid for Ukraine, as have several House candidates. Republican Joe Kent, running for Congress in a historically red district in Washington state, has tweeted: “No aid to Ukraine unless they are at the [negotiating] table.”

If indeed the Republicans take one or both chambers of Congress in the midterm elections, it will be up to their leadership to contain isolationist sentiment and work with President Biden and other Democrats on aid for Ukraine. Unfortunately, potential speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said last week that next year “people are going to be sitting in a recession and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine.” Mr. McCarthy — who voted for the May bill — modified that remark slightly later, noting that he supports “making sure that we move forward to defeat Russia.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell countered Mr. McCarthy by calling for “expedited” aid. To his credit, Mr. McConnell has been a strong supporter of a robust U.S. response to Russian aggression in Europe, based on the succinct, and apt, rationale that it is an investment in vital U.S. interests: “The future of America’s security and core strategic interests will be shaped by the outcome of this fight. Anyone concerned about the cost of supporting a Ukrainian victory should consider the much larger cost should Ukraine lose.”

Good heavens, it looks like the Editorial Board have gone full neo-con! The concept that intervention is required to support “vital US interests” could have been lifted from the writings of Bill Kristol.

To be sure, real democracies abroad are in American interests, because real democracies are (mostly) unlikely to start wars of aggression. But there is a real, qualitative difference between wars of aggression when Iraq invaded Kuwait, or the Muslim guerrilla wars in Africa, and the invasion of Ukraine by a nation with a nuclear arsenal capable of killing the majority of people on earth. I do not want Russia to succeed in its war of conquest against Ukraine, but I want the defense of Ukraine to turn into a nuclear war even less.

That’s the part these clowns just don’t get: the harder we press Russia, the harder Russia as resisted. The action by OPEC+ to cut back oil production, to push increased prices, was led in part by Russia, anxious to hurt the United States and NATO Europe for giving aid to Ukraine. The cutbacks of natural gas shipments to Europe, as winter is approaching — and remember: most of Germany and Poland, and a good part of France, are north of our longest border with Canada — are methods Russia is taking against the West that is supporting Ukraine. If, after all of that, Ukraine begins to push back Russian troops, it is hardly out of the possibility that Russia would use smaller, “tactical” nuclear weapons against Ukrainian troop concentrations. Vladimir Putin does not seem to be the most stable national leader around, and he certainly doesn’t think like a Westerner; he could easily see this as a logical step to cow the West into ceasing its aid to Ukraine, and a way to stave off defeat.

Once that nuclear threshold has been crossed, we have no idea whatsoever how far and how often it will be crossed. I do care what happens in Ukraine . . . but I care more about what happens in New York and Philadelphia and Lexington, and one thing about which I care is not increasing the chances that one of them could be incinerated in nuclear fire.

The GOP’s mixed signals are music to Mr. Putin’s ears. Also unhelpful, in its own way, was Monday’s letter from a group of 30 progressive House Democrats to Mr. Biden, urging the president to open direct cease-fire negotiations with Moscow. The Democrats, unlike Mr. Biden’s critics in the GOP, said they want to “pair” this new diplomatic push with continued aid; there is no moral equivalence between the two parties in that regard. Still, Russia is all too likely to advertise the progressives’ letter, which includes the suggestion that ending the war would help ease high gas prices, as evidence of flagging U.S. resolve. The White House politely but firmly rebuffed the idea, as it should have. This is no time to go wobbly — and that goes for lawmakers in both parties.

And now we have The Washington Post’s Editorial Board telling us that not only should the United States continue sending military aid to Ukraine, but that we shouldn’t even attempt to negotiate an end to the war.

If there is no negotiated end to the war — something which would decrease the chances of a nuclear escalation and the spread of a nuclear conflict — then the war must be fought to a conclusion, with one side winning and the other side losing. If Ukraine loses, it’s independence is gone and the Ukrainian people will suffer a lot more death and devastation; if Russia loses, the probabilities of nuclear war significantly increase. I, for one, don’t see what Major Kong called “nuclear combat, toe to toe with the Russkies,” as a wise idea.

There is, of course, the unstated part of both Mr Boot’s and the Editorial Board’s messages: with the domestic issues of inflation and the American people getting poorer, in real terms, those evil reich-wing Republicans might just gain more power, including taking control of the House of Representatives, and even the Senate, which would completely mess with the left’s domestic goals of nationalizing an abortion license, expanding homosexual and transgender ‘rights,’ putting Donald Trump in jail, and generally pushing the ‘progressive’ agenda. In the end, those things are far more important to them than Ukraine, but those have not been the electoral winners they think they should be.

References

References
↑1 Via Wikipedia: “In an opinion piece for Foreign Policy in September 2017, Max Boot outlines his political views as follows: “I am socially liberal: I am pro-LGBTQ rights, pro-abortion rights, pro-immigration. I am fiscally conservative: I think we need to reduce the deficit and get entitlement spending under control. I am pro-environment: I think that climate change is a major threat that we need to address. I am pro-free trade: I think we should be concluding new trade treaties rather than pulling out of old ones. I am strong on defense: I think we need to beef up our military to cope with multiple enemies. And I am very much in favor of America acting as a world leader: I believe it is in our own self-interest to promote and defend freedom and free markets as we have been doing in one form or another since at least 1898.

In December 2017, also in Foreign Policy, Boot wrote that recent events—particularly since the 2016 election of Donald Trump as president—had caused him to rethink some of his previous views concerning the existence of white privilege and male privilege. “In the last few years, in particular, it has become impossible for me to deny the reality of discrimination, harassment, even violence that people of color and women continue to experience in modern-day America from a power structure that remains for the most part in the hands of straight, white males. People like me, in other words. Whether I realize it or not, I have benefited from my skin color and my gender — and those of a different gender or sexuality or skin color have suffered because of it.”

Does that sound like a conservative to you?
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Neoconservatives want to fight for American-style freedom and democracy everywhere, but don’t seem to want Americans to have individual rights

If someone was asked to put names to a list of neoconservatives in the United States, Irving Kristol, Nathan Glazer, and Norman Podhoretz might come to mind. Irving Kristol was an editor and publisher who served as the managing editor of Commentary magazine, founded the now-defunct magazine The Public Interest, and was described by Jonah Goldberg as the “godfather of neoconservatism.” His son, William Kristol, founded the magazine The Weekly Standard, which quickly took hold to challenge National Review for primacy among conservative opinion journals.

The Weekly Standard failed because, as a fervent #NeverTrumper, Mr Kristol guided the journal into being all-Never Trump, all the time, while National Review, with plenty of Never Trumpers in its fold, still tried to allow pro-Trump articles in its pages and on its website. Mr Kristol (probably) realized that yes, Donald Trump was a factor in Republican politics, and yes, some conservatives really did like his views and his style, but The Weekly Standard was never going to tolerate the views of the riff-raff to pollute its pages and website!

We have already noted how neo-conservative Max Boot of The Washington Post wants to make vaccinations against COVID-19 mandatory. The Post’s other neocon, Jennifer Rubin, while I have not seen anything from her yet urging making vaccination mandatory, certainly wants to do everything that can be done to stifle opposing views. The Post also supports “vaccine passports.”

Now comes the younger Mr Kristol, who, like so many others, wants to force you to be vaccinated. Not trusting Mr Kristol not to delete that tweet, this is a screenshot of it, but the hyperlink will take you to the original. If it’s difficult to see, you can click on it to enlarge it.

Mr Kristol and the neoconservatives, frequently fairly liberal when it comes to domestic and social issues, very much wanted to spread the ideas of American-style freedom and democracy around the world. But I have to ask: when so many of them are now opposed to individual liberty and individual rights, just what does their commitment to American-style freedom and democracy mean? One of the most basic freedoms of all, the right to decide what you will put into your own body, is a freedom they would deny people who have decided differently than they have.

Full disclosure: I have been vaccinated myself, a choice I made freely, and I believe that others should take the same decision I did. While no vaccine is 100% without risk, the benefits of being vaccinated outweigh the risks. But I respect the right, and yes, “right” is precisely the word I mean to use, of other people to choose whether or not to take the vaccine. That’s a right that the neoconservatives don’t seem to want you to have.
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Wir müssen Ihre Dokumente sehen! Max Boot wants to see your papers!

What is fascism? The term is bandied about so much, but it does actually mean something. From the Encyclopedia Britannica:

Fascism

Robert Soucy
Professor Emeritus of History, Oberlin College. American historian specializing in French fascist movements (1924-39), European fascism, and 20th-century European intellectual history; French fascist intellectuals…

Fascism, political ideology and mass movement that dominated many parts of central, southern, and eastern Europe between 1919 and 1945 and that also had adherents in western Europe, the United States, South Africa, Japan, Latin America, and the Middle East. Europe’s first fascist leader, Benito Mussolini, took the name of his party from the Latin word fasces, which referred to a bundle of elm or birch rods (usually containing an ax) used as a symbol of penal authority in ancient Rome. Although fascist parties and movements differed significantly from one another, they had many characteristics in common, including extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and the rule of elites, and the desire to create a Volksgemeinschaft (German: “people’s community”), in which individual interests would be subordinated to the good of the nation.

Max Boot, the Washington Post columnist and well-known neo-conservative, has stated, explicitly, that he believed Donald Trump was a fascist, and Mr Boot is educated enough to know just what fascist means:

Might we then conclude that the distinguished Mr Boot believes that individual interests should not be subordinated to the good of the nation? Well, if we did conclude that, we would be wrong.

Stop pleading with anti-vaxxers and start mandating vaccinations

by Max Boot | July 19, 2021 | 2:53 PM EDT

It’s time to get serious about coronavirus vaccinations. Stop pleading and start mandating.

For the past six months, President Biden, joined by every public health authority in the land, has been begging Americans to get vaccinated. The “pretty, please” approach isn’t working. According to The Post’s covid-19 tracker, in the past week, daily reported covid-19 cases rose 66 percent, covid-related hospitalizations rose 28 percent, and daily reported covid-19 deaths rose 20 percent. With the delta variant spreading across the country, every single state has seen an increase in cases over the past seven days.

This is a preventable tragedy. Over 99 percent of covid-19 deaths in June were among the unvaccinated. Yet even as evidence grows that vaccines are safe and effective, resistance to them is also growing. A recent Post-ABC News poll found that 29 percent of Americans said they were unlikely to get vaccinated — up from 24 percent three months earlier. Only 59 percent of adults are fully vaccinated.

Translation: “individual interests would be subordinated to the good of the nation.”

Persuasion, something one would think an OpEd columnist would favor, does not seem to be something Mr Boot accepts, at least not if some people don’t agree with him:

This is madness. Stop making reasonable appeals to those who will not listen to reason. (According to an Economist/YouGov poll, a majority of those who refuse to get vaccinated say vaccines are being used by the government to implant microchips.) It’s a waste of time. Start mandating that anyone who wants to travel on an airplane, train or bus, attend a concert or movie, eat at a restaurant, shop at a store, work in an office or visit any other indoor space show proof of vaccination or a negative coronavirus test.

We must show proof of vaccination or a negative test? Wir müssen Ihre Dokumente sehen!

Boy, it sure is a good thing Mr Boot does not use the term “fascist” loosely or often!

One would think that the son of Russian Jews, who fled oppression in the Soviet Union in 1976, when the iron-fisted Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev ruled, would understand the need for individual liberty. but, again, if one thought that, he would be wrong.

For months, Republicans have been caterwauling about vaccine passports, even obscenely comparing them to the Holocaust. All this sturm und drang obscures the fact there has been far too little use made of vaccine passports. I downloaded a New York state app on my iPhone months ago to verify that I’m vaccinated, but I’ve never once had to show it. Instead, many stores have signs saying that vaccinated people don’t need to wear masks — but they don’t verify vaccination. That provides no incentive to get your shots. Los Angeles County is also treating vaccinated and unvaccinated alike by again requiring masks for everyone. Why not just mandate proof of vaccination or a negative test

If New York state provides an app to certify that someone has had the vaccines, and Mr Boot has voluntarily chosen to use that, hey, that’s great, and an exercise of his individual liberty.

Sturm und drang, huh? The expression refers to an artistic movement in the late 18th century, characterized by the expression of emotional unrest and a rejection of neoclassical literary norms. To use this expression, the esteemed Mr Boot is telling us just what he thinks of individual thought.

Or at least it would if the distinguished columnist for The Washington Post actually understood the meaning of the term he used, a fact not in evidence.

In the United States, the authority of state governments to mandate vaccinations is clear — it goes all the way back to a 1905 Supreme Court case that upheld a Massachusetts law requiring vaccinations for smallpox. More recently, governors have used their public health powers to mandate mask-wearing and social distancing to fight covid-19. They ought to now take the logical next step and mandate vaccinations for the use of indoor spaces outside the home.

Except, of course, the public have rebelled. In the Bluegrass State, Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) mask mandate was so hated that when Republican candidates ran on the platform of ending his dictatorial powers in November of 2020, the voters rewarded GOP candidates with 14 additional seats, increasing the Republicans’ state House majority to 75-25.[1]The state House districts were set, following the 2010 census, by a House which was then controlled by Democrats. Mr Boot has been all about democracy, in his condemnation of President Trump and his vociferous insistence on supporting Joe Biden, but it seems that when the will of the people isn’t what he thinks it should be, democracy isn’t that great a thing anymore.

The distinguished Mr Boot suggested that President Biden should mandate vaccinations (not just negative COVID-19 tests) for:

  • Airline travel;
  • Amtrak travel;
  • All federal employees;
  • Everyone who enters a federal building (which would include a post office)[2]We have a post office box because the United States Postal Service will not deliver to our house. I have no idea how many people living out in the sticks as we do have the same problem, but Mr Boot … Continue reading; and
  • Order all military personnel to be vaccinated.

Mr Boot wants President Biden to use his authority to order people to get vaccinated, but he said that it was President Trump who was the fascist! And remember: it isn’t a term he uses loosely, or often!

Granted, there are limits to the United States’ ability to mandate vaccines because many red-state governors are unlikely to go along. But even Republicans want to fly on airplanes and visit blue states such as California, Hawaii, Nevada and New York. Vaccine mandates will prove controversial, to put it mildly, but, like seat belt laws, drunken driving laws and motorcycle helmet laws, they will save lives. We should not grant an unreasonable minority the power to endanger public health.

Good heavens! You know, people can get to California, Nevada and New York without flying. It’s not that long a drive for me to get to New York or New Jersey or Virginia. Perhaps Mr Boot thinks that the state police in those blue states should stop all travelers at the border, and demand to see their papers. Sound far fetched? In March of 2020, then Governor Gina Raimondo (D-CN) ordered the Rhode Island State Police to pull over drivers with New York plates so that National Guard officials can collect contact information and inform them of a mandatory, 14-day quarantine. She also ordered the state’s National Guard to go door-to-door in coastal communities to find out whether any of the home’s residents have recently arrived from New York and inform them of the quarantine order.

Ve need to see your papers!

For a man who does not use the term “fascist” loosely, or often, the esteemed Mr Boot sure seems unable to recognize just how much he wants to subject the rights of the individual to the police power of the state. Or, perhaps he actually does recognize it, but just doesn’t care, not as long as that police power is being used for something he thinks good.

References

References
↑1 The state House districts were set, following the 2010 census, by a House which was then controlled by Democrats.
↑2 We have a post office box because the United States Postal Service will not deliver to our house. I have no idea how many people living out in the sticks as we do have the same problem, but Mr Boot would require us to be vaccinated just to receive our mail.
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Living rent-free in their pumpkin heads 4½ years after Mr Trump left office, #TrumpDerangementSyndrome still reigns large in the left

I recently mentioned my good friend Amanda Marcotte, and suggested that she might have a case of #TrumpDerangementSyndrome. Miss Marcotte, ex- of Texas and ex- of Brooklyn, now resides somewhere in South Philadelphia,[1]No, I don’t know her exact address, and wouldn’t publish it if I did. but, for all of her voluminous writings on Salon, never seems to mention the goings on in her home town. People in Philly are outraged over the senseless murder of Christine Lugo, but not a word about it did I see on her Salon page or in her Twitter feed.[2]Miss Marcotte has blocked me from seeing her tweets, but it’s really simple: all that I have to do is log out of Twitter, and then I can see anyone’s feeds I want.

Donald Trump has been out of office since January 20, 2021; that’s 4½ months ago, but Miss Marcotte just can’t let him go. Her last five stories, as of 8:30 PM EDT on Wednesday, June 9, 2021, when the screencap to the right was taken, were All About Trump. You can click on the image to enlarge it.

But it isn’t just Miss Marcotte who has The Donald living rent-free in her head. Toni Williams of The Victory Girls wrote about Mara Gay’s traumatic, traumatic! encounter with, horrors!, American flags!

Mara Gay is a member of the New York Times Editorial Board and writes about New York City for that publication. She is also an MSNBC contributor. Memorial Day weekend she ventured out to Long Island and saw, gasp, pickup trucks, Trump flags and, the horror, American flags. The experience left her overwrought.

What is it about the women of MSNBC? Nicolle Wallace, Rachel Maddow, Yamiche Alcindor and Mara Gay are all seemingly hateful and bitter women. Andrew Sullivan called Maddow condescending and smug. That’s the kindest thing you can say about any of these women.

I happen to love this time of year. We have Memorial Day (the last Monday in May), Flag Day (June 14) and Independence Day on July 4th. I get jazzed by flags, parades and John Phillip Sousa marches. Growing up, even my Liberal friends loved the flag. We all ran to the parades. Our parents, regardless of their politics, all flew the flag. Remember how after the September 11, 2001 attacks everyone flew our spectacular American flag? Five years ago on Flag Day, our Nina wrote a beautiful post about the flag. You can read it here. That beautiful flag covered my Dad’s coffin. When someone you love, who served his country, lies under that flag, maybe you have a special passion for it.

MSNBC has their Morning Joe program with Joe and Mika. That is where contributor Mara Gay started off talking about the continued threat of President Donald Trump and ended up talking about her fear of pickup trucks, Trump flags and the American flag:

Here are some portions from Real Clear Politics and my commentary:

The reality is here that we have a large percentage of the American population — I don’t know how big it is, but we have tens of millions of Trump voters who continue to believe that their rights as citizens are under threat by simple virtue of having to share the democracy with others. I think as long as they see Americanness as the same as one with whiteness, this is going to continue. We have to figure out how to get every American a place at the table in this democracy, but how to separate Americanness, America, from whiteness. Until we can confront that and talk about that, this is really going to continue. . . . .

I was on Long Island this weekend, visiting a really dear friend and I was really disturbed. I saw, you know, dozens and dozens of pickup trucks with expletives against Joe Biden on the back of them, Trump flags, and in some cases, just dozens of American flags, which is also just disturbing, which essentially the message was clear, this is my country. This is not your country. I own this.

Miss Gay saw American flags, being waved by people, on the Memorial Day weekend. That’s kind of a time when we would expect to see the flag displayed, right?

Miss Gay, like Miss Marcotte above, is being triggered by the flag, and by President Trump, and by the fact that there are a few people, yes even in New York, who voted for him.

On June 7th, Washington Post columnist Max Boot, screamed in his headline, “Too many people are still underestimating the Trump threat.”

People, Donald Trump is out of office. Even if he runs for President again, the next election is 3½ years away, and he’ll be 78 years old by then, if he’s still alive.

The obvious question now is: will Mr Trump really be living rent free in these people’s head for another four or eight or twelve years to come?

References

References
↑1 No, I don’t know her exact address, and wouldn’t publish it if I did.
↑2 Miss Marcotte has blocked me from seeing her tweets, but it’s really simple: all that I have to do is log out of Twitter, and then I can see anyone’s feeds I want.
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The neoconservatives always want US troops somewhere! We have been in Afghanistan for 19½ years now; what can we accomplish by staying longer?

Being older than dirt — I turn 68 this coming Earth Day — I can remember the politics in the United States over the War in Vietnam. #NeverTrumper and neoconservative Max Boot, a Washington Post columnist, knows something about it as well.

Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal could be the first step to a Taliban takeover

Opinion by Max Boot | April 13, 2021 | 4:18 PM EDT

For South Vietnamese refugees, this month will always be known as “Black April.” In 1973, President Richard M. Nixon had concluded a one-sided peace deal with North Vietnam that led the United States to pull all of its troops out of South Vietnam while allowing the Communists to maintain 150,000 of their troops there. Hanoi began to violate the Paris Peace Accords as soon as they were signed, while the war-weary United States cut back aid to the South.

The result was a North Vietnamese offensive that resulted in the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975. The U.S. military had to hastily evacuate American personnel and some of the South Vietnamese they had worked most closely with. But hundreds of thousands of our allies were confined to brutal reeducation camps and hundreds of thousands more took to the seas as “boat people.” Many died while trying to flee.

President Biden was already in the Senate when this tragedy transpired. Yet he risks a repeat of this fiasco with his fateful decision, revealed Tuesday in The Post, to pull all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by Sept. 11.

Mullah Mohammed Omar

Every bit of what Mr Boot wrote is true, but what of it? When the United States pulls its last 3,500 troops out of Afghanistan, the Taliban will take over in a matter of months, if not sooner. But we have been in Afghanistan for 19½ years now, and we haven’t wiped out the Taliban, and are not willing to wipe out the Taliban. There are Taliban fighters out there, right now, who weren’t even born when the United States invaded to roust out and destroy al Qaeda, and the Taliban, because Mullah Omar and the Taliban were protecting al Qaeda. What can we accomplish there if we stay, the way the esteemed Mr Boot wants, that we couldn’t in the 19½ years we have already been there?

The ancient Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus attributed to the Caledonian chieftain Calgacus the expression, “They make a solitude, and call it peace,” frequently expressed as “They make a desert and call it peace.”

The expression was used a lot during the War in Vietnam. Another came from an old political science professor of mine, Ernest Yanarella, concerning the Viet Cong: “They were more willing to die for their country than we were willing to keep killing them.”

And it seems to be true in Afghanistan as well: the only way to truly defeat the Taliban is how our allies and we defeated Germany and Japan: we killed so many of their fighting-aged men, wounded millions more, and thoroughly cowed the boys too young to fight but growing up, we destroyed their economy and their infrastructure, we rained down so much fire and steel that Germany and Japan simply couldn’t continue to fight.

We did not do that to the Vietnamese Communists, and we have not done it to the Taliban, because we just don’t want to keep killing and killing and killing. But if we are not willing to do that, there is no other alternative that gives us some sort of victory in Afghanistan.

It’s time to leave. Heck, it was time to leave ten years ago! There is simply nothing to be gained by staying.

So, yes, the Taliban will almost certainly win; so what? They will ban girls from being educated, they will set up a ridiculously repressive Islamist regime, they will kill their enemies and cow those who remain alive. But at some point we have to say, that’s their business, and not ours.