MAGA stooge or Russian one? Doesn't make any difference- they're the same
From Trump to Senator JD Vance, this cowardly and anti-American view is fully in keeping with MAGA’s current worldview.
In an opinion piece published in the New York Times this morning, Senator J.D. Vance (MAGA, OH) parrots Russian talking points and makes his case for appeasement. He argues that Russian forces are simply too much for Ukraine, that Ukrainian war goals are unrealistic, and the United States should not waste any money on protecting Ukraine from the unprovoked and cruel military attack by its larger neighbor but should instead “broker for peace.”
What MAGA stooges, even ones elevated to the United States Senate seem never to understand is that freedom and democracy are ideas worth fighting for and they are ideas that Russia and China are actively working to extinguished.
Photo credit: AP Images
Sen. Vance’s call for surrender comes the day after the Japanese Prime Minister told a joint session of Congress, “The United States policy was based on the premise that humanity does not want to live oppressed by an authoritarian state, where you are tracked and surveilled and denied from expressing what is in your heart and on your mind. You believed that freedom is the oxygen of humanity. The world needs the United States to continue playing this pivotal role in the affairs of nations.”
What principle does Mr. Vance assert? He writes, “Here are the basics: Russia has nearly four times the population of Ukraine.” Or, as Thucydides put it more than 2000 years ago, “right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
On this principle the age of Empires led to the bloodbaths of the 20th century. On this principle powerful actors have treated billions of humans as subjects rather than citizens, reserving to themselves the wealth and power of whole peoples. Russia’s Putin, China’s Xi, and many others believe this is the best system of government. Americans have always seen it for the corrupt and cruel oppression that it is.
Ben Franklin never said, King George’s army is big and strong, let’s forget these ideas of inalienable rights, of independence, and freedom. George Washington with his ragtag Army freezing through the winter in Valley Forge did not say, hey the red coats have already taken New York, let’s make a deal and go home.
80 years ago, Americans did not say the Nazi fortress in Europe is too strong. No, we stormed the Normandy beaches at great cost to live up to our creed. But not J.D. Vance. He mocks our honored dead when he stands for the principle that power may do as it will, and the rest must suffer.
Unfortunately, he has company. This cowardly and anti-American view is fully in keeping with MAGA’s current worldview. It is the idea that the rich and powerful can shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it, while the rest of us suckers are subject to the rule of law. It is the idea that a rich and powerful faction can impose laws that strip American women of their rights and call it the law. It is a tyrant’s philosophy, and delivered to America every day through Russian propaganda and folks like Donald Trump and J.D. Vance.
Mr. Vance sits both on the wrong side of history and in our Senate. It’s time for the rest of us to push back, hard.