Our rulers, without a vote of any sort, have launched the US into a war with Russia—and perhaps also with China. The shooting war, so far, is being conducted through our Ukrainian proxies but make no mistake about it—the economic measures the US has taken to destroy Russia’s economy and its sovereignty are just as surely warfare as any military operations.
How’s it going? Not very well. Putin has announced that he’ll want payment for Russian gas in rubles from Western countries. The result?
Ouch!
Now, the US can easily do without Russian gas and oil. From that standpoint the US will be fine, if our rulers see fit to restructure our policy priorities in the direction of greater self sufficiency. That won’t be so easy with regard to some other critical resources, such as palladium, nickel, neon, etc., although I’m willing to believe that the US will come through that as well. However, the bigger point in this regard is that our vassals in Europe are mostly not as well prepared as we are. They will be far more susceptible to pressure from Russia, in the form of counter sanctions.
Dan Gelernter at American Greatness is having some second thoughts about the road our rulers have taken us down:
Welcome to the most dangerous two years in American history.
I’ve already written in support of Ukraine here, and I have been warning about the danger of a Russia-China alliance for a long time. But something about this Ukraine business rubs me the wrong way: All the people who updated their profile pictures with vaccination status to posture and to shame their friends have now updated their profile pictures again with Ukrainian flags. The mainstream media is in lockstep support. We’re bombarded with ridiculous stories about the “Ghost of Kiev” and Ukrainian farmers dismantling Russian tank columns. Last Friday, former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush visited a Ukrainian church together to lay flowers.
Something is definitely wrong here.
When we see the real establishment out in such force, it should set alarm bells off in our brains: We may not understand the nature of the lie, yet. But we can be certain they are lying to us.
Yeah, those are called clues.
Equally disturbing, he says, is that the long term goals of our enemies—that is, the enemies of free American citizens—seem to align so well with what we should be able to see coming:
Expensive gasoline limits our personal mobility, and can be used to pressure us en masse toward electric cars, which offer less freedom of movement and can be switched off remotely. Expensive food leaves us with less discretionary money to spend, which means a more controlled economy. And a war, among other things, is the greatest opportunity of all for government to expand its power.
Those are all the things that were supposed to be accomplished through the Covid Regime, but Americans shook that off—for the most part. No vax passes, after all. Even New Zealand, with its WEF PM, is being forced out of that. So maybe a war will be the next great thing to lead to the Great Reset? I have to say, it seems daft to me, but who ever said these people weren’t crazy?
Gerlernter is pinning his hopes on the 2024 elections—but sees the next two years as the most dangerous in our history:
The challenge government faces is to see just how far they can push us while preserving the illusion of freedom. Much of this façade crumbled during COVID, and large chunks of the ugly truth are becoming visible with respect to Ukraine. But instead of slowing down, the establishment is speeding up: Pedal to the metal, aimed at the bullseye of disaster. This is their big chance, and they see this as an all-or-nothing opportunity.
America is waking up, but slowly. It’s two years until the next presidential election. Welcome to the most dangerous two years in American history.
What of the next two years in Russian history? Perhaps we can hope that, against expectations, it may have a salutary effect on the West after all:
But if so, it sure won’t be easy. And not content with taking on Russia for no good reason—that is, no reason that’s good for the freedom of Americans—these same crazies want to take on China simultaneously. And maybe much more of the world, as it seems no matter how many times Zhou and Blinken shout ‘Jump!’ not everyone is responding. Could anything go wrong?
The sanctions are making other countries very nervous:
Brian Robertson, also at American Greatness, is taking a shorter term view than Gelernter. Instead of looking ahead to the 2024 presidential election, he’s looking at 2022, and he has some real concerns:
Thanks largely to corporate media and GOP saber-rattling that make him look prudent by contrast, Joe Biden has arrested his freefall in the polls which cite his Ukraine policy.
"We have two parties... One is the Evil Party and the other is the Stupid Party... Occasionally the two parties get together to do something that’s both evil and stupid. That’s called bipartisanship."
— M. Stanton Evans
Robertson’s Big Picture argument is that the Zhou Regime is using Ukraine to pivot away from its big loser issues. I happen to disagree with that—I think this crisis was always part of the Big Plan, going back to 2014 at least, but YMMV applies. The consequences of RINO Delusion work the same, pretty much, whichever alternative you pick.
Robertson gets it: The DC GOP establishment—and this applies especially to Senators—is
“exclusively attuned to the interests of their donor class rather than to the interests of their voting base, or even the national interest.”
That’s democracy at work, for ya. And to make matters worse—much worse—their donor class appears to be very much attuned to the WEF Davos crowd. Or maybe you think people in South Carolina are really itching to have Putin assassinated—damn the consequences? And Robertson really rubs it in:
It’s quite telling that, with a handful of exceptions, Republicans closely identified with the America First movement, including Senators Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and John Kennedy (R-La.), have joined the swelling chorus of voices calling for escalation and more robust support of the sainted Zelenskyy, a George Soros disciple deeply committed to the entire woke internationalist agenda. The ironies are innumerable.
Keep that in mind if you’re watching the Ketanji circus.
The result is that, with Mitch in the lead, virtually all the GOPe has fallen into lockstep behind Zhou, rather than seizing the opportunity to embrace both a responsible foreign policy as well as the political advantage. Here Robertson describes the Stupid Party’s actual reaction:
The problem, apparently, was not the imprudent egging on of the confrontational behavior of a client state created by the color-revolution coup orchestrated by the Obama Administration in 2014. Rather, it was that the Biden Administration was not escalating the conflict quickly enough. Calls for declaring a “no-fly zone” (a.k.a. declaring an air war against Russia), assassinating Putin, and destroying the Russian economy grew in intensity, and these critiques driving the Biden Administration into a more confrontational stance were coming primarily from the Republican side of the aisle.
Given a blank check by their ostensible political opposition to turn the page from their own domestic disasters and to demonize Putin and Russia as the source not only of a potentially catastrophic military conflict abroad but also soaring prices at home, the White House wasted no time in pivoting to the “blame Putin” theme. When confronted with uncomfortable questions about energy prices going through the roof, however ludicrous the explanation was to anyone paying attention over the last 15 months of runaway federal spending and massive expansion of the money supply by the Federal Reserve, the mantra is that we should blame Putin. “I can’t do much at the moment,” Biden responded to a reporter’s question on soaring prices at the pump just two weeks after Putin’s Ukraine invasion. “Russia is responsible.”
Their bellicose stance ensured that Republicans were not in a position (even if they had the inclination) to push back against that ridiculous narrative. Given their complicity in both the unprecedented deficit spending of the last year and their crucial role in pushing the administration further in the direction of an all-out economic and military conflict with Russia, ostensibly aimed at toppling Putin from power, how could Republicans call him out for goading Russia now?
The way that this could really come back to bite conservatives is that, as Robertson recognizes, Putin is far from without means to respond and to cause real domestic pain, both here and in Europe. And then where will RINOs be—having vociferously called for the policies that made that response inevitable?
Russia certainly has enough market leverage to take countermeasures, as they demonstrated with the recently announced embargo on fertilizer sales to the United States—which will throw fuel on the fire of exploding food prices. But the fact that such measures would inflict a much greater degree of harm on consumers here at home than they would on the Putin regime was less important to the Republican saber rattlers than exploiting another opportunity to play Winston Churchill …
But there’s even worse to come. It comes as a result of Putin’s reaction that is already having the effect of calling King Dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency into question. And that question isn’t coming from marginal nations on the world stage. It’s coming from the likes of India, China, and Saudi Arabia—to name a few. In the political world, if King Dollar is dethroned, there is little likelihood that the US will be able to retain NATO countries in their vassal status. America should be able to pull through, although not without considerable pain.
However, the economic ramifications are what should really put the fear of the Lord into Americans—if they only understood. But few Americans, as Robertson astutely points out, understand the degree to which American prosperity has been financed by purchasing ‘stuff’ abroad with ever more inflated dollars. When that regime comes to an end—even partially—the party could come to a screeching halt. I can’t resist quoting Robertson at length in that regard. Note that he takes direct aim at the GOPe:
For politicians who have long questioned the wisdom of ignoring America’s problems at home while spending America’s blood and treasure on failed regime-change strategies in the Middle East to suddenly regard regime change as a viable approach with nuclear-armed Russia is rather astounding. For them to prioritize military aid to Ukraine to the extent that they rush passage of a ruinous $1.3 billion deficit spending bill in the middle of the night because of the purported urgency of coming to the to aid of “democracy” (in the form of one of the most corrupt governments in the world) boggles the mind. For them to do so in the midst of an uncontrolled invasion of the United States at our southern border, orchestrated by the party in power in order to supplant their domestic political opponents (i.e., Republican voters) betrays a death wish.
The chickens are already coming home to roost for the American people as a result of the War Party’s crazed crusade for regime change in Russia. Consumers are already feeling the pinch at the pump and at the grocery store, and sanctions against Russia just poured fuel on that already blazing fire. The longer-term geostrategic consequences of such a shortsighted policy are even worse, and are beginning to play out in the form of a solidifying Sino-Russian alliance against the United States. Major players like Saudi Arabia and India are already cutting deals with Beijing that portend the impending death of the Petrodollar.
If Americans are already feeling considerable pain now as the result of Washington’s hyperinflationary policies, just wait until they find out that their relative affluence in the post-industrial United States was almost entirely based on the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency. It is almost baked in at this point that things will get exceedingly ugly for ordinary Americans before the end of the year. We will be lucky to avoid food shortages and civil unrest the likes of which have not been seen since the Great Depression
Who will speak for Americans? Will they even speak coherently for themselves?
Well, i for one am about tired of wringing my hands and worrying about these DC gangsters and the coming apocalypse. Bring on the collapse. I'd prefer it be without nukes, obviously, but it's clear to me that the only way out of this anarcho-tyranny we're under is a full on collapse that forces all of us to make...difficult choices when the Regime rolls out the full police state measures (rationing, lockdowns, martial law i response to the predictable riots, mass arrests).
It sounds crazy now but it's not hard to imagine how the Regime will use a 2nd Depression to suspend all rights and impose solutions for the "good of the country. " And use their brown shirts BLMTIFA to turn cities into nightmares for more military solutions.
My hope is that these scumbags have once again gone too far too fast too soon and will fail in a flaming heap. Better to get this on sooner than later when we're all poorer, more beaten down, and more frightened. If there are any patriots left in the military, i pray they refuse the lawless orders when they come.
Isn't it strange? One reads columns like this and the ones in American Greatness to see discussions of matters essential to America's interests. When Congress stays up late at night to pass budgets nobody has read are they concerned where we will be getting our zinc and fertilizer from, or the status of the dollar? Are they concerned about millions of Americans or their few lobbyist pals? They all seem to get rich very quickly on coming to Washington. Is flirting with a possible war a political ploy with possible real life consequences that we can worry about later? Are these people for real or do they exist in a Washington bubble where it is all prestige, power, money and cocktail parties? In short, might I suggest that people insulated from real-life consequences risk getting us into a cataclysm that nobody can predict or prepare for. Read Robert Musil writing about Austria on the verge of World War One.