Preserving the Establishment
The American government’s old guard establishment in both parties wants Ukraine to lose the war, but slowly. The establishment’s upstart wing, comprised mainly of populists of the right, including the farcically-named House Freedom Caucus, wants Russia to win, and quickly. Neither side is quite willing to state its genuine position directly, at least so far, although the loonier puppets of the populist faction, led by Marjorie Taylor Greene, are almost there. But the two groups’ respective positions become increasingly obvious and inescapable over time, being the only reasonable explanations for their respective actions and rhetoric.
Let it be noted, however, that for all the apparent conflict between them on the subject of the war, in the final analysis they are aiming at the same thing, namely the appeasement of Vladimir Putin and the maintenance of the pre-war status quo, with thousands of dead or enslaved victims of tyranny “over there” being regarded by both sides as an insignificant price to pay for the restoration of “stability.” That is, for all the noisy vitriol between the two factions, they are, in the final analysis, basically arguing about optics, not outcomes — such internal conflict over mere methods and rhetoric being a defining mark of establishmentarianism. The “two party system” operating as always, and, as always, dragging a hundred and fifty million lost souls through the crucible of its ignoble lie, the never-ending “binary choice” election cycle.
The same dynamic, with regional variations, may easily be observed in Western Europe, as the traditional democratic allies maintain, at the leadership level, the same ambiguous voice of “supporting Ukraine, but not too much,” while an undercurrent made up of undersecretaries and rival parties speaks more openly of Putin having been “unjustly provoked” by NATO, and of Ukraine having to accept the sacrifice of its territorial sovereignty in the name of peace.
Is it any wonder the former free world is so unfree today, and so rapidly accelerating into the gutter of self-annihilation? Its establishments are rotting corpses, decaying in the muck of lustful indulgence and hubristic illogic, and increasingly infested with Marxist flies and populist worms, all seeking, in their superficially alternative ways, to cast off all the institutions, principles, and apolitical wonders that were once the wellsprings of civilization and the guardrails of rational coexistence, in the name of their own avarice, perpetual power, and sense of entitlement.
