It’s become blindingly obvious that our two political parties and the factions that control them could give a rats-ass about the American public, beyond the increasingly hollow democratic ritual every 2 years. The Biden Administration campaigned on improving Americans lives with programs like Build Back Better but instead busied themselves with provoking a war with Russia while letting detractors like Senator Joe Manchin torpedo the domestic program over perceived cost. Promising to be an ethical alternative to Trump, only to perpetuate many of Trump’s policies, isn’t really what we were looking for.

They would like you to believe different but this is Joe Biden and the Democratic Party’s actual record: No real climate action. No minimum wage hike. No serious student debt cancellation. No effective pandemic strategy (more deaths than Trump). No Medicare For All–or the promised public option. No filibuster reform, just a lot of talk. No voting rights protection, just more impassioned speeches. No court expansion, just a sham commission. No end to racist policing. No end to gun violence. No end to deportations & abuse of asylum-seekers. No end to cages for migrant children. No end to brutalizing Afghanistan and Yemen. No end to droning civilians in Third World countries. No end to massive military budgets. No end to arming oppressive regimes. No end to oil drilling and fossil fuel subsidies. No end to poverty, hunger, and homelessness. No end to massive billionaire subsidies.

It is clear that the Democrats and their funders have far different priorities than you and I. Heterodox economist Michael Hudson says that, “It is more realistic to view U.S. economic and foreign policy in terms of the military-industrial complex, the oil and gas (and mining) complex, and the banking and real estate complex than in terms of political policy of Republicans and Democrats.” And for these sectors, war is always at the top of the list. For instance, there’s now talk of rebranding weapons-manufacturer stocks as “socially responsible” investments in light of the Russian invasion. And, of course, war is big business for fossil fuel companies, with the Pentagon the world’s largest institutional consumer of petroleum. 

But Kidd, wasn’t this a completely unprovoked invasion by the evil Russians, led by the demonic Putin?

Not exactly. It’s useful to remember that the US chose this conflict, and it was all planned years in advance. The US empire has had a standing policy of preventing the rise of any rival superpowers since the USSR collapsed, by which I mean that policy was explicitly laid out in writing within months of the Soviet Union’s dissolution. Indeed, the US used Ukraine as a pawn, stuffing it full of advanced weapons and military advisors, in an attempt to draw Russia into a costly invasion and occupation, all to tie them down with a a long, bloody insurgency that is planned against the invaders backed by billions of dollars in US funding.

These consequences cannot really be deemed “unintended.” Too many observers have pointed out exactly what would happen – headed by President Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov explaining just what their response would be if NATO insisted on backing them into a corner while attacking Eastern Ukrainian Russian-speakers and moving heavy weaponry to Russia’s Western border. The consequences were anticipated. The neocons in control of U.S. foreign policy simply didn’t care. Recognizing Russian concerns was deemed to make one a Putin-apologist or voicing  “Russian misinformation”.

So although it was Russian troops who crossed the Ukrainian border, a strong case can be made that they did so only after the most extreme provocations, and these may have been deliberately intended to produce exactly that result. Sometimes the parties responsible for starting a war are not necessarily those that eventually fire the first shot. It would not be stretch to say that the Russian invasion, unlike the US invasion of Iraq, was a case of self-defense. There is strong evidence that the Ukrainian army, led by the Neo-nazi elements, was planning on attacking the two breakaway republics of Lugansk and Donetsk in the eastern Donbas region. Ukrainian president Zelensky threatened to renew their nuclear arsenal. And now, the Russians have discovered the existence of a network of biowarfare labs in Ukraine, funded by the Pentagon and allegedly working with anthrax and plague. 

The bi-warfare sites claim could simply be Russian propaganda, however the situation drastically changed on Tuesday, due to the Congressional testimony of Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, chief architect of our Ukraine policy and super-neocon. She seemed not only to acknowledge the existence of those Ukrainian bio-labs but was also apparently concerned that their dangerous contents might fall into enemy hands, thereby seeming to completely confirm those shocking Russian accusations. Given that Ukraine ranks as one of Europe’s most corrupt states, word of these projects surely leaked out, and it’s easy to understand why the Russians took a very dim view of it, certainly contributing to their decision to invade. How would America react if a rabidly-hostile Mexican government backed by China were developing deadly bioweapons near the American border?

Crazy, huh?

These are the actions of our sociopathic leaders. The objective is not just power for its own sake but power to control the world’s natural resources and markets, power to privatize and deregulate the economies of every nation in the world, and ultimately the power over a global “free market.” The end goal is to ensure not merely the supremacy of global capitalism as such, but the supremacy of American global capitalism by preventing the emergence of any other potentially competing superpower.

In the meantime, it sure sucks to be an apostate in the most propaganda laden environment I can recall. The hypocrisy, dishonesty and phoniness over Ukraine is one of the most distasteful things that I have ever witnessed. The rank hypocrisy is stunning. Some of the same officials that orchestrated the invasion of Iraq, who under international law are war criminals for carrying out a preemptive war, are now chastising Russia for its violation of international law.

Update: This seems appropriate–“No matter your views on the war, there is a massive escalation in state and corporate censorship regimes in the West justified in the name of this war. How does that not deeply disturb those claiming they’re fighting for freedom and democracy?”