Left Jabs

  W here’s the upside of all this wanton destruction? Once you intentionally tear down a flawed but quite-workable system, once you reduce it to smoking ruins, once you’ve thrown much of your population into high-stress survival mode, what’s the benefit? And whose benefit is it? As I said last week , the biggest benefit always goes to Putin. But he’s not the only one looking to make the most of the chaos. Closer to home, there are any number of billionaires aspiring to oligarch status, plainly looking for opportunity in this new world order. I’ll use the word ‘oligarch’ as a catch-all for the extravagantly rich and powerful, as well as for the corporate interests they control and the negative influence they exert. Some are household names, but most stay well under the radar. Think of them as today’s Robber Barons. And they will indeed find ways to increase their wealth under the Trump regime. Which apparently, for some profoundly misguided reason, is ...

  A s I’m sure you’ve noticed, the rhetoric coming from the vandals is utterly bonkers. As usual, it’s all lies, but it’s also a sideshow. It’s there to distract us. None of what’s really happening is about DEI, though the rhetoric about it is hot and thick. Nor is it about woke, trans women playing sports, or anything about efficiency, waste, fraud, or abuse. Yes, the vandals value the degradation of non-whites, non-Christians, non-citizens, and non-men. And yes, the deep well of cruelty we see bubbling to the surface wouldn’t surprise anyone living in, say, the thirteenth century. Nonetheless, that’s all a sideshow. The main event, what this is really about — and the lens through which we all need to see it — is exactly as Nancy Pelosi once put it: “All roads lead to Putin.” If the atrocious actions we’ve seen from the vandals in the last month have one thing in common, it’s that they all, without exception, harm America and benefit Putin. There can ...