Politics

I hate going back, again, to Orwell, but since the world is intent on using Nineteen Eighty-Four as an instructional guide, I have no choice. So proles, take note: this week's Two Minutes Hate will be split between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. They apparently share the goal of destroying American democracy via the invasion of Ukraine. Something very sinister has happened in the American mind-space over the last few days. Ukraine, a country of little importance to the United States, suddenly became the sole focus of most media-consuming Americans. This was constructed to appear organic, but it is impossible not to imagine guiding hands behind the shift of every single media outlet to a single story told in a single way.

Biden’s vibe shift Ahead of last night’s State of the Union, the Biden White House had promised a reset. What he delivered certainly fell short of the full system reboot a president with such dire approval ratings needs. But there was a change in tone. A vibe shift, if you will. Out with the FDR tribute act, in with a torpid moderation. Not an enthusiastic tack to the center but a partial acknowledgment of political reality. The president may not have offered an especially energizing reboot to his presidency in his speech, but it nonetheless felt like a page was turned last night. That was most immediately obvious when it came to the pandemic. Democrats had contrived to make March 1 the day the pandemic ended: rules lifted on the Hill, in the White House and across Washington.

The Putin Party myth In recent weeks, the two most influential men on the American right have come under close scrutiny for their views on Russian president Vladimir Putin and his increasingly indiscriminate attack on Ukraine. The first is Donald Trump, whose repeated insistence of Vladimir Putin’s “genius” and “savvy” have earned him unflattering headlines. The former president certainly seems to have an unhealthy fascination with, and, on a certain level, admiration for, strongmen, authoritarians and dictators. Out of office, he is reportedly pen pals with Kim Jong-un, for instance. However, it’s not just a stretch but a straightforward misrepresentation to describe Trump as pro-Putin.

Will he or won't he? Americans tired of the rampant speculation are surely having a relief-filled two months. First Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady responded to a hasty ESPN report by announcing his retirement from the NFL. Then, former president Donald Trump told a roaring crowd at CPAC that he intends to run for America's highest office a third time. "We did it twice, and we’ll do it again,” Trump said. “We’re going to be doing it again." Trump's announcement is a gut punch for other 2024 contenders who secretly hoped he'd step back and play kingmaker.

Bewilderment, a novel by Richard Powers issued last September, has been praised to high heavens by Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama, Naomi Klein, and reviewers at NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and The New Republic, among others. This ought to be enough to warn any sensible reader to stay far away from its pages and to resign promptly from any reading group that nominates it for collective perusal. But I am not always sensible. The title lured me, for what better word to describe our Zeitgeist?

Biden picks Brown Jackson The president has chosen Ketanji Brown Jackson, a judge on the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court, multiple outlets have reported. Biden had interviewed two other candidates: Leandra Kruger, a judge on the California Supreme Court, and J. Michelle Childs, the South Carolina judge backed by Jim Clyburn and Lindsey Graham. With Russian troops laying siege to the Ukrainian capital, some will question the timing of this announcement. And with all eyes on Eastern Europe, the ceremony promises to be one of the most low-key in recent memory. The White House has good reason to expect a reasonably smooth nomination process.

War in Europe When Joe Biden addresses the American people later today, he will find himself in a changed world. His Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin outlined an imperialist vision of Russia fit for a czar on Monday. In the early hours of this morning, he backed up that nineteenth-century sentiment with nineteenth-century action: the start of a full-scale great power conquest of a sovereign neighbor. The events of the last twelve hours are something that my own end-of-history generation was brought up to believe would never happen in our lifetimes. And yet here we are. More recently, we were told that modern warfare was all cyber attacks and disinformation, deep fakes and propaganda.

The Canadian truckers might have been driven out of Ottawa, but a copycat protest is brewing in the United States. Cockburn hears that police are preparing for demonstrations that could gridlock the DC area, and they could start as soon as Wednesday. Honk honk! The truckers are coming to Washington — just in time for President Biden's State of the Union address next week. Cockburn has been a fan of truckers ever since he decided to see whether he could hitchhike across America using only Jim Beam trucks (he could, as it turns out). But in this case, the big riggers may be in need of a friendly correction.

Let's connect the dots between John Durham, Russiagate, the FBI, and Hillary Clinton. They strongly suggest the Clinton campaign ran a sophisticated, multi-prong coordinated intelligence operation against Trump with either the active or tacit support of the FBI. In the case of prong one, the dossier, the Clinton campaign hired MI6 intelligence officer Christopher Steele. The hiring was through its law firm, Perkins Coie, which hired Fusion GPS, which hired Steele to hide the funding source. The use of the law firm as a cutout allowed Hillary to deny that she'd funded the dossier, and the media to claim for a year or more that it was actually the Republicans themselves who paid for it.