One would be forgiven for believing the entire US commentariat has been given free bleacher seats to the war in Ukraine. They can speak of nothing else. Erstwhile gun control fanatics cheer on the government as they hand out rifles to the citizens of Kiev. Former “Occupy Democrats” demand their followers support a Ukrainian fighter pilot who may or may not have shot multiple Russian planes out of the sky (in case you had any lingering doubts about the legitimacy of Occupy).
The idea that American politics might once have harbored an anti-war, anti-corporate contingent known as “the Left” will likely get you laughed out of polite cocktail-party circles (which I initially typed as “police cocktail-party circles,” because they’re the only people allowed to have cocktail parties anymore). Merely suggesting that the waning winds of the OMFGVIRUS have created a void into which some big scary world-focusing Event must enter to stop our whole crisis-based society from collapsing in on itself invites calls of “conspiracy theorist,” because the only acceptable way to think in aforementioned crisis-based society is to run blindly from one fire to another, pouring on gasoline from a can marked “water” while shouting that you are solving the problem and that there is no way all these fires could possibly be connected.
(Meanwhile, the media breathlessly report that the Ukrainian government is doing its best to jack up civilian casualty figures by inviting all Kiev residents to make Molotov cocktails and chuck them at the eeeevil Russians, thus conveniently turning them into combatants and military targets. You can’t make this stuff up.)
If you’re American, like me, you might be asking “What happened to the 90 tons of military weaponry we sent Ukraine just this year? Surely they haven’t sold it all to buy crack already?” This “civilian defense by Molotov cocktail” plan does have a certain eau de crack to it, but it was more likely dreamed up in Washington than in Kiev. So where are the missing weapons?
Oh right, they’re not missing at all. Ukraine is deploying them while encouraging the western media to focus on heart-wrenching stories of 80-year-old grandmas defending their homes with AK-47s. And Twitter is doing their bidding, with plenty of what one must imagine were once sane well-adjusted individuals (I’m being charitable here, but there’s no way they’ve all been this crazy for this long or we’d be deep in the cannibalism phase of our societal collapse by now) sporting Ukrainian flags on their profiles (some ironically next to claims of being “antifa,” apparently unaware of the political bent of their new Ukronazi bosom-buddies) and calling for the collapse of an Evil Empire that hasn’t existed since before they were born.
And meanwhile, tumbleweeds blow through the Covid-19 testing clinics that are the only functioning businesses in New York City…
We hope you have enjoyed your free trial of the New World Order. You will be billed for the full program in due time.