“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” That statement is often misattributed to Edmund Burke. After Russia invaded Ukraine, many Americans who didn’t have anything to say about the invasion of Afghanistan or Iraq, much less torture at Guantánamo and elsewhere, or Yemen, or Palestine, suddenly started wearing blue and yellow flags. They weren’t good before, so how can these self-serving souls think they are suddenly being good now?
The Only Thing Necessary for Evil to Triumph
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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Sift the data just a little more, Ted. Forget the lack of major protests. What was Hitler’s line? “Who remembers the Armenians?” Something like that. The attention span of the average ‘Merican is that of the average pantry moth. We’ve already forgotten collectively the currently starving Afghanistan population. That’s what we do between mouthfuls of microwaved Swanson TV dinners (oh, note to self to make a snarky comment about future Veep Tucker Carlson being a monster, while I load up the shopping cart with aforementioned dinners).
The more important question is this: Which newspapers/news sites actually follow the cases you mention on a regular basis. Are there any professional reporters in this country who cover these specific issues as a regular beat?
Quite right, Alex. No one covers those stories as a regular beat. I don’t think there’s any interest on the part of mainstream reporters, all of whom have graduated from expensive graduate journalism schools so none of them exactly have the common touch. And even if someone decent were to slip through the cracks somehow, their bosses certainly would shoot them down.
It is much easier to get those protesters out if the west keeps pretending neo-Nazis are not a significant force in Ukraine who are diverting resources from fighting Russians to killing Ukrainian civilians. I’ve never seen such an air-tight narrative in the western media, including all the wars mentioned above. Democracy Now acts like they have a Neocon on their editorial staff. What is it like down in the depths of Azovstal? If you’ve never watched Downfall, this is the time to do it.