Nothing that Russia is doing in Ukraine is something that the United States has done many times elsewhere over the years. But there’s a big difference in the way that these events get covered. When the US does something horrible, it is dismissed as an incongruous departure from standard American values or simply not covered at all.
Much of the opposition to student loan forgiveness boils down to bitterness. Why should people who suffered under a stupid system subsidize young people so they don’t have to suffer as well?
White people are socially prohibited from using the N-word, while Black Americans are not. Some white people complain about being excluded from this “right.” Although one has to wonder, why do they care?
The United States has a habit of arming and funding sides in civil conflicts that later become enemies. Here we go in Ukraine, supporting a questionable government of a country Americans couldn’t find on a map two months ago.
From gas prices to inflation, President Joe Biden is determined to blame Russia for everything that’s going wrong — even stuff that happened before Russia invaded Ukraine.
After a gunman opened fire and set off smoke bombs in a Brooklyn subway, the NYPD investigation was hampered by the fact that none of the cameras in the station were working. According to officials, many of the surveillance cameras in the subway system are out of order at any given time.
It’s impossible to know whether any of this is true or even if US intelligence agencies really believe it, but part of the propaganda war against Russia is spreading the message that president Vladimir Putin is out of touch, doesn’t really know what’s going on and is losing his mind after two years of COVID-19 related lockdowns. Of course, it’s entirely possible that the Russians believe the same things about American president Joe Biden.
Regardless of how you feel about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the fact that Congress quickly allocated $13.5 billion for military aid to a country which is not even an American ally while over half a million Americans are sleeping outside should make us reconsider our national priorities.
Defenders of American imperialism cleverly use the slur “whataboutism” in order to denigrate anyone who points out that the United States doesn’t have the moral standing to criticize other countries in matters of war and peace.
Climate change/global warming is an existential threat to humanity. But the main effect of it, warmer weather, is repeatedly reported as something positive. What we really need to be spurred into action is a seriously painful development.
