No, I won’t employ the convenient Yogi Berra-ism that the press has been so fond of since its coining, but I can’t help but feel like we’re treading the same ground we did decades ago during the height of the cold war. It seems like every time I hear a news report, whether on NPR or some network television outlet, there’s talk of Russia, Russia, Russia. The uprising in Ukraine is really a Russia story here in the States. NBC’s Brian Williams describes it casually as a “personal” matter for Vladimir Putin; an artifact of the ongoing demonization campaign against the Russian president, who is no saint and has dictatorial tendencies, but is not the monstrous freak our government/corporate media complex seem determined to make him out to be.
The national corporate media conversation on Ukraine seems to center on what we are going to do about it, but the fact is, we are supporting the opposition in that country – likely not because our government has overriding sympathy for them, but because they are acting against Russia’s interests. This is reminiscent of the “conversation” that was had last year over Syria, in which articulate opinion was broadly in favor of American strikes while the vast majority of Americans were against it. Again – Russia is on the other side. (We are, of course, aligned with groups in Syria that are in a de-facto alliance with Al Qaeda-inspired militants.) In our ongoing economic/political campaign against Iran, Russia is also on the other side. Sense a pattern?
What interests me, particularly, is the fact that Putin is regularly characterized in the media as a man steeped in the confrontational ideology of the Cold War. Russia has, in fact, moved on from its Soviet past. And yet we in the United States, priding ourselves on having “won” the Cold War, have not changed our approach to the world since those dark days. In many ways, we are far more deeply entrenched in a Cold War mentality by virtue of the fact that our empire still stands, more or less, while our rival’s has disappeared. It is almost an autonomic response to Russia’s relatively recent return to international prominence that we should look upon them as rivals once again … and upon their friends as our enemies.
Of course, that doesn’t make it right. Time to dial it back.
luv u,
jp
