Mar 21
How Soon We’ll Forget
Let’s assume the onslaught in Ukraine continues. Through sheer force of numbers, the Russians will eventually succeed. They will capture or kill Zelensky and his government. They will overrun the cities. They will shut the borders with the West. And they will drop an iron curtain over the media so only propaganda issues forth.
At that point — when there is little more to be done for Ukraine — what will happen to America’s pro-Ukrainian fervor? Will we build on our alliance with the world’s other democracies, persist in punishing Russia, and take the bold but risky steps necessary to protect ourselves from an authoritarian assault that has graduated from information war to literal war — and may include a Pacific theater if the Chinese emulate the Russians in Taiwan?
I’d like to think so. But I doubt it.
At some point after the hot war in Ukraine cools, people will grumble more loudly about high gas prices caused (in part) by our embargo of Russian oil. Here and in other parts of the world, anger will grow over spiking food costs due (in part) to crop failures in Ukraine, which exports mass quantities of wheat, corn, barley, and sunflowers. And, let’s face it, our attention spans are short. Once the war ends, Americans will move on to other things. (They might not even wait that long.)
Nudging us toward forgetfulness will be our own right-wing authoritarians, already making excuses for Russia’s inexcusable violence. Pundit and war veteran David French, no liberal, has pegged their methodology: they “find what they call ‘the narrative’ (another word for the perceived conventional wisdom in the media or in the political establishment) and simply argue the opposite.” They’ll frame the extra money we’re paying for gas and food not as the price of supporting Ukrainian allies experiencing a bloody, all-encompassing disaster, but as just another far-left elitist baby-eater plot enabled by brain-dead Biden to divert attention from his drug-addled son’s corrupt Ukrainian dealings and to victimize ever-victimized you.
(The war has shed harsh light on the authoritarian right’s disinformation tropes, exposing them for the shabby, repetitive cons they are. It has also more clearly exposed authoritarianism’s inferiority to open societies, as detailed in this piece by London School of Economics professor Brian Klaas and this one by New York Times columnist David Brooks, who has come a long way in the last couple of years. Too bad these articles will never be read by the people who most need to read them.)
I can see a rethink of the pro-Ukrainian consensus especially as the 2022 campaign ramps up, with the Republicans blaming Biden for “losing” Ukraine even though their own guy would have ceded Ukraine to Putin while bowing low enough to split his pants. And I can see tens of millions of Americans, who like the former president couldn’t locate Ukraine on a map (not my words, but those of former national security advisor John Bolton), voting without a moment’s thought for Biden’s masterful diplomacy (so far), fixating instead on the money they will save after we get right with Russia again.
And yes, this is another portent you’re more than welcome to razz me about if I’m wrong — which I dearly hope I am.
