Everything is Embarrassing
Ryan Gosling expressing my daily inner monologue in Bladerunner 2049
Despite being more than capable of providing the arms and assistance that would enable Ukraine to win its war against Russia—our brave GOP political leaders have decided to fiddle while Kyiv burns.
Is there nobody left within the GOP who’s willing to rise above pure cowardice and do the right thing? The US Senate could still manage to pass a foreign aid package by the skin of their teeth—maybe—but there’s still the House.
However, given the fact that the United States is still on our 2022 budget, you’ll have to forgive my increasing doubt about our ability to get anything done.
I’m not even particularly sure what I’m supposed to write about on this topic anymore—what is there to say from a military perspective?
We’re failing in the most central task of a war effort, which is the political will to prosecute a war. What does my opinion on the value of fires in-depth even matter? Who cares about arguing if we should increase IFVs in brigade combat teams so they have more staying power when we can’t pass a single budget?
If you cannot generate the will to prosecute a war in the first place, there’s simply nothing to argue about. It’s all just an academic discussion that has about as much meaning as undergraduates arguing about the predictive power of offensive realism versus liberal institutionalism. It doesn’t matter.
To be clear, it’s not like any of the brilliant minds of the MAGA right care about Ukraine one way or another. It has become an increasingly obvious partisan stunt to actively harm the electoral chances of Joe Biden, there’s nothing else to this. Like I said, what am I even supposed to write about here?
Here, in Trump’s own words: As the leader of our party, there is zero chance I will support this horrible open borders betrayal of America…I’ll fight it all the way. A lot of the senators are trying to say, respectfully, they’re blaming it on me. I say, that’s okay. Please blame it on me. Please.
Interpreting the implications of this statement for American global commitments doesn't require a profound textual analysis. It was a bill that essentially granted conservatives all of their major border-related priorities. Trump’s real message is that all American values and interests are merely contingent on how they can help the GOP win an election.
It’s of course true that all wars are political—and how a war is prosecuted is always subordinated to domestic political concerns. The will to fight a war (or support a partner’s war effort) depends on the domestic belief in the cause of a war in the first place. While you’re welcome to attempt to fight a war without domestic buy-in, you can ask how well that’s gone for countries like Saudi Arabia.
What’s not common is seeing domestic politics that so obviously works against advancing a national interest. It just flatly works to worsen the United States and our allies to no conceivable advantage other than obtaining short-term power.
There’s no morals or ethics at play here. No actual vision of what the point of political life is. No question of what is worth fighting over. It’s just a cowardly game being played by people who are more than happy to watch Ukrainians die if it gets them an extra percentage point in the presidential polls.
It’s just the next chapter in the continued descent of the GOP since 2015 into nothing but spineless sycophancy. They would rather repeatedly stab their own country to death than enact policies that would help a fellow democratic country and actively support American interests.
It is the worst kind of nihilism, nothing more than cynically calculating a short-term advantage to the detriment of all other considerations.
Do you want to know why things like the barracks emperors happened in Rome? Why despite being invaded by German tribes from across the Rhine, Roman generals preferred to turn their armies on Rome instead? How it could have been that despite the world crumbling around them, people were more concerned with who got to wear the imperial purple? Yeah, well you’re looking at it.
The only thing we can hope for at this point as a country—or if you’re one of our allies—is that the GOP implodes in on itself after the 2024 election and goes the way of the Whigs or the Know Nothings.
It’s sort of a vicious cycle where the GOP actively works to the detriment of any form of productive policy, making things worse for the United States and our allies, and then using their complete lack of accomplishments—they ride the dissatisfaction to an electoral college victory. Never forget that as it stands, we’re a country that’s being driven to dysfunction by a group of people who haven’t won a popular vote in 20 years.
And in the middle of all of this?
Ukraine is at its most tenuous position since the initial invasion in 2022 with Ukrainian formations now growing increasingly exhausted from years of combat. In the absence of American support ammunition and equipment, shortages are mounting, and increasingly causing unnecessary human losses.
Ukrainian soldiers have been fighting through some of the most demanding combat since Bakhmut as their ammunition stockpiles gradually run dry in Avdiivka. Ukrainian cities are now at risk of returning to the days when the Russian airforce could bomb them with impunity as their air defenses run out of munition. The absence of funding means that each time a Bradley is knocked out, there's no option to deploy a substitute to reinforce units on the front lines.
You might ask what exactly are our Senators fixated on during all of this? Do our Senators seem to be cognizant of the horrific human costs that Ukrainians are shouldering without our support? No of course they aren’t, they’re too busy taking their foreign policy opinions from Vladimir Putin.
This entire episode of American politics is nothing more than a dark comedy of moronic decisions. It would almost make for a tremendous Armando Iannucci script if it wasn’t for the fact that our idiocy was costing thousands of people their lives. It is a profoundly unserious period, and we are failing to rise to meet what this moment demands of us.
While I’ve said it before, it bears repeating in the midst of this, Europe has done its best to step up in our absence. Their continued commitment to the values that we profess to hold is what continues to give me hope that we’re going to pull through this period of American politics.
From Helsinki to London, Europeans have demonstrated the moral character to do what the United States seemingly cannot accomplish. There are fortunately still serious statesmen in the world who care about guiding their nations in defense of democratic ideals. I remain optimistic that these European States can pool their resources to provide the necessary support to Ukraine and at minimum get the Ukrainian military through the next 10 months.
I also remain optimistic that as we get closer to the 2024 elections the average American voter will realize how fucking embarrassing all of this has been, and our national nightmare might finally come to an end.
After all, is this really who we are? Is this the best we can offer the world? The United States is meant to be the great shining city upon a hill, we ought to be able to demand more of our politicians than this.