The Revenge of the Know Nothings

The GOP is Collapsing the International System to Own the Libs

Like their 20th-century America First counterparts, a gang of morons, sycophants, and grifters is going to deadlock American foreign policy at the crossroads of one of the most consequential moments of the 21st century. It does appear that until November 2024 the United States is going to be completely out of the fight in Ukraine.

The House has seen fit to completely abandon their role as a responsible organ of governance and instead of moving legislation forward to provide aid to Ukraine—we are getting a partisan political show of impeaching DHS Secretary Mayorkas. This is in the background of the Ukrainian military running out of ammunition on their front as their forces are being enveloped in Avdiivka. We have had months to fix this and we are still on the 2022 budget.

Can you imagine how this looks to political leaders in Taipei? Tallinn? Warsaw? Tokyo? What reason is there to take seriously any sort of American commitment at this point?

Do you feel confident right now if you’re William Lai and the PLAN starts conducting actual exercises for an operation to cross the strait? Do you feel good if you’re Kishida and the PLARF is conducting drills to target airbases in Japan? How about if you’re sitting in Eastern Europe and Putin announces that the Suwalki Gap is a critical national security concern for Russia?

Trump—the leader of the GOP—has just nakedly announced that he sees no reason to use force to defend NATO allies. The House has killed one bipartisan national security bill and plans to not allow the latest Senate bill to go forward solely from Trump’s influence. Our House of Representatives is too busy playing political theatre for the sake of someone who isn’t even in office to provide aid to a nation that is actively in a conventional conflict.

If Russia does turn up the pressure on NATO’s Eastern flank—or worse attempts a low-intensity military operation—are you really willing to bet your future on the United States right now? Are we giving the impression of a credible partner that’s going to back your territorial integrity?

How about if you’re William Lai’s national security advisor? Are you going to have to explain to him the Americans are too busy arguing over Hunter Biden’s laptop to offer assistance during an attempted act of PLA military coercion?

Who wants to bet on the United States as a guarantor of their security right now when the GOP is single-mindedly focused on winning soundbites? It’s not even that we’re having principled arguments over American foreign policy.

This isn’t some well-thought-out and serious discussion about the extent of American power and competing priorities. The United States could very easily provide the material and assistance to stand up fully mechanized Ukrainian brigades such that they could qualitatively outfight the Russians across the frontline. Our defense industrial base could more than sufficiently provide the munitions to allow the UAF to conduct continuous fires into the Russian depths. We are more than capable enough to provide the capacity to train the Ukrainian forces to be able to conduct brigade-level maneuvers.

We aren’t sacrificing our force posture in the Pacific for this—unless for some reason we were planning to put IFVs onto rafts and sail them into the Taiwan Strait. We aren’t critically short of munitions—we are in fact creating more production capacity. The United States also isn’t fighting some other conventional war that we desperately need to conserve our resources for. We aren’t looking at any actual tradeoffs that would justify pulling back American support.

This is just simply among the stupidest moments in American history. While the 20th-century America First movement and the 19th-century Know Nothings had influence—they couldn’t grind our entire government to a halt. FDR was still able to provide material aid to Great Britain and the Soviet Union. Could you imagine trying to do any of this with our current political parties?

Imagine explaining to Winston Churchill that no we cannot provide any more Lend-Lease since Wendell Willkie has instructed Congress to stop all attempts to pass legislation to help his election odds.

It’s like looking at a nightmare version of a timeline where Charles Lindbergh managed to not only persuade the House Committee on Foreign Affairs to completely block Lend-Lease but was greeted as an American hero for meeting with the Nazis. Except in this case, Charles Lindbergh is a former Fox News host who also films rambling interviews with autocrats who justify their invasions based on letters from 882.

Not to mention, this is a timeline where the GOP then goes on to fawn about how smart and articulate Hitler is. It’s all just so fucking pathetic. At least in the 1940s we had the foresight to break up the German-American Bund. FDR was willing to crack down on people who actively worked to further the ideologies and foreign policy goals of our adversaries.

Now imagine all of this as a Londoner during the Blitz. You and your neighbors are being bombed daily as your city is slowly being turned to rubble. The RAF is only just barely able to hold things together. You’re overstretched around the globe, and the news from Africa isn’t great. Your PM says that you’re going to fight on until the end, come what may.

You look over at the Americans as the great hope on the horizon and all you see is a bunch of complete morons who think that London is a secret bioweapons laboratory. Also, apparently, the Americans are now claiming that Churchill has been embezzling all your money to build mansions in Egypt. You quickly realize that you’re doomed.

Things just cannot keep going on like this. A representative democracy cannot do this forever, and years of gridlock and disarray are going to catch up to us. The United States has boundless material advantages that we can draw upon, but the endless pandering and demagoguery are going to have an effect eventually. But when is the fever going to break? At this point, the entire world can go up in flames so long as the liberals lose.

If we let these idiots have their way our friends and partners across the globe stop counting on us to respond to aggression and look to other nations for their security—and I’m not going to blame them.