Blame America First

Photo by Office of Representative Mike Johnson, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

I spent my formative political years as a religious listener to Rush Limbaugh. Rush was conservative, entertaining, and coined a great many terms. I remember his use of phrases like “drive-by media” and “feminazis,” some of which contained more truth than others. One such phrase that stuck in my mind was the “Blame America First Crowd.”

Back in the 90s and early 2000s, the Blame America First Crowd was a nickname for the left. It referred to people who thought (or seemed to think) that the United States was the root of all evil in the world. Sometimes it was like playing Six Degrees of Separation to get to how America was responsible for some trivial problem on the other side of the world, but they could do it.

The phrase “Blame America First” has come back to the front of my mind in recent weeks, but this time it isn’t the left that is blaming America (although I’m sure this is still going on). This time it’s MAGA.

As the Biden Administration struggles to get aid to Ukraine, the isolationists of the MAGA wing of the Republican Party (which is most of the party these days) have come out swinging, not against Russian imperialism, but against America.

I don’t mean that MAGA is anti-Biden Administration. Biden Derangement Syndrome does reign supreme in the GOP, and it isn’t uncommon to hear Joe Biden being blamed for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the Gaza war, and whatever else is in the headlines (speaking of Six Degrees of Separation). To be fair, some of this is to be expected since it’s the opposition’s job to try to regain power, and that involves painting the Administration in a bad light. You don’t win elections by saying, “The president is doing okay.”

But the Blame America First Crowd goes even further by using moral relativism (yet another thing Republicans used to be against) to rationalize away evil committed by people like Vladimir Putin and to compare America unfavorably against authoritarian nations like Russia.

Tucker Carlson, truly one of the worst people in media, is a prime example. Last week, Carlson was raving over the subways and grocery stores in Putin’s Potemkin village, which as it turns out, were priced out of reach for many Russians. More recently, he has been rationalizing away the Putin regime’s killing of Alexei Navalny.

“I didn’t talk about the things that every media outlet talks about because those are covered, and I have spent my life talking to people who run countries, in various countries, and have concluded the following: That every leader kills people, including my leader. Leadership requires killing people,” Carlson said at the World Governments Summit. “That is why I wouldn’t want to be a leader. That press restriction is universal in the United States. I know because I have lived it…. There is more censorship in Russia than there is in the United States, but there is a great deal in the United States.”

Pardon my French, but that’s BS.

Let’s break it down. First, not every leader kills people, but more to the point, it matters who, how, and why people are killed. Murdering Alexei Navalny in prison is not the same as ordering air strikes on Houthi rebels who killed American soldiers and are firing missiles at ships. To make the claim that these are equal is a blatant attempt to muddy the ethical waters in a way that benefits Vladimir Putin.

Carlson is also glaringly, monstrously wrong that the US has anything like the censorship that Russia has. The former Fox News host is probably still smarting over his dismissal due to Fox’s $787 million loss in a defamation suit filed by Dominion Voting Systems, a judgment partly due to Tucker’s penchant for lying on air to his viewers.

But that isn’t censorship.

The government didn’t pull Tucker’s show off the air. Fox News pulled the plug in an attempt to cut their losses. Censorship is prior restraint of speech. Tucker enjoyed free speech but then had to pay the consequences for telling lies that damaged a company’s reputation. (Note that the truth is a defense against defamation, but Fox could not support their claims with evidence.)

Censorship is prohibiting citizens from expressing themselves, particularly when it comes to expressing disagreement with the government, as Russia does. Censorship is prosecuting people for social media posts that are critical of the government, as Russia does. Censorship is detaining and hassling people who take part in peaceful anti-government demonstrations, as Russia does. Censorship is arresting people who openly mourn the death of dissidents like Navalny, as Russia does. Censorship is murdering journalists who are critical of the government, as Russia does. Censorship is imprisoning Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and holding him for almost a year, as Russia has done.

And then there’s Dinesh D’Souza, who posted on the platform formerly known as Twitter, “Navalny=Trump. The plan of the Biden regime and the Democrats is to ensure their leading political opponent dies in prison. There’s no real difference between the two cases.”

Really, Dinesh? I can give you several differences off the top of my head. First, Trump attacks Biden daily, and yet he’s still running around free and unmuzzled despite being the most indicted former president in US history. Trump is in legal jeopardy because he broke the law, not because he criticized Joe Biden.

How about Trump apologist and disgraced “Dilbert” cartoonist, Scott Adams? Adams posted, “I don’t believe Putin is more evil than Biden/Brennan/Clinton/CIA. It’s closer to a tie.”

Erick Erickson dryly noted that the statement was made by “a man who’ll sleep fine tonight and wake up tomorrow instead of accidentally falling out a window.”

For anyone inclined to take Adams’ opinions seriously, I’ll note that he predicted in 2020 that “Republicans will be hunted.”

I do want to give credit where credit is due, however. Adams’ statement that “assuming people are drunk when they post solves most mysteries” is probably the key to understanding the internet as well as most of his own posts. That post is destined to be an evergreen tweet (or whatever they are called now).

And then there’s the podcaster who posted the Pulitzer-award-winning picture of Vietnamese children fleeing napalm to a thread about Navalny. He captioned the picture, “OMG, look what Putin did.”

If you’ve followed me long, you know that I don’t view American history through rose-colored glasses. American history has a dark side and we have plenty to be ashamed of. Having said that, reaching back 50 years to find an American flaw in order to shift the attention from Putin’s murder of Navalny strikes me as objectively anti-American.

A late addition to the list is Donald Trump. The Former Guy went days without mentioning Navalny’s death, probably because he was busy unveiling his new line of $399 gold sneakers, and when he did finally speak out it was only to turn it into an attack on America. In a Truth Social post that mentions but falls short of mourning Navalny, Trump attacks “CROOKED, Radical Left Politicians, Prosecutors, and Judges” and “Open Borders, Rigged Elections, and Grossly Unfair Courtroom Decisions.” It isn’t clear what, if anything, any of this has to do with Navalny but Trump is clearly more upset at America than Vladimir Putin.

Going further, many members of MAGA sound almost exactly like the leftists of yesteryear as they claim that aid to Ukraine is merely a means to funnel money to defense contractors. A frequent theme is that the Ukraine war is being waged for the benefit of Boeing. (Why they single out Boeing, I don’t know.) Both the old-time liberals and modern MAGA seem to want a strong military that will never, ever be used for anything except maybe patrolling the Mexican border, if MAGA has anything to say about it.

The truth is that the United States did not start the war. We did not force Putin to invade.

Defense contractors might be making profits from supplying weapons that allow Ukrainians to defend their homeland, but the blame for that situation lies in Moscow rather than Washington.

A further truth is that cutting off aid won’t end the war. If Republicans are successful in stopping aid, it just means that Ukrainians will be defending their country much less effectively with knives and rifles rather than with missiles and artillery.

Russia has made its first gains in a long time as Ukrainian troops run short of ammunition thanks to Republican refusals to extend more aid. As a result, Ukrainians are beginning to blame Republicans for the stalled assistance with Speaker Johnson drawing a lot of the criticism and meme attacks.

To be sure, not all Republicans fall into the Blame America first category. Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) called Tucker Carlson a “useful idiot” and Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) attacked disgraced Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for “pushing Russian propaganda.” Nikki Haley said that Navalny was killed by the “same Putin who Donald Trump praises and defends” before Trump’s post and following up with an even stronger denunciation that blasted Trump for stealing “a page from liberals’ playbook, denouncing America and comparing our country to Russia.”

In other words, Blaming America First.

In a post on the platform formerly known as Twitter, Mike Pence said, “There is no room in the Republican Party for apologists for Putin.”

With all due respect to Mike Pence, Vladimir Putin is more popular within the GOP than he is. The problem with all of these Republicans who are critical of Putin is that they are not popular within the Republican Party. The party has moved from strongly anti-Russia during the Cold War to a party of Russophiles under MAGA. It’s not the same party that it was just a few years ago.

The shift from patriotism to Blame America First came on suddenly for the GOP. It’s stunning that a party that drapes itself in the American flag seems to think that the country that flag represents is the epitome of evil or at least no better than Russia’s murderous regime. It’s hard to understand how one can profess to love America and yet hate what it stands for as well as a large segment of Americans.

I’ve written before about the political realignment that we are living through, and the reversal of Republicans to a peacenik, isolationist party while Democrats become the party of national security is yet one more example of that shift. The parties may try to claim that their principles are consistent, but there has been a seismic change over the past decade or two.

The funny thing is that most of the partisans go right along with it. Republicans are happy to become an anti-war (even when the US isn’t involved) party rather than one that promotes the defense of freedom while Democrats don’t seem to mind assuming the mantle of defenders of international law (with the exception of the pro-Palestinian factions). That says a lot about the mindset and priorities of the parties.

For conservatives like me, it underscores the fact that I don’t have a home in either camp. I’m going to have to pick and choose which party and candidate to support based on which issues are my priority at the moment. This year, one of my highest priorities is preventing the abandonment of Ukraine.

SPEAKING OF RUSH LIMBAUGH: I have to wonder how Rush would feel about his Republican Party becoming the party of Blame America First. Honestly, I have to believe that he might roll with it.

Rush did a lot to sow discontent within the GOP and set the stage for Donald Trump, but he had no illusions about who Trump was.

In 2016, Rush riffed, “Can somebody point to me the conservative on the ballot? What do you mean, Rush? Are you admitting Trump is not a conservative? Damn right, I am! Folks, when did I ever say that he was? Look, I don’t know how to tell you this. Conservatism lost in the primary, if that’s how you want to look at it.”

At about the same time, Rush abandoned his traditional trope, the Limbaugh Institute for Conservative Studies, and replaced it with the Rush Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Anti-Leftist Studies.

There may be some benefit to being anti-left, but it isn’t the same as being conservative. Take the recent border security bill for example. A conservative would say that this is an objectively good bill that goes a long way toward resolving the border problem, and even though it isn’t perfect, it is endorsed by the Border Patrol Union. An anti-leftist would reflexively say that this bill is supported by the left, therefore we must oppose it. Is it any wonder that anti-leftists rarely get anything done?

It seems that Rush saw which direction the party was heading and altered his own principles to continue cashing in. When conservatism fell out of favor, he became an automatic anti-leftist. It’s a lot easier to oppose whatever the other side is doing rather than building a constructive, conservative movement that needs a majority willing to compromise to move the ball forward. For the anti-leftists, it is enough to stop the other side from scoring, even if they never score themselves.

At some point, Rush stopped being a conservative leader as the Republican base went in its own direction. Most pundits did their best to get out in front of the crowd and pretend they were the leader as the old saying goes. If you contradict the listeners, they change the dial and your paycheck goes away. By that point, I had turned Rush off and was listening to Michael Medved, a more principled conservative talker who lost most of his audience when he refused to get on the Trump Train.

Maybe piling on the Putin bandwagon would be a bridge too far for Rush, who grew up during the height of the Cold War. But then again, maybe it wouldn’t.