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I know it's beating a dead horse at this point, but this whole Prigozhin situation made one fact crystal clear: American dissident right (and "anti-nato left" by extension) is extremely solipsistic, much more than other factions in American culture war. Just take a look at some of those takes which are prevalent among this crowd
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Essentially, their model of the world looks like: here we are, honest god-abiding Americans, and then there are "elites" — Biden, Hillary, DNC, Podesta, Bill Gates, World Economic Forum. How then do you view something that lies outside your usual experience and ideology? If you are dumb, you deny it altogether:
"Ukraine War is fake, all of it is CGI, Zelensky and Hunter Biden siphon gajillions dollars from American taxpayers to buy mansions in Bahamas"
For those people Ukrainians, Russians, Poles, Finns, Prigozhin, Zaluzhny, Macron, Scholz, ... do not exist.
If you are smarter, you align yourself with perceived enemies of the elites: Putin, Xi, Orban, .... You say things like:
totally oblivious of cases like this
https://zona.media/online/2023/06/22/sko
being a regular occurrence in Russia, when a girl is sent to prison for putting anti-war slogans on price tags in a shopping mall. Of course they'll have prepared a long list of grievances with "elites" that are intended to persuade you that whatever happens in the US is much worse than repressions in Russia or China. And, sure enough, all of it "glownigger propaganda" anyway.
You might say: "Well, I don't care about anti-Putin Russians, unfortunate pro-Putin Russians who became victims of the regime, neutral Russians, Ukrainians, Uighurs, Tibetans, Taiwanese, ... all I care is that my children don't get castrated and turned into trannies". Fair enough. But then please don't take a high moral ground. You are just as evil as "elites".
Whatever patience I had with American "anti-establishment" right-wingers, it ended. I guess Hanania is the only one I keep reading/listening at this point.
I’m gonna give you a really unpopular take on that, but I think it’s sort of a half truth. Not that the civil war is fake, it seems fairly real as far as I can tell, but that it’s actually quite common for the news media to focus on other stories besides the ones that matter simply because they don’t want to undermine their patrons. Or they might quite often simply ignore part of a story or exaggerate something to make it seem like it’s bigger or smaller.
Furthermore, they aren’t exactly wrong about the elites. They aren’t in the same world as you and I are. They certainly consider themselves Americans in the sense that this is their home, but quite often, because of their donors and the fact that most of them spend large amounts of time overseas, don’t see the fact of them being Americans as a reason to choose to do things to help the average American over other global concerns. They also, just on the values, attitudes, and beliefs don’t hold the same culture that regular Americans do. Traditional American culture is Western European (basically British, Celtic, and German), more religious and very specifically evangelical Christian, strongly believe in the work ethic — and especially practical work (building and inventing useful things, farming and so on), and strongly oriented to their family. The elites would see that culture as backwards, racist, poorly educated and cultured, and in need of enlightenment.
Funny thing is the "German" part could even get you in jail about 100 years ago or so... You know, given the war with Germany and yelling fire in a crowded theater and all that. As for the Celtic, if we go another 50 years back, "no Irish need apply" would be a familiar phrase. So I wonder, what is that "traditional American culture" we love so much?
I mean yeah, cultures change. That doesn’t mean that there’s no current culture or clash between American folk culture and the type of culture the elites want us to adopt.
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