Only days after Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was heckled at a town hall in her Queens district for her support for the US's proxy war with Russia, what with the increasing chance of nuclear weapons, the House Progressive caucus sent a polite letter to Joe Biden, asking that he at least consider diplomacy at some vague point in the future.
The reaction to the dreaded D word was swift and it was hysterical. It came from what can now only be termed the Neocon Party, a consortium of Democrats and "moderate" Republicans and their assorted partners in the Deep State/Permanent Ruling Class/Blob, along with their shills in the corporate media. With such a tsunami of outrage coming at them, Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal quickly withdrew their baby toes from the shallow River of Peace and hastened to strenuously wipe them dry with the American flag of freedom.
Jayapal contended the letter was released by staff without proper vetting and said it improperly conflated her caucus’ position with GOP divisions over providing more aid to Ukraine aid, which Democrats back. She withdrew the letter after the embarrassing intra-party feud.
“The Congressional Progressive Caucus hereby withdraws its recent letter to the White House regarding Ukraine,” Jayapal, a Democrat from Washington state, said in a statement. “The letter was drafted several months ago, but unfortunately was released by staff without vetting. As Chair of the Caucus, I accept responsibility for this.”
Nobody wants to be accused of being a Putin puppet or a Trump cultist, or even of whispering the reality that Ukraine itself has been a full-fledged American puppet state for almost a decade, if not longer. Its first post-coup finance minister was, after all not only American, she was an alumna of both the US Treasury and State Departments. She became a Ukraine citizen one day after getting the chief financial officer post in 2014. Its president, Zelensky, is a made-for-American TV actor whose last gig was, in fact, the lead in a hit Ukrainian TV show. But to even hint that the United States is shamelessly using one of the poorest, most oppressed European countries as cover for its rapacious war for the globe's energy and other resources would be an insult to a weakening Superpower.
So would mentioning that Joe Biden is a consummate hypocrite. The man now mouthing such concern for the suffering Ukrainian people himself increased their suffering when as vice president, he ordered their parliament to raise their retirement ages and to stop subsidizing their high energy costs. The imposition of austerity on regular people was necessary, he said, to pay back a fortune in predatory IMF loans and to atone for the country's political corruption. This was during the same time that his own son was raking in millions sitting on the board of a corrupt Ukrainian energy company.
Instead of directly confronting Biden in her letter, Jayapal flattered him, gushing:
Your support for the self-defense of an independent, sovereign, and democratic state has been supported by Congress, including through various appropriations of military, economic and humanitarian aid in furtherance of this cause. Your administration’s policy was critical to enable the Ukrainian people, through their courageous fighting and heroic sacrifices, to deal a historic military defeat to Russia, forcing Russia to dramatically scale back the stated goals of the invasion.
She then ever so so gently pivots to the specter of World War III and nukes, suggesting that it might behoove Biden to talk to Putin, despite the White House's insistence that it will prevent any such meeting from taking place at an upcoming summit, lest a ceasefire ensue. This avoidance might prove to be very difficult, given Biden's penchant for losing his way when departing from various stages, and even forgetting how to get home after a tree-planting ceremony right in his own backyard this week. So wouldn't it be something if Biden's senile confusion led to the inadvertent beginning of the end of the war? Anyway, it's fun to imagine Biden barging into Putin in the VIP steam-room or in a soundproof gold-plated bathroom stall.
But I digress. Even before her forced "clarification" followed by the full retraction, Jayapal's entire letter reads like a case study in Orwellian "war is peace" Newspeak. Although war is indeed hell and a prime cause of worldwide inflation, famine, poverty and death, she agreed that it is simply not US Superpower's place to put pressure on its vassal state to sit down with Putin.
This specious argument for endless grinding war and death is like a mafia boss complaining that he doesn't have the power to call off a hired hit, let alone a full fledged mob war. Not only would stopping the bloodbath be unethical, it would hurt the feelings and disrespect the dignity of his devoted hired hitmen. Worst of all, the godfather himself would lose face and the respect of his entire extended family of consiglieres and capos.
So even as the world starves and burns, American hegemony will gorge itself, all the while covering its own rear end by feigning subservience to the very puppet regime that it created in the first place.
And thus, sensibly sensing that she and her progressive caucus were on the verge of violating the sacred principle of Omerta, with possible consequences including loss of access to the Neocon Party's ATM machine, Jayapal quickly backtracked, even before her formal retraction, vowing: "Let me be clear. We are united as Democrats in our unequivocal commitment to supporting Ukraine in their fight for their democracy and freedom in the face of the illegal and outrageous Russian invasion, and nothing in the letter advocates for a change in that support.”
Repeat after me and write it on the blackboard a hundred times: "D stands for Democrat - not for Diplomacy!"
Jayapal and her caucus have shown themselves to be more devoted to their careers ("party unity") than they are to saving the world from poverty, starvation, displacement, hunger, and even from a nuclear holocaust. That is some dedication! To Jayapal's credit, though, she at least wrote her retracted, wishy-washy letter, thus making the slightest little crack in the hegemonic propaganda. Whether this crack widens despite herself, or whether her caucus is able to mend their booboo with multiple gobs of Superpowerglue and billions of dollars more in war appropriations remains to be seen.
True to party-politics form, Jayapal is passive-aggressively blaming the release of the letter on an underling who sent it out by total mistake - but of course Jayapal is taking full responsibility for the "slipup".
Now get out there, proles, and vote as if your very lives depended on it. You can even use the write-in option while doing your democratic duty. Or, you can just leave it blank in the French way, as I did for the New York State Senate contest several election cycles in a row. Even though it turned out that "Blank" got way more votes than my unopposed GOP Senator John Bonacic, Senator Blank was still denied the election, and Bonacic usurped the will of the voters and took office again and again. It was a real slap in the face to Our Democracy™. Go figure.
On the bright side, when I do vote next month, I will be the lucky recipient of this award-winning sticker from the Ulster County Board of Elections:
It's the creation of 14-year-old Hudson Rowan of Marbletown, NY, who on the urging of his mom, entered the county's art contest for teenagers, most of whom are of course too young to vote. Hudson told the media that his multicolored "robot spider crab" is meant to symbolize the globe-encompassing chaos that is electoral politics. His entry actually got more votes than there are registered voters in all of Ulster County.
So much for the voter apathy that the politicians are always kvetching about.
