General OFFICIAL: CANT CUCK THE TUCK THREAD

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Speaker to Animals

encephalopathetic
May 16, 2021
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It wasn't supposed to happen like this. When Russian dictator Vladimir Putin first sent troops to invade Ukraine, the assumption around the world — but especially among those on the right — was that Russia would enjoy a swift and brutal victory over the fledgling democracy. In the U.S., Republicans broke into two camps. Putin fanboys like Donald Trump, Rep. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, and Fox News' Tucker Carlson were practically drooling with glee, declaring Putin was a "genius" acting out of "love," and gearing up a narrative about how Russia's commanding victory was a blow against the decadence bred by democracy. Others were a little more squeamish about openly backing Putin but nonetheless backed the notion that his invasion was proof that authoritarian leaders are manlier, stronger and more effective leaders, especially compared to mewling wimps like President Joe Biden and the Democrats.

Then the unexpected happened: Russia did not conquer Ukraine in a weekend.

Ukrainians fought back — and defied the expectations of both Putin and his Republican supporters. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, for example, got so mad she openly started yelling at Ukraine to just give up. Then images started to pour in of the atrocities committed by Russian forces, really giving lie to authoritarian claims of Putin's moral superiority over the decadent West. It quickly became clear that the right was not as clever as they thought with their assumption that democracy is a house of cards.


Yet, as late as Thursday, Carlson was still at it on his prime time Fox News show in a segment where he brought on far-right British politician Nigel Farage to blame Russia's invasion on "the unnecessary provocation of Vladimir Putin" by American and European efforts to promote democracy in the region. Naturally, Carlson framed this argument as a strike against the elites who want to silence hard truths, because reframing reactionary drivel as rebellion is his one big rhetorical trick.

But then the weekend happened, and while no one should get in the prediction business on something as unstable as the invasion of Ukraine, there is now little doubt that Russia is facing major setbacks, especially in terms of being pushed back in Kyiv. The evidence clearly shows the violence Russian soldiers unleashed on the local population, including committing horrific massacres of civilians. President Joe Biden has declared that Putin is a "war criminal" and called for him to be tried for war crimes. Now even the biggest Putin apologists at home are struggling to argue back in the face of images of dead civilians with their hands tied behind their backs and laying in the mud in Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv. Just to underscore how Russia is very much the bad guy here, Putin's government is trying to claim that Ukrainians killed those people, which is easy to disprove and also preposterous.

Putin is making it very hard for the American right these days. Not just for the Putin fanboys, either. He's also making life harder for Republicans who merely want to portray him as stronger and more adept than Biden and the other supposed weaklings of liberal democracy.
.

RELATED: Tucker Carlson's Hungarian rhapsody: A far-right manifesto for waging the "demographic war"

So Carlson, as usual, decided to pivot. On Monday, he retreated from the Putin apologia back to his safe zone of hyping the "good news" that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was re-elected. Prior to the Ukrainian invasion, Carlson had been using Orbán as his avatar for his fascist longings. He's repeatedly run segments using Hungary as evidence to his aging right-wing audience that the white nationalist utopia of his dreams is there for the taking, at the low price of abandoning liberal democracy. For now, this fantasy version of the supposedly white idyllic Hungary will be dangled out in front of Fox News viewers as a distraction from the true nature of the ideology Carlson is peddling, visible in the dead bodies rotting in the streets of Bucha.

But the American right doesn't want to hear that, whether they are cheering for Putin's victory or not. To admit that he screwed up is to admit that the democracy might have hidden strengths, precisely because it allows liberal values to flourish. As Ezra Klein notes at the New York Times, the right has been exploiting a sense that liberal democracy is "exhausted, ground down, defined by the contradictions and broken promises." They've been using people's exhaustion to advance an anti-democratic argument that ideologies like Trumpism are a necessary alternative. But "Ukraine's refusal to bend the knee to Vladimir Putin" has been a reminder that "liberalism is a marvel of imagination and ambition," and that basic values like democracy and freedom are, in fact, worth fighting for.

Again, it would be unwise to make bold predictions about how this will ultimately play out. Putin is devious and unhinged, and there's no telling what he will do in the face of these setbacks in Ukraine. The right's hopes that this situation can be leveraged as propaganda for authoritarianism around the globe have also not been totally dashed, and could come roaring back if Russia regains ground. Still, it's heartening to see that neither Ukraine nor supporters of democracy around the world are cowed so easily. It appears that authoritarians both here and abroad started to buy their own propaganda about how liberal democracy is a paper tiger. Now they're finding out that it actually has teeth.
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M

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It wasn't supposed to happen like this. When Russian dictator Vladimir Putin first sent troops to invade Ukraine, the assumption around the world — but especially among those on the right — was that Russia would enjoy a swift and brutal victory over the fledgling democracy. In the U.S., Republicans broke into two camps. Putin fanboys like Donald Trump, Rep. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, and Fox News' Tucker Carlson were practically drooling with glee, declaring Putin was a "genius" acting out of "love," and gearing up a narrative about how Russia's commanding victory was a blow against the decadence bred by democracy. Others were a little more squeamish about openly backing Putin but nonetheless backed the notion that his invasion was proof that authoritarian leaders are manlier, stronger and more effective leaders, especially compared to mewling wimps like President Joe Biden and the Democrats.

Then the unexpected happened: Russia did not conquer Ukraine in a weekend.

Ukrainians fought back — and defied the expectations of both Putin and his Republican supporters. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, for example, got so mad she openly started yelling at Ukraine to just give up. Then images started to pour in of the atrocities committed by Russian forces, really giving lie to authoritarian claims of Putin's moral superiority over the decadent West. It quickly became clear that the right was not as clever as they thought with their assumption that democracy is a house of cards.


Yet, as late as Thursday, Carlson was still at it on his prime time Fox News show in a segment where he brought on far-right British politician Nigel Farage to blame Russia's invasion on "the unnecessary provocation of Vladimir Putin" by American and European efforts to promote democracy in the region. Naturally, Carlson framed this argument as a strike against the elites who want to silence hard truths, because reframing reactionary drivel as rebellion is his one big rhetorical trick.

But then the weekend happened, and while no one should get in the prediction business on something as unstable as the invasion of Ukraine, there is now little doubt that Russia is facing major setbacks, especially in terms of being pushed back in Kyiv. The evidence clearly shows the violence Russian soldiers unleashed on the local population, including committing horrific massacres of civilians. President Joe Biden has declared that Putin is a "war criminal" and called for him to be tried for war crimes. Now even the biggest Putin apologists at home are struggling to argue back in the face of images of dead civilians with their hands tied behind their backs and laying in the mud in Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv. Just to underscore how Russia is very much the bad guy here, Putin's government is trying to claim that Ukrainians killed those people, which is easy to disprove and also preposterous.

Putin is making it very hard for the American right these days. Not just for the Putin fanboys, either. He's also making life harder for Republicans who merely want to portray him as stronger and more adept than Biden and the other supposed weaklings of liberal democracy.
.

RELATED: Tucker Carlson's Hungarian rhapsody: A far-right manifesto for waging the "demographic war"

So Carlson, as usual, decided to pivot. On Monday, he retreated from the Putin apologia back to his safe zone of hyping the "good news" that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was re-elected. Prior to the Ukrainian invasion, Carlson had been using Orbán as his avatar for his fascist longings. He's repeatedly run segments using Hungary as evidence to his aging right-wing audience that the white nationalist utopia of his dreams is there for the taking, at the low price of abandoning liberal democracy. For now, this fantasy version of the supposedly white idyllic Hungary will be dangled out in front of Fox News viewers as a distraction from the true nature of the ideology Carlson is peddling, visible in the dead bodies rotting in the streets of Bucha.

But the American right doesn't want to hear that, whether they are cheering for Putin's victory or not. To admit that he screwed up is to admit that the democracy might have hidden strengths, precisely because it allows liberal values to flourish. As Ezra Klein notes at the New York Times, the right has been exploiting a sense that liberal democracy is "exhausted, ground down, defined by the contradictions and broken promises." They've been using people's exhaustion to advance an anti-democratic argument that ideologies like Trumpism are a necessary alternative. But "Ukraine's refusal to bend the knee to Vladimir Putin" has been a reminder that "liberalism is a marvel of imagination and ambition," and that basic values like democracy and freedom are, in fact, worth fighting for.

Again, it would be unwise to make bold predictions about how this will ultimately play out. Putin is devious and unhinged, and there's no telling what he will do in the face of these setbacks in Ukraine. The right's hopes that this situation can be leveraged as propaganda for authoritarianism around the globe have also not been totally dashed, and could come roaring back if Russia regains ground. Still, it's heartening to see that neither Ukraine nor supporters of democracy around the world are cowed so easily. It appears that authoritarians both here and abroad started to buy their own propaganda about how liberal democracy is a paper tiger. Now they're finding out that it actually has teeth.
Thuglife13 @Thuglife13
 

FINGERS

TMMAC Addict
Nov 14, 2019
16,508
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Everything wrong with society according to idiot Americans is the news media.

The news media that does not agree with them.. Despite demonstrable evidence they are wrong.

Trump has done it for shits and giggles

A mafioso bully the lower orders lap up because their lives are shit.

America was always corrupt. Because capitalism is obviously corrupt.

Same as communism.