I think you are misunderstanding what I was suggesting (which I admit may be totally wrong, I just put it forth as an alternative possibility). The letter as written suggests the obvious course which no sane person disagrees with, which Biden is already implementing to the extent possible and which the letter admits he is doing.
However there are certain highly cynical members of the far left who will ascribe corrupt motives to Biden (or AOC or Trump anyone in power) . See for example
William Hartung writes, “Aid designed to help Ukraine defend itself from Russia has proceeded at the most rapid pace of any U.S. military assistance program since at least the peak of the Vietnam War. But the United States has failed to offer an accompanying diplomatic strategy aimed at ending the war before it evolves into a long, grinding conflict or escalates into a direct U.S.-Russian confrontation.”
My suggestion is that this letter is trying to counter that narrative by explicitly stating that that is not what we are doing.
I’ve heard of worse. But until we know more, if we ever do, then it’s just speculation.
It may have been a complete accident, as I said, and I can think of a few scenarios where that happens. It may have been intentional on someone’s part, but that doesn’t reflect on anyone else. It could have been done with the full blessing of all the signers, and now they are backtracking after hearing people like the OP misrepresent their words and intentions.
In any case, I can’t say I disagree with anything they said, though they could have said some things better, and some things didn’t need to be said at all, but it is people like the OP who call them traitors who are the ones in the wrong here.
Your points are well-made and well-taken, though I have some quibbles of my own. Regarding the above: I think it’s important to cleanly delineate these two factors. It is quite possible for Putin to have behaved totally rationally given the context of the misinformation bubble he clearly lives in (though the extent of the bubble remains to be determined).
I try to remind myself of CGP Grey’s Rules for Rulers video, which is worth a watch, but can be roughly paraphrased as: for rulers, especially authoritarian ones, what may look irrational from the outside may be perfectly rational from their perspective. And not just from the perspective of immediate self-interest; simply holding the country together may require what looks like irrational action.
So yes, somehow determining exactly where Putin is on the reality spectrum, whether he really is acting rationally, the source of that rationality (just staying alive, or in some distorted fashion actually trying to do what’s best for Russia?), and so on is going to be crucial.
It’s hard (though not impossible) for me to believe that Putin doesn’t view the war as a mistake at this point. It’s tough to truly isolate anyone to that extent, plus the Russian government has been very weakly acknowledging that things have become difficult. That is likely the closest we’ll see to admitting a total fuck-up, and it’s not quite at the level of admitting they’re looking for any sort of out that they can sell to the populace, but it’s pretty close.
I get that; I just disagree that the letter is essentially addressed to the far left. I don’t think they have any real influence, and thus their feelings don’t need to be assuaged. I think the straightforward reading of the letter is the correct one: that the longer this goes on, the greater the risk of escalation, and since there is no possible end that doesn’t involve diplomacy, we should be pursuing that course vigorously. And though it shouldn’t need to be said because it’s completely obvious, any agreement needs to be acceptable to the people of Ukraine. There’s just no need to read more into the letter than that.
Right? Why on Earth anyone would post something like, “They said they wanted X, but they didn’t say it enough times for my liking, therefore I am going to assume they want the opposite of X,” and expect to be taken seriously is beyond me.
Just read the letter.
But, but, but… why did they write it?
They put that in the letter.
But, but, but… what are their goals?
That’s in the letter.
Agree fully w your whole post, this snip being the meat.
Calling one’s opposition irrational or a madman is often just name-calling. I didn’t and don’t mean that. The critical difference IMO between “rational” and “irrational” is whether one has any hope of using knowledge of human nature to predict the response to any proposed stimulus. IOW, can game theory be used, or are we dealing with somebody who often decides by in effect just rolling some dice or consulting a particularly hostile / petulant version of the Magic 8-ball?
As we see with ordinary citizens in this country immersed for years in the RW propaganda-o-sphere, they can become so invested in “facts” that aren’t so that they act in ways that seem rational to them but appear irrational to others. It’s only by deeply studying whatever they have been fed that one can learn to simulate thinking as they do and thereby predict their actions with any semblance of reliability.
It’s not that hard for scholars to know and comprehend the history & current trajectory of e.g. US RW propaganda. It’s much harder to know what “facts” and beliefs Putin & his inner circle have been working with.
We’ve often talked here of avoiding the mistake of thinking the next Russian leader will be a peacenik or someone of a pro-western bent. Heck, I’d be overjoyed at somebody who at least agreed that borders are borders even if they hated everything the West stands for and hope to build a separate apartheid civilization of their own.
The point being to avoid personalizing this as “Putin is the problem”. Nope. Russian exceptionalism and institutional paranoia is the problem. Just as US exceptionalism & paranoia is often the problem when we do something stupid or short-sightedly selfish.
Nothing really to add here. I agree completely. It will be interesting to see if it is even possible to disentangle them from their own propaganda. Are they just misinformed, or have they gone full QAnon-style crazy about their own country? If it’s the former, perhaps there’s a chance. But we’ve seen what happens to people here when they are steeped in misinformation bubbles for too long, and it’s not pretty. What happens when you apply that to a whole country?
Maybe it’s a fool’s errand to hope for a constructive debate about the letter, in a Pit thread entitled: “The House Progressive Caucus is full of traitors”!
I completely understand why that rhetoric might derail the discussion.
I’m not at all interested in smearing the progressives in the House, with whom I agree on a whole lot of issues.
About the letter itself, though…
It’s surely relevant that several of the congresspeople who originally signed the letter have disavowed it for specific reasons – mostly for being inappropriate to the current moment. It’s even more relevant that the Caucus as a whole has officially withdrawn the letter.
Withdrawn the letter!
I thought this was a self-evidently anodyne letter that no reasonable person could possibly object to?
And yet here we are.
I don’t know how anyone continues to defend the letter without considering that even the Caucus as a whole, and a number of signatories individually, have now repudiated the letter. Why not hear them out?
Propaganda works best when people are free to choose it. If you have a single state owned media outlet, then at least some people will be suspicious about what it says.
If you can choose who you listen to, and you find someone saying something that you want to hear, then you are much more likely to consume the drink-aid they are offering you.
The reason that the Progressive caucus has withdrawn the letter is because of the unreasonable backlash it got from people like the OP and others who couldn’t be bothered to read past the headlines, and just jumped on the latest outrage wagon, and because the contents were no longer as relevant to the situation as they were when it was written.
That said, no one has pointed to anything in the letter that actually needs to be defended. The “defense” here has been pointing out that the letter doesn’t say the things that people like the OP claims it does.
Just because they have withdrawn the letter doesn’t mean that people like the OP can just lie about it without pushback.
I’ve read the articles that you posted, and none of them have the writers or signatories saying that there was anything in the letter that was untrue, just that it was no longer relevant to the current circumstances and shouldn’t have been released at this time.
I don’t know how anyone continues to attack the letter without considering that in order to do so, they have to just blatantly lie about its contents or the motives of its authors. Maybe they just like to lie and slander people they have chosen to hate. Actually, now that I think about it, that’s exactly what it is.
Chad is the guy who came up with, “They did say they wanted a resolution acceptable to the people of Ukraine, but they didn’t say it enough times,” and then went on to misleadingly take some of Zelensky’s statements out of context to bolster his point.
While I generally agree with you, the whole mess with people signing it months ago and then getting surprised by its release would probably create a similar mess even if the letter was about a hot dog being a sandwich. As far as the internal politics of the progressive caucus, this likely has as much or more to do with just the trust between members than the actual contents.
There’s no greater freedom of choice than when you write your own propaganda. And that, it seems, is part of the problem here. It is one thing to keep the people in line via propaganda. But what happens when the government starts making military decisions based on those lies? When every department–whether military, intelligence, diplomatic, economic, or otherwise–only provides upstream feedback consistent with the party line?
Citizens for Sanity, which is run by a bunch of former Trump White House employees including Stephen ‘Young Gargamel’ Miller, has bought some World Series ad time and they aren’t holding back on the crazy.
The one that was just on was straight up, anti-Ukraine, Russian propaganda. “Biden is sending billions to Ukraine instead of using that money for Americans” “Biden’s involvement in Ukraine is leading us to Armageddon”
Literally saying out out loud all the shit that folks made up about the Progressive Caucus letter.
I can’t find it online yet, but I’ll post it here when I do. Then we’ll have some real pro-Putin, anti-Ukraine stuff in this thread at last.
In the meantime here’s a Tweet that captures the essence.
“Biden is sending billions to Ukraine instead of using that money for Americans”? Really? Suddenly you guys are in favor of government funding the social safety net?
'Course we all know “using that money for Americans” is dog whistle for ‘give the rich another tax cut’.