(1) The Western/Ukrainian and Russian battlefield narratives are nearly the inversion of one another.
Many intelligent and highly informed commentators have observed this, including Belgian based Gilbert Doctorow, German based MoonOfAlabama, Australian cosmopolitan Caitlin Johnstone, British Tony Greenstein, and Russian based John Helmer (and possibly many others who publish at Consortium News, Naked Capitalism, Zero Hedge, (British) Duran, Russian-American TheSaker, former US marine intelligence officer Scott Ritter, former US intelligence officer Ray McGovern, and so on and on--I can't keep up with them all to know how many have made this exact point because the intellectual anti-Hegemonic presence is so vast and variable in true differences to exceed the all-the-same-where-it counts western Mainstream Media in orders of magnitude, meanwhile the pro-western space is transparent cartoon masters, pseudo-authorities who don't seem to think clearly about one thing or another, two-color-flag waving sheeple who don't seem to think at all, and a lot of bots likely owned by western intelligence that seem to have disappeared from Twitter recently but might be coming back any day now). I'm going to try to get a bit more philosophical here than they have time for, and be more speculative than they would dare.
The way it seems to work is that nearly all the people I respected most before I still respect now, though possibly in different degrees, and with lots of truly different additions as I've been scanning far and wide with purpose. Those who tell the correct story about US/Israel/Palestine, for example, generally tell the correct story about US/NATO/Ukraine/Russia. And the story about Israel/Palestine isn't that hard to know, if you have any kind of open mind, it was the exact issue that opened my mind 51 years ago when I considered myself a Conservative Republican but some Communist I ran into just mentioned the Nakba and like Oedipus I just had to find out more.
(2) The Western "free press" Mainstream Media (wMSM) says Dictator Putin is losing badly, driven out from whatever he tries to hold (such as Kiev) by courageous, tough, and honorable Ukrainians. His soldiers are poorly prepared, disengaged, and demoralized. They commit war crime atrocities (Mariupol, Bucha, Train Station) on top of the ultimate war crime of the Unprovoked Invasion itself. His plans are constantly failing badly and he is endlessly scaling back his objectives (despite continuing to pursue the restoration of the Soviet empire, if not all Western Europe--and this remains a grave danger, if he is not stopped now). Things are going so badly he might be just at the point of using chemical weapons or nukes (which he and/or his Minister of Defense (MoD) recently hinted at). He's lost umpteen Generals and is failing to disclose all his battle losses to their public for fear of revolution, which is already brewing in the streets (but being viciously subdued in totalitarian fashion, as always). There are very few Nazis in Ukraine, just like anywhere else in Europe, and they have miniscule influence and impact, only Russian propagandists say otherwise.
(3) Meanwhile, Realist/Conservative, most antiwar* and all specifically anti-Hegemonic, as well as pro-Russian and Russian Media commentators and websites say the virtually the inverse. US/Israel/Kolomoisky/Neonazi owned puppet Zelensky (worth millions if not billions due to the corruptness of Ukraine) is losing horribly on the battlefield. Ukraine's US/NATO trained air force (using Soviet era systems) was disabled in a day or two, and since then nearly all Ukrainian equipment, fighting capacity and strategic advantage has been systematically demolished, with less and less remaining on a daily basis (necessitating that more be delivered, but new weapons are also systematically destroyed immediately on arrival in Ukraine). The remaining large Ukrainian troop formations have been surrounded in massive cauldrons where they are being slowly but systematically pulverized by artillery, while hardened Neonazi militia installations which US/Zelensky deliberately placed in high profile civilian buildings over the last few years--and including many international and pro-Russian civilians as human shields--in strongly pro-Russian cities have been cornered and pinned down until they surrender (which on orders from US/Zelensky, if not threats from ruthless Neonazis, they largely refuse to do). Russia has does not use US/NATO/Israel style shock-and-awe deliberate targeting of civilians in big cities, or knock out power stations, water systems, news media, or telecommunications. Russia is trying to fight this war the old fashioned way, before the US Civil War, in which armies fight other armies and not civilian populations--at least as much as that can be avoided (which is hard, given the deliberate use of civilian buildings and human shields by the Neonazis). Russia is fighting for their ethnic Russian and compatible Ukrainian brothers (most of them except the Poles and Galatians in western Ukraine, who have always been Russian hating). Since Russia wants to protect its "brothers," and end up with pro-Russian statelets if not most or all of Ukraine as a neutral borderland, it must fight in ways that minimize harm to them. Nobody outside the highest circles in the Kremlin actually knows "the plan," which in any case evolves daily based on an accurate assessment of facts. But Russia never intended to occupy Kyiv, or any of western Ukraine, where it knows it is hated. It hoped to drive Kyiv to a quick and easy diplomatic bargain of accepting neutrality and Minsk II, or at least give them an honest chance of doing so in the name of fair play, but was thwarted by the ultimate and unchangeable plan of US/Zelensky to weaken if not break up the Russia of today into small pieces using Ukraine as the battering ram. President Putin's popularity has only increased, from 71% approval to 79% approval, since the war began, and even the Communist Party of Russia (CPR), which is the largest opposition party in Russia, gives the war effort 75% approval. Meanwhile the popularity of Western leaders like Biden has only been falling from around 39%, with even many Republicans in the coin operated US Congress balking against the latest $40 Billion in weapons gifting and "leasing." Russia has not called up any conscripts or Russian volunteers, preferring to use well trained professionals to carry out its plan with the fewest mishaps and missteps. Most Russian troops are not even fighting in Ukraine, being held in reserve for other eventualities, which are all too plausible as US/NATO gets more desperate to maintain its illusion of global superiority. Meanwhile, in Ukraine, the death and exhaustion of regular troops, Neonazis, and foreign mercenaries has led to Ukraine to draft every still breathing male, regardless of age or criminal status, with Neonazis ensuring no males find any way to escape from service by making horrid examples of those who do, often then conveniently providing props for false flag atrocities to be blamed on Russia. Russia was fully justified (some antiwar commentators deny that) in coming to the aid of its ethnic brothers in Ukraine, following the US engineered Maidan coup in 2014 and the resulting civil war which had already killed 14,000 pro-Russian Ukrainians before February 2022, and in the last week of February 2022 Zelensky had already started vastly increased shelling (documented by OSCE) of self proclaimed republics DPR and LPR to reclaim them by force. Reluctant Russia was forced to act to protect its brothers, and did so using the same formal justification (Right to Protect) as US/NATO used in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, but with far more justification in terms of there being a real threat to Russia itself. As such, Russian troops and civilians have a high morale, and are fighting for the continued existence and greatness of Russia itself and well as free global multipolarity (vs tyrannical US Hegemony) against an implacable US/NATO foe who has been waging cold and proxy wars against it for most of the preceding century and surrounding Russia with NATO weapons installations, troops, and other forms of organized hatred.
(*Except DemocracyNow!, Yasha Levine sometimes, and bourgeois faux left in general, reminiscent of the German SPD that voted for war in 1914, including especially most anarchists, Trotskyists, and utopian socialists. Even I'm sad to say, many Communists, but not their greybeards.)
4) Since the lies of war are intended to Manufacture Consent for more war (as aptly described by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky), I have many times suggested that a good starting point rule of thumb is that the country which kills the most people over a generation or two or more is the one that lies the most. (Obviously you can't just look and one particular day, though right now US is murdering people in Afghanistan and many other countries through sanctions, and backing the continued hot war in Yemen, so it might even apply many days now, even during the Russian Special Operations.) I still believe this, and that it applies perfectly in this case. Since WWII, no country on earth has been responsible for more excess deaths due to hot wars, sanctions, and coups than the USA. I have heard estimated ranging from 30 to 40 million, including the hot wars in Korea, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, coups in Iran, Guatemala, Kenya, Indonesia, Chile, El Salvador, Honduras, Ukraine itself, and many others (I believe a full list is nearly 80 countries) and sanctions against Iraq (a million deaths due to sanctions alone), Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, China, Russia, and many others. Meanwhile the excess deaths caused by the current Russian regime and the previous one during these times is vastly smaller, but including Hungary, Poland, and Afghanistan (maybe I should not include Afghanistan as some note that in Afghanistan Russia was called in for protection by the existing secular democratic government against US armed extremist Mujahadeen jihadis, as they were called in for protection by the elected President of Syria, and of course now the self-declared republics of DPR and LPR, and similar issues might even apply in Hungary and Poland). Anyway, if one gets too wound up in the fine points here, one might miss the big picture, and the big picture is clearly that US military operations during during that last 75 years or so have killed perhaps 20 times more people (if not far more that were unjustified) and most of these wars look very very unjustified in hindsight, and in fact most of them were lost anyway.
People I know think this is far too easy. One should look at the facts at hand in this specific case, not the last 20-75 years, they say.
And why is 75 years a good cutoff point anyway? I think it's a convenient cutoff point for many reasons, including that during WWII the US and Russia were allies fighting Nazi Germany. Russia suffered 20 million deaths during that war defending their country from the extreme viciousness of the Nazis and Nazi allies. But they also killed a few Germans, Poles, and others in the process. It gets complicated if you question whether all those deaths defending Russia were justifiable deaths (I think it's pretty clear they were, but anti-Russia polemicists like Timothy Snyder say otherwise).
But what if you drew the line at, say, 1910, in which the Tsarist Russian regime was about as deadly as the US regime. Of course, if you include multiple regimes like this, why not go all the way back to 1619 in which European Colonists (whose descendents are now Americans) killed 100 million or more native americans in the greatest genocide in world history.
Basically, the US and the West have at least an order of magnitude more excess deaths in nearly any multi-generational time frame to ignore, therefore they lie more in order to ignore them. They also have ongoing operations to lie or ignore, including the relentless war in Yemen, the starvation of Afghanistan by sanctions, and more.
6) Others suggest that since the US and Western countries today have much greater freedom of the press and freedom of speech, it is likely that others such as Russia lie more. I don't think this is true, for several reasons.
a) The western MSM is entirely owned by incredibly rich oligarchs, who are often associated with military contractors and related businesses, and have both personal and indirect "intelligence" connections. Also the western MSM may be assumed to be riddled with intelligence assets and agents (since western intelligence agencies have orders of magnitude more funds available to them than Russia) and they RELY on intelligence and other government agencies and individuals for their stories. So the press is not exactly free, in fact, it's incredibly expensive, and thereby owned lock, stock, and barrel by the establishment, sometimes called the Media and Military Industrial Complex (MMiC). Virtually everyone you see on TV is a millionaire, and people like Rachel Maddow are multimillionaires, and Thomas Friedman is married to a billionaire. This means such people are deeply connected to the establishment, if not weapons makers, government intelligence, and all the rest
b) The "freedom" of the press and speech in the west has been inconsistent. Prior to the Brandenburg v Ohio ruling by the US Supreme Court in 1969, you could get imprisoned for selling books by Marx and Lenin in the USA. So it happened to a person I knew pretty well, John Stanford of Texas, in 1964. His case was ultimately thrown out on an evidence gathering technicality, but the statute against communist and "subversive" literature in Texas and other states endured until 1969. Nowadays, the US has been persecuting journalist Julian Assange for over a decade for revealing the truth about an operation in Iraq which killed civilians. Nobody disputes that the story he revealed (via government made videos) was inaccurate, or that telling it interfered with ongoing US military or intelligence operations. There's actually a pretty long list of journalists who have been persecuted by the US or West for doing journalism. No doubt the same is true for journalists in Russia and China, but the point I'm trying to make is that true freedom of the press exists nowhere and therefore argument (6) cannot be used to show that the west is more honest.
c) The new Social Media is equally billionaire owned and intelligence riddled.
d) Living in an entertainment utopia, US and other westerners are basically amused to death. Most hardly remember facts from one day to the next. The story could get turned upside down, and few would notice.
Now some people I know have near photographic memories and do not forget so easily. The problem with many of these people, primarily, is that they never ever venture beyond wMSM. wMSM hardly ever bothers, except when it cannot be avoided, to correct the record. Since wMSM is so vast, covering multiple seemingly disparate points of view (except wrt foreign policy, wars, and MiC) it's easy to believe that everything is being covered. But, and systematically, it isn't.
A good example is the allegations of the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government. By now, every one of these allegations has been disproven by reputable authorities. But how many Americans know this?
Likewise with every allegation made in the fake Russiagate scandals. Every claim has now been either disproven or undermined, but few Americans are aware of any of these corrections, or even if they have heard them, they have also heard a skillfully crafted mind twisting rebut by the likes of the incredibly rich, highly intelligent (and intelligence connected) Rachel Maddow.
e) People in poorer non-Western countries are not being amused quite as well. As one friend of mine says, Americans trust their media but Russians do not trust their media. They go over everything with a fine tooth comb. Therefore, the Russian media cannot lie as much.
f) Now what about non-anti-Hegemonic "alternative" antiwar media such as DemocracyNow!, or (sometimes) The Intercept. Actually, The Intercept *is* also effectively Billionaire Owned, by Pierre Omidyar, as the people at Grayzone have pointed out. DemocracyNow takes no corporate donations, but most likely many rich people contribute to enable it to have such lavish studios and operations.
g) DemocracyNow! is also part of a longstanding tendency of anarchists, Trotskyites, and others like them to essentially tell the bad stories from all sides. Superficially this seems good, why not assume the worst, but many of these bad stories are fake. And nobody in history has created so many false flags or demonized as many leaders of foreign countries as the USA. The USA has do do this (see item 4). So if you simply tell all the bad stories, most of those bad stories told about the Enemies of the USA will be fake.
One should know that when Trotsky left the Soviet Union he became one of its fiercest critics. At that point, he basically became a tool of (and was paid by) western intelligence.
A number of well known Trotskyist socialists ultimately morphed in what we now now as the Neocons. This is less strange than it would at first appear. Both before and after their "conversion" they were critical, above all, of the Soviet Union and hopeful that the "more honest" west would fix it.
h) What about Yasha Levine. Yasha fits pretty well into the liberal anarchist tradition.
Also, because he is a disaffected Russian Expat, one should follow the special Expat Rule. Expats have nothing good and everything bad to say about the country they came from, and especially where it has gone since they left. This follows from the elementary psychology of self-justification. He left, therefore there was a reason he left, therefore what he left was bad and only gotten worse, therefore it is good that he left. I've heard of Expat Chinese who have gone so far as to say that Chinese (those of the country they left) have no soul.
But there are also deeper problems with Yasha's analysis. He completely discounts history and geography, and especially Russian geography and history. With my first look at Ukraine on the map, I could see why the Realists were saying to leave Ukraine alone (as a Russian vassal state) and not try to make it an American vassal state. Yasha is a liberal/anarchist journalist, not a military analyst.
(Not be a vassal state? Don't be an idealist fool, of the kind who believes the time of states disappearing is at hand. Ukraine is in a historic global "hot-spot" because of regional geography much like Israel. No small state in that situation can possibly produce all its own armaments and defend itself from global empire or empires. Marxist-Leninists should not be fooled like that. We are realists, not idealists. Not even Israel can do that alone, it needs an empire, the area (Palestine is a better word) has always had an imperial backer and Jerusalem has changed hands, so to speak, at least 44 times. Have "self-determination"? Don't make me laugh. All is manufactured with billions in propaganda from the richer (and more thieving) empire, changes over time, and is geographically variable. Even "free will" is like this...it's paid influence all the way down to perhaps a handful of real needs and fake strategies of achieving them--a fundamental problem with liberalism itself and one of many in capitalist economics; possibly the leading contradiction in capitalist societies themselves. Will is 99.8% exogenous and the rest is almost invariant biology, like hunger. False promises of satisfaction are endless, and satisfaction will never come accompanied by IMF austerity. And international authorities only come to verify elections or referenda when they generally like the idea. DPR and LPR referenda showed they wanted to and deserved to split in the same way that Ukraine itself spit from Russia, with even more justification because their preferred constitutionally elected President was overthrown in a foreign assisted coup and communist banning and socialist burning Nazis and their supporters and/or supplicants like Zelensky/Kolomoisky continue to rule their country, which is more like a composite the west set on fire. Ultimately, the more brotherly superior is going to be the one next door, the one with blood, linguistic, and religious ties, and not the one across the world set on owning the world. But getting there has often required a long war of "self"-discovery.)
Chomsky is one of the few anarchists who can be mostly trusted. (Don't get me wrong, Yasha is not too bad either, except for what he says about Russia today.) Chomsky seems to have had a conversion experience in the 1970's. During the 1970's, Chomsky came under fire for coddling dictators like the Khmer Rouge and even Nazi Germany (Chomsky defended an alleged holocaust denier because of Chomsky's truly principled free speech principles). Since then, Chomsky has been very careful not to ever sound like he is defending the likes of President Bashir al Assad by consistently prefacing his name with the word Monster every single time his name comes up, and so on for the leaders of many US enemy countries. Recently, he slipped back into the old laxity, and it sounded as if he were defending Donald Trump (but you have to listen to his complete presentation...elsewhere he soundly denounces Donald Trump)--and for a brief moment he sounded like the Earlier Chomsky, where you could later take one little clip out of context to show him coddling Trump. Where he says "the only elder statesman" to see what needs to be done with Ukraine (negotiated settlement) why does he single out Trump and not even mention Jeremy Corbyn, a much more decent person? Partly it's for shock value, and partly it's because Jeremy Corbyn, while a fine Member of Parliament, has never ever been Prime Minister of England. Trump has been the President of the USA and it's hard to get more on-top than that. A Member of Parliament is not really a statesman in that way, he hasn't been directly responsible for state and foreign affairs. One might argue that Trump wasn't particularly either, such as when he backed down on delaying weapons to Ukraine under pressure of Impeachment. But still, a seconds delay is a seconds delay.
i) What about Aaron Mate, Craig Murray, and various others who basically get the story right but nevertheless say Putin was wrong to "invade" Ukraine, he should have done something (though they're never very clear about what he could or should have done that he hadn't already tried twelve times over) etc?
The answer is you never even have to make any judgements about anyone at all. The wisest people avoid all judgements (much as Jesus advised). I do it for for the vanity or something (knowing it may well be my ultimate mistake and downfall) but it's not really necessary. All you really need to do is tell the story correctly then let the reader decide, etc.
So if in fact you make a judgement (such as Putin was wrong to invade) that is incorrect, it barely matters compared with getting the overall story right or wrong. It's just another associative data point which is easily ignored (see item 14) amidst a story that provides far more points.
7) Cartoons and Demonizations. Western Media is cartoonish. It's always black vs white. Our country is noble and concerned with human rights for all (well obviously not) and our enemies are led by evil tyrannical dictators who aim to conquer the world and make us all their slaves (as if a head of state could be that deranged, like Goldfinger).
I simply can't bear to listen to western TV and Radio and I can just barely, sometimes, read the western media in print. It's just so silly. It's like you're being sold obviously defective products 24/7 by crooked salespeople, which is basically what's happening. It's all reminiscent of the pumped up announcer voice of the monologue at the end of What Do You Want From Life by The Tubes: "Well, you can't have that, but if you are an American citizen, you are entitled to a heated kidney shaped pool...a Winnebago, we're giving 'em away...and a baby's arm holding an apple."
Putin is always said to be an evil dictator, rarely said to be an elected President, not ever said to be highly popular and internationally respected (outside the western media dome.
Do the antiwar and anti-hegemonic sources I follow demonize western leaders as much. Basically not. Though US/NATO policies are justifiably seen as originating from the desires of the Military Industrial Complex and the Oligarchy, and not fundamental human justice and peace around the world. IOW, what is demonized, correctly, is the deep state of MMiC, Intelligence, Crime/Punishment, and Oligarchy. People on the surface are figurines on top of the cake, mainly for show, to give the illusion of functioning democracy to rubes, not to say that some rather important things like personal rights may be lost if you don't have the right figurines on top always, no exceptions allowed, making the whole thing a kind of doomsday device.
Putin is not only popular in Russia, he is very intelligent and articulate. One need only listen to Putin, or read his speeches, and compare those to speeches by western leaders. It's astonishing how well Putin, Xi, and other Enemy leaders sound compared to our guys. Any 3 year old can follow and repeat a speechy by Biden (if he could tolerate him at all, as I can't) while Putin's speeches are more like doctoral dissertations.
But you would never, ever know this listening to only western media.
Meanwhile, the accusations against Putin are plainly ridiculous, like the claim he intends to resurrect the old empire of the Soviet Union. This seems to be based on a few comments he made in the 1990's. We can all see how difficult it is to reclaim Russian speaking Novorossiya, how is that going to work in Poland or Sweden??? Nothing is ever said of the eloquent speeches he has given regarding the Russian Special Operations in Ukraine.
8. Who needs to lie, what for, and how much?
9. Illogic.
10. Elided facts.
11. Critical Reading
It's actually strange, very strange, that liars almost always give themselves away when read critically.
To lie well, you have to believe in what you are saying. Then, is it really lying? Almost certainly such liars would be able to hear lies of similar nature uttered by others, and reading them critically, see that they were lies. So the most capable liars lie by suppressing their desire to think critically in the area where they are going to lie, but not so much in other areas. This deviation in the areas where they think critically and where they don't is how they give themselves away. It's still lying, btw.
12. Read all Sources Critically and Carefully
I'm going to specifically denounce this. It's humanly impossible. In fact, what you must do is pick a side and stick to it as much as you can. Listen to other sides through your side AND whatever happens to seep in from elsewhere. Living in the USA it's impossible NOT TO BE aware of the pro-western side. It's on every channel and likely in the minds of nearly every one of your friends. I do subscribe to two American papers and try to read their headlines, as well as the headlines of DemocracyNow! But I have little patience to go beyond that. For those sticking to the other side, like me they should be at least aware of what and how the other side is saying but usually they haven't got a clue.
Of course it is important to find the correct side. If you happened to pick the wrong side, well, the price is eternal damnation or something like that, and possibly early death before that. But you can always change (while you're still alive at least--so avoid risky situations like the plague while you can). So that's another thing, when the weight of evidence in your brain falls over to the other side (which is unlikely given confirmation bias, but not impossible) you must switch over. I am one of the few people in the world who has made many of these changes, so I feel that means I'm far ahead of most. I started as a Republican (I met Edwin Meese III in Sacramento as a Junior Republican), became something like a progressive democrat (I can't remember what they called it then, but I preferred Udall to Carter), a Socialist, and now a Marxist-Leninist Communist.
Anyway, you need to stick to one side because you must hear and memorize every single story and substory otherwise you're toast. Otherwise the know it alls who have photographic recollections of, say, the Western side will nail you every time, usually on some piece of crap NPR said years ago--never to follow up on probably because it was widely debunked elsewhere--but you have to know how and why it is crap. That takes endless work. If you dilute your effort by trying to read all sides carefully, you'll drown in crap before making any progress.
13. Empiricism without Thinking, Theory, Speculation, and Hypothesis testing is useless
Anyway, few of us are actually doing on-the-ground observation in any meaningful way anyway. We're "observing" by watching (likely concocted) videos and the like. I am strongly annoyed by those who say in order to understand any country, you have to have lived there. Most people who would say this haven't got a clue about other classes, probably the masses, even where they live mostly People live in their own bubbles no matter where they live. And if you merely visit, you're likely to be getting a contrived and disinformative canned tour.
Misinformation most commonly reveals itself through internal inconsistencies rather than the true observations few of us are capable of anyway.
14. Writing is more important than Reading. It is often observed that you learn better from teaching than anything else. Teaching focuses the mind in ways that are normally avoided. That's my best justification for even writing to this blog, though I like to think of how I may be admired in 500 years (as it's certainly not happening now as I am writing, as far as I can tell anyway).
15. Mostly Ignore the Strangeness of Bedfellows. The standard way the Big Camps argue nowadays is by association. If it happens that Russians, Republicans, or some other misguided souls say the same thing as you do, you'll be roasted. So if I say something that Tucker Carlson once said, or Glenn Greenwald once said on Tucker Carlson's show, some people will snort "well that just shows you've become a Republican white supremacist" or perhaps "useful idiot."
Association is the least informative method of inference. Association can mean many things, but is poor at prediction, and even poorer at inference of causation. Hence, we have the very often correct accusation of (false) guilt by association. Association means little or nothing. Guilt requires active participation reaching collaboration. And in this case, I hesitate to unequivocally endorse Greenwald either, but once and awhile (on US empire related issues mostly) he gets it correct. Often a bit more than actual "libertarian" Republicans like Ron Paul. What this says about Glenn Greenwald hardly matters. He can be an excellent presenter on the fraction of issues he gets correctly, the rest left mostly unread.)
Tucker Carlson has a more few fingers in the air for popular thinking more than most on the CIA controlled US MSM. So he picks up on populist antiwar sentiments, very endemically popular on all sides but widely ignored elsewhere, mainly to shepherd them into the far right camp. When push comes to shove, he must know the rule (back US war or else). We may see or not. Meanwhile his CIA masters allow some slip because they're far white supremacists too, that's the way it on right side of the "intelligence" community, that side that featured Roy Cohn and now Trump. Since there's no thinking on that side, only identification, absolute reversals can be made at any time, supporting the wars that must be supported. So, meanwhile, if it's only Democratic "intelligence" (and far away foreigners and mercenaries) being killed, and there's a Democratic president to take the blame for it all, war can be questioned by those matching the social preferences of the right oligarchy.
Where variation is possible, variation will occur. Things will get all mixed up whenever it is possible, and less when it is less possible.
Nowadays, it sadly seems that Democrats have become the party voice (in the media anyway) least tolerant of doctrinal deviation. (I still count myself as Democrat as one of my 200 or so "identifications" in that I mostly have voted and likely will next time for Democrats. I have in the past and possibly will again work as a Democratic apparatchik at some level at some point in the future. But I'm an outlier, mainly by virtue of intellectual flexibility. I'm smart enough to know what to say and when to say it, except when confronted by a new pretty lady when I will invariably put my foot in my mouth, if I can even open it at all.) This is because most Democrats pride themselves most on thinking (not winning) and have to do a near impossible job of squaring the circle. (I'm neither square nor circle, but something else altogether in the 11th dimension.) Ignoring, for example, the utter failure of Democrats to deliver on any of their promises since about 1965. And mostly losing badly in the pseudo-democratic scammer "republic" (read oligarchy) of the USA in that exact same time frame possibly for that same reason. They must ignore many inconsistencies, debunkings, and failures of the Russiagate narrative and the election actually lost by Hillary Clinton herself. And so on. And yet, they pride themselves on logic, reason, and science. So they must be thinking right, all the time, even strolling right over the cliff following the party line. Problem is, if you must always be thinking right, you're not actually thinking at all.
Democratic politicians also serve the oligarchy differently. They actually don't line up with the full (basically fascist) US oligarchy. They deviate slightly in social affairs, so as to create a meaningful differentiation from Republicans (but have little incentive from their big money backers and screeners to actually accomplish anything). In order for the oligarchy to let them win at all (or get crushed by the media), in exchange for their softer stance on social issues (not fascist there anyway) they are required to be 100% compliant with the needs of Empire. In this role, as has often been pointed out, Democratic politicians and other names establish the "left edge" (actually somewhere near the center) of acceptable debate.
Or, as some have claimed, Democrats are the party of war, and Republicans are the party of recession. But Republicans have always backed coups and proxy wars and threats, and George W. Bush reversed the record big time by starting two massive wars, on false pretexts as usual.
Republicans have it much easier. They never have and never will care about thinking (at least after Lincoln's assassination--he wouldn't even belong in the party known for him anymore...such is how strange things are). If you will vote for Trump or some similar demagogue, you're welcome in the tent. Just don't speak very loudly if you believe in a woman's right to choose, or gay rights, etc. But they're happy to have Log Cabin Republicans and similar non-thinking persons as more cannon fodder. It's not about how you think--thinking is not even admired and when it happens to occur it is usually promptly ignored anyway. The important thing to them is not thinking, but winning, and guess what they have been and likely will continue to keep doing for some time, perhaps until it's all over. Winning that can and will rely on any means possible. Leading, of course, to ultimate disaster.
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