Opinion

In any negotiation to stop Vladimir Putin's unprovoked terror war against the Ukrainian people, may we add one small demand — that he open his borders to anti-Americans here at home?

This article first appeared in Salon.

It was a double-whammy for two of then-President Donald Trump’s biggest patrons, Vladimir Putin and American fossil-fuel billionaires and their industry: the price of oil was too damn low.

Between the pandemic-induced collapse in demand for oil and the price war Saudi Arabia was then fighting with Russia — two of the world’s largest producers — Putin was being pinched badly. And in America, from Pennsylvania to Texas, oil producers were outright losing money on the oil they pumped. Gas prices were at record lows, gutting the profits even of refiners.

That health care is legal under Texas law, but this is election season. Cynics who think politicians will say anything to get reelected have a new, sparkling piece of evidence.

Other people caught doing what the governor and attorney general are doing — Texas public school students, for instance — risk breaking the law. Check out the definition of illegal bullying in the Texas Education Code: “Bullying means a single significant act or a pattern of acts by one or more students directed at another student that exploits an imbalance of power and involves engaging in written or verbal expression, expression through electronic means, or physical conduct …”

Over the weekend, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., threw out an enticing coinage for some of the most flagrant supporters of Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Republican Party: The "Putin wing."

Cheney was specifically reacting to Douglas MacGregor, who was appointed to be a senior advisor to the Secretary of Defense by Donald Trump, and on Fox Business said that Russian forces invading Ukraine were being "too gentle." Most folks, however, took Cheney's new term to be much broader than that to encompass Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson of Fox News, and any Republicans who were praising Putin before it became suddenly unfashionable to do so approximately two weeks ago. Most of those folks are, reluctantly, claiming disapproval of the invasion of Ukraine, but are likely biding their time until outrage subsides and they can start pushing a pro-Putin line again. Indeed, Carlson has already started to test the waters by accusing the U.S. of victimizing Russia with a "disinformation campaign".

In the end, future historians may well label this the first "social media war," just as Vietnam was the first televised war and the Gulf War of 1991 was the first cable news war.

And as Vladimir Putin's "chosen war" against Ukraine enters its third week, fear and outrage continue to spread across the globe like gangrene. It's increasingly apparent that social media is driving the coverage and providing key information.

The rioters Donald Trump sicced on the Capitol were still tearing the place apart on January 6, 2021, when the folks at Fox News began their effort to minimize the seriousness of the insurrection. Behind the scenes, hosts like Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity were frantically texting the White House, begging Trump to call his people back, but on-air, they were vigorously defending the insurrectionists.

"It's not like it's a siege," Fox host Bret Baier said while thousands of Trump supporters literally overran cops, broke windows, and chased terrified members of Congress through the hallways. Various Fox News personalities would go on to claim that Trump's supporters were only there to "peacefully protest" and pinned the blame for the violence on "antifa" infiltrators.

Russian oligarchs are in the news lately. They are the chief targets of global sanctions imposed in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Squeezing them will do two things, the thinking goes (as far as I can tell). It will drain Russia’s resources, thus hastening the war’s end. It will put greater pressure on Vladimir Putin, who controls the oligarchs.

At the end of 2020 I thought I had written my last piece about former attorney general William Barr. I had followed his two-year tenure very closely and wrote about it often, always dismayed by what was obviously a very arrogant man who was suffering from a terminal case of Fox News Brain Rot. He would have been more to be pitied than censured if it weren't for the fact that he was running interference for the most powerful man in the country. Now Barr has published the obligatory tell-all about his time in the Trump administration, called "One Damn Thing After Another," and I am compelled to write about him one more time.

Barr's overweening egotism, so flamboyantly displayed in his new book and accompanying promotional appearances, is second only to Donald Trump himself. He has said repeatedly on his book tour that he doesn't care what people think of him and I believe him. After all, when you think as highly of yourself as he does, approbation from others is totally unnecessary.

Let’s step back for a moment from the awful human tragedy in Ukraine as the Russian army targets civilians. There is an even bigger issue here. And until we come up with an answer it’s going to continue to plague the world.

It’s an issue that Americans, more than anyone else, should understand. Yet based on all the news and commentary I’ve been reading since the Russian buildup began almost a year ago, this overarching issue is not even on the table.

We learned this week the J6 committee is investigating former President Donald Trump and his advisor John Eastman for the same offense many foot soldiers of the insurrection are charged with.

The committee suspects Trump and Eastman obstructed an official proceeding, a felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

Even against an overwhelming backdrop of relentless GOP book banning and censorship attempts of recent months, Florida's "don't say gay" bill stands out from the crowd.

There are good reasons why the proposed legislation, which passed the Florida Senate on Tuesday, is drawing national attention and condemnation. The bill doesn't just ban teachers from allowing any acknowledgment of LGBTQ people in the classroom, it uses the novel "bounty hunter" system Texas used to ban abortion to allow parents to sue schools if, say, a teacher allows a kid with same-sex parents to talk about it in class. Even Kate McKinnon of "Saturday Night Live" jokingly weighed in on a recent "Weekend Update."

In Russia, though, it has been the subject of intense focus.

Why?

Fox News willed the "People's Convoy" into being. For weeks, the network hyped the "trucker" protest in the Canadian capital of Ottawa, spinning it as a grassroots uprising of ordinary Canadians angry about vaccine mandates and other Covid-19 mitigation policies. In reality, however, it was organized by far-right activists — almost none of whom are actually truckers — whose goal was to exploit pandemic anxieties to recruit more people towards a fascist cause. And that is, of course, why Fox News loved it. And that's why the network spent weeks not only glamorizing the occupation that made life hell in the city for weeks but openly begging their viewers to throw together their own version in the U.S. —except with more violence.

It's a testament to the network's power over its audience that soon there was a "People's Convoy" in the U.S., even though there aren't many vaccine or mask mandates for right-wingers to protest. A growing group of angry right-wingers, led by some big rig trucks, took road trips across the country, in theory to converge on D.C. to send this anti-mandate message. Without actual mandates to protest, however, it swiftly became clear that the real purpose of the convoy was to troll liberals and get attention. Quite literally, organizers declared their intention to be a "huge pain" to the residents of D.C., who have long been demonized in barely coded racist terms in the right-wing press.