You know, it feels to me that we are missing an opportunity to have an extremely important discussion about the soul of this nation right now. I mean, beyond just ridiculing these people and calling them monsters. Because the point of view they are voicing is not uncommon...
When Dr. Oz talks about an "appetizing" opportunity to sacrifice 3% of our children or an honorable Congressman from Indiana says that "sacrificing American lives is better than sacrificing the American way of life" - this stuff is not really out of mainstream! Let me explain...
See, the one distinguishing characteristic of Western liberalism vs. Eastern authoritarianism is a very simple set of priorities: does the state exist for people or do people exist for the state? In Russia, for about 100% of its existence, the latter has been the case...
Russians aren't generally ashamed of this. They will often proudly declare that, unlike Americans and other "fat" Western societies, they are perfectly willing to give their lives, and lives of their loved ones, "for the Motherland" or "for the Idea"...
In a collectivist society, yeah, it's nice if your citizens are happy and not like starving en masse, but ultimately they're viewed as expendable material in the Making the Motherland Great Project. This is why we win our wars the way we do: by drowning enemies in our own corpses
This is why Stalin ordered Kiev to be liberated by November 1943, instead of taking a more methodical approach. He needed it to be done by the Revolution Day, for PR reasons. It was done. We lost 28,000+ lives. The Germans lost about 2,600. The Motherland's expendable children...
Khrushchev was famously unimpressed when Eisenhower showed him products of American technology: fridges, TV sets and suchlike. He was put off by how small Americans think. All this garbage to make some townsfolk's lives more comfortable? Pah! We shot a man into goddamn space!
Yes, our regular people were still sharing communal apartments with 5 other families and wiped their butts with newspaper sheets, but the Motherland was Great. This was the priority. Mining ore, smelting cast iron - this was more important than food and clothes.
This is why our athletes never went to the Olympics to like "jump the highest" or something. They always went "to defend the Honor of the Motherland." This is the terminology still in use, by the way. Because the philosophy has never changed. The philosophy now espoused by GOP...
Not even "Trump's GOP", mind you, because these statist attitudes were on full display during W's years, too. But, overall, American was never a collectivist nation. Its citizens were never as willing to go and die for something abstract. America - not as willing to make them.
Now, though, I genuinely see the discourse shifting. The right side of the spectrum in the US is absolutely fine with the idea that people exist for the state. As long as it's THEIR state, with THEIR president pushing THEIR agenda. God forbid anyone sacrifices their lives of Dems
Nah, with Obama in office, 4 dead Americans in Benghazi is high treason. With Trump, sure, why not, throw a million or two folks into mass graves to get the economy humming. Because The Motherland's Way of Life is more important than lives of puny citizenry...
The funny part is that none of them will see the irony of what exactly they are defending. In how, while decrying universal health care as a second coming of Stalin, they are willing to make this country into Stalinist Russia just to get their man reelected.
Because, through all this, the GOP has internalized and faithfully adopted Lenin's most important ideology: it's not what you fight for and not how you fight, it's always about whether you win. In the end, this is the entirety of the Republican philosophy now. Woe to your kids.
