i really haven't been paying attention to this stuff recently, i've been immersed in my art, i just happened to tune in here recently because i was wondering where i'd go to keep loosely informed now that the real news has imploded (it seems like everybody's moved over to here), and, crikey, schiff has gone and brought back the john birch society...

i think any sane person would recognize the absolute absurdity of this rant. but, i've tuned out of this for a reason - this is the reason - so it's particularly surreal to get a mouthful of it out of the blue, like somebody left some rat droppings in your bag of skittles. yikes. 

and, maybe the fact that i've been so completely disinterested in this for so long gives me some clarity in reaction, as well, in the face of pretty much everybody's neuroticism, one way or the other. like, i've been under a self-imposed blackout on this. this is completely fresh to me. 

my immediate thoughts are that i'm walking into a debate, one that may be closing, on what america's make believe enemy ought to be. what schiff seems to be doing is appropriating a lot of the arguments that you heard during the war on terrorism and reapplying them towards russia. these weren't really cold war arguments, either, they were specific to islamic extremism. so, for example, you never heard anyone argue that you had to fight the soviets in vietnam so you didn't have to fight them at berkeley - that's an argument that you heard from the likes of ann coulter, as applied to iraq. i'm sure - certain - that there are direct quotes from ann coulter, where she argued in favour of the iraq war by suggesting that if you don't fight them in the middle east, they'll come to america, and she was really just channeling byzantine military strategy in the region when she was saying that - it's a barbarian management strategy. likewise, the wounded animal analogy is something that i've actually applied myself, i think far more accurately, to isis. 

why is schiff speaking in these precise terms? well, it seems scripted - these are talking points. there seems to be a conscious intent, here, to shift the focus of american military aggression out of the middle east and back towards russia, and that's just the tip of this long standing debate around who it is that america should be flailing against - the russians or the muslims. to an extent, it's a question of if we're at war with eurasia or eastasia, right. it's perhaps naive to expect this to resolve itself, but it's a definite faultline that exists in the power elite. 

i'm actually wondering if schiff is basically being lobbied by the saudis, though.

i mean, there's two layers to this. there's a legitimate strategic dialogue, and honest questions around how america should be directing it's military resources, and this is healthy. but, if this is essentially a struggle between the russians and the saudis for influence in washington, the reality is that the russians just don't lobby the way the saudis do. a lot of these people are essentially just being bought off with arab blood money, and paid to recite what are ridiculous lines, with the intent to shift the dialogue. this might be the reason he's using the precise language he's using. this is speculation...

what i think is more than speculation is that he is very consciously attempting to appropriate the language from the war on terrorism and reutilize it against the russians, and that this is happening in the context of this broader strategic debate. and, that should make everybody think carefully about the path they're being led down....