Joe Biden worries about how many women he will appoint to the Central Bank. Your Democratic Party takes care of which personal pronouns to use with LGBTQ+ people — or not. He wants to cut military spending and transition to a “green economy” that subjects the country to the whims of foreigners, on whom it depends for sufficient or reasonably priced energy.
The traditional American right thus falls for Biden, also accused of being soft with Vladimir Putin. Yes, the traditional and literate right of the Republican Party. Trumpists go further. They praise Putin and want to leave Russia alone, because the problem would be China.
You can see why Jair Bolsonaro licks Putin’s boots: because he got the taste by licking Trump’s sole.
The traditional right and part of the Democrats want Biden to rip Putin’s hide, even to show China that he is not kidding and that he will not tolerate even a sign of Ukrainianization from Taiwan. They also want the government to lift environmental restrictions on oil and gas production so as to make the US independent and able to sell the energy its allies need, the green transition be damned. Finally, it says that the Americans must prepare for a new Cold War, which implies having different ideas about economic self-sufficiency in strategic items, changing the policy of regional alliances (demanding more loyalty) and moving their military bases closer to enemy borders, of Russia in particular.
Biden should begin this change of course as early as Tuesday at his annual State of the Union address, these critics say. It shouldn’t change, but Putin’s war could further crack the idea of globalization, tear apart the fantasy of international cooperation and favor critics of the “green transition”
The epidemic suggested that it is a risk to depend on foreigners for supplies of various products and supplies, not just medical ones. It showed that global health surveillance is a failure and that when the virus knocks on the door, it’s every man for himself. In addition, the war and the risk of dependence on imported fuels have revived discussions about clean energy and the pace of the green transition. At the very least, the European establishment will think about how to give up dirtier sources of energy without relying on Russian gas.
This right-wing frenzy may seem like opportunistic nonsense, because it deals with problems of a different scale: a serious but circumstantial crisis (war), and an already chronic crisis (climate change) that can become apocalyptic – such crises would be reasons to accelerate the transition.
It remains to convince voters. All are skinned by the global energy crisis. They are increasingly open to xenophobic or isolationist ideas. This mentality is fed, for example, by the propaganda of the “imported virus”, by the fear of imported people (immigrants), by the notion that the outside world is a place of dangers or where money is wasted that should be spent on problems nationals. The circumstance of the war in Ukraine tends to aggravate these reactions and reactionaries.
However, circumstances this bad have been fitting into one another at least since the beginning of the century: uprisings against inequality, refugee crises (people fleeing hunger and horror), disastrous financial crises, climate turmoil, plague and now war. . Each round of circumstantial trouble entrenches the obscurantist reaction to crises and leaves those responsible for the misfortunes untouched.
The long term is made up of short terms, of circumstances, to put it with sinister sarcasm.
