As I type this newsletter, continued American aid for Ukraine is in grave doubt. Tucker Carlson is in Moscow to conduct a friendly interview with Vladimir Putin. And weāre receiving reports from the front lines that Russia is advancing, in part because of Ukrainian ammunition shortages. In short, the war is reaching a critical stage, and Ukraine may lose because Republicans are willing to hand authoritarian Russia a historic military victory rather than supply further aid to a democratic ally.
Ronald Reagan isnāt just rolling over in his grave; he may also lurch from it in a fit of incredulous rage. This is a remarkable and potentially catastrophic reversal by a political party that is in a state of near-total, frequently random ideological transformation.
To explain the intensity of Republican resistance to Ukraine aid, I need to return to a concept I wrote about in November: that of bespoke realities. My friend RenĆ©e DiResta, the technical research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, coined the term, and she wrote that it refers to the ābubble realitiesā constructed by communities āthat operate with their own norms, media, trusted authorities and frameworks of facts.ā
Among those who oppose aid to Ukraine, there are certainly several paleoconservatives who object on classic isolationist grounds: Itās not our fight, our support is costly, we might find ourselves inadvertently embroiled in war, and so on. But the mass Republican movement against Ukraine is rooted far less in policy than it is in a particular bespoke reality of the MAGA universe, in which Ukraine is a pernicious villain, Putin is a flawed hero and Russia should have crushed Ukraine long ago.
MAGA Republicansā hatred and contempt for Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainian cause is shockingly vehement. Candace Owens says she wants to āpunchā Zelensky. Donald Trump Jr. calls him an āinternational welfare queen.ā Carlson says he dresses ālike the manager of a strip club.ā Itās all bizarre and unreasonable. And it all fits the broader MAGA narrative.
I think thereās something wrong with the file you sent me, it doesnāt open anything. Just a black box appears in the middle of the screen and then disappears and then nothingā¦
Even worse, I keep getting all these popups telling me to send money or else theyāll release my webcam footage, but I donāt think my computer came with a webcam? I found something on the PC that looked like maybe a lens with a vertical line in the middle, but when I press it, my computer turns off.
Your computer is just thirsty. Please share your beverage with it. The mouth is the hole in the side or back with warm breath coming out of it.
Donāt do what this person says it will damage your computer, computers are delicate electrical devices therefore much more akin to fish and should be submerged completely