printMike Waltz, Republican representative from Florida, comfortably fumes against Russia, to applause on both sides of the aisle: “We’re on the edge of a crisis with Russia and Ukraine,” he states formulaically.
That’s the formula. Donald Trump briefly and imperfectly departed from neoconservative foreign-policy dogma to the cheers of the base, which was willing to contemplate “certain national-conservative governments in East Europe” as “natural allies to conservative policy makers, stateside.”
Mike Pompeo, a shadow of his former self, having slimmed down to size svelte, swells the chorus on Fox News in advocating muscular threats to Putin, rather than respectful negotiation with a nuclear power with legitimate concerns about the incursion of the US and NATO into its neighborhood. He exhorts the US to “act to make clear to Putin that ‘the cost will be enormous,'” finding the “good” graces to growl against Iran, too. Starve ’em, sanction them…
Fox is guilty of normalizing the empty-headed, zero-information ditz and ditto-headed split-screen panel in adjudicating matters of life-and-death. It used to be one could expect to hear from deep thinkers on Russia like Stephen Cohen, RIP, or Pat Buchanan, whose foreign-policy knowledge and insights are desperately needed now.
Now it’s Da Idiocracy: Foreign policy “insights” flow on Fox News from Lara Logan (read “No, Lara Logan, Only Simpletons Think Afghanistan Is Simple“), beefcake Rambo types like Pete Hegseth and the deeply dumb Johnny Jones; media writer Howard Kurtz, and from the stoic tabula rasa that is Mollie Hemingway—she’s dour and serious so she must know something, right? Wrong! Humdrum Democratic strategists are a-dime-a-dozen in shouting at the screen about what once used to be the purview of serious, learned people.
Then again, that’s how easy it is to thoughtlessly imbibe the neoconservative-neoliberal, Deep State-stamped foreign policy script.
Above all, let us not forget the war porn: For war paint and trashy, tasteless attire, there is no beating Fox News female personalities. The Fox News war porn—females in war paint, bosoms panting and heaving for blood—helped sex-up and sell the offensive against Iraq. (“TUNED-OUT, TURNED-ON, AND HOT FOR WAR“/2003)