The "Eastern Bloc" and the "Russia is a Communist Country" lines live on.

Today on Foxnews a couple of newsbimbos, one blonde, one brunette reflected the level of sophistication with regard to foreign affairs now prevalent in the American people.

1.  The brunette referred to Poland as an "east bloc country."  Evidently she has not heard that the Warsaw Pact and the USSR no longer exist and that Poland is a NATO country.

2..The newsblonde (dark roots) referred to Russia as one of the remaining Communist countries.  It is true that there is a neo-communist political party represented in the Russian parliament but they are a minority party and Putin is not a member, quite the opposite.

In general, Americans are ill equipped to deal with any level of complexity in world affairs above the "Captain America" and "Wonder Woman" level.  The Canadians should not feel smug about this.  They are basically a protectorate of the "Wonder Woman" crowd and Justin Trudeau is oh, so, precious.

pl

 

Comments

[richard sale]

That is extremely well put.

thank you.

Richard Sale

[divadab]

@Colonel - It's even worse - the news bimbo's were reading something written for them - by people who should know better but probably don't. Thanks for watching this crap I can't stomach it. The people who get their "information" from the teevee are pretty much no use as even their terms of reference are wrong.

Not sure why the swipe at Canada - yes Canada is a satrapy of the empire, despite Canadians' patriotic need to not admit it to themselves.

Justin is a bit of an intellectual lightweight but the wingers' disdain for his masculinity, purported lack thereof, is in reality a critique of his metrosexual style - which garnered him many distaff votes and a majority government. He doesn't need wingers' votes but he sure needs the women's vote.

[Bill H]

An anecdote which would seem to confirm your position Colonel;

It was a few months ago that someone at a social function of fairly high level business people informed me that Russia had been our enemy since World War Two. I usually bail out on these discussions, but I mentioned that the Cold War had to do with the Soviet Union, which no longer existed. I was then informed that the Soviet Union and Russia are, and always have been, the same thing. As far as I could tell he was not drunk, was not even drinking.

[Hood Canal Gardner]

What sha have for breakfast today? Two prime pieces! Thanks Pat.

[Oilman2]

The really sad thing is that there are many people in the State Department, in the Pentagon and the military itself that think and believe in comic book terms. This begs the questions, "Who is promulgating this type of thinking?" and "Who is funding these policies?"

If people reading this site can deal with complexity, then it follows that many others can as well. So why are they not doing so?

Perhaps it is simply because they are not given that option? Maybe it is soundbites and clickbait, all running in a circular pattern?

[Sam Peralta]

"In general, Americans are ill equipped to deal with any level of complexity in world affairs above the "Captain America" and "Wonder Woman" level."

Col. Lang, why do you think that is the case? It would seem, that considering that our polity has such a comic strip worldview, we should pursue an isolationist foreign policy.

[doug]

I admit I'm also astonished at the notion Russia is communist or has proclivities in that direction. They don't and it is because they actually experienced what happens in a purportedly socialist state where those in power do what they can to concentrate their power and lock out any threat.

I recall listening to Radio Moscow shortly before the collapse of the USSR. On their "Mailbag" segment some poor fool from Florida wrote in about how unfair our medical system to "the poor" was when the lovely USSR had free medical care for everyone. The answer was along the lines of "Sure, it's free here but what you get is exactly what you would expect when something's "free," close to zero actual care." Other examples in different radio segments in the late 80's similarly deprecated their own system.

I recall telling my dad that the USSR was rotting from the top. That they lost their secular religion! Otherwise the broadcasters would have been replaced and sent to Siberia. But my father was so inculcated in the notion that USSR socialism was some sort of fixed, powerful movement that such indications should be ignored as manipulative. Even after the USSR's collapse he still didn't believe it was real but some soft of feint.

[sid_finster]

It is much easier for bimbettes to argue with strawmen.

[Babak Makkinejad]

As i have said before, these mutual antipathies ought to be taken as irreconcilable religious differences thst can only be managed.

[Stumpy]

Colonel,

Thanks for this post, wish I'd caught the program in question rather than the boring analysis of Trump's impact in Poland, followed by the EU anti-Erdogan vote, on public radio. Ironically, they succeeded in recognizing that the venue was not that of the launch of Solidarnosc, but rather that of the rise against Germany in WW2.

From VOA,

Speaking in front of a monument to the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, Trump lavished praise on his Polish hosts and hailed their fight for freedom from Nazi and Communist rule.

“Those heroes remind us that the West was saved with the blood of patriots; that each generation must rise up and play their part in its defense,” he told the cheering crowd.

Sadly, RT and Al Jazeera have consistently delivered cogent and grammatically correct reports through well-spoken hosts, even if you question their doctrine, to the deprecation of most US media outlets that have established a career path for academically challenged cheerleaders.

[Swami]

Were there any male bimbos (mimbos) on the Fox News panel? What was the color of their hair?

[FkDahl]

Nurse to my wife (Canadienne) - "Justin Trudeau, the Disney prince?"
I've actually met Justin a couple of times. He is not a man I would like to share fox hole with. All the women in the family like him, the men don't.

[Jony Kanuck]

Col,
The kanadian situation is actually a bit worse: Trudeau the younger may come on as a lightweight but he is a good political scrapper. We may see a lot of him. The defense minister is a cold war relic & the foreign minister is a wannabe Uke. It's business as usual for a member of 'the five eye's'. Oh, and I hope you didn't think that subprime mortgages & a real estate bubble were just a USA problem.

[turcopolier]

swami

I ignore the men altogether. pl

[turcopolier]

luxetveritas

Yes, but you won't watch and so I must. pl

[turcopolier]

Swami

What are you? Anti-male? pl

[Ante]

pl, re: Trudeau
He's identical to the power-hungry drama teacher, Mr. G, from "Summer Heights High," a very funny show. Here is Trudeau's on screen counterpart singing a little ditty https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgDwg0opvFo

[different clue]

Oilman2,

The best computer running the best program can only give results as good as the data put into it. Garbage data in, garbage results out.

If many "should know better" people have been marinating in a pressure tank of Fake News and Fake Views for years or decades now, their best thinking can only reflect the Fake News and Views they have been pressure-injected with for all these many years.

All the rest of us can do is keep offering better news and better views in hopes that some personal or intellectual crisis will affect one or another "should know better" people one-at-a-time, and their carefully-molded brain-armor will shatter and they will try dealing with their sudden confusion and disorientation in various ways which might randomly include being led to places like here.

[different clue]

Swami,

I wonder if another word for male bimbos might be . . . bimboys?

[Babak Makkinejad]

It is the same age-old struggle of Latin Christianity to hold sway over the Eastern Rites Churches; at times waged by post-Christian secularists like Napoleon & Hitler and presently - and evidently - by "secularized" Puritans in US & UK against vestiges of the Eastern Roman Empire.
I wonder that the cuurent war in and over Syria not being another religious to destroy - yet again - the Shia political power by Sunni powers.
(And if those Sunni powers succeed, I expect another dark age to engulf Islamdom - just as the demise of Bhuids ushered in an age of virulent rigidity.)

[dsrcwt]

I think the term is "himbo"

[Thirdeye]

Good one. Himbos will also work. But bimboys might conjugate with news better, avoiding the "sh" pronunciation dilemma.

[Thirdeye]

It's debatable whether it was really about Soviet Communism or a continuation of Britain's "Great Game" which had been going on since the Crimean War. The stance of the Atlantic powers during the post-Soviet era pushes me towards the latter interpretation.

[SR Wood]

A good reason not to listen to Faux News.

[BraveNewWorld]

Most Canadians get their news from American sources so yes I agree to at least a certain extent. But being a smaller country (by population) means we are more outward looking by nature. But you will find a ton of questionable nonsense on the TV here as well.

As for PM Justin Trudeau on foreign policy, compared to his father former PM Pierre Elliot Trudeau, lets just say the apple fell on the other side of the planet.