The US needs ‘international oversight’ one liberal writer argued in a New York Times op-ed, just days after another suggested America should be conquered by other democracies to sort out its ‘toxic’ inequalities. What gives?
Peter Beinart, whose essay was published Tuesday, makes a convoluted case for seeking “foreign intervention against tyranny in our own land.” His argument? Democrats are “a vehicle for Black political empowerment” and are therefore facing increased racist oppression – so they should do as African-American leaders have done for decades and seek outside support. The UN, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Organization of American States (OAS) get mentioned.
This comes on the heels of a Twitter thread three days prior, in which someone called Zack Ford mused that it would be “a great time for the US to be conquered.”
“Like not a violent war, just a really peaceful takeover — more like an intervention by all the other friendly democracies out there who've been watching what's been going on here,” Ford explained.
Arguing the US Constitution was “built on a foundation of inequality,” and that American “ineptness” was endangering the world, Ford called for these hypothetical friendly invaders to give the “toxic” US a “nice little makeover” into a proper democracy.
“We're just such a hot mess, and it sounds so much easier to fix things if we just got a full reboot” instead of trying to make everything work as it is now, he concluded.
It may be tempting to dismiss Beinart and Ford as relative nobodies, but the simple fact is that they aren’t. While obviously not all Democrats are like that, these two are very much in the party mainstream. Ford worked at ThinkProgress, a now-defunct blog of John Podesta’s Center for American Progress think tank. He currently works as press secretary for Alliance for Justice, a group promoting liberal judicial activism.
Beinart is a former editor of The New Republic, author of several books, teaches journalism and political science at CUNY and writes for the New York Times, the Atlantic and Jewish Currents, to cite just some of his biographical references.
Yet the party that spent the past four years literally upending the American political process with claims of “Russian meddling” and President Donald Trump’s “collusion” with Moscow – offering zero evidence beyond conspiracy theories, mind you – is now thunderously silent about these solicitations of actual foreign interference. Maybe because to them it’s only bad when the Kremlin (supposedly) does it?
The same New York Times whose staff revolted over Senator Tom Cotton’s op-ed about ending the summer riots by force if necessary – and got the editor fired, no less – hasn’t had the slightest bit of a problem with Beinart’s proposal for submission to international tutelage.
What’s particularly intriguing is how these calls for placing the US under some form of international rule, no matter how benign it’s supposed to be, are being published a month before the election. The very same election, mind you, that all the polls and the entire mainstream media are insisting will be a Democrat landslide, defeating Trump forever, keeping Nancy Pelosi in charge of the House, flipping the Senate, and ushering Joe Biden and Kamala Harris into the White House.
To advocate for a foreign takeover and “makeover” of the US, in this moment of supposedly impending triumph suggests a lack of faith in the Biden-Harris victory, at the very least. That goes even further in Ford’s case, as he apparently doesn’t think even the Democrats can “fix” America.
The source of this pessimism is inadvertently revealed by his reference to “1619,” the notorious pseudo-historical narrative pushed by Nikole Hannah-Jones and the New York Times.
A number of people over the past several days have pointed out that Beinart’s essay amounts to sedition, maybe even treason – and that’s without even addressing Ford’s tweets, which are even more radical. Perhaps. To me, the appearance of such ideas at this point suggests an involuntary admission that things aren’t quite as the narrative managers are making them out to be. We’ll find out soon enough.
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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.