The images are shocking, frightening, and tragic. Putin’s army in Ukraine. Russian warplanes over Kyiv. Ukrainians huddled in subway stations and cellars. Others fleeing toward the border. Another war in Europe triggered by the messianic and violent visions of a corrupt megalomaniac. And this time with a thinly veiled threat of nuclear war.

Whatever happens with the US response—sanctions, military assistance, and the rest—I feel as if we Americans should say to Ukraine and the rest of the world, we’re sorry.

Not because of any policy misstep made in the run-up to this catastrophe. Did President Joe Biden play this right? Perhaps. Or should he and the West have forged a more forceful preemptive stance? Send more military supplies to Ukraine before the invasion? Impose more severe sanctions prior to the attack? Would that have prevented Putin’s assault? Or perhaps Biden and the allies ought to have yielded and pledged no NATO invitation for Ukraine. Would Putin have applied the brakes? It’s too late to find out. A stronger stance or more concessions might have made no difference. After all, Putin’s pre-invasion rants focused on phony arguments: de-Nazifying a nation without Nazis (and led by a Jewish president) and protecting Russian-speaking Ukrainians in made-up republics who are not threatened. NATO was no longer the issue when Putin sent his troops into Ukraine. He seemed bent on seizing Ukraine, as if the expansion of Russian borders is his divine mission. Crusaders rarely listen to reason.

No, we owe an apology to Ukraine and the international community because the United States failed to respond adequately to a previous Putin attack—his attack on us.

As I explained earlier this week, there is a direct line from the Kremlin’s attack on the 2016 presidential election to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. You can read all about it here. In a nutshell, I argue that his attack helped install in the White House an inexperienced, Putin fan boy who had no interest in constraining the Russian leader or fortifying the Western alliance opposed to Moscow’s war on Western democracy. Putin’s victory in the United States, no doubt, emboldened him to pursue his more ambitious goals of weakening the entire West and restoring the Russian empire.

What was the collective American failure in all this? We let Putin get away with it. And I do mean we. Of course, Trump, the Republicans, and their right-wing allies bear most of the guilt. They denied or dismissed the Kremlin’s attack—aided and abetted by Trump and his crew—which helped elect our 45th president. They cooked up crazy conspiracy theories—remember the one about Democratic National Committee servers ending up in Ukraine?— to deflect or distract from the Russia scandal and Trump’s grand betrayal. For them, the world could never know the full story because that would undermine Trump’s legitimacy as president. Consequently, they did not seek to severely punish Putin and demonstrate that such adventurism would not pay off for Russia. When you don’t prosecute a criminal, you jeopardize his next potential victim.

The blame doesn’t stop at Mar-a-Lago, GOP headquarters, and Fox “News” studios. Democrats and the mainstream media failed. The press never figured out how to make the covert 2016 Russian war on the United States a top story. This was most true during the campaign, when news outlets focused on the anti–Hillary Clinton leaks orchestrated by the Russian operation rather than on the Kremlin’s assault on American democracy. Reporters drooled over each tidbit from the John Podesta emails that had been swiped by Putin’s cyber-thieves and disseminated by WikiLeaks without covering the bigger story: The Kremlin was waging information warfare with the objective of electing Trump president. After Putin succeeded, the prestige media published and aired significant pieces on Moscow’s attack. Yet overall, the news industry’s performance in conveying the full import of this historic story and addressing the denialism from Trump and his henchmen on the right was woefully inadequate.

Ditto for the Democrats. Following the 2016 election, some Democratic leaders believed it was bad politics to dwell on this matter, and they were slow to call for investigations. True, Republicans controlled both houses of Congress at this stage. There were a few Democrats who did push to make this issue a priority, but the party lacked a coherent or comprehensive strategy for shaping the narrative—especially in the face of the GOP’s systematic, brazen, and traitorous disinformation campaign that claimed all talk of the Trump-Russia scandal was a “hoax” and a witch hunt. After the Democrats gained control of the House in the 2018 midterm elections, they did not fiercely pursue the Russian attack. There was no full and open inquiry. No move to set up an independent commission. No series of comprehensive congressional hearings to tell the public exactly what had happened.

Instead, the Democrats relied on special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe—a profound miscalculation, given that Mueller’s inquiry was established to investigate and prosecute possible crimes, not to uncover and reveal the complete tale of Putin’s assault and Trump’s complicity. The Mueller report and his less-than-stellar testimony were no substitute for a full accounting. And when the Senate Intelligence Committee in August 2020 released a damning bipartisan 966-page report, it did so quietly, with no public hearings. That report confirmed that Trump and his campaign had assisted Putin’s attack and disclosed that there had been “a direct tie between senior Trump Campaign officials and the Russian intelligence services.” The Democrats, though, did little to highlight its revelations. And the media? Only bare-bones coverage.

In the end, Putin’s attack received no extensive and prominent public evaluation, and the sanctions imposed on the Russian dictator for his intervention were far from robust. It was a lose-lose: The world was not sufficiently warned, and Putin was not sufficiently punished or deterred. A few weeks ago, in this newsletter, I wondered if we just can’t handle big, awful truths: the president trying to overturn an election, a foreign government rigging our system. After Putin’s 2016 attack, there was never a true reckoning. Weakened and compromised, we moved on. That was a disservice to us and to all the others Putin would go on to victimize.

As I write this, reports are coming in of missile attacks on Kyiv. People are dying and it’s fair to wonder if they are because we and others did not do all that could reasonably have been done to restrain Putin. His act of war against the United States did not involve guns and tanks—though one can argue it led to hundreds of thousands of preventable American deaths. Now Putin has returned to conventional warfare. Of course, he is responsible for the violence and death in Ukraine. Yet his position was strengthened because we did not live up to our responsibility to protect our own democracy.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at thisland@motherjones.com.

Dumbass Comment of the Week (Special Useful Idiots Edition)

The amount of stupid on the right prompted by Putin’s illegal invasion overwhelmed the judges this week. All they wanted to do was drink rum and watch old Wes Anderson movies. But they managed to press on and identify a representative sampling.

First up is former and still-disgraced General Michael Flynn, who put out a statement in which he declared there was no justification for the invasion, but he noted that Putin was responding to “legitimate ethnic problems.” Huh?

Lance Wallnau, a pro-Trump evangelist who has said Trump was anointed by God to lead America, had the kind of bizarre pro-Putin take that combines all sorts of crazy cherished by the far right. Fasten your seatbelts: The conflict in Ukraine is the fault of Hillary Clinton, the CIA, and the gays. He asserted, “You want a clear villain in this story. It’s hard to make Putin the villain if you have all the facts because the CIA and Hillary Clinton tried to invade Russia to undercut Putin to bring the LGBT doctrine in…Putin locked it down and kicked them out…like a good dictator.” Hard to believe that Wallnau has a congregation, and some Americans think he speaks God’s truth.

Next we have MAGA-land strategist Steven Bannon and war profiteer Erik Prince, who were praising Putin for opposing LGBTQ rights and anti-racism. On his podcast, Bannon exclaimed approvingly, “Putin ain’t woke. He is anti-woke.” Prince cheerily chirped: “The Russian people still know which bathroom to use.” And Bannon, chuckling, added, “They don’t have the pride flags.”

Look, there’s Lauren Witzke, an anti-gay rights activist and anti-vaxxer who was the GOP’s (losing) Senate nominee in Delaware in 2020. She expressed her support for Putin, saying that he promotes Christian values and is standing up to a Satanic global conspiracy to impose one-world government. She didn’t hold back: “Russia is a Christian nationalist nation…I actually support Putin’s right to protect his people and always put his people first but also protect our Christian values. I identify more with Putin's Christian values than I do with Joe Biden…Christian nationalist countries are also a threat to the global regime, the Luciferian regime that wants to mash everything together. But Putin takes care of his people.” Which he does, to be clear, by invading another country without provocation and killing people. How Christian of Putin.

Tucker Carlson, not surprisingly, said many dumb and dangerous things this week, as I duly chronicled. But let’s stick with one idiotic example: a tweet that said, “Ukraine isn’t a democracy. It’s a State Department client state.” What does that mean? Does he not realize that 18 million people voted in Ukraine’s last presidential election, which was considered free and fair? In a despicable manner, Carlson was falsely denigrating the nation to justify or diminish Putin’s invasion.

Even with this robust slate of contenders, there really was no choice as to this week’s winner. Speaking to a conservative podcaster on Tuesday, Trump hailed Putin’s moves in Ukraine as “genius.” Referring to Putin’s invasion of eastern Ukraine, Trump said, “Putin declares a big portion of…of Ukraine. Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful…I said, ‘How smart is that?’ And he’s gonna go in and be a peacekeeper…Here’s a guy who’s very savvy.” Later in the interview, Trump gushed, “I knew Putin very well. I got along with him great. He liked me. I liked him. I mean, you know, he’s a tough cookie, got a lot of the great charm and a lot of pride. But the way he—and he loves his country, you know? He loves his country.”

Putin so loves his country that he’s willing to send its young men into a neighboring country to kill and be killed in an illegal war that has no justification. Trump made that comment before the invasion was launched. Certainly, once the war began, the former commander in chief would be more somber, right? Not a chance. On Wednesday night, as the hostilities started, Trump phoned into Fox and said, “I really don’t believe [Putin] wanted to do this initially…Then he saw the weakness.” Poor Vlad, forced into an unprovoked war. It was Biden who’s to blame. This (former) guy can never bring himself to criticize Putin.

As the fighting began, Trump continued to praise his BFF. At a fundraiser for Republican candidates at Mar-a-Lago, he told the crowd of GOP money people, “Trump said, ‘Putin’s smart.’ I mean, he’s taking over a country for two dollars’ worth of sanctions. I’d say that’s pretty smart. He’s taking over a country—literally, a vast, vast location, a great piece of land, with a lot of people. And just walking right in.”

Trump’s remarks demonstrated that he values real estate more than human life—look at the great deal Putin got!—and that Putin could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody (or thousands of somebodies) and he wouldn’t lose Trump’s affection. As Trump once said of a similar scenario, “It's, like, incredible.”

The Mailbag

Write about both-sidesism and you strike a nerve. That’s what I learned after a recent issue. There was a strong response to what some called my takedown of Matt Bai’s Washington Post column, in which he kvetched that he didn’t “feel” drawn to either the Democratic or Republican Party and proceeded to dump on both. The Rs are endangering the republic, he noted, yet the Ds are too woke and caught up in identity politics. He said he yearned for a third way in between the two parties. Yet, as I explained, Bai was comparing an actuality (the Republicans) with a caricature (the Democrats). Though he claimed he was not engaging in both-sidesism, this was a classic example only exaggerated by his disingenuous disavowal. Worse still is how his phony equivalence benefits the party that he acknowledged is a threat to democracy. Clearly, many readers were aggravated by Bai and wanted to share.

Rick Schrenker wrote to say my article was “easily the best illustration of what’s at stake that I’ve seen.” And Donna Brown emailed:

Thank you, David Corn for pointing the shortsightedness of Bai in his caricature of the Dems. Funny as I was reading this, I thought I feel at home with the Dems. They are not racist, fascist. They are all inclusive. My county Dem Chair is a GBQT and his spouse occasionally joins our meetings. I feel very welcomed and valued.I wonder if Bai has big tent envy? I am so grateful I am under the big tent. I am not disappointed.

Laurie Fisher chimed in:

This was great! Was recently having this conversation with my brother who is looking for a third way in coming elections. I told him that will only help those not in favor of small-d democracy.

Lois Breedlove sent in this message:

So where would this mythical third-party person position themselves? A centrist between the “illiberal left” and Trumpers? Huh. How is that not Joe Biden? Bai wants to “feel” his politics. And that’s our problem. Feelings are for your family, the dog, and even a football team, if you’re so inclined. I don’t have to be motivated by my feelings for my politics. Ultimately, this is a position only a privileged white man can afford. The rest of us are scrambling to preserve the incremental gains of the last 60 years in voting rights, civil rights, and women’s rights.Thanks for your piece on this. You’ve managed to get me riled up — and I haven’t even had coffee yet.

Dan Dickerson wrote and said he’s not yet a paid subscriber but promised to sign up “very soon,” and, in his long email, noted that Bai miscited Ibram X. Kendi, the author of How to Be an Antiracist, and took a Kendi quote of context to criticize the Democrats. Serena Fossi, though, was sympathetic to Bai’s argument:

I think Bai is capturing a huge swath of only sort-of interested but not experienced people that make up the vast majority of the country. I agree with your “defense” of the existing Dems, and they have an impossible task…I can’t help but wish for a third way and an independent candidate for president at least to appear and save us from certain fascism due to losses in midterms…I know we have considered votes for third parties to be thrown away or worse…Even if a president on a third party could win, they would only have the two existing parties to work with but still the change in conversation might get us out of this impossible impasse.

Jonathan Ostrowsky commented:

I've been a fan going back at least to AM Joy and have missed seeing you on weekends, so I was delighted when Mother Jones put your newsletter in front of me. I'll sign up for the paid version right after I send this. Your thoughts on Matt Bai in particular hit hard, but to me the most insidious part of his piece is the casual presentation of a right-wing talking point as fact: that legitimate concerns about systemic inequalities are nothing more than "identity politics" (see also: "wokeness"). This type of lazy think piece only helps accelerate our descent into fascism

David Robinson emailed:

Your newsletter on both-sidesism is spot on and I continue to wish that you would provide a link onto your newsletter to make it easy to share on Twitter etc!

Thanks, David. This newsletter remains an email product. I do occasionally tweet out a version as a way to attract new subscribers. If you follow me on Twitter (@davidcorndc), you can spot those tweets and RT them. But reader Roger Smith has the right idea. He wrote, “Your refutation [of Bai] is solid, non-histrionic and precisely what is needed. I will be forwarding it to about 200 like-minded friends. Thank you.” No, Roger, thank you! That’s the best way to share this newsletter and—hint, hint—to encourage others to sign up at www.davidcorn.com.

Deborah Hoxie emailed in response to the recent lead item about the new Yoko Ono tribute album that prompts an assessment of her legacy as a musical and conceptual artist: “I enjoyed the article about Yoko Ono. I will no longer blame her for their breakup.” Mission accomplished.

MoxieCam™

Yes, this is the same person dog. It shows that what’s under the surface is what counts.

Read Recent Issues of This Land

February 23, 2022: Yoko Ono (finally?) gets the credit she deserves; a Trump-Russia fantasy; The Slow Hustle takes on the hard case of a Baltimore cop-killing; and more.

February 19, 2022: A masterclass in both-sidesism from Washington Post columnist Matt Bai; Dumbass Comment of the Week; the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

February 15, 2022: Why is John Fogerty serenading Trump crony Steve Wynn?; can Trump be barred from running for president because he flushed documents down the toilet?; The Woman in the House Across the Street From the Girl in the Window doesn’t know if she’s in a parody or not; Elvis Costello tells us to listen to Ian Prowse; and more.

February 12, 2022: Would you want to look at photos of a massacre?; rebranding This Land; Dumbass Comment of the Week; the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

February 8, 2022: The Trump coup: maybe we can’t handle the truth; Steve Martin and Martin Short shine in Only Murders in the Building; Invasion’s odd but conventional take on the sci-fi/alien-attack genre; and more.

February 5, 2022: Can we call Trump’s race war a “race war”?; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Michele Bachmann and Rick Scott); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

February 1, 2022: Please tell me: Why is Michael Flynn crazy?; an impressive film about Nicolas Cage and his pig; Wajahat Ali’s impressive memoir about growing up Muslim and nonwhite in America; and more.

January 29, 2022: The inside story of the banning of Maus—it’s dumber than you think; Dumbass Comment of the Week; the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

January 25, 2022: The snowflake-ization of the right; would you buy cryptocurrency from this man (Steve Bannon)?; Belfast, a feel-good movie about a civil war; Elvis Costello’s delightful and cynical new album; and more.