Author: Mike Coté

The Rational Policy Podcast Episode 17 – Foreign Telegram, May/June 2023

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The Rational Policy Podcast is back with another installment of the Foreign Telegram! A lot has happened abroad in the months of May and June 2023, and host Mike Cote brings you all of the most important news. Three subjects really made a huge impact over the past two months: elections in Turkey, a potential US-China rapprochement, and the Russia coup that wasn’t. Listen in to get the key information and geopolitical perspective on these critical topics and what they mean for the United States and the world.

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Dear ‘White Women’: You Are Racist

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Once again, I read it so you don’t have to.

I read a racist book recently. It was one of the most virulently bigoted screeds I’ve ever read – and, for comparison’s sake, I’ve read a lot of Nazi propaganda. No, it wasn’t a dusty old tome from the 19th century; although I do love me some Victorian-era books. It wasn’t a tale of the Antebellum South, or the Jim Crow South, or South African apartheid, or Japanese internment, or the Holocaust. It wasn’t a novel or fictionalized memoir. In fact, it wasn’t even about the past at all. What it was about was WHITE WOMEN. Funnily enough, that was the title: White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism and How to Do Better.

This 2022 work of staggering racial bias, stereotyping, and progressive nonsense crawled out of the primordial ooze after the 2020 Summer of George (Floyd). Its authors, race grifters Saira Rao – do me a favor and scroll her Twitter for a tad; you won’t be disappointed – and Regina Jackson, are the founders of the company Race2Dinner, in which they are paid thousands of dollars by woke white women to berate them for two hours for their invidious racism. (Oh, and they sell merch.) This sadomasochistic endeavor has gained the two ladies a great deal of fame on the political left, both from self-flagellating white progressives and the minorities – sorry, People of Color; sorry, BIPOC[1] – whom those whites apparently oppress. They have been treated to episodes of Dr. Phil, fawning profiles in mainstream media, and lucrative book contracts with major publishing houses. And boy, did they deliver on that book deal.

White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism and How to Do Better (really rolls off the tongue, n’est-ce pas?) is a masterclass in absurdity, lack of self-awareness, and outright racism. It is a totally insane book that should be laughed at, not taken seriously. Honestly, it would be hard to make a better parody – it had me cackling aloud throughout. Unfortunately, the book is deadly serious. And many influential people and outlets, from comedian Chelsea Handler and actress Anna Paquin to the New York Times, have embraced it as such. So, as a reviewer, I’ll take it seriously too. (Well, at least for as long as I can stand it.)

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Airshows and Americana

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Airshows have been an American tradition since we pioneered powered flight in 1903; the experience is peak Americana and says a great deal about the American cultural identity.

Powered flight is perhaps the greatest of all American inventions, linking people around the country and world in a way that had never before been possible. Flight broke the most significant natural constraint to the human experience – gravity – and has fully changed the way we think about time, space, and our universe. Watching mankind slip the bounds of our earthly chains and take to the skies seemed like a form of magic to the uninitiated, and still does to people across the world who encounter aviation for the first time. The most spectacular feats of aviation come during airshows, those festival-like occasions wherein pilots in specialized planes conduct awe-inspiring aerobatic routines, joined oftentimes by beautifully-restored historical military aircraft. And just like aviation in general, nowhere has the airshow been more deeply embraced than in the United States.

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How Far Is Too Far?

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The most hardcore supporters of Ukraine in the West are too gung-ho about war aims, to the point of being entirely counterproductive. In geopolitics, prudence is often a virtue.

As you may have heard, the war in Ukraine that has been raging since the Russian invasion last February is reaching a new phase: a major Ukrainian counteroffensive. This push by Kyiv to retake its lost territory will fundamentally alter the entire picture and tenor of the war going forward. Lines of contact will shift, breakthroughs will occur, and new lines of contact and defense will be settled for the fall and winter campaigning seasons. Many of the NATO weapons systems transferred to Ukraine will get their first real chance to make a difference on the battlefield. Moves are likely to be made in several theaters, including partisan actions within Russia itself – something we have already seen in Belgorod and elsewhere. The war will likely continue for several years, but this Ukrainian counteroffensive can set the terms for what happens going forward.

Now that this new phase of the war has begun – one with Ukraine decidedly, albeit temporarily, on the front foot – commentators and politicians in the West have started to debate, discuss, and reassess war aims. This is always a crucial topic of conversation when a nation in involved in a war, whether directly as Ukraine and Russia are, or indirectly as the United States and NATO are. These discussions usually involve questions like “What do we seek to gain through this conflict?”, “What is a positive endgame for us in this war?”, and “What is an acceptable solution for our national interests?” These are very important questions, but the answers from those on the fringes of the discourse – especially those who are the most outwardly supportive of Ukraine – have been seriously lacking.

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The Flag Stands Alone

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Flying Pride flags at U.S. embassies abroad is a counterproductive, divisive practice which privileges domestic constituencies over national interests.

It’s June, which means that Pride Month is upon us. If you haven’t noticed the public virtue-signaling yet – whether it’s from woke corporations, police departments, or even sports teams – I’d suggest you get your eyes checked. Rainbows abound, as do the increasingly militant demands and exaggerated claims of LGBT activists across the country. Conservatives have pushed back against these progressive aims, with varying degrees of intensity and success. In short, the month of June has become a full-on culture war. Still, all of this domestic cultural strife is par for the course, although it has ramped up in intensity as of late. What is truly disturbing, however, is how this divisive cultural progressivism has infected our foreign policy.

“Politics stops at the water’s edge” is an old, idealistic adage that has more often than not been ignored throughout American history. Politicians of all stripes tend to use American presence abroad – in peace and war – to elevate their domestic policies and ideas. For instance, the 1790s Quasi-War against France had as much to do with internal arguments between factions headed by Jefferson and Adams as it did international relations. Presidents past and present have harshly critiqued the foreign policy of their predecessors, with some going so far as to criticize America itself abroad – see President Obama’s remarks during his early time in office, for example. Clearly, this is not a new phenomenon.

What is far less common, and thus more concerning, is the export of controversial cultural ideologies from the sphere of domestic debates to that of global affairs. And that brings us back to Pride Month.

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