Back in April, Russia was overrunning Ukraine until they weren’t. I’ve made periodic posts about this war, and in most of them I’ve also felt compelled to use it as a springboard to critique Revolver, a conservative web publication that I find valuable for some of its content. This missive is about them more so than the war. I’ve called Revolver the best and worst in journalism. I get my basic news from three different places mostly: New York Post for general news and a pretty good conservative slant, the Bongino Report for an aggregated selection of more conservative outlook, and then Google News to see what the robots want to dare feed me today. After that, I go to Revolver for hidden gems of commentary or to groan over something out of left field – but I look forward to the surprise.
In the Russian assault against Ukraine, Revolver took the stupefying position of pro-Russia/anti-Ukraine. They view Ukraine as a corrupt puppet tool of a conglomeration of WEF-globalist-controlled nations. I can’t verify if that notion is true or not, but I consider it nevertheless immaterial. I’m unsure if the US is supposed to be one of their puppeteers or their stooge, Ukraine pumping us for money and guns. In Revolver taking this position, they ignored some weighty things like national sovereignty, horrific instances of genocide – as in totally ignored – and the security of all of Europe. They cheered as Russia gritted their teeth to early disappointments, looking forward to seeing them win the long game. Their stories on this were like a collection of atta-boys.
As of a couple weeks ago, Russia is suddenly getting its ass kicked. The only long game anyone is talking about now is what a desperate Putin would do as a coda to losing this war as this seems more likely every day. More so, what will happen with the inevitable political quake within Russia after the fact? Revolver is quickly going dark on the matter. The cat’s got their tongue.
I’ve wondered why Revolver would have taken this position to begin with. I can’t get inside the mind of Darren Beatty and whomever else runs the site, but I’ve watched clues. ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’ goes the proverb. Russia is the boogie man, according to liberal media, the straw man that must be in league with Trump, they say. If the New York Times is going to be Ying, then damn it, Revolver will be Yang. There’s also the fuzzy notion that Russia represents some lost iteration of Christianity, and the globalist West is racing to hell on a rainbow rocket. While the latter is truer, I’m not so sure the former is axiomatically correct.
The impulse to plant a flag on every hill no matter what has forced some untenable conclusions. Sure, the West is corrupt, but let’s be real here, Russia embodies many things that we don’t want, and they’re still nominally commies. Mostly, they’re a hollowed-out dictatorship ripe for their own next revolution. Sure, they have a lot of resources and land mass, but the brains have long since bolted for the door. Their rich industry oligarchs are having fatal ‘accidents’ at a rate of about one per week, which is a pretty high occupational hazard risk. What’s left is mean, brutish, and stupid thugs running the country and their wars. Not a team you’d normally want to root for.
Revolver has come up with some good exposes and research, they’re an aggregator of news and commentary, and they’re not afraid to put out some interesting stuff that no one else would touch. The fact that some of it’s ultimately off the mark should not bother anyone who has the ability to think and to parse it for themselves. Darren Beatty, if you’re reading this – I much doubt it – you don’t have to take a position on everything. Learn a lesson from Alex Jones: not every story is worth going down for. You don’t have to like Ukraine to understand that we don’t need any more genocide or more wars engulfing the entirety of Europe.