Political Pilgrims and Problems

To J. D. Vance, the Republican senator from Ohio, I’d like to respond. Bear with me a moment.

A few years ago, I heard a Hungarian journalist make an interesting point. He was talking about American fans of Viktor Orbán who go to Hungary — to meet him, to express their support, to bask in his glow, or whatever. They rave about how wonderful Hungary is, where “they speak English better than we do,” etc.

The journalist pointed out that these pilgrims always go to Budapest — to central Budapest, more specifically. Of course they love it. Who wouldn’t? People love it for the same reason they love Paris, Barcelona, Prague, and so on — it is a liberal, cosmopolitan, and European place. It has a charming café culture.

Aren’t the Orbánistas supposed to detest such things? Wouldn’t they like to wander into “real Hungary”? Red-hat Hungary, so to speak? But they seldom do. They stay in the cafés of central Budapest.

And what the pilgrims are usually unaware of, continued the journalist, is that Orbán and his people have campaigned against Budapest for years — against the “metropolitan elites” of the wicked, liberal capital. They have made a bogey out of Budapest.

Where all of them hang out, naturally.

But Hungary is small beer. I mention it merely as a prelude to Russia.

When Western Putinistas go to Russia, they usually go to Moscow or St. Petersburg — one of the two western cities. The two most European of all Russian cities. From 2017 to 2019, Karin Kneissl was the foreign minister of Austria. She worked in the populist-Right government of Sebastian Kurz. Now she’s working for Putin more directly. (Kurz works for Peter Thiel.) She lives in St. Petersburg.

Interesting she is not living in, say, Omsk.

You know who lives in Omsk? Vladimir Kara-Murza. He is a political prisoner. He is kept in isolation at IK-7, one of the harshest prisons in the Russian system.

Anyway, Western Putinistas tend to go to Moscow or St. Petersburg. They seldom venture into “real Russia” — where they would see people living in straitened conditions. No, they stay in Moscow or St. Petersburg, from which they report back to the rest of us that everything is hunky-dory in Russia.

Which it certainly is: in the Bolshoi or Mariinsky theater (though many of the top artists have gone into exile).

Yesterday, I made these points, in abbreviated form, on Twitter. Here was the response of Senator Vance:

About the “politics of social security cuts and idiotic foreign wars” — starting with the second part:

Many of us believe that, if we back the Ukrainians, we will help prevent future wars — future invasions. Putin invaded Ukraine, for the purpose of swallowing it. For the purpose of subjugating it. The Ukrainians are fighting and dying to hold on to their country — their freedom, their independence, their right to exist. They are not asking for American or other NATO troops. They are asking for weapons and money. If Putin is allowed to swallow Ukraine, will he be sated? Or will his appetite be whetted? Who will the victim of Putin’s next invasion be? One of the Baltic states? Poland?

Stop him now, where the cost is least to us Americans and our NATO partners.

As for “social security cuts”: Many of us believe — in fact, know — that our entitlement programs face bankruptcy. We think that younger workers ought to have options, so that they, too, can have a pension. Younger workers doubt that Social Security will be there for them. These doubts are well founded.

In the old days, the Left used to attack us conservatives as warmongers and haters of the elderly (and of the common man). Today, the Right hurls the same accusations at us. They ought to get a room together, the Left and the Right. (The Horseshoe Inn?) They ought to stay there.

One more thing: We in the Free World ought not to be naïve about Putin’s Russia. Putin has re-Sovietized the country. He has abolished independent media and civil society. Today, there are more political prisoners in Russia than there were in the late Soviet period. People who are able, are leaving Russia in droves. You can hear Russian on practically any street of London, New York, Tel Aviv — why is that? People vote with their feet, you know.

Also, Putin is on a revanchist tear, and if you think he will stop at Ukraine, you must think again.

For decades, the Left was dopey about the Kremlin (if not outright supportive — outright in alliance). The Right should avoid playing the same part today.

P.S. About the heading of this post: In 1981, Paul Hollander wrote a famous book called “Political Pilgrims.” It was about Western leftists who traveled to the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba. (Hollander was a sociologist who came to America as a refugee from Communist Hungary.) Today, he would have to update his book.

In 2003, Mona Charen published her book Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got It Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America First. Blurbing the book, William F. Buckley Jr. said,

I prayed that such a book would be written but doubted anything so wonderfully readable and instructive at the same time would come along. But here is Mona Charen’s great explication of the central conflict of our times.

That book, too, could use an updating, or a second volume.