In Russia or America: the globalist commentariat is disgusting in defeat

I wonder, what name should we give to all the anti-Trump commentators who had vowed to leave the US if Trump won the election, and who now paint the dystopian pictures of “life after Trump”: Trumpfugees? Hillarefusenicks?

Whatever the name, the things that these people are writing and saying BY INERTIA (the battle has been lost) are astounding.

David Remnick, who for many years has been the editor-in-chief of The New Yorker magazine, writes the following:

“The election of Donald Trump to the Presidency is nothing less than a tragedy for the American republic, a tragedy for the Constitution, and a triumph for the forces, at home and abroad, of nativism, authoritarianism, misogyny, and racism. Trump’s shocking victory, his ascension to the Presidency, is a sickening event in the history of the United States and liberal democracy.”

Paul Krugman, a prolific columnist of The New York Times, who had called Hillary Clinton “likeable” despite many dislikable bombings of Afghanistan and Libya under her stewardship, called America a “failed state and society” – only because HIS candidate did not win.

The list of anti-Trump jeremiads can go on and on, with many Russian liberals joining in the chorus.

An anti-Putin pundit Alexei Makarkin told Nezavisimaya Gazeta that he was disappointed because the widely predicted “crisis of the Republican party” never took place. In fact, it was replaced by the crisis of the Clintonian and Obamian establishment, suddenly rejected by Trump’s “less educated and less affluent voters.”

The globalist commentariat is disgusting not only in its victories (remember the enthusiasm about the “Arab spring,” the bloody “regime change” in Ukraine and the murder of Gaddafi).

It is also disgusting and unapologetic in its defeats. There is no soul-searching, no criticism of one’s own mistakes from the pundits of commentariat.

There is only the good old demonisation.

First it was the demonisation of Putin, then of Russia and its people who vote for Putin.

Later it was the demonisation of Trump and now – of the American people who voted for Trump.

A “Trumpkin” voter is presented much in the same way as the Ukrainian nationalists described the population of the pro-Russian regions in the east of Ukraine before coming to power in Kiev – as “less educated and less affluent.”

For the liberal “commentariat,” the demonised enemy can easily become an object not only of “character assassination” (see The Washington Post’s coverage of Trump and Trumpkins in the last few months).

The demonised masses can also become a target in the crosshairs of a “just war” led by the “liberals” and called for by the commentariat (see the plight of the pro-Russian regions of  Ukraine).

Raging against the “less educated and less affluent” voters, the commentariat never questions its own education (usually very ideologised and one-sided) or the origins of its own affluence.

Somehow, it is the supposedly embattled liberal dailies in Russia (Vedomosti, Kommersant, etc.) that offer their journalists the best salaries in Moscow.

Somehow, none of the thousands of journalists in the US who had written about the weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein – none of these journalists got fired.

But a great many journalists were fired for much smaller mistakes – especially if these mistakes could be seen as “benefiting Putin” or some other figure demonised by the commentariat.

Ultimately, the members of the commentariat will not leave the US – I don’t think we are going to see a lot of Trumpfugees. Because, unlike Obama and Clinton, Trump is unlikely to go after the people who criticised him in the press, even if this criticism looked more like insult and slander (remember The Washington Post calling Trump a “sexist pig”).

For the same reason, Putin’s liberal critics only leave Russia for a time being – if offered even fatter jobs somewhere in Estonia or Washington, or London. So much for “political repression” in Russia.

Meanwhile, the politicians of the “new Ukraine”, where the rules of the media game are much tougher and bloodier than in Russia, are already deleting anti-Trump posts in their Twitters and Facebooks.

The interior minister Arsen Avakov suddenly changed his opinion on “Trump as a dangerous marginal” in his Facebook. A picture of Trump kissing Putin disappeared from Avakov’s page. And the leader of the Radical party of Ukraine Oleg Lyashko stopped seeing Hillary’s lagging behind Trump as “a catastrophe” as soon as Trump’s victory became apparent.

The popular joke in Ukraine and Russia says that a Maidan against “illiberal vote-rigging” in the US is not possible for a simple reason – there is no US Embassy in Washington to support it!

But it certainly makes sense to see the disgusting lamentations of these people now. This is how one SHOULD NOT lose the election.