NOTE: I now write for Aporia Magazine. Please sign up there! Popular wisdom in the online right has it that US foreign policy hawks really care about gay rights and have made it their mission to promote gay rights around the world. One particularly influential
Indeed, the hostility of U.S. Foreign policy elites to Russia is an unbroken constant from the Cold War to the present day. The CIA was promoting and financing Ukrainian nationalism to weaken Russia in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, etc. The core principle of neoconservatism is taking an extremely hard hard line toward Russia -- the Middle East stuff people most strongly associate them with only came later (recall that they were happy to fund Muslim fundamentalists in Afghanistan), since they love Israel almost as much as they hate Russia. Richard's thesis that woke attitudes are a primary driver needs to explain how a cultural change in the 2010s could reach back in time to affect policy decades earlier.
That being said, I do think that the LGBTQ stuff was part of a marketing campaign to sell neoconservative attitudes to rank-and-file Democrats after the Bush admin went down in flames and the murderous rats slunk onto the Obama ship (who basically continued the neoconservative policies of his predecessor but oooh . . . he's black. Turns out the average "progressive" really is that easy to manipulate!).
Indeed, the hostility of U.S. Foreign policy elites to Russia is an unbroken constant from the Cold War to the present day. The CIA was promoting and financing Ukrainian nationalism to weaken Russia in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, etc. The core principle of neoconservatism is taking an extremely hard hard line toward Russia -- the Middle East stuff people most strongly associate them with only came later (recall that they were happy to fund Muslim fundamentalists in Afghanistan), since they love Israel almost as much as they hate Russia. Richard's thesis that woke attitudes are a primary driver needs to explain how a cultural change in the 2010s could reach back in time to affect policy decades earlier.
That being said, I do think that the LGBTQ stuff was part of a marketing campaign to sell neoconservative attitudes to rank-and-file Democrats after the Bush admin went down in flames and the murderous rats slunk onto the Obama ship (who basically continued the neoconservative policies of his predecessor but oooh . . . he's black. Turns out the average "progressive" really is that easy to manipulate!).
Why do elites want unipolarity instead of multipolarity?