By Liza Featherstone
January 24, 2020 "Information
Clearing House" -
Adam Schiff, the
liberal hero of impeachment, is a wholly
owned subsidiary of the military-industrial
complex and a fervent exponent of permanent
war.
o some Democrats and journalists,
Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) is a hero.
All over the internet, people are thanking
him for defending the Constitution, hoping
he’ll run for president someday. After his
performance during this week’s impeachment
hearing, the worship was especially intense;
a letter writer to the New York Times
called it “brilliant” and a “tour de force,”
while the conservative Washington
Times made fun of all the
blue-checked Twitter accounts losing their
objectivity in ecstatic praise. As the face
of the impeachment effort, especially for
liberals disengaged from the election
process, Schiff represents a glimmer of hope
for domestic regime change.
We’d like to be on his side. After all,
he’s working hard to take down Donald Trump,
one of the worst presidents in American
history. But let’s not get carried away in
fandom. Schiff is a dangerous warmonger, and
his efforts to fuel paranoia about Russia
only serve to feed that agenda. It would be
admirable if Schiff’s impeachment crusade
was limited to Trump’s corruption. But
something else drives him: he wants a proxy
war in Ukraine with Russia, and he has for
some time.
Adam Schiff physically resembles a
prosperity preacher. That is to say, he
looks like a classic dodgy American
salesman, but with a beatific glow of
righteousness. This creepily wholesome look
lends a corny Cold War ambiance to his
constant fulmination about “the Russians.”
It’s hard not to listen to him without
thinking of Allen Ginsberg’s 1956 poem
“America”:
America, it’s them bad Russians
Them Russians, them Russians and them
Chinamen.
And them Russians.
Assuring us that he is aware, actually,
of what century this is,
Schiff said in 2015, “Now, we’re not
seeing the same bipolar world we had between
communism and capitalism.” (Phew!) He then
added, “But we are seeing a new bipolar
world, I think, where you have democracy
versus authoritarianism.” Schiff has not
viewed this as a mere contest of ideas: he
constantly advocated for Obama to impose
tougher sanctions on Russia and give more
weapons to Ukraine.
