When Stagecraft Turns to Statecraft
America can’t afford to treat invasions and abductions as props in a global spectacle.
Last Friday, I wrote about the national comfort that has lulled us into a state of complacency. America inherited a relatively well-oiled machine, but we’ve grown accustomed to running it on Dunkin’ slogans and vibes. Yes, there are still civil servants, policy professionals, and corporate leaders striving to advance national interests and expand prosperity. And yes, there are bad actors who deserve every bit of scrutiny we throw their way. But the deeper problem is that we, as a polity, have learned to expect politics to be a spectacle while remaining unencumbered by the legwork and the grinding statecraft that keeps the machine from seizing up.
The Alaska Summit was a case study in that complacency. I hesitate to draw authoritative conclusions because backchannels and memos will eventually fill out the historical record; however, from what is visible now, the meeting between the American and Russian heads of state was more about performance than substance. The U.S. abandoned its push for a ceasefire in Ukraine in favor of talk about a “lasting peace,” which is language that, in practice, risks entrenching stolen territory and leaves tens of thousands of abducted Ukrainian children without recourse.
That about-face fuels fresh uncertainty among our allies. Can the American people be trusted to keep democracy a global priority, even when it means sharing responsibility and wealth, rather than assuming we will remain the eternal center of the world?
The pageantry in Alaska, with its branding, motorcades, Arctic mountains as a backdrop, and oil-rich flyovers, all looked terrific on television. For those unencumbered by the heavy lifting of alliance management, it probably felt like Sunday entertainment. But for the burdened, the cleanup begins immediately: repairing damaged trust, recalculating sanction power, strategizing trade routes, and absorbing the global ripple effects of stagecraft masquerading as statecraft.
A nation endowed with such prestige and power can’t afford a populace that treats global affairs as a reality show or a team sport. The stakes are simply too high. Nor can leaders continue to feed their constituents processed red meat and market it as farm-to-table. Low expectations, cynically stoked, eventually become self-fulfilling.
Invasions, starvation, kidnapping, genocide, and despotism deserve better than to be shrugged off as props in a global spectacle. If their consequences are diminished in an endless search for optics, then America isn’t selling democracy. It’s selling a knockoff brand, as cynical as it is corrosive. Stagecraft becomes destructive statecraft.
The best in us is more than we think. But we’ve settled into low expectations, nudged along by media fragmentation, political chicanery, and the glow of too many screens. In that dystopian glow, we’ve mistaken production value for power. Unless something emerged from the Alaska summit that the public and press are still unaware of (and that is possible), the safest bet is that we’ve once again gobbled down the sausage without asking how it was made. And this one came plated like a Hollywood awards show: glossy, hollow, and too easily forgotten.
If democracy is reduced to spectacle, we’re not just losing influence abroad; then we’re forfeiting seriousness at home.
Happy Sunday.
Read my work from Friday here:
The Comfort That Made Us Forget
America has always prided itself on being a well-oiled machine, meaning it’s self-correcting, self-cleaning, practically able to run on autopilot while we debate whether pineapple belongs on pizza. For decades, we’ve treated democracy like a reliable old car: sure, the “Check Engine” light’s been on since the latter half of the last century, but she always starts in the morning. Trump’s second term is less a sudden crash than the sound of the transmission giving out mid-commute, and the dawning realization that nobody’s checked the oil since Blockbuster was still open.
I watch Velshi while I do my morning exercises, Stephanie Miller and Thom Hartmann on Free Speech TV : Mon thru Fri
Vladimir Kara-Murz who was twice poisoned by Putin, and finally released after 2 1/2 years by a prisoner exchanged with Putin, said that Putin won without stepping on Alaskan soil, just the invite alone gave him gravitas in the international community. Putin had to fly to Alaska, because he is an indicted war criminal and if he flies over any state, he can be arrested, his plane forced down.
Trump showed who was boss, rolling out the red carpet, clapping when he saw Putin, and letting Putin make the first address after the meeting, and what happened in the ten minutes they are alone in the "Beast"
If NATO doesn't stand up to a country, and denounce Trump and throw all of their support into Ukraine, it is all over.
The comparison of the Trump Putin meeting to the Anschluss the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany on March 12, 1938. It was a key event in Hitler's expansionist policy aimed at uniting all German-speaking peoples under one nation. The event involved German troops entering Austria unopposed
Putin has stated his goal of uniting, under Russia, all Russian speaking peoples, and they exist in all countries controlled by the USSR.
In that regard, the USSR did not disappear, it was simply reorganized,
Reorganized as suggested by the Bank for International Settlements in their annual report. One sentence. The USSR is a failed economic experiment and needs to be reorganized. The B.I.S. is the central bank of central banks, located in Basel, Switzerland, it was created in 1929 by the Young Act to handle the German reparations.
The heads of all member banks report to it, the first Monday of Each month, they all occupy and identical office, laid out identically.