Thomas Palley has a new blog post Flirting With Armageddon: The US And Ukraine discussing how the US government is escalating the situation in Ukraine and that warns that it may end badly. An important part of his post is ponting out the existence of an edict of silence.

First, the liberal blob has promulgated an edict of silence against those who challenge its explanation of the war and the case for US participation. The edict applies to conservatives who argue “it’s not our war”, and to independent critics who argue the war has been “made in the USA” via a thirty-year slow-motion attack on Russia conducted through eastward expansion of NATO and regime change subversion in the republics of the former Soviet Union.

Matt Taibbi has used the phrase intellectual no-fly zone to describe this.

Anyone who criticises will be brought down. Supposed left-wing politicians such as Bernie Sanders and the “Squad” vote for more funds for the military industrial complex. The left in the West has always been soft on imperialism and with this the process seems complete. Even supposedly left-wing governments of Sweden and Norway have joined NATO.

There’s a serious problem with the left in the West.

Matt Taibbi quotes Noam Chomsky:

… I reached out to Chomsky this weekend and asked him what in particular it is about the Ukraine conflict that’s brought out such an aggressive response.

“Putting aside the dangers, which are all too real,” he says, the unusually intense response is “part of something much worse: the general atmosphere of irrationality engendered by the whole Ukraine affair. It ranges from the nutcases like Fukuyama assuring us that there’s no threat of nuclear war if we escalate (and the official policy that is not much different), to the ‘left’ shouting slogans about how we have to defend Ukraine and punish Russia no matter what, and any voice that breaks unanimity has to be stilled, maybe crushed.”